animal

Mumbai Wildlife

Last night before going to be I saw a cockroach scuttling over the back of the sofa in my room. I know they are clean and harmless â?? they still give me the creeps. Otherwise Mumbai wildlife is a bit disappointing. No elephants have been spotted at all. Some (not many) cows, goats and cats. The most visible wildlife in the city are the dogs that sleep all day. These are medium sized shorthaired mongrels. More domestic pedigree dogs are walked on a leash.

The other common animals in the city are the ubiquitous crows, small with impressive beaks, they seem to be crowing everywhere in load sounds which demand attention. In general the animals are kindly ignored â?? not sure if this is kind but it beats the traditional cruelty.

Posted on by mklang

Resistance Fashion

Resistance to fashion is a topic that occasionally appears. Such resistance can take the form of animal rights activists protesting against the fur trade (e.g. Coalition to abolish the fur trade), it can take the form of protests against the use of anorectic models (e.g. the Spanish Association in Defense of Attention for Anorexia and Bulimia has managed to obtain the world’s first ban on overly thin models at a top-level fashion show in Madrid), or it can deal with protests against the conditions of workers in the textile trade (the most famous example must be Naomi Kleinâ??s work No Logo)

But what about the fashion of resistance? This is can be seen both as a reflection on what is fashionable to resist at any given time and as the actual fashion statement of the resister. The former is a fascinating subject since the world attention is fickle. The focus of popular attention varies even if the reason for resistance may remain â?? maybe a book here for someone to edit? (nudge, nudge).

However, it is the latter which is the focus of this post. Fashion and style can in themselves be both a form and a symbol of resistance. Styles of dress such as punk and hiphop are seen as resistance to the norm â?? punk went even further since its purpose was to provoke.

But even in the less extreme resistance has a fashion. Styles which identify, unite and exclude. Occasionally these styles establish themselves in the mainstream and there ability to provoke/resist are almost lost. One such controversial symbol is the image of Che Geuvara. On 5th of March 1960 Alberto â??Kordaâ?? Gutierrez took two pictures of Che Guevara. In 1967 the Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli received two copies of the famous print at no cost.

Che by Korda

Feltrinelli started making posters from the prints with the notice â??Copyright Feltrinelliâ?? down in the corner. The image was on itâ??s way to become an international icon â?? it has been transformed, transplanted, transmitted and transfigured all over the world. Korda never received a penny. For one reason only – Cuba had not signed the Berne Convention. Fidel Castro described the protection of intellectual property as imperialistic â??bullshitâ??.

Since then the image has gone from being a symbol of resistance and revolution to being a fashion statement. Today the image has achieved iconic status and is (ab)used on everything from posters to carpets. The image has even had an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The question therefore, as symbolized, by the Che icon is: How does an iconic symbol of resistance spread to a mass audience without becoming pop-culture and lacking in the symbolic value which was the original purpose? Or is resistance fashion a paradox since once it becomes a fashion it loses its resistance quality?

Posted on by mklang

Wanted: Swedish Activist Wiki

Sweden has had a long reputation for being boring. Many Swedes prefer to think of this not as boring but as safe. Trygghet (security) is very big here. Traditionally most of this security was believed to come from the state which would protect its citizens from the cradle to the grave in the classic welfare state captured in the Swedish term Folkhem (Peoples Home). In part this security comes from a long period of neutrality and lack of war or civil conflict.

The upside with security is trust. Swedes tend to be trusting and can therefore get on with their lives. The downside is that trusting people make easy targets.

Sweden does not have a strong individualistic rights based approach and therefore are very easily caught with their trousers down when official agencies approach them. A good example of this was this weeks police raid on the Pirate Bay where amongst other things:

  1. The police took more servers than they needed â?? thereby disrupting the communication of organisations not connected with the raid.
  2. The Pirate Bayâ??s legal representative was asked (required?) to leave a DNA sample â?? a gross misuse of the purpose of DNA tests and a form of intimidation.
  3. The status of surplus information is unclear at present â?? therefore creating an opening for police fishing expeditions.

How does one move from a position of trust and security to a greater awareness of individual rights, legal requirements and the demands which can be made on the legal system? Education.

To achieve this I think there is a need to create a website (preferably a wiki) on the legal position of online activists containing information about rights and obligations in the case of police actions.

A site such as this would provide information on (amongst other things):

  1. What can the police take (and limitations)?
  2. How much or how little should the activist do to help?
  3. Must the activist hand over encryption keys?
  4. What should the activist think about (ask for receipts etcâ?¦)
  5. What happens in the police station? (rights, obligations and experiences)

So does anyone want to start a wiki?

Examples of sites:

Activist Rights – Australia – Demonstrating and Civil Disobedience – FreeBeagles Legal Advice

Posted on by mklang

Did you miss it too?

