A Natural History of Empty Lots

"A Natural History of Empty Lots", by Christopher Brown, 2024, 318 pages, 86k words. Subtitled "Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places". I think recommended by Cory Doctorow. Brown is a lawyer & sci-fi author - I have his 1st novel, but haven't tried it yet.

The book has 3 parts of 4 chapters each.

This is a great tale of the wild attempting to survive civilization. I really felt resonance with the overall message of the book - that wildlife finds a way to exist in the margins, where cities meet non-cities.

Brown bought a lot in an environmental sacrifice zone (it contained an old oil pipeline, abandoned cars, etc.) near the river in Austin TX, and then figured out how to put his family home there.

His accounts of wildlife encounters are of course fun to read. I loved when he talked about finding trails - trails are always there, & since I was a kid, I have always loved finding them. The word "numinous" kept springing to mind reading his descriptions of his explorations & run-ins with local wildlife. The definition of "numinous":

• Of or relating to a numen; supernatural.
• Filled with or characterized by a sense of a supernatural presence. "a numinous place."
• Spiritually elevated; sublime.

OK, yeah, that, but the secular version ;->

The 2nd chapter "A Wilderness of Edges", in a section titled "Demeter and Dionysys", contained an interesting discussion of the trade-off between hunting-gathering and agriculture. It concluded referencing the 2017 work of Yale political scientist James C. Scott: "Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States".

To be a so-called barbarian, Scott argues with anarcho-libertarian flourish, was the only way to be truly free, living a life with no "labor" other than the natural activities of hunting, foraging, and making tools from the world arounc you. As a theory for freshly understanding the rest of human history, it's intuitively compelling. Especially when you couple this reconsideration of the bargain with Demeter with the deeper understanding Scott provides of the power we acquired through the gift from Prometheus. How our mastery of fire coupled with our relentless pursuit of surplus - in its elemental cereal form and all the actual and metaphoric forms we have been able to discover or imagine, from hordes of gold to storage lockers full of stuff and infinite digital vaults of virtual currency - has led us to the brink of an overheated climate that may bring our civilization to the point of collapse before this century is out.

In chapter 3, "Where the Wild Things Are", in a section titled "Portals and Psychopomps", we run into semiotics, and, of course - shudder - French philosophers.

Looking for new ways to understand the semiotic traps of the city, I sampled bits of theory like Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle, a manifesto about the way consumer marketing in the age of mass media insinuates itself into our heads so effectively, replacing our authentic experience of real life and social relations with transactional exchanges. That led to the discovery of Debord's earlier investigations of the way we experience the city.

"Psychogeography"

[Kobo had "Society of the Spectacle" for $3.99, so I bought a copy. It's only 38k words.]

Also mentioned, a French philosophy from the 1950s and 1960s, Situationism.

The 2nd part of the book gets into the construction of his house. Chapter 7 is titled "How To Live In A Feral House". The section titled "Brujas and Devil Riders" touches on some of the philosophy which would up embodied in his 2-part house:

I've gone without air-conditioning in the worst summer heat and humidity, and survived without heat in severe winter conditions of cold and ice. Those experiences provide surprising windows into how else life could be, and how much our climate-control systems are the barrier between us and real life. The means whereby we maintain the illusory boundary between "inside" and "outside" that defines our lives.

I found particularly interesting the techniques Brown used to establish, as much as possible, native foliage over the top of his crazy berm house - pictured on the cover shown above, it has 2x 700 sq ft sections such that you have to go outside to travel between them.

At the end though, it looks like a wave of gentrification may sweep through and destroy the wild lands and wet lands he has helped (via lawyering) get established around his unconventional home. Not sure how to follow the progress.

Chapter 9 is titled "Blood in the Land". In a section titled "Maoists and Muralists", Brown tracks the evolution of graffiti around him. The graffiti is aware that gentrification is just more of the same old colonialist playbook:

Contemporary gentrification may be less violent than the first couple of centuries of colonization in the United States, operating as it does under due process of law; but when you dig deeper into what's really going on, the differences are not so easy to parse out.

Basically it's privileged, rich white people deciding they want what black-and-tan people have and taking it. Again.

As this is happening, in the last part of the book, you can feel him attempting to come to grips with the rapaciousness & the inevitability of the onslaught of capitalism. Quoting The Firesign Theater, "Civilization, ho!".

