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« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Quality of Life vs Quantity of Life
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on January 9, 2011 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Sunday, January 9th, 2011Do we really need a growth economy fueled by planned obsolescence? Or are we ready to start living better, rather than living bigger?
I’m no stranger to the emotionally dynamic world of new consumer products. We all know the feelings evoked when you decide you need a new camera, car, washing machine, or lawn mower, and start researching all the shiny new options and exciting innovations. You make your purchase, and there’s a palpable emotion being experienced as the money changes hands. A sense of achievement and ownership, and a childish excitement about getting your new toy home and opening the package, revealing its shiny pristine contents. Somewhere in the checkout process, you may experience a little buzzkill when the salesperson suggests you’d be foolish to not buy the extended service contract. But you’re a smart person. You opt not to buy it. You know they do testing with advanced algorithms that determine the EXACT DAY the product will fail, which will always be approximately 23 days after the the warranty expires. I jest a bit, but it’s well-established that most service contracts aren’t worth it, and for electronics stores, are one of their greatest sources of revenue, with margins that are nearly 18 times the margin on the goods themselves. So in any case, you get your new purchase home, and if you made smart decisions and spent enough money, you may actually be happy with the product for a while. With the emphasis on “a while”; odds are, especially if it’s an electronic device, there’s a store built right into your purchase, imploring you to buy more. Your mobile phone or computer suddenly needs apps and services you’d never dreamed of being essential to life itself until you started using it, and while a company like Apple makes very little on the sale of apps in these little built in shopping malls, they drive device sales, and a $200 iPod was only costing them 4 bucks each to produce once production was ramped up. The fact is, any buyers’ remorse you feel is the least of your worries, because your new toy will probably be your old toy within a year. Not because it suddenly doesn’t do exactly what you meant it to do, but because the maker has built in a dirty trick with some form of planned obsolescence. In the case of computers, this used to take the form of the Wintel duopoly (a partnership soon to be made obsolete itself by quadroid), in which Microsoft’s code bloat required ever more powerful processors from Intel, driving innovation that was arguably unnecessary otherwise. Does your desktop computer do anything it didn’t do five years ago? Probably not, unless you’re editing HD movies or crunching meteorological data in your home office. Other forms of obsolescence will come from products that failed from shoddy outsourced manufacturing, or in the case of the US obsession with SUV’s, a backtracking in fuel efficiency that makes vehicles more expensive to operate than they need to be, driving anxiety over peak oil, which leads to things like the BP gulf spill, as oil companies get careless in their pursuit of locating oil and maximizing margins. Lately I regularly question the current American model of capitalism, in which corporations have more rights than humans, it’s possible for 4 people to have more wealth than the world’s 57 poorest countries, and in America itself, the pie is divided in such a way that out of every hundred dollars, one person has 42 bucks, while most of the rest of us have about 9 cents each. Although you can find lengthy explanations both emotionally opposing and intellectually defending planned obsolescence as an underpinning of successful market-driven societies, I personally think we’ve entered a new paradigm, and with the world’s population growth slowing to a plateau where we will have seven billion people on the planet this year, it may be time to think about what we really need to live well, rather than what we need to do to keep fueling economic growth. Aside from individual greed, the only justification for growth-driven capitalism has been the fear of some Malthusian catastrophe, something that is an absurd projection in era when we produce so much food and technological innovation that we don’t know what to with either. What about you, have you had enough? Or do you still want more? Read the rest of this entry »
Predictions & Resolutions For 2011
[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 1, 2011 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Saturday, January 1st, 2011One of the only predictions we’re confident about is that our resolutions will fail. And what the heck do we call this decade, anyway?
