The Meaningfulness of Little Things

Things That Make Kim Jong-il Smile

2010-03-12T21:42:00.002-05:00

Things that make Kim Jong-il smile: orange buckets, his reflection, fresh sheet metal, North Korea's national fiber, rows and rows of brightly colored children's shoes, booze, nicely arranged group photos.

Things that make Kim Jong-il frown: everything else.

Nuts Allergy

2010-02-23T18:34:00.001-05:00

These are particularly fine examples of the cake wreck genre.

Hat tip to my wife.

One is the Loneliest Number, Silver is the Saddest Medal

2010-02-22T21:15:00.002-05:00

If you can't win gold, go for bronze:

"On average, bronze medalists are happier than silver medalists," said Victoria Medvec, a psychologist and professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Managementv in Illinois.

The phenomenon is a case of counterfactual thinking - thoughts about "what might have been," she explained.

Third-place winners have upward thoughts ("at least I won") that increase satisfaction, researchers have found, whereas those who come in second tend to have downward "if only" thoughts that decrease happiness.

Ignore Your Food's Expiration Dates?

2010-02-22T20:52:00.002-05:00

I heard Nadia Arumugan on Talk of the Nation today talking about her piece in Slate on the very thin evidence for the usefulness of food expiration dates.

These dates have no real legal meaning, either. Only last year, 7th Circuit Judge Richard Posner reversed the conviction of a wily entrepreneur who'd relabeled 1.6 million bottles of Henri's salad dressing with a new "Best when purchased by" date. Posner decided that the prosecutor had unjustly condemned the dressing as rancid, rotten, and harmful, when in fact there was no evidence to suggest that the mature product posed a safety threat.

In the world of hunger relief work, however, food expiration dates give us quite a bit of pause, mostly because the food supply chain is so long and winding (not to mention unknown in some cases) by the time an item ends up in our hands. If you're curious, here's what the USDA has to say on the issue.

Unhappy Hipsters

2010-02-22T20:36:00.002-05:00

If you haven't subscribed to Unhappy Hipsters yet then get thee to the feed reader.

Increasing Disorder in a Dining Table

2010-02-21T22:05:00.002-05:00

Via Deconcrete.

More at Edible Geography.

Titles of One Star Reviews for 'Runaway Bunny' on Amazon

2010-02-21T09:41:00.003-05:00

"Psycho OCD Stalking Parent Book or better titled, "How to Wear Down a Child Into Submission"

"Not beloved by our family"

"This book is creepy"

"It's so scary..."

"beautiful in its creepiness"

"no more wire hangers!"

"A Smothering Tale"

"A Classic of Squashed Spirits"

"If He Wants To Go So Badly, Let Him Go"

"Psycho Rabbit Mom Stalks Her Own Baby"

"Bunnies do not talk."

Tough to argue with that last one. All reviews here.

Desire Lines

2009-11-09T21:27:00.003-05:00

From Wikipedia:

A desire path (also known as a desire line or social trail) is a path developed by erosion caused by animal or human footfall. The path usually represents the shortest or most easily navigated route between an origin and destination. The width and amount of erosion of the line represents the amount of demand. The term was coined by Gaston Bachelard in his book The Poetics of Space.[1] Desire paths can usually be found as shortcuts where constructed pathways take a circuitous route.

They are manifested on the surface of the earth in certain cases, e.g., as dirt pathways created by people walking through a field, when the original movement by individuals helps clear a path, thereby encouraging more travel. Explorers may tread a path through foliage or grass, leaving a trail "of least resistance" for followers.

The lines may be seen along an unpaved road shoulder or some other unpaved natural surface. The paths take on an organically grown appearance by being unbiased toward existing constructed routes. These are almost always the most direct and the shortest routes between two points, and may later be surfaced. Many streets in older cities began as desire lines, which evolved over the decades or centuries into the modern streets of today.

A short piece in the New York Times entitled "Ploughing Detroit into Farmland" points to this nice post from Sweet Juniper that explicates the emerging desire lines around the vacant urban landscape of Detroit and which can be seen in the photo above, also from Sweet Juniper.

It's not a term that I was familiar with, though one that I'm now glad I know as I've always been a bit of an intrepid desire path follower. If you've spent any time in a developing country, and Africa in particular I think, you know that desire lines are as ubiquitous as feet and you've no doubt seen vast stretches of forlorn untrodden sidewalk as everyone wisely follows their own much more efficient and no less demarcated desire paths across, around and over it. My own favorite encapsulation of the difference between desire paths and paved roads always came when asking if I was following the right road from one village to another village in the Botswana bush, the reply would inevitably be: "This is a road but it is not the road."

Links: Random and Assorted

2009-10-23T20:03:00.004-04:00

1. Add this to the list of things not to tell your children: bunnies being shot, frozen and burnt for fuel in Sweden. (via)

2. Uganda: A ticking population timebomb.

3. An Interview with Dr. Cruelty regarding the supervillian sense of humor:

No, I'm sorry, I still don't—

They're stuck in a pit! They can try to get out but they can't! They will surely die down there, poisoned by snakes! They're trapped!

Right, I understand that but—

It's hysterical, come on! They. Can't. Get. Out.

4. File away for New Years, how to make the McNuggetini (via and recipe)

5. In case you missed them: Gapminder added FAO agricultural data to their visualizer; the FAO's Hunger Report; IFPRI's 2009 Hunger Index.

6. Steven Rattner's behind the scenes account of the auto bailout is worth a read.

7. Charlize Theron one ups Bill Easterly and makes out with the highest bidder to raise money for Africa. Now there's a slippery slope . . . .

8. Coin toss not 50/50?:

Here's what the researchers concluded: Using a high-speed camera that photographed people flipping coins, the three researchers determined that a coin is more likely to land facing the same side on which it started. If tails is facing up when the coin is perched on your thumb, it is more likely to land tails up.

How much more likely? At least 51 percent of the time, the researchers claim, and possibly as much as 55 percent to 60 percent — depending on the flipping motion of the individual.

In other words, more than random luck is at work.

Comedians Solve World Hunger (Again)

2009-10-12T12:25:00.004-04:00

Sarah Silverman makes a suggestion for solving world hunger. The NSFW should be a given, but if not, well, the language is NSFW.

Silverman, of course, isn't the first comedian, nor is she the funniest, to take aim at solving global hunger, here's the classic Sam Kinnison piece from the 80's.

Religion Matters in the Hood

2009-09-01T16:12:00.005-04:00

While fatherhood hasn't left me much time to blog of late it has left plenty of odd moments (i.e., the wee hours of the night) to read blogs and one I've been especially enjoying of late is Tales from the Hood. Today's post is a good example why as it deals with a topic near and dear to my heart, the intersection of religion and development, here's an excerpt:

I am saying that we need to see religion as more than a curiosity or a barrier. I am saying that I see significant room in the aid industry to expand our understanding of the ways in which Religion affects people, broadly speaking, and the ways in which religions are powerful forces in the communities where we work. If the statistic is right and 85 percent of the recipients of aid that we deliver are religious (it’s actually probably higher than 85 percent), then we see a necessarily incomplete picture by sticking with the concrete, the tangible, the scientific. I’m not saying that we should all embrace religion (this is a very personal choice for everyone), but I am suggesting that we need to move beyond arm’s-length tolerance: It is not enough to simply know intellectually that communities in southern Laos are Theravada Buddhist: we need to know what that means specifically in the life of that community and in the lives of those who are to benefit from what we do there. It is not sufficient simply to know that recipients of aid in rural Afghanistan are Muslim; it’s not even enough to overtly make the link between that fact and what it means for us and how we structure and run programs there…

The aid programs that we design and implement and monitor and evaluate nearly always take place in contexts where religion is a central part of peoples lives. For us to be less than complete in our understanding of what that means necessarily limits our ability to fully comprehend the impact of those aid programs.

The whole thing is recommended. My previous posts in a similar vein are tagged under "religion matters."

2 Videos

2009-08-25T21:06:00.003-04:00

Beautiful video of food prep at Alinea via Eat Me Daily:

Bill Streever was on NPR today talking about his new book Cold and talking about hibernating arctic ground squirrels. Full transcript isn't up yet but here's the gist:

"As [the squirrel] hibernates, he begins to cool off. In fact, he cools off to a temperature that's just below the freezing point of water, so around 30 degrees Fahrenheit," says Streever. "When he hits that temperature — when one would think this animal is, for all intent and purposes dead ... he spontaneously starts to shiver," and his temperature rises.

Of course, You Tube has you covered with this video of the process which is great on many, many levels:

The Million Dollar Book

2009-08-20T13:34:00.003-04:00

From Eat Me Daily comes word of the planned publication of a book on wine expected to retail at a cool million dollars:

The book, weighing 66 pounds, will highlight the top 100 wineries in the world and come with six bottles from each winery, presumably driving up the astronomical price tag. But is it worth it?

Assuming the Wine Opus costs about the same amount as their other titles, it would cost approximately $2000 without the wine chaser. Divide what's left of the $1m between the 600 bottles of wine, and you get an average of $1663 per bottle. For comparison, the most expensive, standard-sized bottle on wine.com, a Dom. de la Romanee Conti La Tache Grand Cru 2004, retails for $1,579, but the second priciest, a Château Mouton Rothschild Pauillac 2005, is a comparative bargain at $749.

Feel free to browse the other titles available from Kraken Opus, the self-described maker of "the most luxurious series of publications ever created." Hint: the Prince one comes with an iPod - cha-ching!

Engineers are a Matter of Fact People

2009-08-19T20:35:00.003-04:00

Names of telescopes:

The Very Large Telescope

The Thirty Meter Telescope

The European Extremely Large Telescope

The Overwhelmingly Large Telescope

The only conclusion can be that all the creative energy of astronomers goes into thinking about what aliens look like and therefore they have no time left over to think up names for their equipment. That, or space dementia. Gleaned from this little piece in the Economist on the future of astronomy and the possible implications of it being guided by computerized robots rather than the hunches of mere mortals in the line of Galileo, Kepler, et al.

Factbook eXplorer

2009-07-02T19:00:00.003-04:00

The OECD released an interesting new data/statistical visualization tool: Factbook eXplorer. You know it's good because the "X" is capitalized.

AIDS, Religion and Development

2009-06-22T08:07:00.003-04:00

Via Travis Kavulla's Twitter feed I see that he has a long and worthwhile essay in the New Atlantis touching on one of my favorite talking points, the necessity of recognizing the role of religious beliefs, systems and structures when engaged in development work on the African continent:

The Western public-health lobby, bred in a culture that preaches unconstrained freedom of the individual in the realm of sexual relations, is put off by talk of moralizing policies, or of any policy that de-emphasizes condoms. But it needs a dose of its own advice. It must stop imposing its own agenda on Africa. It must realize that HIV has a social dimension that must be addressed, that Africans are naturally wont to view this disease, which perversely inverts the life-giving act of sex, as a moral calamity. The sooner the donor community realizes this, and reorients its policies to fit African realities, the better.

