The Breaking Time

We are coming back

 

Hello, readers. 

Been a while, hasn't it?

Obviously, the hibernation has gone on longer than expected. The last few months have been an immensely hectic time professionally and personally, but a necessary one. In the process, it became clear that this blog desperately needed an overhaul to reach its full potential. So, for the past few months, that's what I and a hard-working group of similarly interested people have been busy doing. Above is an initial glimpse of our new logo, designed by the talented David Gray.

That brings up something else: I'm not in this alone. Our return will involve a number of other contributors as well, who have excellent ideas and perspectives on our fractious era. If anyone reading this would like to be involved, email me with your thoughts.

I thank all of the Breaking Time's readers for their support and, above all, their patience.

We'll return soon.

P.S.-  All of us working on the revamp are doing so with whatever spare time and resources we can scrounge. You'll see a donate button on the top right. Any support is welcome, and every little bit helps us hasten the day we get the new Breaking Time back up, better than ever.

"I'm not a robot. I am a unicorn": AI makes baby talk

Hi-larious

So the folks at the Creative Machines lab hooked up their "CleverBot" chatbot to itself. The resulting exchange is comedy gold, as the robots snark at each other, worry about God and one insists that it is, in fact, a unicorn.

Hilarity aside, I've predicted for awhile now, half-joking, that the closest thing to true AI will probably emerge out of spam or chatbots. Amid my laughing, it's almost possible to hear the above exchange as baby talk, nonsense sounding out of words as a prelude to something much more evolved.

Or we've just averted the robot war, because AI will be too busy shouting "I'm a unicorn!" to slaughter humanity en masse.

The positive side of binge drinking

There might be a few negatives.

Yes, I chose the title of this post to be intentionally provocative, but there's some interesting results from this research on college binge drinking:

When drunk, I would feel socially skilled, and wonderfully impulsive, and far more fun than I'd ever been before. I was drawn to alcohol because it allowed me to escape my natural shyness and bond with people I barely even knew.

It's those kinds of positive experiences that fascinate Thomas Vander Ven, an associate professor in the department of sociology at Ohio University. In his new book, "Getting Wasted," he aims to uncover not the dangers of college drinking, but what attracts  students to alcohol in the first place. And booze, he finds, not only helps young students alleviate their social anxiety, it helps them grow close friendships, and find romantic love. By taking care of other drinkers when they're feeling ill, he argues, many student drinkers also get their first taste of adult responsibility, findings that have major implications for the ways in which we think about alcohol.

Vander Ven goes into more detail:

There's been some recent research on this. In recent decades parents have been able to check up on their kids more through technology, through Facebook and text messages, and kids' lives have been more choreographed, whether it's being involved in teams or different kinds of lessons and activities and structured places. A recent phenomenon is the parent-orchestrated play date -- when I was a kid I'd never heard of a play date, you just kind of found somebody to play with, and now parents are organizing this. So when they go away to college they feel more off the leash than they would have in past history. They feel this real sense of autonomy. That might result in them taking more risks, and it also means that they may have less practice in managing those risks.

But if they weren't given the opportunity to solve problems when they were younger, the drinking scene also provides them with opportunities to do those things. Taking care of drunks is a way for them to show adult competence.

Vice, in the sense of something enjoyable but possibly dangerous, exists, and people, in some form, are going to try it. Alcohol, even if technically illegal for many college students, is widely available, socially acceptable and doesn't carry the same risks as a number of hard drugs. So, people drink, and form cultures around its use, some more dangerous than others.

College students, instead of being malleable little darlings snared by a sudden epidemic, are humans trying to find a useful way to test vice.

Viewed from this angle, students raised by a generation of "helicopter parents" have a hell of a lot of risk aversion and awkwardness to overcome, and the culture of binge drinking in college helps them to do that quickly, if in a sometimes nasty fashion.

The idea that part of their precious angel's freedom might be to drink herself silly and make out with someone her parents don't approve of before spending the next day hungover doesn't fit with their view of their child as a reflection to manage, instead of an independent human being who has to find out where their appropriate limits lie through making their own choices.

Since the parents have more money and social influence, binge drinking gets regarded as an epidemic, instead of an utterly understandable response to environment. Combine with the still-present idea that vice is something to perfected out of human beings, this makes for really stupid policy that doesn't really deal with the problem.

Personally, I've never seen the appeal of this particular ritual. I enjoy drinks and conversation, but find the whole puking-hangover mess stupid and utterly avoidable. My family also had the blessed sanity to introduce moderate drinking around meals in my teens. I was too poor — and had too much work to do — to binge drink in college. There are far better ways to figure out one's acceptable level of excess.

But it's important to realize these habits don't form in a vacuum. If people actually want to see a decline in binge drinking (and its very real problems), they should push for a lower drinking age and focus on creating a healthier cultural environment for alcohol consumption to take place in.

