Peter King, the Republic Chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security convened a meeting this week to explain that the United States is currently facing a grave threat from a new scary monster: Iranian-backed Hezbollah agents that are inside the country and ready to attack. The shocking new evidence upon which these claims are based appears to be reports of Iranians videotaping subway tracks. Scary stuff indeed. In light of these reports, King claimed that “We have a duty to prepare for the worst.” One can listen to his opening speech at the committee meeting. It’s truly breathtaking.…
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Analysis
This section contains posts with some analysis of current events, issues, or writings.
The Kony controversy
In the middle of the two or three-day period in which the Kony 2012 went viral, a note was posted on this blog linking to the video and recommending support for the campaign to arrest Kony. The world is now witnessing a viral explosion of criticism of the Kony 2012 video, which also deserves some comment. Aljazeera has devoted a section of its website to what it calls the “Kony Debate,” though it is less a debate than it is a collection of complaints against the film. Nonetheless, it is probably the single best source of information for understanding the criticisms…
Higher social status is correlated with lower ethical behavior
It may be true that cheats don’t prosper, but it seems equally true that those who are prosperous cheat. And this is not just an impression: there is now scientific evidence to back it up. The Los Angeles Times has a very interesting article on recent researching demonstrating that people with a high social status are less ethical than others in their daily behavior. According to the article, People driving expensive cars were more likely than other motorists to cut off drivers and pedestrians at a four-way-stop intersection in the San Francisco Bay Area, UC Berkeley researchers observed. Those findings led to…
The future of meat
Over at Gizmodo there is a brief article entitled “The Future of Farming is Brain-Dead Chickens?” about a provocative art project created by an architecture student at the Royal College of Art. The project is described as follows: Architecture student André Ford has presented a very radical solution to increase the efficiency and humaneness in raising poultry. Under his plan, birds would have their frontal cortexes surgically severed, rendering the animals permanently unconscious with no zero sensory input while maintaining their lower brain functions—breathing and such—so that they continue to grow. The form and function of a chicken plant would change…
More on consumer surveillance
In a previous post I described a new technological approach to track consumer behavior, utilizing data from security surveillance cameras and outlined some of the ethical issues that arise from the use and abuse of this technology. A recent NYT article (How Companies Learn Your Secrets by Charles Duhigg) adds valuable insight to the issue. Duhigg outlines the conversations he had with Andrew Pole, one of the leading statisticians of Target, the second largest retailer in the United States, focusing on Target’s interest in identifying pregnant female costumers to be able to specifically target them with advertisements. Though I recommend reading the…
The Fireplace Delusion
In a recent post on his blog, Sam Harris presents an interesting example of the refusal to adjust one’s beliefs in the face of solid scientific evidence. He calls it “The Fireplace Delusion.” Unlike the other cases of intransigence that he has made a career of criticizing, this one has nothing to do with religion. It’s about the refusal to believe (despite clear scientific evidence) that burning wood in campfires or fireplaces is a serious health hazard. The issue is not that the fires might spread (though that too is always a concern) but that the smoke from the fires contains…
American diplomacy: bags of cash
The role of hard cash in America’s diplomacy and international relations is difficult to overstate. In his excellent book Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, Stephen Kinzer provides a detailed account of how US politicians, spies, business men, and CIA operatives conspired on numerous occasions to depose of foreign monarchs, presidents, and prime ministers that weren’t working in the interests of American corporations. One of the most striking stories is that of Kermit Roosevelt, a CIA agent and grandson of Teddy Roosevelt, who in 1953 was sent to Iran with a bag of cash to fund…
Consumer surveillance
Until recently brick-and-mortar businesses have looked upon on-line operations like Amazon with envy because the latter have something that the traditional business do not–an easy and legal way to track consumer behavior and conduct market research. While many proposals have been put forward, none of them have been entirely effective, appropriate (RFID tracking, Payback/Loyalty Systems) or legal (METRO Loyalty card). But recently a new technological approach has been introduced by Prism Skylabs, utilizing the data from security surveillance cameras to track consumer behavior. On their website they state that: Prism Skylabs’ goal is to transform the world’s multi-hundred billion-dollar camera network…
Should consumers boycott Apple products?