There is much more to engage with there than I have the time to do at the moment so please give it a read.

Tips For Those Who Actually Want to Travel

2009-06-14T10:08:00.004-04:00

As with all other areas of my life these days I'm a few days behind working through the old feed reader but when I finally got around to it I was happy to see this post from Erik Hersman in response to Nicholas Kristof's well meaning (?) primer on travel in developing countries. Erik's list along with those he's culled from the comments is worth bookmarking while Kristof's . . . . not so much.

My addition would be to buy, carry and read whatever local English language daily you can get your hands on. A little local knowledge and a few relevant talking points with the man/woman on the street can go a long way in establishing that first foot of insider good will.

Congo Importing Farmers

2009-05-23T12:22:00.004-04:00

It's not colonialism if you are invited, right? (Or, is it the refusal to leave when asked?) As the article points out there are problems with this plan but it seems potentially more desirable (with the possibility for greater long term local returns) than the wholesale leasing of huge tracts of arable land to sovereign states.

Hiatus

2009-05-12T21:16:00.003-04:00

Posts have been a bit scarce of late and will be more so in the next few days, as we just had a baby. We are sleepy, we are excited, we are parents.

PS - In the meantime If you missed Justin Timberlake on SNL, I'm up late these days, there are a couple of skits that are worth watching - I don't love his music but the guy has skills - that monologue was brilliantly done. The Geithner opening was a couple minutes too long but funny:

Markets in Everything: Home Victories

2009-05-05T22:14:00.003-04:00

With the usual apologies to Marginal Revolution, from the AJC:

Georgia, which has beaten New Mexico State by an average of 32 points in three previous meetings, will pay the Aggies $925,000 to come to Athens for another game.

The Bulldogs will play New Mexico State on Nov. 5, 2011, in Sanford Stadium.

Georgia is to pay New Mexico State the $925,000 — believed to be the largest payout UGA has made to a visiting team — by Jan. 31, 2012, according to the contract between the schools, obtained this morning by the AJC.

By my calculations that's an average margin of victory cost of $28,906.25 per point. Memo to Coach Richt, pull the offense back in the second half and you could save a few hundred thousand dollars the next time contract negotiations come around.

Spamming the White Man's Burden

2009-05-04T13:24:00.004-04:00

Andy Baio documents the latest development in 419 spam with the receipt of this email:

From: jenifergoodluck (Your Big Fool)
Reply-to: jenifer.dagba@yahoo.com
Date: Mon, May 4, 2009 at 6:11 AM
Subject: You Owe Me

Since you haven't fallen for my stupid scam letter let me go ahead and be up front with you.

Because I am a Nigerian, you owe me something. The fact that my decadent forefathers sold their neighbors and relatives into slavery means that you owe me a lot of money, especially if you are white. I will accept $1000 USD from you per month for the next 12 months. That will settle your debt towards me that was created by our forefathers.

Moreover, it is imperative that you begin to acknowledge my inherited right to steal and be corrupt without oppression from anybody's legal system. I am entitled to instant riches at the expense of everyone outside West Africa.

This starts with you, my friend, so start paying up now by Western Union.

Check Andy's post for the full story but his theory is that this call for colonial reparations is actually a hackers retaliation to an earlier more standard 419 email. Another possibility is that it is viral marketing for either Western Union or Dambisa Moya.

Superheroes on Twitter: An Abridged List

2009-05-02T13:38:00.004-04:00

In honor of Free Comic Book Day.

Reed Richards

Spiderman, Spiderman, Spiderman,

Clark Kent, Clark Kent , Clark Kent

and last, but certainly not least, The Real Life Superheroes.

In my defense, it has been really rainy here today.

Links

2009-04-26T12:32:00.002-04:00

1. On the Path of Walker Evans. If you've never read or at least thumbed through Let Us Now Praise Famous Men do yourself a favor and pick a copy up some time.

2. For all the budding hypochondriacs: 4 ways to track the swine flu. Health Map also has a Twitter feed and there is this often updated, fairly comprehensive Google map.

3. The cost of fast food per calorie. Sadly, does not reflect your cost in terms of healthcare.

4. A good post-World Malaria Day reminder from Easterly that distributing mosquito nets without adequate preparation/education is rarely enough.

5. More rich country - poor country farming deals in the works - this time the players are Kuwait, Cambodia and small rice farmers.

6. Andrew Bird's great album Armchair Apocrypha is a $1.99 mp3 download on Amazon today- highly recommended.

The End of The End of Poverty?

2009-04-20T19:02:00.002-04:00

I saw this trailer four or five months ago and honestly didn't even make it through the first of its three minutes - but that had more to do with the fact that I find Martin Sheen somewhat unbearable. However, I get the impression that Tyler Cowen doesn't think I'm missing very much by skipping either the trailer or the film, which he summarizes as a "screed of mistruths and error." Is it just me or is that the most straight forward opinion that Cowen has ever expressed. The film's website is here if you're interested in finding a viewing at which to form your own opinion.

Links

2009-04-18T09:08:00.002-04:00

1. The US Working Group on the Food Crisis is urging ag ministers at the upcoming G8 agricultural meeting to reject "green revolution policies" as a way forward for African agriculture.

2. Farmers in India agree as they struggle to deal with the repercussions of their own failed "green revolution:"

But now these farmers are running out of groundwater.

They have to buy three times as much fertilizer as they did 30 years ago to grow the same amount of crops. They blitz their crops with pesticides, but insects have become so resistant that they still often destroy large portions of crops.

The state's agriculture "has become unsustainable and nonprofitable.

3. I think I may have linked to this before but in case I forgot be sure to check out Yes magazine's spring issue. The theme is Food for Everyone: The Local Food Revolution and there is some good content there, including a sweet chart (free pdf download) showing how a community food system works, excerpted below:

4. An increasingly relevant topic in our household: homemade baby food.

5. I've long been fascinated by the postal system and the amazing fact that you can drop a piece of paper in a metal box and for less than two quarters have someone carry it across the country for you and deliver it to another little box that you specify. Amazing and incredibly inefficient but what can you do - here's an in depth attempt at an answer. (via)

6. Some press on WFP's P4P. U c?

7. On the religion and development front this piece by Bryant Myers entitled, "Working with the Poor with a Bias towards Peace" is worth your time. Myers worked with World Vision for thirty years and left to take a teaching position at Fuller Seminary a couple of years ago. A move that, as an alum, I was particularly glad to see as it signals a recognition that good intentions are not enough, but faith-based relief and development must also be grounded in and aware of best practices (an admittedly moving target).

8. Muji's online US store is up and running.

9. Elizabeth Warren totally won me over on the Daily Show this week - engaging, open, honest and smart. This four minute clip from the end was as solid an explanation of the lay of the land and a possible way forward as I've heard, but watch her whole interview if you have the time.

Your Depressing Map of the Day

2009-04-17T16:09:00.005-04:00

Slate took data from the Labor Department's local area unemployment statistics starting in January 2007 and running up to February 2009 and mashed it into an interactive map on which you can watch employment bleed out of the country - further visual evidence that the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 have been simply brutal on the jobs front.

African Exports: Religion

2009-04-12T20:19:00.003-04:00

The New York Times has had a couple of surprisingly good religion beat pieces in the last few weeks and today's long essay on the Nigerian based Redeemed Christian Church of God is another example. It's a much better presentation of a genuinely relevant global religious trend than Jon Meacham's recent (and over covered) Newsweek piece on the end of "Christian America." Pentecostalism is one of the four or five most important trends currently shaping Africa and the global south and thus, by definition (or population, if nothing else), the world. If "Christianity" emerges as another truly global force in the future it will certainly not be an American variant but an African one. This piece is a decent introduction and for further reading start with Philip Jenkins's The Next Christianity and The New Faces of Christianity.

Building Codes: Mapping Technology and Tradition

2009-04-11T22:10:00.003-04:00

Heads up to all the loyal readers in or passing through Baton Rouge, LA next week. Do yourself a favor and check out David West's (one of those rare persons with no discernible "web presence" as he spends most of his time making actual things . . . luddite) show at the Glassell Gallery. The gallery is located downtown in the Shaw Center, which is worth a trip in and of itself, so you really can't miss with this one - definitely worth your time.

Disclaimer: Amongst other things, David and I share parents.

Links

2009-04-11T21:01:00.002-04:00

1. Are big farms the key to African development? As I've said before, I think Collier is wrong on this one. There will certainly be some large farms (there already are), some no doubt driven by development and scarcity elsewhere (i.e. China, South Korea, etc.), because a few folks will figure out how to make money off of it, but there need to be a lot more medium sized farms meeting regional farms and there need to be a lot more subsistence farms with access to appropriate technology so that farming can move from being a life line to being something akin to a legitimate credit line.

2. Are diversified organic cropping systems as profitable as conventional mono-cropping? A new study says yes:

"In our study we found that diversified systems were more profitable than monocropping," explains Joshua Posner, University of Wisconsin.

With feed grade premiums the organic systems were more profitable than the Midwestern standards of continuous corn, no-till corn and soybeans, and intensively managed alfalfa.

Rotational grazing of dairy heifers was as profitable as the organic systems. And to our surprise, including risk premiums into the evaluation did not change the ranking of the systems. This study indicates that governmental policy that supports mono-culture systems is outdated and support should be shifted to programs that promote crop rotations and organic farming practices.

Full paper here.

3. Has Mugabe stolen the Ark of the Covenant? Talismans are a powerful cultural force throughout Africa and it's no surprise that this one pops up all over the continent.

4. Easterly on the secret to a successful aid project.

5. Gmail finally adds the ability to insert inline images - revolutionizing family newsletters throughout the world.

6. The Seattle Times discovers potato boxes. One of the problems with getting people to grow their own potatoes is that they are so freakin' cheap and not enough people have had fresh ones to realize how big a difference there really is - as opposed to tomatoes which everyone knows you have to grow yourself if you want to eat a decent one.

7. Another great Where the Wild Things Are poster.

8. Stamp Out Hunger is coming up in less than a month so start buying an extra can or two every week and put them out for the mailman on May 9th. Seriously, this is a no brainer.