Bracing for the Storm

"Don't worry, we're all battened down here."

That's my grandmother, assuring me that she and my grandfather are prepared for Hurricane Irene. They're survivors, and weathered worse than this, and with far less warning.

Up the coast, New York is preparing frantically, in part because it's extremely unusual for a hurricane to head straight for it, the way Irene has. But North Carolina is first in its path and in the farm country where I grew up, bracing for storms is old habit.

I grew up accordingly: the northeastern corner of the state sticks out into the Atlantic Ocean like a nose ready for a punch. Hurricanes rolling across the long, flat horizon were a matter of when, not if.

Personally, my family never got the worst of it: our homes stayed intact and we never suffered any injuries, but they made an impression. On the cusp of 17, I waded through flood waters for hours to reach a friend's house. Years earlier, we huddled in the living room while trees fell and the metal roof of a neighboring farm shed flapped like paper.

When hurricanes approached, darting over the weather maps like angry specters, regular life ground to a halt and everyone fell back into old rituals: the thousand steps honed over generations to save lives and calm nerves. We had no monopoly on this: compare how West Coast denizens react to earthquakes. It's human nature.

In less terrifying form, storms were even entertainment. My parents would patiently explain the science behind lightning — both as edification and warning — while we watched distant bolts from our porch, thankful for the temporary gusts of cool air. My sister and I played in fallen trees.

I'm not there now, and on an odd level, it creates a sense of visceral discomfort, because a lot of people I still love are, in South Mills, Elizabeth City, Currituck and Norfolk. Before everything else, I hope they weather this safe and sound. I hope the same thing for everyone in the storm's path.

Storms are also a reminder: for all we plot and plan, there are things beyond our practical control capable of great devastation. Chaotic eras like ours are even more rife with them. From time to time, it's good to take a cue from facing natural disaster.

Keep perspective. Prepare. Stay calm. If hit, get back up. Even storms end.

Poems for Friday: A History Without Suffering

Rainy Streets of London on a Quiet Night, by Eric Magnuson

After blasting Frank Zappa's Trouble Every Day this morning, I settled down and decided that this piece by E.A. Markham was better suited to the times at hand.

In this poem there is no suffering.

It spans hundreds of years and records

no deaths, connecting when it can,

those moments where people are healthy

 

and happy, content to be alive. A Chapter,

maybe a Volume, shorn of violence

consists of an adult reading aimlessly.

This line is the length of a full life

 

smuggled in while no one was plotting

against a neighbour, except in jest.

Then, after a gap, comes Nellie. She

is in a drought-fisted field

 

 with a hoe. This is her twelfth year

on the land, and today her back

doesn’t hurt. Catechisms of self-pity

and of murder have declared a day’s truce

 

in the Civil War within her. So today,

we can bring Nellie, content with herself,

with the world, into our History.

For a day. In the next generation

 

we find a suitable subject camping

near the border of a divided country:

for a while no one knows how near. For these

few lines she is ours. But how about

 

the lovers? you ask, the freshly-washed

body close to yours; sounds, smells, tastes;

anticipation of the young, the edited memory

of the rest of us? How about thoughts

 

higher than their thinkers?...Yes, yes.

Give them half a line and a mass of footnotes:

they have their own privileged history,

like inherited income beside our husbandry.

 

We bring our History up to date

in a city like London: someone’s just paid

the mortgage, is free of guilt

and not dying of cancer; and going

 

past the news-stand, doesn’t see a headline

advertising torture. This is all

recommended reading, but in small doses.

It shows you can avoid suffering, if you try.

Who's left in the space race?

An abandoned cosmodrome. Location and photographer unknown. More photos here.

So, Russia's decided to ditch human space travel:

Moscow no longer sees manned spaceflight as its top priority but remains committed to its International Space Station obligations, the head of Russian space agency Roskosmos said on Wednesday.

Russia holds a monopoly on flights to and from the 16-nation station. Soyuz launches from its Baikonur cosmodrome are now the only way to space since the United States retired its 30-year shuttle programme in July.

NASA pays it more than $50 million per flight to send its astronauts to the space outpost.

Roskosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin said Russia was spending almost half of its space budget on manned flights and needed to shift focus to more technology-oriented projects. He added however it would stand by its station commitments.

"Unfortunately manned spaceflight accounts for an unjustifiably large part of the budget: It makes up 48 percent," he told reporters at Russia's flagship MAKS airshow near Moscow.

No, it doesn't mean the end of manned spaceflight entirely, but combined with the end of NASA's shuttle program, it's yet another move in the wrong direction.

So, NASA's bowed out of major human space travel for the foreseeable future, Russia's followed suit. Who does that leave? China? Europe? Weyland-Yutani?

