If you create an "Internet Radio" service, I fully expect Elvis Costello's "Radio Radio" to be available.
If you create an "Internet Music Video" service, I fully expect The Buggles' "Video Killed The Radio Star" to be available.
I was talking to my friend Brock, a scientist at Berkeley and the smartest guy I know, on IM last night:
Brock: Dude what's up.
Brock!
yo
I'm reading nobel speeches! So much nutrition!
what you up to?
Brock: Just shouting you out. How are ya?
Merry Fucking Xmas and all that.
Are we gonna change the world in CPH this week or are we toast?
I'm going to a big-ass protest on saturday. Though literally no one I've talked to knows what we're actually protesting. It’s the James Deans leading the James Deans.
Brock: Good on ya, man, I admire you.
Yeah, always hard to channel general dissatisfaction.
seriously. No one knows what the fuck they're doing
I’m just going because I want to be photographed holding a sign that says The Climes They Are A-Changin'
you been following this whole shit?
Brock: Kinda, but it's rather like electing a pope.
All behind closed doors.
Let's hope this ends with someone from the Hitler Youth as well
Brock: From here, I can only cross fingers.
Write letters, promote discussion, etc, but there hasn't been a whole lot to follow.
do you particularly care about this issue? Being a scientist and all?
Brock: Fuck it, we need total climate Nazis right now.
I think it's terrifying.
So you're on board with The Whole Gore Yards
what do you think we should do? Or they should do, or whatever?
Brock: I am pretty convinced that life will change dramatically within our lifetime due to climate change.
And I actually think it's probably way too late.
Yeah? I defer to your judgement on this, scientifically
what did it for you, originally?
Brock: Hmmmm good question.
I've seen some really compelling data.
If you just measure CO2 levels, that freaks that shit out of me.
So you're directly convinced by the science . Not through a Bono-shaped conduit, like the rest of us
Brock: It correlates spectacularly well with global temperature.
I've seen that graph too it's insane
Brock: That it's unlinked is statistically irrelevant.
And if you extrapolate into the future....
That's when it gets really really scary.
Because there is no reason to think that the relationship will change.
what do you think the politicians should do, particularly?
Brock: Dramatically invest in economic incentives for cleaner living.
That's vague but we need to jump over this hurdle where action for climate impedes economic viability.
It would be great to point to a country and be like 'lets be like them!' but everyone is kind of dropping the ball it sounds like
you like any particulars?
Brock: Forest credits for tropical countries.
Keep the carbon in trees and out of the air.
oh yeah Brazil's experimenting with that, right?
Brazil is turning their shit around.
If every tropical country did the same it would help.
any new stuff coming out from the scientific side?
new revelations, new solutions?
Brock: Unfortunately, way too much negative publicity and that's it.
A few dumbasses joking about manipulating data really does a lot of damage.
Is there a new emerging scientific consensus? Either on the problem side or the solution side?
Brock: Well, I think that's the scary thing, that the scientific consensus is that we really really really fucked up on this.
Solutions seem completely unrealistic at this point.
We need to basically cut in half CO2 emissions immediately.
no way, it's that bad?
Brock: If you look at the projections, it's really bad.
Jesus, the Day After Tomorrow is starting to look more and more like a documentary
Brock: I mean, if population change keeps expanding.
It's bad man.
so as the science emerges, it's actually getting fucking worse? What's the timeline?
Brock: Dunno, I gotta defer on this one.
It's irresponsible for scientists to overpredict.
true. Especially in these trying times of abundant Palintry
Brock: Yet this causes tremendous understandable frustration on the part of citizens and enemies of science.
Science is not, never has been, never should be, political.
This conversation helps me know what to protest on Saturday
My sign is staying the same though
This is the best punctuation mark-related sonning ever:
The former attorney general tells Esquire:
All the internal investigations are over with, no finding of wrongdoing, no finding that I misled Congress.* So I'm gratified by that, but I'm certainly not surprised by it. But anyway, it creates impressions. And yeah, it takes some time to work through that. And that's what I'm trying to do now.
And that asterisk?
*Editor's note: A 2008 Department of Justice investigation was referred to a federal prosecutor and remains ongoing.
Can more journalists start putting little stars behind the bullshit quotes they get from their sources? Stories about Cheney are gonna start looking like the fucking Milky Way.
It's always nice, and depressingly rare, to read something about a political issue written by someone who knows what the fuck they're talking about.
The most likely scenario, I'd predict, is that the bill gets watered down to remove the death penalty stuff, is passed, and then, like all Ugandan laws, goes on to be rarely and haphazardly enforced.
The whole thing's really good.
This is a really great 'full catastrophe' piece about Detroit, one of America's most robust and baffling tragedies:
The troubles of Detroit are well-publicized. Its economy is in free fall, people are streaming for the exits, it has the worst racial polarization and city-suburb divide in America, its government is feckless and corrupt (though I should hasten to add that new Mayor Bing seems like a basically good guy and we ought to give him a chance), and its civic boosters, even ones that are extremely knowledgeable, refuse to acknowledge the depth of the problems, instead ginning up stats and anecdotes to prove all is not so bad.
