Month: May 2007

Let all know by these presents, 

whereas we favor strength, 

thereby any show of it, 

error is first upon the weak. 

‘You can go to your house, and you can go to your job, but we will always know where you are, and if you go where you’re not authorized, an alarm’s going to sound and a patrol is going to come pick you up.’

Receivers pick up the signals and relay them to a computer that displays everyone’s exact location. But radio isn’t the only way to monitor movement. Some are experimenting with digital scanners that read palm prints, iris prints, fingerprints, voices, or facial patterns. Each of these sensors might be part of robotic stress and lie detectors someday.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory has produced a complementary innovation: sound detectors that count the number of heartbeats in vehicles.

“It’s like watching a video game.”

Security services replaced with “smart” perimeters that eliminate the need for fences and barricades. Electronic sensors monitor barriers, seismometers detect suspicious shaking of property, and microwave beams pick up motion in land or building areas. A positive signal from any of the systems sounds an alarm, swings surveillance cameras to the appropriate spot, sets off warnings and sends a patrol car.

An encumbered population worried about dangerous behavior might rely upon virtual contact with the outside world such as remote employment or virtual college courses. or robotic meal delivery. Or telemedicine exam rooms, where the patient with a stethoscope or performing an electrocardiogram transmits the results are relayed over the Internet to a remote medical specialist.

These systems are not the future.
These are operating now.
For today’s prisoner.

Toxic melamine entered the human food chain not by accident, but deliberately.

“Dogs and cats die from eating the product, but apparently it’s OK to give it to livestock and humans.”, summarizes Emmy Koeleman, reporting from the animal feed hub AllAboutFeed.

“Although it is getting more complex each day, the details are starting to come to the surface. The whole pet food scare doesn’t include only pets anymore, it has spread to pigs and poultry and who knows what more! And when will it stop?”

“When US officials visited the source of the contamination –China- it was concluded that the use of melamine in raw materials (intended for animal feed and pet food) was normal. How can the use of a toxic ingredient for live animals be normal?”

“But what hits me most is that after all the panic, pet food companies did not destroy the pet food. No, that would be a waste! They sold it to companies that make pig and poultry feed. Is it just me that is missing an important part here?”

“The huge panic still fresh in my memory, I now realise that US health officials do not mind that the contaminated feed enters the human food chain? They say the health risks are minimal , but how do they know and where is the real data backing up this statement?”

“The real innovation in automobiles is taking place on the outskirts of a town in Switzerland, ” says Bruno Giussani in his monthly column for the Innovation&Design section of BusinessWeek Online.

The Hy-Light is a silent car with great speed and acceleration and amazing stability that produces zero air pollution. It’s a car built around a hydrogen fuel cell. The gas station is a group of solar panels. It’s 180 miles of energy is stored in supercapacitors: a compromise between a battery (which can store a lot of energy but isn’t good at delivering bursts of power) and traditional capacitors (which offer phenomenal power but little storage). The Michelin-designed electric motors and suspension are inside the wheels.

The announcement adds the industrially disruptive vision that “every Swiss will be able to produce the energy for his own home and car” through a combination of solar panels, a home electrolyzer, and a fuel cell.

Meditation may be a practice of withdrawing from normal life. There are other withdrawals as well.

Yoga is making some people rich.

There may be seriously luxurious hideaways deep in the forest. but the industry of yoga is much more than big budget hippies.

Yoga is an $18 billion dollar business.

But all is not calm in the burgeoning industry of yoga. “Yoga, Inc.” made by New York-based filmmaker John Philp and screened at the Toronto international documentary film festival, explores the money trail of yoga.

Philp is not surprised by yoga’s commercialization.

“In the l960s, yoga fit in with counterculture values, but today most people in the West view yoga as a form of fitness. When an industry is that big, commercialisation is unavoidable, and there will always be people swimming around the edges who are ready to cash in.”

As is the highly capitalized retail franchise operations backed by the flush founders of Ask Jeeves, yoga is a male-dominated field, even though women are 75 per cent of the people who take yoga classes.

In a rush to secure leverage in the market, some ventures are seeking to patent or copyright yoga positions and retail material. [story]

Aggressive activity in the sublime yoga sector has provoked the Indian government to enter the yoga marketplace in order to restrain expoitation and protect its cultural heritage. Last year it developed a National Knowledge Digital Library, an online data base that includes traditional Indian healing and spiritual practices to try to protect these practices against patents and copyright laws.

