Amador Square

TUNISIANS IN CHARGE—Democratic nations ought to commend...

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 23:42:00 -0400

TUNISIANS IN CHARGE—Democratic nations ought to commend Tunisians for holding free and fair elections—just 9 months after street demonstrations ushered in a contagious revolution and the ousting of the authoritarian and corrupt regime of Ben Ali.

The reverberations of Tunisia’s civil resistance continue to be felt across the Middle East. For a visual sense of events set in motion in Tunisia in December of 2010, play with this interactive timeline of the events of the Arab Spring kept by The Guardian (last updated on October 20).

While foreign affairs’ experts analyze and debate the meaning of Tunisia’s election results, we can draw reassurance and inspiration from this video depicting Tunisians’ reactions to a tricky voter-mobilization initiative. Watch the changes in the reactions of unsuspected citizens to the hanging of a giant portrait of their former dictator on the side of a building, before and after they realize that it’s meant as an important reminder.

Congratulations, Tunisians!

A recent 11-minute documentary produced for “Need to...

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 23:04:00 -0400

A recent 11-minute documentary produced for “Need to Know“—PBS TV and web news magazine—discusses the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements in the context of America’s history of individualism and resentment of big institutions—from government, to businesses, to any powerful groups that come to be perceived as threatening to our national interest.

Titled “The politics of resentment, from the tea party to Occupy Wall Street” the short film includes interviews with thinkers and media voices on either side of the political spectrum and offers important insight into Americans’ state of discontent.

[Amador Square at WordPress]

"The strength of the argument" NOT "the status of the speaker"

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 00:02:15 -0400

Tracing the networked “global public sphere” exemplified in Occupy-Wall-Street to the Greek agora—where male citizens gathered to debate ideas— Faizullah Jan, American University doctoral student, looks at the evolution of public opinion expression and the interaction between state and society.

“Without a functioning public sphere the state’s interaction with the public is reduced to the relatively brief periods surrounding elections. Though election participation is a a hallmark of representative democracy, without a functioning public sphere, the government, corporations, and interest groups remain unaccountable to the people.”

Full article: “Understanding Public Sphere in a Networked Society,” guest post on Matthew Nisbet’s “Age of Engagement” at Big Think

Can the planet keep up with our demand for food?

Sun, 16 Oct 2011 15:47:00 -0400

Picture the planetary impact of feeding the world’s population today—with roughly one billion going hungry—and in 40 years from now:

Can we feed the world without destroying the planet?

Yes, researchers say, if we manage to…

curb expansion of farmland in the tropics;
raise yields in under-performing lands by 60%;
reallocate water, nutrients and agricultural chemicals;
change dietary habits;
reducing food waste.

Related reading, audio and video:

A Path Toward Sustaining a ‘Cultivated Planet’

Facing Planetary Enemy No.1: Agriculture

Eat less meat to help double world’s food supply: study

Population Growth Explained with Ikea Boxes

West Liberty, IA: A Worst-Case Scenario for Alabama?

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 15:53:02 -0400

Last week was filled with news and debate (NYT) around Alabama’s new immigration law requiring schools to check the immigration status of students. The result of getting at the parents through their children: unauthorized-immigrant parents keeping children home and asking friends to care for their children (AP) in the event of deportation.

What’s the worst-case scenario behind Alabama’s strict immigration law? A Hispanic population majority? What happens to a small American town when Latinos become the majority and own half of the town’s businesses?

West Liberty, is now a mostly Hispanic town in the overwhelmingly white state of Iowa (NPR). What does West Liberty’s Mayor Chad Thomas have to say about that?

“[…] unlike a lot of other small Midwestern towns that are dying, West Liberty is alive […] growing and thriving […] If you didn’t have the Hispanic population here in town, yeah, we would be much more like a lot of smaller towns, and there would be a lot more storefronts that are empty,” Thomas said to NPR.

What happens when schools offer a voluntary dual-language program?

“[…] in the end, all the students then become bilingual, biliterate and bicultural,” West Liberty Elementary School principal Nancy Gardner said to NPR.

How do people feel about that?

Anglo families have moved to West Liberty from nearby towns;
The program has a waiting list;
Other Iowa school districts with growing Hispanic populations are duplicating the program.

Bicultural utopia? Not yet. According to Mexican-born Jose Zacarias—a resident since 1984 recently sworn US Citizen—business and school integration is yet to produce community integration. But Zacarias has a plan. The only Hispanic present at a recent school board meeting, he is considering running for a seat in West Liberty’s City Council.

“We need to get together with the Hispanics and say, we are no longer a minority, we have some responsibilities, and we need to get organized,” he says. “We’ve run out of excuses. It’s time to do some work,” Zacarias said to NPR.

JOSE ZACARIAS FOR CITY COUNCIL!

