Friday, November 21, 2014
Understanding “New Power”
There are those who cherish giddy visions of a new techno-utopia in which increased connectivity yields instant democratization and prosperity. The corporate and bureaucratic giants will be felled and the crowds coronated, each of us wearing our own 3D-printed crown. There are also those who have seen this all before. Things aren’t really changing that much, they say. Twitter supposedly toppled a dictator in Egypt, but another simply popped up in his place. We gush over the latest sharing-economy start-up, but the most powerful companies and people seem only to get more powerful.
Both views are wrong. They confine us to a narrow debate about technology in which either everything is changing or nothing is. In reality, a much more interesting and complex transformation is just beginning, one driven by a growing tension between two distinct forces: old power and new power.
Old power works like a currency. It is held by few. Once gained, it is jealously guarded, and the powerful have a substantial store of it to spend. It is closed, inaccessible, and leader-driven. It downloads, and it captures.
New power operates differently, like a current. It is made by many. It is open, participatory, and peer-driven. It uploads, and it distributes. Like water or electricity, it’s most forceful when it surges. The goal with new power is not to hoard it but to channel it.
The battle and the balancing between old and new power will be a defining feature of society and business in the coming years. In this article, we lay out a simple framework for understanding the underlying dynamics at work and how power is really shifting: who has it, how it is distributed, and where it is heading.
Image: uncredited
Forty Years Young: Hello Kitty and the Power of Cute
It's 15 minutes before the doors will open at the very first Hello Kitty convention in downtown Los Angeles, and thousands of people are lined up to get in. Some have been there since three in the morning, and most are decked out in some sort of Hello Kitty gear, whether it be full-on cosplay or a favorite T-shirt.
There's just somuch. So much to look at, so much to do, so much to buy.Kitty Con, like the Hello Kitty brand itself, is a lot to take in. There's just so much. So much to look at, so much to do, so much to buy. You can have Hello Kitty nail art done by Sanrio's resident nail artist, Masako Kojima, while you eat a bow-adorned donut from the Hello Kitty Cafe truck and a complimentary Hello Kitty Yoplait yogurt in Friendship Berry. You can revive your phone at a glowing Hello Kitty charging station, take out cash at a Hello Kitty-wrapped ATM, and wash your hands with Hello Kitty soap in the bathrooms. (Rumor has it there was also Hello Kitty toilet paper in the stalls, but that was all used—or stashed in the plastic Hello Kitty backpacks that came with admission—by the end of the first morning.)
You can get free Hello Kitty tattoos, both temporary and very permanent ("Hug Life" in ornate script is a personal favorite), and you can spend gobs of money on merch like Hello Kitty Spam musubi kits and Beats by Dre headphones, all charged on a Hello Kitty credit card that you can sign up for at a kiosk some 20 feet away. You can get schooled in the art of Hello Kitty flower arranging, cookie decorating, and scrapbooking. You can play Hello Kitty Wheel of Fortune and take part in a Hello Kitty cosplay contest. You can Instagram yourself in any number of Hello Kitty-themed tableaux. You can even meet Hello Kitty herself, dressed up in one of her myriad outfits whipped up expressly for the occasion.(...)
Hello Kitty was birthed in 1974, not quite girl, not quite cat, but rather gijinka—an anthropomorphization. It was anthropologist Christine Yano who caused the internet to explode this summer with her declaration to the Los Angeles Times that "Hello Kitty is not a cat" in promotion of the Japanese American National Museum exhibit she curated to coincide with Hello Kitty's 40th anniversary.
Let's clear something up, before we get in too deep: Technically, sure, Hello Kitty is not a cat—she's a character, not an actual animal. But she's a character in the form of a cat, the semantics of which were lost in translation and generated a collective freak-out. She's not a cat, but she's not not a cat, and that's something we're going to have to be okay with. (...)
The core of Hello Kitty's near-universal appeal comes from her impeccable simplicity: two eyes, six whiskers, a nose, and a bow, all on a pleasingly round face. "I really look at her as the most perfect of our designs," notes Sanrio art director Dan Peters. "Her basic shape is really appealing. She's huggable, and there are no sharp edges to her. I think everybody can relate to that and be like, 'Oh my gosh, she is just so cute.' She's a simple, perfectly drawn character, and it's very difficult to find that."
The result is a "Zen-like countenance," as Dave Marchi calls it. Marchi has been at Sanrio for nearly 15 years (this is a company that truly retains its employees) and is currently its senior director of brand management and marketing.
"People look at her and feel this love or whatever it is they feel, which is also described as this element of kawaii, a very particular Japanese form of cuteness," he says. "But to call it cuteness is just not enough—it goes beyond that. It's a feeling that you get from looking at Hello Kitty that's almost like being in love. It's this insatiable hunger."
"To call it cuteness is just not enough—it goes beyond that. It's this insatiable hunger."For Hello Kitty, as per the JANM exhibit, "kawaii can be taken as a relational term, swaddled in emotions of attachment that draw people to an object." It should come as no surprise that girl culture is at the very heart of kawaii, though you most certainly don't have to be a girl to take comfort in Kitty. "So CUTE!" is a common refrain at Kitty Con, from men and women alike.
There's just somuch. So much to look at, so much to do, so much to buy.Kitty Con, like the Hello Kitty brand itself, is a lot to take in. There's just so much. So much to look at, so much to do, so much to buy. You can have Hello Kitty nail art done by Sanrio's resident nail artist, Masako Kojima, while you eat a bow-adorned donut from the Hello Kitty Cafe truck and a complimentary Hello Kitty Yoplait yogurt in Friendship Berry. You can revive your phone at a glowing Hello Kitty charging station, take out cash at a Hello Kitty-wrapped ATM, and wash your hands with Hello Kitty soap in the bathrooms. (Rumor has it there was also Hello Kitty toilet paper in the stalls, but that was all used—or stashed in the plastic Hello Kitty backpacks that came with admission—by the end of the first morning.)You can get free Hello Kitty tattoos, both temporary and very permanent ("Hug Life" in ornate script is a personal favorite), and you can spend gobs of money on merch like Hello Kitty Spam musubi kits and Beats by Dre headphones, all charged on a Hello Kitty credit card that you can sign up for at a kiosk some 20 feet away. You can get schooled in the art of Hello Kitty flower arranging, cookie decorating, and scrapbooking. You can play Hello Kitty Wheel of Fortune and take part in a Hello Kitty cosplay contest. You can Instagram yourself in any number of Hello Kitty-themed tableaux. You can even meet Hello Kitty herself, dressed up in one of her myriad outfits whipped up expressly for the occasion.(...)
