Technology – Page 5 – Into the Woods

Bitcoin, schmitcoin

A very small, modest, home-size “mining” rig for bitcoin. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

We are surrounded by crazy people and fanatics. Fanaticism, of course, is found in many varieties. Some varieties are much more dangerous than others. Here’s my list of the top three categories of crazy people and fanatics, ordered by the danger they pose to the rest of us:

1. Right-wing fanatics. Subsets include Republicans, Trumpists, white supremicists, neo-Nazis, militias, radical libertarians, and right-wing and libertarian billionaire activists.

2. Religionists. Subsets include so-called evangelicals, all proselytizing religions including jihadists, those caught up in moral panics such as book-banning and policing bathrooms against transsexuals, and all those who are trying to use the law to impose their religion and wrongthink on others.

3. Techno-utopians. Subsets include bitcoiners and all those who believe that technology can solve all problems. Billionaires with rockets are in this category.

There is a great deal of crossover, of course, because fanatic personalities are drawn to multiple types of fanatacism. There are many religionists who also are right-wing fanatics, and many techno-utopians who also are libertarian fanatics. The nature of fanaticism is such that all fanatics proselytize, and all fanatics are eager consumers of proselytization. I also can’t help but notice that the conflict caused by the three types of fanatics listed above drives about 75 percent of each day’s news. Fanatics are always in our faces. All of them are threatened by reason; all of them are empty of compassion.

I have paid very little attention to the bitcoin hype. But yesterday Vox carried a piece that I deemed worth trying to plough through. It’s “Web3 is the future, or a scam, or both: So what exactly is Web3, and why is everyone in Silicon Valley obsessed with it?”

Do I understand bitcoin or “Web3” after reading the Vox piece? No, I don’t, not really. Web3 appears to be nothing but hype closely connected with bitcoin, and if anything ever comes of it, no doubt we’ll find out about it. But there is a very concrete element to bitcoin, though, in the form of entire warehouses full of computers sucking electricity and “mining” for bitcoin. The word “mining” is deliberately misleading and is part of the hype. The nature of bitcoin is such that every single transaction with bitcoin must be encrypted and stored by every bitcoin server in the world. That’s supposed to be a feature, not a bug, because the control of the currency is shared by many people rather than by any government or central bank. Government, to libertarians and most techno-utopians, is a dirty word. Instead of governments, bitcoin invites us to invest our trust in the corporatized fanatical nerds who can raise the money to build huge data centers full of bitcoin computers. To me, a currency that requires computers that suck up unbelievable amounts of energy is ridiculous. An article at CNet attempts to quantify the energy cost: “Here’s how much electricity it takes to mine Bitcoin.”

The CNet piece says:

“The Digiconomist’s Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index estimated that one Bitcoin transaction takes 1,544 kWh to complete, or the equivalent of approximately 53 days of power for the average US household.

“To put that into money terms, the average cost per kWh in the US is 13 cents. That means a Bitcoin transaction would generate more than $200 in energy bills.

“Bitcoin mining used more energy than Argentina, according to an analysis from Cambridge University in February [2021]. At 121.36 terawatt-hours, crypto mining would be in the top 30 of countries based on energy consumption.”

We’re talking about 53 days of power for a single transaction. And that’s only one reason why you will never use bitcoin to pay for a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Even the fastest “mining” computers need about ten minutes for the computations that “validate” a transaction. This is explained in the Wikipedia article. Would Starbucks customers wait ten minutes for their receipt after whipping their bitcoin Gold Card out of their “wallet”? Does it make sense to burn $200 worth of electricity in Texas and Kazakhstan to log a $5 transaction for coffee in Palo Alto?