For all the talk that private industry might take over the space race, it doesn't look feasible in the near future. The whole enterprise lacks, so far, the huge returns shareholders generally crave. Long-term planning is not corporate culture's strong suit.

What I'd like to see is an alliance. Instead of looking at expenses and dwindling budgets and going "cut!" space agencies should take a cue the cooperation that's increased since the end of the Cold War. Throw together the reduced space agencies, a few more forward-looking private businesses and some coordinating non-profits with the overall goal of advancing space travel. Split the costs and the potential gains in research and resources. This might even allow rising powers like India, South Africa and Brazil to join in, as they could gain access to existing infrastructure and expertise for an investment, without the huge up-front cost of having to build their own programs. Cash-strapped but infrastructure-rich agencies like NASA and Roskosmos get much-needed funds. Business gets a safer investment, because the odds are better than going solo. The non-profits, especially the scientific ones, get to advance their own goals. Win-win, if it was done right.

Of course, as I observed after the end of the space shuttle program, that solution would require motivation: cultures that viewed space travel as a serious priority. Right now, that's seriously lacking.

Magnifying a subculture, pt. II (or: why are there no more feathers?)

El Circo took them.

A little while ago, Jenka Gurfinkel wrote a brilliant post linking the fashion-induced feather shortage to the emergence of the Circus subculture and style, coming out of Burning Man:

Our story begins almost 12 years ago, in a little town in Oregon, by the name of Ashland, where a group of kids came together to start a circus performance troupe called, El Circo. The group would gain recognition within the Burning Man culture for the extravagant parties they threw at the festival, featuring lavish fire performances, a large, geodesic dome venue, and a top-notch sound system that attracted world-renowned music acts to perform there. In a 2005 San Francisco Bay Guardian article on the effect that the various groups within the Burning Man community have had on San Francisco nightlife — an impact which now extends to the entire west coast’s, and arguably global, dance culture — the writer paid particular attention to the influence of El Circo...

The whole history's fascinating, and it brings up something I've touched on here before: how a relatively small subculture magnifies its influence. In the previous case, I focused on the reasons aging Hollywood narcissists show up in so many productions.

El Circo's case is very different, and more positive. But something of the same underlying process is at work, with a difference.

Now, Ashland has a population just over 20,000. Unlike Hollywood, it's not a metropolitan hub plugged into media that can quickly magnify the influence of its cultures. However, El Circo were really damn creative and instead plugged into a subculture, in the form of Burning Man, that could magnify that in its annual, temporary metropolis.

Their panache and style is unique enough that others pick it up after the citizenry of Black Rock City dispersed to their separate corners, including those in aforementioned metropolitan hubs. More mainstream art subcultures, always craving an infusion of the hot new thing, pick it up. Given time, you have Steven Tyler in feathers, pissed off fly fishers, and one tribe out of Ashland that's spurred a larger movement while changing the way people dress around the world.

There's a reason why the third word in Coilhouse's alt culture mantra is INFECT.

Now, fringe artistic subcultures gaining massive popularity is not new, despite the fact that every generation or so the same subcultures seem to forget the process occurs. However, the incubator of Burning Man is, relatively speaking, as is the way that more globalized communications decrease the necessity for El Circo or similar groups to plug in to more mainstream cultural networks to get their message out. There's other ways to magnify now, and they're seemingly less dependent on location than before.

More food for thought.

Update: Talking with Gurfinkel via Twitter last night, she added an important caveat: the tipping point for the El Circo style came after some of its designers moved to Los Angeles. Metropoli remain important, and LA in particular remains a major magnifier for entertainment/fashion subcultures, as its been for a number of decades. As with any time of turmoil, old and new methods of spreading an infection are at work at the same time.

Law-less zones: when authority and anarchy shake hands

Just another Pirate Utopia. Photo by Laura K. Gibb.

Some interesting news out of Copenhagen, as the squat of Christiania just won long-sought autonomy:

"'It's not a perfect society, but one of the nice things about being here is that it doesn't have to be," says one resident, who calls himself only Vesinger.

Vesinger delivers his assessment of Christiania with obvious affection. He has lived here with his two little boys for six months, a recent convert to the Christianian way of life.

And it is not hard to see why this tiny enclave just south of Copenhagen's city centre is an attractive location for a family.

Trees and plant life thrive free from human interference and pesticides. It is more racially diverse, culturally open and creatively expressive than your average Danish neighbourhood.

Christiania has been a squat for nearly 40 years, ever since a group of enterprising hippies broke down the fences and set up in the disused military barracks.

And after a recent government ruling, this small society is celebrating its independence as a kind of semi-autonomous region. They call it Freetown Christiania.

---

Under the new rules, residents are allowed to buy their land at knock-down prices and the remainder will be put up for rent by the state.