Can you patent wisdom?, asks Suketu Mehta.

“It is worth noting that the people in the forefront of the patenting of traditional Indian wisdom are Indians, mostly overseas. We know a business opportunity when we see one and have exported generations of gurus skilled in peddling enlightenment for a buck. But as Indians, they ought to know that the very idea of patenting knowledge is a gross violation of the tradition of yoga.

“There’s more at stake than just the money. There is also the perception that the world trading system is unfair, that the deck is stacked against developing countries. If the copying of Western drugs is illegal, so should be the patenting of yoga. It is also intellectual piracy, stood on its head.”

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Update:
India’s scholars scurry to protect the word ‘OM’ from American trademark laws.

If a word, a single word such as our word ‘home’ received a copyright and trademark registration, would Louis Gray have written the song ‘Home on the Range’? Written in 1852 by Englishman Sir Henry Bishop, could Sir Henry use the word in the old classic ‘Home Sweet Home?

Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.

As if to prove again that our copyright and trademark system is a mess and is embarassing us around the world, Stanley Zambowski of Pittsburgh, PA has made a move to copyright and trademark the word OM.

“Inspired by Bikram Choudhury’s successful copyright of 26 poses of Yoga, Mr. Zambowski hired his cousin Walenty Zambowski, a lawyer, who set loose a flurry of cease-and-desist letters warning yoga studios around the world not to use the word OM, the symbol Om nor even chant OM.

“This is a cold and quiet day for all Yoga studios”, lamented Rod Entriteramen of the NirvanaPranaOneWorldYoga Studios.”

Further insightful reporting is at the Yoga Guide On-line Manual.

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Update:
Techdirt posted some material on the recent applications, showing that:

Bikram yoga had been copyrighted — a topic we had discussed a few years ago. However, with nearly perfect timing, the NY Times has an article noting not just that Bikram yoga has been covered by copyright, but that there are currently 150 yoga-related copyrights, 134 patents on yoga accessories and 2,315 yoga trademarks. The author then goes on to discuss how folks in India are getting increasingly upset about this, since almost all of those things are based on Indian traditions from long ago that clearly shouldn’t be protected by new intellectual property laws.

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CrucialSystems reports on the
Matrimandir Meditation Chamber:

“This is totally sci-fi.

“Its bigger than your average planetarium. Its very sci-fi, with a HUGE crystal projecting the sun from the top of the dome into a very very quiet chamber.

“You can hear every fluid in your body move. I was overjoyed that someone actually farted while I was in there; the echo was spectacular.”

For the other winds…
here’s a typical schedule to help manage “gales of thoughts”,

4am    wake4.30   observe the breath and body6      breakfast8      observe the breath and body11     lunch1      observe the breath and body5      tea7      observe the breath and body8      discourse9      observe the breath and body10     sleep  

“There lies before us if we choose, continual progress in happiness,
knowledge and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot
forget our quarrels? We appeal, as human beings to human beings:
Remember your humanity and forget the rest.” – Bertrand Russel

Western freedom is an illusion

This is particularly true among American posters. They love to write about liberty and what a great democratic nation they are. Some British posters are not far behind them with their constant cries of ‘we’re more civilized than you’.

Read more…

The mental state of livestock has an impact on meat quality.

“Animals feel fear,” states Colorado State University animal science professor Dr. Temple Grandin, an internationally renowned animal welfare specialist and livestock facilities designer.

“Animals that are scared and excited are going to be harder to handle. You’re going to be more likely to get bruised meat – and pale soft meat.”

Teaching low stress methods, Nancy Lidster, a livestock handling instructor in Canada, says, “The main thing that we’re looking at is animal welfare. And that’s both the welfare of the pigs that we’re moving and the welfare of the people that are handling them.”

“Humans have a lot of predatory behavior which is very threatening to pigs. If we understand that conflict then we can change what we’re doing so they feel comfortable responding to us.

“We do a lot of things that are threatening to them.

“We’re yelling and hollering when all we have to do is whisper or just show up.

“Humans instinctively want to get behind animals and make them move away. Animals instinctively want to have us to the side where they can see us while they’re moving away and if we understand what they need we can give them that and they’ll give us what we want from them in return.”

“Some of this stuff just seems so basic and simple that it’s hard to believe it actually works.

“If there is a bunch of us sitting in a room and somebody turns a skunk loose in that room, the skunk doesn’t have to chase us out of there. We will be quite happy to find an exit.

