Sometimes the Good Old Days Were Pretty Bad

By Ed Raymond
Staff Writer

This was the week of using DNA to trace dog poop, to marvel at the fact that in the 520 days Barack Obama has been president, 1,782 books have been written about him and his presidency, and that the average bet in the Chinese casino capital of Macau is $40 as compared to the average bet of $7.50 in Las Vegas. The starting average bet for a Chinese highroller in Macau is $10,000.

An article about our future by Eric Felten in The Wall Street Journal caught my attention. He concentrates on Total Recall, a book by Microsoft research scientist Gordon Bell. Bell writes that soon we will have the capability “to record every moment of our lives, public and private. Electronic devices will record…every block we walk, every trip to the store, every conversation and chance meeting.” If we lose the car keys, press a button. Forgot a name? Press button to review last meeting with “unnamed” subject. All of these “recordings” could prove to be a nightmare or a godsend.

Back on the farm until the late 1930s, we did not have electricity for lights or anything else. When it was 20 below we froze to the old two-holer 56 paces away, attended by a kerosene lantern and a Sears Roebuck catalog instead of “Please Don’t Squeeze” Charmin. Finally, Franklin Delano Roosevelt embarrassed Congress into passing the Rural Electrification Act which brought power and telephones to rural areas. We had a lot of privacy and a lot of privation in the 1930s.

But with all of these electronic spying machines and recorders available now, will it be disastrous to discover we can’t forget anything? Will our minds be so cluttered with the past that we won’t have time for the future?

A Baltimore condo development called the Scarlet Place is so worried about dog poop that has not been scraped up and collected the members (except for most of the dog owners) want to collect poop samples from every dog in the area. The collection will then be sent to a state DNA lab so they can trace unscooped poop to the proper owner. Now that is truly living.

Is There a Private Spot in the Universe?

I wonder what life will be like in 2032, just a hundred years after I was born. The Old Scout Garrison Keillor added some perspective in his column last Sunday. As he was flying home from Washington last week at 37,000 feet, he wrote he was watching live TV pictures taken by an underwater robot 5,000 feet down in the Gulf of Mexico. The Delta airliner was busy dodging thunderheads while the gloppy red crude was seen on the Internet via satellite erupting into the placid blue water of the Gulf. He thought about his role in the great oil spill, flying in an airplane that demanded jet fuel by the barrel while requiring men and machines with little margin for error to dig 18,000-foot holes in the ocean floor.

I think our technical advances have been just amazing over the last half-century, while our attitudes have really changed very little since Neanderthal times. But that’s another column.

At the present time British Petroleum (BP) is drilling two relief wells which will meet in the hole drilled by the Deepwater Horizon platform before it blew up. Both relief wells are slant-drilled to meet exactly in the same spot in the original hole at about 18,000 feet. Both drills will puncture a 21-inch steel well casing at that depth so that drilling mud and cement can be pumped into the gusher to seal it.

How can they even think these two relief drills will meet at the same place? They put a Global Positioning System (GPS) down the main hole and direct the two drilling machines to follow the GPS. Absolutely amazing engineering to a an old farm boy who had to handpump water for the cattle when there was no wind to turn the windmill.

Why Are Railroad Tracks Exactly Four Feet, 8.5 Inches Apart?

The fact that almost all railroad tracks in the world are 4 feet, 8.5 inches apart is fascinating but it has almost nothing to do with engineering. The English developed the railroads first, inventing not only the steam engines used but most of the rail equipment. They helped us in building our railroads and those are the dimensions they had used. Those measurements were used in the pre-railroad English tramways that were pulled by horses. Those measurements came from the manufacture of carts and wagons. Those measurements were used because many of the roads in England had wheel ruts that far apart.

The Romans around the time of Christ built most of the long distance roads in England out of stone. During the Roman occupation Roman war chariots pulled by two horses traveled the roads. The chariots were made just large enough to accommodate the rear ends of a team of horses. The ruts made by the wheels were approximately two horse rear-ends wide. So the tracks that “bullet” trains use traveling up to 300 miles per hour in Asia, Europe, and the United States are based on chariot tracks worn into stone over 2,000 years ago.

Now we have to factor into the human equation all of the “electronic” progress we have made in just the last 100 years. Radio, TV, computers, satellites, e-mail, texting, Googling, Power Point, Smart Phones, Kindle, I-Pods and I- Pads, Blackberries, and all of those wonderful devices may benefit all of us. We can place a satellite call from the top of Mount Everest to the source of the Amazon River in a few seconds. We have astronauts manning the International Space Station, hoping that they don’t hear HAL, that voice from the computers in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, saying “Dave, my mind is going, I can feel it.”

Does Multitasking Inhibit Concentration and Contemplation?