And you knew there was a pyramid element to bitcoin, didn’t you? I won’t try to explain it, but the nature of the algorithms is such that “mining” bitcoins requires an increasing amount of computing power as the number of transactions grows. That is, those who mined bitcoin early did so cheaply, but it’s much more expensive now, and it will be even more expensive next year. How the ten-minute waits and $200 transaction costs are supposed to work with Web3 are not explained. One thing is clear to me, though. There are plenty of people out there who are eager to start selling us virtual stuff that doesn’t exist. That’s why we are hearing so much hype about the metaverse, or Facebook’s “Meta.” People like Mark Zuckerberg plan to make a killing selling us non-existent stuff in a non-existent place. Non-existent stuff may not clutter our landfills like stuff from China, but it does burn electricity and transfer money from prey to predators.

The moral question of tolerance is complicated and subtle, and I won’t digress into that here except to say that tolerant people are not required to tolerate any old thing that some human beings might want to do. I’m not very tolerant of people who abuse cats or beat their children or who lie to the public or rip people off. It’s not just that fanatics are different. It’s that, cognitively and/or morally, there is something wrong with every single one of them. For the most part, bitcoin fanaticism is something that we can ignore by not giving them any money, unlike white supremicism or moral panics, which we cannot ignore. How do we oppose them? Ridicule, and our contempt, are a start.

Some progress with the old calculator

There are a number of YouTube videos about the restoration of machines like this (a Monroe 8N-213) and comparable machines (such as the Friden STW10). The challenge to getting them fully operational is getting them to multiply and divide, operations that are much more mechanically complicated than addition and subtraction. So far, though, I have not discovered anything that is actually broken. All the problems have been caused by gears, levers, cams, and shafts that stuck as the old lubricants dried out, plus 50 years of not being used.

Hidden Figures (the book)

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race. Margot Lee Shetterly. HarperCollins, 2016. 348 pages.

Margot Lee Shetterly writes that, when she was working on this book, people repeatedly asked her why they had never heard this story before. There is a related question that I find very disturbing. What if this book had never been written? If it had not been written, then it’s entirely possible that these stories would have been lost to American history. That would have been a great tragedy. The book became a No. 1 New York Times bestseller. The book was quickly followed by a movie with the same name, focusing on the story of Katherine Johnson.

I find this story fascinating for two reasons.

First there is the story of inequality and how hard some people have to struggle not only to develop the talent they were born with but also to find a way to have those talents recognized and put to use. Fiona Hill, whom Donald Trump called “the Russia bitch,” is a much more contemporary example. In Fiona Hill’s case, what held her back was the fact that she is a woman, and her provincial accent, which elites did not like. Katherine Johnson had even more obstacles to overcome. She was black, and her career began in the 1940s in a still-segregated United States.

Second there is the history of computers and how the history of computers ties in with the space race, the Cold War, the Apollo project, and the eventual creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This is the only book I’ve ever read that illustrates how numbers were crunched in the days before computers. Even before rockets, designing fast airplanes (including supersonic airplanes) required heavy number crunching. This work was done by teams of people with training in mathematics who did the computing work using mechanical calculators made by Monroe, Friden, and Marchant. These people were referred to as “computers.” I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that that’s why we call computers “computers” today. They were the machines that took the place of teams of human computers. The scientists and engineers who needed the early computers made by IBM were the same people who had relied on human teams of “computers.” They simply redirected the term.

Katherine Johnson died in 2020 at the age of 101. The author of this book of course interviewed Katherine Johnson, so the book includes her memories.

The stories of people such as Katherine Johnson and Fiona Hill are immensely inspiring. But there are two sides to that coin. Both Johnson and Hill earned their way up, but there also were lucky breaks and helpers along the way. That side of the coin is inspiring. But the other side is tragic. The tragedy is the many people — poor people without privilege — who never got the education they needed, never got a lucky break, and never had helpers. Hidden Figures and Fiona Hill’s There Is Nothing for You Here are powerful arguments for why all of us should join the struggle for equality of opportunity and economic and social justice. The right, including even the church, demonize the struggle for social justice and even have made an insult out of it — “social justice warrior.” This struggle is not over. Far from it.

Can this old machine be saved?

The eBay portrait of the machine I bought

With apologies to non-nerds, this is a nerd post.