“The whole trick is to keep the animal calm. Stop yelling and screaming.” [from FarmScape]

Ouch! This story hurts.

A study of more than 1.6 million children clearly showed that those conceived in the summer – when pesticide use is at its highest – are less clever.

Spring babies may fare less well at school because they receive the most exposure to pesticides during the first few months of pregnancy – a critical time for brain development.

Dr. Paul Winchester, involved in Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine for more than 30 years and professor of clinical paediatrics of Indiana University School of Medicine, said:

“The foetal brain begins developing soon after conception.

“The pesticides we use to control pests in fields and our homes and the nitrates we use to fertilise our crops and even our lawns are at their highest level in summer.

“Exposure to pesticides and nitrates can alter the hormonal milieu of the pregnant mother and the developing foetal brain.”

“Neurodevelopmental consequences of exposure to pesticides and nitrates may not be obvious for many decades.”

Other work by the same team showed that more babies are born prematurely when pesticide use is at its highest. Dr James Lemons, also of Indiana University, said:

“I believe this work may lay the foundation for some of the most important basic and clinical research and public health initiatives of our time.

“To recognise that what we put into our environment has potential pandemic effects on pregnancy outcome and possibly on child development is a momentous observation, which hopefully will transform the way humanity cares for its world.”

[story found at Australia’s Daily Telegraph]

How did Stalin cope with a violent alcoholic father?

“My Soso was a very sensitive child,” said Stalin’s mother.

“As soon as he heard the sound of his father singing balaam-balaam from the street, he’d immediately run to me asking if he could go to our neighbours’ until his father fell asleep.”

Following his rise she often lived in a Tsarist palace in the Caucasus, but she occupied only one tiny room and died in 1937. [story]

“Young Stalin” by Simon Sebag Montefiore reveals how Stalin became Stalin, based on new evidence discovered in archives across the former USSR.

A video is available narrated by Stalin’s longtime bodyguard, I Was Stalin’s Bodyguard. I failed to convince CBS News to broadcast parts of the unusual tape during the period when the USSR was beginning to fall.

The elderly bodyguard reveals some of Stalin’s odd behavior, including special pots that a worried Stalin would padlock while cooking – even with his mother in the room!

How far from the truth is media?

Fascinating new studies are showing that by the time a story is published for mass circulation, the facts have significantly changed. A top performing company

“positive stories generally indicate the end of superior performance, and negative news generally indicates the end of poor performance”.

Magazine covers: good contrarian indicators

Normal people are those whom you don’t know very well. – Kyrie Martin Hale

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/02/20/various_matters/

“Bob Altemeyer is a Professor of Psychology at the University of
Manitoba, and has become one of the world’s leading experts on the
psychological dynamics which fuel authoritarian political movements
and their followers. John Dean’s best-selling book, Conservatives
Without Conscience (which I reviewed here
<http://www.crooksandliars.com/posts/2006/07/23/john-dean-and-authorit…>),
relied on substantial amounts of Altemeyer’s research.

“Now, Altemeyer has written his own book, The Authoritarians, which
expounds on that research. He is releasing the book chapter by
chapter for free online, and the first six chapters can be read here
<http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/%7Ealtemey/>. I have read the first
three chapters and highly recommend them. The book provides real
insight into the political movement which has been ruling our
country for the last six years — a movement which has at least as
much to do with psychological drives as it does public policy and
geopolitical considerations.”

Imagine – if you can – not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members.

Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken.

And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fools.

Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs.

Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless.

You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and you are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness. The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience, that they seldom even guess at your condition.

In other words, you are completely free of internal restraints, and your unhampered liberty to do just as you please, with no pangs of conscience, is conveniently invisible to the world.

You can do anything at all, and still your strange advantage over the majority of people, who are kept in line by their consciences will most likely remain undiscovered.

How will you live your life?

Some use a mask to manipulate. There are psychopaths who are aware that they are different from the rest of humanity. They see how we respond emotionally to events and people, a capacity they do not have. They are incapable of empathy. Growing up, they learn to wear what Hervey Cleckley’s book called “The Mask of Sanity” (available as a free pdf here).