Adoption as Development

2009-04-05T21:57:00.002-04:00

The best commentary yet on the Jolie/Madonna strategy of "saving the world one tiny exotic baby at a time" comes from SNL:

Links

2009-04-05T17:04:00.003-04:00

1. Restaurant chains taking a beating - get your Outback, Krispy Kreme, Arby's and Sbarro while you can.

2. Stress and generational poverty in the Economist.

3. What Would Jesus Bet? I'd love to read this piece in the New Yorker on game theory, online poker and Chris "Jesus" Ferguson but for some reason it's gated. I didn't even know the New Yorker required registration?

4. Flaming Garbage Cans in Hip Hop Videos. A blog chronicling exactly what it claims.

5. Hunger eclipsed at G-20 Summit, not surprisingly.

Atlas of Global Development

2009-04-02T20:42:00.002-04:00

The World Bank's recently released second edition of the Atlas of Global Development is available for viewing online, but unfortunately not downloadable.

Tauntaun Sleeping Bag

2009-04-01T19:08:00.004-04:00

By far the best April fools bit I saw today was this one from ThinkGeek - the tauntaun sleeping bag:

This high-quality sleeping bag looks just like a Tauntaun, complete with saddle, internal intestines and glowing lightsaber zipper pull. Now when your kids tell you their favorite Star Wars movie is "Attack of the Clones" you can nestle the wee-ones snug in simulated Tauntaun fur while regaling them with the amazing tale of "Empire Strikes Back".

Use the glowing lightsaber zipper pull on the Tauntaun sleeping bag to illustrate how Han Solo saved Luke Skywalker from certain death in the freezing climate of Hoth by slitting open the belly of a dead Tauntaun and placing Luke inside the stinking (but warm) carcass. If your kids don't change their tune on which Star Wars film is the greatest ever, you can do your best Jar Jar impression until they repent.

Perhaps even better is this seemingly legitimate bit recently added to the sidebar, apparently after ThinkGeek received a deluge of emails from customers:

ATTN Tauntaun Fanatics! Due to an overwhelming tsunami of requests from YOU THE PEOPLE, we have decided to TRY and bring this to life. We have no clue if the suits at Lucasfilms will grant little ThinkGeek a license, nor do we know how much it would ultimately retail for. But if you are interested in ever owning one of these, click the link below and we'll try!

Looks like something just got added to the baby registry.

Barack the Barbarian: Quest for the Treasure of Stimuli

2009-03-31T21:55:00.002-04:00

Apologies for two comic book posts in a row but this one pretty much proves the worth of the medium. I give you - Barack the Barbarian: Quest for the Treasure of the Stimuli. Some plot summary:

In the distant future the story of Barack Obama has become a little... distorted. According to THE MADDOWIAN CHRONICLES he was the one destined to save the great republic of America and dethrone the overpaid despots of the time. Join Barack, Sorceress Hilaria, her demi-god trickster husband Biil, Overlord Boosh and Chainknee of the Elephant Kingdom. Who can the lone barbarian trust, if anyone?

Click through for your comic book requisite Barack beefcake and Palin pinup.

NYT Global

2009-03-30T20:06:00.001-04:00

New global edition of the New York Times.

Baker's Pharmacy, Where are You?

2009-03-30T15:39:00.003-04:00

One of the things that it's been fun to think about as impending fatherhood approaches is the possibility of one day re-entering the world of comic books with my son. But I don't know if you've noticed or not those things have gotten expensive. We're talking $3 on average and, as the NYT reports, some of the more popular titles are rolling out price increases to $4. Comic books are an interesting medium, and one that I don't think is unfair to call niche these days, in that they probably are "underpriced" for the existing fan market (excluding myself and possibly my good friend Miles who is my lone spokesman for the first grade demographic) but perceived as overpriced by the market of potential fans who have so many other, often much more interactive, options with a fairly similar market spectrum. Here's what the president of Marvel says in the piece:

Mr. Buckley felt that, because of comic books’ origin in the world of pulp and disposable entertainment, the effort that goes into their creation is sometimes underestimated.

“Comics are a legit form of entertainment, and there are highly respected and well-paid individuals creating them,” he said. “People have an affinity for nickel and dime comics from the 1940s, but we’re competing with video games, film and television.” He added, “We need to keep the talent on the books to make them work.”

Their current pricing scheme supposedly subsidizes the cost of the less popular titles by increasing the price of the more popular titles but why not subsidize across mediums. Why not subsidize comics with the much more lucrative (I'm assuming, I don't claim to know the margins on any of this) video game, film and television productions? Are comic books even the primary entry point for new fans into the super-hero genre? All of that to say that my new excuse to my wife as to why those boxes of comics have to stay in our closet is that the medium may not even be around by the time "junior" gets old enough to appreciate them so I've got to hold on to what I've got.

Two of My Favorite Things

2009-03-29T16:27:00.003-04:00

Two of my favorite things get connected in this piece from the NYT - Wikipedia and Jane Jacobs:

Mr. Lih at one point enlists the urban reformer Jane Jacobs to back up this point. For him, urban stability is replicated through the transparency of wikis — every change ever made at Wikipedia (every discussion as well) is recorded. Ms. Jacobs, he writes, “argued that sidewalks provided three important things: safety, contact and the assimilation of children.” She may as well have been talking about wikis, he says: “A wiki has all its activities happening in the open for inspection, as on Jacobs’s sidewalk. Trust is built by observing the actions of others in the community and discovering people with like or complementary interests.”

Links

2009-03-29T11:14:00.004-04:00

1. Sign the kids up for the summer: cooking camp for teens.

2. The White House garden story has gotten more press than it is probably worth in terms of it's potential impact on food systems (seriously, have you really been worried that el presidente wasn't eating well?) but I've been keeping an ear open for blow-back from the conventional ag camp regarding all the applause over an organic "first garden" and apparently it's out there.

3. Colonel Sanders practices a little enlightened self-interest by filling in pot holes around Louisville, KY.

4. Best beers in the land?

5. With all the talk of collapsing bee colonies new emphasis has been placed on the role that wild bees play in crop pollination. Here's a method that I had never seen for encouraging/protecting wild colonies:

Cane came up with the idea of using corrugated plastic totes—available from suppliers of mail and package handling equipment—as nesting shelters, and has tested them during spring and summer in California, Oregon, Wyoming and Utah. His experiments show that the lightweight, rectangular bins, each 23-1/2 inches long by 15-1/2 inches wide by 15-1/2 inches high, serve as a sturdy, inexpensive and reusable shelter for protecting bee nests against wind and rain.

Growers, professional and hobbyist beekeepers, and backyard gardeners who want wild bees to live near and work in their fields, orchards, vineyards or home gardens can use the totes to house nesting materials, such as five-sixteenths-inch diameter paper drinking straws enclosed in cardboard tubes and stuffed inside empty cardboard milk cartons. Wild female bees such as the blue orchard bee, Osmia lignaria, can use the straws as homes for a new generation of pollinators.

Wild bees are needed now, perhaps more than ever, to help with jobs usually handled by America's premier pollinator, the European honey bee, Apis mellifera. Many of the nation's honey bee colonies have been decimated by the puzzling colony collapse disorder or weakened by varroa and tracheal mites or the microbes that cause diseases such as chalkbrood and foulbrood.

A single corrugated plastic tote can accommodate as many as 3,000 young, enough to pollinate one-half to one-acre of orchard. And, unlike bulky or stationary shelters, the tote houses can easily be moved from one site to the next.

6. Economy vs. Environment. (via)

7. Something for the kids: MS Office 2007 Ultimate for $59.99. Ok, not just for the kids - you just need a .edu email, enrolled in a class somewhere (or be of low moral character), and use a PC.

8. A call for NGO's to raise their game.

Obama and Global Poverty

2009-03-25T18:59:00.001-04:00

The Judeo-Christian tradition compels us to prioritize the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable, whether in our own country or internationally. Not only is this the right thing to do, it is the best interests of our nation that we reach out to the rest of the world at this time. President Obama's administration represents a new opportunity to restore our moral standing in the world. Recognizing and responding to the increased hardship in developing countries caused by an economic crisis not of their making will be the first test of the administration's commitment to addressing global poverty.

Ruth Messinger at the Huffington Post.

Journal: Food Security

2009-03-25T07:17:00.002-04:00

Inaugural issue of the journal Food Security is free online. Norman Borlaug writes the forward, on this his 96th birthday, so you know a bit of the direction they lean. Looks interesting. (via)

Shorts: Planting, Eating, Fighting

2009-03-24T19:04:00.003-04:00

1. In a move that brings climate change right into your own backyard, the USDA is in the process of updating its plant hardiness zone map to reflect the gradual shifting of warmer climates to the north. In addition to drawing on a much more robust data set than the 1990 version the new map will be much more sophisticated and nuanced:

They also describe the new map as much more sophisticated than the 1990 version, which was based on a data set covering only 13 years (1974 through 1986 for the U.S.). The revised map draws on 30 years of data and uses a complex algorithm to factor in other variables that affect local temperatures, such as altitude and the presence of water bodies.

"All we could really do earlier was draw a straight line between data points, but now we're trying to input a lot of other information," says USDA spokeswoman Kim Kaplan. "We'll pick up more heat islands and cold zones, and the edges of zones will be defined more clearly."

The new map is being developed by Oregon State University's PRISM Group, a team of modelers that also produces climate maps for other state and federal agencies. Unlike past versions, the 2009 map will be GIS-compatible, storing and linking layers of information in a digital version that can be read with widely available GIS (geographic information system) viewing programs. It will have a resolution of 800 square meters, so users will be able to zoom in on their hometowns or zip codes and see where they lie within zones.

This last quote sounds like a t-shirt waiting to be made: "All gardeners are in zone denial."

2. From Duncan Green: food prices for the poor aren't coming down. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was hearing much the same thing today.

3. Tyler Cowen dubs Paul Collier's new book, Wars, Guns and Votes, a "must buy" of the year.

Links

2009-03-21T10:15:00.004-04:00

1. "Tyler Perry is simply reflecting the thinking of a lot of uneducated, working-class African-Americans.'' Anecdotally, I know that sentence to be untrue, I work with plenty of educated African-Americans who love Perry, but ever since we moved to Atlanta, the center of his "empire," I've been fascinated by him. His show "House of Payne" comes on 2-3 times a day here on a local affiliate and it is amazingly bad. It is quite literally the TV equivalent of a train wreck and I can't look away. The man is a genius. He filmed 100 episodes of the show in a year, doing almost 3 a week so that he could get into syndication faster and make the real money. The cast was showing up to the set and seeing their dialogue for the first time on the day they were filming. And believe me, you can tell. Horrible acting, dreadful writing (not, mind you, horrible actors or writers, but people being asked to do the impossible) - you would think it was farce if it didn't take itself so seriously. The man is making money hand over fist and seems to be a gaming the system to perfection.