Here's the last paragraph of the book:

In a world governed by human reason, we experience an abundance of surplus and a poverty of meaning. We believe ourselves to have banished magic and superstition from the world. But the magic is still there, all around us. The trick is learning to see it, for what it is: the seemingly supernatural wonders produced by everyday interactions among different elements of the natural world. Things that can all be explained by science, but also understood by poets. Even in the most urbanized human terrains, those wonders can still be found - most often at the edges where the pavement ends and the wild is allowed to express.

A Poem

Walking along a foot path
Running next to Beargrass Creek
Below the Louisville Zoo.
The trees are all adorned
With hundreds of plastic grocery bags.
It made me very sad.
Once those things get into the environment
They are there forever.
There were many signs:
The water is toxic.
No fishing, no boating, no swimming, no wading.
How would you try to clean them up?

Coal Mining Robots -- RSN?

So, coal is still "Kentucky's ace in the hole". And I see "Friends of Coal" license plates everyday. And there was just an article today in the Lexington Herald-Leader, about how the EPA's forcing scrubbers to be installed on coal-burning power plants lead to a boom in coal mining in western Kentucky, where the coal has very high sulphur content.

Also, did you know, "Coal keeps the lights on"?

But, unfortunately, pregnant women are not allowed to eat fish caught in our beautiful lakes, and the rest of us are only supposed to eat them once a week, because of the hight mercury content in the fish from all our coal-fired power plants putting the mercury in our water.

Weird that recently, coal has been taking a beating, from natural gas. Fracking (and other new techniques?) have produced a great surplus of methane, and utility companies are flocking to the much less environmentally harmful fossil fuel.

But back to coal. The last (Massey?) mine disaster was maybe 29 deaths? All the bodies that were recovered were autopsied. 1/3 of them had black lung -- and these are miners in their 20's.

So, seriously, WTF, why are we still sending people down into these hellhole mines? Why aren't the miners sitting in air-conditioned offices, in comfy chairs, on the surface, operating telepresence robots? That technology is not available? Seems to me it should be totally doable. So WTF has the University of Kentucky been doing with the 10s-100s of millions of research dollars that it has for the coal industry? I guess saving miners lives is somehow way down towards the bottom of the priorities list.

Phew

Seems to have cooled off here. Grilled out this evening, cooked salmon on one of the cedar planks my youngest got me for my birthday. Had 2 pieces from a half salmon that wouldn't fit on the plank that I cooked directly on the grill like normal (fresh squeezed lemon juice and dill -- but Kroger was out of fresh dill, I had to use dried dill weed!). The normal was good as usual, some brown on the outside, and you could taste some black -- the good stuff. The salmon off the plank literally melted in your mouth and tasted wonderful -- both were excellent, damn cooking is fun!

Currently listening Spacehog's first, "Resident Alien", which went gold in 1995. WRFL played "In The Meantime" the other morning, I called the DJ to ask what that wonderfully catchy tune I had not heard in years was, went and got the album thereafter. They had 2 more albums before they broke up, and the lead singer married Liv Tyler, not sure I will check them out -- but nice that it's measurable how much more there is to exhaust Spacehog.

Went in to work for 5 hours today, I've been refactoring since 8/2, need to get something done ... Was thinking about working Monday (Labor Day), think I will not. My wife is getting off of 3rd shift -- and going to Cincinatti tomorrow with one of her girlfriends. But, I have ribeyes to cook tomorrow, and a chicken for Monday. Damn, cooking is fun!

Technology Review last month had a very upbeat article from their environmental columnist, re, aquaculture in the oceans has great potential to produce totally mass quantities of food (sushi!). This could overcome "the tragedy of the commons" (blogged here) that threatens the fish harvests of the world's oceans.

Last time I visited my older brother in Maine, he was telling me that Maine lobster harvests are at all time highs, and show no problem in increasing. The main food of Maine lobsters is ... lobster bait, from the lobster traps. The traps are constructed such that small lobsters get in and out without problem. Some larger, but undersized, lobsters will get caught in the traps, but they are thrown back by the lobstermen. So Maine lobsters are an example of successful aquaculture. Hopefully many more will follow.

Took a break to put the ribeyes on to marinate overnight. Someone told me you should never marinade for more than 30 minutes -- yeah, right. Last month I grilled for 30 (the cookout that got busted), cooked 20 ribeyes that had marinated overnight. My grill fit the 1st 16, set it on high, put them all on, opened after 3 minutes, "show me fire" -- and fire there was. I ate one of them, the 1st bite I put in my mouth melted there, "ohmigod" I said. Damn, cooking is fun!