Hello Kitty was birthed in 1974, not quite girl, not quite cat, but rather gijinka—an anthropomorphization. It was anthropologist Christine Yano who caused the internet to explode this summer with her declaration to the Los Angeles Times that "Hello Kitty is not a cat" in promotion of the Japanese American National Museum exhibit she curated to coincide with Hello Kitty's 40th anniversary.
Let's clear something up, before we get in too deep: Technically, sure, Hello Kitty is not a cat—she's a character, not an actual animal. But she's a character in the form of a cat, the semantics of which were lost in translation and generated a collective freak-out. She's not a cat, but she's not not a cat, and that's something we're going to have to be okay with. (...)
The core of Hello Kitty's near-universal appeal comes from her impeccable simplicity: two eyes, six whiskers, a nose, and a bow, all on a pleasingly round face. "I really look at her as the most perfect of our designs," notes Sanrio art director Dan Peters. "Her basic shape is really appealing. She's huggable, and there are no sharp edges to her. I think everybody can relate to that and be like, 'Oh my gosh, she is just so cute.' She's a simple, perfectly drawn character, and it's very difficult to find that."
The result is a "Zen-like countenance," as Dave Marchi calls it. Marchi has been at Sanrio for nearly 15 years (this is a company that truly retains its employees) and is currently its senior director of brand management and marketing.
"People look at her and feel this love or whatever it is they feel, which is also described as this element of kawaii, a very particular Japanese form of cuteness," he says. "But to call it cuteness is just not enough—it goes beyond that. It's a feeling that you get from looking at Hello Kitty that's almost like being in love. It's this insatiable hunger."
"To call it cuteness is just not enough—it goes beyond that. It's this insatiable hunger."For Hello Kitty, as per the JANM exhibit, "kawaii can be taken as a relational term, swaddled in emotions of attachment that draw people to an object." It should come as no surprise that girl culture is at the very heart of kawaii, though you most certainly don't have to be a girl to take comfort in Kitty. "So CUTE!" is a common refrain at Kitty Con, from men and women alike.
by Julia Rubin, Racked | Read more:
Image: Elizabeth Daniels
Obsessed With Baby Names
Writers are largely preoccupied with words, rolling them around like unpolished rocks in our minds and on the page until smooth, glistening sentences emerge. For some, it can take a painstaking amount of time to determine whether the leaves on a tree are evergreen or olive-hued. My low point arrived when I had a heated internal debate over whether or not a tapenade could be “slathered.”
Despite being control-freak wordsmiths, though, we have almost no control over the most important word in our lives: our name. There’s no mental ping-pong over what we’d like to be called happening in utero, no roundtable discussion with fellow crying newborns in the nursery about whether we should be called “Arthur” or “Arlo.”
I’ve been deeply fascinated with names since I was a child—their cadence and candor, how they flit off of the tongue—and how powerful they can be. My childhood stories hammered out on a chunky Royal typewriter were filled with elaborately noir-named female detectives (Thora Marigold Dell) and anthropomorphic unicorns with Victorian surnames (Cornelius Thurston Vandenberg). A pair of Norwegian Elkhounds I raised as a child were christened with long, rambling pedigree names (Sophia Amalie Adelheide and Kristian Thor Gunnar) more befitting a royal toddler than a fuzzy sidekick.
Such a quirky interest isn’t something that’s easy to chatter about at slumber parties or sock hops, and certainly wasn’t a way to make my fellow middle schoolers think I was less of an odd duck. Fortunately, I found a name-loving tribe in the wilds of the Internet: baby name message boards.
My message board home base, Nameberry, is full of name enthusiasts actively discussing the way that names flow together—mostly in preparation for their own child. There are several moderators who serve as elders, calling back trends from decades prior and making lofty recommendations with the help of regulars concerned with syllables, consonant sounds, and how to blend a poster’s family heritage with personal naming taste. Among others, there are message boards for naming boys, girls, pets, and characters in a novel. There’s an entire vernacular to learn in order to be able to use the forums effectively: “Berries” are users, “sibsets” look at how sibling names work together, and “teenberries” are a cluster of teenage-name lovers. It’s not unusual to witness an intense discussion about whether “Daphne Jane” or “Daphne June” has a better aural flow.
What I love most about these baby names websites, and the message boards therein, is that they’re places of eternal optimism about the future. There’s nothing but pure, radiating excitement about the days lying ahead and unabashed hopefulness for new life. When situations feel grim or the world feels dire, it’s easy to swaddle myself in a community that’s not only thinking long and hard about words, but words that will name people and things that will inhabit a brighter tomorrow. A soon-to-be named Clara might be a future Supreme Court Justice, an Ezra could help craft an international peace treaty. In many ways, those name choices will have helped them to reach those lofty goals.
Despite being control-freak wordsmiths, though, we have almost no control over the most important word in our lives: our name. There’s no mental ping-pong over what we’d like to be called happening in utero, no roundtable discussion with fellow crying newborns in the nursery about whether we should be called “Arthur” or “Arlo.”I’ve been deeply fascinated with names since I was a child—their cadence and candor, how they flit off of the tongue—and how powerful they can be. My childhood stories hammered out on a chunky Royal typewriter were filled with elaborately noir-named female detectives (Thora Marigold Dell) and anthropomorphic unicorns with Victorian surnames (Cornelius Thurston Vandenberg). A pair of Norwegian Elkhounds I raised as a child were christened with long, rambling pedigree names (Sophia Amalie Adelheide and Kristian Thor Gunnar) more befitting a royal toddler than a fuzzy sidekick.
Such a quirky interest isn’t something that’s easy to chatter about at slumber parties or sock hops, and certainly wasn’t a way to make my fellow middle schoolers think I was less of an odd duck. Fortunately, I found a name-loving tribe in the wilds of the Internet: baby name message boards.
My message board home base, Nameberry, is full of name enthusiasts actively discussing the way that names flow together—mostly in preparation for their own child. There are several moderators who serve as elders, calling back trends from decades prior and making lofty recommendations with the help of regulars concerned with syllables, consonant sounds, and how to blend a poster’s family heritage with personal naming taste. Among others, there are message boards for naming boys, girls, pets, and characters in a novel. There’s an entire vernacular to learn in order to be able to use the forums effectively: “Berries” are users, “sibsets” look at how sibling names work together, and “teenberries” are a cluster of teenage-name lovers. It’s not unusual to witness an intense discussion about whether “Daphne Jane” or “Daphne June” has a better aural flow.
