Dense Living/ Vertical Farming Edition

Hello to all,

Thanks for checking in. Today will be the first “green” edition of “Amorphous Thoughts.” But, because it involves the environment, it does not mean it won’t be interesting. I stumbled upon a pretty cool graphic from the folks at www.persquaremile.com. Here is a little background on the site and graphic. The folks at PSM simply write about living density. They pontificate about how our world would work if we lived packed like sardines or if we were so spread out we didn’t see anyone for days on end. It’s a really interesting blog, I would suggest it, if you find the time. But, what I’m passing on today was the most surprising item I’ve seen from them so far.

They looked at some of the world’s largest cities (San Francisco, New York, Paris, London, Singapore, Houston). They then extrapolated how much land we would take up, if the whole’s world population lived that same way. It’s difficult to fathom, but amazing to wonder about the ramifications. I immediately thought: How much less would we fly? drive? travel to work? How short of a distance would food have to travel to get to us? Many people don’t know, but food travels from 1,500-2,500 miles on average, before it makes it to your plate. I thought we could negate some of the effects of global warming and sea level rise, by not having to live on coastal areas. Then I got sad, because I thought there would less cool places to travel to. With all good comes some bad, right?
So, here’s the chart, you’d be surprised to know that we can house the world’s population without even using all the land in the USA:

Pretty incredible, we would only use up the land in Texas, if we all lived at the same density as New York City.



2 more things before clearing out for the weekend. Another pretty cool item, that may give a glimpse into our future world. Chances are you’ve never heard of vertical farming. It does tie into this denser living idea in this post. Vertical farming is exactly what it sounds like. Instead of massive fields, taking up acres and acres of space, your land runs upward. The vertical farming is being researched to alleviate some of the problems I mentioned earlier, like food traveling long distances to get to you. You could conceivably have a vertical farm, on the outskirts of a large town or even within an urban setting and lower that 1,500 food mile average by a large amount. For me, it’s just another thing that’s fun to consider. Check out the link and here’s a clip about it as well:

Monday, we have a new blog section called, “Huh, that’s legal?” On Tuesday & Wednesday, I will post direct links to my earlier individual previews of the candidates (so you don’t have to find them in the archives or scroll through all 4). And, some other posts I liked, so people can catch up on things they missed.

A couple of candidates have done some stupid things since the last debate, so there will be at least 2 new video clips.  There will be a link posted for a great interview I’ve never put on the site, with another economist, Jeff Madrick. I have another graph to show our income inequality here in the States. And, a great photo album on the Oakland strike/protest on Wednesday, complete with a whopping 122 pics. So, something for the folks who have read all the posts so far too. And, I’ll come back Thursday with a new post.

Have a good weekend,

James

Missing (?) Amy WInehouse Edition

Hello to all,

Thanks for checking in. Today, it's a musical edition of "Amorphous Thoughts." Another first. Today, I wonder aloud if I miss Amy Winehouse. So you know, I don't mean for this post to come off as mean or callous. It's an absolute shame when someone goes at an early age. It's a tragedy for family and friends as well. These are just my honest thoughts I've noticed I've had when a musician passes away. Amy's case is even different to me, because there are loads of women with a similar sound. It's like she re-spawned this genre. There are so many, it's like Michael Keaton in that old movie "Multiplicity." I forget the entire premise of the movie. But, in it, Michael Keaton's character ends up with a few clones of himself. Each one with one major distinction (or defect) from the original. You'll see that this exists within Amy Winehouse's musical genre. This blog is called "Amorphous Thoughts" with good reason!

I'll post one of my favorites from each singer, including Amy Winehouse, and you can decide if the sounds are similar or not. Or, if this is another case where I'm just crazy. The list is as follows:
Joss Stone: Younger version of Amy Winehouse, minus the drug habit and personal problems (as far as we know). 24 years old, born in the part of England that is not London, has released 3 of her own albums and appeared on loads of collaborations. Joss Stone and Adele probably have the best voices of this bunch. Here is "You Had Me"

Duffy: Welsh version of Amy Winehouse, minus the drug habit and personal problems (as far as we know). 27 years old, born in Wales, released 2 albums herself. Here is "Enough Love":

Paloma Faith: A sultry, more soulful version of Amy Winehouse (again minus the personal problems). 26 years old, born in London and she's working on her 2nd album currently. Here is "Play On":

Adele: She's a heavier version of Amy Winehouse. People on the Internet are very mean about her appearance, no personal problems either. 23 years old, born in London as well, she's released 2 albums. Here is "Rolling in the Deep"

Kate Nash: A more well-rounded Amy Winehouse, she sings and  plays a few instruments. 24 years old, also from London, working on her 3rd album. Here is "Foundations"

Estelle: The only 30 something (31 yrs old) on this list. But, she too was born in London. She's released 3 albums. And, has loads of collaborations with some real heavy hitters, including John Legend and Talib Kweli. Here is: "Thank You":

And, here's my favorite from Amy (she was also from London), her version of "Valerie":

So, let's review. My first thought was, what the hell is going in London? There must be a factory in town, producing these chicks. Secondly, this list could have been longer. I didn't want to overload everyone with the videos. But, you can look at a few other artists: Lily Allen, Katie Melua, V.V. Brown. They all have similar sounds too. Talking about age, the women mentioned in this post are all within 7 years of each other in age. And, that's only because I threw Estelle in. The rest are within 4 years of each other. So, they sound very similar, they were born within a few years of each other, and in the same town (mostly). I'm starting to think they all might be related to each other. Someone's not telling the whole story, just too many coincidences here. The question is, can we really miss her when we have at least 8 reasonable facsimiles of her actual music? And, we can still listen to everything she's done already.