2. Layoff, a recession inspired video game. (via)

3. Jac Smit, often called the "father of urban agriculture, has a new website.

4. Is the Big Picture a Bummer Today? Nice single serve ribbing of one of my favorite sites.

5. The New York Times covers the annual angst-fest that is the San Diego Comic Con Hotel lottery.

6. There are some helpful things to hear in Douglas Bowman's explanation as to why he left Google - I see lots of relevance for those working in (and making decisions about) development and community building:

When I joined Google as its first visual designer, the company was already seven years old. Seven years is a long time to run a company without a classically trained designer. Google had plenty of designers on staff then, but most of them had backgrounds in CS or HCI. And none of them were in high-up, respected leadership positions. Without a person at (or near) the helm who thoroughly understands the principles and elements of Design, a company eventually runs out of reasons for design decisions. With every new design decision, critics cry foul. Without conviction, doubt creeps in. Instincts fail. “Is this the right move?” When a company is filled with engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems. Reduce each decision to a simple logic problem. Remove all subjectivity and just look at the data. Data in your favor? Ok, launch it. Data shows negative effects? Back to the drawing board. And that data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions.

Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such miniscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle.

7. I really like the fact that the White House will have a garden again, though it remains to be seen whether or not the Obama's access to fresh, local produce will have any impact on the much more important issue of rehauling the American public's food system, and these pictures released by the White House are great but come on, somebody get that woman some Carhartts.

Your Job Sucks

2009-03-20T08:27:00.002-04:00

Chances are, your job sucks. Or so says BusinessWeek in their list of "The World's Worst Places to Work." It's a list heavy on developing world urban centers - 6 in India, 5 in China and the rest scattered primarily around Africa and Asia - with a cumulative population of somewhere in the neighborhood of 160,000,000 (based on a quick Wikipedia perusal). Compiled by ORC Worldwide, a global HR firm, the criteria run mainly to poor infrastructure, likelihood of crime/violence, humidity and the fact that "there is little for Westerners in the way of cultural and recreational opportunities."

That's What She Said: Pope Edition

2009-03-18T14:00:00.005-04:00

William Easterly has already said everything that I wanted to say about the Pope's comments on condom usage in Africa. However, here are a few semi-anecdotal asides:

1. While living in Botswana, my base of operations, Francistown, had the highest HIV infection rate of 15-25 year olds in the world. There was no shortage of condoms. Nor was there a shortage of groups advocating for an A-B approach only (that's "abstain" and "be faithful" minus the C, "condom" for those not familiar with the infamous triad). There was a shortage of groups offering real alternatives and solutions to the 15-25 year olds looking to avoid a positive diagnosis in the midst of rapidly changing cultural and social norms that had the deck stacked against them. In a culture where women have few if any sexual rights how do you ask a man to put on a condom? What's worse - the beating that is sure to follow such a request or the possibility of a disease somewhere down the road?

2. Regardless of where you land on the condom argument the sad truth is that the Pope's statement probably hurt women and other sexually marginalized populations the most as they are the only ones who probably could have benefitted from a more nuanced message from the pontiff.

3. Somewhere I have a photo I took of a group of boys playing soccer with a ball made entirely of condoms (thrown out by a clinic after they "expired"). Did I mention there were a lot of condoms around?

4. The problem in my little slice of the world at that time was not condom usage. It was a lot of things - a healthcare infrastructure scrambling to play catch up with relatively limited resources, finding an effective medium through which to educate a culture that never publicly discussed sexuality about the dangers of sexual intercourse, replacing the traditional sexual initiation/education model that rapid urbanization was demolishing, the necessity of economic transience, etc., etc., etc. - and none of them were very effectively solved by the simple math of "do I or do I not use this piece of latex."

5. Balloons. You see a lot of condom balloons knocking about as well.

6. To quote the Pope, HIV/AIDS is "a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems." Nor can it be overcome by the church alone, which even aggravates the problem. One of the greatest tragedies of my time in Botswana was seeing how unwilling churches and secular NGO's were to work together and realizing how many instances there were where they could have been incredibly effective partners. The lack of imagination and basic trust from both sides in the face of an unfolding epidemic was depressing to see. In many places on the continent that has changed some, but not enough.

7. Am I the only one that thinks the above sentence from the Pope would have been a good time for someone in the crowd to shout "That's what she said." And if so, does that make me a bad person?

Shorts: Pop Culture

2009-03-16T21:54:00.003-04:00

1. It's a strange world: "Paramount has acquired the rights to a forthcoming Wired magazine article about diamond thieves that J.J. Abrams will produce as a feature film, according to The Hollywood Reporter." I'm a sucker for a heist movie, so I will of course see this.

2. Action Comics #1 goes for $317,200.

Shorts: Watchmen

2009-03-09T18:55:00.002-04:00

1. For the moment, Watchmen is the #1 selling book on Amazon. (via)

2. The New York Times released its inaugural Graphic Book Best Seller List last week.

3. Track by track look at the Watchmen soundtrack and its connection to the book by Evie from Awesomed By Comics.

Bon Iver"s Blood Bank $0.99 @ Amazon

2009-02-27T19:40:00.002-05:00

In case you haven't snagged it already, Amazon has Bon Iver's new EP for $0.99 - for the next few hours at least. Highly recommended.

Rose McCoy

2009-02-27T19:12:00.005-05:00

NPR did a great piece on songwriter Rose Marie McCoy this afternoon. You can tell just by listening to her conversation with the interviewer that she made her money with words so listen to it if you have time (though it looks like most of the transcript is there). These were a couple of my favorite lines:

In 1954, McCoy and Singleton wrote a song called "Trying to Get to You," which was first recorded by a black vocal group called The Eagles. Elvis Presley heard their version in a record store in Memphis, and he decided to record the song on his debut album for RCA Records in 1955.

"Elvis did that just exactly like The Eagles, exactly," McCoy says. "Every breath, every sound, everything. Amazing how he did that. ... He wasn't a big star at that point, and we thought he was terrible because we thought he couldn't sing. We didn't understand, but we was grateful. Thank God for Elvis."

. . . . .

"They wanted to hear what you had," she adds. "And if they liked it, they didn't care if you was black or white. We thought it was the blues and they called it rock 'n' roll; I still don't know the difference."

Shorts

2009-02-26T21:28:00.002-05:00

1. Really interesting write up by Waxy on a group of 240 Chinese fans of the Economist who collaborate to translate each weeks issue behind China's infamous "great firewall":

While researching Oscar screeners last month, I stumbled on a remarkable example of online collaboration in China that's completely undiscovered here. In short, a group of dedicated fans of The Economist newsmagazine are translating each weekly issue cover-to-cover, splitting up the work among a team of volunteers, and redistributing the finished translations as complete PDFs for a Chinese audience.

As usual, there's lots more of interest that follows including the translation process, self-censorship, distribution and what the Economist thinks.

2. Louis CK on Conan, "everything is amazing and nobody is happy."

Recently Spotted: Civil Religion

2009-02-21T18:45:00.003-05:00

Snapped on the way home from work.

Hard to complain if he's getting folks there at 7:30 on a Sunday morning.

Links

2009-02-20T20:31:00.002-05:00

1. No Lunch Left Behind, Alice Waters rallying for school lunch reform ahead of the upcoming renewal of the Child Nutrition and Women Infants and Children Reauthorization Act, set to expire in September. Nice accompanying graphic:

2. Is food the new sex?

3. Beer not recession proof after all, down 14% for the quarter, more here. Previously.

4. Another great series of photos from the Big Picture.

5. Vermicomposting goes mainstream.

6. The evolutionary role of cookery.

"Extinct" Bird Seen, Eaten

2009-02-19T22:04:00.003-05:00

From National Geographic, an early contender for blog post title of the year.

(via)

Singin' 'bout Coprophagia

2009-02-16T21:04:00.003-05:00

I just realized that Andrew Bird does precisely that in "Tenuousness:"

When coprophagia was writ
Know when to stand or when to sit
Can't stand to stand, can't stand to sit
And who would want to know this?
Click. Click. Click.

This seems to be the best version You Tube has to offer:

James Beard Semifinalists

2009-02-16T20:29:00.004-05:00

The James Beard Foundation announced the semifinalists (pdf) for their 2009 Restaurant and Chef Award's a few days ago. It's a list that seems more useful for the layman and casual eater than the finalists and eventual winners (they rarely seem to be surprises) as, it goes without saying, it is more expansive in both number and locale. The usual suspects are all there but there are also a lot of chefs and restaurants who won't make it to the final cut because they are a little out of the way (as far as the culinary world is concerned) and under reported - the long list of rising stars is especially nice. Which is an apt enough description of our home city, which happens to be fairly well represented at this stage of the game and your city might be as well so take a look.

Aside: Am I right in thinking that they don't, but should, announce semifinalists for the media, journalism, author, and design categories?

Farmers and High Speed Internet

2009-02-16T19:31:00.002-05:00

Interesting post from Daily Yonder mining the USDA's 2007 Census of Agriculture to look at high speed internet access in rural areas.

The whole thing is interesting but here's the final summary:

The Census asked only two questions pertaining to the Internet: Did the farm operator at any time in 2007 have internet access? And, did the farm operator have a high speed Internet connection? The Census did not ask about price or the kind of connection the operator purchased — DSL, cable, satellite.

The nation has little sense of who has and who lacks broadband connections in rural America. The Senate stimulus bill, in fact, requires the Department of Commerce to prepare “a comprehensive nationwide inventory map of existing broadband service capability and availability in the United States.”

Until that report is completed, however, the Ag Census may have the most complete survey of broadband availability and use in rural America.

The Census collected answers from so many rural residents — more than 1.3 million farms ranging from mega-ranches in Texas to hobby farms in Washington — that it gives a good picture of how deeply broadband has penetrated into rural America.

The map at the top of this story shows a clear divide between the eastern and western United States. Farms east of the Mississippi River, especially in the South, use broadband Internet far less than those farms in the Great Plains, the Mountain West and the Pacific coast. Some states are clearly more broadband-savvy than others.

Is that because of the local economy, state policy, national broadband initiatives, local government? It’s impossible to tell, but the variation in broadband use across rural America is so large that it raises questions about the extent of economic and social inequality among rural communities.

Gillian Welch's Revival $1.99 @ Amazon

2009-02-16T14:10:00.003-05:00

Honestly, I haven't turned into a shill for Amazon. I just haven't had time to do much blog-wise beyond passing on noteworthy links and Gillian Welch's Revival album for $1.99 at Amazon is EXTREMELY noteworthy. (You see what I did there. It works on two levels. One, it is awesome. Two, it is music and music is composed of notes. Do you see that? Do you see what I did?). This recommendation comes even more strongly than the Andrew Bird recommendation of a few days ago (Manuel, back me up on that one.).