What I love most about these baby names websites, and the message boards therein, is that they’re places of eternal optimism about the future. There’s nothing but pure, radiating excitement about the days lying ahead and unabashed hopefulness for new life. When situations feel grim or the world feels dire, it’s easy to swaddle myself in a community that’s not only thinking long and hard about words, but words that will name people and things that will inhabit a brighter tomorrow. A soon-to-be named Clara might be a future Supreme Court Justice, an Ezra could help craft an international peace treaty. In many ways, those name choices will have helped them to reach those lofty goals.
by Sarah Baird, The Atlantic | Read more:
Image: Tamaki Sono/The Atlantic
Thursday, November 20, 2014
We Will Need Writers Who Can Remember Freedom
I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings. … Power can be resisted and changed by human beings; resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words. I’ve had a long career and a good one, in good company, and here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. … The name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom.
~ Ursula Le Guin accepting the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at the National Book Awards Ceremony November 19, 2014.
~ Ursula Le Guin accepting the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at the National Book Awards Ceremony November 19, 2014.
‘One Problem With Skate Skiing: It’s Hard’
Then a friend introduced me to skate skiing, “classic” Nordic’s zippy younger brother. If traditional Nordic skiing is a walk in the woods, then skate skiing — which was born only in the 1970s — is more like trail running. It’s swooping. It’s fast. It’s graceful. It’s even a bit sexy, something its buttoned-up older brother has never been accused of. No wonder that more runners and cyclists have discovered the discipline as a great winter counterpart. Purchase of skate skis has been on a slow, steady rise in recent years, accounting for 16 percent of cross-country skis bought in 2012-13.
There’s just one problem with skate skiing: It’s hard. While anyone can hop on old-school Nordic skis and at least poke around the forest, big lungs are hugely helpful in skate skiing — yet even more important is good technique. I tried to teach myself, bulling my way to proficiency. It didn’t work. On the trail, women in their 70s would chirp, “Good morning!” as they skated effortlessly past my gasping, lathered frame. I needed help. (...)
In traditional Nordic skiing, skiers drive forward in a linear kick-then-glide motion. Skate skiing, by contrast, is more like ice skating: It’s a V-stride in which a skier pushes off with the edge of one angled ski and shifts his body weight to the other ski, driving forward, then reversing the process — and, with luck, gliding down the trail. As a result the skis are several inches shorter, lighter and shaped differently; the boots have more ankle support; and the poles are longer. Skate skiing also isn’t done in set tracks like its cousin but on smooth, manicured (and usually flat to moderately hilly) terrain.
Now we worked on shifting our weight back and forth from one ski to another. Here came Tip No. 2: When you push off from one ski onto another, think “nose over knees over toes,” Mr. Paulsen said — a position called being “stacked.” When you’re centered like this, the ski can glide nicely instead of digging in, he explained. Learning how to efficiently glide is key as a skate skier. “The push is good,” Mr. Paulsen told us. “But the glide is better.”
“The big-timers who come out there, it’s just refinement of all this,” he told us. “Now, let’s get our poles and hit the trails and get a scenery change.” We skidded behind him onto the green (easiest) trails, a pack of wobbly puppies, until we reached a forgivingly wide, flat piece of trail.
The arms, and use of the poles, are the second half of a skier’s engine. “We’re going to get into the world of different poling techniques,” Mr. Paulsen said. “There are about five of them.”
by Christopher Soloman, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Bonny Makarewicz for The New York Times
The Internet of Value: Why Banks Fear Bitcoin
Bitcoin is but the most famous example of an emerging technology network with the potential to improve banking. It belongs to the new type of financial animal called crypto currencies, i.e. decentralized, secure money storage and money transfer enabled by the Internet. What Bitcoin, and the even more promising Ripple network do, is not to poke a hole in banking’s basic business models—lending, deposits, trading, and money exchange—but to create the embryos for entirely new markets typically referred to as the Internet of Value. That is, a way for regular folks, as well as specialists, to potentially monetize everything, regardless of location, traditional market access and jurisdiction.
Cryptocurrencies have been with us for over five years, an eternity by Internet time. Using the elegance of mathematics they enable almost instant transfer of value at almost no cost between two parties without the need for a trusted third party. The disruption lies exactly there: in disrupting the intermediaries.
For a few years already, we have been talking about the sharing economy. Companies like AirBnb and Uber have enabled previously untapped, idle assets such as your empty bedroom or your second car to be mobilized for financial gain. Liquidizing such stale assets has added convenience in the utterly inefficient markets of room rentals and transportation services.
The Internet of Value would go a few steps further. Imagine a world where you can literally become your own market maker; you can create markets for any of your own assets—which could be thought of as anything you own, think or do, or can influence others to do.
In contrast, and to the great disappointment of many financial tech (‘fintech’) startups, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) last month released new guidance for virtual currency exchanges and payment processors, ruling that such companies may be considered money services businesses under US law and would be subject to new regulations. The ruling is well meaning, but quite contradictory, and, more importantly, wrongheaded. Prematurely imposing such limitations will have little long term impact beyond dulling the US’s innovative edge.
In the 2001 book, The Architecture of Market, my former UC Berkeley colleague Neil Fligstein makes the excellent point that markets cannot be thought of as automatically or magically appearing on their own, neither by individuals acting alone nor by structures and established institutions acting in concert. Rather, markets are elaborate and complex creations by communities with a joint purpose, and they must be sustained by those who use them in order to survive.
In the case of Bitcoin, what is being enabled here is not merely a new market, but a market of markets; a platform for all kinds of new markets to emerge. In it, lies the promise of a transformation, as strange as it sounds, greater than the Internet. Denying such a potential is equal to denying the reality of globalization.
by Trond Undheim, Fortune | Read more:
Image: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg—Getty Images
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Requiem for Rod Serling
[ed. One of the best tv shows, ever. Ever.]
An airliner vanishes from the sky. Intruders stray across unenforced borders. Technophobes succumb to gadgets while automatons steal their jobs. Identities are erased. Aliens lurk.
After the framework for each installment in The Twilight Zone has been teased, the camera whip-pans to Rod Serling, the embodiment of American anxiety. He presides from a safe distance — tucked into a witness stand, a corner booth, a Culver City soundstage — and talks through his teeth, wrists clasped at the waist. Reinforced in this device, perhaps the most effective method of introduction ever designed for television, is the secret formula of The Twilight Zone — the act that isolates. As spellbound travelers wander through empty towns and doppelgängers chase each other down deserted streets, only the viewer and the narrator share their findings. Were cameras and kinescopes unable to track these subjects as their lives spiraled out of control, there would always be Serling’s monologues to encapsulate the unexplainable. A pitch, a premise, a nightmare.
Accepting his second Emmy for Best Teleplay Writing, in 1957, Serling said, “A writer rarely gets an opportunity to get in front of the camera, so I’m gonna take this opportunity.” Two years later, the Twilight Zone pilot would air on CBS, the first of 156 episodes, 92 of which were written or adapted by Serling. As head writer and narrator, appearing on-camera from the second season until the fifth and final in 1964, Serling would perhaps reconsider his remark at the Emmy podium. While his deadpan monologues appear to be the model of composure, he once quipped, “Only my laundress really knows how frightened I am.”
