 Maureen Dowd writes in the NYT this week about the importance of being an organ donor. You can literally save the life of one of 100,000 people waiting for vital organs in North America alone. It costs you nothing except the time to fill out an organ donor card. If you’re American, click on this link, download the card, complete it following the instructions, and talk it over with your family (they can overrule your donation if you don’t). If you’re Canadian, get the applicable provincial organ donor card here.
And if you’ve already filled out a card, take the next opportunity to make a blood donation. Another great need you can fill, for free. |
November 23, 2003
SAVE A LIFE
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THE WORDS & PICTURES OF HUGH MACLEOD
  
I‘ve always admired artists who can sketch something clever in a few moments over a beer. It’s rare to find such an artist who also has a way with words. The combo is called a cartoonist, and one cartoonist that I admire greatly is Hugh MacLeod of Gaping Void, who creates by doodling on the back of business cards. His work, samples of which are shown above and below, is gritty, smart, and blazingly cynical, but it always brings a smile. And we need more of those these days. |
November 22, 2003
‘AND I’M LEFT TO CONCLUDE THERE’S NO HUMAN ANSWER NEAR’
 As I get older I find I get essential solace and renewal from music, especially music of the remarkable years from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, when we all thought we could save the world. One of my favourite musician-songwriters from that period is Ottawa’s Bruce Cockburn. A pilgrimmage to Le Hibou coffeehouse to see Bruce or one of the many other great folk artists and poets of the day was the Canadian equivalent of a trip to the Village to see Bob Dylan. In the early 1970s, Bruce was at the top of his form, turning out lyrics at once angry and poetic, underlined by rich, unique and challenging guitar riffs. He turned out two really exceptional albums, Joy Will Find a Way and In the Falling Dark that I think are among the best albums of their genre. If you’ve never heard his music, you can buy it here, and listen to some samples here. His poetry is exemplary in its own right, and I found his words and music immensely cathartic last week, a week of disheartening news, watching our society’s seemingly hopeless decline into endless violence, terror, retribution and rage. Here are the lyrics from three of his songs from the above two albums.
Gavin’s Woodpile Working out on Gavin’s woodpile And log slams on rough-hewn log I remember a bleak-eyed prisoner and I toss another log on Gavin’s woodpile I remember crackling embers And the stack of wood grows higher and higher And everywhere the free space fills Distant mountains, blue and liquid, In the Falling Dark And the lights lie tumbled out like gems A million footsteps whispering Earthbound while everything expands Light pours from a million radiant lives A Long-Time Love Song Can’t trace this conversation – And you know I long to feel that sail Time measured in summersaults Oh, damn it, I’m crying again. Gotta get some sleep. Postscript: The image above is of a painting by Canadian artist Alex Colville entitled “Horse & Train”. Bruce used it as cover art for one of his albums and wrote “The horse seems to contain such energy, as if it were a charged particle of pure spirit. This sense of spirit, in confrontation with material power, is something any artist can relate to. A sense of impending doom, too, I think”. The painting hangs in the National Gallery of Canada. |
November 21, 2003
INTELLIGENCE FAILURE: ‘WHAT WASHINGTON DOESN’T SEE IN IRAQ’
 In this week’s (Nov.24) New Yorker, author George Packer attempts valiantly to portray post-war Iraq accurately and moderately, so that both sides can realize what must urgently be done and hopefully draw together to stave off what he sees as impending disaster. But what emerges is not a moderate picture. What Packer reveals is the absolutely staggering ignorance of the decision-makers in Washington: about Iraqi culture, about geography, about history, about global politics, about what is really going on in Iraq. Because ‘the war after the war’ is being run with an iron hand by a handful of ideologues in Washington who do not know or seemingly care about the facts, not only is the world’s only superpower acting in a grossly incompetent manner in ‘reconstructing’ Iraq, but those in Iraq now perceive their ‘liberators’, through no fault of the brave troops and volunteers on the ground, as complete idiots, horrendously under-resourced, unwilling to spend any money on even basic infrastructure, extravagant in rewarding their own higher-up stalwarts, insensitive and indifferent to the suffering of the people, and utterly disorganized. To the troops and volunteers, the perception is only marginally better: the internal dissension between the ideologues and the more competent military and humanitarian leaders is palpable, disruptive, confusing, counter-productive and demoralizing. It is now clear that, with mind-boggling naÔvetÈ, Bush went to war in Iraq with absolutely no plan for post-war reconstruction, expecting not only that Iraq would somehow be able to manage this enormous task themselves, but would be able to do it with their own money. It is clear that there still is no plan for reconstruction, and the inadequate and uncoordinated team on the ground in Iraq has no idea what to do first, does not have the skills or resources to do the things that most urgently need to be done, and is essentially making it up as they go along. The war in Iraq is clearly going to go down in history as one of the most colossal political and military blunders of all time.
The article itself is very long, and although you can get an interesting Flash presentation of some of Packer’s comments and the accompanying photos by Gilles Peress (in ironic black and white) on the New Yorker site, the full text is not online, so you owe it to yourself to buy this issue and read the article in its entirety. The cover to look for, reproduced above, features a stark illustration entitled The Occupation by Anthony Russo. Although I’d never attempt to summarize the whole article, here are some noteworthy excerpts:
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The consequence of all this is a country largely in limbo, ungoverned, chaotic, with people living in constant and abject fear. Without authority, without resources for reconstruction, the country is degenerating quickly into anarchy, despair, lawlessness, and civil war. With a monstrous live grenade about to go off in its face, there is no wonder that Bush has suddenly decided the US has to make a hasty retreat before next year’s elections, to hell with the consequences. As so many of us said before the war was launched, the US has neither the stomach nor the bankroll to lead Iraq through at least a generation of necessary rebuilding that will cost at least a trillion dollars in US taxpayers’ money, and involve inevitable setbacks, violence and loss of American lives. It’s still hard to conceive that Bush’s cloister of advisors were too stupid to realize this. November 20, 2003
CORPORATISM — THE NEW ‘ENEMY WITHIN’
 Yesterday, Salon carried an interview by David Tabot with Robert Kennedy Jr., a long-time environmental campaigner. It’s worth a complete read, but here are some key excerpts, emphasis mine:
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NON-TECHIE RANT AND APOLOGY
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Yesterday I got a new PC with a larger screen, and the first thing I did was check out how this blog looks on it using various browsers. What a shock. It looks November 19, 2003
HAIKULOGISMS & HAIKUTHYMEMES– A CONTEST
 It’s been awhile since I’ve had a contest. So I’m going to award two prizes, each of $25, redeemable at the online vendor of your choice, to those who submit the best Haikulogism and the best Hiakuthymeme to me (by e-mail or in the comments area below this post) by November 30th. I will pick three finalists in each category, and the final winner in each category will be chosen by someone else (to be announced shortly), since I don’t like making hard decisions.
A Haikulogism is a syllogism in haiku form. A syllogism must have a primary premise that is universal, stated as either a positive or a negative (e.g. everything that lives, moves), a secondary premise that can be either a universal or a particular statement (e.g. no mountain moves), and a conclusion that follows logically from the two premises (e.g. no mountain lives). I’m not stuffy about whether the premises are demonstrable or unarguable — controversial, debatable premises could actually be more interesting. And you’re free to state the secondary premise before the primary one if that suits the metre of the haiku form better. The haiku form has many rules, some of which preclude entirely the possibility of a Haikulogism. So for purposes of this contest the only rules that must be followed are (a) it must be a three line 17 syllable composition, the middle line having 7 syllables and the remaining lines 5 each, and (b) it must have a ‘break’ or ‘turn’, a shift in perspective between the second and third lines. Natural imagery in the first two lines, traditionally found in haiku, would be wonderful but is not critical. A Haikuthymeme is an enthymeme in haiku form. An enthymeme must have either a primary or secondary premise (e.g. Bush lied), and a conclusion (e.g. he cannot be trusted). It is left up to the reader to supply the missing premise (e.g. you can’t trust liars), from their own knowledge, so that the conclusion still follows logically. So here is a terrible example of a Haikulogism: world is a prison
our instinct is to be free we want to get off And here is a terrible example of a Haikuthymeme: bush lied, people died
how much more can this world take? turf him out next year You will not find Haikulogism or Haikuthymeme in the dictionary or Google — I just made them up. But the idea of combining them is not actually new. I’m sure you can do much better than my examples. Maximum of three entries per person, please. Brain hurt, yet? Artwork above — ‘Moon Maiden’ by Sioux artist Ioyan Mani — you can buy her work here. |
November 18, 2003
THE WAL-MART DILEMMA
| Please read this thorough and extraordinary article from Fast Company entitled The Wal-Mart You Don’t Know. If its length discourages you, read the following excerpt (emphasis mine), and you’ll want to go back and read the rest:
If Levi [Strauss] clothing is a runaway hit at Wal-Mart, that may indeed rescue Levi as a business. But what will have been rescued? The Signature line–it includes clothing for girls, boys, men, and women–is an odd departure for a company whose brand has long been an American icon. Some of the jeans have the look, the fingertip feel, of pricier Levis. But much of the clothing has the look and feel it must have, given its price (around $23 for adult pants): cheap. Cheap and disappointing to find labeled with Levi Strauss’s name. And just five days before the cheery profit news, Levi had another announcement: It is closing its last two U.S. factories, both in San Antonio, and laying off more than 2,500 workers, or 21% of its workforce. A company that 22 years ago had 60 clothing plants in the United States–and that was known as one of the most socially reponsible corporations on the planet–will, by 2004, not make any clothes at all. It will just import them.
