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The Fourth Republic and the future of America

A fascinating article at Salon.com on whether the election of Barack Obama represents the beginning of a new segment of American history, within the context of the Three Republics model:

George W. Bush was not only the final president of the Jeffersonian backlash period of Roosevelt’s Third Republic, but the last president of the 1932-2004 Third Republic itself. The final president of a republic tends to be a failed, despised figure.

The First Republic, which began with George Washington, ended with James Buchanan, a hapless president who refused to act as the South seceded after Lincoln’s election.

The Second Republic, which began with Abraham Lincoln, ended with the well-meaning but reviled and ineffectual Herbert Hoover.

The Third Republic, founded by Franklin Roosevelt, came to a miserable end under the pathetic George W. Bush.

Unlike most of the hyperbolic editorials I’ve read on Obama’s victory this one gives a technological and economic historical context:

…what causes these cycles of reform and backlash in American politics? I believe they are linked indirectly to stages of technological and economic development.

Lincoln’s Second American Republic marked a transition from an agrarian economy to one based on the technologies of the first industrial revolution — coal-fired steam engines and railroads.

Roosevelt’s Third American Republic was built with the tools of the second industrial revolution — electricity and internal combustion engines. It remains to be seen what energy sources — nuclear? Solar? Clean coal? — and what technologies — nanotechnology? Photonics? Biotech– will be the basis of the next American economy.

This presents an interesting historical framework to the United States. As to whether it’s true, only time will tell.

[via Boing Boing][image from zaphodsotherhead on flickr]

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This is your brain on smart drugs…

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Medical ethicists are starting to get worried about the possibility of employers requiring their workers take smart drugs to boost productivity. Hence this report entitled “When the boss turns pusher” in the Journal of Medical Ethics:

…the possibility of discrimination by employers and insurers against individuals who choose not to engage in such enhancement is a serious threat worthy of legislative intervention. While lawmakers should not prevent individuals from freely pursuing neurocognitive enhancement, they should act to ensure that such enhancement is not coerced.

It’s an interesting question. Another point concerns the anti-egalitarian nature of smart drugs. If their use confers a genuine advantage, but they remain expensive, it will be yet another exclusive tool of advancement for the rich. The JME suggests:

…objectors argue that neurocognitive enhancement is anti-egalitarian because these technologies are expected to be costly and the wealthy will have significantly more access to them.

This is indeed likely to be the case—unless society chooses to subsidise enhancement, as it does public education and (outside the USA) healthcare.

However, similar inequalities are generated by private grammar schools and tutors for the SAT (a college and university admission test) and Ivy League universities, yet few suggest outlawing these threats to distributive justice.

So the issue of equality is another political ballgame (I’d love to be able to get some memory enhancers on the NHS). Anyway the approach suggested vis a vis smart drugs by the JME seems very positive and enlightened.

[When the boss turns pusher via article on Macleans.ca, via Sentient Developments][image fron jenlight on flickr]

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Friday Free Fiction for 7th November

It’s Friday evening here in the UK, which can only mean one thing – namely, that I’ve been sat at the keyboard bashing together your weekly selection of free science fiction to read on the intartoobs. Here we go, fiction-fans…

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There’s a lone novel at Manybooks.net:

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There’s some old-school classics at Feedbooks:

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There’s a new edition of Clarkesworld Magazine, containing (among other good non-fictional stuff):

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Here’s the usual monthly foursome from Apex Online:

Plus some special Election Horror:

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This week’s fictional output at Strange Horizons is the first part of “Return” by Eric Vogt.

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Meanwhile, over at Subterranean Online there’s…

… a brand new story by recent Campbell award-winner, Mary Robinette Kowal. We hope you enjoy “Waiting for Rain” but should also point out that Mary’s posted a different, shorter version of the tale at her website. Read them both — we had trouble deciding which version to buy!

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From Chris Roberson:

The good people at Pyr have published an original short story of mine, “Ill Met in Elvera,” as part of their “Sample Chapter” program.

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Via SF Signal:

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Here’s last week’s late Friday Flash:

And this week we have:

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And there we have it, folks; should keep you busy for a while. Don’t forget to keep sending in your plugs and tip-offs and blatant self-pimpage; deadline 1800GMT every Friday. Have a great weekend!

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Testing spray-on solar cells

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A microscopic sensor to detect toxins needs a power source.  Xiaomei Jiang and colleagues at the University of South Florida respond with an array of 20 polymer-based cells, each about the size of a 12-point lower-case letter O.

The polymer they selected has the same electrical properties as silicon wafers, but can be dissolved and printed onto flexible material. “I think these materials have a lot more potential than traditional silicon,” Jiang said. “They could be sprayed on any surface that is exposed to sunlight — a uniform, a car, a house.”

The next step is to test the array with the sensors. The team hopes to generate 15 volts by the end of the year.

[Sun Spray by littleblackcamera]

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Climate change all over the place

And speaking of climate change there is an interesting story at the BBC about how monsoons/droughts, as recorded in the concentrations of minerals in stalactites, have been linked with Chinese dynasties:

By comparing the rain record with Chinese historical records, Pingzhong Zhang of Lanzhou University in China, and colleagues, found three out of five “multi-century” dynasties – the Tang, the Yuan and the Ming – ended after several decades of weaker summer monsoons with drier conditions.

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These moisture-laden winds bring rain necessary for cultivating rice. But when the monsoon is weak, the rains stall farther south and east, depriving northern and western parts of China of summer rains.

This could have led to poor rice harvests and civil unrest, the researchers speculate.

It’s an interesting theory, and reflects how important climate is in the lives of humanity, and also in the lives of lemmings, with the discovery that the lemming population of Norway is no longer as fecund as it once was:

The research team, composed of Norwegian and French scientists, believes the winters are now too humid, leading to the “wrong kind of snow“.

This results in a less stable subnivean space (the space between the ground and the snow layer above), meaning substantially fewer animals survive until spring.

Aww. But apparently it’s not all bad news vis a vis climate change. Apparently certain Alaskan glaciers have in fact grown this year for the first time in 200 years.

This will please Sarah Palin – who apparently has only recently discovered that Africa is a continent, not a country.

Congrats on the win, America!

As to the glaciers – only time will tell.

[wanxiang cave image from BBC News, lemming from kdleditsch on flickr]

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