The G20, Business as Usual, and Earth’s Future

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The largest protest so far against the Toronto-area G8/G20 summits heads south on University Avenue from the Ontario legislature on Saturday afternoon. People were marching in support of a variety of causes, including the environment. (Timothy Neesam/CBC)

This is about how regular people have so little control over their own future, and little to say about whether the human race survives or not. It’s long and convoluted, but there are some interesting bits in it. In Obama’s speech at the end of the G20 today, he said that nations agree that fossil fuel use has to end and that they all have to work to get climate change stopped.  However, he didn’t elaborate.  There was a G20 “Climate agreement” and a document that I haven’t seen yet. It reportedly called for reductions in the use (or subsidies) of fossil fuels voluntarily, and President Obama pushed them to remove the “voluntary” wording, supposedly making it mandatory.  Even if it is mandatory, it’s still not an official climate agreement, and there is no way of enforcing it that I’m aware of. When I find the text of it, I will reprint it here.

Unfortunately, calling for governments to  keep on growing and spending and consuming and supporting bank health might sound good to people in America, and it’s what all the leaders did, but this is just more propping up a broken capitalistic system that’s falling apart, instead of inventing a new and more equitable economic system for everyone. That system should be based on renewable energy and ending hunger and poverty. Instead, they want to save all the banks. Everything world leaders and Obama and our Congress is doing amounts to putting Bandaids on an unsustainable system.

What we need right now is a better system, one that phases out constant consumption, waste and corruption, and takes all the money out of politics.  Money in politics is the main reason why we have no climate change bill. We have an economic system that feeds on itself, looping itself in with our politics, and that is bound to fail.  Unlimited growth on a limited planet will be disastrous, and we are already seeing evidence of that. It’s harder and harder to get the oil and the coal out of the ground, because there is less of it, yet we need more and more of it. Something, besides the oil rig that sank, is bound to crash and burn very soon.  From the LA Times:

G-20 climate pact erases word ‘voluntary’ from efforts to cut oil-firm subsidies

International negotiators, under pressure from the Obama administration, agree to omit the term when describing efforts to cut production and consumption incentives. Summit also focuses on arriving at a consensus on the global economic crisis.

In a last-minute turn in global climate talks, international negotiators agreed over the weekend to adopt more ambitious plans than expected to trim government subsidies to oil [...]

Sam Vaknin: The Ten Errors of Science Fiction

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Global Politician columnist Sam Vaknin argues in a recent article that science fiction is guilty of ten specific mistakes when postulating the characteristics of advanced extraterrestrial life. Specifically, he contends that sci-fi writers consistently buy into fallacies about:

  1. Life in the universe

  2. The concept of structure
  3. Communication and interaction
  4. Location
  5. Separateness
  6. Transportation
  7. Will and intention
  8. Intelligence
  9. Artificial vs. natural
  10. Leadership

While the article certainly raises some food for thought, Vaknin's call for writers to think more 'outside of the box' is a bit of a stretch, if not condescending. Science fiction writers, for the most part, take great pains to weave a coherent narrative around novel imaginings of what ETIs might look like. Moreover, Vaknin is himself guilty of considerably hand-waving, arguing that ETIs may be existentially and qualitatively of a different sort than what we might expect, but at the same time he doesn't provide any substantive or compelling evidence for us to believe otherwise.

Sure, I agree that ETIs may be dramatically different than what we can imagine and that they may exist outside of expected paradigms, but until our exoscience matures we should probably err on the side of the self-sampling assumption and figure that the ignition and evolution of life tends to follow a similar path to the one taken on Earth. Now, I'm not suggesting that we refrain from hypothesizing about radically different existence-states; I'm just saying that these sorts of extraordinary claims (like alternative intelligences spawning different quantum realities) require the requisite evidence. It's far too easy to fantasize about some kind of energy-based hive-mind living in the core of asteroids, it's another thing to prove that such a thing could come about through the laws of physics [my example, not Vaknin's].

In the article, Vaknin also posits six basic explanations to the Fermi Paradox (and the apparent failure of SETI) that are not mutually exclusive:

  1. That Aliens do not exist
  2. That the technology they use is far too advanced to be detected by us and, the flip side of this hypothesis, that the technology we use is insufficiently advanced to be noticed by them
  3. That we are looking for extraterrestrials at the wrong places
  4. That the Aliens are life forms so different to us that we fail to recognize them as sentient beings or to communicate with them
  5. That Aliens are trying to communicate with us but constantly fail due to a variety of hindrances, some structural and some circumstantial
  6. That they are avoiding us because of our misconduct (example: the alleged destruction of the environment) or because of our traits (for instance, our innate belligerence) or because of ethical considerations

Very quickly, point number one is possible but grossly improbable, points two to five are essentially the same argument—that we don't yet know where, how and what to look for, and point six violates the non-exclusivity principle (explains some but not all ETI behavior). It's odd that Vaknin selected these particular six arguments. There are many, many potential resolutions to the FP with these not being particularly stronger than any other (though point #1 has a lot of traction among the Rare Earthers.). And where is the Great Filter argument, which is possibly the strongest of them all?

