[BRIEF NOTE] Novel Demographic Arguments, Part x

From South Africa's The Star:

A veteran Spanish politician has stepped into a controversy over a proposed new law on gay marriage, saying that allowing homosexuals to marry would worsen Spain's ageing population problem.

"At the moment there is a population crisis ... This could aggravate a problem Spain already faces," Manuel Fraga, president of the Galicia region and a leading member of right-of-centre Popular Party, said yesterday. He did not elaborate.

"Soon, if things don't improve, it will be the most aged country in the world," he said.

Fraga, a minister during the Nationalist, Catholic dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, is running for a fifth term as president of Galicia in June elections at the age of 82.

And here I was thinking that the birth dearth was produced by the unwillingness of heterosexual couples to reproduce in sufficient numbers to sustain population numbers over the long run.

[BRIEF NOTE] Advances in Robotics

Sony's QRIO robot, apparently quite skilled at walking, is now attending a California nursery school.

Qrio, a humanoid robot developed by a Sony Intelligence Dynamics Laboratories Inc has been attending a nursery school in California since March to play with children up to 2 years of age in an experiment to help develop a robot that can "live in harmony with humans in the future."

Qrio spends time each day with more than 10 toddlers at the nursery school located in San Diego. Qrio is always accompanied by a researcher, who is in charge of making sure everything goes smoothly. While the children were at first apprehensive about Qrio, they now dance with it and help it get up when it falls. "The children think of Qrio as a feeble younger brother," researcher Fumihide Tanaka said.

This is a rather cool news item (robots are going to day care!), and certainly the Matrix and Terminator movies' vision of an apocalyptic future marked by conflict between artificial intelligences and human beings is something to be avoided. Still, I can't help but be reminded of California writer and psychologist Theodore Roszak and his argument in his excellent book The Cult of Information that, too often, theorists of artificial intelligence confuse the appearance of intelligence with the existence of intelligence.

QRIO robots might be able to walk like human beings; subsequent generations of post-QRIO robots may be able to master more complex tasks yet. The robots of the early 21st century don't think like human beings, though, indeed they don't think at all. Whatever role they might play in contemporary popular culture, humanoid robots are far from being our equals in reality. When they are--when they can actually think--the crunch will come. Does anything protect the civil rights of artificial intelligences?

[BRIEF NOTE] Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

I was taken somewhat aback to see, on the front of section G of today's Toronto Star, "the Baroness", Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. I learned about her in a course that I took on American modernist literature at UPEI that happened to be taught by the leading world expert on the Baroness. Since this was a literature course, we concentrated on her avant-garde poetry, on works like "Heart (Dance of Shiva)," originally published in the September-December 1920 issue of The Little Review.

Around me hovers presence that thou art,
secretely atmosphere draws cloudy——dense——
perfume athwart mine cheekbone swings intense——
smile on mine lip——
I kiss thee——
with mine heart !

Ja——with mine heart——
that can perform fine tricks
since it is housed with wizzardry and art—— !
soul——how enchanted art thou——
by such heart ! !

Ho !——lover far——

Her professional biography was arguably at least as fascinating as her published work.

Writer Felix Paul Greve hopes to elope to America with the young poet and performer, Elsa Hildegard Plotz. Unfortunately, both remain entangled with past spouses. Meanwhile, Elsa's poetry is all the rage in Berlin's cabarets; her nonsensical-hysterical proto-Dada texts are performed by the electric, outrageous actress Else Lasker-Schüler (1869-1945). Finally, in 1909, Greve stages his own suicide, assisted by Elsa, and secretly escapes via Canada to America. Elsa obtains some consolation money from Greve's publisher and joins Greve -- who proceeds to desert her a few years later in Kentucky.

In 1913, Elsa became a baroness by marrying Baron von Freytag-Loringhoven and quickly began to use her aristocratic title as an avant-garde weapon to assault bourgeois taste. She single-handedly presented futuristic fashion to the bohemians of Greenwich Village, scandalizing her neighbors by parading semi-nude along 14th Street, barely covered with feathers.

Parading with her dogs, skimpily dressed with her bald head covered with vermilion, she said "shaving one's head is like having a new love experience." At times she purloined her art materials from five-and-dime stores and managed to escape arrest more than once by leaping from paddy wagons to freedom.

The Little Review put her on the map in 1918 by publishing 20 of her poems and more than a dozen of her essays and notes. The magazine thereupon gave the baroness a forum for the next four years, establishing her among Dada luminaries. The first movie made by Duchamp and Man Ray was about Elsa, titled The Baroness Shaves her Pubic Hair. Sadly, only a handful of stills have been salvaged by history.

Courageous to an insane degree, Elsa was able to provoke and challenge everyone. She recited her poetry on the street, to passers-by, wearing nothing but tea-balls on her breasts. She was feared and admired in verse by the likes of Ezra Pound, Hart Crane, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens and Djuna Barnes. Elsa's death by gas in 1927 at her home in Paris left her friends wondering if it was an accident or suicide.

It's good to know that more and more people are recognizing the Baroness. There's even going to be a book launch of two Baroness-related titles this coming Wednesday at the Hard Rock Café on 279 Yonge Street. Perhaps I'll attend.

[QUIZ] Via detailbear

( Which Revenge of the Sith character am I? )

[MEME] Where was I?

( Borrowed from countess_sophia. )

[NON BLOG] Sam the Record Man

Sam the Record Man once had a store in Charlottetown, on the ground floor of the building on the northwestern corner of University Avenue and Kent Street. That store closed long before Sam Sniderman's chain slid into bankruptcy. Despite occupying a prime corner, the space once leased to Sam the Record Man remains vacant, proof of the profound decay that is slowly taking over downtown Charlottetown. This is doubly a shame since Sam the Record Man's departure deprived Charlottetown of a second CD store in the downtown area.

Fortunately, Sam the Record Man's Yonge Street store remains open. There is a HMV store just down the street, but I tend to prefer Sam the Record Man. Not only is the latter store physically more attractive than the antiseptic modernity of HMV, with its inked signatures of rock stars and the framed million-selling CDs and recordings on its walls, but its staff seems to be more personable and helpful. I was able to get this single, for instance, just one day after it came in.