I have written in the past about a quirk I have — empathy for mechanical things. Seeing a beautiful old machine (or any beautiful machine, for that matter) abused or falling into ruin is painful. Like abused or abandoned animals, old machines silently cry out to be rescued and given a forever home, and I hear them. There comes a time in the life of a machine when its value falls to near zero. Many go to landfills, or to crushing machines, at that point. And yet, if an old machine survives to a certain age in restorable condition, its value may start to rise. Think of “barn finds” of classic automobiles. Some barn finds, after being rescued and restored, are worth a fortune.

My particular weakness is for old machines that are complicated and that have a keyboard and a complicated set of controls. That is my favorite kind of toy. My brother, coincidentally, has the same syndrome but with a different twist. His weakness is for old machines with engines. He just bought a 1941 Aeronca airplane. My toys are far less expensive than his, though.

This Monroe 8N-213 electromechanical calculator cost me $125 on eBay (plus a hefty shipping charge). The eBay listing said that it made a noise when plugged in but that otherwise its condition was unknown. On the outside, the machine looked very good and showed no signs of abuse. It was a pretty safe assumption that the inside would be in good condition, too. The problem, though, is that even a machine that went into storage in working condition will soon stop working. All the lubricants dry out and become sticky. The moving parts all freeze up. The process of getting the machine back into working order is long and tedious. It involves cleaning up the residues of old lubricants, then using new oil and new grease to get everything moving again. Getting things moving again means exercising the machine. Not long ago I bought a Remington adding machine on eBay and got it working again, but that was a simple process compared with a machine as complicated as the Monroe 8N-213.

Part of the romance of the Monroe 8N-213 is that it was the type of machine used by Katherine Johnson, the mathematician who worked for NASA and the subject of the wonderful movie “Hidden Figures.” In “Hidden Figures,” a Friden STW10 calculator is shown on her desk as a prop. That is only partly historically accurate. It’s true that the Friden machine and the Monroe machine were contemporary and comparable. But Katherine Johnson preferred, and used, a Monroe. Restoring one of these machines, in a way, is a way to honor Katherine Johnson (and all the old NASA mathematicians and engineers). I hope her Monroe 8N-213 is in a museum somewhere, or maybe in the hands of her family, but I was unable to find out her machine’s fate. There are examples of this machine in the Smithsonian.

My Monroe machine surveyed the trip with UPS, though I was not greatly pleased at how the seller boxed it. When I plugged it in for the first time, the motor ran, but none of the keys worked. Everything was stuck — everything. After the generous application of a solvent (CRC 2-26 is my preference), it was fairly easy to get addition and subtraction working again. Multiplication and division, though, are much more complicated. That’s because, when dividing or multiplying, the machine’s carriage flies back and forth. An addition or subtraction takes only a fraction of a second. But multiplication and division may go on for quite a while. If you try to divide by zero, the machine will never stop (though the Monroe 8N-213 has a handy “stop” key for such situations).

At the moment my machine is stuck again. I made the mistake of attempting to do a division, because I had gotten the carriage moving again. I thought that doing a division might be good exercise for the carriage. But it stuck. It’s not possible to force the machine to come unstuck. That would cause damage. So I have to hope that continuing the process of de-gunking the machine will get the carriage moving again. Once I get things working (fingers crossed), I have two types of grease and two types of oil to apply to the thousands of moving parts. These machines don’t appear to wear out. Lack of use and dried-out lubrication is what disables them.

I estimate that my machine was made around 1956. Its cost then was just over a thousand dollars — about the cost of a new car at the time. Electromechanical calculators were built that were much more complicated (for example, the Mark I that IBM built for Harvard). But the Harvard machine was a one-off custom machine. As far as I know, the Monroe 8N-213 was pretty much the apex of mass-produced electromechanical calculators, just as the IBM Selectric III was the apex of typewriters (I have one, in excellent working condition). You can see a Monroe 8N-213 in operation here, on YouTube. It was computer chips and digital calculators, of course, that brought the era of mechanical calculators to an end.

I’ve removed the case to work on the machine.