While Serling holds his iconic on-camera stance, two scars hide in plain sight. One is from the shrapnel that tore through his wrist during a bomb blast at the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines in 1944. The other is a twice-broken nose, received not from combat, but during his training as a paratrooper in Georgia and Louisiana, where he boxed as a flyweight with his fellow “paraguys,” as he affectionately called them. Known for his berserker style, Serling tried his hand at the Golden Gloves, though he promptly retired from boxing when his nose was bashed for the second time, during his 17th and final fight.
In his work, Serling would return often to the hardships of the war-weary, but he reserved some of his most powerful observations for broken-down boxers, particularly those who failed to achieve stardom. Serling’s fighters would never be heavyweight champions, the men who come the closest, as Norman Mailer once wrote, to being “the big toe of God.”
With boxing as my through line, I immersed myself in Serling’s work, beginning with his radio dramas of the 1940s through the avalanche of teleplays, screenplays, and novellas he completed before his death in 1975. I searched his archives and pored over letters of rebuke he mailed to bigots and censors who menaced the media landscape. I listened to Dictabelt recordings of screenplays he acted out for his secretary to transcribe. And I spoke with a range of voices influenced by Serling’s legacy. David Chase, creator of The Sopranos, suggested that The Twilight Zone prepared his generation for hallucinogenic drugs. Matthew Weiner, creator of Mad Men, praised Serling for his embrace of irrationalism in a world that couldn’t be explained by the scientific and technological revolutions of the late 1950s. Rick Baker, who terrified a generation with his makeup artistry for “Thriller” and An American Werewolf in London, recalled being inspired to dress as an ape at drive-in screenings of Planet of the Apes— another celebrated script written by Serling — and emerge from his trunk to scare unsuspecting moviegoers. Anne Serling, author of As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling, recalled watching her first episode of The Twilight Zone at the family cottage in upstate New York and being “absolutely horrified” by what kind of material her otherwise fun-loving father was writing in his backyard office back in Los Angeles.
Throughout this search, I was reminded of the ingenuity of television’s most provocative voices at the midcentury mark. As noted by the late John Frankenheimer, who directed several Serling scripts for big and small screens, there were no old days when he and other television pioneers like Serling got their start. “We were the old days,” he said. Circumnavigating censors at that time was commonplace. In an interview with Mike Wallace in 1959, Serling recounted his frustrations in trying to bring an unvarnished account of the murder of Emmett Till to air on The United States Steel Hour in 1956. After the location was shifted from Mississippi to New England and even Coca-Cola bottles were removed from the set to satisfy sponsors’ fears of a Southern connotation, Serling knew he needed to escape even further, to other planets if necessary, to smuggle his socially conscious messages onto American airwaves. Less than three years later, The Twilight Zone was born.
Likewise, when Serling used sports as a portal to connect with viewers, he often did so with a light touch, presenting an escape from the everyday. There was “Casey at the Bat” with robots, or his segment for an unmade Twilight Zone film, in which baseball’s most bruising slugger turns out to be a figment of the imagination of a lonely hot dog vendor at Shea Stadium. But when Serling focused on boxing, he achieved a level of verisimilitude that is particularly striking. He addressed issues of race and class head-on. He drew from his own memories during the most combative and challenging chapter of his life. Dodging censors and skittish sponsors, he landed punches in prime time. It was this side of Serling that I hoped to connect with — the fighter’s instincts that helped change the face of a new medium.
by James Hughes, Grantland | Read more:
Image :Glueck
An airliner vanishes from the sky. Intruders stray across unenforced borders. Technophobes succumb to gadgets while automatons steal their jobs. Identities are erased. Aliens lurk.
After the framework for each installment in The Twilight Zone has been teased, the camera whip-pans to Rod Serling, the embodiment of American anxiety. He presides from a safe distance — tucked into a witness stand, a corner booth, a Culver City soundstage — and talks through his teeth, wrists clasped at the waist. Reinforced in this device, perhaps the most effective method of introduction ever designed for television, is the secret formula of The Twilight Zone — the act that isolates. As spellbound travelers wander through empty towns and doppelgängers chase each other down deserted streets, only the viewer and the narrator share their findings. Were cameras and kinescopes unable to track these subjects as their lives spiraled out of control, there would always be Serling’s monologues to encapsulate the unexplainable. A pitch, a premise, a nightmare.Accepting his second Emmy for Best Teleplay Writing, in 1957, Serling said, “A writer rarely gets an opportunity to get in front of the camera, so I’m gonna take this opportunity.” Two years later, the Twilight Zone pilot would air on CBS, the first of 156 episodes, 92 of which were written or adapted by Serling. As head writer and narrator, appearing on-camera from the second season until the fifth and final in 1964, Serling would perhaps reconsider his remark at the Emmy podium. While his deadpan monologues appear to be the model of composure, he once quipped, “Only my laundress really knows how frightened I am.”
While Serling holds his iconic on-camera stance, two scars hide in plain sight. One is from the shrapnel that tore through his wrist during a bomb blast at the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines in 1944. The other is a twice-broken nose, received not from combat, but during his training as a paratrooper in Georgia and Louisiana, where he boxed as a flyweight with his fellow “paraguys,” as he affectionately called them. Known for his berserker style, Serling tried his hand at the Golden Gloves, though he promptly retired from boxing when his nose was bashed for the second time, during his 17th and final fight.
In his work, Serling would return often to the hardships of the war-weary, but he reserved some of his most powerful observations for broken-down boxers, particularly those who failed to achieve stardom. Serling’s fighters would never be heavyweight champions, the men who come the closest, as Norman Mailer once wrote, to being “the big toe of God.”
With boxing as my through line, I immersed myself in Serling’s work, beginning with his radio dramas of the 1940s through the avalanche of teleplays, screenplays, and novellas he completed before his death in 1975. I searched his archives and pored over letters of rebuke he mailed to bigots and censors who menaced the media landscape. I listened to Dictabelt recordings of screenplays he acted out for his secretary to transcribe. And I spoke with a range of voices influenced by Serling’s legacy. David Chase, creator of The Sopranos, suggested that The Twilight Zone prepared his generation for hallucinogenic drugs. Matthew Weiner, creator of Mad Men, praised Serling for his embrace of irrationalism in a world that couldn’t be explained by the scientific and technological revolutions of the late 1950s. Rick Baker, who terrified a generation with his makeup artistry for “Thriller” and An American Werewolf in London, recalled being inspired to dress as an ape at drive-in screenings of Planet of the Apes— another celebrated script written by Serling — and emerge from his trunk to scare unsuspecting moviegoers. Anne Serling, author of As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling, recalled watching her first episode of The Twilight Zone at the family cottage in upstate New York and being “absolutely horrified” by what kind of material her otherwise fun-loving father was writing in his backyard office back in Los Angeles.
