Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Old-Fashioned American Arrogance
"Two hundred and thirty years ago, our forefathers fought a war to throw off the yoke of a European monarch and gain the freedom of self-determination.
"Texans long ago decided the death penalty is a just and appropriate punishment for the most horrible crimes committed against our citizens.
"While we respect our friends in Europe ... Texans are doing just fine governing Texas."
According to the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center, 1,090 executions have taken place in the US since the Supreme Court lifted a ban on capital punishment in 1976.
Texas has carried out more than a third of those.
Read more hereSeriously, there's a respectful way to handle disagreement, and then an asinine way. Besides which, I will never understand why Texas thinks they are effective. Shouldn't they have the least number of executions if they deter people?
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Facebook and MySpace, the class divide?
By Claire Cain Miller, Forbes.com
A flurry of recent articles have observed that young people are leaving
MySpace for Facebook in droves, setting off speculation that MySpace is becoming
the latest victim of fickle teens following the hot new thing.Not so, says
University of California, Berkeley, researcher Danah Boyd. Not all teens are
leaving MySpace, she wrote in a recent essay--instead, they're splitting up
along class lines.Boyd confirms what teens in any high school across the country
already know: Affluent kids from educated, well-to-do families have been fleeing
MySpace for Facebook since it opened registration to the general public in
September, while working-class kids still flock to MySpace.
That could have
big implications for advertisers targeting the coveted teenaged population
online, three-quarters of whom have a profile on a social network. Both
sites have been powerhouses for advertisers because of their huge,
wide-reaching
audiences, says Robin Neifield, chief executive of interactive
marketing agency
NetPlus Marketing. That strategy could change if the sites
become more like the
niche social networks popping up across the Web for
groups of like-minded people
from similar backgrounds.
Boyd's essay came
amid speculation about the future of the social network giants. Despite the fact
that MySpace still gets more than twice as many unique visitors as Facebook,
it's littered with postings announcing that users, often teens, are switching to
its rival.The number of Facebook visitors ages 12 to 17 jumped 149% over the
past year, while MySpace lost 27% of teens, according to ComScore Media Metrix.
Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp.owns MySpace, even lamented in an interview that
he was losing readers to Facebook. News Corp. is rumored to be considering
swapping MySpace for a 25% stake in Yahoo! Estimated ad revenue for 2007
calendar year for Facebook is $125 million, $525 million for MySpace, according
to research firm eMarketer.
Together, the two account for 72% of all online
advertising on social networks. There's a reason why the "goody-two-shoes,
jocks, athletes or other 'good' kids" are going to Facebook, says Boyd, who
studies social networks and youth culture and made her observations based on
formal interviews with 90 teens, informal interviews with hundreds more, and the
perusal of tens of thousands of teens' online profiles. Facebook launched in
2004 as a site for Harvard students. Gradually, it opened up to other college
students, then to high school kids if a college student invited them. "Facebook
is what the college kids did. Not surprisingly, college-bound high schoolers
desperately wanted in," Boyd writes. MySpace, meanwhile, is the "cool
working-class thing" for high school students getting a job after graduation
rather than heading to the Ivy League, Boyd writes. Constant local news stories
on predators targeting kids on MySpace further alienated the "good kids," she
says. Both companies declined to comment on Boyd's essay.
I can see that. It's interesting that their concern is how to make us consume MORE and MORE instead of why affluence is displayed the way it is. I, for one, didn't ever consider MySpace. It's cluttered, SPAMrific and POP-UP laden and messy. I don't know if I know anyone with
one. I got Facebook when my school was added (after some resistance!) as an easy alternative to online journaling. Just the facts :) Now it too is cluttered and becoming a creepy
stalker zone. Sad. And I don't click the ads, for the record!
Monday, August 6, 2007
In Memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
That fateful summer, 8:15. The roar of a B-29 breaks the morning calm. A parachute opens in the blue sky. Then suddenly, a flash, an enormous blast ― silence ― hell on Earth.