Katherine Johnson at her desk at NASA. That’s a Monroe 8N-213 in front of her. It is said that, when a computer helped with orbital calculations, she would check the computer’s work with her Monroe. NASA photo.

Apple News+

There are two versions of Apple News. The free version, called just “Apple News,” is on all Macintosh computers, iPads, and iPhones. The subscription version, called “Apple News+”, costs $9.99 a month.

For some years, I had casually used the free version on my iPhone, because it often showed me things that I had missed on my daily rounds of a long list of newspapers, magazines, and web sites. After I upgraded to a new version of iOS, some ads appeared for the subscription version. I looked through the long list of publications that are available and immediately subscribed.

Getting news from Europe to Americans is just one example of how Apple News+ can expand our reading horizons. One of the reasons we Americans know too little about Europe (and the world, for that matter) is that American media (including the New York Times) don’t cover Europe well. For years, I had longed for access to the Times of London, but it was hard to justify the cost. Nor did I want yet another password to manage. A part of the hassle of managing subscriptions to paywalled publications is the aggravation of signing in. With the New York Times and Washington Post, I deal with that by always having a tab open to their “my account” pages. Subscriptions to the New York Times and Washington Post, by the way, are expensive and are not included in Apple News+. Part of the appeal and convenience of Apple News Plus is that you don’t have to sign in to read any of the publications you follow. That’s all handled through your Apple ID, so you’re always signed in to the publications you want to see.

Many times, I have been tempted to resubscribe to the Economist. But an Economist subscription costs about the same as the New York Times, and the sign-in problem was a big deterrent. Apple News+ lets you subscribe to the Economist through Apple News+ and pay for it monthly through Apple. With access to the Times of London and the Economist, suddenly I have new windows into Europe. Previously I had only the Guardian, the Irish Times, and the Herald of Scotland. (As far as I can tell, Der Spiegel’s English edition is not included in Apple News+.) The Times of London, by the way, seems to cover Scotland quite well.

Another newspaper that is included in Apple News+ is the Wall Street Journal, still a good newspaper in spite of its wingnut editorial department. Two North Carolina newspapers are included, the Charlotte Observer and the Raleigh News & Observer. Both those state newspapers are greatly diminished, but they’re all we’ve got for state coverage.

Magazines include Scientific American, the New Yorker, Wired, the Atlantic, and MacWorld. There is a long list of niche magazines, to which I subscribed to only one lest I be overwhelmed by niche magazines. That exception was Octane, a niche magazine about classic cars.

Some people like reading on their phones. I do not, even though I have a large iPhone 12. It’s on a big iMac screen that Apple News+ excels. The presentation is often just as good as a publication’s web site. There are some ads, but they’re not terribly intrusive.

In short, for news junkies and those who make a serious effort to keep up with the world’s news sources, Apple News+ is both a bargain and a convenient way of centralizing lots of sources.

One thing is missing. Much of what we need to know is to be found in papers from academics and think tanks. That stuff has been privatized. It is very hard to get and also very expensive, unless one has access through a university’s accounts. It’s a cartel that needs to be broken. There is a movement crusading for open access publishing in academia. Apple probably could break that cartel if they wanted to.

As for newspapers and magazines, much has changed. The Times of London today is nothing like the old gray lady it was when I first bought copies of it in London in the 1980s. Many publications still exist but have gone to hell in a basket — Newsweek, for example. Fox News is in Apple News+, making an ax-grinding fool of itself as always. Wired, though provocative, seems to be just as wrongheaded as it always was. The Atlantic’s print version maintains a high standard, but their web site indulges in clickbait. Fox News notwithstanding, and though there is plenty of fluff, Apple News+ seems to have steered away from fringe publications on both the right and the left, as though the word came down from on high at Apple that their mission is to be informative, not provocative. Imagine that.

Here is Apple’s complete list of publications.

Artemis

Artist’s representation of the Artemis lunar module. Source: NASA via Wikipedia

This is a twofold post. First, some gripes about the media. And second, a little about NASA’s program to return to the moon and, eventually, to go to Mars.

