David Brin

A couple of interesting items from the near future, this time.  But first... Does the Murdoch Hacking Scandal Signify the End of Privacy? - Scientific American interviews 'one of the world thought-leaders on transparency, whistle-blowing, hacking and our future as an "enlightened" civilization.'  (Their words. In fact, the “thought-leader” happens to be me. Gosh.)

Should Facebook and Google+ offer pseudonymic membership?

Still in beta testing, Google-Plus is already a hit, making Facebook nervous with some blatantly better approaches to social networking -- such as the ability to specify your postings to different groups of 'friends'.  One of many fixes we humans have been asking for.

Yet, controversy already simmers.  Take the issue of pseudonymity vs identity.  Just like Facebook, Google+ insists that people use their real names. They've already suspended many accounts found to be in violation.

Complains one blogger: “Allowing pseudonyms could be a way for Google Plus to distinguish itself from Facebook, particularly since Google contends that Google Plus emphasizes personal control over information and sharing. But as it stands, that control is limited to those who choose to go by real names.” Some users, no doubt, merely want to separate their public and private profiles.

Some take their objection even further:  Google+'s "No-Pseudonyms" Policy is Homophobic, Not Just Anti-Social. A snip: “Forcing people to use their real names can be directly damaging to people, especially people who are persecuted for their political views, or persecuted just for being who they are. Like LGBT people — who still face execution in at least three countries.”

A good point.  But Google and Facebook have legitimate counter-points of their own.  First, anonymity and unaccountable pseudonymity are proved to foster some very unpleasant types of online behavior, ranging from predatory to deliberately harmful to just plain nasty. Second, anonymity can open the door to automated personas that sift and collect data for hidden masters, or that might replicate endlessly, clogging the system with multiple, non-real  entities.

Sure, there should be realms where identity is as open and wild as the old west! But when it comes to those domains that offer themselves up as central fora, where we'll all feel obliged to join and where our children feel they "must" have a presence? These should be subject to norms of accountability, backed by a reputation that rises and falls according to one's deeds - as it always did for our ancestors.

There are other problems too, described in my book The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom.

The perennial key question: Must we make an either-or choice? Our civilization made most of its real strides by looking for the win-win, the positive sum game. I have been consulting for some folks who believe they see a terrific business offering two items desperately needed online, both reputation management and portable but accountable pseudonyms...

...pseudonyms that come certified and therefore offer some defense  against abuse, with “follow me” reputations that ensure accountability for specific misbehaviors... but still provide safety from retribution for political or other views.  In fact, the outline for such a system seems remarkably clear, with some surprising added benefits!

Somebody is going to make a lot of money, providing a win-win-win solution to this problem.

Are Algorithms Going to Take Over? Too late - they have!

Kevin Slavin argues that we're living in a world designed for -- and increasingly controlled by -- algorithms. In this riveting talk from TEDGlobal, he shows how these complex computer programs determine: espionage tactics, stock prices, movie scripts, and architecture. And he warns that we are writing code we can't understand, with implications we can't control...

Watch the video, then ponder the microsecond trading that he reveals in Wall Street. Stock markets should be driven by people who study a company's details and choose to invest... not by computer programs that detect the ordering patterns of those studious investors and automatically buy up whatever stock they want, before they can type "return."

In what way does that make "markets more efficient?"  How does it allocate investment capital better?  In fact, it deters intelligent investment in promising companies because the system has parasitic organisms sucking gradient energy and flattening opportunity curves.

I never thought of this before.  These awful parasitic trade-programs are the biggest argument FOR insider trading!

You know how I feel about this!

The Securities and Exchange Commission approved rules Wednesday that could make it highly lucrative for Wall Street whistleblowers and other corporate insiders to alert the agency to securities violations. Under the rules, whistleblowers will be entitled to receive 10 percent to 30 percent of the money they help the SEC collect through enforcement actions. Corporations had lobbied intensely for rules that would impose constraints on whistleblowers.  

And this...

Dozens of police departments nationwide are gearing up to use a tech company’s already controversial iris- and facial-scanning device that slides over an iPhone and helps identify a person or track criminal suspects. The so-called “biometric” technology could improve speed and accuracy in some routine police work in the field.  The smartphone-based scanner, named Mobile Offender Recognition and Information System, or MORIS, can be deployed by officers out on the beat or back at the station.

An iris scan is significantly more accurate than results from other fingerprinting technology long in use by police, BI2 says. When attached to an iPhone, MORIS can photograph a person’s face and run the image through software that hunts for a match in a BI2-managed database of U.S. criminal records. Each unit costs about $3,000.

Can we get the benefits without paying a steep cost?  Sure... providing we get these things, too!  And we always, always have the right to aim them back at authority.

Briefly back to politics... and murdochs vs eloi...

Got the literary reference? Now dig this.

Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal - Rupert Murdoch’s top partner and co-owner of Fox News - said that he wants oil prices to drop so that the United States and Europe don't accelerate efforts to wean themselves off his country's supply. Ask your favorite Fox-watcher what he or she makes of all the facts contained in that sentence.  First get them to read it aloud.  Watch cognitive dissonance and denial go to work.

And to show who Barry Goldwater or William F. Buckley would be voting for, today? President Obama announces push to train 10,000 engineers yearly.

Science Miscellany

Some black holes may be older than time.

And the campaign against Uplift begins -- with fear-mongering. See also "Rise of the Planet of the Apes."  This is going to be a hard struggle, with BOTH the right and the left lined up against what could be humanity's greatest and most noble accomplishment.

And more misceallaneous cool/weird science? Can eating “probiotic” bacteria extend health and life? Long considered a beneficial side effect of eating certain types of yoghurt, these “good bacteria” have been studied and even refined a bit by science. Indications are that there’s some truth to it. But do researchers have any literary background? Aldous Huxley wrote of gut bacteria bringing immortality in “After Many a Summer Dies the Swan.” (1939) You only learn it’s scifi on the last page!

An interesting attempt to create a nonprofit to improve discourse by holding public figures accountable for conflicts of interest.  I’m not at all sure it is well-designed or executed, but some folks should look it over and report back.

With support from President Barack Obama, NASA’s budget is at an all-time high. Over the next four months, the  division is due to launch three major missions: to the Moon, to  and to Jupiter. And the heliophysics division plans to send a probe plunging into the blistering atmosphere of the Sun, closer than ever before. But because the overall NASA science budget is relatively flat, something had to give. Since 2008, astrophysics funding has plunged relative to other NASA science -- and relative to physics and astronomy funding at other agencies.  Stung by spiraling costs and charges of mismanagement, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) -- Hubble's long-awaited successor -- is now seen by some critics as too expensive to fly. And the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), which would hunt for exoplanets and probe the poorly understood phenomenon known as dark energy, may take too long to develop to be worthwhile.