So, I hope I made my point. In the case of her death, there are many people with a similar style out there. Secondly, and this is a bit off the point, but I never understood fans that would mourn the death of singers (see right, re: Michael Jackson fans). You didn't know the person. You guys weren't hanging out on weekends together. And, their music lives on forever anyway. I guess some fans need to know that the person continues to exist in some world they will never enter anyway. Who knows? But, those reactions always shocked me.

We'll leave it there for today, thanks for checking in.

See you next time,
James

Man Meets Machine/ Intro to Injustice Facts Edition

Hello to all, this will be a short post today. My sometime editor (and all-the-time wife) says I’ve been posting too much and they are too long. She’s worried about me overwhelming everyone. She hasn’t even read everything herself. When loved ones aren’t even keeping up, it might be time to take the foot off the gas.

Today’s story is the stuff of movies that depict our future. I stumbled across a story of a man who had a dock for his smartphone carved into his prosthetic arm. I kid you not. In the article, he says he loves it. He can text and use the phone with his natural hand. He can put the phone on speaker or bring the prosthetic up to his ear to talk. I’m happy for him, but I’m a little freaked out for the rest of us. Full story is detailed here.

I started to think how far along has this gotten? So, with only a couple of clicks on The Google, I found a couple of videos and an interesting article. I found that robotics have gotten much more advanced, seriously fast. Some of it I knew, some I didn’t.  Advances in prosthetics are detailed in this article. Here’s a portion of the article, worth a full read though. I also suggest you look up some of Dean Kamen’s work, a pioneer in this field. He’s done some amazing things himself.
As Rodney Brooks wrote in a recent IEEE Spectrumarticle:

Our merger with machines is already happening. We replace hips and other parts of our bodies with titanium and steel parts. More than 50, 000 people have tiny computers surgically implanted in their heads with direct neural connections to their cochleas to enable them to hear. In the testing stage, there are retina microchips to restore vision and motor implants to give quadriplegics the ability to control computers with thought. Robotic prosthetic legs, arms, and hands are becoming more sophisticated. I don’t think I’ll live long enough to get a wireless Internet brain implant, but my kids or their kids might.
And then there are other things still further out, such as drugs and genetic and neural therapies to enhance our senses and strength. While we become more robotic, our robots will become more biological, with parts made of artificial and yet organic materials. In the future, we might share some parts with our robots.

So, there you have it. We might have a couple more generations as normal humans. But, your great grand-kids will probably live forever. Here are the videos. In this first one, the woman is able to control her prosthetic arm with her mind. If you were wondering, Amanda Kitts lost an arm in a car accident. But, she was born with all her limbs and had to get used to the prosthetic at an advanced age.

And, the other is of a robot riding a bike. In the first clip,  they’re picking stuff up for us. Now, they can also take care of us for our work commutes. My guess for the next step is robot maids, like Rosie in the Jetsons. It’s not as crazy as it sounds. When you think about it, Rosie is just a next-next-next-next generation Roomba. How the hell did I get going on the Jetsons? Sorry, here’s the clip:

And, here’s another Twitter intro for everyone. This one is under the name “Injustice Facts.” He or she just posts some of the most eye-opening, horrid, shocking facts that have occurred/are happening in our world. If you want to follow on Twitter, you can here. Here they are:

- The Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety.

- Every year 300,000 human beings die on the job, mostly due to deregulation and severe labor exploitation.

- 1% of the world’s population own 50% of the world’s wealth & resources.

- Kim Kardashian has more Twitter followers than all the professors, teachers and writers in the world combined. (me again: she has just under 12.6 million followers, I had to check this myself)

- During the Bush years the richest 400 Americans added $400 billion to their net worth, while unemployment doubled and poverty tripled.

- In a survey of 30 rappers, 28 said that they are coerced by music executives to mention drugs, cars and women because that ‘sells."

- A poll by Rasmussen Reports found that 15% of Americans say Fox News has a liberal bias.

- 95% of Americans and 97% of Australians allow the television to lull them to sleep each night.

- Heavy U.S. television viewers (more than 4 hours per day) think that there are 100,000 homeless in the U.S. when there are 7 million.

- If the minimum wage increased at same rate as CEO pay, then our new minimum wage would be about $31/hour.

- Researchers have shown that people who watch 1 Hollywood Blockbuster per month, will spend 22% more on goods than those who watch none.

- Khomeini, Saddam, Bin Laden, were are all trained by the CIA before playing the role of America’s evil enemy.

We’ll leave it there for today. See you tomorrow for my post on Amy Winehouse.

See you next time,

James