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Thought of the day: Why is it that in order to buy products made in safe and humane working conditions where workers make a decent wage (often only pennies more a day), we often have to pay many times as much? Where is our money going? ...
Bruce Lee appeared in an interview on the Pierre Berton Show on 1971 Dec 9. Its a great interview, which I recommend watching in full. Recently, I've been thinking about one quote in particular [transcribed verbatim]: ...
Two weeks ago (Oct 10 2011), I participated in a student march in Boston affiliated with the Occupy movement. I walked with about 1000 other students without a set path for 3 hours through the streets of downtown Boston. This strategy made the protest visible and just disruptive enough to be seen and heard as we passed. Small crowds of bystanders gathered as we approached, or watched and waved through office building windows. A few drivers honked in support as they waited for us to pass. Overall, the Boston Police were not at all overbearing, only directing blocked traffic. Towards the end, as we reached the entrance of the Charlestown bridge, police lined up forming a firm barrier. Although we sat there for over half an hour, the police did not say a single word, nor explain why they didn't want us to cross the bridge. The crowd debated on whether to attempt to cross the bridge, but was quite divided. Some were indifferent or unsure, some against, some for, and many worried about being arrested. Over time, chunks of the crowd broke off and left, not wanting to confront the police. I noticed that these police barricading the bridge were deliberately making themselves cold and unreadable, wearing serious and unmoving facial expressions and large, dark sunglasses, even though the sun was already beginning to set. I made of point of engaging each officer one at a time by staring into their covered eyes until I got some reaction. ...
Across the wave of protests here in the U.S., the Middle East, Europe, and Chile, the movements seem quite coherent. The messages, although varied (which is a good thing if we are to acknowledge individuality), generally seem to complain about the lack of employment and high cost of living and education. the moral corruption of big business and government, and the disparity of wealth between the rich and everyone else. Some protesters even mention explicitly that they are not against the system (ei "free-market capitalism"), but rather against the corruption of the system. I have seen little mention of interest in environmental issues or shifts in cultural or economic values. Many people are frustrated about the lack of employment, but seem unconcerned with how unemployment and economic inequality might connect to underlying values and beliefs. I'm concerned that people are not focused on how each of us participates in and believes in the exploitation of labor and the waste and destruction of the environment. Sensing this, I brought a large sign to a student march in Boston that on one side reminded "WE ARE RESPONSIBLE TOO" and on the other side encouraged, "WHAT CAN YOU DO?". ...
Scarcity means that there isn't enough to go around. It has been an prominent assumption in free-market economic ideology. The feeling of scarcity feeds cut-throat competitiveness and class tensions (rich versus poor, ethnicity versus ethnicity, man versus woman). Such tension shows itself most in hard times, as they are now. ...
One of my friends asked me a really interesting question last night: did it cost less to bail out the banks than to let them go under and then fulfill FDIC insurance for account holders with those banks? The answer to the question should have been crucial in making a decision on whether to bail out the banks. If the bailouts were not cheaper, then they are very difficult to justify. If they were cheaper, they might be justified. Of course, this whole thing could have been avoided by cracking down on blatantly irresponsible and predatory investment practices rather than encouraging them, and requiring that banks hold a significantly higher cash reserve than the current 10% minimum. And of course, giving banks and investment firms a total of over 100 billion dollars without strings attached could only be described as idiotic were it not intentional. Interestingly, in all the news coverage I've read, I have never seen my friend's question asked or addressed. I could not find the answer via an internet search last night either, although I found some hints. What bothers me is that this questions is central to understanding the problem and the answer should be easy to find. The banks surely have known the answer all along, and the government could have verified this information in a few weeks with an independent audit (perhaps they did and didn't bother to tell us?). ...
Banks and investment firms like Bank of America and AIG are very responsible for the current economic disaster. So are all the politicians who proposed or voted for the unjustified and botched bailout of these irresponsible and predatory corporations (George Bush, Obama, McCain, and 74 of 100 U.S. Senators voted for the bailouts). The politicians are also responsible for the wars with Iraq and Afghanistan, encouraging bad economic practices, and the trend towards corrupt subsidies and private-profit/public-expense contracts. We can and should protest again big business, speculative investors, economists, and politicians. But at the end of the day, it's a show. We have little if any direct control over politics and big-business. Our demonstrations will likely have few if any tangible consequences. ...
The dominant ideologies in the fields of Science, Marketing, and Free-market Economics all assert that the most good comes when we don't concern ourselves with the consequences of our actions. We are supposed to think only of ourselves in isolation, and never worry about how we relate to other people or the natural environment. We are supposed trust that we can and should conduct and use science, technology, and business without concern or awareness of anything beyond ourselves in isolation. We should never stop to ask what we are doing, why we are doing it, who and what is affected, how we as individuals relate to the whole, and how the whole relates to us. Irresponsibility is the ultimate virtue. ...