 One prediction we’re pretty sure of is that you’ll break your resolutions |
So. The new year is upon us, which means we can finally get a break from all those annoying Best of 2010 lists. But wait, what’s this? They’re making best of 2011 lists already? Best cars, best stocks, best kiteboarding gear? Ah well, I guess we may as well get used to this; as you may have read on the Google Blog, Google will soon know what we’re searching for before we do. Until then though, for many of us the first of the year is still a time to make resolutions. And then break them a few weeks later. As I said last year, you can start the resolutions without me. To me, the most interesting thing about 2011 is the fact that it marks the end of the decade that cannot be named. And introduces a new problem about what to call the decade we’re in. The whole noughts vs oughts vs 0′s argument is a tired trope. But what the heck are we going to call this decade? It can’t be the “teens”, because at best, only seven of its years end in “teen”. So one of my few resolutions this year is to stop pondering such an inane question. Feel free to enlighten me if there’s an intelligent answer though. Which leaves us then with the inevitable “predictions and hot trends” motif. This year, if you peruse the web a bit, this theme ranges from the peculiar and perhaps desperate Eleven 3D Printing Predictions For the Year 2011 over at the usually respectable TechCrunch.com, to the flat out, tinfoil-hat, batshit insane End Of Days kind of stuff. The only prediction we’re absolutely confident about is that more than 90% of these predictions will be wrong. Bearing in mind of course the words of an oft-quoted friend of ours who points out that 77.3% of all statistics mentioned in casual conversation are inaccurate. Although these predictions for 2011 from 1931 were in some ways uncanny in their accuracy. In any case, we’re not about to let these trivial issues of accuracy and general banality stop US from making a few predictions and resolutions below. Do YOU have any predictions or resolutions for 2011? Read the rest of this entry »
Do Lottos Really Benefit Education?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on December 19, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Sunday, December 19th, 2010Or are they just a “tax on the stupid”, as they’re often cynically referred to?
 Having trouble picking your numbers? There’s an app for that. |
A couple of things got me thinking recently about the concept of legalized state lottos that operate with the public assumption that they fund education. The first was that I fell into a rather amusing obsessive-compulsive trap a little over a year ago. My mother – bless her soul, she passed away this year – suggested we pick a few lotto numbers and play them regularly. It was a little moment of fun once a week, checking to see if we were multimillionaires, and we even had a couple of $150.00 winners. But now I’m left with a sick compulsion – and I’ve talked to a few other people that do the same – to keep playing the numbers, because I’m DEAD POSITIVE that the day that I don’t play is the day that the numbers will be the multimillion dollar winners. I mean I’ve “invested” around three hundred dollars in that year and a half, so I’m at about break-even, right? No harm going on, correct? And so goes the thinking of a potential gambling addict. The other thing that got me pondering these state lottos was observing the demographic that seems to support the system. I’m doing work on location with a client who owns several lotto/liquor stores, and couldn’t help noticing that the vast majority of lotto customers seemed to be lower income, and non-white. This is obviously a local and anecdotal observation, and as you might imagine, there are very few large-scale scientific surveys to reference. However, surveys like this one from Georgia (2.6MB PDF) and this one from Texas (221KB PDF) make it clear that although the percentage of each racial demographic that has at some time played is almost the same, the high-frequency players who spend the largest percentage of their income are in fact black, in the lowest income bracket, and have the lowest “educational attainment”, in this case a high school degree or less. Well, perhaps the government knowingly supporting the gambling fixations of the hardworking poor is acceptable. In a free market economy, it’s “buyer beware”, right? Besides, it’s all for a good cause. We’re supporting education, remember? Well, not so much, as it turns out. This Illinois School Board brochure (180KB PDF) points out that lotto revenue provides less than .03% of total funding for schools in Illinois, and as this NBC News affiliate article points out, many states take money away from education to match the lotto revenue. And in the case of Michigan, which boasts in press releases about the efficiency of their lotto commission, the former governor shuffled $208 million of the school money into the general budget to reduce the state’s deficit figures this past fall. Well, at least once in awhile some poor cuss will win and live the good life right? Well, someone has to win, but one of the commonly used examples of how absurdly unlikely that it will be you is that if you spent a million dollars a year on tickets, it would be 146 years before you’d be sure to win. And when people do win, it often doesn’t turn out so well.
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Whistleblowing For Fun & Profit: Bradley Manning Will Enjoy Neither
[ Comments Off ]Posted on December 11, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Saturday, December 11th, 2010As George Bernard Shaw pointed out, you should never wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it. To get the truth out these days, it seems like everyone involved has to be the kind of person you wouldn’t want dating your sister.