Throughout this search, I was reminded of the ingenuity of television’s most provocative voices at the midcentury mark. As noted by the late John Frankenheimer, who directed several Serling scripts for big and small screens, there were no old days when he and other television pioneers like Serling got their start. “We were the old days,” he said. Circumnavigating censors at that time was commonplace. In an interview with Mike Wallace in 1959, Serling recounted his frustrations in trying to bring an unvarnished account of the murder of Emmett Till to air on The United States Steel Hour in 1956. After the location was shifted from Mississippi to New England and even Coca-Cola bottles were removed from the set to satisfy sponsors’ fears of a Southern connotation, Serling knew he needed to escape even further, to other planets if necessary, to smuggle his socially conscious messages onto American airwaves. Less than three years later, The Twilight Zone was born.
Likewise, when Serling used sports as a portal to connect with viewers, he often did so with a light touch, presenting an escape from the everyday. There was “Casey at the Bat” with robots, or his segment for an unmade Twilight Zone film, in which baseball’s most bruising slugger turns out to be a figment of the imagination of a lonely hot dog vendor at Shea Stadium. But when Serling focused on boxing, he achieved a level of verisimilitude that is particularly striking. He addressed issues of race and class head-on. He drew from his own memories during the most combative and challenging chapter of his life. Dodging censors and skittish sponsors, he landed punches in prime time. It was this side of Serling that I hoped to connect with — the fighter’s instincts that helped change the face of a new medium.
by James Hughes, Grantland | Read more:
Image :Glueck
Everything You Need to Know About Marijuana Edibles
How is cannabis a drug?
Cannabis produces over 770 chemical compounds, 90 percent of them in trace amounts. The primary active compounds in cannabis are the cannabinoids and include THC, CBD and CBG. Only THC is psychoactive, but both CBD and CBG possess potent medicinal activity and modify the effects of THC. The other primary effects of cannabis are produced by cannabis’s essential oils, a common class of plant chemicals called terpenes. Terpenes can be absorbed orally through the mucous membranes of the mouth, but do not survive digestion if chewed up and swallowed. Myrcene, one of these terpenes (also produced by thyme and lemongrass), is thought to interact with THC and produce the sedative indica effect of smoked or vaporized cannabis varieties. Other terpenes such as beta-caryophyllene and pinene may contribute to the stimulating sativa effect of other cannabis varieties when inhaled. However, when cannabis medicines are swallowed, they do not exhibit these sativa or indica effects. (...)
The pot available in dispensaries today is radically different than what our parents or grandparents might have toked. How has marijuana changed over the years, and how do the genetic changes in the plant influence dosage and how the drug affects us?
Ultra-high THC potency cannabis is relatively recent. For most of our twelve thousand year history with cannabis, cultivated cannabis drug varieties produced only two or three percent THC. The legendary Thai Stick variety contained around eight percent. Even cannabis resin, hashish, rarely topped twenty percent THC. But prohibition encourages potency and an aggressive drug war encouraged it more. Potent plants require less space, which aids their concealment.
After a thirty-five year War on Drugs, cannabis can exceed twenty-five percent THC. Cannabis resin often exceeds fifty percent, and cannabis oils can top seventy percent THC. Increased potency is not really the issue that prohibitionists claim; but it does reduce the margin of error when consuming cannabis. Like beer vs. whiskey doses, only a fool would pour and consume a pint of whiskey, because most drinkers learn to dose alcohol. Similarly, cannabis users learn that higher-potency cannabis reduces the amount required. But individuals only having experience with the low-potency cannabis of the Seventies and Eighties can be unpleasantly overwhelmed when consuming today’s cannabis.
The chemical balance of cannabis has changed since the Sixties. Cannabis breeders for the past forty years have selected plants that produced the highest levels of THC. Unbeknownst to them, many of the early cannabis varieties contained significant levels of CBD as well as THC. CBD is a cannabinoid that is not psychoactive but medicinally valuable and CBD reduces many of the adverse effects produced by THC. Today’s cannabis produces THC, and rarely any CBD. Recently, varieties producing CBD have become more available thanks to the testing labs searching for CBD cannabis varieties and organizations such as Project CBD.
How do you determine what a proper dose of herbal cannabis or infused edible is, and what’s the science behind cannabis dosage?
Research on dosing herbal cannabis has been hampered by federal law. What is known about herbal cannabis dose is primarily based on anecdote, hundreds of thousands of them, with some extrapolation from doses of prescription cannabis medicines such as Marinol and Sativex. Despite the volume of experience, anecdotal guidance barely suffices. With less prohibition and more research, we would be much more precise in understanding the use of herbal cannabis.
Too many people calculate a dose of cannabis by the amount of THC psychoactivity they can comfortably withstand. A more informed approach to cannabis dose is to determine the minimum dose needed to reach the desired outcome. This minimum dose approach can be challenging when today’s herbal cannabis can average 15 percent THC in dispensaries in California,
Cannabis users in the Sixties often consumed an entire joint. Back in the day, a one-gram joint of 2% THC cannabis typically contained about twenty milligrams of THC. A person smoking that joint would absorb around seven milligrams of THC, the rest lost to combustion and sidestream smoke.
By comparison, that one-gram joint filled with a contemporary high-THC variety like OG Kush could contain 250 milligrams of THC. A single 50 milligram inhalation of high-potency cannabis oil (a “dab”) can deliver a dose equal to over four joints of Mexican commercial weed from the Seventies.
Remember that the THC in orally consumed cannabis will be metabolized by the liver into 11-hydroxy-THC and this form is twice as strong and will last twice as long as regular THC.
The threshold of THC psychoactivity for most people when consumed orally beneath the tongue or swallowed is just below two milligrams of THC. A cannabis dose for pain begins at around two milligrams and for most new medical cannabis patients tops out at about ten milligrams per dose. In a study of smoked cannabis at University of California, San Diego, researchers noted a “sweet spot” of dose for smoked cannabis in treating pain. Too small a dose produced little relief, while too high a dose actually increased the pain levels in the study subjects. Cannabis dose for pain relief presents a “Goldilocks” conundrum to find a dose that is “just right.” Most individuals unused to the effects of THC in cannabis become uncomfortably high at doses of fifteen milligrams or more.