Water appears to be abundant in the universe -- even where we least expect it!  Caltech researchers recently found an immense cloud of water vapor near a quasar  surrounding a black hole. This distant (and ancient) site - the super-blasting center of an ancient galaxy - indicates that water was around from the earliest stages of the universe...

Now to find intelligence... anywhere! Far from Washington, I presume...

Here in Southern California we just survived the "carpocalypse"  - when fevered pundits proclaimed that one stretch of closed LA freeway might wreak gridlock all the way to the Mexican border.  It didn't happen, because people sensibly heeded warnings. As during the so-called "Y2K Crisis," headlines blared: World Fails to End!

Nor will the United States of America collapse, if it slips into an August of No Borrowing. 

Oh, the political fight in Washington, over the raising of the debt ceiling, is serious, all right. There's plenty at stake and the rare adults in that town are trying hard to negotiate solutions.  Here I plan to lay out some of the parameters - a few of which you surely haven't seen mentioned in big-media. I will also appraise some of the crazier polemical tricks.

But first, let me reiterate a key starting point: despite chicken-little proclamations pouring from all sides, America won't tumble into hell if there's no budget deal by August 2.

Jeopardy in the Short-Term?

The cause of "carpocalypse" level panic in D.C. is fear that the U.S. credit rating will collapse, if the debt ceiling isn't raised in time. America is said to be the only major nation that's never defaulted on its obligations, resulting in easy access to cheap bonds. And indeed, a true default on interest and principle payments could do serious harm, raising risk assessments and borrowing costs for ourselves and for our children. But that won't happen.

Even if August 2 passes without a deal, and the U.S. government abruptly stops borrowing, there will be no reason for our national credit to be damaged, more than a scintilla. 

Why? Because there will still be enough money in the till, on August 3 and thereafter, to keep the armed services, FBI, FEMA and most vital services going. And after that, more than enough to pay interest due on all outstanding debts. In other words, no "default."

And if all interest is being paid, exactly what will the credit markets have to complain about? Will their calculations of self-interest really change that much, because of an official state of insolvency - clearly very brief - that won't affect their bottom line a single bit? There is a word for market participants who let symbolism trump calculated self-interest.

Chumps. Sure, speculators will send bond yields on a roller coaster for a couple of days. Then, their place will be taken by calmer, more calculating heads.  Winners.

Oh, don't get me wrong. The August 2 deadline is a serious matter!  The President will be forced to shutter half of the government. Farm subsidy payments and student loans won't go out.  Social Security checks may be cut in half, or they may not go out at all.  That's bad!  But that won't last very long, you can be sure.  No more than days - a couple of weeks, at most. And the difference will be made up, within a month.

The short term victims of this idiocy will be politician-demagogues with careers cut short by self-inflicted wounds. We won't see a collapse of the United States of America.

My real worries extend over the longer term, to the underlying poroblem of which this is just a hiccup symptom. The same damned curse we've suffered for 20 years. Our grinding decline into phase three of the American Civil War.

A Primer on the Impossible Politics of Debt Reduction

Consider the awful position the Republicans find themselves in. They cannot turn around now and simply vote to raise the debt ceiling, as they did 17 times under Ronald Reagan and seven times under George W. Bush, without a squeak, while the national debt skyrocketed under both presidents.  (The ceiling went up four times, by small amounts, under Bill Clinton.)

Never mind history. For the GOP-controlled House to do this for Obama, after all their radical rhetoric, would be political suicide.

President Obama has made it even more difficult to back out.  By seeking a Grand Deal on the deficit, he took on his own party's base to offer major cost-savings in entitlement obligations, such as Medicare and pensions. For the GOP to walk away from a table heaped with budget cuts, efficiencies and spending limits amounting to three trillion dollars over ten years - more than they ever asked for - would be public admission of hypocrisy.

(Secret factoid: the Democratic leadership sees this event as an opportunity to do some major fat-trimming that the country desperately needs, but that they could never justify to their base, under normal conditions. Each side could do this - enact some vital reforms while blaming the other side!  That is, they might, if pragmatic adults filled the room.)

Why can't the GOP accept this offer? Because Obama demands one trillion dollars in revenue to compensate and help pay for it all.  Every penny of new revenue would come from elimination of targeted pork or fatcat tax breaks - like subsidies for the corporate jets that helped the rich to escape the "TSA hell" the rest of us endure in public airports.

Polls show the public overwhelmingly supports this modest set of adjustments, especially since taxes on the rich are at their lowest rates in 50 years. But most of the radicals who recently came into the House of Representatives under the Tea Party banner have signed Grover Norquist's pledge to absolutely never, ever enhance revenue going to the federal government, under any circumstances. Even during times of war.

(How did we go from budget surpluses under Bill Clinton, rapidly paying off the debt, to arterial gushers of red ink under Bush? Could one major factor have been going to war for the first time in the nation's history without a plan for shared sacrifice, or any provision to pay for it? Norquist doesn't try to soft-pedal his aim, which is to "strangle the U.S. federal government to death"... a literal quotation.)

Such a pledge leaves no wriggle room. No space for adjusting to circumstance, to negotiate or deliberate. or to be a delegate for all of your constituents. Even the narrowest exception, one that gets three dollars in budget cuts for every dollar of loophole closing - (which old-sane conservatives like Goldwater or Buckley would deem a huge victory - is absolutely anathema to today's GOP.

Whatever you think of the doctrinal details - wherever you stand along the dismal, lobotomizing "left-right axis" - you've got to admit they are impressive. Reciting exactly the same talking points with hours, sometimes even minutes. The most ideologically pure and stunningly well-disciplined party machine America has seen in two hundred years.

The McConnell Two-Step

Now, there are smart people on both sides of the current debt-ceiling mess... even some of those who are out of their freakin' minds... who know they've painted themselves into a corner. As we speak, they are desperately seeking a way out. And some of the imaginative escape plans are downright stunning.

Take the proposal of Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell to evade the political mine field by deliberately surrendering to the President the power to raise the national debt ceiling.  

Say what? Your party disapproves of red-ink spending, right? (It never bothered you under GOP presidents, when the mantra was "deficits don't matter.) So... your solution is to throw away your Congressional power of say-so over borrowing and hand it over permanently to the wastrels in the Executive Branch? 

How does the mind even wrap itself around that one?

