Folding the Red Into the Black, or Developing a Viable Untopia for Human Survival in the 21st Century, by Walter Mosley

Category: Non-Fiction;  Rating: 3 out of 5;  Tags: Political Theory, Government Policy

Walter Mosley is a multiple-award-winning writer of mysteries, including those featuring Easy Rawlins, Socrates Fortlow and Fearless Jones.  I enjoy his fiction, which often portrays the difficult lives led by black people in mid-twentieth century America, so when I saw he had published a political monograph, I decided to take a look.

The word untopia in the title is not a typo.  Instead of a hypothetical utopia, Mosley is aiming for a practical system of government that recognizes “…the wide palette of human limitations and foibles as well as its potentials and possibilities.”  Ambitiously, he wishes to reconcile the false conflicts between socialism and capitalism.  He wants to put “…happiness before profit, freedom before organization, and truth before political and economic necessity.”

He takes aim at both the heartless exploitation of capitalism and the suppression of individualism in socialism.  He points out that many have been brainwashed into thinking they are richer than they are – if you don’t have enough put aside to tide you through a year or two of bad times, you are not a member of the middle class, you are solidly in the working class.  A change in mindset on this single issue would clarify a lot of problems.

Mosley’s recommendations are simple, and boil down to taxation of automation to support workers so displaced; universal subsidized access to food, shelter, and medical care; a flat tax; free education; and elimination of laws that restrain competition and which act mainly to protect established interests.

How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler, by Ryan North

Category: Non-Fiction;  Rating: 3 out of 5;  Tags: Engineering, Technology, Time Travel

 

Inside the front cover, there’s an emergency index that asks, “Are you already stranded in the past?  Stay calm.  Here’s what you need right now…”

Admit it.  You’ve harboured the secret fantasy that you, if stranded in a more primitive time, could quickly re-create the amenities of modern life.  In no time, you’d be warm, comfortable, and well-fed – after all, you’re a well-educated, modern human, right?

How well you do might depend on when you’re stranded.  For example, here’s a possible list of tasks:  first, invent language.  That’s right, if you’re stranded before around 50,000 years ago, you’ll have to invent and teach people a spoken language.  We think humans had the potential for language for about 150,000 years before this, but for some reason it wasn’t developed until much later.  After crossing that little task off your list, you can turn to written language.  Now that one could have been around for almost 200,000 years before it was actually invented in 3200 BC, so you, as a stranded time travel, might advance human development (in your new time line) by a significant margin just by being there.

Next, tell people about numbers.  Help them to skip past the awkwardness of Roman numerals, and get straight to a good, solid, base 10 numbering system, including such wild innovations as a symbol for zero, negative numbers, irrational numbers, and the imaginary number.   Another project easily completed in a weekend.

It’s astonishing how long it took for many ideas to occur to anyone.  Take the wheel barrow, which is essentially a combination of a bucket, a wheel and a lever.  It took more than 4500 years after the invention of the wheel before anyone thought to attach a bucket to a wheel, and yet it seems so simple in hindsight.  Or buttons, which were used for 4000 years as decorations before anyone thought to use them as fasteners.  Incubators were used for chickens for about 3800 years before being tried on human babies.

You get the idea – the scientific method, domestication of plants and animals, the plough, the wheel…all these things need to be re-invented before you can even think about being able to kick back with your i-thing and text anyone.  Do you really know how to make charcoal, tan leather, build a water wheel, make paper, or extract iron from ore, or even start a fire?  North gives a superficial guide to how to do all this stuff, in the end showing only what a huge undertaking it has been to get to where we are now.

 

Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Category: Non-Fiction;  Rating: 4 out of 5;  Tags: Moss, Nature, Biology, Environment

We walk along the forest trail in cool shade.  Suddenly, our leader stops, bending close to the surface of a boulder, and identifies several species of moss.  Who knew there were so many different kinds?  I always thought of it as just moss.  I knew there were different kinds, like Spanish moss…but wait, that’s not really a moss at all.  A member of our group asks about a lichen on a tree branch, eliciting a sniff from our leader.  “That’s not a plant,” he says.

Mosses seem so insignificant, they are easy to overlook.  Yet to those willing to take the time to get down on their knees and examine these tiny plants, they are fascinating.  With no roots or vascular system, the leaves are just one cell thick, and must be in direct contact with water to absorb moisture.  Largely adapted to cool, shaded places, they are also remarkably drought tolerant – specimens have been revived after spending 40 years in a cabinet.  Propagation in mosses varies from cloning (most mosses can generate new plants from fragments of leaves and stems) to specialized sexual reproduction.  Some varieties, like Splachnum ampullulaceum, are ridiculously specialized.  This moss only occurs in bogs,  “…in one, and only one, place in the bog.  On deer droppings.  On white-tailed deer droppings.  On white-tailed deer droppings which have lain on the peat for four weeks.  In July.”

Mosses play a significant ecological role, their miniature forests hosting a collection of critters like waterbears, springtails, rotifers, nematodes, mites and fly larvae.  Mosses act as a water reservoir, their tissues, both living and dead, absorbing the liquid when it rains and slowly releasing it when things are dry, regulating humidity and temperature and contributing to the health of the forests in which they live.  They are small plants, but have a large impact.