Some say kids are no longer reading because they are too entranced by video and computer games. But aren’t they reading briskly as they are playing the games? Maybe they just need more interesting reading matter. A Shakespeare reader starts with Hot Rod magazine, not with a critique of Hamlet.

As I work on a column I’m listening to CNN and answering phones, reading articles while surfing USA Today, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, and reading and printing interesting e-mails from readers. If I want to “fact-check” something I can Google for the answer without leaving the computer. Over the years I have turned myself into a speed reader, although I have never reached the level of Woody Allen, who once read War and Peace in one sitting. He summarized the lengthy novel this way: “It was about Russia.”

Some media “philosophers” say multitasking with all the available devices is hazardous to our intelligence. If that’s true why does the IQ level on tests go up a couple of points every decade? I’m with Steven Pinker of the New York Times on this one. He claims that almost every development in the media business has caused panics in board rooms. People thought the printing press, newspapers, and paperbacks would decrease our brain power.

Pinker writes: “These days scientists are never far from their e-mail, rarely touch paper, and cannot lecture without Power Point…Yet discoveries are multiplying like fruit flies, and progress is dizzying…Other activities of the mind, like philosophy, history, and cultural criticism, are likewise flourishing.” Like the very complicated field of robots. R2D2 of Star Wars fame now belongs on the junk heap.

How About Roxxxy, the First Sex Robot?

Maybe the guy in Vegas who went into a backroom for a simple lap dance and ended up with a $20,000 charge on his credit card would have been better off courting Roxxxy, the world’s first sex robot. Douglas Hines, an artificial intelligence engineer, has developed what he calls “the ultimate in robot sex.” Roxxxy is available in six different personalities. Roxxxy and her five other personalities (two are called Frigid Farrah and Mature Martha) can talk, listen, carry on an indecent conversation, and feel your touch. Some can have an orgasm. I don’t know about Frigid Farrah. He didn’t say. According to the story in Harper’s you can get more info at TrueCompanion.com. Prices start at $7,000.

This story may sound a little crazy, but multitasking people will work on things that are positively “dizzying.” I think the Miller Park Zoological Society of Bloomington, Indiana, overcoming the fact that they use computers and multitasking, has come up with an innovative way to make money.
Having Santa’s reindeer already pooping in the zoo, they dehydrate, sterilize, and “glitterize” Donner and Blitzen’s poop and sell necklaces and ear rings made with it. No mention of nose rings made from “Magical Reindeer Gems.” Items range from $10 to $20. The zoo picked up $21,000 from zoo poop last year.

Paro the Seal and AIBO the Robot Dog

The Japanese have been the world leaders in electronics and robotics for decades, leading all nations in the development of industrial robots since the 1970s. At the present time over 20 Japanese companies are working on robots that will assist the elderly. Under development is a robotic bed that will transform itself into a wheelchair by spoken command. They are also working on a giant robotic nurse disguised as a teddy bear that can lift patients that weigh as much as 134 pounds.

So far the Japanese have developed Paro, a furry seal-like robot about the size of a large cat that will be the “pet” of seniors who cannot take care of a cat or dog. Taking 15 years and $15 million to develop, Paro is loaded with sensors that react to the motions and speech of the elderly. If Paro is ignored it starts to cry. It moves its tail in response to praise and/or greeting. Costing $3,800 at the present time, Paro has been used since 2007 to calm anxious residents of nursing homes and provide company to the lonely. It reacts to smiles and communications. The key is to get the patient to accept the robot as a “living thing.”

The Japanese have developed Hybrid Assisted Limb (HAL), a robot which will help people to walk. Electrical impulses from the brain of the injured person are sent to his muscles. The power units attached to the limbs of the person then generate the power to lift the patient to a standing position and a walk. You can get this assistance robot for a monthly rental rate of $2,400.

AIBO is a metallic robot dog that has become so beloved by Japanese owners that some bake birthday cakes for their clanky pooch. However, most robot companies, including those in the U.S., are working on “Astroboys,” or robots that will serve as houseboys and servants in homes.

NASA and Robonaut 2

General Motors is currently under contract with NASA to develop a “humanoid” robot that can use arm and hand tools in space. NASA hopes that Robonaut2 will be able to replace live astronauts that now must go on space walks to repair sections of the International Space Station. Such space walks are the most dangerous parts of any space mission. R2 will supposedly be ready for the next shuttle so it can undergo tests and further research on the Space Station.

Actually the U.S. is no longer slouching in the development of robots. Hospitals and other industries are using robots to deliver medicines and other products. As an example, Diapers.com uses more than 350 robots in preparing diaper shipments. El Camino Hospital in Silicon Valley uses 19 robots to open doors, run elevators, deliver drugs and to carry out trash. The robots also are polite to hospital workers—and patients.

All in all, it’s a terrific time to be living for an old guy who spent dark winter hours as a young boy in a very cold two-holer, waiting for the full moon to shine through the half moon in the door.

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