This is from Guernica:
There is such a dire shortage of protein in the city that Glemie Dean Beasley, a seventy-year-old retired truck driver, is able to augment his Social Security by selling raccoon carcasses (twelve dollars a piece, serves a family of four) from animals he has treed and shot at undisclosed hunting grounds around the city. Pelts are ten dollars each. Pheasants are also abundant in the city and are occasionally harvested for dinner.
OK, so that's the bad and the ugly. What's the good?
It’s possible to do things there. In Detroit, the incapacity of the government is actually an advantage in many cases. There’s not much chance a strong city government could really turn the place around, but it could stop the grass roots revival in its tracks.
[...] In many cities where strong city government still functions effectively, citizens are tied down by an array of regulations and permits that are actually enforced in most cases. Much of the South Side of Chicago has Detroit like characteristics, but the techniques of renewal in Detroit won’t work because they are likely against code and would be shut down the minute someone complained.
Just as one quick example, my corner ice cream stand dared to put out a few chairs for patrons to sit on while enjoying a frozen treat on a hot day. The city cited them for not having a license. So they took them away and put up a “bring your own chair” sign. The city then cited them for that too. You can’t do anything in Chicago without a Byzantine array of licenses, permits, and inspections.
In central Indianapolis, which is in desperate need of investment, where the city can’t fill the potholes in the street, etc., the minute a few yuppies buy houses in an area and fix them up, they immediately petition for a historic district, a request that has never been refused. [...]
In most cities, municipal government can’t stop drug dealing and violence, but it can keep people with creative ideas out. Not in Detroit. In Detroit, if you want to do something, you just go do it.
This reminds me, strangely enough, of my trip to Italy last year. I attended a fundraiser organized by my buddy Giacomo for earthquake victims in Abruzzo. Their idea was to raise a bunch of money, fill a van with sandwiches and sound equipment, and drive down to Abruzzo and throw a dance party. The night I was there we raised like 2,000 euro, and the next week, they did their Movable Techno Feast.
It struck me that weekend how similar America and Italy are. We know that the government isn't going to do anything for us, so we take some of the responsibility. Everyone I talked to at the Abruzzo fundraiser had a 'if not us, who?' kind of attitude, the same one you found in a lot of America after Katrina and 9/11. You can't count on the government for everything (or, quite possibly, anything), so you do it yourself. This goes from small gestures to huge movements, from sponsoring a bell-ringing santa to endowing a college fund.
There's a kind of vitality and independence there that I really like. One of the symptoms of growing up in a well-functioning social democracy (Denmark, Switzerland, etc) seems to be the ebbing of this 'let's make this happen fellas!' drive. Government will take care of you. You're hit by a bus and you keep your job, your home, your car, your kids. A friend of mine here in Copenhagen gets a monthly stipend from the government for being allergic to wheat. Because gluten-free food is more expensive. We roll our eyes at this, but there's a logic to it.
It's sort of sad to think that a generation or two of well-functioning government and social harmony might just neuter Americans of everything we like about them. It's also sad to think of the profound price we pay for our individualism. I'd trade some of that DIY urban renewal in Detroit for a government that actually addressed its failures and their impacts on the individuals picking up their trailings.
For now, though, I just keep reading great articles about the people doing their best to salvage a city out of Detroit, and cross my fingers that no one with any authority notices them.
There's a great op-ed in the Washington Post today that sums why I find it difficult to get enthusiastic about the green 'movement' as it's currently practiced.
Stop "going green." Just stop it. No more compact fluorescent light bulbs. No more green wedding planning. No more organic toothpicks for holiday hors d'oeuvres.
Green gestures [...] ("Look honey, another Vanity Fair Green Issue!") lure us into believing that broad change is happening when the data shows that it isn't. Despite all our talk about washing clothes in cold water, we aren't making much of a difference.
For eight years, George W. Bush promoted voluntary action as the nation's primary response to global warming -- and for eight years, aggregate greenhouse gas emissions remained unchanged. Even today, only 10 percent of our household light bulbs are compact fluorescents. Hybrids account for only 2.5 percent of U.S. auto sales.
Every time I see some magazine article about Greening Your Whatever, I think shut the fuck up. The consumer-powered green movement isn't very useful, and may be doing more harm than good. For five reasons:
- Consumers are fickle. You might be able to guilt consumers into buying reusable coffee filters next time they go to the store. But the next time? And the next time? Climate change is too important to be driven by the same mechanism that got you to buy Crocs.
- Not everybody cares. O Magazine and Bono are going to deliver, at best, a tiny portion of consumers.
- It doesn't target the fundamentals. Buying florescent light bulbs is great. But if you live in a house with four bedrooms, two living rooms, a three-car garage and a treehouse, all of which are lighted and heated, you're not exactly carbon-neutral. Driving a hybrid is great too. But if you live 40 miles away from work and commute by car every day, you're bad for the environment, no matter what you drive. Consumer-based green messages might be fine for getting people to switch from one form of consumption to another, but not reducing it overall.