Another challenge of taking cannabis orally is that only 10 to 20 percent of the dose reaches systemic circulation after its liver transformation into 11-hydroxy-THC. On an empty stomach, the onset of effects is typically thirty to sixty minutes and the THC psychoactivity lasts four to eight hours. Medicinal effects such as appetite stimulation can persist for 24 hours or more after a dose of THC.
Seven grams of twelve percent THC high-quality indoor cannabis infused into fifty grams of butter in slow cooker at 200 degrees for three hours will extract around 600 milligrams of THC. (For geeks, there is some loss in converting raw acidic THC to bioactive THC when heated by cooking, vaporizing or smoking. The raw THCA gives up a carboxyl group and converts to its neutral THC form. Additionally, the butter extraction method is not perfectly efficient.) That butter infused into a batch of twenty cookies will result in a cookie containing thirty milligrams of THC, which would be considered three portions under Colorado’s cannabis edible regulations.
Here are some basic anecdotal rules of thumb concerning THC dose for occasional cannabis users.Again, these are anecdotal and should not be considered professional or medical advice. Remember that there are genetic differences among individuals, so doses and onset times vary.
2 mg: threshold of psychoactivity for infrequent users. Very little to no impairment.
2.5 mg: most report psychoactivity equal to a glass of wine or a beer. Doses in this range are popular for social anxiety, encouraging the munchies, and focus.
5 mg: nearly all occasional users will note significant psychoactivity. Significant appetite stimulation. Mild psychoactivity, akin to two to three glasses of wine.
10 mg: Strong psychoactivity for most occasional users. Significant distraction from pain. This dose is often recommended by physicians to stem nausea from chemotherapy.
15 mg: Most occasional users report uncomfortable levels of psychoactivity at this dose. Regular users of cannabis do not.
1000 mg: the most potent edible available in California dispensaries. This is ten times the maximum THC content of the edibles permitted by law to be sold in Colorado adult-use cannabis shops.
Cannabis produces over 770 chemical compounds, 90 percent of them in trace amounts. The primary active compounds in cannabis are the cannabinoids and include THC, CBD and CBG. Only THC is psychoactive, but both CBD and CBG possess potent medicinal activity and modify the effects of THC. The other primary effects of cannabis are produced by cannabis’s essential oils, a common class of plant chemicals called terpenes. Terpenes can be absorbed orally through the mucous membranes of the mouth, but do not survive digestion if chewed up and swallowed. Myrcene, one of these terpenes (also produced by thyme and lemongrass), is thought to interact with THC and produce the sedative indica effect of smoked or vaporized cannabis varieties. Other terpenes such as beta-caryophyllene and pinene may contribute to the stimulating sativa effect of other cannabis varieties when inhaled. However, when cannabis medicines are swallowed, they do not exhibit these sativa or indica effects. (...)
The pot available in dispensaries today is radically different than what our parents or grandparents might have toked. How has marijuana changed over the years, and how do the genetic changes in the plant influence dosage and how the drug affects us?
Ultra-high THC potency cannabis is relatively recent. For most of our twelve thousand year history with cannabis, cultivated cannabis drug varieties produced only two or three percent THC. The legendary Thai Stick variety contained around eight percent. Even cannabis resin, hashish, rarely topped twenty percent THC. But prohibition encourages potency and an aggressive drug war encouraged it more. Potent plants require less space, which aids their concealment.
After a thirty-five year War on Drugs, cannabis can exceed twenty-five percent THC. Cannabis resin often exceeds fifty percent, and cannabis oils can top seventy percent THC. Increased potency is not really the issue that prohibitionists claim; but it does reduce the margin of error when consuming cannabis. Like beer vs. whiskey doses, only a fool would pour and consume a pint of whiskey, because most drinkers learn to dose alcohol. Similarly, cannabis users learn that higher-potency cannabis reduces the amount required. But individuals only having experience with the low-potency cannabis of the Seventies and Eighties can be unpleasantly overwhelmed when consuming today’s cannabis.
The chemical balance of cannabis has changed since the Sixties. Cannabis breeders for the past forty years have selected plants that produced the highest levels of THC. Unbeknownst to them, many of the early cannabis varieties contained significant levels of CBD as well as THC. CBD is a cannabinoid that is not psychoactive but medicinally valuable and CBD reduces many of the adverse effects produced by THC. Today’s cannabis produces THC, and rarely any CBD. Recently, varieties producing CBD have become more available thanks to the testing labs searching for CBD cannabis varieties and organizations such as Project CBD.
How do you determine what a proper dose of herbal cannabis or infused edible is, and what’s the science behind cannabis dosage?
Research on dosing herbal cannabis has been hampered by federal law. What is known about herbal cannabis dose is primarily based on anecdote, hundreds of thousands of them, with some extrapolation from doses of prescription cannabis medicines such as Marinol and Sativex. Despite the volume of experience, anecdotal guidance barely suffices. With less prohibition and more research, we would be much more precise in understanding the use of herbal cannabis.
Too many people calculate a dose of cannabis by the amount of THC psychoactivity they can comfortably withstand. A more informed approach to cannabis dose is to determine the minimum dose needed to reach the desired outcome. This minimum dose approach can be challenging when today’s herbal cannabis can average 15 percent THC in dispensaries in California,
Cannabis users in the Sixties often consumed an entire joint. Back in the day, a one-gram joint of 2% THC cannabis typically contained about twenty milligrams of THC. A person smoking that joint would absorb around seven milligrams of THC, the rest lost to combustion and sidestream smoke.
By comparison, that one-gram joint filled with a contemporary high-THC variety like OG Kush could contain 250 milligrams of THC. A single 50 milligram inhalation of high-potency cannabis oil (a “dab”) can deliver a dose equal to over four joints of Mexican commercial weed from the Seventies.
Remember that the THC in orally consumed cannabis will be metabolized by the liver into 11-hydroxy-THC and this form is twice as strong and will last twice as long as regular THC.
The threshold of THC psychoactivity for most people when consumed orally beneath the tongue or swallowed is just below two milligrams of THC. A cannabis dose for pain begins at around two milligrams and for most new medical cannabis patients tops out at about ten milligrams per dose. In a study of smoked cannabis at University of California, San Diego, researchers noted a “sweet spot” of dose for smoked cannabis in treating pain. Too small a dose produced little relief, while too high a dose actually increased the pain levels in the study subjects. Cannabis dose for pain relief presents a “Goldilocks” conundrum to find a dose that is “just right.” Most individuals unused to the effects of THC in cannabis become uncomfortably high at doses of fifteen milligrams or more.
