The Mummy’s Bracelet wrote that the use of cat and dog fur has finally been banned across the EU from the start of 2009 (BBC story). More than two million cats and dogs are said to be killed for their skins in China every year. Many shoppers buy goods made with the fur unknowingly, as exporters attach false labels.
This is not only false marketing but really rather gross.
So a couple of days ago I complained about having a cold but just to make sure that I know how lucky I was I now get to complain about a real problem. I have developed sciatic nerv pain. I cannot walk, sit, lie down or do almost anything without feeling pain.
photo: pills by rover.- (CC by-nc-sa)
The good news is that I have dropped all my earlier principles towards medications and taken a nice little coctail of drugs to ease the pain. It’s not gone but at least it is manageable. Don’t feel up to working, just lieing down in different painful positions.
The hole in the ozone is blamed upon lots of factors, my favourite is blaming it on cow farts! Lots of long explanations about how methane gas from cows causes greenhouse gases seems to make us forget that we are the ones responsible for the massive cow population so therefore damage caused by cow farts is our fault.
What I did not know, and the Guardian made me aware of, was the fact that concrete is very hazardous to the ozone: “Making the 2bn tonnes of cement used globally every year pumps out 5% of the world’s CO2 emissions – more than the entire aviation industry.”
Engineers have now devised a concrete which reverses the process. The Guardian:
Novacem’s cement, based on magnesium silicates, not only requires much less heating, it also absorbs large amounts of CO2 as it hardens, making it carbon negative.
Very cool stuff. But what are the negative effects of this evolutionary step in concrete?
It feels good to be able to start the new year on a high note instead of my normal cynical rant so I was very happy to read in the Gaurdian about the retired professor and inventor Josh Silver who has invented adjustable do-it-yourself glasses aimed to be distributed to poorer nations.
The glasses are simple and cheap. They allow the user, almost without training, to adjust the strength of their own glasses and be able to continue their lives.
For me it is relatively easy to understand the impact of this invention since I am dependent on my glasses or contact lenses to be able to see anything at all. This is not a big deal in my life since the solutions available to me are both cheap and readily available. The article writes “in Britain there is one optometrist for every 4,500 people, in sub-Saharan Africa the ratio is 1:1,000,000.”
This is an amazing adaptation of technology from the complex to the manageable well worth praising for its inventiveness and social awareness.
Media Culpa reports a fantastic blooper from Swedish Radio (SR) when they reported the death of Nobel Prize laureate Harold Pinter on Christmas Day. The reporter managed to confuse the name Harold Pinter and turn it into Harry Potter.
“The British writer and dramatist Harry Potter is dead, it was announced today. Potter received the Nobel Prize in literature in 2005. He wrote about 30 plays and more than 20 screenplays. He was 78 years old.”
Listen to the news item during the 00.00 broadcast, Dec 26 (at the very bottom of the page). Download in mp3 format also available. The piece about Pinter/Potter starts at 1.26 minutes.
It’s been a long time since I had a real good discussion on determinism but recent discussions online and off have brought determinism back in focus. In particular the differences between technological and social determinism.
As a brief recap technological determinist believes “the uses made of technology are largely determined by the structure of the technology itself, that is, that its functions follow from its form” (Neil Postman). On the opposite side of the spectrum is social determinism which, as Langdon Winner states, “What matters is not the technology itself, but the social or economic system in which it is embedded”. Basically that society is not controlled by technology but innovation and the consequences of technology are shaped through the influences of things like culture, politics, economic arrangements and regulation.
What really annoys me with both these positions is their lack of flexibility. In order to make their positions work both the social and technological determinist attempts to be blind to facts which do not support their pet theory.
Look at file sharing – yes I know that this is a big target.
The regulation of file sharing through social, economic, political and moral attempts have been a failure in attempting to change the way in which certain social groups behave. Given fixed price, high bandwidth Internet connections and high storage – low cost mp3 players there is a high incentive to file share. Technology alone is not enough. The low chance of getting caught is also an incentive to copy.
But being either/or in attempting to explain the reason for file sharing is too narrow minded since it can only provide a limited view of the problem. So when the legislator attempts to regulate the problem it is indispensible to see both the social and technical forces which drive social changes related to technology.
During the Christmas rush I have not been in sync with my online life but I have been doing the necessary maintanence. This is mostly typical stuff such as making sure spam does not get through. On the 22 December I recieved the nastiest comment ever on this blog.
The comment was to a post on the Fourth Nordic Conference on Scholarly Communication and made nasty, arrogant, vulgar, abusive & sexual comments about one of the persons mentioned. The comment was a nasty type of Cyberstalking and I simply removed it. But I am still wondering what the correct response should be. Removal from the visible side of the blog was an obvious step, but should I be contacting someone? Maybe the victim? Or the police?
The comment was signed but I rather doubt that the name was a real name. The comment came from IP number 63.117.244.62 which according to the ARIN WHOIS Database may narrow the search done a bit. Beyond that there is not much more information.
While visiting New York Buddha stopped at a hot dog vendor stall and said “Make me one with everything.”
Buddha gave the vendor a 20 dollar bill and started eating his hot dog. After a while, Buddha asked, “What about my change?”
The vendor replied: “All change comes from within”
Runny nose, glassy eyes, red face, feverish and just a bit misarable. That’s right, after a great Christmas I have caught a minor cold and feel like crap. Sitting in front of the fire, wrapped in a blanket watching television, painkillers and tea. What a way to end the year…
Digitalization is not a cheap process for museums but the Victoria and Albert Museum in London has, in collaboration with Wikipedia, thought of a way to get a head start on the process:
Wikipedia Loves Art at the Victoria and Albert Museum is a free content photography contest organised by the Victoria and Albert Museum, Wikimedia UK and other Wikipedians. It is due to take place in February 2009 and is part of the wider Wikipedia Loves Art project that month.
The objective for the V&A is to compile a public digital collection of the major art pieces held at the museum. For Wikipedians, the objective is to collect images and use them to illustrate articles throughout Wikipedia.