Although this effectively turns a hippy haven into a local council for Ms Larson, it means for the first time they can exist in security as well as peace.

"It will be a new way of living," she says.

"We do not have to worry anymore about whether the government will throw us off our land. Hopefully now that we have won our right to own the land, then we will be able to feel more secure and start to deal with some of the problems that exist here."

Ah, "we won, now what?" the question would-be revolutionaries in every field have to grapple, specifically, Christiania's relatively lawless status has drawn increasingly violent drug dealers:

There have been outbreaks of violence including gun battles on the streets as rival gangs fight for control of Christiania's drugs trade.

On the notorious Pusher Street, skinheads with pitbulls glare menacingly from behind their stalls draped in camouflage netting at anyone who looks like they might be there to do anything other than buy drugs.

Society: never a simple issue.

Christiana's problems aren't new ones either. Back in 2008, I did a brief write-up on the history of the Kowloon Walled City for Coilhouse. Instead of hippie idealism, in that case the lawless zone was founded on a far more mercantile culture, but it faced many of the same problems. As I summed it up then:

Yes, the anarchistic types out there are correct when they say that the Walled City is evidence that humans can co-exist, and even thrive, without laws constantly piled on them. But it’s not that simple. After all, without massive police raids (government incarnate), the place would have probably become a mob-run tyranny. Its residents had a degree of freedom that anyone who comes home to piles of bills or endless forms can’t help but envy. They also had darkness, a lower life expectancy, filthy living conditions and huge numbers of drug addicts.

If the problems with the drug gangs keep building, Christiania will probably need police raids, ironically, to keep its ungoverned character. Anarchists, by ideology or default (as in Kowloon) have never been particularly good at handling organized violence. At the same time, while a hell of a lot greener than the urban labyrinth that was Kowloon, many of the other traits seem similar: functionally self-governing, relatively peaceful, ensconced in a niche and free of some of the surrounding society's ills.

This brings up a paradox: in both cases, lawless areas had their lawlessness preserved by, well, the law. So, what does one do with that particular contradiction?

From drunk to ruler: Liu Pang survives a Breaking Time

Despite his badassery, Liu Pang never slew a dragon. But Washington never killed a tiger either

Here's a story, and it's worth taking a moment to tell.

A very, very long time ago, Liu Pang (or Bang, depending on the translation), was born in a small village in China, a peasant. Generally regarded as a lazy drunk in his youth, Liu Pang was still charismatic enough that bartenders would pour him free drinks just to keep him around. Occupying various village positions from cop to headman, Pang eventually married relatively well and, as a leader of his town, ended up picked to lead a group of draftees to work on the emperor's tomb.

Yes, that Emperor's tomb

In was a dubious honor. China, at the time, suffered under the rule of Qin Shi Huang, who had a love for massive building projects that, whatever their uses, also happened to work large portions of the laborers to death. In fact, he loved these projects almost as much as he adored utterly crushing anything that might contradict him. Life expectancy either way was not good. So, one by one, Pang's drafted labor force slipped away. Heavily influenced by Legalism, perhaps the most cold-blooded political philosophy ever developed by humans, the emperor's laws were heavy on death penalty. Rebellion? Death. Late for duty? Death. Swimming in a thunderstorm? Death. Conscripts escape? Death.

Well hell, at least a death on the run might be quick. Driven by the same combination of insightful ambition and selfishness that had preoccupied his life, Pang ditched the rest of his band and went off to get drunk in the swamp. Some of them followed, and soon Pang was a genuine bandit lord.

When the old tyrant died, his machinery fractured, and the state quickly fell apart. Pang emerged from brigandage and became a minor warlord (same job, better title). Charismatic as ever, he picked capable subordinates, winning cities and former enemies over by the innovative tactic of not looting and burning them to the ground. A Taoist, he simplified laws where he want, reducing taxes on farmers and shaking off the mechanistic oppression of the Qin era. Later historians would marvel at his ability to draw loyalty (and repeated reinforcements) from the peasantry, but a large part of his appeal stemmed from simply not being a raging asshole when everyone else was.

The Ice Age is coming, Ctd.

As an epilogue to the last post on London's riots, I think it's fitting to add this map of London's impoverished areas overlaid with the riots. It handily illustrates both the underlying causes and the stupid tragedy of rioting, as the poor areas see the most destruction.

The furor's mostly died down, and MPs returned from their holidays for a basically pointless debate. Somehow I don't think Prime Minister David Cameron's insistence that the riots were "criminality, pure and simple" is exactly the approach needed to defuse a volatile situation and prompt a frank reassessment of the best way to prevent a repeat. Instead, expect more brutal tactics, more surveillance and more governmental cluelessness.

The Ice Age is coming.