For more on the Latino experience in the US, check out the NPR series
Two Languages, Many Voices: Latinos in the US
Play with the interactive map: A Decade of Hispanic Population Growth

And consider a less-known aspect of Alabama’s immigration law, as depicted in this photo published in The Guardian:

Whose Planet to Manipulate?

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 23:00:00 -0400

#paceblog—US politicians can’t agree on the science of climate change, let alone how to respond to it. But a task force of scientists, former government officials and national security experts gathered by the Bipartisan Policy Center debated the issue and submitted their recommendation to the Federal Government: large-scale research on geoengineering.

The law of unintended consequences rushes to mind, and so do the questions: whose planet is it and whose decision to make whether we are to risk meddling with the complexities of our planet and universe? Whose technology will benefit or harm one country or world region in detriment of another? What new international conflicts can we expect?

We have replaced “global warming” with “climate change”—doesn’t geo-engineering sound like a paradox to anyone?

The concept is not new—certainly not to scientists—and experimentation has long been underway. A matter of time?

212 Amazonian activists murdered since 1996 Hundreds more...

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 23:15:00 -0400

212 Amazonian activists murdered since 1996

Hundreds more living under the threat of assassination

More than 20% of the Amazon Rainforest has already disappeared

If deforestation continues at its current rate, loss of habitat could endanger more than 100 native species

Amazon Rainforest:
—five-and-a-half million square kilometres / 1.4 billion acres
—60% contained in Brazil, home to 1/3 of world’s rainforests.

At Odds:
—preservation versus obliteration;
—long-term sustainability versus short-term profitability

Brazil’s Economy:
—1988-1991: decreased deforestation—economic slowdown
—1993-1998: increased deforestation—rapid economic growth
—World’s second-largest producer of beef and top exporter

The Deforestation Process:
—Loggers come and leave with the most valuable trees;
—Cattle ranchers move in and replace forest with pasture;

The Land:
—Amazon residents, pressed by economic hardships and no government support sell land to ranchers or allow the loggers to move in;—‘grileiros’: land-grabbers who take illegal possession through forged documents or by force and intimidation;
—Vastness of Amazon: difficult-to-impossible to enforce regulations or police illegal activity, including gun violence;

Other Crimes:
—Inhumane working and living conditions for loggers as well;

—Modern Slavery: impoverished migrant workers forced to clear therainforest in order to pay off debts to their employers;
—18,000 modern-day slaves freed by Brazil’s government between 2005-2010;
—Loggers moving deeper into the forest where defenders have been obliterated and new ones fear to venture.

_____________________________________________

Complied from “In Pictures: Pitting Preservation Against Destruction”, Aljezeera
WATCH THE SLIDESHOW AT ALJEZEERA

For more information or to get involved, visit RAN Rainforest Action Network

#paceblog

Inspiration in Homework

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 23:05:04 -0400

To fellow #paceblog -ers: Weekend homework assignments delivered unsuspected inspiration:

By Professor Andrew @Revkin at DotEarth:

“[…] visions of the human species eventually overcoming its tribal and myopic nature and embracing the reality that it is in fact a single, if variegated, community inhabiting a shared, if planet-size, home.”

Fascinating and thought-provoking read: the story of Tasmania’s technological regress as a result of isolation and self-sufficiency (Ridley, Matt. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, p. 77-78).

On a different discipline—Communications Law & Ethics—but in the same spirit, the words of Bill Bernbach, an icon in America’s advertising history (1911-1982):

“All of us who professionally use the mass media are shapers of society. We can vulgarize that society. We can brutalize it. Or we can lift it to a higher level.”

Samsung's 21th Century Investment: Green Techonology and Health Care

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 21:53:43 -0400

#paceblog—It’s good news when the world’s largest information-technology firm incorporates some idealism and social responsibility into a new, competitive business vision and investment.
The Economist - Seoul - October 1, 2011

“[Samsung] intends to spend $20 billion over ten years on solar panels, light-emitting diodes (LEDs) used for lighting, electric-vehicle batteries, medical devices and biotech drugs. These businesses shift Samsung away from easily substitutable gadgets towards more essential industrial goods […]—or from “infotainment” to “lifecare”, as the company puts it. Just as electronics defined swathes of the 20th century, the company believes green technology and health care will be central to the 21st.
“With these plans Samsung sees itself bringing technologies that are vital for society into much broader use. The company has always had an eye for more than just the bottom line, seeking both to epitomise and to further the progress of its home country. Now it talks idealistically of improving the world by driving down the costs of zero-carbon power and providing poor countries and rural areas with medical equipment and drugs that they cannot afford today.

“But the plans are also an ambitious industrial power play, one that challenges some of the world’s biggest companies. Success would raise Samsung to new heights. Failure could lead to the firm losing what it already has, no longer able to flourish just as a maker of commodity gadgets and components.”