The intervention in blue that can stop this ‘race to the bottom’ is anathema to ‘free’ traders. It says simply that if a product can reasonably be produced domestically, then duties and other regulations should be imposed to protect domestic producers. In other words, the alternative to ‘free’ trade is not no trade, but rather regulated trade, regulated to protect the economy and social fabric of the regulating country. That switches the cycle shown in red to the cycle shown in green. Of course, it’s not all black and white, or we would have resisted the globalization extremists and wouldn’t be facing this dilemma today at all. In the red vicious cycle, the seduction is:
and the downside is:
The green cycle also is not perfect. Its seduction is:
and its downside is:
You pays your money and you takes your choice. In my biased opinion, the vast majority of people are ahead with the green cycle, and the very rich few are ahead with the red cycle. Guess who’s lobbying and bribing governments for untrammeled globalization and ‘free’ trade? Contrary to what most of us are taught in school, modest inflation is the single most effective way to painlessly redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, because it allows debts to be repaid in ‘cheaper’ future dollars. There are environmental and social advantages to the green cycle as well. The use of slave labour is discouraged. Lax environmental laws in third world countries are not exploited as much. And if the red cycle gets out of control (some would argue it already has), a possible consequence is deflation, a terrible threat to the whole economy that we need to avoid like the plague. The answer is not to blame the Wal-Mart shopper for buying imported goods there, because in the vicious red cycle it’s all they can afford — they’re paradoxically forced to perpetuate the cycle and sustain their own and others’ poverty. And the answer is not to blame Wal-Mart either: They’re doing what their corporate charter dictates, using their immense buying power (they sell a quarter trillion dollars worth of goods each year) to increase earnings per share, and in the process they have introduced some unarguably beneficial innovations into their, and their suppliers’, business processes. The answer is to recognize that ‘free’ trade laws need to be limited to goods and services that cannot be reasonably produced domestically, and pressure politicians to reimpose duties and other regulations on those goods and services that can. That alone would move us from the red cycle to the green, and halt the race to the bottom that threatens our nations’ very social fabric, and benefits only a handful who are rich enough already. |
The article brilliantly describes what I call the ‘Wal-Mart Dilemma’, which is represented by the cycle diagrammed at right in red. November 17, 2003
CONTRIVANCE
 I had just been writing a weblog entry entitled THE WORLD AS A PRISON, explaining how we had all become so inured to being browbeaten, indoctrinated, humiliated, deceived, cowed, and intimidated by our fellow man that we had given up hope of ever making a better world, and had started deluding ourselves that we were actually free, that things were actually getting better, that somehow, ludicrously, less regulation of the power elite and more growth would solve the world’s problems.