We’re probably all getting a little WikiWeary, with WikiLeaks and Julian Assange dominating the news cycle for the last few weeks. Which is probably a good thing, because as Assange gets all the credit for exposing the corruption of governments worldwide, and hacktivists around the world rise to defend him, the guy who REALLY exposed the corruption is rotting in jail, largely forgotten. So what about Private First Class Bradley Manning? Is he a hero? A traitor? In the increasingly less-nuanced views of our time, there seems to be little middle ground on this topic. My personal views are mixed. I have a pretty strong sense of honor, and this man was a soldier. In my eyes, his method of releasing classified information clearly violated the guidelines of his command structure. But on the other hand, his command structure has violated its own sense of honor, from the Abu Ghraib scandal to the Collateral Murder video that was the first of Manning’s leaks to be released. And frankly, the fact that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld intentionally blew the cover of Abu Ghraib whistleblower Joe Darby doesn’t bode well for the US Military’s Whistleblower Program. Historically of course, doing the right thing has to be its own reward. Although Daniel Ellsberg is regarded as a hero of sorts for the Pentagon Papers, you’ve probably entirely forgotten Jeffrey Wigand of the Brown & Williamson ‘impact boosting’ scandal that cost the tobacco industry billions in headaches. And although there’s a good chance you know Karen Silkwood’s name, she probably died for her efforts. And I personally had never even heard of Wendell Potter, the former insurance industry executive who exposed many of the industry’s deceptive practices, and has recently come out in defense of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, asserting that the private sector attacks on WikiLeaks set a scary precedent. Things look a little dismal all around for truth; sadly, the president that campaigned on transparency in government is being even harder on whistleblowers than the Bush administration. So no, there’s probably not much glory awaiting Bradley Manning, unless they’re stupid enough to martyr him with execution, as many are suggesting. And the rat that ratted out Manning? If you have the time, Glenn Greenwald has a lengthy piece on Salon trying to sort out the convoluted trail of Adrian Lamo, the convicted hacker turned government informant in whom Manning confided. Lamo has a pretty sordid history himself, and when you read about how he works, and his recent push for a heavier hand with WikiLeaks, you get a strong sense that he blew Manning’s cover more out of self-interested ass-covering than out of some sense of reluctantly doing what was right, as he typically tries to play it all off. So the next time you’re thinking about blowing open that international scandal at work, make sure you sell out properly and get your millions. Basic honesty seems to lead to jail. Or death. And as Adrian Lamo shows us, your reward will have less to do with human decency than your desire to profit.
BankRun 2010 – Take The Money & Run On December 7
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on December 2, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Thursday, December 2nd, 2010Money talks, bullshit walks. In a circle. With a hand-painted sign. Maybe an intentional run on the banks could send a message that actually gets results.
 A bank run? There’s an app for that. |
With all the all the Commie Central Liberals, Tea Party Wingnuts, and Rand Paul Conservatives running rampant in this country, waving signs and shaking fists at whatever Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann point their fingers at, and with so much excitement about the Palin/Quayle 2012 campaign that marines are getting Sarah tattooed on their bums, it’s surprising that the BankRun2010 movement hasn’t gotten more press traction on this side of the pond. If you haven’t heard about it, it’s a grass-roots movement inspired by this video clip (also below) in which French ex-footballer and deodorant model Eric Catona suggests that when a person takes part in conventional protests, they’re really just “swindling themselves”, since they’re using their time and perhaps money to engage in an act that is likely to have little real impact. His idea? An intentional run on the banks. His argument is that since banks hold all the real power in the world, the only way to change the system is by bringing down the banks. To that end, December 7 is the day that has been suggested as a day that we all withdraw our money for a day. Because what, after all, is a wealthy, smug, morally decrepit banker, with no money in his bank? Probably a less smug, morally decrepit person. As a borderline collapsitarian myself, I have to say I think this is one of the best protest ideas since the Gandhi era. On the purest level, there is absolutely nothing wrong with briefly taking your money from the clearly corrupt hands that hold it, simply to remind the bankers attached to those hands that the power is not theirs, it’s ours. In my (obviously opinionated) view, any argument against this as a rational form of protest is predicated on the idea that the banking system as it exists today is somehow of intrinsic benefit to humanity, and must be protected for the good of us all. And is most likely to be presented by the bankers themselves. It will be interesting to see what kind of turnout there really is; a protest with similar motives in Chicago last year had some brief momentum but ended up being a blip in the media. After the videos below, we’ve compiled a list of active Facebook pages for “BankRun 2010″ by country. Read the rest of this entry »