Fire and Knowledge

There’s not much to be said about the period except that most writers don’t reach it soon enough.

—William Zinsser, On Writing Well, p. 71.

What is called “capitalism” might more accurately be called consumerism. It is the consumers who call the tune, and those capitalists who want to remain capitalists have to learn to dance to it. The twentieth century began with high hopes for replacing the competition of the marketplace by a more efficient and more humane economy, planned and controlled by government in the interests of the people. However, by the end of the century, all such efforts were so thoroughly discredited by their actual results in countries around the world that even communist nations abandoned central planning, while socialists governments in democratic countries began selling off government-run enterprises, whose chronic losses had been a heaven burden to the taxpayers.

Privatization was embraced as a principle by such conservative governments as those of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Britain and President Ronald Regan in the United States. But the most decisive evidence for the efficiency of the marketplace was that even socialist and communist government leaders who were philosophically opposed to capitalism turned back towards the free market after seeing what happens when industry and commerce operate without the guidance of prices, profits, and losses.

—Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics (3rd Edition, Basic Books, 2007), p. 178.

Has advertising gotten better since 9/11? Paula Scher thinks so. An excerpt:

On the whole (with the exception of movie and theater advertising) ads are better designed than anytime I can remember since the sixties. The concepts are smarter, the layouts are more sophisticated, type choices are more appropriate, and art direction is more nuanced.

A food culture of anti-eating is worse than useless. People hold to their food customs because of the positives: comfort, nourishment, heavenly aromas. A sturdy food tradition even calls to outsiders; plenty of red-blooded Americans will happily eat Italian, French, Thai, Chinese, you name it. But try the reverse: hand the Atkins menu to a French person, and run for your life.

—Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (HarperCollins: 2007), p. 17.

Lamp lit by gravity wins Greener Gadget award

Concept illustrations of Gravia depict an acrylic column a little over four feet high. The entire column glows when activated. The electricity is generated by the slow fall of a mass that spins a rotor. The resulting energy powers 10 high-output LEDs that fire into the acrylic lens, creating a diffuse light. The operation is silent and the housing is elegant and cord free — completely independent of electrical infrastructure.

The light output will be 600-800 lumens - roughly equal to a 40-watt incandescent bulb over a period of four hours.

To “turn on” the lamp, the user moves weights from the bottom to the top of the lamp. An hour glass-like mechanism is turned over and the weights are placed in the mass sled near the top of the lamp. The sled begins its gentle glide back down and, within a few seconds, the LEDs come on and light the lamp, Moulton said. “It’s more complicated than flipping a switch but can be an acceptable, even enjoyable routine, like winding a beautiful clock or making good coffee,” he said.

Moulton estimates that Gravia’s mechanisms will last more than 200 years, if used eight hours a day, 365 days a year. “The LEDs, which are generally considered long-life devices, become short-life components in comparison to the drive mechanisms,” he said.

Most humans have twelve sets of ribs, but 8 percent of us have a thirteen set, just like chimpanzees and gorillas. This is a remnant of our primate ancestry: We share common ancestors with chimps and gorillas, and the thirteen set of ribs has been retained from when our lineage branched off six million years ago.

—Michael Shermer, Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design (Times Books, 2006), p. 18.

I know of no good reason why these containers and all other forms of manufactured “waste”—solid, liquid, toxic, or whatever—should not be outlawed. There is no sense and no sanity in objecting to the desecration of the flag while tolerating and justifying and encouraging as a daily business the desecration of the country for which it stands.

—Wendell Berry, “Waste” in What Are People For? (1990), p. 127.

Mysteries of computer from 65BC are solved

Since its discovery, scientists have been trying to reconstruct the device, which is now known to be an astronomical calendar capable of tracking with remarkable precision the position of the sun, several heavenly bodies and the phases of the moon. Experts believe it to be the earliest-known device to use gear wheels and by far the most sophisticated object to be found from the ancient and medieval periods….

Remarkably, scans showed the device uses a differential gear, which was previously believed to have been invented in the 16th century. The level of miniaturisation and complexity of its parts is comparable to that of 18th century clocks….

One of the remaining mysteries is why the Greek technology invented for the machine seemed to disappear. No other civilisation is believed to have created anything as complex for another 1,000 years.