Actually, the political legerdemain is pretty clever! Try to follow along.

First, you pass a bill that tosses all power to raise the debt ceiling over to your enemy President Obama. In the long term, this abrogates forever one of Congress's chief powers , to force the nation's focus on the budget (like right now!) But it gets you out of being responsible for a default.

You know Obama will raise the limit, for the sake of the country. And so, Social Security checks will flow. You won't be blamed for stopping them. Phew.

Next, you express outrage that Obama has done exactly what you tossed him the power to do! Great. And then, according to the new law, you pass a resolution through the House blocking the debt-ceiling increase!

But... won't that stop the Social Security checks?

Nope, because you feel safely certain it will fail in the Democratic-controlled Senate, or under the president's veto pen. Thus GOP Congressfolk get to have a win-win! They escape from the debt-limit crisis they triggered. No Grand Deal means the government keeps spending like mad, but without any tax adjustments on the rich. And, above all, you can tell your back-home radicals:

 "I voted against any debt-limit raise!  Our fingerprints aren't on it! HE did it!"

It's a fabulous tale, worthy of science fiction. But, um, here's a question for House majority leader Eric Cantor And Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell: Sirs, do you actually think that will work?

Sure, 'he' (Obama) will have raised the debt ceiling. But only because you voted to give him that power... forever! Will your constituents really be too stupid to notice that? Sure, past history suggests you may be right about that. But can you count on stupidity saving you... forever?"

The President should reject this idiotic ploy, in savagely contemptuous terms, even if it means that the debt-raise deadline passes by on August 2. As I said (above) our credit rating will be fine. There will be no permanently credit-damaging "default." And the nation might do well to go without federal checks for one or two weeks. It'll make us think.

He won't do that, of course.  By nature Mr. Obama is a consensus dealer and bridge-builder who tries endlessly to "reason together." He seems congenitally incapable of recognizing that we live in unreasonable times, with our bridges already set aflame by a foreign-owned propaganda machine.  Abraham Lincoln also spent six months trying to find someone in southern states to reason with, to negotiate with. It took multiple, hard shocks before Lincoln realized the harsh, exceptional realities of civil war.

What's The Worst That Can Happen?

In fact, we've seen all this before. Back in the 1990s, Republicans in Congress shut down the government... and paid for it politically. But they felt a grand gesture was necessary for ironic reasons. Because, for a brief time, House Speaker Newt Gingrich and President Bill Clinton actually worked together!

Upon first taking over Congress, in 1995, Gingrich made a lot of bellicose statements. But he also wanted a track record of accomplishment. And so, he sat down with Clinton to negotiate Welfare Reform, a bill that took on many complaints about a system that both right and left found unworkable and destructive.  The result was legislation that simply worked. So well that "welfare" has dropped from the lexicon of top political issues, even among polemical extremists.

And that brief interlude of sane-discussion and compromise had other products. Gingrich and Clinton worked out budget control measures that resulted, soon thereafter, in the first balanced books and black ink in the federal treasury since Eisenhower. Black ink that Clinton diligently applied to debt reduction, even later when they GOP demanded that it all be given to their top 1% sponsors. Even when he was being sprayed by the opening salvoes of Culture War.

It was a remarkably productive year or so. And Republican radicals looked upon what had been wrought by Gingrich and Clinton. And they saw that it had been achieved by pragmatic negotiation and good old American, non-dogmatic problem solving. And they saw that citizens and the nation benefited and the public thought it good.

And they swore that nothing like it would ever happen again.  

Whereupon the Great Federal Government Shut-down Crisis commenced, accomplishing nothing but noise and smoke and posturing and harm to conservatism. (Read-up about the eerie parallels to today's big posturing festival over the debt ceiling.)

When that venture flubbed, the GOP decided to try something even more radical, while expecting different results. They crossed another traditional barrier by impeaching a President over matters that had nothing to do with his performance of the job we hired him for... indeed, for doing far less than eight out of the fifteen "House Managers" (prosecutors) had done to earn their own messy divorces.  Only one other president had ever been impeached, in the direct aftermath of Lincoln's assassination. But the turning of trivialities into mega drama seems to be a trait that we must live with, during this phase of our ongoing civil war.

What does this history lesson have to do with the current crisis? It shows what we could have, right now, if adults chose negotiation, yes, even across an ideological divide. And it shows the ultimate futility of partisan rage, when pragmatism is replaced by fevered dogmatism. It shows that Mr. Obama needs to study Clinton and learn to be tough. 

He must call... their... bluff.

"Punishing Job Creators.

I want to conclude by getting specific. Some of the polemical nonsense being hurled about seems to come straight of of the corrupt ad agency in "Mad Men." Much of the claptrap is being answered well. But I wrote to a cousin of mine who works in the Executive Office to point out some major Murdochisms that are going unrefuted.  Here is a big 'un.

Deficit-cutting helps the economy. But any revenue increase hurts "job creators."  

Here are two points that someone ought to say in reply:

a)  CUTS ALSO COST JOBS:    
    "Every million dollars of spending that we cut means 20 or 30 real-live middle class Americans will lose a job. Obviously.

    "Now, in spite of that fact, we're willing to do lots of cutting! Because we have to.  We've spent a decade plunged into land wars of attrition in Asia without doing what all our ancestors did, in time of war - making sacrifices to pay for it.  Well, the bill is due.

    "But if several dozen middle class Americans must go jobless to save a million dollars... exactly how is it sacred 'job-creation' to give the same million dollars in special interest tax breaks to some billionaire corporate jet owner?  Do you really believe he'll use that million to hire 30 people?

    "Sure, it's happened, now and then. But if the Bush tax cuts had translated into 30 jobs per million given to the rich, we'd have almost no unemployment right now!

    "So, why should we swallow that line, this time?"

b)  VELOCITY:   "When you pay a worker to help fix a decaying bridge or weatherize an apartment building, what does that worker do with his or her weekly check?  These days, it has to go right back out again, paying a grocer, who pays a trucker, who pays a farmer, and so on. It's called Money Velocity and money that goes to the middle class has lots of velocity.

    "Now Republicans say we should be stingy to the working class, but generous to the rich, so they can make jobs.  But if economists know one thing, it's that the rich don't spend the way middle class folks do. They don't have to! 

    "Sure a few of them build factories. We'll extend tax breaks for useful capitalist enterprise, for research and investment in job-making capital equipment.

    "But this is no time to go into debt preserving huge tax gifts for those who simplyhold onto it all, hardly spending.  That's not velocity. It sure isn't job-creation. It's using your friends in Congress to just get richer while the middle class pays."

