2.05.2010
Priority One: Planet
James Hansen is the kind of scientist you just have to believe. He's everywhere (head of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, professor at Columbia's Earth Institute, etc) and he's passionate - which really helps us regular people understand (read: give a shit about) what he's demanding.
Basically, we're fucked.
The climate is changing beyond any natural phenomena, deforestation is exacerbating already massive industrial carbon emissions, poverty and urbanization are making populations harder to feed and placing more people in danger when the storms that will result from these changes do take place (see: Port-au-Prince, New Orleans).
And here's the scary part: we KNOW, and we aren't doing anything about it!
And this is the part I find extremely reassuring. At our base, we human animals are incapable of dealing with problems like this. We've lost the ability to act collectively - if we could have ever had it with a global population of this size - and because of that, we are continuing on our merry way, just like all the other animals.
And fear her hand though we may, Nature has got this under control. How does SHE solve this problem...death! And lots of it. Want to bring the planet back in balance, kill off the species that's causing the problem.
We see this happening in animal populations all the time: got an oversupply of lions? No problem. They'll eat their way through the springboks in a season and then all next year's cubs will die of starvation. Problem solved.
But we should really be embarrassed. Too many lions doesn't undermine the delicate balance of the entire planet. Lions don't rape and pillage the natural environment for every living thing - they stick to their natural prey and so the problem and its' solution are both smaller in scope...so much so that rarely is an ecosystem hanging in the balance. But we've managed to endanger ourselves for generations - maybe for the survival of the species - and it will take thousands, maybe even millions of years for Nature to recover.
Then again, maybe by then we'll remember our place in the food chain and act accordingly.
Basically, we're fucked.
The climate is changing beyond any natural phenomena, deforestation is exacerbating already massive industrial carbon emissions, poverty and urbanization are making populations harder to feed and placing more people in danger when the storms that will result from these changes do take place (see: Port-au-Prince, New Orleans).
And here's the scary part: we KNOW, and we aren't doing anything about it!
And this is the part I find extremely reassuring. At our base, we human animals are incapable of dealing with problems like this. We've lost the ability to act collectively - if we could have ever had it with a global population of this size - and because of that, we are continuing on our merry way, just like all the other animals.
And fear her hand though we may, Nature has got this under control. How does SHE solve this problem...death! And lots of it. Want to bring the planet back in balance, kill off the species that's causing the problem.
We see this happening in animal populations all the time: got an oversupply of lions? No problem. They'll eat their way through the springboks in a season and then all next year's cubs will die of starvation. Problem solved.
But we should really be embarrassed. Too many lions doesn't undermine the delicate balance of the entire planet. Lions don't rape and pillage the natural environment for every living thing - they stick to their natural prey and so the problem and its' solution are both smaller in scope...so much so that rarely is an ecosystem hanging in the balance. But we've managed to endanger ourselves for generations - maybe for the survival of the species - and it will take thousands, maybe even millions of years for Nature to recover.
Then again, maybe by then we'll remember our place in the food chain and act accordingly.
2.04.2010
Love poem to capitalism
From The New Yorker, January 10, 2010:
Shopping for Pomegranates at Wal-Mart on New Year's Day
by Campbell McGrath
"
Beneath a ten-foot-tall apparition of Frosty the Snowman
with his corncob pipe and jovial, over-eager, button-black eyes,
holding, in my palm, the leathery, wine-colored purse
of a pomegranate, I realize, yet again, that America is a country
about which I understand everything and nothing at all,
that this is life, this ungovernable air
in which the trees rearrange their branches, season after season,
never certain which configuration will bear the optimal yield
of sunlight and water, the enabling balm of nutrients,
that so, too, do Wal-Mart’s ferocious sales managers
relentlessly analyze their end-cap placement, product mix,
and shopper demographics, that this is the culture
in all its earnestness and absurdity, that it never rests,
that each day is an eternity and every night is New Year’s Eve,
a cavalcade of B-list has-beens entirely unknown to me,
needy comedians and country singers in handsome Stetsons,
sitcom stars of every social trope and ethnic denomination,
pugilists and oligarchs, femmes fatales and anointed virgins
throat-slit in offering to the cannibal throng of Times Square.
Who are these people? I grow old. I lie unsleeping
as confetti falls, ash-girdled, robed in sweat and melancholy,
click-shifting from QVC to reality TV, strings of commercials
for breath freshener, debt reconsolidation, a new car
lacking any whisper of style or grace, like a final fetid gasp
from the lips of a dying Henry Ford, potato-faced actors
impersonating real people with real opinions
offered forth with idiot grins in the yellow, herniated studio light,
actual human beings, actual souls bought too cheaply.
