16:24 minutes well spent. Clay Shirky talks about cognitive surplus and it’s capacity to transform society.

via Frank

Technorati Tags: Clay Shirky, cognitive surplus, media, gin, media that ships without a mouse is broken, Gilligan’s Island

I have been lax - I should have pointed to this interesting article by Diane on the Ethics of Aging some time ago. It’s a good article (yes I’m biased but…) so you ought to read it if you have elderly relatives etc.

Technorati Tags: interesting, Ethics of Aging, elderly

What does that title mean you ask. Well it means that the US with approximately (~) 5% of the world’s population has ~25% of the world’s prison population. Yup that’s right, the US imprisons more people per capita and for far more offenses than any other country in the world, including the most brutal dictatorships.

Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences.

The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College London.

China, which is four times more populous than the United States, is a distant second, with 1.6 million people in prison. (That number excludes hundreds of thousands of people held in administrative detention, most of them in China’s extrajudicial system of re-education through labor, which often singles out political activists who have not committed crimes.)

[snip]

The United States comes in first, too, on a more meaningful list from the prison studies center, the one ranked in order of the incarceration rates. It has 751 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 in population. (If you count only adults, one in 100 Americans is locked up.)

The only other major industrialized nation that even comes close is Russia, with 627 prisoners for every 100,000 people. The others have much lower rates. England’s rate is 151; Germany’s is 88; and Japan’s is 63.

The median among all nations is about 125, roughly a sixth of the American rate.

What a distinction. This is what you get when you elect conservatives, those father figures who can’t abide any dissension. First you had trickle down economics that didn’t (couldn’t) work and now trickle up punishment (the poorer you are the more likely you are to serve time.)

Technorati Tags: Criminologists, prison, incarceration, prisoners, conservatives, father figures, trickle down economics, trickle up punishment

Thomas Paine:

“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize Mankind; and for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.”

Technorati Tags: obscene stories, voluptuous debaucheries, cruel and torturous executions, unrelenting vindictiveness, Bible, word of a demon, word of God, wickedness

Via Tomgram

It’s strange that the business and geopolitics of energy takes up so little space on American front pages — or that we could conduct an oil war in Iraq with hardly a mention of the words “oil” and “war” in the same paragraph in those same papers over the years. Strange indeed. And yet, oil rules our world and energy lies behind so many of the headlines that might seem to be about other matters entirely.

Take the food riots now spreading across the planet because the prices of staples are soaring, while stocks of basics are falling. In the last year, wheat (think flour) has risen by 130%, rice by 74%, soya by 87%, and corn by 31%, while there are now only eight to 12 weeks of cereal stocks left globally. Governments across the planetary map are shuddering. This is a fast growing horror story and, though the cry in the streets of Cairo and Port au Prince might be for bread, this, too, turns out to be a tale largely ruled by energy: Too many acres turned over to corn (and sugar cane) for the creation of biofuels; a historic drought in Australia and other climate-change-induced extremes of weather — a result of the burning of fossil fuels — that have affected crop yields; and many new middle-class consumers, in China and elsewhere, coming on line, with a growing desire for meat, the production of which is heavily petroleum based.

It continues with a great chapter from Michael Klare’s new book Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy

The End of the World as You Know It
…and the Rise of the New Energy World Order
By Michael T. Klare

Oil at $110 a barrel. Gasoline at $3.35 (or more) per gallon. Diesel fuel at $4 per gallon. Independent truckers forced off the road. Home heating oil rising to unconscionable price levels. Jet fuel so expensive that three low-cost airlines stopped flying in the past few weeks. This is just a taste of the latest energy news, signaling a profound change in how all of us, in this country and around the world, are going to live — trends that, so far as anyone can predict, will only become more pronounced as energy supplies dwindle and the global struggle over their allocation intensifies.

do read the whole article then let me know what you think.

Technorati Tags: Tomgram, geopolitics, energy, oil, food riots, Geopolitics of Energy, $110 a barrel, unconscionable price levels, energy supplies

Global climate change denialists and so called Intelligent Design proponents share at least two things in common, aside from their general lack of reasoning capabilities, and that is their willful dismissal of sound science and their intellectual dishonesty. Here’s a couple of articles to piss them both off.