Some gripes

I fell for the clickbait and its down-with-billionaires appeal. NASA wasn’t on my radar screen, and I was distracted by the breathless media coverage of billionaires and their little rockets. It would have been easy to suppose that NASA was being upstaged and supplanted by Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. But an excellent piece in yesterdays’s Washington Post (a piece with no clickbait appeal) made it clear that that’s not the case. The article is “NASA looks to a future that includes flights to the moon and Mars as it reorganizes.” This is a good piece for starting to get up to speed on what NASA is doing today.

The piece is an interview with Bill Nelson of NASA. The commercial space industry, Nelson says, allows “NASA to get out of low Earth orbit and go explore.” The media have had very little to say about this, having focused on rage and turmoil on earth (and on low earth orbit, where billionaires are having so much fun). Apparently today’s media find Musk and Bezos more interesting than NASA. If you want to know what NASA is doing right now, you need to visit NASA’s web site. The Wikipedia article on Artemis, though poorly written, is comprehensive.

Moon launch

We actually have a NASA moon launch to look forward to later this year, in November or December, if the launch is on schedule. This first launch is covered in a separate Wikipedia article on the first stage of the Artemis program, Artemis 1. This flight will be a test with no humans on board. This year’s flight will be an exciting mission because NASA will be launching, for the first time, its biggest rocket ever. The new SLS rocket will produce 15 percent more thrust than the Saturn V rockets used in the Apollo program.

The third stage of the Artemis program, stage 3, is scheduled for 2024. Two astronauts are to land on the moon and remain there for just under a week.

Here is a YouTube video of NASA’s test firing of the rocket earlier this year, at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. This is a long video. You can skip ahead to about 51 minutes when they actually light up the rocket. Before the rocket starts, you’ll see lots of water flowing. That’s to keep the test site from melting down. By the way, I have seen a rocket engine test-fired at the Stennis Space Center. It was an impressive sight that I will never forget. I have never seen a rocket launch, though. That just might be worth a trip to Cape Canaveral in 2024.

Mechanical math

Calculating at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. NASA/JPL photo.

Starting, say, in the early 1960s, when computer chips started to become available, one of the first applications was making electronic calculators. That was a huge advance in technology, but it also is sad, because mechanical calculators became obsolete. A whole genre of elegant mechanical engineering was lost.

In the film Hidden Figures, a Friden calculating machine is used as a prop, sitting on the desk of Katherine Johnson. In a 1966 photo in the Wikipedia article about Johnson, she is sitting in front of a mechanical calculator. Mechanical calculators got us to the moon (though the Apollo capsules had a rather primitive computer). You can see a Friden STW10 in operation in this YouTube video. Those machines were complex enough to do real math, not just addition and subtraction.

Many machines as elegant and expensive as the Fridens were preserved, and many have been restored. More humble machines, however, of the type used by accountants, met fates that were much more demeaning. Even when they survived, few were considered to be worth restoring.

I had wanted a mechanical adding machine for a long time. Recently I found one in such good condition that it could be restored with little effort beyond cleaning it and oiling it.

Remington Model 10811-10 adding machine

This is a Remington Model 10811 (or Model 10811-10) adding machine. I believe it was made in the early 1960s. It’s a non-electric model, but an electric model of the same machine was available, as you will see in the manual.

It is my curse to want to rescue and adopt every old example of beautiful mechanical engineering. Fortunately I don’t have the space for that, nor would I be able to afford a machine such as a Friden STW10. This Remington adding machine came from eBay, from a seller in East Bend, North Carolina. I met the seller halfway and picked up the machine in person rather than having it shipped. I also learned the history of the machine. I am its second owner. It belonged to the seller’s parents, both now in their late 80s. They ran a TV repair shop many years ago, and they used the adding machine to add up customers’ bills. It was completely dust free, having always been kept covered. The cover came with the calculator.