That it never ends, O Lord, that it never ends!
That it is relentless, remorseless, and it is on right now.
That one sees it and sees it but sometimes it sees you, too,
cowering in a corner, transfixed by the crawler for the storm alert,
home videos of faces left dazed by the twister, the car bomb,
the war always beginning or already begun, always
the special report, the inside scoop, the hidden camera
revealing the mechanical lives of the sad, inarticulate people
we have come to know as “celebrities.”
Who assigns such value, who chose these craven avatars
if not the miraculous hand of the marketplace,
whose torn cuticles and gaudily painted fingernails resemble nothing
so much as our own? Where does the oracle reveal our truths
more vividly than upon that pixillated spirit glass
unless it is here, in this tabernacle of homely merchandise,
a Copernican model of a money-driven universe
revolving around its golden omphalos, each of us summed
and subtotalled, integers in an equation of need and consumption,
desire and consummation, because Hollywood had it right all along,
the years are a montage of calendar pages and autumn leaves,
sheet music for a nostalgic symphony of which our lives comprise
but single trumpet blasts, single notes in the hullabaloo,
or even less—we are but motes of dust in that atmosphere
shaken by the vibrations of time’s imperious crescendo.
That it never ends, O Lord. That it goes on,
without pause or cessation, without pity or remorse.
That we have willed it into existence, dreamed it into being.
That it is our divine monster, our factotum, our scourge.
That I can imagine nothing more beautiful
than to propitiate such a god upon the seeds of my own heart.
Shopping for Pomegranates at Wal-Mart on New Year's Day
by Campbell McGrath
"
Beneath a ten-foot-tall apparition of Frosty the Snowman
with his corncob pipe and jovial, over-eager, button-black eyes,
holding, in my palm, the leathery, wine-colored purse
of a pomegranate, I realize, yet again, that America is a country
about which I understand everything and nothing at all,
that this is life, this ungovernable air
in which the trees rearrange their branches, season after season,
never certain which configuration will bear the optimal yield
of sunlight and water, the enabling balm of nutrients,
that so, too, do Wal-Mart’s ferocious sales managers
relentlessly analyze their end-cap placement, product mix,
and shopper demographics, that this is the culture
in all its earnestness and absurdity, that it never rests,
that each day is an eternity and every night is New Year’s Eve,
a cavalcade of B-list has-beens entirely unknown to me,
needy comedians and country singers in handsome Stetsons,
sitcom stars of every social trope and ethnic denomination,
pugilists and oligarchs, femmes fatales and anointed virgins
throat-slit in offering to the cannibal throng of Times Square.
Who are these people? I grow old. I lie unsleeping
as confetti falls, ash-girdled, robed in sweat and melancholy,
click-shifting from QVC to reality TV, strings of commercials
for breath freshener, debt reconsolidation, a new car
lacking any whisper of style or grace, like a final fetid gasp
from the lips of a dying Henry Ford, potato-faced actors
impersonating real people with real opinions
offered forth with idiot grins in the yellow, herniated studio light,
actual human beings, actual souls bought too cheaply.
That it never ends, O Lord, that it never ends!
That it is relentless, remorseless, and it is on right now.
That one sees it and sees it but sometimes it sees you, too,
cowering in a corner, transfixed by the crawler for the storm alert,
home videos of faces left dazed by the twister, the car bomb,
the war always beginning or already begun, always
the special report, the inside scoop, the hidden camera
revealing the mechanical lives of the sad, inarticulate people
we have come to know as “celebrities.”
Who assigns such value, who chose these craven avatars
if not the miraculous hand of the marketplace,
whose torn cuticles and gaudily painted fingernails resemble nothing
so much as our own? Where does the oracle reveal our truths
more vividly than upon that pixillated spirit glass
unless it is here, in this tabernacle of homely merchandise,
a Copernican model of a money-driven universe
revolving around its golden omphalos, each of us summed
and subtotalled, integers in an equation of need and consumption,
desire and consummation, because Hollywood had it right all along,
the years are a montage of calendar pages and autumn leaves,
sheet music for a nostalgic symphony of which our lives comprise
but single trumpet blasts, single notes in the hullabaloo,
or even less—we are but motes of dust in that atmosphere
shaken by the vibrations of time’s imperious crescendo.
That it never ends, O Lord. That it goes on,
without pause or cessation, without pity or remorse.
That we have willed it into existence, dreamed it into being.