Are we ready for Humanity 2.0?

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 21:09:00 -0400

#paceblog—Or did we usher it in? Warwick University Professor Steven Fuller, author of “Humanity 2.0: What it Means to be Human, Past, Present and Future,” explained his theory in a recent interview with The Guardian as “an understanding of the human condition that no longer takes the ‘normal human body’ as given.” And according to Fuller, we have embraced the evolution:

”[…] people are voting with their feet to enter Humanity 2.0 with the time they spend in front of computers, as opposed to having direct contact with physical human beings. In all this, it’s not so much that we’ve been losing our humanity but that it’s becoming projected or distributed across things that lack a human body.

Our humanity “projected or distributed across things”—nothing 2.0 about that, I’d say. Unless the new paradigm is about the amount of time we are devoting to “2.0 things.” But Fuller continues:

“In any case, Humanity 2.0 is less about the power of new technologies than a state of mind in which we see our lives fulfilled in such things.”

Well, again, if it’s not one thing, it’s another. But maybe that’s exactly what Fuller is contending:

“We need to be always reminding ourselves that […] we have been trusting machines over our own bodies for at least 300-400 years now. We’ve already broken through that barrier – we do live in a very artificial world. Even though the stuff on the horizon may amplify our powers tremendously, it is nevertheless part of the same process. It is a step change but it’s the same story, the story of scientific progress.

I’m still confused about the point of Mr. Fuller’s book—especially when he veered off to smart drugs, disabilities and life-expectancy—but I’m somewhat relieved that Prof. Fuller remains optimistic about humanity. His brief reference to Archimedes and the Greeks was reassuring:

“[Archimedes] would be surprised – if not puzzled – that we appear to think of science and technology as some long-term collective project of self-improvement – ‘progress’ in its strongest sense. While the Greeks gave us many of our fundamental scientific ideas, they did not think of them as a blueprint for upgrading the species.”

I hope we will continue to rely on more than science and technology for our improvement. But in our current political environment, science is instead the object of discredit and vilification.

ROBOTS Growing Our Food? “When Robots Run Our...

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 23:43:42 -0400

ROBOTS Growing Our Food?

“When Robots Run Our Nation’s Farms” BigThink.com predicts greater efficiency and productivity for America’s agriculture but asks—as do I—what happens to the whole eat-local and organic movement? (Will there be robots at my farmers’ market?) growBotgarden project doesn’t find them mutually exclusive, but it’s a huge shift in the way we think and relate to our food. And might agriculture robotics put small farmers out of business, in a Walmart-like effect? But it would be interesting to consider how agriculture automation might help regions plagued by food shortages.

“The most peaceful time in our species’...

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 22:44:26 -0400

“The most peaceful time in our species’ existence”

Steven Pinker, Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, elaborates on the overarching decline of violence throughout human history. For anyone involved in causes for the elimination of violence, this is an important, validating perspective to keep in mind.

“Do you want to answer some questions about contraception?...

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 21:05:56 -0400

“Do you want to answer some questions about contraception? No??”

Today, September 26, is World Contraception Day. Watch how hard it is to get people to talk-contraception in this Your-Life.com street video, and test your own contraception IQ.

Manhattan Shoebox Studio or Martha Stewart’s Jail...

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 21:37:00 -0400

Manhattan Shoebox Studio or Martha Stewart’s Jail Cell?

Manhattan architect Luke Clark Tyler rents this 78-square foot space for $800.00 a month in mid-town. Throughout the video you’ll hear him saying, “I work from home, so…”—as if that fact enhanced the beauty of his living arrangements.

Now, I can see how, say, a medical student who seldom makes it home to sleep, let alone eat, might find Tyler’s set up ideal. And I applaud the low carbon-imprint of Tyler’s life style—the “McMansions” up my country road should blush! I can also remember a time—over 20 years ago—when I wished my possessions would all fit into my 4-door sedan. However, part of that youthful longing was for less cluttered, more open living space, and a life free of moving companies. But the idea of spending all working hours and personal time in such tight, economic quarters makes me think of the challenges of a trip to Mars.

For more stories and videos about sustainable life choices, go to Fair Companies.
(Recommended by Andrew Revkin, DotEarth, New York Times)

"Over the past week I’ve twice heard twenty-somethings wonder whether kids growing up today, kids who..."

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 10:58:10 -0400

“Over the past week I’ve twice heard twenty-somethings wonder whether kids growing up today, kids who were practically born with iPhones in hand, will still have the capacity for wonder. Yesterday as a present for his first day of second grade I brought home an erasable gel pen for my iPhone savvy six year old. After a brief demonstration, he spontaneously hugged me, “I’ve been waiting for this pen my entire life!” I think the kids are alright.”