Okay. Yeah, I know that those concepts - like money velocity - may be dismissed by political operatives as hard for Joe Six Pack to grasp. Well, I don't agree. I think they'll nod, understand, and feel flattered at being explained stuff, like adults.

What It Boils Down To

I consider the "Tea Party Movement" to be one of the most brilliant sociological ploys. Perhaps unmatched since a million poor white southern farmers were talked into eagerly and courageously fighting to the death, in order to protect the feudal privileges of a tiny, slave-holding aristocracy. Yes, it is that impressive.  Get them to think they are fighting for one thing, while dying for something else.

Likewise, by holding up and waving an obsolete and irrelevant old "left-right'political-axis," todays feudal lords (http://www.vanityfair.com/...)  have managed to stir Red America into a frenzy of unparalleled rancor toward every single group or profession that has both knowledge and professional skill -- from scientists to teachers, civil servants, academics, medical doctors, attorneys, diplomats, skilled labor... amounting to a "war on smartypants."

Why stir hatred for all of the folks in society who know a lot? Calling them "intellectual elites?"  This program clearly has one aim.

To protect one set of elites from being counterbalanced by other elites.  Pretty simple, actually.

Distract and prevent us from returning to what made the country great... pragmatic negotiation. Calm discussion. A mix of state and enterprise and individual solutions that somehow never tipped into any ideological excess...

...that is, until it was stirred by foreign-owned propaganda machines, with that one goal. To sic us at each others throats.

H+ Magazine put me through a great big interview on transparency, accountability, surveillance and sousveillance. and our chances to keep a little privacy in the coming age of light.

An example of the "big picture" perspective is this piece I did for Thomas Kuhn's PBS series "Closer to Truth."  Are we living in a simulation?

If any of you know teachers or librarians who happen to love science fiction and also live near Northern California or Nevada, clue them in that this year’s World Science Fiction Convention - in Reno this August - will feature a college credit course on the teaching of science fiction!

= A final word on the "rapture" event =

I just saw that Mr. Camping expected 200 million to be raptured! Wow, what a liberal. When I first heard of this rapture thing, the number was 144,000 exactly, and unbaptized children need not apply! (see below) BTW that's not the number going to heaven, it's the number who are so wonderful they don't have to suffer Tribulation first.

Funny how memes mutate, under criticism. By the time the “Left Behind” series took this up, they realized that sending a billion kids into years of torment might not be the best way to pitch their story! So pre-puberty children got taken up, even from Hindu or Muslim homes! Huge change. Some flexibility! (To get a clear picture of the story they are talking about - derived from a portion of the Christian Bible that Martin Luther personally despised, and that Jesus would have reviled, see Apocamon.) So the circle of inclusion has gradually expanded - though it still encourages followers to gleefully relish their inherent superiority and the prospect of their neighbors' coming torment.

(One person writes in to explain the original 144,000 figure: "They were to be the first "fruit" and once they were "sealed" they could go forth and bring the rest of the world in, therefore allowing for many more people. But the first 144,000 were crucial, coming from the 12 tribes of Israel. "Revelation 7:3-8 - saying: "Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until after we have sealed the servants of God on their foreheads." And I heard the number of the sealed, a hundred and forty-four thousand, sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel" (12 tribes, and 12,000 from each). Jehovah's Witnesses are said to believe in this firmly, and the rest of their member will be left behind to teach."  

(Ah... so what part of not harming the Earth is so hard to understand? And why have they stopped mentioning this 144,000 thing? And wasn't the Temple supposed to be rebuilt (God forbid) before all this happens, so the newly Christianized twelve Jewish tribes (including the ten missing ones) can be sealed?  In which case, all we need to do, in order to prevent this psychopathic Patmos scenario from ever happening is simply NOT build a building? Okay then.)

The crucial point. This is all so self-centered and solipsistic - so totally focused on the individual's greedy urge to leave everybody else behind - that Jesus would certainly have nothing to do with the whole thing. People who pray for such an event to happen are inherently UNWORTHY of rapture because they are praying for their neighbors to suffer.  That’s it. Summarized accurately. Top, middle and bottom.

Putting it all in completely Christian terms, Paul and Patmos may be vengeful cusses, but Jesus overrules them, and he says LOVE thy neighbor. Don't pray for events that will send your neighbor into torment and hell --

-- which is what a number of leading presidential candidates openly avow to do!  They avow to follow preachers who openly call more than half of all living Americans "damned souls." Pastors and congregations who pray for the coming of events that will send more than half of their countrymen into agony and eternal hell.  Events that will end democracy, abolish rule "by the people" and terminate the United States of America.  Events that will rain "fire from the sky."

And these folks want us "damned souls" to vote them keys to our nuclear arsenal.

This isn't just amusing, people. (Though I had hoped there'd be more stunts with empty suits of clothes left on sidewalks!) This matter is one that's relevant to politics and the rise of a new Know-Nothing movement that hates modernity, that hates science. And that hates us.

= Some Science and Cool Tidbits.

This wondrous solar powered plane isn't a gimmick anymore! It looks so retro nostalgic... like something from the 1920s... yet it works.  It staye aloft 26 hours on just sunlight & batteries... and looks so cool. (Also, it probably doesn't have much of a heat signature....

Pixar as an early propaganda wing of the Uplift Institute? Pushing the notion of non human intelligence?

The world's leading climate change research organization issued a report yesterday that has renewable energy boosters cheering, as it foresees substantial growth in alternative energy sources over the next 40 years.

No one has ever floated a boat on another world, but NASA is now considering doing just that, on Saturn's icy moon Titan.

Red wine turns metal compound into superconductor. Sake, beer and whiskey also work?  

Red colobus monkeys in Uganda's Kibale National Park are being hunted to extinction—by chimpanzees. According to a study published May 9 in the , this is the first documented case of a nonhuman primate significantly overhunting another primate species.

Wow. Stunning video: NASA captures giant comet hitting the sun. My doctorate was for analyzing the composition and behavior of comets BTW. Put a lot of it into HEART OF THE COMET. And at Caltech I was a solar astronomer! Combo-interests! Amazing.

= As for generations... ==

At last!  Someone takes on generational nostalgia!  Bill Clinton points out that if the Boomers are worse people than the WWII "greatest generation" then those “greatest” must not have been such great parents, hm?  Mind you! I do believe that generation accomplished their historical missions pretty well.  Moreover, we boomers have our problems.  Our inherent generational trait is self-righteous indignation, a drug high we cannot kick and that is poisoning America with "culture war."  America in particular will be better when our calmer kids take over!  But that, too is the point.