Another challenge of taking cannabis orally is that only 10 to 20 percent of the dose reaches systemic circulation after its liver transformation into 11-hydroxy-THC. On an empty stomach, the onset of effects is typically thirty to sixty minutes and the THC psychoactivity lasts four to eight hours. Medicinal effects such as appetite stimulation can persist for 24 hours or more after a dose of THC.
Seven grams of twelve percent THC high-quality indoor cannabis infused into fifty grams of butter in slow cooker at 200 degrees for three hours will extract around 600 milligrams of THC. (For geeks, there is some loss in converting raw acidic THC to bioactive THC when heated by cooking, vaporizing or smoking. The raw THCA gives up a carboxyl group and converts to its neutral THC form. Additionally, the butter extraction method is not perfectly efficient.) That butter infused into a batch of twenty cookies will result in a cookie containing thirty milligrams of THC, which would be considered three portions under Colorado’s cannabis edible regulations.
Here are some basic anecdotal rules of thumb concerning THC dose for occasional cannabis users.Again, these are anecdotal and should not be considered professional or medical advice. Remember that there are genetic differences among individuals, so doses and onset times vary.
2 mg: threshold of psychoactivity for infrequent users. Very little to no impairment.
2.5 mg: most report psychoactivity equal to a glass of wine or a beer. Doses in this range are popular for social anxiety, encouraging the munchies, and focus.
5 mg: nearly all occasional users will note significant psychoactivity. Significant appetite stimulation. Mild psychoactivity, akin to two to three glasses of wine.
10 mg: Strong psychoactivity for most occasional users. Significant distraction from pain. This dose is often recommended by physicians to stem nausea from chemotherapy.
15 mg: Most occasional users report uncomfortable levels of psychoactivity at this dose. Regular users of cannabis do not.
1000 mg: the most potent edible available in California dispensaries. This is ten times the maximum THC content of the edibles permitted by law to be sold in Colorado adult-use cannabis shops.
by Xeni Jardin and Lisa Marks, Boing Boing | Read more:
Image: uncredited
My (Fake) Interview With Tiger*
* Or how it plays out in my mind
When Tiger Woods returned to golf from his back surgery, the national media saw it as the greatest news flash since D-Day. This energized me so much I immediately tracked down Tiger and asked if we could do the interview we should have done years ago. Surprisingly, Tiger agreed and suggested we grab a couple of orange Slurpees at the 7-Eleven and meet at a GameStop, where we could play Tomb Raider during breaks.
I insisted on picking the location and told Tiger I would rule out the fire hydrant but would still pick one of the places where he'd spent the past six years not winning another major.
My first choice was the greenside bunker on No. 6 at Royal Lytham & St. Annes. Why? Because it was the hole where Tiger suffered the only bad break I ever saw him get in a major while he was in contention.
The lie in that bunker in the final round of the 2012 British Open was so impossible he might as well have tried to play out while lying on his belly and using a pool cue. He came away with a shocking triple-bogey 7 and tied for third place. To my mind, it was the highlight of his six-year slump.
But that seemed a long way to go for a chat, so we met at a diner, and the interview began. From here on, the voice in boldface type will be mine.
Why did you turn down previous interview requests with me?
Like Steiny said: We had nothing to gain.
So why now?
Steiny says we have to rebuild my brand.
Why? TV still loves you. The print press still loves you. The average fans still love you. Of course the average fans still love the Kardashians, too, but I feel sure America will find a cure for this someday.
I just do what Steiny says.
Why haven't you fired Steiny, by the way? You've fired everybody else. Three gurus, Butch, Hank and Sean Foley. Two caddies, Fluff and Stevie. Your first agent, Hughes Norton, who made you rich before you'd won anything. Other minions.
I'll probably get around to it.
I like to fire people. It gives me something to do when I'm not shaping my shots.
When Tiger Woods returned to golf from his back surgery, the national media saw it as the greatest news flash since D-Day. This energized me so much I immediately tracked down Tiger and asked if we could do the interview we should have done years ago. Surprisingly, Tiger agreed and suggested we grab a couple of orange Slurpees at the 7-Eleven and meet at a GameStop, where we could play Tomb Raider during breaks.I insisted on picking the location and told Tiger I would rule out the fire hydrant but would still pick one of the places where he'd spent the past six years not winning another major.
My first choice was the greenside bunker on No. 6 at Royal Lytham & St. Annes. Why? Because it was the hole where Tiger suffered the only bad break I ever saw him get in a major while he was in contention.
The lie in that bunker in the final round of the 2012 British Open was so impossible he might as well have tried to play out while lying on his belly and using a pool cue. He came away with a shocking triple-bogey 7 and tied for third place. To my mind, it was the highlight of his six-year slump.
But that seemed a long way to go for a chat, so we met at a diner, and the interview began. From here on, the voice in boldface type will be mine.
Why did you turn down previous interview requests with me?
Like Steiny said: We had nothing to gain.
So why now?
Steiny says we have to rebuild my brand.
Why? TV still loves you. The print press still loves you. The average fans still love you. Of course the average fans still love the Kardashians, too, but I feel sure America will find a cure for this someday.
I just do what Steiny says.
Why haven't you fired Steiny, by the way? You've fired everybody else. Three gurus, Butch, Hank and Sean Foley. Two caddies, Fluff and Stevie. Your first agent, Hughes Norton, who made you rich before you'd won anything. Other minions.
I'll probably get around to it.
I like to fire people. It gives me something to do when I'm not shaping my shots.
by Dan Jenkins, Golf Digest | Read more:
Image: Chris Buck
The Irrelevance of the U.S. Congress in Stopping NSA Mass Surveillance, What Matters Instead
The “debate” among the Senators that preceded the vote was darkly funny and deeply boring, in equal measure. The black humor was due to the way one GOP Senator after the next – led by ranking Senate Intelligence Committee member Saxby Chambliss (pictured above) – stood up and literally screeched about 9/11 and ISIS over and over and over, and then sat down as though they had made a point. (...)
So the pro-NSA Republican Senators were actually arguing that if the NSA were no longer allowed to bulk-collect the communication records of Americans inside the U.S., then ISIS would kill you and your kids. But because they were speaking in an empty chamber and only to their warped and insulated D.C. circles and sycophantic aides, there was nobody there to cackle contemptuously or tell them how self-evidently moronic it all was. So they kept their Serious Faces on like they were doing The Nation’s Serious Business, even though what was coming out of their mouths sounded like the demented ramblings of a paranoid End is Nigh cult.
The boredom of this spectacle was simply due to the fact that this has been seen so many times before – in fact, every time in the post-9/11 era that the U.S. Congress pretends publicly to debate some kind of foreign policy or civil liberties bill. Just enough members stand up to scream “9/11″ and “terrorism” over and over until the bill vesting new powers is passed or the bill protecting civil liberties is defeated. (...)