Global commerce has been a contentious issue. One one side people complain that we undermine domestic interest by importing products from elsewhere that could be or were once made locally with local materials. On the other side, people argue that importing products is the only practical ("economic") option when imported products cost less money. Some who believe in this "economic" argument might do so regretfully, while others exclaim that such importation is a sign of the "free-market" doing its magic. All of these positions make the same assumption (an assumption that limits the possibility of an alternative): imported products are cheaper because they come at a lower monetary cost. But lets forget about that mysterious thing called money for a moment, and think about the problem from a different angle. ...
In the "developed" world, we either congratulate ourselves for or fear our immense and incessant advancements in technology. These technologies are quick to become part of our lives. We can simply buy a lot of the technology that we use. As workers, we are expected to seek education in the latest and greatest labor technologies, including theories, ideologies, techniques, computer software, and industrial tools. Surely, we are more a technologically capable and literate society than any that has existed at any other point in history. ...
I recently read an article by Richard Levins entitled A Left Critique of Organic Agriculture. Levins explains Cuba's approach to agricultural research and technology. Unable to afford most technological commodities for growing crops, such as designer seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, and machinery, Cuba has conducted substantial research in order to develop practical, cost effective, non-commodity agricultural technologies. For example, Cuba has experimented with various poly-cultures (growing different kinds of crops together), with using farm animals for weed control, and with using predatory insects such as ants for pest control. This research has been careful and scientific. It has considered ecosystems as a whole and both the long-term and short-term costs and benefits of technologies. ...
I've observed that many people including students and educators believe that education consists of a teacher giving a student knowledge. Teachers are expected to exclusively teach, and students are expected to exclusively learn. ...
There's no shortage of comparisons between education, science and technology, human rights, and economy in the United States and other countries. These comparisons talk about progress, superiority, inferiority, and development. But they also distract from the real issues at hand and inhibit our ability to reflect and improve. ...
For most of my life I've had this fantasy of becoming important. Maybe I would make an "important" work of art or solve an "important" physics problem or come up with an "important" sociological theory and everyone would think I am "important". ...
I saw this article in the New York Times today about several people in Chicago facing up to 15 years in prison for making audio recordings in public places of police officers. Illinois law (source) forbids audio recording another party without consent. The penalty is obviously ridiculous and in many cases may exceed those for rape or murder. But further, this application of the law is a troubling double standard. ...
The term "recession" has been ubiquitously used by government and media to describe the economic situation in the United States for the past decade. But, a recession is "a general [cyclic] slowdown in economic activity over a period of time for more than two consecutive quarters", which doesn't at all describe the economic decline the United States has experienced since the tech bubble crashed in the late 1990's. Rather, the past decade has been "a sustained, long-term downturn in economic activity in one or more economies", better known as a "depression" (source: Wikipedia). "Recession" is not only a misleading euphemism, but outright incorrect. ...
I've traveled a fair amount, and anytime I go to a different place I always notice local fashion. Often the differences in fashion between difference places are fairly subtle. Nonetheless they are significant enough to easily catch my eye. Certainly, people in different areas often have physical differences too, which may in turn influence fashion choices. Often though, the way people dress and project themselves seems to most greatly affects how they look. I first noticed this traveling from Taiwan to Hong Kong. Both populations largely share the same biological ancestry (Han chinese). I was surprised to find that people in Hong Kong looked significantly different to me compared to the Taiwanese. How could people who objectively were supposed to share the same physical traits subjectively appear to be so different? ...
I use the internet for so many things that I find myself believing that the internet has the best information about nearly everything. If I'm looking for an image, I'll search the internet. If I'm looking for an explanation about math or physics, I'll search the internet. If I want to know about something that happened in history, I'll search the internet. Certainly, the internet is often a really great source of information. ...
When I was a kid I had a terrible temper. As I matured, I learn to not get angry and ways to deal with conflicts. Looking back, the anger came from getting frustrated when I felt not understood, or worse, misunderstood. I don't have a natural talent for communication, so this can still be an issue for me. Thinking more broadly, it seems like a lot of conflicts in the world arises as a failure of explaining oneself and/or the failure to listen to the other person. ...
Debates about education typically center around which education paradigm is best. The built-in assumption is that that a single "best" education paradigm exists and that subsequently we should reject all other education paradigms. Only the "best" education paradigm should be employed always and everywhere. The push for progress is a push for homogeneity. ...
What is anarchy? Is it the total absence of any government or hierarchy? Is it living alone and self-sufficiently in the mountains? Is it angry teenagers? Is it terrorism? Is it a temporary state of chaos that revolutionaries use to subvert power before replacing it? Is it a war-zone? A riot? A protest? Is it a kind of capitalist or socialist society? Is it a political position? Is it a contradictory, paradoxical, or impossible ideal? I've been thinking about these questions recently. I'm interested anarchy, and the word has meaning for me, but perhaps haven't understood it well enough to explain it properly. Nonetheless, I'm going to give it a shot here. ...
Everywhere, we see and hear claims that we live in a global world. Companies have branches and chains all over the world, and can and do move or open offices, factories, and design centers where ever they feel price or quality is best. Governments even sometimes offer tax breaks or other subsidies to entice companies to relocate. ...