Looking at our kids, I have to say -- we appear to have been terrific parents.

Finally... a clarification. Satiation?  I call satiability one of the hallmarks of sanity, and it is... but only if it means you shift your longings!  When you get what you said you wanted, you should be happier! And need that thing (e.g. money) less) But that should not stop ambition and longing in general!

Mignon McLaughlin put it, “Youth is not enough. And love is not enough. And success is not enough. And, if we could achieve it, enough would not be enough.”

In honor of the coming (or not-coming) Rapture event... may I reprint an article of mine from the last century? It seems even more relevant today. Alas.

Let's take a pause for a flight of fantasy, and imagine that we still had an America where political negotiation was possible, and people might listen to a "positive sum" proposal... one in which (at least in theory) almost everybody ought to be able to win. Yes, it is as far-fetched as a sci fi novel!  But bear with me as I talk about a way that the tax code might be simplified, without getting snared in the morass of the (insane/stupid) Left-Right Political Axis.

-----
President Obama said he would seek a reform of the U.S. tax code, calling the current tax system is a "10,000-page monstrosity." But that promise has been made by others before.  Whenever somebody proposes tax simplification, we run up against the fact that every “simplification” would gore somebody’s ox.  The more code-trimming you do, the more people will scream.

In fact, I know a simple way the sheer bulk of the tax code - its complexity, in numbers of rules,  words or exceptions - could be trimmed by perhaps 70% or more, without much political pain or obstructionism! Because the method is designed to be mostly politically neutral.  It does not aim at some utopian fantasy (like the Flat Taxers rave about.)  It gores only a few sacred cows. It would be cheap and easy to implement. And almost guaranteed to work! (Only accountants should hate it for the effects on their lucrative business.  Yet, to the best of my knowledge, this method has never been tried, or even proposed. Alas.

How can I promise such a thing? First let's note something interesting.

There is nothing on Earth like the US tax code.  It is an extremely complex system that nobody understands well.  But it is unique among all the complex things in the world, in that it's complexity is perfectly replicated by the MATHEMATICAL MODEL of the system.Because the mathematical model _is the system.

Hence, one could put the entire US tax code into a spare computer somewhere, try a myriad inputs, outputs... and tweak every parameter to see how outputs change.  There are agencies who already do this, daily, in response to congressional queries. Alterations of the model must be tested under a wide range of boundary conditions (sample taxpayers.) But if you are thorough, the results of the model will be the results of the system.

Now. I'm told (by some people who know about such things) that it should be easy enough to create a program that will take the tax code and cybernetically experiment with zeroing-out dozens, hundreds of provisions while sliding others upward and then showing, on a spreadsheet, how these simplifications would affect, say, one-hundred representative types of taxpayers. As

I've said, this is done all the time. A member of Congress has some particular tax breaks she despises and asks the CBO for figures on the effect, should those breaks be eliminated. Alas, what inevitably happens is that, as soon as word gets out, her proposal soon faces a firestorm from constituents or powerful interests who will fight like hell to keep from losing millions.  

Hence, although American corn-ahol subsidies are propelling high food prices and hunger around the world, nothing is done to end the wasteful programs that costs more net energy than it delivers. There are thousands of other special interest groups that each wish the budget to be balanced... on somebody else's back.

So how would my suggestion get past this? A key innovation would be to program in boundary conditions to the experiment.  The paramount condition would be “no losers.”  

Let the program find the simplest version of a refined tax code that leaves all 100 taxpayer clades unhurt.  If one group loses a favorite tax dodge, the system would seek a rebalancing of others to compensate.  No mere human being could accomplish this, but I have been assured by experts that a computer could do this in a snap.

Here's the key point: If such an iterative search finds a new, much simpler tax structure that leaves none of the 100 groups more than 5% worse off than they currently are, then who is going to scream?

Oh, well, I suppose a lot of people will scream. Cheaters will holler of course, and those who benefit from the cloud of obscurity allowed by an overly complex tax code.  Even if farmers are guaranteed adjustments in other areas, they will reflexively protest over the end of Roosevelt-era subsidies.  In fact, everybody will complain! But...

...but a lot of the HEAT will be taken out of their complaints, if they see their bottom line is completely unchanged. And that is the secret trick to this approach.  To remove enough heat so that a critical mass of reasonable people may calmly re-assess, negotiate, and accept pragmatic change that's good for all.

Will "no-losers" really leave everybody unaffected? Nope.  One hundred sample-type American taxpayers won't cover everybody, especially at the upper end. Some in the aristocracy have arranged for tax laws to be enacted specifically to benefit them. They will hit the roof when simplification zeroes out those special exemptions (while leaving the typical 100 types alone). But if enough of the rich are included in "no-losers" they might tip the balance, canceling out the final obstructors, for the sake of a new simplicity. And for patriotism.

Will this method solve all tax-related problems?  Of course not!  Complexity isn't the only thing wrong with the Tax Code.  After simplification must come some genuine tax policy shifts that do advantage some and disadvantage others.  Like all of you, I have my favorite injustices I’d love to see redressed, behaviors disincentivized, business ventures stimulated...

 But, by starting with “no-losers,” you can use politically neutral optimization routines to find a much simpler system, trimming and slimming the machinery to use the fewest moving parts, in order to achieve the exact same output it is performing right now.  Then, and only then, will it make sense to argue about steering the vehicle in new directions.

Honestly, can you think of ANY other way that simplification might plausibly ever happen? Beside armwaving fantasies that will never get past angry interest groups. If so, I'd love to hear it.

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... Ah well, I wrote all of the above back when it was at least possible to imagine negotiated positive sum politics.  But let's be plain. That is not the case today, amid the outright treason called "culture war," which has so desperately weakened the United States of America. We must face the fact that normal politics is dead. There is only one analogy for the state of simplistic, imbecilic rage that we are currently experiencing.

 We are in Civil War part III.

As one who nurses a few conspiracy theories of his own -- but only ones that fit the Seven Secret Rules of Plausibility ;-) -- I actually find most of the run-of-the-mill-kneejerk stories, concocted by modern loonies (not only on the far right, but also plenty on the far-left and even far-out) to be just plain dumb. They are nearly always based on several self-flattering premises:

1) that the powers who are supposedly performing the conniving-nefarious activity are nearly all-powerful, nearly all-knowing and have unlimited supplies of eager, willing, compliant, conscience-free, yet staggeringly competent henchmen, who somehow commit their acts with perfect timing, without a glitch, hiccup or anyone deciding to blab... and

2) firmly believe that somehow, in a world filled with skilled scientists, cops, investigators, journalists. intelligence agents and dedicated enemies of the (purported) conspirators, somehow it is the believer and his or her close-aligned pals who are the only ones smart enough to see through the smoke and mirrors to the truth... and

3) avow and admit that lots of people on this planet can be delusional crazy while vigorously denying it, yet nevertheless go on to proclaim, in serene confidence -- "But I'm not one of them!"