Today (May, 25) was international towel day. The day is celebrated for being 42 days after the anniversary of Douglas Adams death. To commemorate the day and to remember Douglas – carry a towel…
I missed it – again…

Why towel day? Shame on you for displaying such ignorance. But in the aid of your further education:

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value – you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you – daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Towel Day 2006 – Innsbruck

So long and thanks for all the fish, Douglas…

Posted on by mklang

The Way We Eat

Question Technology always recommends the great books. He has increased my library with some interesting choices. Now he pointed out that Peter Singer & James Mason have a new book out: The Way We Eat – Why our food choices matter. Prepare to be saddened, angered and hopefully goaded into action.

Excerpt via Animal Liberation Front:

Most Americans know little about how their eggs are produced. They don’t know that American egg-producers typically keep their hens in bare wire cages, often crammed eight or nine hens to a cage so small that they never have room to stretch even one wing, let along both. The space allocated per hen, in fact, is even less than broiler chickens get, ranging from 48 to 72 square inches. Even the higher of these figures is less than the size of a standard American sheet of typing paper. In such crowded conditions, stressed hens tend to peck each other — and the sharp beak of a hen can be a lethal weapon when used relentlessly against weaker birds unable to escape. To prevent this, producers routinely sear off the ends of the hens’ sensitive beaks with a hot blade — without an anesthetic.

Posted on by mklang

Declaration on Great Apes – Spain

The Declaration on Great Apes consists of three main points:

  1. The Right to Life
  2. The Protection of Individual Liberty
  3. The Prohibition of Torture

The Spanish Socialist Party are introducing a parliamentary bill to reflect this declaration:

The Spanish Socialist Party will introduce a bill in the Congress of Deputies calling for â??the immediate inclusion of (simians) in the category of persons, and that they be given the moral and legal protection that currently are only enjoyed by human beings.â?? The PSOEâ??s justification is that humans share 98.4% of our genes with chimpanzees, 97.7% with gorillas, and 96.4% with orangutans.

The party will announce its Great Ape Project at a press conference tomorrow. An organization with the same name is seeking a UN declaration on simian rights which would defend ape interests â??the same as those of minors and the mentally handicapped of our species.â??

According to the Project, â??Today only members of the species Homo sapiens are considered part of the community of equals. The chimpanzee, the gorilla, and the orangutan are our speciesâ??s closest relatives. They possess sufficient mental faculties and emotional life to justify their inclusion in the community of equals.” (Spain Herald)

Rights for the Great Apes is not a joke and the Spanish Socialist party is to be applauded for their efforts. Dvorsky writes:

No one is suggesting that humans and apes are equal in terms of cognitive, linguistic or physical proclivities. I donâ??t think the Spanish politicians who are pushing for the bill believe that apes should qualify for the next vote, or that apes should be counted in Spainâ??s next census. (via IEET)

The way in which we treat animals as raw materials is sickening. Arguing for animal rights to a wider public involves being treated as a bit naive (if not simple). But begin by reading Tom Regan – The case for animal rights & Peter Singer – Animal Liberation and it becomes more obvious that the treatment of animals cannot be morally defended.

Wikipedia has a good introduction to the topic of animal rights with a bibliography.

Posted on by mklang

Define disaster?

What is a disaster and how does it compare to a catastrophe or a tragedy? A few months ago I began thinking about this. I wanted to use this as part of a future lecture on the effects of technology (and probably an advanced form of procrastination). The basic idea is that most of us have short memories. We trust technology implicitly and we see the failure of technology as a brief, unfortunate anomaly.

While writing about the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident these thoughts came back and I began to dig for a suitable list of man-made disasters. The man-made is an easy criterion since all technology is man-made (this is a specie-ist argument where I am brutally discounting tools made by animals and aliens). But what other criteria should be involved when attempting to demonstrate the failures of technology and their connection to trust?

  • War is a disaster but it is for the most part intentional.
  • The slow erosion of the ozone layer may be a disaster but â?? do we include it?
  • How does one differentiate between extinction and natural selection in relation to the disaster?
  • What about â??naturalâ?? disasters which have been triggered or aggravated by technology?

Therefore for the purpose of a lecture on trust in technology events can have disastrous consequences without being disasters.

Feel free to add comments on this! To be continuedâ?¦

Posted on by mklang

Intelligent Design?

BBC report that the American Supreme Court have banned the teaching of “intelligent design“. While intelligent design sounds like a valuable course at a technical university it actually refers to the newest form of anti-Darwinism. Basically the idea is that nature is too complex for natural selection.

Do you want proof that there must be an “intelligent” force guiding the choices nature makes then look at any complex animal or organism. This is of course bull. If anyone wants to believe – thats fine. But proof? No way. Also I would like to know if these people find “flawed” or even really bad design in nature as a proof that unintelligent design forces are at work?

platypus
Is the Platypus evidence of humorous design?*
To point at an anthill, beehive, weaver bird nest or the human eye and say “oh! thats complex” is fine. But to take complexity as a proof of a higher power is to regress “…back to cavorting druids, death by stoning and dung for dinner” (Blackadder). Historically, that which we did not understand was referred back to some higher being. But this gets scary today when we have both more knowledge and methods for understanding more of the truth than ever before and still some people prefer the mythology to the facts. Its time to face it (if you have not already done so) Darwinism may not be what you want to hear but it is a fundamentally better theory than anything else around.

