Johnathan Foley is director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. He recently received a Heinz Award, which is given annually to people who improve the human condition and environment through work in areas ranging from poverty alleviation to the arts and sciences. The award citation for Foley begins as follows: A scientist on the leading edge of understanding global ecosystems and the study of complex environmental systems, Jonathan Foley, Ph.D., has dedicated his career to examining and finding solutions for the challenge of feeding an ever-growing population while at the same time protecting our planet…
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Analysis
This section contains posts with some analysis of current events, issues, or writings.
The future of the human species
Today’s headlines from the political left and right form a striking diptych that surely tells us something about the future of the human species. From Truthout comes this article, The March of Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, providing the sombre and sober truth about the state of the environment on planet Earth. While most of us do our best to ignore them, the signs of catastrophic climate change are all around us. This article does a good job of detailing several of the most recent signs and driving home the point that we are probably long past the point of no return…
9/11 conspiracies
A conspiracy is defined as “a secret plan made by two or more people to do something that is harmful or illegal.” Since nobody doubts that the infamous acts of violence and destruction carried out in Manhattan and Arlington VA on September 11, 2001 were planned by two or more people, it follows that, strictly speaking, no one really doubts that a conspiracy was carried out on that fateful day. This is worth repeating: everyone is a conspiracy theorist (at least in this one sense) with respect to the events of 9/11. Accordingly, the intense and vitriolic debates over 9/11…
Fukushima and the mainstream media
On March 11, 2011, the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant was severely damaged as a result of a massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami that wreaked havoc along parts of the eastern Japanese coastline. Numerous equipment failures at the power plant led to nuclear meltdowns, a rapid loss of coolant inside the facility, and the release of large quantities of radioactive material. It was the largest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl and is one of only two disasters (the other being Chernobyl) to be classified as a Level 7 event on the International Nuclear Event Scale. In the days and weeks following…
Rationality and the belief in life after death
Anna Corwin is a Ph.D. student in anthropology at UCLA. She has spent a significant amount of time in a Catholic convent trying to figure out why nuns outlive other women and seem to enjoy such healthy aging. She summarizes her observations in this interesting article in Yes! Magazine.” The six tips are as follows: 1. Keep moving – nuns are apparently on their feet most of the day. 2. Practice positive emotions – nuns communicate a sense of love to each other and also in prayer daily. 3. Have a purpose and work for it – many nuns continue…
More guns = more gun violence
While the US has the highest rate of gun ownership of any country in the world, gun ownership and gun control legislation are deeply divisive issues among Americans. Some take pride in their country’s permissive gun culture; others see it as a national disgrace. At the heart of the debate between gun enthusiasts and their opponents lie a few questions of fact, chief among which is the question of whether more guns make people more or rather less safe. Fortunately, there is now enough evidence now to provide a convincing answer to this question. Two recent, independent studies, both published…
Do the Math (documentary)
Bill McKibben is one of the greatest environmental writers and activists of our time. In 1989 he wrote The End of Nature, which is considered by many to be the first book on global warming written for a general audience. Since then he has written countless articles, given hundreds if not thousands of public lectures, and is the main organizer of the 350.org movement to solve the climate crisis. One year ago McKibben published an influential article in Rolling Stone magazine entitled “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math.” The thesis of the article is that there are three significant numbers that everyone needs…
Islamophobia and gender equality
A recent article reprinted in Truthout has the provocative title “The biggest lie you’ve told about the oppression of Muslim women.” And what is that biggest lie? According to Lauren Rankin, author of the article and graduate student in Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, the biggest lie is that Islam is a “violent and misogynistic faith, one from which Muslim women need to be saved.” Rankin adds that those who perpetuate this lie–as Joyce Carol Oates allegedly did in this series of tweets–suffer from a form of racism known as “Islamophobia,” a term that has also recently been…
A Brave New 1984
The term “Orwellian” is being used a lot in the current discussions concerning the global surveillance programs carried out by the NSA and other British and American government agencies. The term relates, of course, to George Orwell’s famous novel (written in 1949), set in a futuristic dystopia of perpetual war, omnipresent surveillance, broad censorship, and mind control. This novel is also the origin of the term “Big Brother”. In the world Orwell (i.e. Eric Blair) describes, books are banned and burned, newspapers are controlled and censored, information is monopolized and restricted, and the truth is drowned by propaganda. Resistance and dissent…
Why we should care about government surveillance
In releasing information concerning the top-secret US and British government surveillance programs to the press, Edward Snowden initiated–at great personal cost–a much-needed discussion concerning the costs and benefits of, and ultimate justification for, these mass government surveillance programs. Some people, especially those in positions of power in the US and UK, have tried their best to conflate this important public discussion with a spurious debate over whether or not Snowden is a traitor. That Snowden is a hero, not a traitor, barely needs mentioning at this point, but what does need to be pointed out is that the debate over…