This is not the time or place for me to get into intense detail, in a formal essay appraising all the types and species of human paranoia... and why my own particular brands just happen to be the ones that are smart, on target and sensible! Alas. Lacking both the requisite energy and spare-expendable lifespan, I'll just offer a few enlightening tidbits below, and save all-encompassing wisdom for another time.

= IS IT ALL A MATTER OF PERSONALITY? =

This seems especially pertinent, given America’s recent swerve down Kookoo Lane. Aha! Belief in Conspiracies linked to Machiavellian Mindset -- a firm belief that "they did it" is linked to the concept that "I would do it". It's exactly what I would have written, if they hadn't systematically stolen my ideas. Wait, am I confusing conspiracy theorizing with paranoia?  Easy to do... except when the conspiracies are real, but only a few can see them!

Or might it all be chemical? In work that gives cranky teenagers another reason to blame their parents for all life's woes, researchers have uncovered a genetic link to happiness.  The study of more than 2,500 Americans revealed two variants of a gene that influenced how satisfied – or dissatisfied – people were with their lot. Those born with two long versions of the gene (one is passed down from each parent) were more likely to declare themselves "very satisfied" with life than those who inherited two short versions.  

= TECHNO PARANOIA? =

Can arresting officers search the arrested person's cellphone, downloading everything from address books, photos and websites to thousands of texts... plus everything the phone touched in the Cloud... all without a warrant, because the phone was on your immediate person, and thus "like" a pocket or a purse or a set of keys? Or is the phone something much more? A "portal" into your whole life, meriting a warrant to rummage through?

And now -- they lied to us!  Was The Last Typewriter Factory Closed? Not Really.  

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...followed by much more, below... ==>

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Every tenth posting or so, I take care of a pile of small/cool items.  Here's one you are sure to like:  Scientific American interviews me in their Too Hard For Science? series. "David Brin on - Raising Animals to Human Levels of Intelligence. If we cannot find aliens in the stars, we might create new "alien" intelligences on Earth. But it won't be easy, technically, politically or ethically.

Spread the word: all uplift books now available on kindle!

I confess to having a few visual fetishes. One of them is bridges..  I love bridges. Even "ugly" utilitarian ones have a kind of beauty, so long as they express the compelling elegance of physical equations and our ever improving materials.  But some inspire and even leave one awestruck. Perhaps that is why bridges are among the things that human beings always create with panache and (almost) always with skill. (The other being weapons; we seem to be best at both connecting and separating from each other.) See some of the latest bridge concepts: Imagining bridges of the future.

Meanwhile.... We're catching up to (or bypassing) the future -- in sci fi movie timelines. Clockwork Orange was set in 1995, The Postman in 2013, Soylent Green in 2022. Below that chart, a Trilogy Meter -- rating 1st, 2nd & 3rd movies in famed SF series. I mostly agree in every case! He captures "2nd movie syndrome." He's too kind to Jedi, Trek3 (blech), Alien3 (beyond evil), & Khan was great! But generally right.

= Predictions Registry Time? =

Predictive hit in EARTH p164 "How about fighting the greenhouse effect by sending up dust to block sunlight like those volcanoes made the chill snap of '09." About this snippet-quotation, a fan writes: "Oh sure, new planets, the web, secrecy radicalism, your dead-on technology, but HOW did you know in '89 that '09 volcano dust'd do a cold snap in 2010?!"

Aw, that's nuthin' See p.206 of Transparent Society! Far creepier! (More below.)

Oh, and now this: ”Researchers at the University of Arizona, analyzed  grains that the Stardust probe scooped up from Comet Wild 2's coma on a close flyby in 2004, sending the samples to Earth in a capsule two years later. After studying the comet dust using electron microscopy and X-ray analysis, the researchers found minerals that formed in the presence of liquid water.”  Suggesting the comet’s nucleus underwent a period with liquid in its interior... as suggested in my novel HEART OF THE COMET. (Based on my doctoral thesis.) Melted in the early cloud by decaying Aluminum26. Trillions of such test tubes might have made... life?

Another Predictions Registry Item:In 2010 I said we'll be sorry someday for investing too much in so-called Just In Time production and inventory methods. Now the entire world economy is suffering because events in Japan have rocked delicate "efficient" supply chains. See: “Disasters show flaws in just-in-time production, 'Earliest impact will be felt with high-cost, low-weight products'.

Now add the fact that hundreds of thousands in the afflicted area had charged cell phones they could not use, when they needed them most, because of the lack of P2P text passing capability. (Some probably died because of it, trapped in buildings with their phones in their hands.)  Another area I have been railing about since before 9/11, grabbing lapels ain Washington, Silicon Valley, with the most trivial fix that would make our civilization far more resilient and robust. Alas.

And don't get me started about the need to re-start Yucca Mountain.

(Come see a wiki that has been set up by some meticulous fans, attempting to track my own near-future forecasts, ranking a success-failure rate, especially when it comes to my near-future novel EARTH (1989): new helpers are welcome to join in updating the site and keeping me honest!)

.... and more below on science and perceptions!

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Not even those of us who are scientifically trained actually do objective science consistently well. Like all other humans, we are predisposed, with biased, emotionally prejudiced human minds, to first see what we want or expect to see - a dilemma first illustrated by Plato as the "Allegory of the Cave."  In one of the few things that Plato got right, he showed how each of us allows our subjective will to overlay and mask anything inconvenient about the objective world.*  

Now Chris Mooney (author of the Republican War on Science) explains how this age-old human flaw  is being analyzed in scientific detail, by researchers who reveal it to be dismayingly intractable. It seems that obstinacy is as deeply rooted as love or sex! See: The Science of Why We don't Believe Science. -

Of course, there's hope, or we would never have climbed so far. In the last few centuries w discovered a general way around this dilemma. It is through the enlightenment process that underlies almost everything successful about our civilization - not only science but also free markets, justice and democracy. The one tool that has ever allowed humans to penetrate the veil of their own talented delusions.

It is called Reciprocal Accountability. Or criticism, the only known antidote to error.