This is an album that every person with ears should own - it's one of my all time favorites. Again, if you don't know Gillian Welch, do your requisite googling and You Tubing but for goodness sake if you like puppies, pies or oxygen you're gonna like this album.

You've got 24 hours.

Links: Some Old, Some New

2009-02-13T20:59:00.002-05:00

1. Gapminder updated their handy one slide/sheet global HIV chart.

2. Lovely, Lovely Charts.

3. Declining nutrient content in fruit and vegetables, report here.

4. To make.

5. Two from the Ag Biodiversity Blog: the back and forth (and back again) debate on whether or not small farms (or big farms) can save Africa; and poultry of the world:

6. Amazon doing their part for, um . . . . valentines I suppose, free download of Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On".

Wendell Berry's Standards for Technological Innovation

2009-02-12T14:29:00.002-05:00

Both Waxy and Kottke pointed to this interesting piece by Kevin Kelly entitled Amish Hackers. It reminded me of a short essay by Wendell Berry published, amongst other places, in Harper's back in the late 80's (originally?) entitled Against PC's (the Harper's version is gated but here's the essay as well as subsequently published letters between Berry and readers.). He ends with this list of "standards for technological innovation:"

To make myself as plain as I can, I should give my standards for technological innovation in my own work. They are as follows:-

1. The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces.
2. It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces.
3. It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces.
4. It should use less energy than the one it replaces.
5. If possible, it should use some form of solar energy, such as that of the body.
6. It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided that he or she has the necessary tools.
7. It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible.
8. It should come from a small, privately owned shop or store that will take it back for maintenance and repair.
9. It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships.

If You Don't Know Now You Know

2009-02-11T20:29:00.003-05:00

My brother is the only actual artist I know personally and he's already one of the hardest working guys around so maybe he doesn't need the advice but for those of you who are like myself and find your artistry expressed in the more mundane tasks of your day I'm going to add my recommendation to the plethora of others already out there and suggest you watch Elizabeth Gilbert's TED Talk. Gilbert's writing isn't my particular taste but the good Judge John Hodgman, her friend and fellow TED attendee, nailed it as to why this particular talk is so effective (and interesting to me in particular).:

BUT WHILE SHE IS ADORED in this video, and I adore her as well, the magical thing you may not be able to get through this embedded video is how skeptical the audience initially was of her, and how masterfully she won over this bunch of jaded billionaire/genius TEDTOPIANS through simple, good storytelling.

PS - Come to think of it, David, you should watch this one too.

The Old Keeps Getting New

2009-02-08T21:16:00.004-05:00

Accompanying article.

La Machine in Liverpool

2009-02-06T15:11:00.003-05:00

The Big Picture has another amazing photo set up, this time of an "event" that was part of Liverpool's Capital of Culture year. The best way to describe it seems to bit this bit pulled from one of the photographer's captions: "street theatre on a city scale with a 50 foot spider."

There is, of course, plenty of You Tube coverage as well.

Andrew Bird: Noble Beast - $1.99 @ Amazon

2009-02-06T14:46:00.003-05:00

Buy. This. Album. Even if you have no idea who Andrew Bird is trust me on this one thing and buy this album. I assume it is a mistake and that Amazon will correct it momentarily, because seriously, how can this album be $1.99? Either way the deal only lasts 24 hours so don't dally.

$1.99? Are you kidding me?

Gates @ TED

2009-02-05T20:33:00.005-05:00

Video for the much talked about Gates presentation at TED is now available. I can't help but like the guy and even if you don't agree with his methodology you've got to respect his passion and the considerable footprint he has in the development world.

I also noticed via the TED blog that Hans Rosling presented again this year and it sounds like he utilized Gapminder's recently updated HIV/AIDS data sets to do so, I love his presentations so I'll be keeping an eye out for it and hopefully he swallows another sword.

Tough Guy Challenge ≥ Refugee Run?

2009-02-02T13:16:00.003-05:00

On his excellent new blog, Aid Watch, Bill Easterly recently took to task the UN High Commission on Refugees for putting together a "Refugee Run" at the Davos economic conference for its embodiment of what he sees as "sensationalizing, patronizing, and dehumanizing attitudes" towards refugees and their plight (a topic he returns to in another great post today as well). Perhaps the real problem with the UNHCR's simulated refugee experience was that they undersold it - look how successful this year's Tough Guy competition was at getting people to crawl through the mud under barbwire and they require £250, an updated tetanus shot and a signed death warrant:

For further proof that the UNHCR should probably be setting up shop outside of extreme sporting events rather than high level meetings of the World Economic Forum see the rest of the photos at the Big Picture.

Aside: Like Easterly's commenters I've got mixed feelings about "educational" events such as the "Refugee Run" - which I have no personal knowledge of, but which is by no means the first or only such recreation in the attempt to raise awareness of a cause - they are legion and their effectiveness and "worth" are widely disparate. Having been involved in the advocacy/education arm (for lack of a better term) of non-profit work for the last couple of years I've participated, observed and even led more than a few of these with varying degrees of success and uncertainty. One of the things that I think those of us who are passionate about these issues forget is that the journey towards becoming an informed advocate for causes of global injustice is just that, a journey, a process of becoming aware, educated and empowered. For a lot of people that process begins with empathy. Some people encounter extreme poverty, violence or hunger through travel, some through relationships, some by reading books by esteemed authors such as Monsieur Easterly and some by participating in "educational" events like the "Refugee Run." None of these individuals will emerge from their respective encounter with the full picture but they may emerge with a desire to see more fully. Again, from my own experience, there are ways to talk about issues of gross global injustice while at the same time affirming the dignity and worth of those trapped in their midst. I am a fan of Easterly and his writings but I would wager that far more passionate, well informed, active advocates have begun their own journey at the entrance to a "refugee run" than they have at the introduction to one of his books - though I highly recommend they seek out a copy as soon as they come out the other side!

Links

2009-02-01T19:36:00.003-05:00

1. Zimbabwe abandons its currency, a fitful and far too late acknowledgment of reality by the government.

2. Obama, replacing both Santa Claus and your mother.

3. Genuine rural development.

4. Nice little piece on Updike and religion from PBS's Religion and Ethics News Weekly.

5. Babies know that a little dirt is good for you.

6. TED recently put up a video of a talk by Scott McCloud on understanding comics filmed back in 2005. Via Jesse Thorn, who recently interviewed McCloud on The Sound of Young America, a podcast favorite of mine.

7. The Big Fix - long, but, in my very unqualified opinion, worth reading piece in the NY Times Magazine breaking down the bail out and its many ripples.

8. Motown #1's, 26 of them in fact, for $1.99 (for another few hours at least) from Amazon's MP3 store. By the bye, they've got a Twitter feed announcing their daily $1.99 deal.

State of the States: Importance of Religion

2009-01-28T19:08:00.003-05:00

Not much new or surprising in this report by Gallup but I do like pretty maps.

Links: Food and Ag Edition

2009-01-28T17:32:00.004-05:00

Lots going on around the UN's meeting in Madrid on global food security:

1. Giving a cow a name increases her annual milk yield by almost 500 pints. This is pretty cool but my guess would be that dairy farmers who call their cows by name and "treat them as family" are the types of farmers who are also taking greater care in other matters more central to an increase in milk production, if those were controlled for I hazard the increase would disappear. But I like this bit:

Dr Douglas added: "Our data suggests that on the whole UK dairy farmers regard their cows as intelligent beings capable of experiencing a range of emotions."

2. The Feeding of the Nine Billion. A summary post by Alex Evans on the release of his excellent year long study report (pdf) of the same name looking at global food prices and scarcity. Definitely worth a download and read. I especially like this bit from the executive summary on the need for a 21st-century Green Revolution (emphasis mine):

Invest in a 21st-century Green Revolution. The 20th-century Green Revolution achieved astonishing yield increases. Now, a 21st-century equivalent is needed – one that not only increases yields, but that also moves from an agricultural model that is input-intensive (in water, fertilizer, pesticide and energy) to one that is knowledge-intensive. Genetically modified crops may have a role, but ecologically integrated approaches – such as integrated pest management, minimum tillage, drip irrigation and integrated soil fertility management – often score higher in terms of resilience and equitability, as they put power in the hands of farmers rather than seed companies. Additional funds for public research and development are also vital: the budget of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research has fallen by 50% over the last 15 years, for example.

3. Getting fat in rural America. Blog for Rural America points to the release of the Center for Rural Affairs' new report Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity in Rural America (pdf) - also worth a read.

4. When banks manage the food crisis - from the Food First Institute.

5. Tom Philpott over at Grist has some thoughts on the Gates Foundation's plans to boost food production in Africa as outlined in their annual letter.

6. Farmers don't use much water.

7. Reason on agricultural subsidies, a topic that rarely comes up outside of Farm Bill discussion.

8. Smashed chickpea salad.

Obama Backlash?

2009-01-26T17:08:00.004-05:00

Years from now when historians look back at the Obama presidency and seek to determine precisely when the backlash began they will point to two historical artifacts.

This song (opens popup player - lyrics are here for those with stout hearts but weak constitutions) by Garrison Keillor from this weekend's A Prairie Home Companion and this video by a parade of . . . . luminaries(?). (Oh, I strongly encourage you - do not listen or watch either of these. No, I'm serious. They. Are. Awful.)

Marbury has the take down.

Like many, I have been worried about the state of political satire and comedy under an Obama presidency, but apparently his supporters have all co-conspired to fill in the gap - taking one for the team if nothing else, I suppose.

Good Music, Good Cause

2009-01-23T21:12:00.003-05:00

The new compilation put out by the Red Hot folks looks pretty freakin' great. Artist and track list here, and you can listen to new tracks contributed by The National and Bon Iver via their handy widget below.

Kgosi

2009-01-20T14:12:00.002-05:00

Tough to fool a baby, even more so if said baby is a Jedi.

Clif Bar Voluntary Recall

2009-01-19T21:41:00.003-05:00

Heads up - keep an eye on the peanut news mis amigos, I've had a mild case of a salmonella strain before and it was one of the most unpleasant 24 hour periods of my life.