Another hero
A recently created Wikipedia entry on Edward Snowden read as follows: Edward Joseph Snowden (born 1984) is an American technical contractor, a former CIA employee, and a traitor. Snowden released classified material on top-secret United States National Security Agency (NSA) programs including the PRISM surveillance program to The Guardian and The Washington Post in June 2013. PRISM is a top-secret government surveillance program, in operation since 2007, that enables the NSA to access the servers of nine major Internet companies, including Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo! and Facebook, to collect data on the emails, documents, audio and video chats, photographs, and connection logs of not only Americans but also billions of people around the world…
Inequality and trolleyology
The most famous thought-experiment of contemporary philosophy, first described by Philippa Foot, goes roughly as follows: Suppose a runaway train is hurtling down a track headed toward five innocent people who will surely be killed if the train is not stopped or diverted. The brakes on the train have failed and there is no other way of stopping it, but the driver can divert the train on to a side-track, where one innocent person is standing. This person will surely die if the train is diverted. Should the driver divert the train on to the side-track? In the last decade…
Harris, Greenwald, and elementary logic
An opinion piece written by Murtaza Hussain and posted on the Al Jazeera website last month has given rise to a rather heated and very public dispute between Sam Harris and Glenn Greenwald. The dispute can be found in this vitriolic email exchange, which Harris posted on his blog, this response from Greenwald, published in the Guardian, and this follow-up piece from Harris. All are well worth reading. Those who have skimmed through this material may well wonder why these two well-educated and highly articulate men, who share much in common, can’t seem to agree on anything. What exactly is it that so divides…
Political reform and gun control in the US
What is the most important problem facing Americans today? Gallup has been polling Americans on this question and their data, which is divided into two categories (economic and non-economic), can be found here. On the economic front, Americans are concerned about the economy in general (24%), unemployment (16%), federal debt (13%), lack of money (4%), and taxes (2%). In the non-economic category, the main concerns are dissatisfaction with government (20%), healthcare (7%), illegal aliens (5%), education (4%), gun control (4%), and religious decline (4%). Interestingly, only 2% of Americans mention environmental concerns as the most serious problem facing the nation. And…
Andrew McAfee’s technological utopia
Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at the Center for Digital Business at the MIT Sloan School of Management, delivered this astonishing lecture at a TEDx event in Boston in 2012. The main question of the lecture was “Are droids taking our jobs?” His answer, which is based on research, not mere speculation, is “most definitely yes.” And it’s not just mechanical or manufacturing jobs that are being taken over by robots, but also jobs involving higher order cognitive skills, like writing newspaper articles. Indeed, McAfee points out that Forbes online magazine has already started publishing flawless articles written by droids,…
More reasons not to trust Fox News
There are of course many controversies surrounding Rupert Murdoch’s obnoxious Fox News, but it is no secret that Fox is very much a mouth-piece of American conservatism. According to a recent poll done by Public Policy Polling, Fox News currently enjoys the confidence of about 41% of American voters, which is basically the percentage of Americans who support the Republicans. In fact, Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling, points out that: “We continue to find that Democrats trust most TV news sources other than Fox, while Republicans don’t trust anything except Fox. News preferences are very polarizing along party lines.”…
The Doomsday Clock and the best sex toy ever invented
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is a non-technical magazine dedicated to informing scientists about the real world implications of scientific research and educating non-scientists about the dangers that human civilization currently faces. It began in 1945 in response to the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two events which vividly demonstrate the catastrophic potential of scientific research and the need for policies to direct that research away from disastrous ends. In 1947, the Bulletin launched its Doomsday Clock, a metaphorical clock that represents the best guess among concerned scientists as to how close humanity is to annihilation. While…
The true costs of cell phones
A recent study by James Roberts, professor of marketing at Baylor’s Hankamer School of Business, claims that “cell phone and instant messaging addictions are driven by materialism and impulsiveness and can be compared to consumption pathologies like compulsive buying and credit card misuse.” The study, which was published in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions, suggests that cell phones are also eroding our personal relationships. The published article can be found here (with paid subscription). In addition to these interpersonal effects of cell phone use, there are other social costs to consider, such as the effects it is having on education and classroom instruction, a…
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The religion of capitalist economics
In earlier posts we mentioned the Oxfam report entitled “The cost of inequality: how wealth and income extremes hurt us all,” which outlined how the annual income of richest 100 people is enough to end global poverty four times over (i.e. while the annual net income of the world’s richest 100 billionaires is about $240 billion, the estimated cost of raising everyone worldwide above the $1.25 a day poverty line is about $66 billion). Recently Oxfam released another report, “Working for the Few: Political capture and economic inequality,” which maps the the general distribution of wealth on a global level.…
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