The eyes of young girls watching the parachute were melted. Their faces became giant charred blisters. The skin of people seeking help dangled from their fingernails. Their hair stood on end. Their clothes were ripped to shreds. People trapped in houses toppled by the blast were burned alive. Others died when their eyeballs and internal organs burst from their bodies―Hiroshima was a hell where those who somehow survived envied the dead.
Within the year, 140,000 had died. Many who escaped death initially are still suffering from leukemia, thyroid cancer, and a vast array of other afflictions.
But there was more. Sneered at for their keloid scars, discriminated against in employment and marriage, unable to find understanding for profound emotional wounds, survivors suffered and struggled day after day, questioning the meaning of life.
And yet, the message born of that agony is a beam of light now shining the way for the human family. To ensure that “no one else ever suffers as we did,” the hibakusha have continuously spoken of experiences they would rather forget, and we must never forget their accomplishments in preventing a third use of nuclear weapons.
Despite their best efforts, vast arsenals of nuclear weapons remain in high states of readiness―deployed or easily available. Proliferation is gaining momentum, and the human family still faces the peril of extinction. This is because a handful of old-fashioned leaders, clinging to an early 20th century worldview in thrall to the rule of brute strength, are rejecting global democracy, turning their backs on the reality of the atomic bombings and the message of the hibakusha.
However, here in the 21st century the time has come when these problems can actually be solved through the power of the people. Former colonies have become independent. Democratic governments have taken root. Learning the lessons of history, people have created international rules prohibiting attacks on non-combatants and the use of inhumane weapons. They have worked hard to make the United Nations an instrument for the resolution of international disputes. And now city governments, entities that have always walked with and shared in the tragedy and pain of their citizens, are rising up. In the light of human wisdom, they are leveraging the voices of their citizens to lift international politics.
Because “Cities suffer most from war,” Mayors for Peace, with 1,698 city members around the world, is actively campaigning to eliminate all nuclear weapons by 2020.
In Hiroshima, we are continuing our effort to communicate the A-bomb experience by holding A-bomb exhibitions in 101 cities in the US and facilitating establishment of Hiroshima-Nagasaki Peace Study Courses in universities around the world. American mayors have taken the lead in our Cities Are Not Targets project. Mayors in the Czech Republic are opposing the deployment of a missile defense system. The mayor of Guernica-Lumo is calling for a resurgence of morality in international politics. The mayor of Ypres is providing an international secretariat for Mayors for Peace, while other Belgian mayors are contributing funds, and many more mayors around the world are working with their citizens on pioneering initiatives. In October this year, at the World Congress of United Cities and Local Governments, which represents the majority of our planet’s population, cities will express the will of humanity as we call for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
The government of Japan, the world’s only A-bombed nation, is duty-bound to humbly learn the philosophy of the hibakusha along with the facts of the atomic bombings and to spread this knowledge through the world. At the same time, to abide by international law and fulfill its good-faith obligation to press for nuclear weapons abolition, the Japanese government should take pride in and protect, as is, the Peace Constitution, while clearly saying “No,” to obsolete and mistaken US policies. We further demand, on behalf of the hibakusha whose average age now exceeds 74, improved and appropriate assistance, to be extended also to those living overseas or exposed in “black rain areas.”
Sixty-two years after the atomic bombing, we offer today our heartfelt prayers for the peaceful repose of all its victims and of Iccho Itoh, the mayor of Nagasaki shot down on his way toward nuclear weapons abolition. Let us pledge here and now to take all actions required to bequeath to future generations a nuclear-weapon-free world.
Tadatoshi Akiba
Mayor
The City of Hiroshima
Eating local vs. Reducing Fuel Consumption
THE term “food miles” — how far food has traveled before you buy it — has entered the enlightened lexicon. Environmental groups, especially in Europe, are pushing for labels that show how far food has traveled to get to the market, and books like Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life” contemplate the damage wrought by trucking, shipping and flying food from distant parts of the globe.