Machines like this need lots of oil and even a bit of grease in some places. The oil and grease had become gummy, but I’ve started the process of cleaning it up. It works perfectly. I actually will use it for managing money (which is what it was designed for), because the electronic calculator I’ve been using for the past few years isn’t heavy enough and slides around on the desk.

Judging from eBay, there seem to be quite a few of this model of adding machine still in existence. Most are in rough shape, though. I have scanned the eight-page manual, and I’m posting it here for those who are are Googling for the manual. I seem to have one of the few copies of the manual still in existence.

The manual:

Click here for high-resolution version

It’s time to talk about galactic law

Hubble space telescope: the Sombrero Galaxy. Source: Wikimedia Commons

“… the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities.” — Elon Musk, Starlink terms of service

Elon Musk’s long game

Before the likes of Elon Musk started swaggering around the solar system, the question of galactic law was a matter of interest mainly to writers and readers of science fiction, or to those who speculate on whether a galactic federation may already exist, if there are civilizations out there. Elon Musk has forced the issue.

If you sign up for Musk’s Starlink internet service (which involves hundreds of trashy little satellites swarming around earth just above the atmosphere), you will have to agree to these terms of service. I’ve put the diabolical part in bold:

10. Governing Law. For Services provided to, on, or in orbit around the planet Earth or the Moon, this Agreement and any disputes between us arising out of or related to this Agreement, including disputes regarding arbitrability (“Disputes”) will be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of California in the United States. For Services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship or other spacecraft, the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities. Accordingly, Disputes will be settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement.

Here we see a big part of Musk’s game, which is about power as well as money. He is declaring that Mars is a free planet not bound by any earthly laws. However, if there are disputes about your bill, California law will apply.

Never mind that Musk’s businesses have already sucked up, in subsidies, $4.9 billion in taxpayer dollars. Musk’s intent is to make earth-based governments (and chumps like us who actually pay taxes) finance a libertarian utopia on Mars. Musk will claim big chunks of Mars as his property, his to rule and to exploit, if he gets there first. This is terrifying far beyond the question of who gets to pocket the dollar value of whatever might be found on Mars. Musk not only intends to privatize space, he intends to make space, from the start, into a Wild West beyond the reach of earthly law.

Colonies

My objections are philosophical. Yes, there are obvious parallels with earth’s colonial era and the establishment of European colonies in North America. But, if human civilization on earth has made any progress since 1600, we mustn’t repeat old mistakes. Fortunately for the American colonies, the Enlightenment was well under way as the colonies were developing a constitution and a new body of laws. (Also fortunately, libertarianism at the time was just an embryo.) Today, there are powerful forces that are seeking to roll back the Enlightenment, cripple democracies, empower oligarchies, and maintain order with authoritarian methods including religion.

I am no philosopher, and I am not a historian of law. But I think it’s reasonably accurate to say that, as the American colonies were forming themselves into the United States of America 250 years ago, there were three or so competing philosophies of law and government to draw on. First, there was the concept of natural law, the idea that rights are inherent in being born human, and that rights are not created by government. Second, there was utilitarianism, a theory of ethics which was being developed during the Enlightenment and which boils down to the greatest good for the greatest number. And third, there was religion.

Rawls or Nozick?

Today, the philosophical landscape has changed. There are two new political philosophies to take into consideration. The first is libertarianism. Though libertarianism has some old roots, it wasn’t really codified until the 1970s. Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) was a libertarian answer in opposition to John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (1971). Rawls’ theory is referred to as justice as fairness.

We almost never hear the names Robert Nozick or John Rawls mentioned in the high-stakes and sometimes violent political struggle now playing out in the United States and elsewhere. But that’s what it boils down to — Nozick’s theory of government versus Rawls’.

Nozick, and libertarians, want minimal government, “limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on.” To quote from Wikipedia, “When a state takes on more responsibilities than these, Nozick argues, rights will be violated.”

Rawls’ theory, unfortunately, is not something that can be summed up in a sentence or two. A good deal of reasoning is required, working from some basic principles. Not by any means does the complexity of Rawls’ theory make it weaker. Rawls’ theory of justice acknowledges a social contract. William Edmundson argues (and I agree), in John Rawls: Reticent Socialist, that the only form of just government under Rawls’ principles is democratic socialism.