However since Darwinism is not compatible with a litteral interpretation with the bible schools have attempted to ban the teaching of evolutionary theory. Therefore to comply with this certain schools of thought began developing intelligent design. Its not a well grounded theory – it does not have to be since it demands faith rather than proof.

Anyway the US Supreme Court have now found that Darwinian evolution must be taught as fact in biology lessons. Good work!

—

*Robin Williams about the platypus:
“Do you think God gets stoned? Take a look at the platypus… I think you think he might.” (mimes toking on a joint) “Hey Darwin! Yo. Here ya go! I’m gonna take a beaver, and put a duck’s bill on it.” (cackles stonily) “Then, I’m gonna give it webbed feet, and it’s gonna live in water. Then (tokes again) it’s gonna be a mammal, but it’s gonna lay eggs! Muahahahaha! Hey, I’m God, what’re you gonna do, eh?”

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Freedom of Expression & Computer Games

In the first case of its type in Sweden. The Swedish Chancellor of Justice has sued (Swedish decision here) the importer of the computer game Postal 2 for its excessive violence for an offence against The Fundamental Law on Freedom of Expression (in English here), which is part of the Swedish Constitution (in English here).

Chapter 5 art 1, Second paragraph states â??Under the same conditions, unlawful portrayal of violence whereby a person intrusively or protractedly portrays in moving pictures gross acts of violence against persons or animals, with intent to disseminate the item, shall also be regarded as a freedom of expression offence unless the act is justifiable having regard to the circumstances.â??

The importer states that they follow the recommendations of PEGI (Pan European Game Information). The game was rated 18 and also carried a red warning label from the manufacturer. 200 copies of the game have been sold in Sweden.

The Office of the Chancellor of Justice was introduced by King Charles XII in 1713. One of the duties of the Chancellor is to ensure that the limits of the freedom of the press and other media are not transgressed and to act as the only public prosecutor in cases regarding offences against the freedom of the press and other media.

The trial will start next week and should be interesting in many aspects.

Posted on by mklang

Blogging revisited

In a previous entry I reported reasons why a blogger (especially academic) should blog. Naturally these views are not unanimous. Here is an anonymous submission to the Chronicle of Higher Education signed by the pseudonym Ivan Tribble. Remember the Tribbles from original star trek fame? Small furry, soft, gentle animals whose cute appearance and soothing purring endears them to every sentient race which encounters themâ??with one notable exception: Klingons.

Anyway Ivan Tribble writes about blogs:

â??The pertinent question for bloggers is simply, Why? What is the purpose of broadcasting one’s unfiltered thoughts to the whole wired world? It’s not hard to imagine legitimate, constructive applications for such a forum. But it’s also not hard to find examples of the worst kinds of uses.

A blog easily becomes a therapeutic outlet, a place to vent petty gripes and frustrations stemming from congested traffic, rude sales clerks, or unpleasant national news. It becomes an open diary or confessional booth, where inward thoughts are publicly aired.

Worst of all, for professional academics, it’s a publishing medium with no vetting process, no review board, and no editor. The author is the sole judge of what constitutes publishable material, and the medium allows for instantaneous distribution. After wrapping up a juicy rant at 3 a.m., it only takes a few clicks to put it into global circulation.â??

The more positive approach to blogging mentioned above (Alex Soojung-Kim Pangâ??s If you’ve got a day job…) focused on four reasons to blog: Practice of the skill of writing, gain readers fame & credibility, participate in a discourse and finally market yourself. All these four are important to the academic (and to the blogger).

Tribbleâ??s argument against the blog concern the situation where you are a job applicant and the stuff which you have written online can be used against you. Both when the committee looked at the applicants online appearance â??…it turned out to be every bit as eye-opening as a train wreck.â?? Another aspect which causes blogging concern is the very existence of the blog… â??Several committee members expressed concern that a blogger who joined our staff might air departmental dirty laundry (real or imagined) on the cyber clothesline for the world to see. Past good behavior is no guarantee against future lapses of professional decorum.â??

tribble
Captain Kirk with Tribbles

So basically the blog is like the Tribble – cute, furry and soothing to all (except the Klingons) but remember the problem with Tribbles? The crew of the Starship Enterprise spent so much time cuddling with, and being cuddled by, the Tribbles that they no longer functioned as a crew. In a sense the blog can become like Tribbles. Surrounded by both our own and others we exist in a quasi world of our own creation which is not a bad thing unless we replace the â??realâ?? world with the blogged one.

Posted on by mklang