There are many good reasons for eating local — freshness, purity, taste, community cohesion and preserving open space — but none of these benefits compares to the much-touted claim that eating local reduces fossil fuel consumption. In this respect eating local joins recycling, biking to work and driving a hybrid as a realistic way that we can, as individuals, shrink our carbon footprint and be good stewards of the environment.
On its face, the connection between lowering food miles and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions is a no-brainer. In Iowa, the typical carrot has traveled 1,600 miles from California, a potato 1,200 miles from Idaho and a chuck roast 600 miles from Colorado. Seventy-five percent of the apples sold in New York City come from the West Coast or overseas, the writer Bill McKibben says, even though the state produces far more apples than city residents consume. These examples just scratch the surface of the problem. In light of this market redundancy, the only reasonable reaction, it seems, is to count food miles the way a dieter counts calories.
But is reducing food miles necessarily good for the environment? Researchers at Lincoln University in New Zealand, no doubt responding to Europe’s push for “food miles labeling,” recently published a study challenging the premise that more food miles automatically mean greater fossil fuel consumption. Other scientific studies have undertaken similar investigations. According to this peer-reviewed research, compelling evidence suggests that there is more — or less — to food miles than meets the eye.
It all depends on how you wield the carbon calculator. Instead of measuring a product’s carbon footprint through food miles alone, the Lincoln University scientists expanded their equations to include other energy-consuming aspects of production — what economists call “factor inputs and externalities” — like water use, harvesting techniques, fertilizer outlays, renewable energy applications, means of transportation (and the kind of fuel used), the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed during photosynthesis, disposal of packaging, storage procedures and dozens of other cultivation inputs.
Incorporating these measurements into their assessments, scientists reached surprising conclusions. Most notably, they found that lamb raised on New Zealand’s clover-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed. In other words, it is four times more energy-efficient for Londoners to buy lamb imported from the other side of the world than to buy it from a producer in their backyard. Similar figures were found for dairy products and fruit.
These life-cycle measurements are causing environmentalists worldwide to rethink the logic of food miles. New Zealand’s most prominent environmental research organization, Landcare Research-Manaaki Whenua, explains that localism “is not always the most environmentally sound solution if more emissions are generated at other stages of the product life cycle than during transport.” The British government’s 2006 Food Industry Sustainability Strategy similarly seeks to consider the environmental costs “across the life cycle of the produce,” not just in transportation.
“Eat local” advocates — a passionate cohort of which I am one — are bound to interpret these findings as a threat. We shouldn’t. Not only do life cycle analyses offer genuine opportunities for environmentally efficient food production, but they also address several problems inherent in the eat-local philosophy.
Consider the most conspicuous ones: it is impossible for most of the world to feed itself a diverse and healthy diet through exclusively local food production — food will always have to travel; asking people to move to more fertile regions is sensible but alienating and unrealistic; consumers living in developed nations will, for better or worse, always demand choices beyond what the season has to offer.
Given these problems, wouldn’t it make more sense to stop obsessing over food miles and work to strengthen comparative geographical advantages? And what if we did this while streamlining transportation services according to fuel-efficient standards? Shouldn’t we create development incentives for regional nodes of food production that can provide sustainable produce for the less sustainable parts of the nation and the world as a whole? Might it be more logical to conceptualize a hub-and-spoke system of food production and distribution, with the hubs in a food system’s naturally fertile hot spots and the spokes, which travel through the arid zones, connecting them while using hybrid engines and alternative sources of energy?
As concerned consumers and environmentalists, we must be prepared to seriously entertain these questions. We must also be prepared to accept that buying local is not necessarily beneficial for the environment. As much as this claim violates one of our most sacred assumptions, life cycle assessments offer far more valuable measurements to gauge the environmental impact of eating. While there will always be good reasons to encourage the growth of sustainable local food systems, we must also allow them to develop in tandem with what could be their equally sustainable global counterparts. We must accept the fact, in short, that distance is not the enemy of awareness.
