(Planet Earth Inversed, from VladStudio -- click on image to reveal a larger version with all the interesting detail)
In the year following my knee replacement surgery and subsequent cognitive insult, I discovered (and derived a sense of balance from) The Miniature Earth, a webmovie which begins with the "idea of reducing the world’s population to a community of only 100 people" and providing a snapshot of who would live in that village. Perhaps all of you are familiar with it, but in case you are not: It has been updated since the original creation by Donella Meadows, and since her death, Sustainability Institute has carried on her vision and work.
Clicking on the link below will allow you to view the third version of The Miniature Earth. It's an invaluable source of perspective. I especially recommend viewing it with children, allowing them to ask questions and brainstorm afterward.
If you want to see Donella's original version (just a list, not the movie) while she was adjunct professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth College, go to State of the Village Report.
You can also download a copy for your own PC for $5, the proceeds from which will be used to fund a social project.
For those of you without bandwidth or who for other reasons cannot view the webmovie, I'm transcribing the text after the fold.
THE MINIATURE EARTH
If we could turn the population of the earth into a small community of 100 people, keeping the same proportions we have today, it would be something like this...
61 Asians
12 Europeans
8 North Americans
5 South Americans and the Caribbean
13 Africans
1 from Oceania
50 women
50 men
47 live in an urban area
9 are disabled
33 are Christian (Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, Anglicans and other Christians)
18 are Muslims
14 are Hindus
16 are non-religious
6 are Buddhists
13 practice other religions
43 live without basic sanitation
18 live without an improved water source
6 people own 59% of the entire wealth of the community
13 are hungry or malnourished
14 can't read
only 7 are educated at a secondary level
only 12 have a computer
only 3 have an internet connection
1 adult aged 15-49 has HIV/AIDS
The village spends more than $1.12 trillion on military expenditures
and only $100 billion on development aid
If you keep your food in a refrigerator
your clothes in a closet
if you have a bed to sleep in
And a roof over your head
You are richer than 75% of the entire world population
If you have a bank account
You're one of the 30 wealthiest people in the world
18 struggle to live on $1.00 per day or less
53 struggle to live on $2.00 per day or less
Appreciate what you have
And do your best for a better world.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
It may seem like a small contribution, but you can start doing your part by visiting the following websites:
Make Poverty History
Millenium Campaign
Millenium Goals
(Lino-block print by Liam Holiday)
Mahatma Gandhi said the roots of violence are:
Wealth without work
Pleasure without conscience
Knowledge without character
Commerce without morality
Science without humanity
Worship without sacrifice
Politics without principles”
Friday, May 23, 2008
THE MINIATURE EARTH
Thursday, March 6, 2008
I'VE POSTED AT MAOIST ORANGE CAKE
(Newly discovered photo of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan, July 1888 in Brewster, Cape Cod, Massachusetts -- Helen is eight and Anne has been her teacher for about a year)
Just to let you all know, I've posted today at the other blog I sometimes write for, Maoist Orange Cake. Go here to read.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
SUPER BULLSHIT
There will be no scores reported at this blog today, and no team colors displayed.
I love the Olympics, I love people who engage in physical activity for work or play, and, within limits, I can see the value of team sports. But what appears on television is entertainment, not a reflection of character or even regional pride. Organized sports in this country is part of the hired entertainment complex. It has no meaning beyond that, and it has no place being part of news broadcasts. It is no more news than what's on sale at Wal-Mart or what color Britney wore today.
Many people close to me have argued that playing sports offers a healthy outlet for natural human aggression. Well, first of all, I don't feel that kind of aggression or the need to slam my body against that of another, and I think I'm a natural human. Second, I see no evidence that men who play sports for a living are less aggressive or violent than other men, and plenty of evidence indicating they are more so.
As I see it, organized sports serves eight main functions:
(1) It offers the daydream of "getting rich" to entire classes of folks who would never have a hope otherwise of lifting themselves from poverty and foreshortened hard-working lives. It's as much a fantasy as the notion of becoming a "star" is. Feeding that myth doesn't just keep American Idol and ESPN on the air, it also keeps a huge number of people from realizing how rigidly class stratified our culture is and maybe doing something about it.
(2) It offers a way for men, mostly white men, to funnel a great deal of money directly into the educations and pockets of other men, almost entirely bypassing women (Title IX notwithstanding).
(3) It gives white bigots everywhere an excuse to claim they are not racist. "I love Michael Jordan, man." Uh-huh. Dating your daughter? Moving his less affluent cousins onto your block? Hanging with his buddies on the street corner? Running as your President?
(4) It gives men who are terrified of their own feelings and terrified of the company of other men an excuse to hang out, pretend they are close, and have something to talk about with no requirement that they engage their intellect or their emotions.
(5) It has given these same men an excuse to not spend time with their families on weekend or holidays.
(6) It gives men a pretext for feasting their gaze on the bodies of other men. Exaggerated shoulders via padding, cup-enhanced codpieces and pants that cling lovingly tight to buttocks, all without a clearly visible face or the need for conversation: A pederast's dream but also a safe haven for the ordinary longing men and boys have (but are denied) for basic human touch with their own kind.
(7) It affords a pretend way for men to be smart: Memorizing statistics as a substitute for thinking. Once a game is over, the stats involved in its playing are of no consequence whatsoever. Time marches on. But men who cannot remember the birthdays of their own children or parents can tell you inning by inning numbers of a game thirty years ago, and get jobs based on that ability. It also offers dumbed-down "truth is simple" metaphors as a replacement for the real complexity of social organization and struggle. If you've heard one athlete post-game try to explain why they won or lost, you've heard them all. It's nonsense to ask them the question. It's delusional.
(8) Most of all, it maintains the cult-like worship of masculinity as what separates men from all Others. Jock is a key synonym for masculine. A few women dare to interlope, and get called dykes or nappy-headed hos as a result.
I lived a dozen years without Super Bowls occurring, and let me assure you, people still had good, productive lives before 1967. I can remember when the evening news had actual speeches from politicians in them, and interviews with concerned citizens that lasted longer than 1.7 seconds. If you couldn't attend a game, you missed it, buddy. You could read the scores next day in the paper but there were more important things to think about. Like disaster preparedness, climate change, genocide around the globe, rape, inequality, child abuse -- when did we vote on removing those from the news in favor of watching grown men toss balls around?
As long as we're taking on the massive imbalance in this country, I'd like to see sports returned to playing fields where it is funded locally, with team slots and scholarships open to all regardless of ability. It should be relegated to "fluff for the fluffy-brained" TV as surely as specials about Natalee Holloway and Anna Nicole Smith (who are, like the Elvis T-shirt says, "Dead. Really dead.")
And if you're having trouble seeing this objectively, here's a few questions for ya:
What would you do with your sons if you didn't have school sports to babysit them?
How would your relationship with your spouse fare if watching sports on TV was reduced to one game a week?
What if sewing became a competitive event, with every stitching lingered over in close-ups? (Way more interesting than golf or most of what goes on in a baseball game.) What if folks memorized the cost of Butterick vs. McCall's patterns back into the early part of last century and could reel off the minute changes in styles at hard-drinking "sewing" bars? What if using steroids to increase hemming and basting speed was thought to merit Congressional investigation? At least with a sewing competition, you'd have usable garments at the end instead of Gatorade stains and future orthopedic bills.
I'm now going to dare turn on my TV and see if the crapfest is over yet.
Saturday, September 8, 2007
BROAD CAST 8 SEPTEMBER 2007: REALITY OR REAL-LITE?
I've written more than once about the American myth of self-invention and what trouble it's gotten us into. I guess great minds (?) think alike, because Stephen Colbert just produced a "The Word" segment on this topic. Here's a quote from it:
But now, Wiki-Scanner threatens another concept that’s even more American than democracy: self-invention. The idea that you can be whoever you want to be, whoever you say you are. Now you may come from generations of Connecticut blue-bloods and gone to the finest prep schools out east, but if you clear brush and talk with a Texas twang, you are a cowboy!
(Quilt "Talk of Nation" by Anna Young of the extraordinary Gee's Bend quilters)
Orcinus (I seem to recommend them a lot) has produced another superb essay on the intersection of racism and classism at What's Lynching Got To Do With The Price of Cotton? It's very worth the long read, and especially going to the suggested essays at the end on an effective truth and reconciliation process. For now, here's a quote from it:
"It's old news that economic stress increases tension between the various working classes in America. But [a new study linked to in the article] study brings up a couple points that shed some new light on where we find ourselves today.
"First, the study is striking in that it shows very directly how a poorly-performing economy correlates with extreme forms of racial violence. Whether it's violence against African-Americans in the South during the lynching years, Asians on the West Coast in the first part of the 20th century, or Mexicans in today's faltering market, a depressed white working class always means those just below them in the economic pecking order are sitting ducks for a wave of vigilante violence. The more you look at the history, the clearer it appears that the cause-and-effect relationship is both ubiquitous and inevitable. It's a fact of American life that whenever the economy tanks, people of color are going to pay the price in blood.
"Right now, of course, the wealth gap in this country is yawning ever-wider. It's as big now as it was during the 1920s heyday of sundowning and lynching across the country. (snip) When you get this many have-nots, there are only two ways to go. They're either going to turn on each other -- or organize.
"Which brings me to my second point. This kind of violence has always been instigated with a hard shove from the economic royalists, who would rather have the lower classes killing each other on the courthouse lawns rather than going inside the courthouses to challenge the structural inequalities they find so profitable. We know the Minutemen are backed by wealthy supporters, who are using the group to promote exactly the same kind of racial scapegoating that tore apart the early Populists -- and, no doubt, for exactly the same reasons. Now, as ever, divide-and-conquer is proving to be a handy-dandy little trick that never fails to prevent people with similar economic interests from recognizing their common concerns, and pulling together for real, long-term change."
I was fascinated by an article in the Washington Post about how Persistence of Myths Could Alter Public Policy Approach. I'm going to quote from it at length because it has some subtle, precise points that I think we need to learn in order to effectively counteract the massive lying of Bushistas:
"The research is painting a broad new understanding of how the mind works. Contrary to the conventional notion that people absorb information in a deliberate manner, the studies show that the brain uses subconscious "rules of thumb" that can bias it into thinking that false information is true. Clever manipulators can take advantage of this tendency.
"The experiments also highlight the difference between asking people whether they still believe a falsehood immediately after giving them the correct information, and asking them a few days later. Long-term memories matter most in public health campaigns or political ones, and they are the most susceptible to the bias of thinking that well-recalled false information is true.
"The experiments do not show that denials are completely useless; if that were true, everyone would believe the myths. But the mind's bias does affect many people, especially those who want to believe the myth for their own reasons, or those who are only peripherally interested and are less likely to invest the time and effort needed to firmly grasp the facts.
"The research also highlights the disturbing reality that once an idea has been implanted in people's minds, it can be difficult to dislodge. Denials inherently require repeating the bad information, which may be one reason they can paradoxically reinforce it.
"Indeed, repetition seems to be a key culprit. Things that are repeated often become more accessible in memory, and one of the brain's subconscious rules of thumb is that easily recalled things are true.
"Many easily remembered things, in fact, such as one's birthday or a pet's name, are indeed true. But someone trying to manipulate public opinion can take advantage of this aspect of brain functioning. In politics and elsewhere, this means that whoever makes the first assertion about something has a large advantage over everyone who denies it later.
"Furthermore, a new experiment by Kimberlee Weaver at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and others shows that hearing the same thing over and over again from one source can have the same effect as hearing that thing from many different people -- the brain gets tricked into thinking it has heard a piece of information from multiple, independent sources, even when it has not. Weaver's study was published this year in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
"The experiments by Weaver, Schwarz and others illustrate another basic property of the mind -- it is not good at remembering when and where a person first learned something. People are not good at keeping track of which information came from credible sources and which came from less trustworthy ones, or even remembering that some information came from the same untrustworthy source over and over again. Even if a person recognizes which sources are credible and which are not, repeated assertions and denials can have the effect of making the information more accessible in memory and thereby making it feel true, said Schwarz.
"Experiments by Ruth Mayo, a cognitive social psychologist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, also found that for a substantial chunk of people, the "negation tag" of a denial falls off with time. Mayo's findings were published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology in 2004.
"If someone says, 'I did not harass her,' I associate the idea of harassment with this person," said Mayo, explaining why people who are accused of something but are later proved innocent find their reputations remain tarnished. "Even if he is innocent, this is what is activated when I hear this person's name again.
"If you think 9/11 and Iraq, this is your association, this is what comes in your mind," she added. "Even if you say it is not true, you will eventually have this connection with Saddam Hussein and 9/11."
"Mayo found that rather than deny a false claim, it is better to make a completely new assertion that makes no reference to the original myth. Rather than say, as Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) recently did during a marathon congressional debate, that "Saddam Hussein did not attack the United States; Osama bin Laden did," Mayo said it would be better to say something like, "Osama bin Laden was the only person responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks" -- and not mention Hussein at all.
"The psychologist acknowledged that such a statement might not be entirely accurate -- issuing a denial or keeping silent are sometimes the only real options. So is silence the best way to deal with myths? Unfortunately, the answer to that question also seems to be no.
"Another recent study found that when accusations or assertions are met with silence, they are more likely to feel true, said Peter Kim, an organizational psychologist at the University of Southern California. He published his study in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
"Myth-busters, in other words, have the odds against them."
(Willow Rosenberg and Tara Maclay)
One of the most effective tools we mythbusters DO have is humor. For all you Buffy fans, here's a short, hilarious quiz: GOP Frontrunner or Buffy Villain: You Decide!
A recent article from the Sci-Tech section of CBS News covers a study which illustrates in interesting detail how one of the evils of sexism -- the reduction of women to their appearance -- is internalized and reinforced by both genders:
"In the study, participants were asked before the session to fill out a questionnaire about what they were looking for in a mate, listing such categories as wealth and status, family commitment, physical appearance, healthiness and attractiveness. After the session, the researchers compared what the participants said they were looking for with the people they actually chose to ask for another date.
"Men's choices did not reflect their stated preferences, the researchers concluded. Instead, men appeared to base their decisions mostly on the women's physical attractiveness. The men also appeared to be much less choosy. Men tended to select nearly every woman above a certain minimum attractiveness threshold, Todd said.
"Women's actual choices, like men's, did not reflect their stated preferences, but they made more discriminating choices, the researchers found. The scientists said women were aware of the importance of their own attractiveness to men, and adjusted their expectations to select the more desirable guys.
"Women made offers to men who had overall qualities that were on a par with the women's self-rated attractiveness. They didn't greatly overshoot their attractiveness," Todd said, "because part of the goal for women is to choose men who would stay with them".
But, he added, "they didn't go lower. They knew what they could get and aimed for that level." So, it turns out, the women's attractiveness influenced the choices of the men and the women."
(Image from the wonderfully irreverent Art Is Not A Scam)
And, back to humor for our conclusion, a completely heartening story from the Asheville, Tennessee IndyMedia covers how creative and courageous prostestors used ridicule in a brilliant way to drive a Nazi and Klan rally out of Knoxville. Read it and pass it on! White Flour Forever!
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
BROAD CAST, 28 August 2007
GONZO is gone. Two more threats to democracy to go.
(Image from Zaius Nation, copyright theirs)
Zaius Nation asks the question: How many Bush administration officials does it take to change a light bulb?
The answer is seven:
* One to deny that a light bulb needs to be replaced.
* One to attack and question the patriotism of anyone who has questions about the light bulb.
* One to blame the previous administration for the need of a new light bulb.
* One to arrange the invasion of a country rumored to have a secret stockpile of light bulbs.
* One to get together with Vice President Cheney and figure out how to pay Halliburton one million dollars for each light bulb.
* One to arrange a photo-op session showing Bush changing the light bulb while dressed in a flight suit and wrapped in an American flag.
* And finally, one to explain to Bush the difference between screwing a light bulb and screwing the country. 
Reader Kat Miller from the East Bay turned me on to this article, Gay Unions Sanctioned in Medieval Europe
written by Jeanna Bryner -- It's short, so I'm going to reprint it here.
Civil unions between male couples existed around 600 years ago in medieval Europe, a historian now says.
Historical evidence, including legal documents and gravesites, can be interpreted as supporting the prevalence of homosexual relationships hundreds of years ago, said Allan Tulchin of Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania.
If accurate, the results indicate socially sanctioned same-sex unions are nothing new, nor were they taboo in the past.
“Western family structures have been much more varied than many people today seem to realize," Tulchin writes in the September issue of the Journal of Modern History. "And Western legal systems have in the past made provisions for a variety of household structures.”
For example, he found legal contracts from late medieval France that referred to the term "affrèrement," roughly translated as brotherment. Similar contracts existed elsewhere in Mediterranean Europe, Tulchin said.
In the contract, the "brothers" pledged to live together sharing "un pain, un vin, et une bourse," (that's French for one bread, one wine and one purse). The "one purse" referred to the idea that all of the couple's goods became joint property. Like marriage contracts, the "brotherments" had to be sworn before a notary and witnesses, Tulchin explained.
The same type of legal contract of the time also could provide the foundation for a variety of non-nuclear households, including arrangements in which two or more biological brothers inherited the family home from their parents and would continue to live together, Tulchin said.
But non-relatives also used the contracts. In cases that involved single, unrelated men, Tulchin argues, these contracts provide “considerable evidence that the affrèrés were using affrèrements to formalize same-sex loving relationships."
The ins-and-outs of the medieval relationships are tricky at best to figure out.
"I suspect that some of these relationships were sexual, while others may not have been," Tulchin said. "It is impossible to prove either way and probably also somewhat irrelevant to understanding their way of thinking. They loved each other, and the community accepted that.” 
(Quiet Sea by 6 Brago)
LiveScience has a number of interesting Top Ten lists. I'm going to excerpt a few items from one of them, 10 Things You Didn't Know About You
Number 9: Body Position Affects Your Memory
Can't remember your anniversary, hubby? Try getting down on one knee. Memories are highly embodied in our senses. A scent or sound may evoke a distant episode from one's childhood. The connections can be obvious (a bicycle bell makes you remember your old paper route) or inscrutable. A recent study helps decipher some of this embodiment. An article in the January 2007 issue of Cognition reports that episodes from your past are remembered faster and better while in a body position similar to the pose struck during the event.
My Note: The first time I every worked on an incest memory, it was triggered by re-enacting a scene where I was sitting in a bathtub and Shelley played the role of my older brother, putting his arm into my imaginary bathwater. The next thing I remembered, I was trying to choke her and the other women in the group were pulling me off her. One of them -- Angie Romagnoli -- said "You got some fucking issues, woman, you better get clear before you kill somebody." Yeah.
Number 6: Thousands of Eggs Unused by Ovaries
When a woman reaches her late 40s or early 50s, the monthly menstrual cycle that controls her hormone levels and readies ova for insemination ceases. Her ovaries have been producing less and less estrogen, inciting physical and emotional changes across her body. Her underdeveloped egg follicles begin to fail to release ova as regularly as before. The average adolescent girl has 34,000 underdeveloped egg follicles, although only 350 or so mature during her life (at the rate of about one per month). The unused egg follicles then deteriorate. With no potential pregnancy on the horizon, the brain can stop managing the release of ova.
My Note: Another fact I learned from Maria Limon years ago: All of the eggs you have inside you as a woman were formed while you were still in your mother's uterus. Thus, you were once an egg inside your grandmother as well as your mother! No wonder matrilineage is so powerful.
Number 5: Puberty Reshapes Brain Structure, Makes for Missed Curfews
We know that hormone-fueled changes in the body are necessary to encourage growth and ready the body for reproduction. But why is adolescence so emotionally unpleasant? Hormones like testosterone actually influence the development of neurons in the brain, and the changes made to brain structure have many behavioral consequences. Expect emotional awkwardness, apathy and poor decision-making skills as regions in the frontal cortex mature.
My Note: And you want to inject incompletely understood hormones WHY, exactly? Because it makes you "feel" like you can think better? Yeah, I used to hear that from druggies in the 70's, too.
Number 1: Your Skin Has Four Colors
All skin, without coloring, would appear creamy white. Near-surface blood vessels add a blush of red. A yellow pigment also tints the canvas. Lastly, sepia-toned melanin, created in response to ultraviolet rays, appears black in large amounts. These four hues mix in different proportions to create the skin colors of all the peoples of Earth.
My Note: Thus, skin color is simply how our human DNA for all colors is expressed by each individual. The genes are the same, which is why there is no genetic entity known as "race". The epigenetic expression of that gene is what makes you look the way you do. There is only one race, known as human.
I have to share a computer with Dinah and I frequently find the screen left on LOL Cats or I Can Has Cheeseburger. She likes not only the photos but also the fact that cat language (with its own spelling and grammar) is becoming recognized as a respected form of English. Her friend, Little Gator, turned her on to the following sites as well:
The Laugh Out Loud Cats -- LOLcats as early 20th century newspaper cartoons
An original Star Trek episode some with LOL Cats-style captioning
Same thing done with Star Trek: The Next Generation
And -- not cats but still interesting to Dinah because it's gerbils, a.k.a. snacks, with some gay innuendo thrown in at Gebrils (no, that's not a mispelling)
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