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Feb 7, 2012
By David Brown | Posted at 13:14:51
Animal charity sues SeaWorld on behalf of five 'slave' whales (UK Telegraph 2-7-12)
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Miller called the hearing in San Diego after SeaWorld asked the court to dismiss a lawsuit filed by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) that names five orcas as plaintiffs in the case.
PETA claims the captured killer whales are treated like slaves for being forced to live in tanks and perform daily at its parks in San Diego and Orlando, Florida.
“This case is on the next frontier of civil rights,” said PETA's attorney Jeffrey Kerr, representing the five orcas.
Feb 6, 2012
By David Brown | Posted at 13:58:52
Colbert v. the Court (Slate 2-2-12)
The Supreme Court has always had its critics. Chief Justice John Marshall had to contend with the temper of President Andrew Jackson (“John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it!”). And Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes went toe-to-toe with FDR, who wouldn't let up with the court-packing. But in the history of the Supreme Court, nothing has ever prepared the justices for the public opinion wrecking ball that is Stephen Colbert. The comedian/presidential candidate/super PAC founder has probably done more to undermine public confidence in the court's 2010 Citizens United opinion than anyone, including the dissenters. In this contest, the high court is supremely outmatched.
Citizens United, with an assist from a 1976 decision Buckley v. Valeo, has led to the farce of unlimited corporate election spending, “uncoordinated” super PACs that coordinate with candidates, and a noxious round of attack ads, all of which is protected in the name of free speech. Colbert has been educating Americans about the resulting insanity for months now. His broadside against the court raises important questions about satire and the court, about protecting the dignity of the institution, and the role of modern media in public discourse. Also: The fight between Colbert and the court is so full of ironies, it can make your molars hurt.
Jan 16, 2012
By David Brown | Posted at 15:52:38
A former model delves into the industry (Boston Globe 1-15-12)
To write the book, Mears spent more than three years doing research and interviewing models, agents, and clients. Pricing Beauty describes the industry as glamorous, yes, though marked by a particular kind of struggle. The pay can be low, the working conditions harsh, and the workers' expectations often unrealistic. At the same time, it is sustained by a glut of laborers—many of them imported from abroad—who are willing, or resigned, to work for little more than the promise of glamour and fortune. It's a winner-take-all setup, with few participants reaping the rewards. For every Kate Moss, Mears writes, there are literally thousands of other girls and women who have sacrificed years of their youth and come away with very little. Many are in debt to their agencies for essentials like housing and visas before they even begin to work, and the physical requirements are intense. Mears describes models who, though not the norm, feel enough pressure to stay thin that they turn to extreme exercising, high-protein low-fat shakes, unhealthy diets, or pharmaceuticals such as Adderall, which suppresses appetite. And the older a model gets, writes Mears, the more she “exudes failure.” There's no shortage of models washed up by their mid-20s.
Jan 13, 2012
By David Brown | Posted at 17:31:26
India's UID scheme-
Opposition to the world's biggest biometric identity scheme is growing (The Economist 1-14-12)
FOR a country that fails to meet its most basic challenges-feeding the hungry, piping clean water, fixing roads-it seems incredible that India is rapidly building the world's biggest, most advanced, biometric database of personal identities. Launched in 2010, under a genial ex-tycoon, Nandan Nilekani, the “unique identity” (UID) scheme is supposed to roll out trustworthy, unduplicated identity numbers based on biometric and other data.
By David Brown | Posted at 10:39:27
Could You Be A Criminal? US Supports UN Anti-Free Speech Measure (Forbes 12-30-11)
While you were out scavenging the Wal-Mart super sales or trying on trinkets at Tiffany and Cartier, your government has been quietly wrapping up a Christmas gift of its own: adoption of UN resolution 16/18. An initiative of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (formerly Organization of Islamic Conferences), the confederacy of 56 Islamic states, Resolution 16/18 seeks to limit speech that is viewed as “discriminatory” or which involves the “defamation of religion”—specifically that which can be viewed as “incitement to imminent violence.”
By David Brown | Posted at 8:9:29
Digital natives and their brave new world—Is the smartphone generation getting smarter, or just more superficial? (MercatorNet 1-10-12)
Mark Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University, is a distinguished scholar of this technological and cultural revolution. In 2009 he published a best-seller called The Dumbest Generation, arguing in thoughtful detail what the constant use of the Internet was doing to the mind and character of people glued to their computers, cell phones, tablets, and a huge variety of additional electronic gadgets. The book was disturbing at best, pointing to the growth of narcissism, anti-intellectualism, and the loss of general literacy and good manners. Bauerlein has now collected a series of excerpts taken from books, magazines, and journals by 23 authors that “present a range of judgments about the Digital Age, and digital tools and behaviors that have enveloped our waking hours.” Variety abounds in The Digital Divide: Arguments for and Against Facebook, Google, texting, and the Age of Social Networking (2011), but the quality level is inconsistent. Here is a review of some of the best of the selections.
Jan 12, 2012
By David Brown | Posted at 18:56:44
Getting There Too Quickly—Aldous Huxley and Mescaline (The Revealer 1-2-12)
Between his 1932 vision of a sterile dystopia in Brave New World and the 1962 novel Island about a spiritual utopia, the author Aldous Huxley experienced two things; the Hindu religious philosophy known as Vedanta and psychedelic drugs. In Brave New World, people are addicted to Soma, a hallucinogenic that artificially simulates a kind of dull transcendent state, and so makes religion irrelevant. In Island, the Palanese (residents of Pala where the book takes place) ritually use the drug moksha for spiritual and mystical insights. It wasn't that by the time he was writing Island Huxley no longer believed that civilization was potentially doomed to a homogenized over-indulgent consumer culture, but rather that there was another possibility for human destiny. Soon after writing Brave New World Huxley saw this other opportunity but believed it would take work, a disciplined and rigorous adherence to a spiritual ideal. By the time he got around to writing Island he was convinced there was a faster, less strenuous way to find the higher purpose of human consciousness: mescaline.
Jan 10, 2012
By David Brown | Posted at 14:58:12
Ready for Doomsday: Buying asteroid-proof bunkers, killing their pets and planning mass suicide, the families convinced this ancient calendar predicts the world will end in 2012 (UK Daily Mail 1-10-12)
Public concern is so high that NASA, the U.S. space agency, even has a section debunking the theories of impending doom on its website.
The agency says it has taken more than 5,000 questions from people, some asking if they should kill themselves, their families or their pets.
Dec 12, 2011
By David Brown | Posted at 10:12:37
The Occupy movement is an unprecedented opportunity to overcome America's current hopelessness by Noam Chomsky (In These Times 11-1-11)
Delivering a Howard Zinn lecture is a bittersweet experience for me. I regret that he's not here to take part in and invigorate a movement that would have been the dream of his life. Indeed, he laid a lot of the groundwork for it.
If the bonds and associations being established in these remarkable events can be sustained through a long, hard period ahead—victories don't come quickly—the Occupy protests could mark a significant moment in American history.
Dec 5, 2011
By David Brown | Posted at 10:48:13
The FP Top 100 Global Thinkers (Foreign Policy Dec. 2011)
Foreign Policy presents a unique portrait of 2011's global marketplace of ideas and the thinkers who make them.
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