All of that illustrates what is, to me, the most important point from all of this: the last place one should look to impose limits on the powers of the U.S. Government is . . . the U.S. Government. Governments don’t walk around trying to figure out how to limit their own power, and that’s particularly true of empires.
The entire system in D.C. is designed at its core to prevent real reform. This Congress is not going to enact anything resembling fundamental limits on the NSA’s powers of mass surveillance. Even if it somehow did, this White House would never sign it. Even if all that miraculously happened, the fact that the U.S. intelligence community and National Security State operates with no limits and no oversight means they’d easily co-opt the entire reform process: just like how the eavesdropping scandals of the mid-1970s led to the establishment of Intelligence Committees (which were instantly captured by putting in charge supreme IC servants like Senators Dianne Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss and Congressmen Mike Rogers and “Dutch” Ruppersberger) and the creation of FISA “oversight” courts (instantly turned into rubber stamps by installing subservient judges and having it all function in total secrecy).
Ever since the Snowden reporting began and public opinion (in both the U.S. and globally) began radically changing, the White House’s strategy has been obvious. It’s vintage Obama: enact something that is called “reform” - so that he can give a pretty speech telling the world that he heard and responded to their concerns – but which in actuality changes almost nothing, thus strengthening the very system he can pretend he “changed.” That’s the same tactic as Silicon Valley, which also supported this bill: be able to point to something called “reform” so they can trick hundreds of millions of current and future users around the world into believing that their communications are now safe if they use Facebook, Google, Skype and the rest.
In pretty much every interview I’ve done over the last year, I’ve been asked why there haven’t been significant changes from all the disclosures. I vehemently disagree with the premise of the question, which equates “U.S. legislative changes” with “meaningful changes.” But it has been clear from the start that U.S. legislation is not going to impose meaningful limitations on the NSA’s powers of mass surveillance, at least not fundamentally. Those limitations are going to come from – are now coming from – very different places:
1) Individuals refusing to use internet services that compromise their privacy. The FBI and other U.S. government agencies, as well as the UKGovernment, are apoplectic over new products from Google and Apple that are embedded with strong encryption, precisely because they know that such protections, while far from perfect, are serious impediments to their power of mass surveillance. To make this observation does not mean, as some deeply confused people try to suggest, that one believes that Silicon Valley companies care in the slightest about people’s privacy rights and civil liberties.
As much of the Snowden reporting has proven, these companies don’t care in the slightest about any of that. Just as the telecoms have been for years, U.S. tech companies were more than happy to eagerly cooperate with the NSA in violating their users’ privacy en masse when they could do so in the dark. But it’s precisely because they can’t do it in the dark any more that things are changing, and significantly. Rather obviously: that’s not because these tech companies suddenly discovered their belief in the value of privacy. They haven’t, and it doesn’t take any special insight or brave radicalism to recognize that. That’s obvious.
Instead, these changes are taking place because these companies are petrified that the perception of their collaboration with the NSA will harm their future profits, by making them vulnerable to appeals from competing German, Korean and Brazilian social media companies that people shouldn’t use Facebook or Google because they will hand over that data to the NSA. That – fear of damage to future business prospects - is what is motivating these companies to at least try to convince users of their commitment to privacy. And the more users refuse to use the services of Silicon Valley companies that compromise their privacy – and, conversely, resolve to use only truly pro-privacy companies instead – the stronger that pressure will become.
Those who like to claim that nothing has changed from the NSA revelations simply ignore the key facts that negate that claim, including the serious harm to the U.S. tech sector from these disclosures, driven by the newfound knowledge that U.S. companies are complicit in mass surveillance. Obviously, tech companies don’t care at all about privacy, but they care a lot about that.
Just yesterday, it was announced that WhatsApp “will start bringing end-to-end encryption to its 600 million users,” which “would be the largest implementation of end-to-end encryption ever.” None of this is a silver bullet: the NSA will work hard to circumvent this technology and tech companies are hardly trustworthy, being notoriously close to the U.S. government and often co-opted themselves. But as more individuals demand more privacy protection, the incentives are strong. As The Verge notes about WhatsApp’s new encryption scheme, “‘End-to-end’ means that, unlike messages encrypted by Gmail or Facebook Chat, WhatsApp won’t be able to decrypt the messages itself, even if the company is compelled by law enforcement.”
by Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept | Read more:
Image: Alex Wong/Getty Images
Switzerland's Basic Income Campaign
Switzerland could soon be the world’s first national case study in basic income. Instead of providing a traditional social net—unemployment payments, food stamps, or housing credits—the government would pay every citizen a fixed stipend.
The idea of a living wage has been brewing in the country for over a year and last month, supporters of the movement dumped a truckload of eight million coins outside the Parliament building in Bern. The publicity stunt, which included a five-cent coin for every citizen, came attached with 125,000 signatures. Only 100,000 are necessary for any constitutional amendment to be put to a national vote, since Switzerland is a direct democracy.
The proposed plan would guarantee a monthly income of CHF 2,500, or about $2,600 as of November 2014. That means that every family (consisting of two adults) can expect an unconditional yearly income of $62,400 without having to work, with no strings attached. While Switzerland’s cost of living is significantly higher than the US—a Big Mac there costs $6.72—it’s certainly not chump change. It’s reasonable income that could provide, at the minimum, a comfortable bare bones existence.
The benefits are obvious. Such policy would, in one fell swoop, wipe out poverty. By replacing existing government programs, it would reduce government bureaucracy. Lower skilled workers would also have more bargaining power against employers, eliminating the need for a minimum wage. Creative types would then have a platform to focus on the arts, without worrying about the bare necessities. And those fallen on hard times have a constant safety net to find their feet again.
Detractors of the divisive plan also have a point. The effects on potential productivity are nebulous at best. Will people still choose to work if they don’t have to? What if they spend their government checks on sneakers and drugs instead of food and education? Scrappy abusers of the system could take their spoils to spend in foreign countries where their money has more purchasing power, thus providing little to no benefit to Switzerland’s own economy. There’s also worries about the program’s cost and long term sustainability. It helps that Switzerland happens to be one of the richest countries in the world by per capita income.
The problem, as with many issues economic, is that there is no historical precedent for such a plan, especially at this scale, although there have been isolated incidents. In the 1970s, the Canadian town of Dauphin provided 1,000 families in need with a guaranteed income for a short period of time. Not only did the social experiment end poverty, high school completion went up and hospitalizations went down.
“If you have a social program like this, community values themselves start to change,” Evelyn Forget, a health economist at the University of Manitoba, told The New York Times.
“If you have a social program like this, community values themselves start to change,” Evelyn Forget, a health economist at the University of Manitoba, told The New York Times.
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
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