Saturday, May 30, 2009
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Love + Sex with Robots
If I were me, but a college kid again, starting a psych major, I would--well, OK, I would still be most interested in courses that might explain why I’m such a screwed up individual.... But after that, I would be surely want to take a few courses in the psychology of artificial intelligence. Of course, to paraphrase Alexander Pope, the proper study of robots is man--at least as far as psychology goes.
Anyone reading this already has a fair amount of experience with interacting with computers. Take MySpace. This corporation has chosen to have its users interact with a spokesperson, Tom, even though, for most people, it’s decidedly a one way interaction.
Back when the blogs were down, I actually visited his site, looked at some of his blogs, to see if he had anything to say about the problem. His blog was on the musty side. His bulletins nearly always promote some new service or product.
Wouldn’t we all be better served by an artificial intelligence MySpace friend who communicated with us on a regular basis about what was actually going on?
Eventually, computers will be talking to us a lot more. If there is a MySpace, when we log on, we will probably be greeted by some avatar for Tom. (Hopefully, we’ll be able to disable him if we like!) Maybe, if they’re smart, we can chose it to be a lady avatar. Really, even with the current technology, it’s amazing how unimaginative MySpace is....
Anyway, what brought some of these thoughts on is the book I’ve been reading (up to p. 110 at the moment), David Levy’s Love + Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships (2007).
This does eventually get as creepy as it sounds. Near the end, I’ve noted illustrations of mechanical devices, like the Stallion XL Sex Machine:
Which, actually, is less creepy than the whole plastic fantastic lover notion for men. (I’m sure there are some for women, too.) Frankly, for me, personally, creepy isn’t the word. Silly. Silly is the word.
But as for the sex machines, businesses are making them, people are buying them, with prices generally ranging between $1,000 and $2,000. And as far as the dolls go, once on some HBO show I saw some very expensive ones that were much closer to lifelike than the more familiar ones that look more like something you’d use as a beach raft. Anyway, while I look forward to what Levy has to say on the subject, clearly, such things will always be pretty damn expensive.
And so, it’s much more likely that people will, in some way, come to love their computers and/or robots than that they will have sex with them physically. Levy explores this in a very persuasive, methodical way, beginning with the psychological theory of attachment, and the way our relationship with the mother extends to other relationships. He talks about the notion of transitional objects, like security blankets or teddy bears, that ease us away from the intensity of that original relationship. And then of course there are pets, and he has a lot of interesting things to say about our relations with them.
I’ll probably back track to some of that in some other blogs, but as for computers and robots, one thing is very clear: even though most all of us understand that the computer is not a human but a machine, very many of us will react to it, in varying degrees, as if it were. For instance, if empathetic responses are programmed in, if the computer provides positive support, and so on, people have much more favorable responses to the computer (or the software), than if everything is conducted in a strictly no-nonsense, unemotional way.
If an avatar is used and given a name and uses empathy--as in the case of “Laura,” a computerized fitness coach, people will be much more inclined to say things like “Laura and I trust one another.”
[Laura, created by MIT’S Tom Bickmore a few years ago]
Nearly all pet owners talk to their animals and some people even talk to their cars and such, so it’s no great stretch at all to predict that as AI develops (and it will, exponentially), we will be interacting with robots in ways that increasingly mirror human relationships.
Anyone reading this already has a fair amount of experience with interacting with computers. Take MySpace. This corporation has chosen to have its users interact with a spokesperson, Tom, even though, for most people, it’s decidedly a one way interaction.
Back when the blogs were down, I actually visited his site, looked at some of his blogs, to see if he had anything to say about the problem. His blog was on the musty side. His bulletins nearly always promote some new service or product.
Wouldn’t we all be better served by an artificial intelligence MySpace friend who communicated with us on a regular basis about what was actually going on?
Eventually, computers will be talking to us a lot more. If there is a MySpace, when we log on, we will probably be greeted by some avatar for Tom. (Hopefully, we’ll be able to disable him if we like!) Maybe, if they’re smart, we can chose it to be a lady avatar. Really, even with the current technology, it’s amazing how unimaginative MySpace is....