That it is our divine monster, our factotum, our scourge.
That I can imagine nothing more beautiful
than to propitiate such a god upon the seeds of my own heart.
2.03.2010
Misreading the signs of the past
Here's what I love about science: they're always finding out new things.
Here's what I hate about science: their interpretations suffer from the same prejudices that have restricted our cultural progression for too long.
I'm speaking, of course, of the constant (and seemingly irrevocable) desire to see women as the inferior gender. And by inferior I mean, less innovative, less powerful, less provocative, less organized, less productive, and of course, less valuable.
Here we see it yet again: An article and story from NPR entitled "For Cave Women, Farmers Had Extra Sex Appeal" claims that when men developed the revolutionary technology of farming (and the tools to go with it), the women of their time welcomed them "with open arms".
While the science is good, and the trends they've observed most definitely rational and most certainly accurate, their reading of these circumstances is frighteningly biased.
According to this interpretation, it was - of course - the men who invented the technology and were responsible for its' adoption across what is now the Middle East and Europe.
But I would make another argument. Since it was women who were primarily responsible for food gathering and what little cultivation could be accomplished without a methodical technique, AND it was also women who were more likely to need a permanent location, AND it was also women whose children would stay in that place learning and implementing new technologies and techniques, it makes MUCH more sense that it was the women who were responsible for the spread - and more importantly, the widespread adoption - of this technology. And, while adopting the tools and learning the techniques the men (raised in the farming tradition by their mothers) brought with them, they probably wanted to get a little action (since, presumably, all the local men were off hunting).
But of course, that doesn't make good sense, because we women just sit around doing what the men tell us to do, hoping that one of them will honor us with the passing of a sperm or two, praying to our (male) deity that we might just be lucky enough to provide a fertile home for that divine piece of man-seed.
HA
Here's what I hate about science: their interpretations suffer from the same prejudices that have restricted our cultural progression for too long.
I'm speaking, of course, of the constant (and seemingly irrevocable) desire to see women as the inferior gender. And by inferior I mean, less innovative, less powerful, less provocative, less organized, less productive, and of course, less valuable.
Here we see it yet again: An article and story from NPR entitled "For Cave Women, Farmers Had Extra Sex Appeal" claims that when men developed the revolutionary technology of farming (and the tools to go with it), the women of their time welcomed them "with open arms".
While the science is good, and the trends they've observed most definitely rational and most certainly accurate, their reading of these circumstances is frighteningly biased.
According to this interpretation, it was - of course - the men who invented the technology and were responsible for its' adoption across what is now the Middle East and Europe.
But I would make another argument. Since it was women who were primarily responsible for food gathering and what little cultivation could be accomplished without a methodical technique, AND it was also women who were more likely to need a permanent location, AND it was also women whose children would stay in that place learning and implementing new technologies and techniques, it makes MUCH more sense that it was the women who were responsible for the spread - and more importantly, the widespread adoption - of this technology. And, while adopting the tools and learning the techniques the men (raised in the farming tradition by their mothers) brought with them, they probably wanted to get a little action (since, presumably, all the local men were off hunting).
But of course, that doesn't make good sense, because we women just sit around doing what the men tell us to do, hoping that one of them will honor us with the passing of a sperm or two, praying to our (male) deity that we might just be lucky enough to provide a fertile home for that divine piece of man-seed.
HA
Media models get a clue...perhaps
Let's hope that the study of media is slower than the people working behind the scenes, because if it isn't obvious by now, hybrid business models are going to spank you some time soon.
As we've seen over the past few years, the convergence of content and the concurrent usage of media consumers mean only one thing: the more ways you can make a little money, the more ways you'll survive the decline in traditional media models.
And it's not just about opening more content, or putting advertising on the web. If we look at the trends in industry and regulation from the history of media proliferation, we can see that DELIVERY is not the way to make money. And that means that eventually subsidies and smart infrastructure investment will have to take over the management of the wired and wireless networks.
And that means that the companies that rely on hoarding access will eventually become content providers, regulated monopolies, or extinct.
As we've seen over the past few years, the convergence of content and the concurrent usage of media consumers mean only one thing: the more ways you can make a little money, the more ways you'll survive the decline in traditional media models.
And it's not just about opening more content, or putting advertising on the web. If we look at the trends in industry and regulation from the history of media proliferation, we can see that DELIVERY is not the way to make money. And that means that eventually subsidies and smart infrastructure investment will have to take over the management of the wired and wireless networks.
And that means that the companies that rely on hoarding access will eventually become content providers, regulated monopolies, or extinct.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)