In a libertarian utopia, there is no limit to inequality, and human misery is of no concern to the government. Government won’t lift a finger to help anyone, except through the police. In a society based on Rawls, we’re all in it together, and no one can abandon others to a state that they wouldn’t want for themselves.

We’re already close enough to a libertarian utopia to see where it leads. It leads to a tiny elite of super-rich oligarchs, hostile to democracy, lording it over a work force of disinformed, barely educated, and heavily policed ignorati who are expected to work their asses off for a little bit of pie. Of course that’s the kind of society that people like Elon Musk want. They’ll take anything they can get if they can make taking it legal. They even have the power, already, to take money from the weak, through subsidies — reverse taxation. That’s what oligarchy is all about, and that’s what the Trump era is all about — a crude grab to entrench oligarchy in the United States and put it beyond the reach of law and democracy.

A thought experiment

What if Elon Musk’s attempt to lay the foundations of the laws of space has already failed? What if there actually already is a federation of civilizations in our galaxy? What would their law look like? On what kind of principles would that law be based? Though that would have been good to know 250 years ago during earth’s age of Enlightenment, it’s much more relevant now, as earth’s oligarchs compete to extend their power into space, to privatize it, and to set it beyond the reach of earthly law or any human value other than liberty and profit.

Not least because I’m convinced that we are in fact being visited by extraterrestrials, I can’t help but speculate that we already have some hints about what galactic law might look like, if it exists. If earth really is being visited by extraterrestrials, and especially if those visitors are coming from more than one planet, then it seems likely that they already are bound by, and are acting in accord with, galactic law. We seem to have some rights as earthlings, including the right not to be robbed or conquered by those with superior power. It’s possible that they’re even here to help, since they have done no harm. Whatever the principles of galactic civilizations’ law might be, my reasoning tells me that it’s much more likely to be in harmony with Rawls’ civilizing philosophy than with Nozick’s dog-eat-dog Wild West.

However, until such time as the galactic federation makes itself known, we’re on our own to deal with dangerous figures such as Elon Musk. If we’re going to fight this war — and in many ways it is a war — then we need to be clear on the principles at stake. There are those who would tolerate any degree of injustice and misery in the name of liberty. I am not one of them.

Further thoughts

Musk’s self-promotion: It’s possible that the lines about Mars in the Starlink terms of service are really just self-promotion on Musk’s part, intended to direct attention to his other projects and to delight the clueless techno-utopian libertarian fanboys who circulate around him on YouTube and elsewhere.

Rawls the obscure: I often wonder why Rawls is so little known, given that many would agree that he wrote the most important work in moral philosophy for two or more centuries. Partly, my guess would be, that’s because Rawls’ ideas are complex, and the book is a very hard read. His opponents with elite educations and goods of their own to promote certainly noticed quick enough that they had quietly been shamed and diminished. Nozick’s book appeared only three years after Rawls’ book. And some of the most erudite arguments against Rawls have been made by Jesuits, horrified that their theologies are not (even if they ever were) the state of the art in moral philosophy. To my lights, even utilitarianism now seems savage.

Can we have some nice things now?

Pete Buttigieg at Washington Union Station. Source: Wikipedia.

With “Amtrak Joe” in the White House, and the new U.S. secretary of transportation wanting to lead the world in high-speed rail (we’re now 19th) can we Americans now have some nice things?

To people like me, who have ridden thousands of miles on trains (President Biden has ridden 770,000 miles on trains), it amazes me how many people have never ridden a train. How could they not be curious? I admit that I love cars, too. But where is their spirit of adventure? Certain images inspire awe and imagination: A Concorde in flight (a sight not seen since 2003), a square-rigged sailing ship under full sail in a white-capped sea, a Saturn 5 rocket lifting off, a Boeing 747 descending above the Golden Gate Bridge, a steam train working its way across Scotland’s Glenfinnan Viaduct on its way to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Some of those things are not doable. But anyone, even an American, can ride a train.