Machiavelli’s famous advice to the Prince seems to cover many topics, and its ostensible theme is prowess, but its gist is loyalty: its indispensability to a successful prince. He dwells on it from every angle. How to deserve loyalty. How to win it, buy it, inculcate it, cultivate it, terrorize people into it. How to subvert loyalty to rival princes or states. How to sniff out disloyalty and deal with it. All his digressions lead back to loyalty.” – Jane Jacobs

So then Jesus urged the crowds and disciples not to follow leaders whose deeds do not follow their teachings…

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. – Matthew 23:1

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on “I am not too sure.” – H. L. Mencken

Why is there a mass movement of religious zealots in the USA?

Why now?

The European Tribune tries to explain:

Growth has slowed.
For example, measures of wealth which have shown a sharp rise in the US and UK during the past several decades are based primarily upon the super wealthy having become even more wealthy [ see American Plutonomy ]

But their wealth is in areas where the inherent “value” is relative – stocks and real estate.

A house which now sells for $1 million is of no greater utility than it was ten years ago when it sold for $300,000. Similarly the rise in stock prices does not reflect a corresponding growth in the fundamentals of the firms.

So while the paper wealth of the super rich has gone up and raised the aggregate figures as well, the average family is living pretty much the same life style as their parents did.

There may be more material goods in their lives, but how they spend their time, and what their expectations are hasn’t changed much.

Then what has changed?

The stability of social structures has diminished.

People no longer expect to work in a stable job with a predictable career and a secure retirement.

They no longer feel assured that health care will be affordable or available. They no longer know what will happen to them when they get old and infirm – extended families don’t provide support now that many women are out of the home as well.

This has raised the level of insecurity and made people more amenable to adopting messages from ideologues who present simple explanations to the causes of such insecurity.

There has arisen increased competition from the newly emerging industrial powers.

The first wave of fear was with the rise of the Japanese economy starting in the 1960’s. The patterns that US businesses had pursued for a hundred years were thrown into doubt as big industries like steel started fail.

More recently the rise of China and India has started to worry the industrialized west as they start to consume raw materials and take jobs away from high cost economies.

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Reporting on James Dobson, a fellow who is less well known than Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson and far more powerful than either of them, Slate reveals a few of the “my way or the highway” tactics in today’s zealous conservative wing.

At Common Dreams Bill Moyers has harsh words for the President and the Christian Right

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What’s happening lately?
“This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy.” – U.S. Representative Christopher Shays R-CT

With full academic support and years of research behind him, Professor Bob Altemeyer of the University of Manitoba describes the key characteristics of followers (Right Wing Authoritarians) and their leaders (Social Dominants).

Professor Altemyer, who was the basis for research data in John Dean’s recent book “Conservatives without Conscience”, explains,

Briefly these people are unquestioning followers of strong leaders who believe in a hierarchical social structure.

How many ordinary people do you think an evil authority would have to order to kill you before he found someone who would, unjustly, out of sheer obedience, just because the authority said to?

What sort of person is most likely to follow such an order? What kind of official is most likely to give that order, if it suited his purposes?

‘The Authoritarians’ is a scientific look at what years of experiments tell us.

It’s about the disastrous decisions that government has made. It’s about the corruption that rotted the Congress. It’s about how traditional conservatism has nearly been destroyed by authoritarianism.

It’s about how the “Religious Right” teamed up with amoral authoritarian leaders to push its un-democratic agenda onto the country.

It’s about the United States standing at the crossroads as the next federal election approaches.

‘The Authoritarians’ is free. [pdf]

Thousands of adults and children have recently died.

A toxic syrup has caused mass poisonings in Panama, Haiti, Bangladesh, Argentina, Nigeria and twice in India.

Officials in Panama mixed falsely labeled diethylene glycol – antifreeze – into 260,000 bottles of cold medicine – with devastating results causing up to 365 deaths from the poison.

Chinese companies had exported the poison mis-labeled as 99.5 percent pure glycerin. The counterfeit glycerin passed through three trading companies on three continents, yet not one of them tested the syrup to confirm what was on the label. [story]

Adding to the mass poisoning of dogs and cats, plus the importation of contaminated honey, the Food and Drug Administration warned drug makers and suppliers in the United States “to be especially vigilant” in watching for diethylene glycol.

Interestingly, seventy years ago, medicine laced with diethylene glycol killed more than 100 people in the United States, leading to the creation of the Food and Drug Administration.

Chinese safety regulations lag behind its growing role as low-cost supplier to the world.

“I’m not a prude,” Warren Buffet said, “but to quite an extent gambling is a tax on ignorance.”

It is “revolting,” he said, when a government preys on its citizens’ weakness rather than trying to provide them with services.