My last post, I was so proud of "proprioceptive illusion" -- I thought I had made the concept up, I am so cool -- but then, google it, there are numbers of proprioceptive illusions being researched. I am such a loser -- old and slow :-(

A couple of months ago, I was reading in one of the local weekly newspapers ("Southsider" I think) about someone in Lexington publishing a science fiction digest. I read it, and saw the guy's name, and thought "Wait a minute -- he works at Exstream!". And sure enough, Jason Sizemore, the editor of Apex Digest, was a buildmaster at Exstream. Apparently he had also worked at RenLar in the past. He quit last month to do the magazine full-time. He gave me a sample issue, the quality of the stories was very good. As you would expect, some simplistic stuff ("no one ever expects the spanish inquisition"), but mostly enjoyable. Their big mainstream author for the issue was Kevin J. Anderson, of the Dune sequels and the interminable "seven suns" series I am trapped into reading. This guy is such a hack, the intro to the story said he produces 750K words of literature a year -- I believe it, and I am sure that it all aspires to the same high level of triteness. The guy needs to just focus on writing bodice-rippers, or Anne Rice vampire novels ...

Aside from that tho, Apex Digest was very readable, and had a continued story that made me go on and buy a subscription -- 4 issues/year, $20.

After a month off from heat/vacation, biked last Sunday with the wife, 20.5 miles in 1h50m, 1 stop. Walked the dog this morning, will bike Monday.

Rainy Day, Dream Away

Looks like I am rained out from biking again -- it just started raining pretty steady, around 9am. Checked the radar, it should last 30-60 minutes. So I'll go for a walk when it's done. Meanwhile, might as well blog.

I wasn't going to bike far anyway, maybe 30 miles. We're back to low 90s and humid as hell. We were at a party last night, sitting on a deck at 10:30pm and sweat is rolling off me.

Actual title of this entry was going to be "The Birds and the Bees". Main point re the birds is, they fight all the time, as long as they are within 1 size class of the other bird. So robins, cardinals, and mockingbirds get territorial on each other, both within and without of their species, but ignore sparrows. Blackbirds will gang up and try to drive a crow away. And when there's a hawk around, both crows and blackbirds will put 1-3 sentries keeping tabs on the hawk. They will also mess with it when it's in flight.

I enjoy watching my bird bath and 3 bird feeders. Here's some anecdotes / natural science.

• Of the birds that use the main bird feeder, the pecking order is: blackbirds, bluejays, cardinals. Doves eat but don't seem to get involved. We also have a lovely pair of chickadees that the other birds seem to ignore. They fly almost like hummingbirds.
• I had thought robins didn't use the feeder (worm eaters), but there was one eating there yesterday.
• The main feeder and bath are between an aristocrat pear and a crabapple tree near the house. I cut most of a branch on the crabapple that the squirrels (3) were using for fast access to the main bird feeder. Our hummingbird feeder (none this year or last) hangs from it and the vibration of the squirrels' passing sloshes the liquid out of the hummingbird feeder. After I cut it, I noticed a chipmunk (chipmunks climb trees!) going up the pear over to the crabapple, all around the crabapple, back to the pear -- I had destroyed his access to the bird feeder. So then he climbs the pole the feeder's on -- the squirrels do this and then just swarm over the lip of 6 x 12 inch base of the feeder -- and leaps backwards along the long dimension of the base; attempts to grab the edge; fails and falls to the ground (5 feet). Then back up the pole again, another leap in the direction 180 degrees from the first, with the same result. Then back up the pole, reach the edge in the shorter direction directly, without leaping, and easily pulls itself over. So why did it try twice leaping 6 inches before reaching 3? Almost like its route searching algorithm was random, which I wouldn't think was the case ...
• The birds don't mess with the the squirrels on the feeder. I thought maybe rodents got a pass, but a bluejay got territorial with the chipmunk when it was in the tree, so it's probably the size thing.
• Cardinals seem to be fairly timid, but I did see a female cardinal dominating a bluejay briefly. I also saw a male cardinal fly up and side with a female when a bluejay was dominating the female.
• The bluejays and chickadees fly to the feeder, get a piece of food, and fly back to a branch to eat it. The doves, blackbirds, cardinals, and robins eat at the feeder.
• The goldfinches currently have the thistle seed feeder to themselves. I guess that shows the advantage of have an unusual food be part of the definition of your ecological niche.

BTW, I am adding another blog link: that of an old friend/WRA of mine. She was affectionately known as "slaphead" when she worked for me ~15 years ago because she was such a smartass you wanted to slap her upside the head -- my kind of person.

