Archive for January 2018
“I can understand that a man might go to the gambling table – when he sees that all that lies between himself and death is his last crown”*…
Wheel of Fortune, Las Vegas, 1988
Thirty years ago, gambling in the US was limited to three destinations: Reno, Las Vegas, and Atlantic City. Jay Wolke photographed the ordinary people who played, lived and worked in the rapidly expanding cities. Wolke was fascinated by the intersections of people, artifice, architecture and landscape in the US’s three gambling cities…
Girl in car, Trump Plaza, Atlantic City, 1989
Fortune Hunter, Las Vegas, 1988
See more at “Same dream another time: under the skin of 80s Vegas – in pictures” and at Wolke’s site.
* Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass’s Skin
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As we consider the odds, we might recall that it was on this date in 2000 that Cynthia Jay-Brennan won $34,959,458.56 on a Megabucks slot machine at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, the world’s largest payout; it was a one in 7 million chance. A cocktail waitress at another casino, she had been a Desert Inn regular; on this occasion, she had “invested” $27 in the machine that paid off so handsomely.
Sadly. Jay-Brennan has become synonymous with the “Jackpot Jinx”: a few weeks after her huge haul, she and her sister were driving to a casino out of town when they were hit by a drunk driver, paralyzing her and killing her sister.
“Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist”*…
The tenth anniversary of the start of the Great Recession was the occasion for an elegant essay by the Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman, who noted how little the debate about the causes and consequences of the crisis have changed over the last decade. Whereas the Great Depression of the 1930s produced Keynesian economics, and the stagflation of the 1970s produced Milton Friedman’s monetarism, the Great Recession has produced no similar intellectual shift…
Robert Skidelsky explains why at: “How Economics Survived the Economic Crisis.”
* John Maynard Keynes
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As we delve into the dismal, we might spare a thought for Robert Burton; he died on this date in 1640. An Oxford scholar, he is best known for his classic The Anatomy of Melancholy, an odd mix of wide-ranging scholarship, humor, linguistic skill, and creative (if highly approximate) insights– a favorite of scholars and authors from Samuel Johnson to Anthony Burgess.
“Humans as we know them are just one morphological waypoint on the long road of evolution”*…
Imagine a world where the human race is no longer the dominant species.
Extinct through war or spectacular accident. By devastating pandemic, super-natural disaster, or cosmic cataclysm.
Passed through the Singularity to become unrecognisably posthuman, and left the natural order forever behind.
Infected by a virus, hijacked by a parasite or otherwise co-opted to become ex-human – a “bio zombie” – moved sideways to a new position as ecological actor.
Gently absorbed into – or completely overshadowed by the unfathomable actions of – a superior civilisation comprising benevolent – or unacknowledging – emissaries from the stars (or extra-dimensions).
Dethroned by the return of ancient species, the reawakening of the slumbering Old Ones… Out-competed by the arrival of an invasive species from another world making the Earth just one habitat in a galactic ecology.
It could be far into the future or The Day After Tomorrow.
Robots may rule the world… not so much enslaving as letting us retire to a life of Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism; life in The Culture as Iain M. Banks foresaw it could be.
What is the world like then? After us…
Imagine a world where the human race is no longer the dominant species: “What is the Post-Human World.”
* Annalee Newitz in “When Will Humanity Finally Die Out?”
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As we stretch our frames, we might spare a thought for Marvin Minsky; he died on this date in 2016. A biochemist and cognitive scientist by training, he was founding director of MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Project (the MIT AI Lab). Minsky authored several widely-used texts, and made many contributions to AI, cognitive psychology, mathematics, computational linguistics, robotics, and optics. He holds several patents, including those for the first neural-network simulator (SNARC, 1951), the first head-mounted graphical display, the first confocal scanning microscope, and the LOGO “turtle” device (with his friend and frequent collaborator Seymour Papert). His other inventions include mechanical hands and the “Muse” synthesizer.
“Unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.”*…
Andrei Lacatusu, a self-taught digital artist from Rome, created this series of digital art called “Social Decay.”
Learn more at “Artist Imagines The Decay Of Social Media Companies“; see the full set at Lacatusu’s Behance page.
[TotH to the always-illuminating Pop Loser]
* Ernst Fischer
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As we contemplate a post-social media world, we might recall that it was on this date in 1996 that the first version of the Java programming language was released by Sun Microsystems; the language, created by James Gosling, had been in use in since 1995 as part of Sun’s Java Platform. Its ability to “write once, run anywhere” made Java ideal for Internet-based applications. As the popularity of the Internet soared, so did the usage of Java.
“A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul”*…
Since 1979, inflation-adjusted hourly pay is up just 3.41 percent for the middle 20 percent of Americans while labor’s overall share of national income has declined sharply since the early 2000s. There are lots of possible explanations for why this is, from long-term factors like the rise of automation and decline of organized labor, to short-term ones, such as the lingering weakness in the job market left over from the great recession. But a recent study by a group of labor economists introduces an interesting theory into the mix: Workers’ pay may be lagging because the U.S. is suffering from a shortage of employers… its authors argue that the labor market may be plagued by what economists call a monopsony problem, where a lack of competition among employers gives businesses outsize power over workers, including the ability to tamp down on pay. If the researchers are right, it could have important implications for how we think about antitrust, unions, and the minimum wage…
… not to mention anti-trust laws. The full story at: “Why Is It So Hard for Americans to Get a Decent Raise?”
* George Bernard Shaw
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As we concentrate on concentration, we might spare a thought for Charles Erskine Scott (C. E. S.) Wood; he died on this date in 1944. An author, civil liberties advocate, artist, soldier, attorney, and Georgist, he is best known as the author of the 1927 satirical bestseller, Heavenly Discourse.
Wood settled in Oregon, where he defended Native American causes, represented dissidents such as Emma Goldman and wrote articles for radical journals such as Liberty, The Masses, and Mother Earth. His friends included Chief Joseph, Emma Goldman, Eugene Debs, Ansel Adams, Robinson Jeffers, Clarence Darrow, Childe Hassam, Margaret Sanger and John Steinbeck. His daughter, Nan Wood Honeyman, was Oregon’s first U. S. congresswoman.
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