Links: Themes Edition

2009-01-16T20:13:00.003-05:00

1. Basketball:

a. The Audacity of Hoops - it's the only sport I follow and as someone who worked through many of the trials of early adolescence playing on a dirt court in his backyard I really enjoyed this piece.

b. A similarly themed anecdote from Peggy Noonan:

This week in the transition headquarters, the president-elect walked by a row of offices. Someone had given him a basketball; he dribbled it as he walked down the hall. Suddenly a young veteran of the campaign turned to another and said, "The black guy with the basketball is the next president." For them it's a rolling realization: You know it, lose it in the flow, realize it again, and suddenly it's new again. The aide says, "He's in a line with Washington and Lincoln, and luminaries like JFK and Reagan." He shakes his head wonderingly. I have seen new guys say this about new presidents most of my professional life. I never see it that I'm not moved. To this day.

c. Ankle Insurance Co.

2. Africa:

a. Advice to Obama's Africa team from the Global Development Center: Don't Change Too Much.

b. Similar thoughts from US News and World Report.

c. Flying toilets still abound.

d. Lessons of Zimbabwe. (via)

The Uncharted Zone

2009-01-13T21:50:00.004-05:00

American Idol premiered tonight which meant that my wife and I parted ways at 8:00. It's not that I'm above watching American Idol, sociologically it's probably the only interesting reality show left on the air, but I don't watch much TV that's not animated and I have an over developed sense of empathy that makes it very uncomfortable for me to watch people publicly humiliate themselves and if by some chance you haven't seen the show, that's it in a nutshell.

Any who, as usual when left to my own devices I eventually got around to You Tube and discovered The Uncharted Zone. It is, by all accounts, both "The Most Important Music Television Show Along The Gulf Coast" and "The Gulf Coast Leader In Music Video Production," offering such services as:

Can follow a story line with actors and/or the artist playing parts.
Can be cool scenes inserted around the song
Can be models looking good throughout the Music Video
Can be different angles of the artist performing

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding and they have quite a feast on their You Tube channel, but might I suggest this sampler counting down their top ten videos of 2008:

All of this raises three mildly serious questions in my mind. Are all public access television shows doing this kind of internet crossover? Isn't You Tube just public access television writ large? How many American Idol contestants will we see on future UZ top tens?

Global Soil Maps

2009-01-13T16:48:00.002-05:00

Global Soil Maps: of particular interest to those exploring issues relating to agriculture, climate and sustainability but with a wide variety of maps that could be used for more general purposes.

It comes to my attention as a number of global development heavyweights are investing in a project to more thoroughly map the (often) depleted soils of Africa. Though I don't quite share this level of optimism:

"The digital soil map has brought soil science to the 21st century," he said. "At the push of a button, you have answers on soil erosion, where to farm and what crops to grow on what type of soils."

it should prove useful. Any farmer worth their salt, or 6'th grade science student for that matter, will tell you it does little good to plant crops in soils that don't have the fertility necessary to bring them to maturity, but then again, any farmer worth their salt won't need a digital soil map to tell them where and what to plant. It's certainly good information to have, especially on the meta level, but I've never spoken to a farmer on any continent who didn't already know what and where to plant. Which isn't to say that there aren't new technologies which might help increase yields, there almost always are, but it is to acknowledge that most farmers on the African continent farm the way they do out of necessity, i.e. they want to feed their family today and tomorrow will worry about itself.

(via)

Links: Extended Edition

2009-01-11T20:28:00.007-05:00

1. Religion bits: Father John Neuhaus passed away, Gordon Cosby and The Church of the Savior transition "out of existence" (or depending on your perspective "out into existence"), Philip Jenkins on dying Christianities, the rapture index ticks up a notch (can you guess the category?), the Church of England adds a couple of timely new prayers, "A prayer on being made redundant," and "A prayer for those remaining in the workplace," both are here.

2. Crayon Physics Deluxe finally available (if you have a PC, sorry Pomeroy).

3. "Bikers wear fruit shells to avoid helmet law", or the perils of regulation in a developing context:

Police in Nigeria have arrested scores of motorcycle taxi riders with dried fruit shells, paint pots or pieces of rubber tire tied to their heads with string to avoid a new law requiring them to wear helmets.

The regulations have caused chaos around Africa's most populous nation, with motorcyclists complaining helmets are too expensive and some passengers refusing to wear them fearing they will catch skin disease or be put under a black magic spell.

The law, which came into force on January 1, pits two factions equally feared by the common motorist against one another: erratic motorcycle taxis known as "Okadas," whose owners are notorious for road-rage, and the bribe-hungry traffic police.

Some bikers have used calabashes -- dried shells of pumpkin-sized fruit usually used as a bowl -- or pots and pans tied to their heads with string to try to dodge the rules.

Construction workers have set up a lucrative trade renting out their safety helmets for around 500 naira ($3.60) a day.

"They use pots, plates, calabashes, rubber and plastic as makeshift helmets," said Yusuf Garba, commander of the Federal Road Safety Commission in the northern town of Kano.

"We will not tolerate this. We gave them enough time to purchase helmets. Six months ago the price of helmets was below 800 naira so complaints about non-availability and high prices are no excuse," he told Reuters.

Helmet prices have since risen sharply as sellers cash in on demand.

4. Little housing crisis on the prairie:

Pa and Ma signed the papers.

Laura still didn't understand. "But, Pa," she asked again, "if we never pay off any of the principal, how will we build equity in the house?"

"Don't worry, Laura," Pa reassured her. "In a year, this house will be worth twice what we paid for it. And if we need cash before then I can always hew some equity out of an oak stump with my ax. Oak is good hard wood."

Then Laura felt better. Pa could make anything with his ax.

"You see, Laura," Pa went on, "Uncle Sam has made a bet with us. We have bet that housing prices will continue to rise at historic rates for the foreseeable future. And the government has bet that if real-estate values plummet, honest citizens like us will be too stupid to do anything but continue paying out our hard-earned 5-cent pieces for property that was never worth more than a fraction of its appraised value. Either way, we are going to win that bet!"

"Charles," Ma remonstrated. She did not approve of gambling, even in metaphors.

"But what if land values do drop?" Laura wanted to know.

Pa's blue eyes twinkled. "That can never happen, Half-Pint. Why, it's just as likely that all our crops will be ruined by a blizzard, or a prairie fire, or a horde of grasshoppers!"

Laura and Mary and Ma and Pa all laughed at that idea. Jack barked and barked. Mr. Edwards ran around his mule in circles, slapping at imaginary bees.

5. Ethan Zuckerman on cyberwarriors in Gaza.

6. AbeBooks' most expensive book sales of 2008.

7. Know your cuts of beef (and make Letterman proud).

8. In a move of colossally bad timing (not to mention failure of foresight) for me, barring some intervention, many second-hand and thrift stores will be forced to stop selling children's clothes come February 10th. WTF, mate?! (see also, above article on Nigeria.)

9. More on the previously mentioned bees freebasing cocaine, in the NY Times.

10. Good long piece in the New Yorker on international aid workers in Africa, worth a read for anyone thinking in that direction (via Scarlett Lion).

Ouch

2009-01-09T13:28:00.001-05:00

xkcd.

Oxfam in Gaza

2009-01-08T16:20:00.003-05:00

Oxfam's Mohammed Ali lives and works in Gaza and he's been posting on the situation there through the Oxfam newsfeed. This, depressingly, from yesterday:

We have one day left of food and the nappies I bought two weeks ago are nearly gone. They are not good quality as little has been able to enter this strip of land since the blockade was imposed on us eighteen months ago. Bad quality nappies means unpleasant leakages, and for the last few days the little ones have had to be bathed in freezing cold water.

My sister who was with us the last time I wrote decided to return home in spite of our protests. She feared that with food reserves running out we might have to eat one meal a day rather than the two we have been having of late. At home she has a little food left, enough to keep her and her family going for a while longer.

We are now eleven, huddled together in my parents’ dining room. My brother and I and our families moved there, thinking that the first floor may be the safest option. There is a saying in Arabic, which says, ‘ death in a group is a mercy’, I guess if we die together maybe just maybe we will feel less of the pain than in doing so alone.

I have had 8 hours sleep since the beginning of this conflict; we can hear attacks almost every minute.

Strangely, as technology enables us to make the waging of war more and more impersonal it also makes the victims and casualties of war more and more intimate.

So, there's this . . . .

2009-01-07T21:25:00.003-05:00

An artifact from a seemingly foreign land. (via)

Oh, if you're wondering, You Tube's first "related video" for this little gem is entitled "Retarded Cats." Which I also find hilarious.

I could make a pretty good case for the idea that You Tube is single handedly keeping us as a nation out of a full blown depression by virtue of its ability to cumulatively distract us all long enough so that we wander back from the edge. God bless those good folks, bless them every one.

Watching the Watchmen

2009-01-06T18:57:00.005-05:00

If you haven't listened to This American Life's December 29th podcast then you're probably still playing catch up after the holidays like me. However, I recommend doing so as soon as possible as it's a quality episode but especially so for Joshua Bearman's piece on the infighting currently shaking the very foundations of the Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santa's. (Bearman, you may remember, was also the author of the previously mentioned excellent piece from Rolling Stone on real superheroes, he's got a real thing going there. Did you see what I did right there? Did you see it?) If for nothing else you will need it to make sense of this.

PS - You could also throw some change their way.

A 50 Year Farm Bill

2009-01-05T22:59:00.002-05:00

Wes Jackson and Wendell Berry have a short op-ed in the NY Times today (logins if needed):

Industrial agricultural has made our food supply entirely dependent on fossil fuels and, by substituting technological “solutions” for human work and care, has virtually destroyed the cultures of husbandry (imperfect as they may have been) once indigenous to family farms and farming neighborhoods.

Clearly, our present ways of agriculture are not sustainable, and so our food supply is not sustainable. We must restore ecological health to our agricultural landscapes, as well as economic and cultural stability to our rural communities.

For 50 or 60 years, we have let ourselves believe that as long as we have money we will have food. That is a mistake. If we continue our offenses against the land and the labor by which we are fed, the food supply will decline, and we will have a problem far more complex than the failure of our paper economy. The government will bring forth no food by providing hundreds of billons of dollars to the agribusiness corporations.

Not unrelated, Salon has a review of Mark Bittman's new book, Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating, which is described as "applied Pollan."

Church and State

2009-01-05T20:13:00.004-05:00

Recently released report from Pew on the religious makeup of Congress and contrary to race and gender it looks a lot like the rest of the country it purports to represent. The full report here and some summary from USA Today. Of Interest at first glance: the rise of Catholics (+11.3%) and Jews (+6.1%) and the decline of Protestants (-19.4%) over the past 48 years; and the fact that you apparently still can't get elected without claiming some faith tradition (0% unaffiliated compared to 16.1% of the population).

