Undulating Ungulate

Slavoj Zizek, entertaining nutjob philosopher provacateur interviewed in New Scientist. As ever a random grab-bag of scattered insights, but this struck me:

When I was in China, some researchers showed me a document from their Academy of Sciences which says openly that the goal of their biogenetic research is to enable large-scale medical procedures which will “rectify” the physical and physiological weaknesses of the Chinese people.

Filed by billy at 4:31 pm under oblivion,the world
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Just since my web presence is a bit dispersed, and Twitter vanishes, here are some things I tweeted in the past week, plus some links of note:

Massive Censorship Of Digg Uncovered http://bit.ly/dcFuF8

(This is actually pretty interesting – a cabal of conservatives acting to vote down anything they don’t like the look of. Reveals the vulnerability of our meta-filter information systems.)

Coca-Cola: “No Consumer Could Reasonably Be Misled into Thinking Vitaminwater Was a Healthy Beverage” http://bit.ly/bBs4HS

(exactly what it sounds like, the head exploding contradictions of modern life)

Google and Verizon moving to strike first blow against #netneutrality http://nyti.ms/dfXt9k

(this has been everywhere since, with good analysis; this was an earlier report if you don’t know of this, you should. the future of your internets at stake.)

5 social media lies that must die.

http://www.audiblehype.com/blogs/business/2010/aug/03/top-5-social-media-lies/

(Excellent piece, by 37 of brainsturbator fame)

Many of the oldest Japanese are dead or missing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/world/asia/15japan.html?_r=1&src=tp

(just kinda wtf.)

A few US/economic doom notes:

US infrastructure needs 2.2 trillion to fix, say US architects group. http://www.archpaper.com/e-board_rev.asp?News_ID=3164

US student loan debt now greater than credit card debt http://cryptogon.com/?p=16946

(One of them indicators of total inner gastro-economic rotting.)

US about to cross rubicon of economic collapse http://cryptogon.com/?p=16997

“crossing the 90% debt/GDP threshold is the equivalent of crossing the proverbial Rubicon of economic growth. It’s a point from which it’s almost impossible to return.”

(whee. only so much cryptogon one can handle if one wishes to remain in the oblivious bubble.)

So yeah. A wee round-up of random Things of the World.

Filed by billy at 8:41 pm under culture,oblivion,politics,the world
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is the man.

I blogged one of his TED talks a while back, and since then have explored further. Last year he gave the 2009 Massey Lectures in Canada. They are fucking awesome, and if you snoop around you will probably find the audio available somewhere online (Not sure if it is legit, so not linking; his SALT talk on the same themes is here.) (EDIT: actually, the talks seem I am on about seem to be here fairly legally )The lectures are collected into the book The Wayfinders.

His fundamental message – that the diversity of world-views adds to the collective wonder of humanity, and that each of these world-views has astonishing depth and richness and makes a unique contribution to that collective – comes at an incredibly relevant moment in time.

We are facing a cultural mass extinction, and a corresponding impoverishment of the human collective. We face a linguistic catastrophe – around half the languages spoken in the world are going to be dead in a generation. With each language we lose a world-view, a way of understanding and being, a unique set of answers to the questions posed by humans – who are we? what are we? why are we? how do we survive? what does our existence mean?

His grasp of diverse cultures and ability to express them is second to none. His talks are a hell of a ride. Appreciating what is at stake through his examples is literally mind-blowing. The diversity of human belief and behaviour is staggering.

I find it flat out inspiring. There is a massive convergence with my own work on consciousness, belief, and world-views, though from a really different point of entry; and I can see potentials that excite the heck out of me. There is something hugely important here.

Filed by billy at 12:53 pm under consciousness,culture,language,oblivion,reading,research,the world,utopia
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TED is amazing, and this is the peak I’ve encountered so far. Absolutely incredible talk. This can only enhance your life.

Watch it now. If you want to download it you can here.

Filed by billy at 10:15 pm under consciousness,culture,oblivion,the world
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Went along to see Martin Lord Rees talk last week.

Rees is the President of the Royal Society of London, more or less the most prestigious scientific organisation in the world.

