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…
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Egypt: football violence and revolution
This post aims to provide information and insight to everyone left puzzled by the latest football violence in Egypt and the obfuscating mainstream media coverage that followed. Two articles are especially relevant. The first is written by James Montague, author of When Friday Comes: Football in the War Zone, a book about football and politics in the Middle East. The second is by Dave Zirin, author of “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” and the documentary “Not Just a Game.” AlJazeera featured both articles in their opinion section. Some quotes from James Montague’s article (Egypt’s politicised football hooligans)…
The ethics of internet piracy (by Peter Singer)
Recently an article by Peter Singer was published by project-syndicate, discussing the ethics of internet piracy. While the whole article is absolutely worth reading, here are a few paragraphs that seem to catch the essence: If I steal someone’s book the old-fashioned way, I have the book, and the original owner no longer does. I am better off, but she is worse off. When people use pirated books, the publisher and the author often are worse off – they lose earnings from selling the book. But, if my colleague had not sent me the book, I would have borrowed the…
Video: Everything is a Remix
The documentary Everything is a Remix, produced by Kirby Ferguson, explores the idea that no idea is original. Ferguson argues that essentially all forms of creativity just remix existing ideas. In his words: Remixing is a folk art but the techniques are the same ones used at any level of creation: copy, transform, and combine. He defines “remix” as “social evolution.” It’s similar to standard evolutionary theory, but instead of genes, it’s memes that are being “copied, transformed and combined.” This cultural development occurs through ideas, behaviors and skills being constantly used and reused. Just like the evolution of beings and species,…
The business of appearances
A few years ago, one of the English-language newspapers papers in South Korea ran a special report (i.e. advertisement) on a thriving new business that rents out “friends” by the hour. According to the article, customers rent these “friends,” not for sex, or even for friendship, but rather for the appearance that one actually has friends. Weddings were the most common occasion: brides and grooms with no friends apparently pay handsomely for appearances to the contrary. It’s a sad business, or perhaps it’s a reflection of a sad society. In comparison with this, old fashion prostitution–the sex trade–somehow seems romantic,…
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…
Video: There’s No Tomorrow
There’s No Tomorrow is a well-written, animated documentary about resource depletion, energy, and the impossibility of infinite growth on a finite planet. Similar in style to the Story of Stuff and Story of Broke videos written and produced by Annie Leonard, the film provides a clear introduction to the energy dilemmas and problems arising from growth-based economies. The title however is misleading, since the documentary does provide a vision of tomorrow. It’s just quite different from today.
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…
Video: Poor America
While it is by some criteria the richest country on the planet, the US now has 1.5 million children without a home, 50 million people without health insurance, and growing communities of people living in the sewers underneath its glittering cities. This short documentary called Poor America, produced by the BBC, is a revealing, disturbing, but refreshingly frank look at just how bad times are in the US.
Progressive movements in the US
The Occupy Movement received a lot of attention in 2011 and it was indeed one of the most promising signs that although the economic and political system is profoundly unjust and has been hijacked and corrupted by corporations that quite literally own the country, the game is not completely over. The people are down but not thoroughly defeated, and we are now witnessing a reawakening of political consciousness. The lesson of the movement is simple and profound: if people unite, they can resist the corporate takeover of their country and instead democratize it. Within and alongside the Occupy Movement are…
Video: The Story of Broke
Annie Leonard has done it again. The Story of Broke is a nice follow-up video to her massive hit the Story of Stuff. It focuses on the economic choices that sustain the dinosaur economy and the political choices people have to create a sustainable future. She has a real talent for taking a complex issue, boiling it down to its essentials, and presenting it in a lively and entertaining fashion. You can watch the Story of Broke either on her website or here.
The great carbon bubble
If there is any single person worth listening to on the issue of climate change, it’s Bill McKibben. He’s the global canary in the coal mine, sending out ominous warnings that unfortunately fall mostly on deaf ears. He’s been at this for decades, and his messages, which are backed up by the latest climate science and corroborated by the events unfolding in front of our eyes, are getting louder, clearer, and more urgent. Still the changes made in response to this looming crisis are insignificant, inconsistent, and do not approach the scale of the changes that are required in order…
Religious lunatics
Here’s some more evidence of just how harmful religious faith can be–and of the idiotic and irresponsible lengths to which some Christians will go in search of divine intervention or a message from God. From the Korea Times: A tragedy occurred in South Jeolla Province (South Korea ), when a pastor and his wife beat three of their children, who had the flu, to death under the pretext of “expelling evil spirits” based on the Bible. They were arrested by police following a tipoff from a relative, while praying and fasting in an alleged attempt to revive the three. The…
International award for hypocrisy
Alan Hart recently wrote this emotional but accurate article on his blog, asking for the introduction of an international Award for Hypocrisy as a consequence of the British and American response to the failed UN Resolution on Syria. He says, If there was such an award, the statements of European and American leaders in the immediate aftermath of Russia and China’s veto of the Security Council resolution to end the killing in Syria suggest two most obvious nominees for it. Those being William Hague, UK Foreign Secretary, and Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the UN. Some Quotes from the article: The obvious…
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…
More on the Apple sweatshops
Another article in the mainstream media (in this case from CNN) on the horrible working conditions at the Chinese factories run by Foxconn, the main supplier for Apple and many other high-tech brands. One really has to wonder what Apple has done to deserve all of this bad publicity in the Western press, especially considering that just about every other major western brand is doing exactly the same thing–that is, outsourcing to Chinese sweatshops in which there is neither the incentive nor the inclination to maintain labor conditions that are acceptable by Western standards. The article is worth reading mainly…
Alien spaceship found in Baltic Sea
There are two main English-language newspapers in Korea, one of which is the Korea Times. Today’s top headline news in that paper asserts that “an international team of oceanic experts have found an alien ship from Planet Gootan on the bottom of the Baltic Sea.” The article goes on to point out that “the ship was abandoned, but experts from the U.N. Panel of Extraterrestrials told WWN that the Gootans were using the Baltic Sea as a base to spy on humans.” The full article can be read here. I believe there are two possible explanations for how this story got…
Run for your life
The YouTube video posted below contains a brief presentation by Dr. Mike Evans about the importance of exercise for overall health. He cites a number of studies showing dramatic reductions in various diseases among those who engage in even modest amounts of exercise. The basic message of the presentation is that if you want to avoid the major chronic diseases, such as heart disease, diabetes, or cancer, the single biggest thing you can do it get off your butt and move for at least 30 minutes a day. Hence the title of his lecture: “23 and 1/2 hours” However,…
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