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April 25, 2005
Neistat Brothers
These guys are wild. Artists, pedalers, organizers…check out their array of videos at www.neistat.com or cut to the chase.
“Goldfish” had me wincing and biting my fingernails.
“Bike Thief” was sad, especially for those of us who value our rims.
Posted by nick at 08:35 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
GMO
I sent a friend an exerpt from the Harper’s Weekly Review earlier this week:
…and brewer Anheuser-Busch, America’s number one buyer of rice, announced that it will no longer buy rice from Missouri if that state allows genetically modified rice to be grown within its borders.”
And he replied:
So, I don’t know how I feel about this. I really think that all of the anti-gmo activism is really misdirected, as I think we will severely need genetically modified crops to help feed the world in this century. I think that people overstate the risks, especially when compared to the risks of pesticide use, the clearing of more land for farming (because yields are lower because we are not using gmo crops), and starvation in third world countries which could be helped by specifically working the genetics of third world crops. That being said, there are clear problems with the way gmo research is done now—namely, it is only done by a few companies which patent the genes. The incentive is thus only to develop crops that are good for first world countries, and to only research things like corn because you have to buy your seed every year for corn (unlike rice and wheat, which you can use from your old crop), and farmers become dependent on it. Also, research is hampered because of patents—they recently engineered a type of rice that had vitamin a in it, which could potentially prevent millions and millions of cases of blindness in malnourished parts of Asia, but they could not sell it because the scientist who did it violated something like 40 patent rights (it’s called golden rice).
What I think we should be arguing for is:
1) more public research of gmo crops and less private research
2) patent laws which make it much more difficult (or impossible) to patent genes
3) severely increased gmo research for crops in third world countries, especially Africa.
Essentially, not completely ceasing GMOs.
I don’t know how we advance those points though—maybe a simple anti GMO message is best until they reform the system. I don’t know. it just upsets me to see people get up in arms about gmos.
He’s good, and it left me wondering why I’m the one with a blog.
Posted by nick at 12:27 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
April 22, 2005
Rachel Carson vs. Adam Smith
The Economist’s latest print edition bares the title “Rescuing Environmentalism”. The leader article opens with a reference to the widely hoo-ha’d Death of Environmentalism article that was presented to the Environmental Grantmakers Association this past fall, dousing the firey words of traditional environmental organizing groups with a bracing new reality.
If environmental groups continue to reject pragmatic solutions and instead drift toward Utopian (or dystopian) visions of the future, they will lose the battle of ideas. And that would be a pity, for the world would benefit from having a thoughtful green movement. It would also be ironic, because far-reaching advances are already under way in the management of the world’s natural resources�changes that add up to a different kind of green revolution. This could yet save the greens (as well as doing the planet a world of good).
I usually like the tone (if not the content) of the Economist because their agenda always seems to be about consensus-building around things that their British editors feel are common-sense. That said, they didn’t seem to finish reading “Death…” . They missed it’s main point, that it is not about the numbers but about the framing of arguments around other issues.
If governments invest seriously in green data acquisition and co-ordination, they will no longer be flying blind. And by advocating data-based, analytically rigorous policies rather than pious appeals to �save the planet�, the green movement could overcome the scepticism of the ordinary voter. It might even move from the fringes of politics to the middle ground where most voters reside.
I wish environmentalism could be reduced to a game of numbers, but it’s not like there is a lack of numbers about the destruction of the environmment out there. To be calling for more seems a bit out of touch. In fact, the only example they cite is “The marginal cost of removing the last 5% of a given pollutant is often far higher than removing the first 5% or even 50%: for public policy to ignore such facts would be inexcusable.” But that is an example of how an environmental statistic could easily be turned against the movement: “Why try to change it if the last 5% is what matters. We’re never going to completely eliminate it.” By my political yardstick, the Economist falls short by calling for more data instead of more ideas. The whole idea behind the “Death…” article is to merge environmental causes and issues with other market forces like labor and energy lobbyists, to find a joint mission that appeals to unions and people who care about how much money they are spending on gas. People hear enough numbers to make them lose trust in them, and remember, faithful Economists, people listen to the silent commands of their pocketbooks.