The talk was called “the world in 2050″.

It was a competent genteel coverage of where we are heading, and the challenges ahead. There was nothing new in it. Population will grow, then fall; climate change and energy resources need dealing with; biodiversity is dropping at an alarming rate due to our actions;; a lot of interesting developments may or may not happen in biotech, genetics, AI, etc.

It was entirely grounded and reasonable, but frankly tame. I came away thinking if this is the pinnacle of scientific leadership, then we are doomed.

Easily the most coherent thing, and the only sign of vision, was his call for something equivalent to a Manhattan project, or the race to put a man on the moon, for developing new technologies to adapt to the challenges of climate change. The situation is stark; we cannot go on as we are without facing disaster. If we want to maintain economic growth and reduce emissions – and I wonder how long it will be before we realise that is having our cake and eating it too – we need new clean technology to power our civilisation. We have the means to pursue those technologies, while we still have fossil fuels to power the research and development (and it will take about 30 years to shift society to new technology); the question is as ever political will.

Creating political will means communicating strongly with the public, and strongly with the politicians.

I guess my objection was to the genteel nature of the call. For fuck’s sake. Advocating the urgent adoption of one of the largest scale endeavours in human history to avoid disaster should not be done with a polite cough. Grab the politicians by the fucking lapels and scream in their face. Scientists say: ‘if we don’t do this your constituents’ children will be fucking dead’ – are the headlines we need.

Knowledge is power, and with power comes responsiblity. Politicians are stupid. Okay, not all of them. But the skill set required to lie and cheat and get elected is not the same as one that requires you to have a comprehensive knowledge of the world and applied intelligence.

Right now the knowledge is with the scientists. Yes, it needs to be communicated to the masses. But the time for being polite about it is over. Otherwise we will just see the continual side-lining of the issue by a confused corporate-owned media that can’t tell the difference between the opinions of a paid corporate lobby group and a scientific consensus. [EDIT: this is timely - Greenpeace reveals the oil company subsidiary sponsoring tonnes of climate skeptic propaganda.]

We get most of our information from journalists. Journalists are not actually any smarter than the rest of us. They just copy shit from press releases from PR companies and act smug.

But if the scientific community isn’t smart enough to realise that they have the power and responsibility to lead the debate and set the agenda – and here we are talking actually demanding society reorder itself to attain goals that matter – then they aren’t that smart either.

And if we are collectively too stupid to figure this out, we can die off. Evolution takes no prisoners. We are not the end product of evolution, we are a part of the process. The process can go in other directions, with another species dominating.

Maybe I am being too hard on him. Maybe speaking to another audience he would put forth a different message. (The link up top is to his TED talk, which I haven’t watched, which will probably cover similar ground.) But I feel we need more participation in leading and shaping our political will from our scientific community. Scientists are also members of the democratic population, and free to act as such, not being limited by what is perceived as appropriate to the scientist’s role.

Filed by billy at 3:38 pm under oblivion,the world
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Today the National misGovernment announced they are sacking the democratically elected councillors of Environment Canterbury, replacing them with an appointed commission, presumably of bugfuck rightwing cronies if the first two members are anything to go by, and suspending local elections until 2013, because the issues are “too complex to be resolved in the democratic cycle”.

This is about water, which we have ranted about before. Control of water is going to be vital in the years to come. The wrong way to do this is privatise these assets. Solutions to the crises the world faces require cooperation, not competition or coercion. And control, for half of NZ’s water assets, has just been ripped out of public control, and given to an appointed commission with special powers – appointed by slick millionaires who don’t give a damn about our country (for instance, choosing to overturning conservation areas to allow mining), and whose preordained solution will probably involve privatisation, since their blind faith in a peculiar economic ideology prescribes that solution.

I don’t know the substance of the report that led to the sackings; maybe there is good reason for the move, and maybe we will see a sane responsible outcome. I doubt it.

A year or so ago I described life under a National government unleashing its never-announced policies by ramming laws through under urgency in these terms:

It’s like discovering that not only is your mild-mannered, freshly pressed date a rapist who has already drugged you, but that they’re really into stabbing you in the kidneys with a rusty corkscrew while they ream your ass.