Anyway, what brought some of these thoughts on is the book I’ve been reading (up to p. 110 at the moment), David Levy’s Love + Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships (2007).
This does eventually get as creepy as it sounds. Near the end, I’ve noted illustrations of mechanical devices, like the Stallion XL Sex Machine:
Which, actually, is less creepy than the whole plastic fantastic lover notion for men. (I’m sure there are some for women, too.) Frankly, for me, personally, creepy isn’t the word. Silly. Silly is the word.
But as for the sex machines, businesses are making them, people are buying them, with prices generally ranging between $1,000 and $2,000. And as far as the dolls go, once on some HBO show I saw some very expensive ones that were much closer to lifelike than the more familiar ones that look more like something you’d use as a beach raft. Anyway, while I look forward to what Levy has to say on the subject, clearly, such things will always be pretty damn expensive.
And so, it’s much more likely that people will, in some way, come to love their computers and/or robots than that they will have sex with them physically. Levy explores this in a very persuasive, methodical way, beginning with the psychological theory of attachment, and the way our relationship with the mother extends to other relationships. He talks about the notion of transitional objects, like security blankets or teddy bears, that ease us away from the intensity of that original relationship. And then of course there are pets, and he has a lot of interesting things to say about our relations with them.
I’ll probably back track to some of that in some other blogs, but as for computers and robots, one thing is very clear: even though most all of us understand that the computer is not a human but a machine, very many of us will react to it, in varying degrees, as if it were. For instance, if empathetic responses are programmed in, if the computer provides positive support, and so on, people have much more favorable responses to the computer (or the software), than if everything is conducted in a strictly no-nonsense, unemotional way.
If an avatar is used and given a name and uses empathy--as in the case of “Laura,” a computerized fitness coach, people will be much more inclined to say things like “Laura and I trust one another.”
[Laura, created by MIT’S Tom Bickmore a few years ago]
Nearly all pet owners talk to their animals and some people even talk to their cars and such, so it’s no great stretch at all to predict that as AI develops (and it will, exponentially), we will be interacting with robots in ways that increasingly mirror human relationships.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Eugene Sharp, non-violent revolutionary, and thoughts on the news
In the further downscaling of my life, my newspaper subscription ran out and I told them I wasn’t renewing it. So far, they’re still delivering it....
Aside from the expense, it was getting environmentally embarrassing. Every day I would flip through it and immediately discard about 75% of it. Most of the stuff is online, anyway, and of course I check Reuters several times a day. Clearly, the days of the print newspaper are numbered, although they may last ten years or so. If you look at the financials of any of them, they all have a ton of debt, so they may not last even that long.
I’m not entirely happy about it all, though. I don’t really like reading long articles online. It’s nicer with a newspaper. Perhaps some of the really good papers will hang on longer. So far, for instance, the Wall Street Journal seems more or less undiminished after Rupert Murdoch’s purchase of it. At the moment, I think it’s the best newspaper I’m aware of. Certainly the best in the USA. Its editorials are extremely right wing, but it consistently has these fantastic articles.
Take, for instance, the recent article on Gene Sharp, who is sort of the Saul Alinsky of modern non-violent revolution.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122127204268531319.html?mod=hps_us_pageone
It is at the same time a cool story about this obscure yet important 80-year old man and the sort of background journalism that has become all too rare:
“Spread via the Internet, word-of-mouth and seminars, Mr. Sharp's writings on nonviolent resistance have been studied by opposition activists in Zimbabwe, Burma, Russia, Venezuela and Iran, among others. His 1993 guide to unseating despots, From Dictatorship to Democracy, has been translated into at least 28 languages and was used by movements that toppled governments in Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan.”
The complete text of From Dictatorship to Democracy is available at:
www.aeinstein.org/organizations/org/FDTD.pdf
Getting back to the subjecet of news in gerneral, up until recently, I had CNN.com on my Firefox Bookmarks Toolbar, but I finally decided that CNN had degenerated into junk / tabloid news. Reuters is fairly decent....