Scientists at the Carnegie Institution determined that over a 23-year span from 1979 to 2001 the jet streams in both hemispheres have risen in altitude and shifted toward the poles. The jet stream in the northern hemisphere has also weakened. These changes fit the predictions of global warming models and have implications for the frequency and intensity of future storms, including hurricanes. (Science Daily)

and for the idiotic IDers - you’re Expelled

In 1971, biologists moved five adult pairs of Italian wall lizards from their home island of Pod Kopiste, in the South Adriatic Sea, to the neighboring island of Pod Mrcaru. Now, an international team of researchers has shown that introducing these small, green-backed lizards, Podarcis sicula, to a new environment caused them to undergo rapid and large-scale evolutionary changes.

“Striking differences in head size and shape, increased bite strength and the development of new structures in the lizard’s digestive tracts were noted after only 36 years, which is an extremely short time scale,” says Duncan Irschick, a professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “These physical changes have occurred side-by-side with dramatic changes in population density and social structure.”

Researchers returned to the islands twice a year for three years, in the spring and summer of 2004, 2005 and 2006. Captured lizards were transported to a field laboratory and measured for snout-vent length, head dimensions and body mass. Tail clips taken for DNA analysis confirmed that the Pod Mrcaru lizards were genetically identical to the source population on Pod Kopiste. (Science Daily

Read the article it’s fascinating. It’s pretty much as close to proof of evolution as it is possible to get.

Technorati Tags: Global climate change, denialists, Intelligent Design, sound science, intellectual dishonesty, Carnegie Institution, jet stream, These changes fit the predictions of global warming models, storms, hurricanes, Expelled, pod kopiste, green-backed lizards, Podarcis sicula, rapid and large-scale evolutionary changes, only 36 years, Duncan Irschick, evolution

“Ever bigger machines, entailing ever bigger concentrations of economic power and exerting ever greater violence against the environment, do not represent progress: they are a denial of wisdom. Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology towards the organic, the gentle, the non-violent, the elegant and beautiful.” E.F. Schumacher

CNN Money has an interesting article on shrinking cities. What, as a city administrator, do you do when your industrial base disappears and your population declines?

Youngstown, Ohio, has seen its population shrink by more than half over the past 40 years, leaving behind huge swaths of empty homes, streets and neighborhoods.

Now, in a radical move, the city - which has suffered since the steel industry left town and jobs dried up - is bulldozing abandoned buildings, tearing up blighted streets and converting entire blocks into open green spaces. More than 1,000 structures have been demolished so far.

Under the initiative, dubbed Plan 2010, city officials are also monitoring thinly-populated blocks. When only one or two occupied homes remain, the city offers incentives - up to $50,000 in grants - for those home owners to move, so that the entire area can be razed. The city will save by cutting back on services like garbage pick-ups and street lighting in deserted areas.

They’re onto something there. Leaving the homes abandoned and rotting would create vast slums and make the city even less attractive to any potential residents and businesses. Better still it brings a sense of pride back into the remaining population, lifts some of the despair, anger and feelings of betrayal by the system that Obama rightly referred to the other day. Creating green spaces and new farming areas helps a city immensely.

What they are doing is attracting attention from other cities falling into dereliction. Permanent growth is a myth of capitalism. There may be an appearance of such growth in a single economy but we live in a world economy now and that is ultimately a closed system, a zero sum game, where for one part to grow another must shrink.

With peak oil here or soon to be here, with global climate change about to bring massive disruption to food supply chains (check what’s happening to rice crops), with so much about to become in short supply it’s time for us to take a clue from E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful

In the first chapter of ‘Small Is Beautiful’, “The Problem of Production”, Schumacher points out that our economy is unsustainable. The natural resources (especially fossil fuels), are treated as expendable income, when in fact they should be treated as capital, since they are not renewable and thus subject to eventual depletion. He further points out that similarly, the capacity of nature to resist pollution is limited as well. He concludes that government effort must be concentrated on reaching sustainable development, because relatively minor improvements like education for leisure or technology transfer to the Third World countries will not solve the underlying problem of unsustainable economy.

Schumacher’s philosophy is one of “enoughness,” appreciating both human needs, limitations and appropriate use of technology. It grew out of his study of village-based economics, which he later termed “Buddhist Economics.” Buddhist Economics forms the basis for ‘Small is Beautiful’s fourth chapter.