We may not be able to spot our own mistakes and delusions, but others will gladly point them out for us! Moreover, this favor is one that your FOES will happily do for you! (How nice of them.) And, in return, you will eagerly return the favor. In our enlightenment - and especially in science - this process is tuned to maximize truth-output and minimize blood-on-the-floor.  But it requires some maturity. Some willingness to let the process play out. Willingness to negotiate. Calmness and even humor.

It doesn't work amid rage or "culture war." Which is precisely why culture war is being pushed on us. By those who want the enlightenment to fail.

Which brings us back to Mooney's cogent and detailed article, which explains the problem of "narrowcasting" to specifically biased audience groups, who get to wallow in endless reinforcement of their pre-existing views, avoiding the discomfort of cognitive dissonance from things like evidence...

... a problem - exacerbated by the internet age - that I predicted in my 1989 novel EARTH - describing a near future in which people shift their attention only to those sources that confirm and reinforce their pre-existing beliefs. (A forecast I would rather not have seen come true.)

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* How ironic then, that the Platonists ( including his successors at "logic-incantation," like Hegel, Marx and Rand) have excelled even the priests at weaving subjective spells to mask the real world.  Oh we are good at this. Delusion truly is the greatest human talent!  Indeed, all you sci fi fans... what talent of YOURS am I paid to cater-to? Hm? ;-)

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In an April 4 paper in arXiv, Adrian Kent of the University of Cambridge and Perimeter Institute suggested two alternate reasons why we haven’t heard from extraterrestrials:
 
    •“Intelligent species might reasonably worry about the possible dangers of self-advertisement and hence incline towards discretion” — the “Undetectability Conjecture,” suggested by Beatriz Gato-Rivera.

    •Strengthening that argument: “Evolutionary selection, acting on a cosmic scale, tends to extinguish species which conspicuously advertise themselves and their habitats.”

Referring to this new article, the good folks at Kurzweilai.net added:

"In SHOUTING AT THE COSMOS … Or How SETI has Taken a Worrisome Turn Into Dangerous Territory, astrophysicist and science-fiction author Dr. David Brin advises that “people who care about [transmissions from Earth] — preferring a wide-ranging discussion before a few individuals start screaming into space on our behalf — are going to have to do some yelling of their own.” He explores this issue further in A CONTRARIAN PERSPECTIVE ON ALTRUISM: THE DANGERS OF FIRST CONTACT and other thought-provoking articles."

Thanks Kurzweil folks!

Alas, I have been wrassling with the Fermi Paradox since before it was called that!  Back in 1985 I named this mystery "The Great Silence" in what is still the only full review article ever published on the subject. (See footnote)

There I cataloged almost a hundred explanations that people have offered for the silence and the impression that we have - so far - of being alone in the cosmos. Alas, most folks tend to choose one particular answer, over all the others, for reasons having a lot more to do with individual psychology than either logic or evidence!

 If you look at the good old Drake Equation (it needs to be expanded by a couple of factors), then it's clear that some factor must be lower-than-expected, in order to make the emptiness that we seem to see around us. But which factor?

Funny thing.  Those who want the cosmos to be empty of competition (so we can fill it with our descendants) tend to choose factors on the left side of the Drake Equation - e.g. those having to do with the number of potential life-bearing worlds, or the likelihood of biogenesis, or of intelligence or industrial civilization.  

Those who are eager for contact - like the SETI folks - tend to choose factors on the right side to blame for the apparent absence of neighbors.  Factors that let them say "that just means things are a little sparse; but give us time. Those signals will show up any minute!"

The saddest thing that I've noticed? Once a person picks a favorite explanation, he or she tends to cling to it, vociferously sure that all other theories are utter nonsense.  I've seen this happen to some of the smartest guys I know. Such certainty... in a realm that has been called "the only scientific field without any known subject matter."

Almost nobody seems willing to admit "We just don't know; there's too little data. A dozen of the best explanations may be true, maybe even several at once. So let's act accordingly."

As for the theory recently published? The so-called "Darwinian Explanation" amounts to "they're all cowards out there, because some predatory types may be mean. So everybody's hiding." Well, well. It is an old, old, old hypothesis. It's been around a boringly long time, though sadly it seems that the authors think they invented it.

Heck that explanation could be true. Indeed, because it might be true, I am part of a growing movement trying for a moratorium on idiotic "message-to-ET" shouting, at least till we learn a bit more and have had a chance to discuss these matters, openly, like adults.  Still, that doesn't make the idea original.

(Or even especially likely. The notion of a universe filled with cowards... who stay cowardly FOREVER, no matter how advanced they become... seems no only unimaginative and temporally myopic, but deeply dismal, as well.)

Someday, I hope, some people will enter this field interested in exploring the full scope of ideas, the way grownup scientists do in almost any other field, actually reading the literature and comparing past arguments and progress before blabbing "I just figured it out!"

Perhaps it will happen one day, when curiosity and professionalism outweigh impulsive egotism.  Heck, maybe then we'll be worthy and ready for contact.

==

* My "Great Silence" paper about the mysterious Fermi Paradox, the strange lack of signs, in the heavens, of extraterrestrial intelligent life. Quarterly Journal of  Royal Astronomical Society, fall1983, v.24, pp283-309  (Downloadable at http://www.davidbrin.com/... or at http://adsabs.harvard.edu/... )
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The Electric Infrastructure Security (EIS) Council agitates for better infrastructure protection against electromagnetic threats.  EMPACT America is a bipartisan, non-profit NGO for citizens concerned about protecting the American people from a nuclear or natural electromagnetic pulse (EMP) catastrophe.  

This is serious and sobering stuff. The EMP-vulnerability of our electric grid, our machines, transportation systems, tools and homes, is probably the most glaring, "acute-impact" threat on our horizon.

To be clear, we face other dangers of a chronic nature, for example the need to develop sustainable energy to escape dependence upon foreign oil-masters and to possibly save the planet. Educating a smarter generation and rescuing our decaying infrastructure also matter a great deal, over the longer time scale. But acute-imapct threats fall into another category. They are events that could possibly knock us flat in a single day, or instant. Those of us with memories of the Cold War know how it feels to be constantly aware of a Damoclean Sword, hanging overhead..

 By that standard, an EMP calamity ranks higher than anything else visible on the horizon - unlike the trumped-up panic and distraction that were foisted upon us over "terrorism."*  (We could have suffered a 9/11 hit every month for the last ten years and still maintained a vibrant, healthy civilization. Our parents suffered worse in WWII. It was one long scam.)

There are two possible ways that we might be hit by an EMP pulse strong enough to cripple a continent.