Urban Hunger in Africa

2009-01-04T21:35:00.001-05:00

If I remember correctly, somewhere around 40% of Africa's population live in urban areas, a number that was in the low teens circa 1950. So it's no surprise that the U.N. is struggling to find solutions for the rising problem of urban hunger across the continent and in doing so finding that it's a different beast altogether from the rural hunger that the international development industry has principally been "designed" to combat:

Escalating hunger in African cities is forcing aid agencies accustomed to tackling food shortages in rural areas to scramble for strategies to address the more complex hunger problems in sprawling slums.

The United Nations World Food Program, the world's largest food-aid group, has plenty of experience trucking food into rural Africa, responding to shortages sparked by drought, famine and war. But in urban areas -- where, despite widespread poverty, hunger wasn't a significant issue until recently -- the hurdles are different.

In the vast and crowded slums, with many unnamed streets and dwellings without running water or electricity, it is difficult to identify who's most in need of help. Simply handing out food can disrupt cities' informal markets, cutting into the livelihoods of those who earn a few dollars each day selling peanuts or fresh fish, or of small farmers who haul their produce to the city.

As Bill Easterly is fond of saying, poverty is more than a technical engineering problem that is simply waiting for the right answer to come along. Effective ground level solutions have to find ways to knit together the socio-cultural fabric that has been torn apart by poverty and hunger, unfortunately that is a really hard task to accomplish if the needed threads have been left behind in the village.

In rural areas, aid groups can rely on the communities to help single out the neediest people and quickly distribute aid. That's more difficult in cities, where more nuanced surveys are needed to find the most vulnerable.

One suggestion, Ms. Sheeran, might be to call the church.

NPR Hearts Me

2009-01-04T19:07:00.004-05:00

We finally got around to becoming members of our local NPR affiliate this year and if I had known that they were going to cater to my musical tastes so well I would have done so much sooner. There was a nice interview with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver on NPR this afternoon discussing their new EP, Blood Bank, due out on January 20th - they've also got some nice live performance audio up as well. Even better they've just started streaming Andrew Bird's new album, Noble Beast, also due out January 20th.

Both mentioned previously here.

Update: Long profile of Andrew Bird in the NY Times. (user: beatbox/pword: beatbox)

Links

2009-01-04T10:38:00.003-05:00

1. Ranking rich countries' commitment to the developing world:

I suppose this means most countries just aren't "earning" our help.

2. Boy Scout earns all 121 possible merit badges. You only need 21 to make eagle scout. Here's a list of the 121 current merit badges, here's a list of those that have been discontinued since 1911. If nothing else it's a good record of the rise of the urban, technology dominated culture of modern America and the decline of the agrarian.

3. Best of 2008: Blogs. One of my favorite newly discovered blogs this year has been Kim Wolhuter's video/photography blog, Wildcast. Wolhuter is a wildlife filmmaker (with quite a pedigree as both his father and grandfather were the head ranger at Kruger) operating along the Zimbabwe/South Africa border and he updates his blog with amazing frequency with video and photography of incredible quality. It's a can't miss for wildlife geeks and today's post is a good example.

4. When a phillips is not a phillips, an exhaustive guide.

5. Penguin's favorite book designs of 2008 and Robot 6's 25 best comic book covers.

Belated Tennyson

2009-01-03T23:25:00.003-05:00

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out false, ring in the true.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Sadly, the old is already new.

The Science of Shopping

2009-01-01T17:41:00.002-05:00

From the Economist:

Then there is the in-store bakery, which can be smelt before it is seen. Even small supermarkets now use in-store bakeries. Mostly these bake pre-prepared items and frozen dough, and they have boomed even though central bakeries that deliver to a number of stores are much more efficient. They do it for the smell of freshly baked bread, which makes people hungry and thus encourages people to buy not just bread but also other food, including frozen stuff.

Links

2008-12-31T22:49:00.002-05:00

1. White farmers in Zimbabwe are looking to the tribunal of African judges set up by the SADC for legal help in ongoing conflicts over land redistribution. I've wondered if this could be an opening for the southern African nations to demonstrate their displeasure with Mugabe, but given the volatility of the issue across much of southern Africa maybe not. Land tenure is messy, messy stuff.

2. Paste has a piece on the newest addition to Sufjan's Asthmatic Kitty label, The Welcome Wagon. The group is a husband wife duo from Brooklyn, he's a presbyterian pastor (Aside: I like the simple clean look of their church website). Sufjan, who produced, arranged and contributed, sums up their record, which I like, quite well:

It’s a Presbyterian ordained minister and his wife, playing religious songs. Take it or leave it.

3. From Salon: In defense of pie (a defense I am in whole hearted support of, though at my wedding we opted for cheese cake which is, I suppose, a sort of pie/cake hybrid compromise).

4. I'm still catching up so here is the Big Pictures year in photos part two and part three.

5. Amazon is selling their top 50 albums of the year in mp3 format for five dollars each. My favorite album of 2008 is there if you don't have it yet as well as a few others that would be in my top 10ish: Gnarls Barkley, Santogold, and Girl Talk.

6. Happy New Year.

Real Life Superheroes

2008-12-30T21:24:00.002-05:00

From Jesse Thorn over at the Maximum Fun Blog comes this great essay in Rolling Stone on Real Life Superheroes:

Like other real life super-heroes, Master Legend is not an orphan from a distant dying sun or the mutated product of a gamma-ray experiment gone awry. He is not an eccentric billionaire moonlighting as a crime fighter. He is, as he puts it, "just a man hellbent on battling evil." Although Master Legend was one of the first to call himself a Real Life Superhero, in recent years a growing network of similarly homespun caped crusaders has emerged across the country. Some were inspired by 9/11. If malevolent individuals can threaten the world, the argument goes, why can't other individuals step up to save it? "What is Osama bin Laden if not a supervillain, off in his cave, scheming to destroy us?" asks Green Scorpion, a masked avenger in Arizona.

The whole thing is well written and worth a read. Also worth your time is a perusal of the World Superhero Registry, mentioned in the essay. When you read this on the disclaimer page you know you have stumbled on to something special:

This website deals with the actual incorporation of the superhero archetype into daily life. As a consequence of the complex and ever-changing nature of the legal system and the diverse and unusual activities that may be involved in such alternative lifestyles, some of the activities described herein may be in conflict with local laws in some areas. None of the creators of this web page specifically condone any of the described activities or the possession of any of the equipment related to those activities. We are not legal experts and lack the expertise and resources to research the legality of any of the practices of our members, or visitors.

The entire site is wonderful, and I mean that, it is sincerely wonderful (if in need of an upgrade) but be sure and check out the registry page to see who might be patrolling in your area.

Conversion as a Bridge to Development?

2008-12-29T21:08:00.008-05:00

Here's the title and byline from Matthew Parris's current piece in the Times Online:

As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God

Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa's biggest problem - the crushing passivity of the people's mindset.

Aside: It's probably no fault of Parris, as titles and summaries are usually the provence of editors, but there is plenty to quibble with in those first thirty words or so before we even get to the article itself, something of an inauspicious beginning. Not the least of which is to bemoan yet another occurrence of run of the mill adult behavior somehow being deemed worthy of laudatory attention ("Cat says, 'Dogs not that bad, really!'"). The ability to see both sides of an issue and muster up the intellectual imagination necessary to conceive of how someone approaching said issue might arrive at a different conclusion, given their own unique starting point, was at some point in the past not a feat of staggering genius but a minor point of good manners. Alas, that and the hills requiring us to walk up them both ways in the snow appear to be no more and so matters of intellectual civility are reduced to little more than a writers conceit. Bah, bring me my lap blanket!

However, even though I appear to be on the other side of the spectrum when it comes to the matter of religious faith, I'm not sure that we are interpreting the cause and effect of religious involvement, in this case a decidedly Christian faith, in a similar fashion. Since I'm just re-entering the digital world after a bit of a holiday fast here are a couple of random, disjointed, very inside-baseball thoughts drawn from my own time working with faith based groups on the African continent:

1. Africa has "had God" for quite a while now. Depending on your reading of history the African church has been around since the first century, Mark the evangelist is traditionally thought to have founded the Coptic Church in Alexandria between 40-50 AD. So, either God's not doing that great a job or there is more going on across Africa than a dearth of missionaries (a point I'm sure Parris wouldn't argue). I'm actually a fan of the reading of history which gives the Christian faith a place of importance in the cultivation, development and spread of the best of our modern society (and admittedly a not infrequent tool used to decimate some of the worst) but it did so amidst the seedbed of more than a few other important factors, many of which Africa lacks. Faith, Africa has in spades.

Aside: If you're curious about the historical importance of Christian thought that has taken place on the African continent, Thomas Oden released a good book at the beginning of this year entitled How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind.

2. I can't help but hear my neo-colonialism bells ringing when I read Parris's article - no accusation there, just my own reading. Admittedly, they are occasionally tuned a little too finely but when Parris recounts returning to his boyhood home after being away for 45 years and comes away impressed by the Africans who have thrown off the bondages of traditionalism, be they religious or communal, and embraced the well spoken niceties of western European conventions it is hard for me to hear him saying anything other than, "I like the Africans who are more like me and less like their uncles."

3. Parris attributes this escape from the "crushing passivity" of the African mindset to Christian conversion. Undoubtedly, there's some merit to that claim as exposure to the Christian faith has traditionally meant exposure to Europeans and Americans (Aside: this is increasingly not the case however, as the majority of Christian "evangelism" taking place on the African continent is now African to African.) and this exposure has brought along with it not only a new found faith but a variety of invaluable social capital that might push them ahead of their more traditional neighbors. The same thing happens to individuals in developing countries who find work with NGO's. Their English gets better, even if passively so they are more aware of both the hurdles and opportunities for bettering themselves and again, by association if nothing else, they are better equipped to avoid the former and embrace the latter. In a developing context where a weeks delay in the rainfall can be the difference between famine and plenty, how much more meaningful could a relationship with a wealthy, accommodating Westerner be in terms of incremental change?

4. Missionaries frequent the lobbies of expensive hotels quite a bit. Which is not to say that they do not live lives of spartan sacrifice in relation to what they may have left behind in their native lands and in service to their calling; but it is simply to acknowledge that they too attend conferences and discuss strategy, take the occasional vacation, entertain a donor here and there, and are no more ignorant of the exchange rate than their NGO counterparts.

5. I don't think "tribal value systems" should be beyond critique either but neither do I think that the Christian gospel is inherently destructive to traditional cultures. There is no denying that in the hands of the over zealous it has often been so, as they introduced not only the gospel message but their own culturally conditioned interpretation of the gospel as being both singular and normative, but at its heart the gospel is a message of redemption and reconciliation for both individuals and cultures.