“Just a nightmare”, said Mimic, the macaw, swooping down from the giant cedar tree, and perching beside his friend Oswald. “It was so real…”, I said. “It almost made sense in some ghastly, terrifying way. A whole world of overcrowded, frightened, beaten-down people spreading like a cancer, killing and inflicting massive global suffering. But the real information — the pictures of dead children, the stories of the tortured, the anguish of animals bred strictly for food, the details of cynical genocidal war plans — all of this was carefully suppressed and hidden for fear that the bare truth would cause massive revolt, suicide, revolution, madness. Just endless unimaginable horror behind a thin facade of calm and normalcy…” “Shhh..”, said Mireille. “You’re frightening the children. You’ll give them nightmares.” I looked around and my heartbeat and respiration slowly returned to normal. Our community, the Astarte community of artists, about 100 people in a stunning expanse of untouched tropical splendour, the community I had adopted and that had adopted me, in my youth after three years as a Traveler, was intact, peaceful, safe. I was home. I put on my Second Skin, the programmable attire that had replaced clothing a century ago, and had obviated the need for residential buildings. I instructed it to play some soothing music from my personal collection, and, as a distraction, to display an educational program, on the language of whales, in my Mind’s Eye. As the last one up this morning, I quickly disassembled the SmartWalls of the community Sleeping Area and stowed them under Oswald’s cedar tree. Jorge had set up a temporary Learning Area for today’s three events: A story-telling session for the children this morning, featuring legends of the wolves; An afternoon seminar on computer animation; and the evening rehearsal for Mireille’s new play Mirages, which our community would soon be presenting to some of the neighbouring communities. I decided to go for a walk in the forest, with Mireille, and Catherine, one of the community’s children, tagging along. Just ahead of us, a parachute with a package attached dropped to earth from a helicopter overhead, guided as it landed by Vittorio and Vanessa, our community’s culinary experts. It was their self-chosen job to convert the week’s nutritious BasicFoods that had just been airdropped by the Eos community of fabricators, using flavour chemistry and the herbs and spices the children grew to learn about ecology, into the amazing gastronomic delights consumed twice daily by the members of the community. As we walked in the forest, Catherine skipped ahead, pointing out the names (species and personal) of the abundant birds, animals and flora we passed, with Mimic repeating them, and correcting her when she got them wrong. The smells of earth and rain and wildflowers filled my senses, and my heart.
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And then I woke up. I was soaked in sweat from heat to foot, screaming and writhing, when I felt the caring hands, the caresses and calming embraces of my loved ones sleeping nearby. “Just a nightmare…”, said Mireille, the new visitor to our community. 
November 16, 2003
SECOND LOOKS
 Disposable e-mail addresses: I recently proposed a way to permanently foil spam by giving each subscriber a whole domain of e-mail addresses and letting them set up an unlimited number of transient subdomains. Ron Bell points out that Yahoo Mail Plus ($30/yr) offers just such a service. Called AddressGuard, it works this way:
AddressGuard lets you easily create a large number of disposable addresses using a simple template: Basename-keyword@yahoo.com. You choose one base name, and you can create up to 500 disposable addresses by choosing different keywords. Once you have secured your base name, you have full control of the keywords you want to use. For example, if you chose dairyman88 as your base name, you can create dairyman88-shoeforsale@yahoo.com or dairyman88-myfoodstore@yahoo.com, etc.
Messages sent to any of your disposable email addresses will be automatically forwarded to your Yahoo! Mail account, and you can decide to direct these messages to a specific folder. If any of your disposable email addresses start getting spam, you can simply delete it and messages sent to this address will start bouncing instead of filling up your account. Small Press, Big Ideas: The Princeton Architectural Press has kindly sent me a few of its newest releases. If you have an interest in design, photography, or landscape, check out their site. I especially like You are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination — for lovers of maps, real and metaphorical. Creating Shitty Jobs: Palmerhaas, responding to the jobless recovery, points out that the Onion hilariously predicted this eighteen months ago. Unfortunately, it’s not as funny now that it’s come true. More Dirty Business: The Massey Energy Inez Kentucky coal slurry spill in October 2000 was a much worse environmental disaster than the Exxon Valdez oil spill, but has received almost no media coverage. Massey Energy is a big contributor to Republican coffers, and is pushing to get the anti-environment Bush gang to fire the investigator so it can all be hushed up. Salon picks up on the story. Another Multimedia Goldmine: Albino Blacksheep archives Flash and other multimedia shorts from a variety of sources, with topics and treatments both poignant and whimsical. The Miniature Earth is a powerful profile of our planet as a village of 100 people. And for pure unadulterated silliness, try Colin Mochrie vs. Jesus H. Christ. |
