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It took far too long, but I finally got around to reading Stephen Graham’s Cities Under Siege. In the end, I’m not entirely sure it was worth it.
Graham’s book is sweeping in its generalizations, its implications, and its conclusions. It broadly traces the rise of the city in military and popular conception as a hotbed of vice and perversion, as a target for military operations, and as an increasingly oppressed environment for its citizens. Cities Under Siege is split into sections covering such phenomenon of urban militarization as the rise of the SUV (“Car Wars”), autonomous drones and robot warfare (“Robowar Dreams”), the destruction and replanning of cities (“Lessons in Urbicide”), recreated urban training centers (“Theme Park Archipelago”) and the nexus of the “military-industrial-media-entertainment network.” It’s a mouthful, as is much of this book.
The electric grid of the United States.
Overall, it’s hard to tell whether this story comes as a relief or not. Short version: the illogicality and inconsistency with which the national power grid has built – that is to say, there isn’t a national grid – means that we are in fact more immune from a Robbian-style global guerrillas attack. The grid is too shitty to be vulnerable.
Which is good for our security short-term, but bad for long-term nationwide electricity. The real question is how do you duplicate the success of of an unplanned system? How do you engineer unpredictability? Answering that will be one of the major challenges of the 21st century.
Via io9.
It seems like good news always comes out when the weather’s bad, and bad news when it’s nice out. But when it’s a grey day to begin with and you look at this series of charts…
What the gap between potential and actual production means for employment.
Basically, a recovery could take 10 more years. Or never materialize at all. Given the devastating effects of long-term unemployment on recent graduates, young adults, and the very fabric of society, we have got to do better. And the stimulus was too much?!
At this point, it doesn’t even matter. Make-work, nothingness – anything is better than the worst-case outcome here.
Nigerian Mubarak Muhammad Abdullahi's homemade working helicopter.
In a delightful example of the DIY ethos, and bearing more than a slight resemblance to the John Robb school (not to mention Cory Doctorow), amateur engineers in Kenya, Somaliland, and Nigeria are cobbling together their own aircraft out of spare parts and discarded hulks.
And that includes both fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft. The above helicopter was crafted from “scrap aluminum and parts of a Honda Civic, a Toyota, and a Boeing 747.” And it actually flies, too – at an altitude of 7 feet.
Via io9.
Automatic Ballpoint 