Free diving under ice lakes:
What an amazing world under there. That’s still planet Earth.
Predictions from the turn of the 20th century
This page of predictions from 1901 about what the world will look like in 2001 is remarkably prescient in some ways, and highly amusing in others.
Photographs will be telegraphed from any distance. If there is a battle in China a hundred years hence, snapshots of its most striking events will be published in newspapers one hour later.
Store Purchases by tube. Pneumatic tubes, instead of store wagons, will deliver packages & bundles.
Makes you wonder which of the futurists today are getting things right and which they’re getting wildly wrong.
Douglas Adams lays out the roadmap for technology
I’m an avowed Douglas Adams fan, and this is just pure evidence that he died way, way too soon – written in 1989:
All I want to do is print from my portable. (Poor baby). That isn’t all I want in fact. I want to be able regularly to transfer my address book and diary stacks backwards and forwards between my portable and my IIx. And all my current half-finished chapters. And anything else I’m tinkering with which is the reason why my half-finished chapters are half-finished. In other words I want my portable to appear on the desktop of my IIx. I don’t want to have to do battle with cupboard monsters and then mess about with TOPS every time I want that to happen. I’ll tell you all I want to have to do in order to get my portable to appear on the Desktop of my IIx.
I just want to carry it into the same room.
Bang. There it is. It’s on the Desktop.
And when someone asks why Apple’s “Continuity” feature and seamless “it just works” stuff is exciting when you could do it yourself, this is why.
(The whole piece is brilliant, just the lovely Adams ramble that brings so many wonderful images to the fore and yet is really a rant about Adams not being able to find the right cable for his laptop (back before there were such things as “laptops”))
Taylor Swift: Master Manipulator
When did you first realise Taylor Swift was lying to you?
Bill Simmons: I knew Taylor Swift was lying to me once she established that she didn’t have a type. Everyone has a type. Everyone. Every single person who ever lived. Maybe you drift away from that type once or twice over eight years, but not consistently. Taylor Swift has dated older guys, MUCH older guys, younger guys, masculine guys, not so masculine guys, damaged guys, innocent guys, rich guys, struggling actors, famous actors, virginal guys, lotharios … there’s just no rhyme or reason to these picks (well, except they’re all white). She picks boyfriends like someone would fill positions on their fantasy team.
Well, colour me naive, but this has been a bit of an eye-opener. Goddammit Tay.
Did George Lucas predict the current political environment?
A bit more US-centric, but this gives me the shivers:
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, paralyzing political divisions threatened democratic governments. Disputes over free trade, and the free movement of people and goods, were a big reason. Stymied by polarization and endless debates, the Senate proved unable to resolve those disputes.
As a result, nationalist sentiments intensified, leading to movements for separation from centralized institutions. People craved a strong leader who would introduce order — and simultaneously combat growing terrorist threats.
Think we’ve already got Senator Jar Jar Bernadi here in Australia…
Australia’s Political Malaise
With Election 2016 well underway (but still with about 6 weeks to go… yeesh), it’s looking increasingly like we’re going get more of the same. What happened to Australia’s politics that made it so insipid, so unable to hold forth a discussion in which some may be worse off, but the result would be better for the country?
2. Bad economic structure
This is the more important reason behind the centrality of the budget to business and thus the push for rents. Australian spruikers like to sell the economy as “diversified” but this is rubbish. At its base, Australia has only two economic drivers: houses and holes. Mining delivers national income and banking leverages it up to spread the wealth. Everything else follows these two. That means that these two industries have limitless power over policy. Disruption in one equals disruption to the entire nation.
Given the financial crisis in 2008 and now the commodities price crash (which was always going to follow the boom), it’s increasingly inevitable that we’re looking down the barrel of some bad economic outcomes, but no-one in power seems to be acknowledging it.
The talk is small while the problems are writ large. I’m skeptical that any party is going to be in a position to manage it, and that’s going to become rather scary rather fast for us. More on those thoughts later.
A Blind Mind’s Eye
Blake Ross can’t visualise things like others:
I have never visualized anything in my entire life. I can’t “see” my father’s face or a bouncing blue ball, my childhood bedroom or the run I went on ten minutes ago. I thought “counting sheep” was a metaphor. I’m 30 years old and I never knew a human could do any of this. And it is blowing my goddamned mind.
My first thought was “yeah I’m pretty bad a these things too,” but then I kept reading, and I realised how much I do visualise in my “mind’s eye” that just seems alien to those with this same condition.
Comparing economic records
May 2016 marks 43 years and 6 months since the election of the Whitlam Labor government in 1972, and conveniently provides a mid-point for the two political parties – 21 years and 9 months of government each. Stephen Koukoulas uses this pivot point to provide a detailed comparison of their respective economic performances, and he comes up with more-or-less a dead heat, with a slight edge to Labor:
The overall weighted average quarterly GDP growth rates since 1972 are 0.80 per cent for the Labor Party and 0.77 per cent for the Liberal Party. This shows that the economy grows faster, on average, under Labor than the Coalition by 0.03 per cent per quarter, which is a touch over 0.1 per cent per annum.
Figures are similarly in Labor’s favor for job growth – noting this also includes the recession we had to have.
Something to keep in mind this election season, and for the budget tomorrow.
Jury Duty
Thoughtfully written behind-the-scenes peice from a juror serving on a homicide trial:
At some point, one of the older women gets out her makeup kit and gives Ally a makeover. This is literally a scene from The Breakfast Club. Edith looks up from a game of solitaire and casually mentions that she actually thinks the murder was committed by the accomplice, who was never found and is not on trial. But since the defendant’s lawyer did such a poor job exonerating him, she concludes, she’s going to deliver a guilty verdict. My jaw drops. No one questions her obviously flawed reasoning, because she’s on their side.
Molly mentions that she watched 12 Angry Men over the weekend.
“It’s so good,” she says. “It’s just like this.”
Brilliant perspective on how people interact and how flawed jury trials can easily become. It takes just one informed person acting on principle to swing that, and it’s scary how easily it could go the other way.
Movie Review: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
What does one say about a series like Star Wars that you haven’t already heard? It’s such a pop-culture phenomenon that you’d be hard pressed to avoid it in any English-speaking country. The revival of Star Wars by Disney’s purchase of the rights from George Lucas was huge, and with Episode VII, The Force Awakens, we can see just how huge the juggernaut can get. I went to watch it on Friday, a whole 42 hours after its release on midnight Thursday, and I already felt like I was out of the loop for almost two days.
Still, the experience is unique in its own way: the lights go down, the trailers end, the screen goes dark… and then those words appear – A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… cue the fanfare.
The Star Wars experience is as codified as a fairy tale starting with “Once upon a time”, and the rush of seeing it in a full theatre is equal for fans and non-fans alike – you can’t help but be caught up in John Williams’ score, or the scale and scope of the visuals that march across the screen. This is a sign the fun’s just getting started.
The Force Awakens starts with a thirty year jump from the end of Return of the Jedi (and in the real world, it has been over thirty years since as well, so this is only too apt). Luke Skywalker is missing; the galaxy is not yet wholly under the New Republic; the Rebel Alliance still relevant as the Resistance, who fight the remnants of the Empire in the form of The First Order. Leia is a general in the resistance, and sends a pilot, Poe Dameron, to track down a map to the whereabouts of Skywalker. He’s being tracked by The First Order, who want to prevent the return of Skywalker as much as they want to re-establish control over the Galaxy.
Since it’s still so close to the release, I’ll tuck the rest away under a break for spoilers…
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