Posted by nick at 09:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 17, 2005
Pre-season: Scrimmage 1
April 17th vs. Red Sox
1-2, HBP, K
1IP, 3R, 1ER, 2BB, 1K
Posted by nick at 07:25 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 10, 2005
F%!@ing war
I ran across this great Boston Globe op-ed piece from November that spins a nice perspective on the kerfluffle about the censoring of a for-TV version of “Saving Public Ryan”. The issue was not its graphic depiction of war (aren’t we already desensitized from network news?) but its profane language:
Speaking of television, is it an accident that the nation finds itself most intensely at war in the season when the Viagra theme song has become a kind of anthem? Male impotence, or fears of it, are openly referred to, but the problem has its effect far more broadly than in bedrooms. Beware a heavily armed nation that acts like a man with something to prove.
Because of the puritanical way in which “moral values” are defined in contemporary America, the connection between killing and sex is not regarded as fit for public discussion any more than the connection, say, between fears of impotence and gun ownership would be. But as suggested by an election in which Iraq was not an issue but homosexuality was, it is not sex we cannot openly contemplate but the actualities of violence. In war, human beings hand over ethical decision-making to a chain of command. Private soldiers do this, but so do the populations of war-making nations. This is the ultimate in impotence. We Americans watched the unfolding story of Fallujah as if we were not responsible for it.
There’s a dated reference here to the post-election frustration (although remembering that pain and anger probably is not a bad thing). More importantly, there is a timeless reminder to focus on the important problems (war, sexual repression) and stop squabbling over the “bad” words that we all hear everyday.
What could possibly be driving our nation to this “leveling” of Iraq? We don’t know, and we don’t want to know. We are ordering our young people to leap into a volcano. Our warplanes spew fire on the heads of old men, women, and children. We are turning cities into ashes. Meanwhile, what offends us is the Anglo-Saxon word for what people do when they are lonely or in love.
Posted by nick at 10:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 02, 2005
I blinked
Last night, biking home along the Charles, just after passing underneath the BU Bridge, a obese white woman was standing next to the embankment and her stopped car (tail lights on) was right there along the Storrow 500.
Things happen quickly. A few speed walkers pass me going the opposite direction as I approach, I pull on my brakes a bit, she asks “Can I use your light to look for my phone I just dropped it down the embankment?”, I see a large-ish man get out of the car to my left and start to lumber towards me across the bike path. “No, sorry, I’m running late getting back,” I call out over my shoulder as I lean into my pedals again and distance myself.
My heart was racing, I felt like I had probably just spoiled these people’s night by running away from an innocent situation. People stuck on the side of the road, innocent enough. They need help. I’m the nice biker who goes by and I stick it to them. But I saw something there that I didn’t like. Within moments, the good little disciple of the culture of fear that I am, I was generating headlines about the biker mugged or worse on his evening ride. I started reading Malcolm Gladwell’s new book “Blink” the other day. Within the first thiry pages or so, he makes an interesting case for how people are remarkably adept at making split second decisions with just a glance’s worth of visual information. He cites archaeologists and art historians who spot fakes in seconds after curators and their hired teams of validators spend months doing chemical sampling and stylistic evaluation, and describes the example of a researcher who looks at videos of a married couple and can predict with statistically significant accuracy whether the couple will divorce.
Gladwell is good. He’s a New Yorker writer, author of “The Tipping Point” which is being read by all kinds of businessmen, entrepreneurs and network-theory academicians now because it talks about how trends and fads catch on. But, as my dad pointed out, he suffers from an “acutely American disease” — he sees too much the rosy side of things, dwells on the shiny, happy, innocuous examples. In “The Tipping Point” he talks about how the trend of penny-loafers catches on in the Village in NYC, how social revolutions get started. To be fair, he does talk about suicides and smoking as social trends a bit, but briefly. And he doesn’t talk about the sticking power of hatred or anger, and how that can become a trend, despite a wealth of historical examples. I haven’t finished “Blink”, but I wonder if he gets into the negative sides of split-second decisions, instead of dwelling on these leading aristocratic examples of divorce and art.
I chose to speed away from these two people who didn’t look like me, likely screwing them over, and missing an opportunity to spread some good smaritanism because I had fear. This seems to be a definite underbelly to split-second decision making. Do I decide which of my new classmates I am going to befriend in the first five minutes of the first class? As if to caution me away from this reasoning, my rear tire went flat in the next half mile after I passed the couple. Karma?
Posted by nick at 09:40 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack