Carbon Retirement — you read it here first (or maybe second).This combines together on one page various
news websites and diaries which I like to read.
Also: BBC In Pictures
| mySociety panopticon
| Francis is (my own blog)
[GENERAL] problems fetching app content from application servers | by Facebook Platform Status | 24 July 2008, 04:48 PM
we're having some DNS resolution problems which are impacting our ability to fetch content from some application servers. we're working to get this resolved as quickly as possible. in the meantime, if your application is being affected, you may be able to use IP addresses or other domain names in your app settings as a workaround.
Don’t Offset Your CO2 Emissions, Retire Them | by Climate Progress | 24 July 2008, 04:44 PM
Carbon Retirement — you read it here first (or maybe second).
I don’t normally endorse individual companies. But I have long thought European allowances were the best alternative to offsests and am delighted someone has made a business out of it.
The business opportunity is clear — offsets suck. At a policy level, they can destroy the environmental value of climate legislation (see “Boxer bill update: Probably no U.S. CO2 emissions cut until after 2025” and “McCain speech, Part 2: Relying on offsets = Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic“).
At a personal level, lots of vendors are selling very dubious offsets, including CCX (see here and here and here). I can’t imagine why you would waste your money on the most popular offsets, trees (see no trees and certainly not a Northern forest — even offset seller Terrapass disses trees). Or on the other popular offset, RECs (see “Schendler Part II: Good RECs vs. Bad RECs“).
But I know some of you out there really want to be carbon neutral, and while you have 100% bought renewable power for your superefficient home that uses a geothermal heating and cooling system to replace natural gas, and you bought a Prius for the family car and telecommute, you just haven’t figured out how to avoid some driving and flying.
What to do? Buy real emissions credits from the European market and retire them permanently! Now that is the best idea since solar baseload.
Dude, where’s my flying car? | by Futurismic | 24 July 2008, 04:10 PM
It’s become a cliche to ask why we don’t have flying cars yet, since they’ve been a dream of science fiction writers and gadgeteers for decades. It’s not easy to build a flying car, that’s why–but Moller International has been working on it for years and has announced that it is in the process of completing its fourth “Jetson”–well, they don’t call it a flying car, they call it a “volantor airframe,” but still–and expects to complete forty of them by 2009. And Moller, as a glance at its website will reveal, has much bigger plans down the road for their flagship design, the M400 Skycar. (Via Gizmodo.)
The two-passenger, saucer-shaped M200G Jetson is designed for operation at up to 10 feet above the ground (so its operators don’t need pilot’s licenses), uses fly-by-wire technology (meaning a computer takes care of all the tricky control stuff and you just have to point it where you want to go) and:
can take-off and land vertically, is the size of a small automobile, operates vibration-free with little noise and is also qualified to travel short distances on the ground as an automobile as well. The prototype M200X has completed over two hundred flights with and without a pilot on board and can be seen flying here. In addition to the M200G, the Company plans to offer the M200E, a kit-built version of its Jetson aircraft with sales beginning in 2010. The M200E will not have the same software enabled altitude constraints as the M200G and the Company expects the M200E to be operable as an Experimental class aircraft.
The eight rotary engines give the Jetson a cruising speed of 75 miles per hour, a maximum speed of 100, a range of 100 miles, and a cargo capacity of up to 250 pounds. The engines operate on unleaded gasoline and can also be configured to run on other fuels.
If you want one, you have to identify yourself as a “candidate qualified to bid” in the planned international auction by establishing your ability to meet the $150,000 reserve.
On the plus side, you don’t have to pay anything until you actually win the bidding.
I wrote a column about aircars back in 2003. In it I mentioned a company called Roadable, which has since been purchased by the Mundus Group, which is still pursuing the technology, and Urbanearo, which is also still in the game. Gizmodo, which provided the article quoted above, has also profiled the Cell Craft concept of Italian designer Gino d’Ignazio Gizio.
Of course, Moller has been pursuing flying cars for something like 40 years now. Has the time finally come for this concept to, pardon the expression, take off…or is it doomed to remain nothing but pie in the sky?
(Image: Moller International.)
McCainerly Hillbillies | by Climate Progress | 24 July 2008, 03:52 PM
TV Computer | by Havoc Pennington | 24 July 2008, 03:30 PM
I want a computer with the following specs to connect to a TV:
Seems like an obvious product, but I haven't found it yet. Anyone have a link? Email me and I'll post an update if I find something.
How to diss-a-peer: Real Climate Scientists take on TVMOB | by Climate Progress | 24 July 2008, 03:23 PM
The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley just can’t catch a break. Not only does TVMOB have to deal with well-deserved mockery for his un-peer-reviewed paper. He also has to deal with factual debunking from real climate scientists, in this case, the scientists at RealClimate. Here is a taste:
India: To Jaipur | by Global Voices (India) | 24 July 2008, 03:21 PM
Try the Chai goes to Jaipur, India and describes the place known as the “Pink City”.
India, Pakistan: Going to India | by Global Voices (India) | 24 July 2008, 03:18 PM
Ramblings goes to India, and has a wonderful and unique post on the Pakistani perspective.
Cuba: Glorious Future? | by Global Voices (Cuba) | 24 July 2008, 02:25 PM
Both Child of the Revolution and Ninety miles away…in another country take issue with a series of articles in the Christian Science Monitor speculating about Cuba's economic future: “It is particularly galling that the resourcefulness they all laud as the sign of a changing Cuba is a harsh expedient forced on a captive population - desperate to eke out a living any way they can - by the system under which they live.”
your guilt at work | by Danny O'Brien | 24 July 2008, 01:35 PM
So somebody reading this blog joined the Open Rights Group and sent me their confirmation code, even though I have already received enough notifications to be forced to write daily for this month. Sheesh. People, this is the Internet: have you not heard of free-riding?
So, anyway, to burn up any remaining goodwill, for the forseeable future, if you now join ORG at the tenner-a-month rate (or up your payment by a fiver), send me your confirmation code, and then tell me which of the following you’d like from me. Choose from:
I envisage you’ll be able to move around your vote when it’s clear I won’t reach any of these, but I’ll do that only at certain points, like in Mike Reid’s Runaround, so think carefully.
As a show of goodwill on my part, here’s Flowers for Debian, a piece I wrote a few years ago for Linux User and Developer.
Judith Supine Hits New York's East River | by Wooster Collective | 24 July 2008, 12:51 PM
Bush EPA says Americans are worthless | by Climate Progress | 24 July 2008, 12:45 PM
Oops. That was a typo. This was not a Phil Gramm, we have “sort of become a nation of whiners,” moment for the EPA. The headline should read:
Bush EPA says Americans are worth less
Last week, EPA marked down the value of a generic American from $8.04 million to $7.22 million. This is the value that EPA will use to judge “whether potentially lifesaving policy measures are really worth the cost.”
Normally, economists would say the value should rise over time, since Americans historically have become wealthier while incomes and productivity keep rising, meaning the lost income from a premature death should rise over time.
Now some have described nefarious motives to the EPA:
True Enough, by Farhad Manjoo | by Eric Nehrlich | 24 July 2008, 12:31 PM
Based on my previous thoughts about the decline of Absolute Truth , it’s not surprising that I wanted to read a book that is subtitled “Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society”. Manjoo observes that we, the body politic, used to agree on what was happening and the problems we were facing, but had different ideas about how to address those problems. Now we can’t even agree on what reality is. He wrote this book to try to answer the question “How can so many people who live in the same place see the world so differently?”
Manjoo cites several great experiments throughout the book that demonstrate the human psychology contributing to this divergence of “realities”. One is an experiment by Brock and Balloun to demonstrate selective exposure, which “set out to determine what happens when people are presented with information that contradicts their core beliefs”. They played audio tapes of speeches on various topics, but the tapes were recorded with a lot of static. The test subjects could eliminate the static for a few seconds by pressing the button. By correlating when subjects pressed the button with the subject of the speech, the experimenters noticed that people only wanted to hear information they matched their worldview already. The application of this idea of selective exposure in a media ecology with divergent viewpoints is obvious, as Republicans tend to listen to Fox News, and Democrats to NPR. We choose media that reinforces our existing biases, and therefore the biases become stronger, driving us further away from each other and reducing our ability to have a common dialogue.
Similarly, another experiment by Hastorf and Cantril demonstrates the power of selective perception. As Manjoo puts it, “Selective perception says that even when two people of opposing ideologies overcome their tendency toward selective exposure and choose to watch the same thing, they may still end up being pushed apart from each other…. each of them will have seen, heard, felt, and understood the “thing” vastly differently from the others who have experienced it.” Hastorf and Cantril illustrated this by showing a clip of a football game between Princeton and Dartmouth to students of the respective schools and asked them to “objectively” mark down any infractions they saw. From the same clip, the students got very different results, as Dartmouth students saw the Princeton team cheating on every play, and vice versa. Even when we see the same thing, we only notice and remember the things that fit into our existing worldview, and fill in the blanks accordingly.
So now take these two tendencies to only accept media inputs that match our biases and see only what makes sense to us, and combine them with our growing ability to locate ourselves with our communities of choice, and it’s unsurprising that we choose communities that think the same way that we do and reinforce our beliefs. After the last presidential election, a friend and I were discussing the result, and he said “Do you know any Republicans? I can’t think of any that I know.” which is an astonishing claim in a country where half the country had just voted Republican. But he lived in Boston, and I lived in the Bay Area, and those communities are decidedly liberal. We had self-sorted into communities which matched our ideologies, shielding us from having to deal with conservative viewpoints. It’s much easier to deal with the straw men put up by liberal media than it is to deal with other real people who might make good points, a phenomenon Manjoo calls “weak dissonance” - we like being able to easily refute points with which we disagree.
These trends also play into the polarization of media. We want media that is “objective”, but alas, we don’t share a definition of what “objective” is. Manjoo calls this biased assimilation:
“… each of us thinks that on any given subject our views are essentially objective, the product of a dispassionate, realistic accounting of the world. This is naive realism, though, because we are incapable of recognizing the biases that operate upon us. … You think there are more facts and better facts on your side than on the other side. The very act of giving [the other side] equal weight seems like bias. Like inappropriate evenhandedness. … we all want objectivity, but we disagree about what objectivity is.”
Given that tendency to want “objective” news that caters to our existing opinions, and given a market economy where media channels are supported by viewership, it’s obvious why news outlets have become more polarized to satisfy audiences in a culture of niches.
I liked this book. It takes several real-world examples from across the political spectrum, from Swift Boat Veterans to the Democrats who thought the 2004 election was stolen to 9/11 conspiracy theorists, and describes psychology experiments that illustrate the underlying principles that drive such behavior. Ironically, part of the reason I liked the book is that it played into my own pre-existing biases about the fragility of Truth. Regardless, it’s a quick read that provides some insight into the world of splintering reality that we live in.
On the Street.....The Impact of Mens Accessories, NYC | by The Sartorialist | 24 July 2008, 11:50 AM
The women's accessories business is huge because of the impact the right bag or sunglasses can have on a total look.
We don't often hear/notice that same impact in menswear.
Well, here is a great example of a few small accessories having a major impact on a look and totally changing the perception of that look.
By simply adding a silver cuff, highly stylized sandals and a dramatic hair style; this gentleman has taken a basically preppy look and turned it on it's head.
Of course the proportions of the polo and the rolled shorts also impact the look but the first thing i noticed were his accessories.
ps don't forget to click on the images to see a larger version of the photo
Paris Cycle Chic & Celebrity Cycle Chic | by Copenhagen Cycle Chic | 24 July 2008, 12:12 PM
How can we not blog about this wonderful French blog called 'Bike in the City - Ma vi(ll)e à vélo'. The tagline means "My life/city on a bike" and it's all about a character called Leah, who lives a cycling life in Paris, both on the Vélib' and her regular bike. It's nothing short of brilliant and we especially love it because it is frightfully chic and it portrays an urban cycling life in regular clothes.
The illustrations are by Didier Néel - or Le Did - and the concept is the brainchild of Patricia Gallot-Lavallée at Kenazart Strategy Interactive.
The blog is a non-stop chic-fest featuring our protagonist living, loving and loving it as a 'Vélibiste' in Paris, with all the trials and tribulations that involves. Handsome men, silly motorists, rain and sun, flat tyres, you name it. All while portraying urban cycling just as we do here on the blog - as a normal, enjoyable, effortless transport option.
Brilliant stuff. I couldn't RSS the site fast enough.
Here's some links to our Vélib Week series from our visit to Paris back in May:
- La Semaine du Vélib' et du Vélocouture Parisienne
- Joie de Vivre Avec Vélo Libre
- Vélib' - Sociable and Sustainable
- Paris Cycle Chic pour hommes
CELEBRITY CYCLE CHIC
From the other side of the Atlantic a reader sent us some celebrity photos of Hollywood stars doing their cycling thang. I don't give a toss about the celebrities, but it sure is important that they are setting good examples for their fellow citizens. And looking good doing it.
On the Street.....Layered, Paris | by The Sartorialist | 24 July 2008, 11:05 AM
Future of a free internet | by YouthNet blog | 24 July 2008, 10:56 AM
Yesterday an article appeared on the BBC news site about the big ISP's in the UK signing some kind of deal with the UK Government to combat piracy. This morning it was headline news across BBC radio and television. Fergal Sharkey was asked for the music industry's view, but no one asked us consumers.
It's shocking and disappointing how a public broadcaster like the BBC frames the debate in such outdated and simplistic terms. It's at moments like this that it's possible to see just how out of step big media companies and organisations are with the issues that the rise of new media has thrown up for consumers. Their focus tends to always be on the issues new media throws up for themselves- not us. To coin a phrase: it's about privacy, not piracy stupid.
Rarely is consumer privacy raised as an issue in the music industry's war on piracy. Will ISP's be expected to handover personal data of their customers? How will illegal file sharing be defined when, for example, anyone can download mp3s of any music they like from prominent websites like Facebook and YouTube? What sanctions will they take against file sharers? Will young people increasingly see the internet as a constraint on their liberty, rather than liberating?
It's interesting to contrast the broadly sympathetic coverage that the BBC has given to the music industry's efforts to clamp down on file-sharing (hey, it's not just music that people share these days), with it's coverage of the development of deep packet inspection (deep packet what?) by the advertising industry "a system that tracks where people go on the web, and builds up a profile so it can serve up adverts based on what that person has seen" (BBC's Click presenter Spencer Kelly).
Yeh, deep packet inspection (DPI), it's the biggest issue in net neutrality at the moment and most people haven't heard a thing about it outside of the tech pages in old style mainstream broadcasters like the BBC. For the last two years the technology has been secretly trialled and is set to come on stream officially in the next month or so.
Both these issues raise questions of consumers' privacy, and both developments seem to suggest that consumer privacy should be sacrificed in the interest of corporate needs.
In May 2008 on BBC technology programme 'Click', the BBC interviewed Kent Ertegrul and Alex Hanff. Ertegrul who heads up Phorm- a company looking to profit from DPI technology- had his "most notable foray online was as the founder of PeopleOnPage, an ad network that operated earlier in the decade and which was blacklisted as spyware by the likes of Symantec and F-Secure".
Alex Hanff wrote his dissertation on the privacy issues of DPI technology with special reference to Phorm and has headed up the campaign against DPI in the UK. Hanff previously hit the headlines after being sacked from his job for airing pro file sharing views on BBC's Newsnight. He's also been the recipient of a lawsuit by Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal City Studios and Warner Bros back in 2005.
The head to head brought together the opposite ends of the spectrum in the modern privacy debate- that encompasses corporate spyware developers and file-sharing facilitators. It's a mainstream debate that is currently marginalised by mainstream broadcasters. But anyone interested in the future of freedom on the internet should be sitting up and taking plenty of notice.
The Sartorialist on Men.Style.com video | by The Sartorialist | 24 July 2008, 10:45 AM
Chiyogami - A Kaleidoscope Of Patterns | by PingMag | 24 July 2008, 10:03 AM
Chiyogami is brightly patterned Japanese paper — or Washi as you, ardent Ping reader, might be familiar with by now — on which all kinds of beautiful flowers, characters or family seals are printed. These intricate designs never seem to lose their magical brilliance and maybe that’s one of their secrets since, until today, people [...]
Photos of Preah Vihear | by Global Voices (Cambodia) | 24 July 2008, 09:44 AM
John Vink posted several photos of Preah Vihear temple which captured the tension between Thailand and Cambodia. Both countries are claiming the historic site.
Obama looks more and more like any other US politician | by John Redwood MP | 24 July 2008, 08:55 AM
Senator Obama is travelling to demonstrate he is a great international statesman in the making. The more he travels the more compromises he has to make, and the more hollow will seem his message of wonderful change.
Today in Berlin he has allowed himself to be billed to speak in front of the Victory Column or Siegessaule, a monument to Prussian militarism and their prowess in defeating European neighbours. It is not a wise backdrop for someone who wishes to send a message of peaceful change after the two Middle East wars of the Bush years.
More importantly, the message is no longer one of negotiate peace and withdraw American troops from far flung foreign lands. The pollsters and positioners that cluster around the big Obama cheque book have persuaded him to be tender and tough at the same time – tender on Iraq, tough on Afghanistan. They have even managed to persuade him of the Pentagon’s wish to widen the Afghan war to include the border lands of Pakistan, where terrorist now congregate beyond the reach of most American fire power. Just as Democrat Clinton became bomber Clinton under the advice of the Pentagon, reining bombs in many places in pursuance of US policy aims, so peacenik Obama is morphing rapidly into warrior Obama seeking to intensify the conflict in Afghanistan. The UK may still be in love with Obama because he is not Bush, but it is time as he approaches our shores to be more critical.
I liked his message of change and wrote favourably of his new approach to fund raising – asking for small sums from many rather than seeking big sums from the few – when he first appeared on the political radar. I thought he would do well and might go all the way to victory. I said at the time I did not think I would like his policies, although people ignored that and billed my piece as meaning Redwood wanted an Obama Presidency. I was predicting success, not backing him. I liked his use of words, his ability to reach out, and his ability to forge a new coalition of support – it was great politics. As I feared, what he is now offering should he come to power is altogether more disagreeable.
I have three charges against Obama the realist, three bones to pick with Obama the wannabe statesman. The first is I do not think he has shown a full understanding of the complexities of Middle Eastern politics. He is in danger of being neither effective peacenik nor effective warmonger, now he wants to widen the Afghan war but retreat from the Iraqi one. He has not explained how he would handle the relationship with Pakistan, and was uncomfortable in Israel. If he is unsure of the extent of his war aims and limited by positioning in how he can pursue them, it does not augur well. He will come to learn that Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are all linked - succeed it making it too hot for the terrorists in one of those, and they move to another base.
The second is his possible protectionism. His supporters often say he did not mean his protectionist sentiments, and would knuckle down like the Republican Presidents before him to try to make a success of the World Trade Talks and the latest round of reducing barriers to trade. If that is so, why can’t he bring himself to make the case for free trade? If he wants to remain new and fresh, he needs to be honest. If, on the other hand, he means what he says about protection, he will help make the world a poorer place.
The third is his likely support for higher taxes. His critics claim his social security taxes will mean a hike in the marginal rate of tax on higher incomes to 50% in the USA. That would be bad for business and bad for the USA as a place for business investment. If he is going to be yet another tax and spend Democrat it means he has not learned the lesson of Bill Clinton, who in his first term was fiscally more conservative to the benefit of the US and the world economies.
After high spend tax cutting Bush we need someone who will control spending and squeeze the size of government. The world needs a President who offers policies that encourage economic recovery. The fascinating political duel that has unfolded so far does not seem to have thrown up a candidate capable of doing what it takes to speed and broaden economic recovery. Both McCain and Obama favour more overseas expeditions by US forces, and both seemed wedded to high levels of spending. Both are concentrating more on the war on terror than the war on recession and Credit Crunch. There are probably more votes in the latter.
Print-on-demand in three dimensions - Shapeways beta launches | by Futurismic | 24 July 2008, 08:49 AM
Via Jamais Cascio and BoingBoing comes word of the beta launch of Shapeways, a Philips spin-off company that specialises in on-demand fabrication services. In other words, they’re like a LuLu for 3D objects: you design ‘em and email the files, they’ll “print” them out. Go check out their blog if you’re interested in seeing the machinery they use.
Fabbing is a great science fiction trope, because it has the potential to be used in both good and bad ways. For the good, companies would only ever need make as many of something as they could actually sell, leaving less for the landfills.
But here’s a flipside scenario for you: let’s say a marketing outfit manages to scrape the electoral register for names and addresses, feeds the resulting database into a service like Shapeways and instructs it to ship some dumb gimmick to every home on the list?
3D spam, folks. You heard it here first*.
[ * Well, I imagine Bruce Sterling beat me to it more than a few years back, and I'll bet Sven Johnson has mentioned it more than once, not to mention countless others. "On the shoulders of giants", and all that... ]
[image by oskay; object pictured actually made by CandyFab, a 3D printer that specialises in printing edible confections but which can work with other materials too.]
"Wait" lights faulty, 24th July | by FixMyStreet, new reports in Cambridge | 24 July 2008, 08:48 AM
None of the WAIT lights illuminate when the button is pressed.
Calling All Copenhageners | by Copenhagen Cycle Chic | 24 July 2008, 09:44 AM
Red light adjustments. A mobile, an ipod, lipstick... we'll never know. What is certain is that she certainly isn't in a hurry. Style over speed indeed.
CALLING ALL COPENHAGENERS!
I've been asked to make a video about Copenhagen bike culture - a kind of promotional music video. I'm starting shooting soon and will continue through August. Many of the shots will be in the style of the blog - just motion pictures instead of stills. However, I would like to round up various Copenhageners for a kind of casual casting.
I need all sorts. Chic cyclists, of course, but also older cyclists, families with kids in the cargo bay, men in suits, quirky bikes, funky people, you name it. If selected, all we do is go for a bike ride and I'll film. It'll be fun. No money in it, though. :-)
If you're interested, drop me a line. I'll tell you more about it on mail. Og på dansk, hvis du vil. Please write 'Cycle Chic Film' in the subject line. Thanks!
L.A. Bike Block Party
BFF Block Party LA 2008 from rossangeles on Vimeo.
Ross sent us this cool film he made from a recent event in L.A.. It's def a cool video with cool people doing cool things on bikes.
Caucasus: Tolerance | by Global Voices (Georgia) | 24 July 2008, 08:37 AM
Social Science in the Caucasus comments on its own research into the attitude of citizens of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia towards their neighbors.
Interesting photos - 23 Jul 2008 - Flickr | by Daily interesting photos - Flickr | 24 July 2008, 07:49 AM
Lobby the EU against copyright term extension | by William Heath | 24 July 2008, 07:31 AM
ORG is supporting a campaign against copyright term extension:
Copyright in sound recordings currently lasts for 50 years. An independent review (the “Gowers review”) commissioned and endorsed by the UK government says it should remain at 50 years. Yet the recording industry continues to demand that this term be extended. But term extension would be an injustice to European musicians and musical culture, and may harm our economy.
If you agree that copyright term on sound recordings should not be extended past 50 years, please, sign this petition today.
When last I checked there were 13,000 signatures.
Lebanon's Blood Holiday | by Michael Totten's Middle East Journal | 24 July 2008, 05:37 AM
Lee Smith (who sometimes pens guest columns for this Web site) just published a strong piece in the new British foreign policy magazine Standpoint about Lebanon's celebration of the return of child-killer Samir Kuntar from the prisons of Israel. The whole sordid episode besmirches Lebanon, but, as he demonstrates, plenty of Lebanese are rightly disgusted. More importantly he shows that while Lebanon is in real trouble right now, Hezbollah is doomed in the long run.
The Politics of Conversation | by Dave Pollard (How to Save the World) | 24 July 2008, 03:21 AM
 Four years ago I read and reviewed Keith Johnstone's book Impro, in which he explains how pervasive dominance and submission behaviours are in human interactions. He describes an example of physical dominance and submission (status displays) in our encounters with strangers: Imagine that two strangers are
approaching each other along an empty street. It's straight, hundreds
of yards long and with wide pavements. Both strangers are walking at an
even pace, and at some point one of them will have to move aside in
order to pass. You can see this decision being made 100 yards or more
before it has to. In my view the two people scan each other for signs
of status, and then the lower one moves aside. If they think they're
equal, both move aside. If they both think they're dominant (or if one
isn't paying attention) they end up doing the sideways dance and
muttering apologies. But this doesn't happen if you meet a frail or
half-blind person: You move aside for them. It's only when you think
the other person is challenging that the dance occurs. I remember doing
it once with a man in a shop doorway who took me by the forearms and
gently moved me out of the way -- it still rankles. Old people tend to
cling to the highest status they have had, and will deliberately 'not
notice' others while clinging fiercely to the (often walled) inside of
the walkway. A bustling crowd is constantly and unconsciously
exchanging
status signals and challenges, with the more submissive person stepping
aside. Shortly thereafter I read and reviewed Peter Collett's The Book of Tells that teaches you to read status displays in body language, and specifically these six displays:
Collett includes, in addition to body, hand, eye and face signals, some examples of spoken signals of dominance and submission:
Since then I have been speaking about the importance of Love, Conversation and Community, and specifically the integration of the three: Facilitating non-hierarchical, peer-to-peer conversations among people in community (i.e. with shared passions, shared objectives, or shared problems) who care about each other and their community. Today I asked myself: Are
these status displays, and our apparent unconscious need to make them,
interfering with communication, and undermining the achievement of
consensus, collaboration and non-hierarchical problem-solving? Since our bodies are always 'saying' much more than our words, even if we monitor and try to extinguish (as facilitators) more obvious dominance behaviours (bullying) and submissive behaviours (wallflowers), there is almost nothing we can do to reduce non-verbal signals. Yes, we can create circles and get rid of tables, but you will still see a ton of such displays, in posture, eye, face, hand signals and tone of voice. The courses I have taken in facilitation don't teach you to recognize or try to alleviate such behaviours, perhaps because it would be an impossible task. I know I am prone to slouch back, legs extended, hands on head with elbows out like antlers, a multiple dominance display. It must be very confusing to others when I try consciously to speak in an inviting, questioning, open-minded way while making such an aggressive non-verbal display! Likewise I have witnessed people speak passionately and articulately about something, but leave the audience unimpressed because their body language betrays a lack of self-confidence in what they're saying. In particular I have watched a woman speak in a soft voice (raising her voice slightly at the end of each phrase) and be completely ignored and discounted, while a man a few minutes later, speaking in a soft, measured voice, said the same thing and was hailed as brilliant, everyone scribbling down what he said word for word. So what do you think: Are there things we can do, both as facilitators and as conversationalists, to suppress power displays and displays of submission, so that listeners focus on what is being said, not how it is said or by whom? Last Saturday I mentioned an article by Andrew Campbell that retrieves and elaborates on a fascinating model by Vincent Kenny on 'Dead Language' vs 'Live Language' and how power politics in conversation 'deadens' the language and dialogue and saps its power, creativity and usefulness. Language in conversation, the article explains, is sometimes wielded as a weapon, to stop thought and creativity and sharing and connection and everything else it is valuable for. This is a second, more explicit 'abuse of power' in conversation. You know how it works: There are amazingly effective conversation-killers that those uncomfortable with change can use to stomp it out in a way that is almost impossible to defend against. "We tried that last year and it was a disaster." "If we allowed people to do that, we'd have chaos on our hands, costs would soar and productivity would fall." "We'd need to get the authority to do that from x and for reason y that would be almost impossible to get." Andrew's article provides more examples. This raises a second question: Are there things we can do, both as facilitators and as listeners, to challenge and reject 'dead language' that stifles energy, innovation, courage and other collective qualities of a group necessary to bring about change? I am very good at imagining possibilities (and throwing them out for consideration) and for gently (and not so gently) provoking people to want to change (themselves), prodding them to intend to act. I think these capacities are helpful in conversations in community. Maybe I'm meant to do these things in conversations, rather than being a 'neutral' facilitator. But since my imagined possibilities and provocations often produce these hostile dominance displays and 'dead language' responses, if I really want my ideas to get traction, I think I need to learn how to deal with these behaviours. What's your experience? Category: Conversation |
Spontaneous Social Symmetry Breaking | by Cosmic Variance | 24 July 2008, 02:30 AM
Physicists love spontaneous symmetry breaking. It’s a great way to reconcile the messiness of reality with our belief in simple and beautiful underlying mechanisms. We posit that the true fundamental dynamics of the world has some symmetry — X can be exchanged with Y, and all relevant processes are unchanged — but the actual state of the world does not respect that symmetry, which leaves it hidden (or “nonlinearly realized,” if you want to sound all sciencey). Deep down, a (left-handed) electron is completely interchangeable with an electron neutrino; but in the world as we find it, this symmetry is broken, and we end up with an electron that is charged and massive, a neutrino that is neutral and nearly massless. The Higgs boson that the Large Hadron Collider is looking for would be the telltale sign of the mechanism behind this symmetry breaking.
For reasons which escape me, this concept has not been borrowed (as far as I can tell) by social scientists and pundits more generally.* Which is too bad, as it explains a great deal. For example, appealing to the concept of spontaneous symmetry breaking would have been really helpful to Whoopi Goldberg on The View recently, as she patiently tried to explain to a distraught Elisabeth Hasselbeck why it’s just not the same when black people use the word “nigger” as when white people do. (From Sociological Images, via The Edge of the American West.)
Which is not to say that it’s always okay, or that there is no thoughtful critique of the re-appropriation of derogatory language by targeted groups, etc. Just that “If it’s wrong when white people say it, it should be wrong when black people say it too! It’s just not fair!” is far too simple-minded to carry any weight.
Let’s imagine that, in our view of a happy future utopia, all races find themselves in situations of perfect equality of opportunity and dignity. Everyone enters society with equal status, and people are judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. (The “symmetric vacuum.”) In such a world, arguments like “If you can do it, why shouldn’t I be able to?” would be perfectly legitimate. But even if we want that to be the world — even if we believe that the grand unified theory of social ethics involves a symmetry of rights and obligations under the interchange of various racial categories — it’s not the world in which we live. In the real world, different races don’t go through life with the same masses and charges (if you will). There really are such things as discrimination, legacies of poverty and exclusion, and so on. We can argue about the best way to deal with those features of reality, but pretending that they don’t exist isn’t a very useful strategy.
As Whoopi explains, many blacks have chosen to re-appropriate the n-word as part of a conscious strategy of fighting back against a power dynamic that uses language to keep them at the bottom. Again, one can argue about the effectiveness of that strategy, and the circumstances under which it is appropriate, and whether Jesse Jackson should really have used that term in referring to Barack Obama. But it doesn’t follow that “if it’s fair for you, it should be fair for me.” Here is a guy who sadly doesn’t get it; a white high-school teacher who is genuinely puzzled about why he got in trouble for calling one of his black students “nigga.”
I was contemplating writing this post for a long time, with the relevant symmetry being men/women and the social milieu being the scientific community. Too many physicists reason along the following lines: “Men and women should be treated equally. Therefore, any time we privilege one over the other, as in making a special effort to encourage women in science, we are making a mistake.” That would be a reasonable argument, if the symmetry weren’t dramatically broken by the state in which we find ourselves. Which happily is not a stable vacuum! (Note that the underlying assumption is not that different genders or races are necessarily equivalent when it comes to innate abilities; that is largely beside the point, and obsession about those questions gets to be a little creepy. But they should certainly have equal opportunities — and right now, they don’t.) Treating one group differently than the other isn’t what we ultimately want to be doing — it’s not part of the happy utopia — but it might be the best response to the current state of unequal treatment overall.
But Whoopi’s little teaching moment was too good to pass up. If the discussion of race and gender in the rest of the MSM rose to that level of sophistication, we’d all be better off.
———-
*I’ve been searching for an excuse to mention Kieran Healy’s Standard Model of Sociophysics. I’m not sure if this is it, but I’ll take it.
arxiv Find: Stars in Other Universes | by Cosmic Variance | 24 July 2008, 02:22 AM
Fred Adams wonders whether we could still have stars if the constants of nature were very different. Answer: very possibly! It’s in arxiv:0807.3697:
Motivated by the possible existence of other universes, with possible variations in the laws of physics, this paper explores the parameter space of fundamental constants that allows for the existence of stars. To make this problem tractable, we develop a semi-analytical stellar structure model that allows for physical understanding of these stars with unconventional parameters, as well as a means to survey the relevant parameter space. In this work, the most important quantities that determine stellar properties — and are allowed to vary — are the gravitational constant $G$, the fine structure constant $\alpha$, and a composite parameter $C$ that determines nuclear reaction rates. Working within this model, we delineate the portion of parameter space that allows for the existence of stars. Our main finding is that a sizable fraction of the parameter space (roughly one fourth) provides the values necessary for stellar objects to operate through sustained nuclear fusion. As a result, the set of parameters necessary to support stars are not particularly rare. In addition, we briefly consider the possibility that unconventional stars (e.g., black holes, dark matter stars) play the role filled by stars in our universe and constrain the allowed parameter space.
I’ve never thought that our knowledge of what constituted “intelligent life” was anywhere near good enough to start making statements about the conditions under which it could form, apart from fairly weak stuff like “life probably can’t exist if the universe only lasts for a Planck time.” So when anthropic arguments start to hinge on thinking that fractional changes in the mass of this or that nucleus would result in a universe with no observers, it seems more prudent to admit that we just don’t know. But putting any anthropic considerations aside, it’s still interesting to ask what the universe would look like if the constants of nature were completely different. How robust are the starry skies?
Wetlands destruction — another climate feedback | by Climate Progress | 24 July 2008, 01:28 AM
Wetlands are an essential ecosystem that promote biodiversity and flood control. They are also essential to maintaining a livable climate — since wetland destruction potentially accelerates global warming.
As reported in Science Daily, leading scientists are now meeting in Brazil at the 8th International Wetlands Conference, discussing actions to better understand, protect, and manage this key global resource.
How big a deal are the wetlands?
Azerbaijan, Here I Come -- UPDATED | by Michael Totten's Middle East Journal | 24 July 2008, 12:15 AM
So I just got invited to a week-long conference in the mysterious country of Azerbaijan in August.
I can't help but wonder how many people even know where it is. (It's between Iran and Russia, and around a fourth of Iranians are ethnic Azeris. One Iranian province is actually called Western Azerbaijan. The former name of the country was the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic.)
It should be damned interesting. I'll publish at least one article from there before I return to Iraq, and more than one article if it's interesting enough.
Tell me: what would you like to know about this place?
UPDATE: A reader asked what this conference is all about. It is being hosted by the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy, and it is called "Views from America 2008." There will be panel discussions on at least four topics: Elections in the U.S., pop culture's impact on the American image, the role of the Internet in politics, and the future of secularism and moderation in Islam.
The conference will last one day, but I'll be in country for a week. Meetings are being arranged with senior government officials including the Minister of Foreign Affairs, religious leaders, business executives, and think tank professionals.
So if you could talk to these people, what would you ask them? I can think of my own questions, of course, but you're my readers and some of you dontate money to my account, so I want to know what you want to read about.
Сдача своей крови | by DJ Drive's LJ (Georgia) | 23 July 2008, 11:05 PM
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ogneev пишет:
Дабы раз и навсегда поставить точку в этом вопросе сразу поясню: конечно я не строю иллюзий относительно личности Караджича и тем более не пытаюсь проводить аналогов с Россией. Но тем не менее считаю его настоящим национальным героем Сербии, которым патриотам последней следовало бы хотя бы гордиться. Каким бы он ни был, скольких бы он не убил, он воевал за Сербию и убивал ее врагов, так что не вам, господа, судить его. А нации, сдающей своих героев компрадорскому трибуналу, могу лишь посочувствовать, да и то не хочется. Сегодня сербы показали всему миру, что тех сербов, которых мы когда-то считали своими братьями, больше нет. Есть испуганный, поставленный на колени народец, не способный ни отстоять свою свободу, ни хотя бы умереть за нее. Сербов не жаль, поделом им с Косово.Я бы не стал обращать внимание на это моральное уродство, если бы не ощущение того, что, - в глубине души, - так думает очень много людей. Не верите? Почитайте свою френд-ленту!
DSC_8860 | by Ayesha's photos | 23 July 2008, 10:16 PM
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Interactive Strategies 08: Secrets Exposed | by HorsePigCow | 23 July 2008, 10:00 PM
I’m looking way forward to speaking at this. They have a great lineup and the conference itself has a really awesome theme…kind of a film noire bit about uncovering the secrets. Hope y’all can make it!
On the Street....Woman of Arles, France | by The Sartorialist | 23 July 2008, 09:38 PM
The New Trussardi Shop, Milan | by The Sartorialist | 23 July 2008, 08:41 PM
I'm adding this shop to my "must-see-whenever-in-Milan" list (the title is longer than the list)
Matt reading, just about to go home again | by Helen Wright's photos | 23 July 2008, 07:37 PM
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Field, cows | by Helen Wright's photos | 23 July 2008, 07:37 PM
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Stile | by Helen Wright's photos | 23 July 2008, 07:37 PM
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Walking, dappled evening sunlight | by Helen Wright's photos | 23 July 2008, 07:37 PM
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Field, pleasing cloud/sunlight effects | by Helen Wright's photos | 23 July 2008, 07:37 PM
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Dry stone wall | by Helen Wright's photos | 23 July 2008, 07:37 PM
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Matt and Zoë looking into the entrance of a disused mine | by Helen Wright's photos | 23 July 2008, 07:37 PM
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Something from Tolkien or something | by Helen Wright's photos | 23 July 2008, 07:37 PM
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Entrance to disused mine | by Helen Wright's photos | 23 July 2008, 07:37 PM
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Matt, Reuben and Zoë gaze into the abyss | by Helen Wright's photos | 23 July 2008, 07:37 PM
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Evocative warning sign | by Helen Wright's photos | 23 July 2008, 07:36 PM
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"An impressive chasm", although it doesn't really come across in this picture | by Helen Wright's photos | 23 July 2008, 07:36 PM
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Reuben reads the Health & Safety advice; Susan plays a supporting role | by Helen Wright's photos | 23 July 2008, 07:36 PM
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Matt and Zoë walking across a field | by Helen Wright's photos | 23 July 2008, 07:36 PM
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Crossing a stile | by Helen Wright's photos | 23 July 2008, 07:36 PM
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Zoë taking a photo of me taking a photo of her | by Helen Wright's photos | 23 July 2008, 07:36 PM
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Matt poses on demand | by Helen Wright's photos | 23 July 2008, 07:36 PM
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Susan poses on demand | by Helen Wright's photos | 23 July 2008, 07:36 PM
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Susan | by Helen Wright's photos | 23 July 2008, 07:36 PM
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Walking | by Helen Wright's photos | 23 July 2008, 07:36 PM
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McCain ‘nukes the fridge’: Now he believes that doing nothing can lower oil prices | by Climate Progress | 23 July 2008, 07:02 PM
How far we have come from the principled maverick of the 2000 campaign:
That’s right, the man who wants to be the next President of the United States believes that doing absolutely nothing — which is what Bush did when he reversed his father’s ban, since the congressional ban is still in place — dropped oil prices $10.
You know you have jumped the shark nuked the fridge (see below) as a candidate when even the White House paid shill press secretary won’t go that far:
Energy efficiency is THE core climate solution, Part 1: The biggest low-carbon resource by far | by Climate Progress | 23 July 2008, 06:17 PM
Energy efficiency is the most important climate solution for several reasons:
This post focuses on #1 — the tremendous size of the resource.
Of the 14 or so wedges we need to deploy globally by 2050, I have argued that about two are electricity efficiency, one is recycled energy (cogeneration), and one is vehicle fuel efficiency (cars globally averaging 60 mpg) — see “450 ppm (or less) Part 2: The Solution.” The International Energy Agency also thinks about four wedges are efficiency, see “IEA report, Part 2: the 450-ppm solution.” And so does Price Waterhouse Coopers, see here.
New ESA/Russian manned spacecraft pictures! | by Futurismic | 23 July 2008, 06:14 PM
Check out the Soyuz capsule replacement and conceptual artwork here.
One of the most unusual features about the capsule appear to be the thrusters and landing gear on its underside. Mr Zak said it would use these engines to soften its landing on Earth after the fiery re-entry through our atmosphere.
It’s interesting how the national space agencies seem to see the future in rockets, rather than space planes, for space exploration.
What with the Space Shuttle being retired in 2010, and with a possible alternative European plan for a manned version of the ATV called Jules Verne, as well as the American Ares V rockets planned for use in Project Constellation, it seems it’s no longer de rigueur to build spaceplanes unless you’re a private space tourism company.
[story from BBC News]
The real Smith Institute scandal | by Intelligent Giving | 23 July 2008, 05:25 PM
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The big news in charity-town this week has been the Charity Commission’s investigation of the Smith Institute, a charity think-tank with close links to the Labour Party. The Commission found that the Smith Institute “did not adequately manage ... risks to [its] independence,” and ran the risk of appearing party-political – a major sin in the Commission’s eyes.
It’s clear to everyone – apart from the Smith Institute’s trustees, it seems – that the think-tank was too supportive of the Labour cause. That’s why this story has received so much coverage. But the really interesting conclusions from the Commission’s investigation aren’t directly related to the Institute’s politics. The truly astonishing stuff concerns the lackadaisical way in which the Institute was run.
The behaviour of the Institute’s trustees – its legal governors – beggars belief. After a telling-off in 2002, the Commission asked the Institute to get its act together to avoid future accusations of bias. Like the helpful regulator it is, the Commission gave specific instruction to the Institute on how it could improve its game. The trustees said that they accepted these instructions.
But then, over the following five years, the trustees behaved almost as if the instructions didn’t exist. For example:
Cambodia: Traveling Along The Coastline | by Global Voices (Cambodia) | 23 July 2008, 05:23 PM
Caroline Finlay shares pictures from her three-day motorbike trip along the Cambodian coastline.
Officers recommend Tesco Approval | by Your Coleridge Conservative Councillor | 23 July 2008, 04:51 PM
The officers report about the latest Tesco Planning Application (which is for refrigeration plant and equipment that they would like to install in order to open a Mill Road Tesco without their earlier planned extension) is now available here.
As predicted, despite huge numbers of objections from around the City, the recommendation is for approval of the application, subject to conditions to protect local residents from noise nuisance from the plant. The officer has clearly indicated that the application needs to be judged on its merits, not on the merits of opening a Tesco per se, saying:
"In my opinion the application does not raise issues of highway safety, a view shared by the Local Highway Authority, which has chosen not to comment. As rehearsed previously, I do not
share the premise of many of the objectors, that highway safety is an issue in the consideration of the proposals for the condenser and the air conditioning plant, because approval of the plant will make certain the re-opening of the store and the traffic/congestion/safety issues rehearsed through the objections will arise out of that re-opening of a retail use by this applicant."
"While sympathetic to the concerns about the vitality and viability of the area and the perceived implications of the proposal for the well being of the local community and its diversity, I do not
agree with the standpoint that all those issues can be addressed on the back of a proposal for a relatively limited quantity of plant and equipment."
The application will be decided at the East Area Committee, agenda here, to be held:
Date: Thursday 31 July 2008
Time: 7.15pm for 7.30pm start
Place: St Philips Church, 185 Mill Road, Cambridge
In line with my personal policy, I will choose not to take part in deciding planning applications at this meeting despite being a member of the East Area Committee.
What are my views on this? I am not against Tesco's opening on Mill Road in principle, and there are pro's and con's to local residents of the introduction of some aggressive new competition.
That said, there are some very valid concerns about Tesco's plans, notably the impact from deliveries and customers to the local traffic situation. It was quite right for the extension plans to be refused for this reason.
If this application is approved next week (and I am struggling to see how Councillors can realistically object unless there really is something demonstrably dodgy about the noise reports), I think it is time for the objectors to recognise that Tesco has permission to open a store if they wish to do so, and move on to ensuring that all relevant traffic regulations are complied with and not altered for Tesco's convenience at the expense of local residents and other road users. For these aims, the campaigners would have my full support.
Hailing the future | by Forum for the Future | 23 July 2008, 04:29 PM
Hydrogen taxis get the green light for 2012
London’s aim of organising the “first ‘sustainable’ Games” has been given a further boost after plans were unveiled for a fleet of zero-emission hydrogen taxis, to be on the streets in time for the start of the 2012 Olympics.
read moretomowens | by It's Getting Hot in Here | 23 July 2008, 04:07 PM
So take Virginia, the old Commonwealth, the birthplace of some of the most esteemed leaders of American history: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and television’s the Waltons. Where are Virginia’s leaders now? On today’s political front, you have politicians such as potential VP candidate Governor Tim Kaine, a strong outspoken proponent of a new waste coal plant in Wise County Virginia and a dismal goal of 7% green house gas reductions by 2025. This is not even in the ball park of where scientists says we need to be. If that wasn’t enough, you have Rick Boucher in Virginia’s fightin’ 9th and one of Congress’s biggest champions of so called Clean Coal and the myth buster Carbon Capture and Sequestration technology. Granted there are some potential Clean Energy champions in the mix, but they need the loud uncompromising voice of the people in their ear demanding a clean and just energy future.
There’s an old story about Franklin D. Roosevelt that captures how the movement needs to think in terms of responsive leadership. A group of activists met with FDR in the Oval Office to urge his support for some liberal reform. After listening to their arguments, Roosevelt responded, “Okay, you’ve convinced me. Now go out and put pressure on me”
His point: Even a president can’t always act with ideal freedom. He too faces constraints–powerful leaders in Congress, bureaucratic resistance and inertia, opposition from state and local government leaders, potential roadblocks in the courts, and so on. Sometimes a president needs “pressure” in the form of a visible, well-organized, vocal, and articulate public movement to provide him with both political cover and supportive energy that permits him to do what he really wants to do anyways.
Student leaders from across Virginia are calling for exactly that, a PowerShift this October 10th - 12th at Virginia Tech. Noticing that the politicians of the Old Dominion aren’t quite where they need to be, the youth of today are excited, driven, and frankly a little pissed at the prospects being put on the table for their future. You saw it when they blockaded themselves to Dominion’s headquarters in calls of desperation and solidarity from a generation that will bear the load of a coal filled economy. Now they’ll show it with the largest mobilization of young people (apart from the Civil War) in Virginia’s history.
The plan:
1) Bring 1000 students from across the Commonwealth to Virginia Tech to be and hold the largest state summit on clean energy and youth activism. We need to be a LOT louder and where better to start then the cradle of coal country.
2) Get trained and inspired to take this movement on as our own for the taking.
3) Influence the major media: The Society of Environmental Journalists will be holding their annual conference three days after Virginia PowerShift. We will make sure they know what was accomplished!
Check out www.vapowershift.org and get more plugged in. There is a need for speakers, trainers, sponsors and great minds who can help make this thing a reality.
India: Co-eds and Convents | by Global Voices (India) | 23 July 2008, 03:49 PM
Bohemian Rhapsody on the the value of getting educated at a co-ed over a convent school.
India: On the Death Penalty | by Global Voices (India) | 23 July 2008, 03:45 PM
Law and Other Things on the Indian Supreme Court redefining the death penalty and life sentence.
The Life-Cycle of a Trope - Science Fiction’s Tragedy of the Commons? | by Futurismic | 23 July 2008, 03:00 PM
Blasphemous Geometries returns, like a surly postal worker on a rainy day.
This time Jonathan McCalmont takes a look at tropes - the riffs, clichés and plot enablers that form the backbone of much genre literature. Are tropes subject to abuse and overexploitation in the same way as any other limited resource? (more…)
meegee | by It's Getting Hot in Here | 23 July 2008, 02:23 PM
Citizens opposed to National Coal Corporation mining the Sundquist Wildlife Management Area
Yet another action from Mountain Justice in Defense of the Appalachian Mountains! Please Support Fellow Activists.
CAMPBELL COUNTY, Tenn., July 20 - Residents of coal-impacted communities throughout Tennessee and Appalachia took a stand today for the mountains of East Tennessee by marching on Zeb Mountain, a surface 
mining site owned by Knoxville-based National Coal Corporation. In the tradition of American Civil Disobedience, the march, organized by United Mountain Defense, Mountain Justice, and <