Nice try, Vaknin, but the Great Silence problem is more complex than what you've laid out.

T-Mobile Motorola Charm Is an Android Phone With a Blackberry-Styled Keyboard [Motorola]

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A leaked T-Mobile slide is showing off the Motorola Charm, a square-ish Android device running Motoblur with a physical keyboard. Though Motoblur is definitely not for us, the Charm's Blackberry-esque, candybar form factor is interesting since it hasn't been done with Android before. If the keyboard is better than typical Motorola-fare, this could serve as a great messaging device for tweens everywhere. It's supposed to run Android 2.1, which means you won't be that behind when it releases. [Engadget] More »




T-Mobile - Android - Motorola - Smartphone - Motorola Charm

Greece to Sell of Islands

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greece islands for saleI am getting conflicting reports from newspapers around the world about the state of Greece’s many islands. Recent articles in the Guardian have reported that Greece is selling up to four of their private islands through Private Islands Online. However, the Guardian recently retracted this statement stating that it was inaccurate. The same has been said in the New York Daily News.

The New York Daily News had this to say:

As the cash-strapped country struggles to repay its debt, it is putting big swaths of land on some its 6,000 islands up for sale or long-term lease, The Guardian reports. Greece denies these allegations, saying it has “no involvement” in the sale of the islands and calling the report “insulting” and “untrue,” the Wall Street Journal says. With these conflicting reports, it’s unclear what’s going on, but here’s what The Guardian dished about Greece’s alleged plan to sell islands:

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2010/06/25/2010-06-25_greece_to_hawk_islands_to_repay_debt_reports_greece_denies_these_allegations.html#ixzz0s4SJe41i

Building Your Own White iPhone 4 [Mod]

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If you were geeked on the white iPhone 4, but disappointed to see that they wouldn't be shipping until late July, you could always just build your own. Engadget put together a white iPhone 4 with third-party parts and it looks, well, like a white iPhone 4. Though it's missing an earpiece grill, lens cover, LED diffusor, and a white Home button, it's a pretty neat mod for users who just can't wait for the white version. There's a Michael Jackson joke here but yeah, we're not going there. [Engadget] More »




IPhone - Smartphone - Handhelds - Engadget - Apple

Anti-Semitic Violence in Germany: Muslim Youths throw Stones at Jews during Dance Festival

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1939 Germany, all over again

From Eric Dondero:

Lower Saxony lies in the Northwestern region of Germany. It borders the North Sea and the Netherlands to the west. Hannover is one of the States' largest cities.

Hannover has a unique history in regards to the Jewish Holocaust. In 1938 the city was a major site of the famous Kristallnacht. A centuries old Jewish synagoge was burned to the ground. The local Jewish population were deported soon after. Most were eventually exterminated in German Death Camps, including at Auschwitz in Poland.

Hannover is the closest major city to the famous Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where hundreds of thousands of German, Dutch, Polish, and Hungarian Jews were killed by the Nazis. Among the most famous of detainees at Bergen-Belsen, a young Dutch girl named Anne Frank.

Now this breaking news...

AP/Yahoo News: Youths attack Jewish dance group in Germany

BERLIN – Arab youths threw stones at a Jewish dance group during a street festival in Hannover, injuring one dancer and forcing the group to cancel its performance, German police and dance officials said Thursday.

The teenagers also used a megaphone to shout anti-Semitic slurs during the attack Saturday, Hannover police spokesman Thorsten Schiewe said.

"I don't remember such a dramatic attack in Germany in recent times," said Michael Fuerst, the head of the Jewish community of the state of Lower Saxony.

Six suspects have been identified — five Arabic immigrants and one German — and police are looking for the other three, police said.

An official with an association of German Jews, Stephan the Central Council of Jews, was quoted:

"This latest incident shows something we have not experienced before: A growing radicalization of young Muslims, which affects not only the Jewish community but the entire German community."

There are other reports that the Muslims were shouting "Juden Raus" (Jews get out), during the assault; taunts eerily similar to those lodged by German residents at Jews during the 1939 deportation.

Meanwhile, the Association of Jewish University Students in Germany is attributing the recent rise in Anti-Semitic violence to the unrest in the Gaza strip. They describe a marked increase in death threats and slurs on Facebook and by email in the last few weeks.

Pamela Geller, liberty champion and publisher of the Ayn Rand-oriented blog Atlas Shrugs, commented on the Jewish dance group stoning:

The Muslims are finishing the work of the Mufti al-Husseini, Hitlers allym and mass slaughterer of Jews during the the holocaust. Sixty years later it's the Muslims are dragging the rest of the world with them, in their genocidal dreams of annihilating goodness, creativity, production, inventiveness, benevolence, charity, medicine, technology and all of the gifts of the Jews.

Photos are of the camp at Bergen-Belsen. (H/t Wiki for Bergen-Belsen historical facts.)