Creaping Dualism

Thinking about earlier posts on AI vs AE in the light of the mind as a ecosystem, I think I was engaged in some creaping dualism: intelligence vs emotion. They may be well be in different parts of the hardware, with the emotions more in the central, older parts and intelligence in the outer, newer parts of the brain, but, I think it would be a mistake to treat them as different. They both live in the ecosystem of the mind. Just as there are old organisms in modern ecosystems (sharks, turtles), emotions may be evolutionarily older, but they are no less players for that.

Got some new cds:

• "The Girl in the Other Room", by Diana Krall. I have one other of hers I don't like that much. It would be great sitting in a jazz bar and listening to it, but w/o the atmosphere, it's kind of dull. I was interested in this new one, since she cowrote a number of the songs with her (new) husband, Elvis Costello -- but, still, kind of dull. There's a cover of a Joni Mitchell song, "Black Crow", that really made me want to her the original.
• "The Evening of My Best Day", by Ricki Lee Jones. I have most of her cds, this one starts out strong, but then seems to peter out. Needs a few more listens.
• "Grows Backward" by David Byrne. Great tunes, suitably quirky, hardly a weak track.
• "Musicology" by Prince. Prince was, of course, the great musical genius of the 80's. Unbelievable the number of hit songs he cranked out, and an unbelievable musician. My kids used to always get me Prince cds/tapes for gifts, hadn't had any for a while. This latest is great, the funk groove is still there. I'm jealous, my baby sister is going to see him.

Have lots of good stuff to read, the new Stephenson, the new Sterling. Have to drain the magazine stack 1st, I'm into June now.

Ecosystems Redux

Thinking about the glial cells "tending" the neurons, you wonder how this came about. The glial cells are reacting to the excitation of the neurons. Is it "interesting" to them in some sense? It seems like a strategy of cooperation as opposed to competition would have evolutionary advantages. Is this all based on the stuff they are finding with bacterial communication (see for example this wired article -- seems like there was a more complete writeup in Scientific American, where they thought they had found the chemical that all cells would use to communicate). Yet another thing that we may have scientific understanding of soon.

Ecosystems

They're everywhere, they're everywhere!

In her senior year of high school, my oldest daughter did a research project involving factors affecting mylenization of neurons. The myelin sheath around neurons makes them transmit impulses faster; lack of it is I think mostly what Multiple Schlerosis is. The myelin sheath is composed of Schwann cells that wrap themselves around the neurons. I remember thinking and mentioning to her at the time that this seems like a relationship that may have started out parasitic and evolved to be symbiotic.

Last month's Scientific American had an article on glial cells, of which Schwann cells are a type. Glial cells make up the majority of the brain and were thought to mostly provide nutrition to the neurons. Now they have found out that they react to synapse firing and in fact moderate it. As such, they may have a role in moderating neuron activity and development, i.e., memory and learning. Really cool pictures of glial calls with tendrils wrapped around synapses, clearly they are involved in the synapses' operation. Kind of like neuron shepherds. You wonder how this relationship evolved -- this little ecosystem in our brains.

I read a few years ago "Slanted Truths", by Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan. One of the points of this book is that one of the techniques by which life evolves is by things merging, rather than strictly by mutation. Basic cell structure is a case in point. Mitochondria were a bacteria or something that got eaten by early cells at some point and that then got incorporated rather than digested -- they have their own DNA. Also mentioned, if I remember right, were the spindles used in mitosis, which are basically spirochetes, just as sperm tails are. So, an ecosystem in every cell.

This was also one of the coolest things of the many cool things in "Genome", already blogged -- that the genome itself is an ecosystem, with little snippets of replicating genetic code trying to make more copies of themselves, snake other sequences, and otherwise engage in Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest strategies.

So, is it surprising at all that our minds are an ecosystem? No, not at all, what else would they be? Good books on this: "Society of the Mind", by Marvin Minsky, the father of AI at MIT; and also "The Meme Machine", by Susan Blackmore, already blogged.

Read a post by Jaron Lanier at The Edge, kind of talking about how the early pioneers of computer science (Von Neumann, Wiener, Shannon) were too hung up on serial architectures and ignored surface-based (not parallel) computing. He got totally blasted on it. Still I agree with his idea, blogged previously, that current software interfaces are too brittle. It is too hard to get things to talk together, any software developer can tell you that. Re the above thoughts, it makes it too hard for software ecosystems to self-organize and evolve. If we can come up with the more approximate, organic interfaces that Lanier proposes, then our silicon children can maybe begin to evolve into something interesting. Kind of funny, Lanier is saying the Cybernetic Singularity is a pipe dream, but his idea might be a key one to make it happen.