“It’s not government at its best,” he concluded.

I can’t find the video story, but today’s evening CBS News cited the story of the Queen’s visit to the USA using a ‘man on the street’ snippet at the Kentucky Derby, where a woman said,

“I have seen Royals. I have seen Emperors. But there’s nothing quite so regal as Colonel Sanders.”

Hail the Antics.

politics is a poor self image trying to prevent it.

i have noticed a lot about society.

that is not a good thing.

war is dodgeball

while dying.

numb is a committee

being made fun of.

i can’t get the argument smaller,

brains are draining.

Where’s Hello?

maybe it should turn up the volume.

Tomorrow does not stop.

drink more Do.

what’s the matter with a long run?

let’s revolt.

the Capital sticks.

we won’t show up with lower case people.

Which moustache is the most instantly recognisable – and sinister – in history?

A previously unpublished essay by a writer who served alongside Hitler in the First World War trenches reveals that the future Führer was only obeying orders when he shaped his moustache into its tightly-clipped style.

He was instructed to do so in order that it would fit under the respirator masks, introduced in response to British mustard gas attacks.

Whatever adjustments Hitler was forced to make to fit German army gas masks did not save him from being badly gassed and temporarily blinded during a British attack in 1918.

Had that order never been issued, the tyrant who brought most of Europe to its knees would be remembered as a man with a large Prussian moustache. [story]

Update:
In a follow-up story, the Telegraph importantly adds that Hitler deliberately kept his moustache trimmed in the style necessary for a gasmask, when everyone else went back to normal, so that when he appeared on political platforms the first thought of any man of his generation was of the trenches. more…

A map of pioneer internet communities has been discovered on the internet that illustrates how the ‘continents of the world’ were perceived by internet explorers and the colonies that follow. The rare and unusual map indicates where internet societies would gather, exchange and trade.

Analysts are already reporting that the map reveals sites and generations that are isolated or have been abandoned, although no records or artifacts indicating hardship, starvation or cannabilism have been unearthed.

Although studies are incomplete, experts are pointing out that there are unexplained omissions not unlike early maps used by scholars and navigators of Europe or North America. For example, several important historical ventures are unreported, a timely reminder not unlike overlooking Jamestown in modern history texts for the more convenient story of Plymouth Rock.

History seems already to be repeating itself. While the map shows parts of the internet seem to be ageless from the start, it may be evident that there are forces at work to create a more private interpretation of true history. Perhaps hidden in populist beliefs or underhanded politics, certain players may have continued to lobby their influence in order to subjectively alter the record of history by pressuring social peers to alter the revered practice of the fine art of cartography.

[large archival copy here]

A new musical theory of the universe might be possible.

Roland Piquepaille’s Technology Trends reports, “Microbiologists from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) have converted DNA sequences of human proteins into music, so you can listen to the sound of proteins. One of the researchers, who is both a microbiologist and a skilled pianist, found a way to “cram the 20 standard amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) into just 13 notes.”

In “Genes come alive with the sound of music,” Nature adds that it’s not the first time that researchers have tried “to convert biological structures into music, but Takahashi says it differs from its predecessors because the chord assignment limits the music to within a one-and-a-half octave spread, making it, in her opinion, more pleasing to the ear.” And here is what the team did.

More water-loving or hydrophilic amino acids have been assigned a chord in a higher key, while water-hating or hydrophobic ones are lower. So similar amino acids sound alike. And the duration for which a chord is played is determined by the prevelance of its ‘codon’ (the three DNA letters that make up an amino acid) in the sequence. So amino acids that make up a good chunk of a protein will be played for longer than those that are rare within the protein. This gives the piece a rhythm that says something about the repetitive structure of the protein.

You can listen to several examples of music created by this method.

There is a very large nation that is permanently within another nation’s borders – a migration nation.

About 200 million migrants from different countries are scattered across the globe, supporting a population back home that is as big or bigger….

While some migrants go abroad with Ph.D.’s, most travel … with modest skills but fearsome motivation.

Migrants worldwide circulated an estimated $300 billion last year — nearly three times the world’s foreign-aid budgets combined.

We ought to perhaps regard our interactions with migrants as the best opportunity we have for global diplomacy and sustainable development.

Alex Steffen at WorldChanging clearly points out that, “Immigration is not only beneficial to most developed nations, it’s necessary.”