- We don't always know what we're buying. I'm not saying the 'green movement' is a fad. But it does have fad elements.
We all love organic produce, yay. But do we really know that a salad dressing with 'Organic!' next to the cartoon barn on the label is actually good for the climate? Does that definition incorporate methods of farming? Transport? The labor rights of workers? The fact is, you can charge a lot more for something if it's organic or 'Earth-friendly'. Right now, there aren't any incentives for businesses to offer products that are Earth-friendly. There are only incentives to make products that seem Earth-friendly. There isn't watching these labels or the practices behind them. - Consumer products aren't everything. Goods and services sold to magazine-flipping consumers don't actually make up all that much of the economy. Businesses buy shit too. So do governments. Tons of services go on in the background of our economies, totally unnoticed. I haven't heard anyone teaching community-center seminars in how to pick a greener sewage-removal provider. 'Voting with your dollar' only impacts the economy you can see.
Copenhagen is all climate-tarded this week because of the summit, and it's mostly of the consumer-driven, 'change one tiny habit and we're all going to be ok' variety. I saw a huge sign in one of the city center squares last night that said 'Brad Pitt is Saving The World.'
Because nothing says 'this problem is of the utmost seriousness' like inviting comparisons to a cologne ad.
Hopefully somewhere in Copenhagen this week, around an oak-paneled conference table, someone's talking about how we can change our options, not just our choices.
Watching the demo for Google Goggles reminds me of my EZ Identification post.
"In the future, it will help you do more cool things - like suggesting a move in a chess game or taking a picture of a leaf to identify the plant."
I continue to liken it to the Pokedex device from Pokemon. By pointing the camera at a Pokemon, it would bring up the appropriate encyclopedia result.
Others appear to liken it to the Tricorder device from Star Trek. But waving a sensor over something to get a complex analysis disrupts the analogy.
When Dollhouse began, I quickly caught the NATO Phonetic Alphabet naming convention for Actives (Alpha, Echo, November, Sierra, Victor).
This latest episode revealed a second Dollhouse that has adopted a Greek God naming convention (Hades and Aphrodite). As an extension of this allusion, Summer Glau's character, Bennett Halverson, seems to be a representation of Hephaestus.
Saturday mornings are a good time to think about all the conversations you had last week, and assess whether you were boring your conversation partners to within an inch of their lives:
1. Repeated, perfunctory responses. A person who repeats, “Oh really? Wow. Oh really? Interesting.” isn't particularly engaged.
2. Simple questions. People who are bored ask simple questions. “When did you move?” “Where did you go?” People who are interested ask more complicated questions that show curiosity, not mere politeness.
3. Interruption. Although it sounds rude, interruption is actually a good sign, I think. It means a person is bursting to say something, and that shows interest. Similarly…
4. Request for clarification. A person who is sincerely interested in what you’re saying will ask you to elaborate or to explain. “What does that term mean?” “When exactly did that happen?” “Then what did he say?” are the kinds of questions that show that someone is trying closely to follow what you’re saying.
5. Imbalance of talking time. I suspect that many people fondly suppose that they usually do eighty percent of the talking because people find them fascinating. [...] Or maybe you just aren't letting them get a word in -- recently I was talking to someone who, though fascinating, didn't want to let me contribute to the conversation. I enjoyed it, but not as much as if I'd been able to talk, too.
6. Abrupt changes in topic. If you’re talking to someone about, say, the life of Winston Churchill (I have a tendency to dwell at length on this particular subject), and all of a sudden the other person says, “So how are your kids?”, it’s a sign that he or she isn’t very interested or perhaps not listening at all.
This is a pretty good list of topics that are always boring:
1. A dream.
2. The recent changes in your child’s nap schedule.
3. The route you took to get here.
4. An excellent meal you once had at a restaurant.
5. The latest additions to your wine cellar.
6. An account your last golf game.
7. The plot of a movie, play, or movie—in particular, the funny parts.
This all really gets back to what we think conversation is for. Do we converse with others to hear their experiences, or to bounce our own back at ourselves? Do we listen, or do we wait to talk?
Dreams are boring to listen to because, by definition, no one can relate to them. They were a broadcast from you, to you. Plots of movies and TV shows are the same way. The only way a listener can really engage with that as a topic is if it reminds them of a TV show they saw once -- and now you're bored.
We're narcissistic creatures, we look for patterns that resemble our own. Listening to someone talk about how their parents grounded them for trying to eat the couch cushions or whatever is interesting because it's vaguely parallel to your own. It triggers an anecdote ('that reminds me of the time my aunt got stuck in the couch!') that then reminds them of something, and so on.
If something's not relatable ('I had a dream last night where I was a squirrel!), then it's not conversation, it's fucking talk radio. If we as a species are gonna give this conversation thing a shot, we should aim to bring out the 'dotes.