1) Natural cycles can apparently lead to the sort of solar flares that did little to disturb our ancestors - other that creating scary-gorgeous aurorae - but that could devastate an electricity-dependent civilization. For example, the "Carrington Event" of 1856 and another large solar storm in 1921 show that such things happen fairly frequently, and we've been lucky, so far.

Even lesser events can wreak havoc. According to a report in IEEE Spectrum: "In March 1989, such a geomagnetic disturbance took down the entire Hydro-Québec power grid, leaving six million customers in the Canadian province without electricity for 9 hours, and also knocked out power stations in the Northeastern United States. That disturbance occurred at one peak of an 11-year solar cycle,"

A Congressional EMP Commission report recently estimated that a once-in-a-hundred- years solar flare could cause $1-2 trillion worth of damage, if the electric grid went down for weeks. Worse, if most truck transport failed, millions of Americans might simply starve.

2) A devastating electromagnetic pulse can also be man-made. Already, more than half a dozen nuclear-armed nations have missile capabilities that - now or soon - would tempt them to try knocking out Pax Americana with a single blow.  Just one warhead, detonated high over North America, could cause untold amounts of EMP chaos. Weighing the scenarios, this is a no-brainer. Sending such a missile to take out one US city would be a nasty hit, but it would leave us almost intact and ready for vengeance. But knocking us back to the stone age? Far more tempting, whether it is realistic or not.  

With the number of nuclear armed states rising, is that a temptation we really want to be left on the table?

At recent congressional hearings on the matter, several agency heads agreed with the assessment that "it is now a matter of if, but of when." According to Lifeboat Foundation member Paul Werbos: "One official said, after looking at the report, that $1-2 trillion was a ridiculously low estimate of the risk. 'Yes, we
have three months food stockpiled, but with electricity out for more than three days, it will all go bad. And how long can we live without water?"

"So there was serious talk of the end of civilization (their words) and of more than half the US population dying (and likewise other nations), and so on. Franks, a staunch conservative from the oil business, basically said "hey folks, this is no CO2 thing, this is real..."

Werbos continues: "And so stakeholders will take strong and vigorous action. In the face of 2012, there will be stakeholder' s meetings. And maybe some education campaigns. And a few more spare transformers. But will anyone install the relatively simple isolators to protect transformers? Will the planning include anyone who knows what a transformer IS? And all of the usual complex ways of doing nothing useful all come into play, in all the usual myriad of ways. It will be interesting to see whether a few meager bits of light can help.... maybe..."

Now, in full disclosure, let me say that I haven't really pored through the thousands of pages of material, and there is certainly a lot I still have to learn about this topic, as it has evolved since I last studied it.

But I have been talking about this general danger for 30 years, urging that a very small annual investment - perhaps as little as fifty million dollars a year, plus some arm-twisting with industry - could equip our grid and our vital tools to bear the brunt of such an event.

The best time to act on this was decades ago.  The second best time is now.

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*Other than a contractor greed-fest and wasting a trillion dollars on draining, debilitating "nation-building" land wars of attrition in Asia.

Why are SF and Fantasy so often grouped together? Obviously, because they share readership and so are well placed together in book stores. And... heck... some of us write both! Still, there are very real differences.

Look, fantasy is the mother genre -- e.g. Gilgamesh, the Illad, Odyssey and most religions. Sci Fi is the brash offshoot.  All literature has deep roots in fantasy, which in turn emerges from the font of our dreams.

Having said that, what is my definition of the separation? I think it is very basic, revolving around the notion of human improvability.

"Do you believe it is possible for children to learn from the mistakes of their parents?"

For all the courage and heroism shown by fantasy characters across 4000 years of great, compelling dramas -- NOTHING EVER CHANGES! Aragorn may be a better king than Sauron would have been. Hurray. Fine. But he's still a freaking king. And the palantir on his desk that lets him see faraway places and converse with viceroys across the realm is still reserved for the super elite. No way are we going to see mass-produced palantirs appearing on every peasant's tabletop from Rohan to the Shire. (The way our civilization plopped such a miracle on YOUR tabletop.) It never even occurs to Aragorn or Gandalf to give the poor the godlike powers they themselves get to wield... let alone provide them with libraries, running water, printing presses or the germ theory of disease. Only little Peregrin Took seems to get a glimmer of an idea in that direction. The only character who briefly ponders possibilities, and he's soon bullied out of it.

Fantasy has its attractions. Something about feudalism resonates, deep inside us. We fantacize about being the king or wizard. Heck it's in our genes. We are all descended from the harems of the guys who succeeded at that goal. The core thing about fantasy tales is that, after the adventure is done and the bad guys are defeated... the social order stays the same.

It may be the natural genre... but should we be proud of that?

Science fiction, in sharp contrast, considers the possibility of learning and change.

Not that children always choose to learn from their parent's mistakes! When they don't, when they are obstinately stupid and miss opportunities, you can get a sci fi tragedy... far more horrible than anything "tragic" in Aristotle's POETICS. Aristotle says tragedy is Oedepus writhing futilely against fate. A sci fi tragedy portrays people suffering, same as in older tragedies... but with this crucial difference -- things did not have to be this way.  It wasn't "fate." We - or the characters - could've done better. There was, at some point, a chance to change our own destiny.

One type of tragedy makes you weep - hey, Oedepus is powerful stuff. But for millennia the deep moral lesson - the thing taught in all "campbellian myths" - is that resistance is futile. The overall situation, the rule of fate, remains the same.

The other type of tragedy - the new kind - is a cautionary tale that may change your decisions. It may alter destiny.

You can see why the absurd old farts who inhabit most lit departments hate science fiction. SF considers it possible that the eternal "verities" and relentless stupidities praised by Henry James might someday be obsolete! If we make kids who are better than us (our goal, duh?) then their Startrekkian heirs will still have problems. Why insist that our descendants have to fret over the same ones?  Can't they assume the solutions we find, take them for granted, and move on to new, interesting issues of their own?

Isn't that what we did?

The implicit assumption in most fantasy is that the form of governance that ruled most human societies since the discovery of grain must always govern us. And when a fellow like Tim Powers resists that assumption, he is writing science fiction, whether or not there are pirates, or wizards or demons.

Anne McCaffrey says "Never call me a fantasy author! I write science fiction!" Indeed. Despite the dragons and lords and medieval craft and renaissance fair stuff... her characters have heard of flush toilets and universities and democracy...

...AND THEY WANT THOSE THINGS BACK! They want starships. And Anne is going to let them earn those things. They will get them back, and move on. And she is a science fiction author.