One of my philosophy professors, Dr. Franklin Perkins, once pointed out in class that many philosophers talk about how be happy, but very few philosophers actually seem to be happy. More generally, many intellectual arguments that are logically correct are actually wrong. On top of that, we have to deal with arguments that sound believable and appealing, but have missteps in logic. ...
When I was younger, images of fashion models and celebrities in the U.S. seemed normal and attractive to me. Sometime in college, my reaction to these images changed. In part, fashion images have changed, but my perspective has shifted significantly too. Getting into photography definitely had something to do with my change of perspective. Through the camera, I came to understand how complex, subtle, and beautiful the interaction of light and real uncovered skin is. I also became more aware of how much photography can manipulate how a person looks. ...
I do not believe in god. I do not not believe in god. Most of the time I simply do not concern myself with god because I have no reason to believe that god does or does not exist. But a fair number of people try to argue one way or the other. ...
A lot of brilliant people have spent a lot of time studying the (intangible) mind and the (physical) brain. But ironically, all the efforts of philosophy, psychology, sociology, and cognitivism have made remarkably little progress. We still have yet to come close to understanding how any aspect of human creativity, emotion, or problem solving works. In fact, everyone is still struggling to define what these things are. ...
There is a popular notion that social intelligence is defined by being socially dominant. There is also a notion that the optimal, if not necessary space for socializing is loud, visual, group oriented, and consumption based. In short, we idolize and aspire to the socialite. We need to recognize that playing the part of the socialite has some serious weaknesses, limitations, and drawbacks, and requires certain attitudes, intentions, group dynamics, and skills to get anything positive out of. Moreover, being a socialite is simply not for everyone. ...
There is a pervasive attitude and propaganda that the health of the economy relies on increasing the perceived value of investments. The stock market, for example, works almost entirely on this principle. The price of a stock on a given day is determined by whether or not investors perceive the stock to be valuable, and more importantly, whether investors think that other investors think that the stock is valuable or will become more valuable. In other words, stock prices go up or down based on what investors think other investors are thinking. ...
It occurred to me the other day that all of the leading fundamental equations in physics rely on imaginary numbers. I also remembered something that I usually think little about: that imaginary numbers represent imaginary things. The claim of physics, therefore, is that the existence and behavior of all real, measurable things are actually determined by underlying imaginary things. What philosophical consequences does this have? I'm not sure, but it is extremely strange, and deserves a bit of skepticism. ...
We often treat time like space, saying that we move through it. But we forget that movement is itself something that happens in time. Moving in time is therefore a change in time in time (∆t/∆t), which has no unit and is equal to 1 and therefor has no physical meaning. Time cannot be both a spatial dimension and process. It is either one or the other. If time is a kind of space, then all aspects of experience, including the perception of time and process, is at once. Nothing happens, everything just is. For now, I'd rather stick with the theory that time is time, and space is space. ...
In theories of biological evolution, traits mutate and are passed on to others through biological reproduction. Beings with biological traits that are well suited for their present environment are most likely to survive, reproduce, and pass those traits on to the next generation. Over many iterations of this process, traits may persist, die out, or spread through a population. However, this is not a straight forward process. Both ancient and modern history has shown that what promotes survival one day my be detrimental the next, and what works in one situation or environment may be a disadvantage in another. Consequently, theories of evolution cannot say much if anything about how populations will evolve or whether a population will be successful in the long run. Biological evolution simply describes an abstract process. ...
Our possibility is tied closely to the experiences, people, and things we have access to. What we have access to is largely a matter of where we have access to. The agility with which we are able to navigate our environment affects where we go, what we see, and what we do. In other words, the breadth of our experience and the size and strength of our "sphere of influence" is correlated to our spatial mobility. Moreover, other people and things may come to us and are more likely to do so if they are highly mobile. Considering how much is invested in transportation and logistics, it is safe to assume that mobility is a dominant social constraint (The Hirsch Report, 2006). Lately I've been thinking a lot about how culture and public policy affect mobility and how mobility in turn affects culture and public policy. ...
English, like many languages, is as gendered language. Gendered language supposedly gives us more information about the subjects of a conversation. Take for example the sentence "My friend Sam will stop by after he goes to the store.". If we do not already know who Sam is, the "he" in the sentence gives us additional information by indicating that Sam is a male. With this information, we can infer quite reliably that Sam has a penis and testicles. Beyond that, we can only imagine quite unreliably any number of common male traits and male stereotypes that may or may not apply to Sam. We should ask ourselves whether this really qualifies as information at all. Our imaginations may guess that Sam has a mustache and muscular arms but later when we meet Sam in person, we might find that instead Sam has a beard and is skinny. And is the kind of genitals Sam has so important that it should be one of the first things we learn about Sam? Does this not reflect an undue focus on gender and gender stereotypes? Why should our language force us to be conscious of gender and gender specifiers all of the time? ...