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Oil Realities
Every now and then I read something in the paper that accurately describes something when nearly everyone else seems not to even get it. This time it was a column by the Waco Tribune-Harold writer, John Young. Waco as in Texas, where they understand the oil business.
“Hear the drill-at-all-cost chorus and it will tell you that exploration in ANWR is about ‘energy security’ or ‘energy independence.’
“No.... It’s about money. Not a drop of the oil that would be harvest in ANWR is ‘ours.’
“It’s the world’s. It’s as much the dread Russkies’ as yours or mine. That’s the definition of a global market. Any free-market conservative ought to be able to explain it to you. ANWR oil would go in the same collective vat as any other oil.”
He goes on to agree that, sure, it would, in a broad general sense, make some slight improvement in global supply, but it probably would not lower prices as much as reducing supply.
Similarly, just recently, Iraq signed a contract providing $3 billion worth of oil to the Chinese. I bring this up, in particular, because I’ve always found the “No blood for oil” slogan puzzling. It was never explained how our soldiers’ blood was supposed to produce oil for us. It might in fact have been a good idea if somewhere along the line we might have asked for some oil in repayment for ruining our economy over the war. But, while there have been contracts here and there with Western oil companies, obviously, Iraqi oil is even less “ours” than the ANWR oil.
If it were really only or even mainly about oil, obviously the thing to do would have been to simply settle up with Saddam, remove all sanctions, and carry on as before.
“Hear the drill-at-all-cost chorus and it will tell you that exploration in ANWR is about ‘energy security’ or ‘energy independence.’
“No.... It’s about money. Not a drop of the oil that would be harvest in ANWR is ‘ours.’
“It’s the world’s. It’s as much the dread Russkies’ as yours or mine. That’s the definition of a global market. Any free-market conservative ought to be able to explain it to you. ANWR oil would go in the same collective vat as any other oil.”
He goes on to agree that, sure, it would, in a broad general sense, make some slight improvement in global supply, but it probably would not lower prices as much as reducing supply.
Similarly, just recently, Iraq signed a contract providing $3 billion worth of oil to the Chinese. I bring this up, in particular, because I’ve always found the “No blood for oil” slogan puzzling. It was never explained how our soldiers’ blood was supposed to produce oil for us. It might in fact have been a good idea if somewhere along the line we might have asked for some oil in repayment for ruining our economy over the war. But, while there have been contracts here and there with Western oil companies, obviously, Iraqi oil is even less “ours” than the ANWR oil.
If it were really only or even mainly about oil, obviously the thing to do would have been to simply settle up with Saddam, remove all sanctions, and carry on as before.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
Yesterday I finished a book I’ve blogged a bit about before--Maria Coffey’s Explorers of the Infinite, which came out earlier this year and has the subtitle: The Secret Spiritual Lives of Extreme Athletes-and What They Reveal About Near-Death Experiences, Psychic Communication, and Touching the Beyond.
Well, first off, it was a really entertaining, page-turner of a read, with lots of cool stories, mostly about mountain climbers. Stories about ghosts, premonitions, telepathy, NDEs, hallucinations, and such. She does a very nice job of agnostically putting forth scientific explanations for things while keeping an open mind and respecting the experiences of her subjects. It’s fairly clear, on the other hand, that she believes in a lot of what she’s describing....
I’ve never been particularly interested in mountain-climbing myself given that, for one thing, I sure as hell don’t plan on doing any of it. It seems an even more dangerous and deadly endeavor than I thought. I think perhaps the majority of the stories in the book--including Coffey’s own--are told by those who lost loved ones to climbing....
The most interesting chapter, though, dealth with hallucinations. Contrary to what you might perhaps think, I don’t have a lot of experience with such. I had one definite auditory one. Two visual ones that come to mind, strangely, were both shared with one or two others, and so, who knows, may have been real. There was the standard Breathing Sidewalk one....