We don’t have a lot of details so far, but we do know that the Biden administration and the new Congress will push for a major investment in high-speed rail. We also know that Republicans will fight tooth and claw to resist, though Republicans don’t seem to mind the billions of dollars that this country spends each year on roads and gasoline.

Why do conservatives hate trains? The pompous and dull-witted George Will is infamous for claiming to know why we progressives love trains: “[T]he real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.” Does that make any sense at all when a few million Americans fly each day on packed airplanes, with about as much room left for their individualism as for their legs? I’m not the first to suspect that the real reason that conservatives hate trains is racism.

Trains for America — fast ones — make more sense now than ever. Our interstate highways are overloaded, dangerous, and miserable. To me, one of the most exciting things about this change in the American government is that trains are back on the agenda. New York City has made a nice start with the new train hall at Pennsylvania Station.

One more thing. The kind of people who hate trains also are the kind of people who would try to sabotage the U.S. Postal Service. The first order of business is to fire Louis DeJoy, a Trump appointee. Then we can start talking about new services, new revenues, and a new prosperity for the Postal Service.

I took this photo in Paddington Station in August 2019, on my way from London Heathrow to Edinburgh.

Catching the train from Uig to Inverness, August 2019

New York City’s new train hall. Source: Wikipedia, photo by Jim Henderson

The Jacobite steam train crossing the Glenfinnan Viaduct. Source: Wikipedia photo by Nicholas Benutzer.

Our own fresh taste of the 14th Century

The Covid-19 virus. Source: Wikipedia

By historical standards, this plague has been a mild one. So far, worldwide, about 2.3 million people have died from Covid-19. The most fatal pandemic in recorded history was the Black Death, which peaked in Europe between 1347 and 1351. The Black Death killed between 75 million and 200 million people.

Covid-19 is not the first plague that seniors like me have lived through. Even today, the World Health Organization estimates that there are 10 to 20 million survivors of polio worldwide. AIDS has killed up 40 million people worldwide, and the peak year for deaths from AIDS — 2004 — is only 16 years behind us. Hundreds of thousands of people still die each year from AIDS.

There is much here to reflect on, including our vulnerability to the dark and primitive side of nature, no matter how modern we think we are or how dazzled (and coddled) we are by our technologies. Nor can we forget that the dark and primitive side of human nature is still with us. When I was a poll watcher during last year’s election, a woman who refused to wear a mask said, loudly, because she wanted as many people as possible to hear, “God’s got me covered.” And just this morning a former friend posted a link on Facebook about how Covid-19 was caused by a global “criminal elite,” including Bill Gates, George Soros, and the Rockefeller family.

Though I think there is such a thing as the arc of justice and slow moral progress, we have plenty of grounds to wonder just how much fairer today’s world is from the world of the 14th Century. Covid-19 reminded us that viruses are just as fatal to the high and mighty as to the poor. But the poor are more exposed, and they’re usually the last to get help.

I feel slightly ashamed to report that, three days ago, I got the first dose of the Moderna vaccine for Covid-19, because my state (North Carolina) is now vaccinating people over 65 as the available vaccine is allocated to risk groups. Meanwhile, teachers can’t yet get the vaccine, nor can younger people with pre-existing conditions. In the U.S., only 28.9 million people have had at least one dose of the vaccine so far. At that rate, according to the New York Times, we won’t reach 90 percent of the U.S. population until Dec. 15.

It’s surprising that I’m just now getting around to reading Connie Willis’ Doomsday Book, in which a 21st Century historian time-travels to 14th Century Oxford to do historical research and accidentally arrives during the middle of the Black Death pandemic. Now seemed like a good time to read this book, the better to appreciate not only how some things never change, but also how much better off we are — or could be if we really tried.

Source: Wikipedia

Having mentioned the 14th Century, I should also mention Barbara Tuchman’s classic (if somewhat controversial) book, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, published in 1978, which I have read twice.