sweatshop

Slippery Slope to Spandex

Never thought of myself as a spandex kind of guy. Spandex is the extremely stretchy kind of material worn by athletes and the attractive crowd at the gym. Me I always seemed to be happier in baggy heavy cotton. Then in January I began to run. The more I ran the better I became. Running is not really fun and requires effort and encouragement. So I slowly began encouraging myself.

It began with a slightly more attractive t-shirt. Something to cheer me up and encourage me to run more often. Then I made sure that my iPod contained more lectures and podcasts than music. Running to history is the best distraction I can imagine. Nothing stops boredom like an lecture on the Roman invasion of Britain.

Slowly I bought another t-shirt, a “proper” runners t-shirt, and another and another. But still no spandex. That was still in a different league. But the more I ran the more I liked to run and the more encouragement I enjoyed.

Today I crossed a major barrier I ran in spandex – or whatever its called – and it was really comfortable… This is the slippery slope. It begins with a t-shirt and before you know it you are in spandex…

Where will it all end?

Posted on by mklang

Apple Sweatshops Spoof

Have you seen the Get-a-mac adverts? Basically a minimalistic, humorous set of adverts (watch them here) begging for someone to do a good spoof â?? and of course someone has!

The spoof is on the working conditions in Chinese factories manufacturing (among other things) Apple products. These factories are infamous for their low wage, long hours and brutality. More info in this article from MacForum.

See this spoof and others over at MacSpoofs â??Get-a-macâ?? category.

Posted on by mklang

The guilt of a travelling techie

I replaced my iPod yesterday after the total collapse of my last one. Today I read about the iSweatshops. The iPods are assembled in China by mainly female workers. The workforceâ?¦

â?¦resides in “iPod cities” with as many as 200,000 employees. Outsiders are forbidden, and 15-hour workdays are the norm. As you might expect, the wages are low, even for China. (Foreign Policy).

Tomorrow I will fly to Barcelona to participate in the GPLv3 conference besides being an event that I am looking forward to, the privilege of visiting foreign cities is one I value. Recently the discussion on environmental damage caused by flights has taken speed â?? especially with the rapid rise of cheap tickets which increases our â??unnecessaryâ?? flights.

Monbiot writes: â??Flying kills. We all know it, and we all do it.“

Monbiot is referring to the environmental effects of flying. He claims (convincingly) that while most of our reliance on fuels causing carbon emissions can be reduced without a too serious limitation to our freedom â?? this does not apply to flying. Reducing carbon emissions caused by flying means reducing the number of flights we take.

Both these arguments (iSweatshops & flying) have something important in common. They both bring into question things I appreciate. The question that must be posed from this information is â?? what shall I do about it?

When bringing this information to people he meets Monbiot writes of the listeners response: â??They just want to enjoy themselves. Who am I to spoil their fun? The moral dissonance is deafening.â??

The first impulse may be the ostrich approach â?? by sticking oneâ??s neck into the sand the bad news can be ignored. This approach should not be ignored â?? it works surprisingly well and is applied successfully by many. I tried this for a while â?? unfortunately it eventually wears thin. Another approach is self-denial. A no-excuses approach to technology and flights. This entails limiting everything to the bare necessities â?? without allowing for rationalisations. This involves denying oneself of many of the things that I appreciate â?? not an easy approach.

Can there be a middle-of-the-road approach? Is awareness better than ignorance? This argument would mean that our knowledge of the harm our choices entail legitimises our actions even if this has no real effect on physical events (better working conditions or environment). As much as I would like this, I cannot believe this is a solid approach to improvement.

The answer? Donâ??t look at me. I believe it is better to be aware than ignorant of the harm I do â?? even if this cannot mitigate the harm.

Posted on by mklang

Monbiot on impanted chips

Georg Monbiot has written very elegantly on the dangers of implanting RFID chips in people. Here is an excerpt (full post here):

There are, in other words, plenty of legitimate uses for implanted chips. This is why they bother me. A technology whose widespread deployment, if attempted now, would be greeted with horror, will gradually become unremarkable. As this happens, its purpose will begin to creep.

At first the tags will be more widely used for workers with special security clearance. No one will be forced to wear one; no one will object. Then hospitals â?? and a few in the US are already doing this(7)- will start scanning their unconscious or incoherent patients to see whether or not they have a tag. Insurance companies might start to demand that vulnerable people are chipped.

The armed forces will discover that they are more useful than dog tags for identifying injured soldiers or for tracking troops who are lost or have been captured by the enemy. Prisons will soon come to the same conclusion. Then sweatshops in developing countries will begin to catch on. Already the overseers seek to control their workers to the second; determining when they clock on, when they visit the toilet, even the number of hand movements they perform. A chip makes all this easier. The workers will not be forced to have them, any more than they are forced to have sex with their bosses; but if they donâ??t accept the conditions, they donâ??t get the job. After that, it surely wonâ??t be long before asylum seekers are confronted with a similar choice: you donâ??t have to accept an implant, but if you refuse, you canâ??t stay in the country.

via Question Technology

Posted on by mklang