Anyway, my mom had some during her Alzheimer’s, and even--I guess, especially--secondhand, it’s disturbing. It’s often easy to ascribe them to some physical basis. Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, seizures, drugs. Still, when my mom saw dead people, it creeped me out. When my great uncle, in the late stages of Alzheimer’s himself, said, “I’ve seen what’s it’s like on the other side, and I don’t like it,” that was even creepier.
Not just mountain climbing, but enduring arctic conditions seems to lead to a particular type of hallucination where one sees and even interacts with another being. I was surprised by Coffey’s explanation of the mysterious lines in T.S. Eliot’s Waste Land:
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When i count, there are only you and i together
But when i look ahead up the white road There is always another one walking beside you....
Coffey says these were inspired by the extreme Antarctic experiences of the explorer Ernest Shackleton, during which he believed a mysterious presence guided him and his crew to safety. (Perhaps Eliot mentions this in his footnotes. I’m too lazy to get out up and check.)
Apparently, it is not uncommon for these apparitions to act as guides or aides. Anyway, Coffey discusses some research by Dr. Charles Houston that suggests that, in the case of mountain climbing, for instance, such hallucinations may be due to “miniature temporal lobe seizures, triggered by fatigue, low blood sugar, personal crisis, and anxiety.” To keep baggage to a minimum, mountaineers usually carry very little food and sometimes less than adequate clothing or shelter.
Similarly, BTW, as Coffey herself points out, Jesus, Moses, and Mohammed had their visions on mountains, each talking to devils, angels, or God. I know Jesus was subsisting on the usual locusts and honey diet, Moses had been living on manna, and Allah only knows what Mohammed had been ingesting. And while there is a long tradition in several religions of mystics and holy men living hermitic lives on mountains, there are also modern mountain climbers and other extreme atheletes who practice their sports for the express purpose of experiencing altered states of consciousness.
Surely there must be easier ways....
Well, first off, it was a really entertaining, page-turner of a read, with lots of cool stories, mostly about mountain climbers. Stories about ghosts, premonitions, telepathy, NDEs, hallucinations, and such. She does a very nice job of agnostically putting forth scientific explanations for things while keeping an open mind and respecting the experiences of her subjects. It’s fairly clear, on the other hand, that she believes in a lot of what she’s describing....
I’ve never been particularly interested in mountain-climbing myself given that, for one thing, I sure as hell don’t plan on doing any of it. It seems an even more dangerous and deadly endeavor than I thought. I think perhaps the majority of the stories in the book--including Coffey’s own--are told by those who lost loved ones to climbing....
The most interesting chapter, though, dealth with hallucinations. Contrary to what you might perhaps think, I don’t have a lot of experience with such. I had one definite auditory one. Two visual ones that come to mind, strangely, were both shared with one or two others, and so, who knows, may have been real. There was the standard Breathing Sidewalk one....
Anyway, my mom had some during her Alzheimer’s, and even--I guess, especially--secondhand, it’s disturbing. It’s often easy to ascribe them to some physical basis. Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, seizures, drugs. Still, when my mom saw dead people, it creeped me out. When my great uncle, in the late stages of Alzheimer’s himself, said, “I’ve seen what’s it’s like on the other side, and I don’t like it,” that was even creepier.
Not just mountain climbing, but enduring arctic conditions seems to lead to a particular type of hallucination where one sees and even interacts with another being. I was surprised by Coffey’s explanation of the mysterious lines in T.S. Eliot’s Waste Land:
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When i count, there are only you and i together
But when i look ahead up the white road There is always another one walking beside you....
Coffey says these were inspired by the extreme Antarctic experiences of the explorer Ernest Shackleton, during which he believed a mysterious presence guided him and his crew to safety. (Perhaps Eliot mentions this in his footnotes. I’m too lazy to get out up and check.)
Apparently, it is not uncommon for these apparitions to act as guides or aides. Anyway, Coffey discusses some research by Dr. Charles Houston that suggests that, in the case of mountain climbing, for instance, such hallucinations may be due to “miniature temporal lobe seizures, triggered by fatigue, low blood sugar, personal crisis, and anxiety.” To keep baggage to a minimum, mountaineers usually carry very little food and sometimes less than adequate clothing or shelter.