Aside: One valid critique of Christianity in Africa by Christian African academics is that its failure to move beyond superficial transformation in many African cultures is a result of its failure to adapt itself to what Parris bemoans as the "rural-traditional mindset" (or rather re-adapt, since it is hard to read the biblical narrative as anything other than speaking to and out of a "rural-traditional mindset"). They claim that an individualistic, community eschewing faith (which it pains me to say has been the most prevalently espoused Western interpretation) is not what Africa needs, but a faith that redeems the strength of community and enables the community to move beyond the corrupt, monopolies of individuals who have learned to manipulate the strengths of community against itself.

6. A final quibble:

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

Since Parris is a self-professed atheist he can be excused for the over simplification, but that isn't Christianity, it's not the gospel, or at least it's not all of it. As I mentioned above, the heart of the gospel is redemption and reconciliation but it's not simply a restoration of the link between God and humanity - it is certainly that, but it is also the reconciliation of humanity to others, to creation and to itself. Christianity does not call us out of the tribe, out of community, but it calls us into "true" community. The faith described by Parris above will certainly position Africa to be a continent of independent, self-interested, potential consumer-capitalists but I don't think it will make them overly Christian or developed.

The bulk of Parris's article is interesting if problematic in places - though if taken to its logical conclusion I fear it would be bad for both religion and development on the African continent. I tend to agree with the overall gist of his premise - that there is something both good and necessary, both affecting and effective, inherent in the faith based work that takes place across the developing world, and the African continent in particular. As I've said before, (here, here and here for starters) I think that religion can (and must) be one of the key bridges to continued development success when operating in cultures as intrinsically religious as those found throughout much of Africa. To ignore religion is to do more than fail to acknowledge the elephant in the room it is to fail to arrive at the house all together. More could be said but this has gone on far too long already, apologies.

Best of 2008: Blog Post Titles

2008-12-23T15:41:00.003-05:00

A late entry, but a clear winner:

Honey Bees On Cocaine Dance More, Changing Ideas About The Insect Brain.

Even better, the whole thing is interesting, not just the title.

Best of 2008: Seasons

2008-12-17T21:44:00.001-05:00

Fall.

Inaugural Roster

2008-12-17T21:20:00.003-05:00

Looks like Rick Warren will be delivering the invocation at Obama's inauguration. Interesting choice. Despite accusations otherwise from both ends of the spectrum Warren occupies a center right position in the American religious landscape, or at least the closest thing there is to a center right position, which means he's not "all that" far from the center left position at which Obama seems to be positioning most of his administration. I'd be curious as to who else made the short list for the invocation and benediction spots.

Of equal (greater?) interest is this bit as well:

John Williams, the composer whose music was heard at Mr. Obama’s victory party on election night in Grant Park, will compose a new piece to be played for the incoming president.

His new piece will be played by Mr. Perlman on violin, Mr. Ma on cello, Gabriela Montero on piano and Anthony McGill on clarinet. (Usually at this juncture in previous inaugurations an operatic soloist performs.)

Not too shabby.

PS - A previous bit on Warren.

Year In Photos

2008-12-17T19:10:00.001-05:00

Good stuff as always from The Big Picture: the year in photographs, part 1 of 3.

Hallelujah Redux

2008-12-17T16:55:00.004-05:00

PRI's The World covered the story of the dueling Hallelujah's today. The jist: "Music fans are using the internet as a battleground to campaign for their favorite cover version of Leonard Cohen's 1984 love song 'Hallelujah'" - this particular battle pits the winner of Britain's X-Factor (a UK American Idol I am told) against hardcore Jeff Buckley fans who despair of the sacrilege of a version other than Buckley's topping the charts, all of this is made more "exciting" as the coveted Christmas #1 spot is at stake here . (Cohen fans are apparently content knowing that Leonard is cashing fat royalty checks.)

Those playing along at home will remember that a similar phenomenon occurred during this years American Idol here in the states, which I (among others) noticed and mentioned previously here.

Here's Burke's live version from X-Factor ("official" studio version is here with embed disabled):

Here's Buckley's live version (the "official" studio version is here with embed disabled):

The money is on Burke at the moment but Buckley isn't far behind and I like the look of this dark horse who has quite a following.

Best of 2008: Music

2008-12-16T20:31:00.003-05:00

There weren't that many albums that bowled me over this year, but here are two worth a look.

I've mentioned Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago before and I'm still listening to it. A lot. Here's the band on Letterman a few days ago:

The other album worth mentioning is Human Highway's Moody Motorcycle.

Honorable mention: Mike Relm's Spectacle. and Jayber Crow's Two Short Stories.

PS - Two to look for in early January: Andrew Bird's Noble Beast and Bon Iver's EP Blood Bank.

Links Addendum

2008-12-14T21:57:00.002-05:00

6b.

Update: Video. Good reflexes and a great line from the Pres.

8. More on the global auto industry and the southern U.S., or why you've heard so many southern law makers speaking out against the Detroit bailout. (Previously)

Links

2008-12-14T16:38:00.006-05:00

1. Stories to watch: Faith based charities, funding and Obama. I'd be a bit surprised if anything changes here and even more so if anything changed any time soon, given the current plight of the economy. Anecdotal: almost 70% of the organizations in our metro area providing short and long term hunger relief are faith-based.

2. Waxy points to this flaying of Swoopo by Jeff Atwood. (and from what I can remember after looking around the site several weeks back it's pretty accurate).

3. My food sensibilities run moderately counter-cultural so for reasons that are becoming more relevant by the day I appreciated this account of what to do when your child wants to try Dunkin' Donuts.

4. Who gets U.S. foreign aid, in Parade of all places.

5. Kanye on SNL last night (worth clicking the link for full screen). I've heard most of the new album now and I like it a lot more than I thought I would. No vocal (or mixing) awards are going to be handed out for this performance but the whole package is pretty mesmerizing. No one, in any field, is taking advantage of the multiplicity of ways in which technology and popular culture are intersecting like Kanye and you get the sense that his self-perception is that of an artist who creates (thus the vanities?), not simply a performer. (via)

Kanye West - Love Lockdown - SNL - 12/13/2008

6. Iraqi journalist throws shoes at Bush during press conference. I'm not a Bush apologist but I can't help feeling sorry for the guy occasionally and thinking that on some level (like Palin) he is a victim of circumstance.

7. List of common misconceptions:

Hair and fingernails do not continue to grow after a person dies. Rather, the skin dries and shrinks away from the bases of hairs and nails, giving the appearance of growth.

McSweeney's: Bon Jovi's Preconcert Prayer Circle

2008-12-11T19:37:00.004-05:00

I find almost everything Dan Kennedy writes hilarious and this piece for McSweeney's is no exception (your tendency to laugh will greatly increase if you have a rudimentary knowledge of Bon Jovi as a result of coming of age in their heyday and an intimate knowledge of prayer circles as a result of much of the aforementioned coming of age taking place in the milieu of church youth groups):

Dear God, thank you for this opportunity to be together tonight and to bring people together with our music. Thank you for surrounding us with each other. You really gave us an awesome guitarist, God. We appreciate you taking the time to do that back in 1983, when you had so much stuff on your desk. I remember that the musical Annie was closing on Broadway that year; it was in basically every single newspaper in the city every day, it seemed like. And I remember thinking that maybe the only prayers about arts and entertainment that you would be listening to would be that cast's prayer circles before they went on each night, but you tuned them out and instead focused on steering this man named Richie Sambora toward me here on Earth because you knew it was more important that I get a rippin' guitar player early on so I could form this band and we could start making our way to the top. The U.S. Embassy in Beirut was bombed that year, too, so I know you had tons of stuff going on and were really busy, so I'm just sayin' I appreciate your making kick-ass lead guitar a priority in '83. You didn't have to do that, but you did.

. . . . .

Give us the strength to deliver to the fans out there in the seats tonight. I know there's a lot of stuff going wrong in the world again. Guess what, though: there's always going to be stuff going wrong in the world. I need you focused on the Bon Jovi show at the Wachovia Center in Philadephia, Pennsylvania, USA, Earth. I need you focused on our set list, and I need you focused on making sure the couple of hiccups we had in sound check today don't become issues onstage tonight. Again, I know the stuff's really hitting the fan down here and you're probably getting slammed with more prayers than ever, but for the next 75 nights we've got shows and I'm asking you to put tuning in to our preshow prayer circle at the top of your list. That's why we're doubling up our power and signal by being in a circle like this and by holding hands to basically make one giant person beaming one huge consolidated prayer up to you—we'll do what we have to do to get heard and to cut through the clutter of individual prayers.

Links Addendum

2008-12-07T18:07:00.003-05:00

8. Forgot this one, of interest to my father if no one else: G.M.’s Pension Fund Stays Afloat, Against the Odds (registration required at the moment, username: skcusger, password: regsucks, if you need it).

Links

2008-12-07T10:24:00.006-05:00

1. Ebert's top films of 2008. Two thoughts while looking over the list: the symbiosis of life/art seems to have held true this year as there's not a lot of cheer or humor in the mix (WALL-E may be as close as it gets and if you've seen it you know that while the ending is optimistic it's a backhanded optimism at best); you're going to have to search hard for a lot of these if you're outside a decent sized metropolitan area - a fact Ebert acknowledges with this bit at the end:

Looking back over the list, I think most moviegoers will have heard of only about 11, because distribution has reached such a dismal state. I wrote to a reader about "Shotgun Stories," "I don't know if it will play in your town." She wrote back, "How about my state?" This is a time when home video, Netflix and the good movie channels come to the rescue. My theory that you should see a movie on a big screen is sound, but utopian.

2. America's other auto industry here in the deep south - we'll be driving home for the holiday's in a few weeks and pass by three of these plants.

3. Oven stoves and heat walls: long, interesting article with wonderful pictures.

4. SitOrSquat - use your phone's GPS to find the nearest public bathroom (also coming soon to a comedy plot line near you.) (via)

5. Tim Harford says microcredit is working and raises some good questions. (via)

6. I didn't know that Graham Linehan has a blog. Poking around, this entry from the archives is a good discussion of the difficulty of putting together a comedy sitcom on either side of the pond and why I so vastly prefer those in the British tradition - I like my comedy with a healthy dose of the absurd. If you haven't seen Linehan's IT Crowd do yourself a favor and hunt around for it. Oh, and I also found this:

7. When Pomeroy and I were kids one of our favorite pranks was to use the phone at his parent's office to dial two random numbers and conference them as they both picked up the phone. You'd be surprised at how amusing an argument between two strangers over who had called whom could be to twelve year old boys. However, we certainly never imagined that our calls might precipitate a nuclear war. Suddenly this seems much more plausible. My favorite line from the article:

"It was a little alarming, to say the least."

(via)