Ain’t no fun to be right about this.

Now I am wondering how much damage this government can do to this country and its future…

The mining protest was interesting today. An actual issue of identity at stake. The first time Phil Goff has seemed remotely like a leader. General open talk of direct action to stop the bulldozers as a normal course of events.

Fuck this government.

Filed by billy at 11:16 pm under new zealand,no mercy for john key,oblivion
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Those who witness extreme social collapse at first hand seldom describe any deep revelation about the truths of human existence. What they do mention, if asked, is their surprise at how easy it is to die.

These people seem kind of interesting. Unfortunately I came across them just after their deadline ended.

Filed by billy at 1:52 am under oblivion
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The Copenhagen talks failed to reach a binding accord that deals with the scientific reality of climate change. This effectively is committing to radical sea level rises and unpredictable local weather effects, massive population migration and millions of unnecessary deaths.

Thus our current social organising systems and structures – democracy and capitalism – have demonstrated they are maladapted to the present environmental context we face. I called this a few months ago, and stand by it.

Thus they need to be replaced. Or rather, rendered obsolete by new people’s movements. We can adapt in our own lives to face the reality of our times. We can organise directly within our communities and horizontally across the world between illusory nation states. We can, and must, take responsibility for ourselves and our world, and do things differently ourselves. Expecting our systems to solve the problem from above is to willfully embrace a fatal ignorance.

The failure of Copenhagen is the wake up call. Change is coming, and it us up to us to engage with those changes: to lead.

Hmm. Looking through the archives, I find this:

I remain optimistic – in the most general sense, we currently have enough resources to make the planet rock for everyone, if only we did things really differently, starting right now – however some days do seem darker than others. And the fact of a fundamentally broken economic system based on illusion, a fundamentally unsustainable approach to resource use and the planet, and an incompetent corporate owned media that will have to face its total failure as a means to inform people in democracy – that these things will collapse in on themselves, while causing a mess, provides us with the opportunity to replace them with better systems. And we are free to do this. In crisis lies opportunity. This is the source of my optimism. For the unfolding crisis is upon us.

Find the others. Get involved.

Er. Merry Christmas.

Filed by billy at 12:58 pm under oblivion,the world,utopia
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The UK Royal Society’s review of geoengineering argues for a 2-step back up plan in the 50-50 event that current moves to curb global warming at 2 degrees fail – a series of sun shields, and tech-heavy methods of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (argument for tech rather than tree planting is messing with ecosystem is where we go wrong).

Meanwhile, on the incipient resource wars front, China is restricting access to rare minerals.

China currently accounts for 93 percent of production of so-called rare earth elements — and more than 99 percent of the output for two of these elements, dysprosium and terbium, vital for a wide range of green energy technologies and military applications like missiles.
…
Even tighter limits on production and exports, part of a plan from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, would ensure China has the supply for its own technological and economic needs, and force more manufacturers to make their wares here in order to have access to the minerals.

In each of the last three years, China has reduced the amount of rare earths that can be exported. This year’s export quotas are on track to be the smallest yet. But what is really starting to alarm Western governments and multinationals alike is the possibility that exports will be further restricted.

Oh yeah. Interesting times a-coming.

Filed by billy at 5:16 pm under oblivion,politics,the world,utopia
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So after all the consultations, the government announced their plan to deal with climate change, with the announcement of 10% emissions reduction – maybe 20% if the rest of the world plays ball first. Never mind that Germany and Scotland have opted for 40% or higher. Never mind that the science says less than 40% is incommensurate with ongoing human civilisation.

We are led by a donkey.

And, y’know, the world is noticing:

So yet again, New Zealand gets awarded a fossil. The Climate Action Network unanimously awarded New Zealand the fossil for:

Adopting a completely inadequate mid term target and demanding that the accounting rules get changed in its favour. This follows comments in the New Zealand Parliament where the Government criticised small Pacific Island States for advocating for the targets needed to ensure their survival.

Embarassing. And scary too.

Filed by billy at 12:39 pm under oblivion
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