Similarly, BTW, as Coffey herself points out, Jesus, Moses, and Mohammed had their visions on mountains, each talking to devils, angels, or God. I know Jesus was subsisting on the usual locusts and honey diet, Moses had been living on manna, and Allah only knows what Mohammed had been ingesting. And while there is a long tradition in several religions of mystics and holy men living hermitic lives on mountains, there are also modern mountain climbers and other extreme atheletes who practice their sports for the express purpose of experiencing altered states of consciousness.
Surely there must be easier ways....
Thursday, August 14, 2008
The Spoken Word Revolution
During commercials or boring parts of the Olympics, I’ve been reading. I finished--which is to say, read most of--a book I’ve had kicking around here since the New Year when I was getting ready for my poetry reading: The Spoken Word Revolution: Slam, Hip Hop & the Poetry of a New Generation, edited by Mark Eleveld.
When I started reading at that event, it was something of a slam atmosphere, although not really a slam. It’s less so now. But I’m always interested in poetry read aloud, and this book comes with a CD of poetry readings, which actually, I haven’t listened to yet, although I added it to my iTunes....
I’m not sure what’s up with the whole poetry slam thing these days. This book (which came out in 2005) has several memoirs of the movement’s beginnings in Chicago and elsewhere (like Taos). I definitely think it was very cool that the slam thing generated so much interest in poetry. I have no problem at all with mixing poetry with other media or using it as almost stand-up comedy or performance art. On the other hand, as just poetry, most of what is in this book is just so-so. I made some notes as I read it and then tonight I went through it again and, really, the only ones that stood out for me were Yusef Komunyakaa--who has won the Pulitzer Prize--and Regie Gibson. Interestingly, when I went looking for online versions of their poems, I found Gibson’s poem in a blog that reviewed The Spoken Word Revolution, and that blogger also singled out Gibson as the best poet in the book.
I liked the Komunyakaa so much, that I checked his book of poems, Pleasure Dome, out of the library, and that’s the next book of poetry I’ll be reading. I think “Anodyne” would sounds quite nice read aloud, too, as you can hear for yourself here:
http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/komunyakaa/anodyne.php
Anodyne
By Yusef Komunyakaa
I love how it swells
into a temple where it is
held prisoner, where the god
of blame resides. I love
slopes & peaks, the secret
paths that make me selfish.
I love my crooked feet
shaped by vanity & work
shoes made to outlast
belief. The hardness
coupling milk it can't
fashion. I love the lips,
salt & honeycomb on the tongue.
The hair holding off rain
& snow. The white moons
on my fingernails. I love
how everything begs
blood into song & prayer
inside an egg. A ghost
hums through my bones
like Pan's midnight flute
shaping internal laws
beside a troubled river.
I love this body
made to weather the storm
in the brain, raised
out of the deep smell
of fish & water hyacinth,
out of rapture & the first
regret. I love my big hands.
I love it clear down to the soft
quick motor of each breath,
the liver's ten kinds of desire
& the kidney's lust for sugar.
This skin, this sac of dung
& joy, this spleen floating
like a compass needle inside
nighttime, always divining
West Africa's dusty horizon.
I love the birthmark
posed like a fighting cock
on my right shoulder blade.
I love this body, this
solo & ragtime jubilee
behind the left nipple,
because I know I was born
to wear out at least
one hundred angels.
http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/ is a nice little site, featuring the very fine poetry of Seamus Heaney, Philip Levine, Czeslaw Milosz, Robert Pinsky, Margaret Walker, Richard Wilbur, and Komunyakaa.
Here’s the Gibson poem I liked:
from The Spoken Word Revolution:
in the year i loved your mother
(for my daughter safiya who needs to know this)
by Regie Gibson
in the year i loved your mother
i lived a glorious death
i was satellite traveling between blood and star
a planet evolving through rage and grief
in the year i loved your mother
was a time of drought and deluge
a season of rain and ruin
between us much soil and water
an illiterate ocean of language and diction
i arrived to her half broken half breaking
in the year i loved your mother
we were drum and drone
a volley of polemic and ideal
once i glimpsed you
waving at me from her mouth
as dawn met our shoulders
she whispered your name
we became the thin line
between sea and mountain
valley and sky
in the year i loved your mother
gravity abandoned me to her
she was vortex-a black hole
sewn into the belly of a continent
crushing all into singularity.
grapewaswinewas
soundwassongwas
motionwasdancewas
dovewasvulturecirclingwaslandingwas
all that was : was herYYY
the year I loved your mother
was the year tragedy tamed tongues
we served ours stitched them into
one anothers mouths we grew fluent
in speaking pain.
we brought stones from our pockets
traded them hurled them back towards
each others wounds and those that missed
were gathered later were used to build our walls
she was an equinox of razors when i found her
an autumn of featherless wings
caught in this gale of a man
your mother was: soft lips cutting calluses
from my knuckles
a silk fist logged hard in my mouth
where it opened into a sunflower
widening in the crag of my throat
in her skin i was cryptic blasphemy
transparent decoded holy
When I started reading at that event, it was something of a slam atmosphere, although not really a slam. It’s less so now. But I’m always interested in poetry read aloud, and this book comes with a CD of poetry readings, which actually, I haven’t listened to yet, although I added it to my iTunes....
I’m not sure what’s up with the whole poetry slam thing these days. This book (which came out in 2005) has several memoirs of the movement’s beginnings in Chicago and elsewhere (like Taos). I definitely think it was very cool that the slam thing generated so much interest in poetry. I have no problem at all with mixing poetry with other media or using it as almost stand-up comedy or performance art. On the other hand, as just poetry, most of what is in this book is just so-so. I made some notes as I read it and then tonight I went through it again and, really, the only ones that stood out for me were Yusef Komunyakaa--who has won the Pulitzer Prize--and Regie Gibson. Interestingly, when I went looking for online versions of their poems, I found Gibson’s poem in a blog that reviewed The Spoken Word Revolution, and that blogger also singled out Gibson as the best poet in the book.
I liked the Komunyakaa so much, that I checked his book of poems, Pleasure Dome, out of the library, and that’s the next book of poetry I’ll be reading. I think “Anodyne” would sounds quite nice read aloud, too, as you can hear for yourself here:
http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/komunyakaa/anodyne.php
Anodyne
By Yusef Komunyakaa
I love how it swells
into a temple where it is
held prisoner, where the god
of blame resides. I love
slopes & peaks, the secret
paths that make me selfish.
I love my crooked feet
shaped by vanity & work
shoes made to outlast
belief. The hardness
coupling milk it can't
fashion. I love the lips,
salt & honeycomb on the tongue.
The hair holding off rain
& snow. The white moons
on my fingernails. I love
how everything begs
blood into song & prayer
inside an egg. A ghost
hums through my bones
like Pan's midnight flute
shaping internal laws
beside a troubled river.
I love this body
made to weather the storm
in the brain, raised
out of the deep smell
of fish & water hyacinth,
out of rapture & the first
regret. I love my big hands.
I love it clear down to the soft
quick motor of each breath,
the liver's ten kinds of desire
& the kidney's lust for sugar.
This skin, this sac of dung
& joy, this spleen floating
like a compass needle inside
nighttime, always divining
West Africa's dusty horizon.
I love the birthmark
posed like a fighting cock
on my right shoulder blade.
I love this body, this
solo & ragtime jubilee
behind the left nipple,
because I know I was born
to wear out at least
one hundred angels.
http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/ is a nice little site, featuring the very fine poetry of Seamus Heaney, Philip Levine, Czeslaw Milosz, Robert Pinsky, Margaret Walker, Richard Wilbur, and Komunyakaa.
Here’s the Gibson poem I liked:
from The Spoken Word Revolution:
in the year i loved your mother
(for my daughter safiya who needs to know this)
by Regie Gibson
in the year i loved your mother
i lived a glorious death
i was satellite traveling between blood and star
a planet evolving through rage and grief
in the year i loved your mother
was a time of drought and deluge
a season of rain and ruin
between us much soil and water
an illiterate ocean of language and diction
i arrived to her half broken half breaking
in the year i loved your mother
we were drum and drone
a volley of polemic and ideal
once i glimpsed you
waving at me from her mouth
as dawn met our shoulders
she whispered your name
we became the thin line
between sea and mountain
valley and sky
in the year i loved your mother
gravity abandoned me to her
she was vortex-a black hole
sewn into the belly of a continent
crushing all into singularity.
grapewaswinewas
soundwassongwas
motionwasdancewas
dovewasvulturecirclingwaslandingwas
all that was : was herYYY
the year I loved your mother
was the year tragedy tamed tongues
we served ours stitched them into
one anothers mouths we grew fluent
in speaking pain.
we brought stones from our pockets
traded them hurled them back towards
each others wounds and those that missed
were gathered later were used to build our walls
she was an equinox of razors when i found her
an autumn of featherless wings
caught in this gale of a man
your mother was: soft lips cutting calluses
from my knuckles
a silk fist logged hard in my mouth
where it opened into a sunflower
widening in the crag of my throat
in her skin i was cryptic blasphemy
transparent decoded holy
Sunday, July 20, 2008
The Lawn Liberation Movement
I just read a really good New Yorker article, “Turf War” by Elizabeth Kolbert, about the history and future of lawns in America. (BTW, you can subscribe to The New Yorker via RSS, which I just did, although I came by this article by way of another RSS feed I use, http://pruned.blogspot.com--a blog about gardens, landscaping, etc.)
I was pleased and amused to learn that what I have is a “Freedom lawn”!
In “Redesigning the American Lawn” (1993), F. Herbert Bormann, Diana Balmori, and Gordon T. Geballe dub such a lawn the Freedom Lawn. The Freedom Lawn consists of grass mixed with whatever else happens to seed itself, which, the authors note, might include: dandelion, violets, bluets, spurrey, chickweed, chrysanthemum, brown-eyed Susan, partridge berry, Canada mayflower, various clovers, plantains, evening primrose, rushes, and wood rush, as well as grasses not usually associated with the well-manicured lawn, such as broomsedge, sweet vernal grass, timothy, quack grass, oat grass, crabgrass, and foxtail grass.
The Freedom Lawn is still mowed—preferably with a push-mower—but it is watered infrequently, if at all, and receives no chemical “inputs.” If a brown spot develops, it is likely soon to be filled by what some might call weeds, but which Bormann, Balmori, and Geballe would rather refer to as “low growing broad-leaved plants.”
[End of quotation from the article]
I personally never water the damn thing. I never fertilize it. I apply no herbicide. I deserve thanks! As for the water, the article says:
In order to keep all the lawns in the country well irrigated, the author of the (NASA-funded) study calculated, it would take an astonishing two hundred gallons of water per person, per day. According to a separate estimate, by the Environmental Protection Agency, nearly a third of all residential water use in the United States currently goes toward landscaping.
[End of quotation from the article]
The herbicides and pesticides seem ultimately always to be toxic, carcinogenic, and/or environmentally damaging, particularly deadly to environmentally sensitive creatures such as tadpoles, salamanders, and honeybees, which, as we no know, are experiencing severe problems like colony collapse for the bees and genuine endangerment to many of the amphibians.
I am not such a radical as to dispense with my front lawn altogether, although on the side of my corner lot, where there are several tall pines, I have just let the needles form a mulch so that little lawn grows there. I still mow the front lawn with a gas-powed mower. But perhaps someday in the not-too-distant future we will be able to mow with solar powered robot mowers!
These Husqvarna solar-powered lawnmowers cost $4000 now, but that strikes me as being a price that, should they catch on, could come down well enough in not so long a time.
As I’ve said before, the Freedom Lawn is pretty much where most of my neighbors are at these days. There are still several who hire lawn care guys who just go apeshit with the chemicals, yielding the bright green, homogenous Fascist Lawn. Down with the Herbo-Fascists!
Scott Miracle-Gro ad
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