He faults conventional economic thinking for failing to consider the most appropriate scale for an activity, blasts notions that “growth is good”, and that “bigger is better,” and questions the appropriateness of using mass production in developing countries, promoting instead “production by the masses.” Schumacher was one of the first economists to question the appropriateness of using GNP to measure human wellbeing, emphasizing that “the aim ought to be to obtain the maximum amount of well being with the minimum amount of consumption.”

Technorati Tags: shrinking cities, Youngstown, Plan 2010, capitalism, E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful

If you are of an age you will remember the terrible death squads in Peru (not to mention the ones in Argentina, Columbia and Chile) and the toll they took on people opposed to the government. Yesterday the BBC reported

A Peruvian court has convicted four members of an army death squad of murdering nine students and a professor suspected of rebel links in 1992.

One of the four, former Gen Julio Salazar Monroe, was sentenced to 35 years in prison while the other three were each jailed for 15 years.

A prosecutor said the verdicts would establish a precedent for trying former President Alberto Fujimori.

He denies authorising the death squad to fight Maoists in the early 1990s.

The four men convicted of the 1992 killings were part of a squad known as La Colina, whose members are also accused of a 1991 massacre of 15 people in a poor suburb of Lima known as Barrios Altos.

Good for Peru, now go after the rest of them. Set a precedent so loyal Americans, ones who believe in supporting their constitution, will have an added incentive to go after the war criminals, and their lackeys, currently occupying the White House.

Technorati Tags: death squads, Barrios Altos, Peru, , war criminals, White House

Via The Happy Tutor comes this article Karl Hoecker’s Album. A different view of Auschwitz, a private collection of photographs by the adjutant to the commandant of Auschwitz, from May, 1944 to January, 1945, that shows the utter moral, and emotional disconnect, between what happened there and those who made it happen.

Technorati Tags: Auschwitz, moral disconnect, propaganda, evil incarnate, never forget

There is an excellent article in the LA Times today on Allah vs God

And “jihad” comes from the word “excel,” juhd or ijtihad in Arabic. It means a holy war or righteous struggle. Some schools in the Middle East, religious and secular, will hold jihads — or special intense programs to get students to accomplish something — to improve math scores and raise reading levels. Although most English usage I’ve come across refers only to an Islamic holy war, I have begun to see “jihad” as a synonym for crusade (originally a Christian holy war, broadened now) and a vigorous fight against something. In other words, jihad, this English word, might one day encompass its full Arabic meaning.

English has yet to incorporate these words fully, and history suggests it might never do so. The language is filled with words that are culture specific: “sahib,” “coolie,” “effendi,” “bey.” The word “emir” simply means prince in Arabic, but in English it is a prince or ruler of an Islamic state. When my sister in Beirut tells her daughter a bedtime story, the emir kisses the sleeping princess awake. No mother in the U.S. or Britain would let an emir anywhere near a princess’ lips. No princess will ever sing “Someday My Emir Will Come.”

That in some ways is how it should be. Language, after all, is organic. You can’t force words into existence. You can’t force new meanings into words. And some words can’t or won’t or shouldn’t be laundered or neutered. Language develops naturally.

I bring all this up, however, to get to the word whose connotation I would love to see changed — “Allah.”

Allah means God.

In Arabic, Muslims, Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians all pray to Allah. In English, however, Christians and Jews pray to God, and Allah is the Muslim deity. No one would think of using the word “Allah” to talk about any other religion. The two words, “God” and “Allah,” do not mean the same thing in English. They should.

This isn’t about political correctness; it isn’t about language distortion.

[snip]

In these troubled times, creating more differences, further parsing so to speak, is troubling, even dangerous. I suggest we either not use the word Allah or, better yet, use it in a non-Muslim context.

Of course that’s exactly why those who are not ignorant that Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh and God are synonymous, use Allah as it makes Muslims “other” and that makes it OK to hate them. If I was a betting man, and I’m not, I’d bet that the overwhelming majority of Americans are simply unaware that Muslims pray to the exact same deity they do, and a somewhat smaller majority, the Rushbots of America, are no doubt equally confused about the Jewish God too.