The New York Times, rather surprisingly, published an interesting article recently on the inhumane and unsafe conditions in which Chinese workers are suffering while making products for high-profile, high-tech Western companies like Apple. The conditions there are so bleak that when workers there aren’t being killed by explosions or toxic chemicals they are killing themselves. And those who manage to survive don’t fare much better, working overtime, sleeping in crowded dorms, living effectively in conditions of slavery. The NYT article, and others like it, have received a lot of attention and caused a bit of an image problem for Apple–surprising because…
Ron Paul
Ron Paul is a very interesting figure in American politics. Progressives love his foreign policy but hate his economic plans and his positions on domestic issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, and health care. Conservatives, on the other hand, love Paul’s domestic agenda of reducing the size of the government, lowering taxes, and abolishing the Federal Reserve, but they seem to hate his non-interventionist foreign policy. So Paul has been received differently by different political groups, but even among liberals and progressives, Paul has generated a significant amount of controversy. Consider Kathy Pollit’s recent essay, which outlines the reasons why…
Keeping the public in the dark about climate change
If enough people were well informed about the reality and likely consequences of climate change the political changes required to bring this problem under control would surely be happening a lot quicker than they are. An important question then is why this problem is still insufficiently appreciated. There are a number of well-known and documented causal factors contributing to public ignorance about climate change. In the first place, according to this recent study by the Daily Climate organization, media coverage of climate change is actually decreasing at the very time (2010, 2011) that it should be increasing. Here is a…
Cancer and economic development
The World Cancer Research Foundation has published a ranking of countries in terms of cancer rates. The list, and a brief discussion of it, can be found in this article published in the Guardian. Interestingly, the top twenty positions on the list are dominated by OECD nations and the full list suggests a fairly strong correlation between cancer rates and a country’s level of economic development: in general (and with few exceptions, such as Singapore), the greater the level of economic development in a country, the higher the incidence of cancer in the population. There is already an abundance of…
Even the IMF is now questioning capitalism
Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Harvard University, and former chief economist at the IMF recently published two interesting articles on Project Syndicate: Is Modern Capitalism Sustainable? and Rethinking the Growth Imperative. The articles, which are worth reading in full, are not at all what one would expect from a former chief economist at the IMF. Here are a few excerpts: From Is Modern Capitalism Sustainable?: It is ironic that modern capitalist societies engage in public campaigns to urge individuals to be more attentive to their health, while fostering an economic ecosystem that seduces many consumers into an extremely…
The internet filter bubble
Thanks to Google’s search engine we now have the ability to retrieve instantly a massive amount of information on virtually any topic or any question we might have. On the surface, it seems that we are all better informed and more knowledgeable as a result of Google. But are we? Consider the fact that Google recognizes users and collects information on their digital behavior–their favorite searches, articles they have read on Google news, and even their choice of words. Everything is recorded, the pattern is analyzed, and a user profile is created. Then, when you perform a search, Google tries to find…
Less inequality during the Roman Empire than in the US today
Walter Schiedel and Steven Friesen recently analyzed papyri ledgers, biblical passages, and previous scholarship to conduct a study on the ancient Roman Empire and found that the top one percent of income earners in ancient Rome controlled 16% of society’s wealth. Per Square Mile, a data analysis blog by writer Tim De Chant, took the study and compared it to contemporary income disparity in the US and found that the Romans had less inequality than the Americans currently have. Some Quotes: Over the last 30 years, wealth in the United States has been steadily concentrating in the upper economic echelons. Whereas the…
Time magazine and American ignorance
Here is a comparison of the front page covers of recent editions of the various regional editions of Time magazine (US, Europe, Asia, South Pacific). These images have been circling around on the Internet lately. The discrepancy between the US versions and the others is so dramatic that it’s hard to believe, but if you look them up at Time Magazine, you can see for yourself that the images below are correct. Americans are notorious for their ignorance of world affairs. For instance, according to Rick Shenkman, Associate Professor of History at George Mason University, In 2003, the Strategic Task Force on…
Climate change is not just a theory
One still hears people saying that climate change is not a fact but a theory. Indeed that is what the U.S. House of Representatives recently declared while cutting off its funding for the Nobel Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But the claim that climate change is just a theory does not stand up to scrutiny. Already in 2005 a study was conducted to examine this problem and to reveal the biased presentation of the issue (Climate of scepticism: US newspaper coverage of the science of climate change). Here are some quotes: The results of this study indicate that…
The network of global corporate control
Unfortunately, though there are many books and articles written on the tight grip multinational corporations have on global governance, there is relatively little empirical research conducted on this matter. This recently published paper by Swiss researchers however provides some practical empirical evidence and background research on the network of global corporate control: Abstract: The structure of the control network of transnational corporations affects global market competition and financial stability. So far, only small national samples were studied and there was no appropriate methodology to assess control globally. We present the first investigation of the architecture of the international ownership network, along…
Study reveals that traders are worse than psychopaths
St. Gallen University in Switzerland recently conducted a study to examine the differences and similarities between stock market traders, clinically diagnosed psychopaths, and representative “normal” citizens when tested with the classic prisoners dilemma game. As expected, the traders revealed a much higher penchant for competitive advantage and destructive behavior than the “normals”. What wasn’t expected–and what is highly interesting–is that the traders outdid the clinical psychopaths in psychopathic tendencies. Thomas Noll, one of the conductors of the study said in a Spiegel interview: “Naturally one can’t characterize the traders as deranged, but for example, they behaved more egotistically and were more willing…
Democracy Now
Democracy Now News Feed
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