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An eyebrow raiser from George Gilder’s The Silicon Eye (W. W. Norton & Company, 2005), a history of the development of the digital camera:
“Leading-edge clean rooms at companies like Intel or National Semiconductor are ‘class ten’ or even ‘class one,’ meaning that there are between zero and ten such particles, making a microchip factory tens of thousands of times cleaner than a hospital’s cleanest surgical facilities” (p. 53).
Wow.
Great talk from TEDx at Carnegie-Mellon University: “After re-purposing CAPTCHA so each human-typed response helps digitize books, Luis von Ahn wondered how else to use small contributions by many on the Internet for greater good. At TEDxCMU, he shares how his ambitious new project, Duolingo, will help millions learn a new language while translating the Web quickly and accurately — all for free.”
(Thanks to James F. for the link.)
Natural News surveyed its readers asking which corporations they believed to be the most evil: Monsanto topped the list, followed by B.P., Halliburton, McDonald’s, Pfizer, Merck, Wal-Mart, and Nestlé. Natural News writer Mike Adams reported on the survey results, chiming in to agree and add his opinion that Monsanto is not only evil but psychotic and a number of other bad things.
I had heard such things in passing from some of my colleagues who are crunchy-granola-eating-nostalgic-for-the-1960s types, so I read the article to learn more. Why is Monsanto so evil? Adams offered four reasons.
1. Monsanto produces and markets genetically-modified seeds, and so, according to Adams, it is an “opponent of open-pollinated seeds.” My questions: What kind of opponent is Monsanto — scientific? economic? political? And why is it evil to be that kind of opponent? No answers in the article.
2. Monsanto, Adams says further, has acted against politicians who try to ban its products: “politicians in France and across Europe who found themselves being added to a ‘retaliatory target list’ that was assembled by the United States ambassador to France, working in conspiracy with the leaders of the GMO industry.” Is that obviously bad? Food production is unfortunately highly politicized, and politics is often rough and tumble. In this case, some European politicians, like some of their African colleagues, are against GMOs and have attempted to ban them. Why shouldn’t Monsanto and other GMO advocates fight back? And why is this a “conspiracy”? No answer.
3. “Monsanto’s GMO crops are now linked to roughly 200,000 suicides of farmers and farm workers in India.” The link in this case seems to be that India’s traditional, low-producing agriculture sector is being modernized, but the transition is slow-going and often ugly. New methods, including GMOs, are increasing crop yields, but some farmers are not making the transition well — for many reasons, including lack of credit markets, nasty politics and guerrilla warfare. So why exactly are the deaths being laid at Monsanto’s door? Unexplained.
4. Adams makes a passing reference of Monsanto as a threat to “planetary health.” But he offers no argument.*
So what exactly is bad about GMOs and Monsanto? And why the strong language?
Also odd are the article’s omissions. Adams does not raise any health concerns about GMO. Yet if GMO producers are evil, wouldn’t data showing their product to be a threat to health be important here? One suspects that the studies showing the safety of GMOs are being ignored by an ideologist.
Nor does he mention the increased yields or other benefits of GMOs. Intellectual honesty requires looking at the arguments on the other side, and this omission is also suspicious.
My Ph.D. is not in bio-tech, and I have not researched Monsanto and have no opinion about whether any of its actions are moral or immoral. But if GMOs really are dangerous and extreme language like evil is warranted, the evidence and arguments should be obvious and strong.
Feeding billions of people is important. Good science and engineering are important. Overcoming ignorant and power-hungry politicians is important. The stakes are high and quality journalism is essential to helping us all become informed.
On that score, I find Adams’ article to be irresponsibly badly argued and an excuse for ideological venting and name-calling.
[* And he missed a perfect chance here to mention Bolivian president Evo Morales's relevant claim that GMOs cause baldness and homosexuality.]
[Disclaimer: I own no Monsanto stock but wish I had bought some a few years ago.]
Very cool ten-minute talk about thorium’s prospects as a large-scale source of energy.
Sorenson blogs at Energy from Thorium. 
And here is a primer on thorium from the World Nuclear Institute.
Currently, its seems that China and India lead the world in exploring thorium as an option.
A stunning glimpse of the future of the new media:
Count me a huge fan of Rosling’s work:
See also his “200 countries, 200 years, 4 minutes.”
I’ve been reading Inside Steve’s Brain, by Leander Kahney, a compelling business biography of Steve Jobs and Apple. Jobs is a business genius by all accounts (and regularly a jerk on the job, by most accounts).
Why has Jobs been so successful as an innovating entrepreneur? One factor is knowing clearly whether consumers or producers drive innovation.
Jobs’s view: “Creativity in art and technology is about individual expression. Just as an artist couldn’t produce a painting by conducting a focus group, Jobs doesn’t use them either. Jobs can’t innovate by asking a focus group what they want—they don’t know what they want. Like Henry Ford once said: ‘If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse’” (p. 62).
Another striking example, this one from Sony founder Akio Morita, one of Jobs’s business heroes:
“Sony would never have invented the Walkman if it had listened to its users. The company actually conducted a lot of research before releasing it. ‘All the marketing data said the Walkman was going to fail. It was unambiguous. No one would buy it. But Morita pushed it through anyway. He knew. Jobs is the same. He has no need for user groups because he is a user-experience expert’” (p. 63).
While Kahney could have used a good editor to help him remove many unnecessary repetitions, the work is a product of loving research and deep thought.
And a related point about the usual dichotomies that put the arts and the sciences, art and business, and artists and technologists into different categories, Kahney makes this report:
“Jobs has said several times that he thinks technological creativity and artistic creativity are two sides of the same coin. When asked by Time magazine about the difference between art and technology, Job said, ‘I’ve never believed that they’re separate. Leonardo da Vinci was a great artist and a great scientist. Michelangelo knew a tremendous amount about how to cut stone at the quarry. The finest dozen computer scientists I know are all musicians’” (p. 193).
Reminds me of a line from Paul Valery: “A businessman is a hybrid of a dancer and a calculator.”
Stata Ventures is Kaizen interviewee Ray Stata’s venture capital vehicle. It recently provided funding to technology startup Lyric Semiconductor.
Lyric is developing probability chip technology. Traditional chips use binary “yes/no” switches, but probability chips “can accept inputs and calculate outputs that are between 0 and 1, directly representing probabilities, or levels of certainty.” Commercial applications of this technology include better error correction and faster operation for portable flash drives; better prediction of consumer behavior for websites like Amazon (and better product recommendations for customers); and faster, cheaper large scale data processing.
Here’s a video interview with Ben Vigoda and Mira Wilczek, co-founder/CEO and Director of Business Development of Lyric, respectively, in which they explain probability chips:
Read more about Lyric at the New York Times and VentureBeat.
For more about the excellent Ray Stata, here is my extended Kaizen interview with him from last year.
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