Technorati Tags: Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh, God

I never knew that, prior to the Tate-LaBianca ritual murders, Charles Manson was a songwriter. He’s just released an album via a Creative Commons license that anyone can download for free. Morbid (pun indented) curiosity caused me to download it but so far trepidation has prevented me from listening to it. As I’m a cat person I guess curiosity will win out in the end. Let’s hope I don’t turn into a cult killer with swastikas carved into my forehead by doing so

Technorati Tags: Tate-LaBianca, ritual murders, Charles Manson, songwriter, cult killer

The US is not alone in the shabby treatment of its soldiers. It shames me to say that Canada too has a lot to account for.

Mary McFadyen, the Canadian military ombudsman, released a scathing report today on the staus of health care for Canadian Armed Forces Reservists.

reservists are often denied the medical benefits offered to full-time soldiers and are receiving far less compensation for their injuries. Care that is delivered to reservists isn’t always adequate or ongoing, and not always delivered in a timely manner.

McFadyen said it’s “clearly unfair” that reservists aren’t given the same level of care, considering they are increasingly asked to fill the same risky roles as regular members of the military.

“If you’re expecting the reservist to take the same job, make the same risks, they should get the same compensation,” McFadyen said Thursday in a telephone interview from Ottawa.

This is, in a word, unacceptable. Regardless of the fact that this has been going on for much longer than they have been in office, the Tories have an opportunity here to put their money where their mouths are. They are war mongers who consistently spout off about beefing up the Armed Services (which for them appears to consists of handing juicy contracts for new ships etc. to their buddies) so how about it Steven.

Technorati Tags: shabby treatment, soldiers, Canada, Mary McFadyen, Canadian military ombudsman, unacceptable, Tories

Another year and another 283,000 dead, seals that is. Yes the great Canadian seal hunt is on again and the stain on Canada’s grows more fetid with each seal brutally clubbed to death and skinned alive. It is beyond disgusting. Rick MacPherson has a good post on this over at Malaria, Bedbugs Sea lice and Sunsets

Thanks to Shelley for the link

Technorati Tags: 283, 000, seal hunt, clubbed to death, skinned alive, disgusting

Fitna by Geert Wilder is a very disturbing film. It is a completely one sided view of Islam. It focuses solely on jihadists and not on the millions of peaceful law abiding Muslims that don’t accept the Wahhabi jihadist movement. By doing so he has produced a hate film, regardless of the sweet Rimsky-Korsakov Scheherazade background music. This is a movie intended to incite fear among non-Muslims and hatred of Muslims by them and for that reason alone he needs to be thoroughly condemned for it.

There’s nothing wrong in pointing out the dangers of jihadism so long as you also point out that the vast, overwhelming majority of Muslims are peaceful, though misguided, people. Indeed, so far as I’m concerned, the only good jihadist is a dead jihadist. Their take on the world is submit to their violent brand of Islam or die so they should all just die. I don’t have a problem with that, do you? In my book the same applies to any fundamentalist, from any religion, that tries through force to push their fucked up view of the universe onto anyone. In my book all religions, especially monotheistic religions, are despicable.

You can view the film below but pay attention - you need a strong stomach to watch this.

Update 11:12pm PDT - Due to serious death threats LiveLeak has pulled the movie from their site. It is however still available on YouTube so I have changed the video below to that

Technorati Tags: Fitna, Geert Wilder, jihadist, hate film, Muslims, dangers of jihadism, majority of Muslims are peaceful, , only good jihadist is a dead jihadist, fundamentalist, any religion, fucked up view of the universe

When you cultivate a state of perpetual fear it is not just the people who are programmed to fear that suffer. As we’ve seen in Iraq many innocents, more innocents than enemy, have perished for any number of reasons, ranging from sheer homicidal pleasure on the part of battle damaged soldiers to those killed because they could not understand English commands to stop or do something else. This week an innocent Egyptian vendor, plying his trade from a small boat on the Suez Canal was summarily executed by US Navy personnel on a leased cargo ship (you know those things that don’t look anything at all like a naval war vessel, which might have clued him into his danger) the, Global Patriot, because he did not respond to warnings. Such is the price of perpetual fear. One can only hope that some day Bush and his cronies will feel that certain dread twisting in their bowels that comes with a state of mortal fear, and that it won’t ever let go until the moment they shuffle off their mortal coil (and should there be an afterlife then for all eternity.)

Technorati Tags: Egyptian, Suez Canal, Global Patriot, perpetual fear