- Raul Gutierrez (via bobulate)

Hands Off: My First Feminist Action

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 10:41:41 -0400

Hands Off: My First Feminist Action:

A blogger to watch!

Low on Battery and on Cash

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 17:23:00 -0400

Yesterday, the balmy Autumn-like morning inspired a trip to the Peekskill, NY, farmers’ market to check out the harvest and, possibly, come away with some video or images of the city—which is quite a hopping place on Saturday mornings. I drove to the city tuned to WNYC, and two of my favorite voices—Ella & Satchmo—filled the air with “Autumn in New York” (for once Jonathan Schwartz wasn’t playing Frank Sinatra). Everything was coming up roses, until my camera’s battery was found to be on its last gasp, and I was caught trying to pay for $11 worth of peaches and potatoes with 8 singles.

Unaware this embarrassment was about to unfold, I asked the farmer, “Where’s Mifflinburg, PA?” after reading the print on the truck behind the stand. “Four hours away!” he said. And the conversation went on while I counted my singles. He and his children get up at the ungodly hour of 1:30 am for the trip. “I love it!” he assured me, and his kids have no complaints: they sleep soundly on the road. When I finally said to him, “I’ll have to leave the peaches behind. I only have $8,” he smiled and shrugged, “It happens. You’ll owe me $3 next time!” “What is your name?” I had to ask and wanted to know. “Jonie!” “Thank you, Jonie!

An ATM machine was only a block away, so I didn’t make Jonie wait a week for my dues. The beauty is that Jonnie had no way of knowing if I would ever be back. In fact, this was only my second time at that market this season. I’m a patron of the Cold Spring market, further north along the Hudson—where we get to have Block Factory black-bean tamales and all-fruit Go-Go Pops for lunch (stay tuned for characters and images of the Cold Spring Farmers’ Market). But I don’t know if there’s another Jonie in Peekskill or Cold Spring.

My battery let me get away with one image of Jonie at work:

Down Broadway and to the River

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 12:58:00 -0400

The City of Newburgh, not unlike many others, screams with contrasts. I’ve worked there for close to a decade. Some days I drive around saying, “I gotta get out of this town,” others, I feel very fortunate to know it and its people. For all the profound socio-economic woes that plague its communities, the constant news of drug and gang-related violence and raids, it’s a place where families and neighbors still sit on their front stoops and sidewalks at the end of a summer day—more so when the summer begins to wave goodbye.

Yesterday was my turn to brave a fear or two and try my hand at some videotaping, uploading and posting. I lingered around the city to capture some of its feeling—in full “amador” spirit and naiveté (“amador” is Portuguese for amateur).

The Newburgh riverfront features a handful of expensive restaurants meant for out-of-towners, two marinas and a club or two. What attracts me, and my camera, is an old dock where fishing buddies meet up (my first clip) and grandparents bring their grandchildren to feed the ducks. The heart of the city is Broadway: puzzlingly wide, colorful-to-dizzying—from its architecture to its ethnic shops and eateries—loud and traffic-crazed. The second clip was taken well after 5pm when the city was winding down. (Taped with a Sanyo Xacti HD2000)

Got beautiful old dresses and gowns?

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 19:13:00 -0400

A woman in Nairobi Kenya knows what to do with them, and you can help her grow her home-business and provide for her family in the process.

Read Nicholas Kristof’s Sept. 14 NYTimes’ column, “Can Old Dresses Help a Kenyan Dressmaker?” to find out how to get your dress to Jane Ngoiri. And give some thought to this sentence from Mr. Kristof:

“while [Jane’s] access to credit helped her start a business, the biggest help was the psychological push to save and start thinking about the future.”

From someone who is charged with accepting or turning down all manner of in-kind donations for a different cause, I also appreciated that Mr. Kristof’s took the time to explain some of the complex problems and imbalances that in-kind donations can produce.

UNICEF Report: Gender-Inequality and Long-Term Poverty

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 14:26:34 -0400

Some of the findings of a UNICEF report just released in New York:

“girls are significantly more likely to be married as children (under 18 years of age) and to begin having sex at a young age.

“Young women are less likely to be literate than young men and are less likely to watch television, listen to the radio and read a newspaper or magazine.

“young men are better informed about HIV/AIDS and are also more likely to protect themselves with condoms during sex.

“Young women in sub-Saharan Africa, the report says, are two to four times more likely to be infected with HIV/AIDS than young men.”

Geeta Rao Gupta, UNICEF Deputy Executive Director, noted that, “differences by gender appear increasingly more pronounced during adolescence and young adulthood,” and she highlighted the links between gender-inequality, poverty and chances for development:

“In addition to the harmful and often-tragic effects of gender inequalities on children themselves, the kinds of persistent inequalities that we continue to see in the available data, especially in the adolescent years, are major barriers to the efforts of many nations to move out of long-term poverty and achieve their development aspirations,” said Gupta.