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Moris Farhi, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, argues that we must quit the “emotional fascism” against migrant people,
the menacing image,
the psychotic fiction,
the shrewd soundbite,
and the “credible falsehood” that migrants are barbarians mounting a siege at our gates in order to invade us, steal our wealth, and ravage our women.

Migration and exile have characterised the world since the beginning of time. And for most of that time, the ambivalent presence of The Other has aroused extremes of sentiment within the host community.

Farhi suggests that migrants are a caste, …”surely the largest in the world”,

“…the caste of “the other”: of exiles, refugees, immigrants, displaced people, outsiders, outcasts, strangers, untouchables – and, of course, artists and writers.

“…to struggle against the depression of exile, the harsh realities of exclusion, the longings for home, the free-floating angst of feeling worthless because of the difficulties of integration and acceptance.

Migration is not only a condition that rules much of the animal kingdom but also much of humanity.

Those “caught in the sand” – the perfect representation of this caste. He said we were creatures facing death with a much greater awareness of the frailty of life and thus with an enhanced compulsion to survive; creatures that could not – or did not get the chance to – live in their native matrix and, consequently, desperately sought to make a new life in unknown lands and under harsh conditions; creatures that often became fodder for the people in power in their new environments, thus providing the hosts with good nourishment.

There is a duality in every human endeavour.

The same is true of the history of migration.

It has two selves.

The first – we could call it “official” or “partisan” history – narrates and repeatedly glorifies war, conquests, occupation, colonisation, the subjugation of indigenous peoples, the marginalisation of their cultures, the vilification of their religions, and, at its most extreme, the purge of “lives unworthy of life”.

The second – which can only be read between the interstices of “partisan history” and which I shall boldly declare to be “true history” – gives accounts of the lives of the innumerable men, women, and children, “the countless millions of unknown Jesuses” – if I may paraphrase François Mauriac – who lived and died, often with dignity, despite the brutality and humiliation that ruled their lives.”

All history is the history of migration

They have vivified a literature that was increasingly neglecting the ambitions of its grand heritage.

They have enlarged the horizons of a country self-righteously clinging to its insularity and shown it the world at large, a world much of which it had colonised, but seldom enhanced and often betrayed in proud insolence.

They have brought back the idealism that the present materialistic world order has so very nearly killed.

They have defied the soulless worshippers of the abacus.

And they have grappled with narcissism, cynicism, complacency, bigotry, and limitless greed.

They have brought new visions of truths, colours, depths, spectrums, insights, and compassion. They have brought new horizons.

They have enriched us with neglected or ignored cultures.

They have reignited in us such universal concepts as the struggle for love, liberty, equality, and universal welfare.

They have reminded us – and stirred up those of us who did not want to know – that the differences between peoples are superficial; that irrespective of ethnicity, colour, or creed, we laugh or weep in the same way and for the same reasons.

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Update:
from Michael Parekh, On The Fate Of Boomers and Immigrants

Tied At The Hip
Fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal, titled “Boomers’ Good Life Tied to Better Life for Immigrants“.

It makes a point not very well understood by mainstream Americans on how the quality of life for them and/or their senior loved ones is intricately tied to the fate of immigrants going forward. Here’s the introduction:

“The quality of life for some 80 million graying baby boomers in the U.S. may depend in large part on the fortunes of another high-profile demographic group: millions of mostly Hispanic immigrants and their children.

One-third of the ocean’s seafood is gone.

“This century is the last century of wild seafood.”

There will be virtually nothing left to fish from the seas by the middle of the century if current trends continue.

The journal Science reports that the global catch fell by 13% between 1994 and 2003. In 2003, 29% of open sea fisheries were in a state of collapse, defined as a decline to less than 10% of their original yield. [story]

On a more encouraging note, a quarter of the world’s oceans will be protected from fishing boats which drag heavy nets across the sea floor, South Pacific nations have agreed. The area extends from the Equator to the Antarctic and from Australia to the western coast of South America.

The landmark deal will restrict bottom trawling, which experts say destroys coral reefs and stirs up clouds of sediment that suffocate marine life. New Zealand is responsible for 90% of bottom trawling in the South Pacific.

“It can be done, it has been done, and it’s time for all countries to do the same in all other ocean regions.” [story]

A teacher asked a little girl, “What are you drawing?”

The little girl answered, “I’m drawing God.”

The teacher paused, “But no one knows what God looks like.”

Not looking up the girl replied, “They will in a minute.”