I just learned about a recently formed company called Veratect, based right here in my own home state of Washington, which is pioneering a new kind of expertise. Veratech is harnessing the power of the “always on” world wide web to find, synthesize, and disseminate information about disease and civil unrest around the world to leaders in business, governments, and non-profits in order to help these leaders more effectively … well, Make The World A Better Place (MTWABP).
From their front page:
Veratect provides the earliest detection of emerging threats to human, animal and plant life while empowering corporations, government organizations, NGOs and global citizens with trusted, timely and actionable information.
It sounds like Veratech is doing the same sort of thing google recently accomplished in tracking flu trends much more quickly, only on a much larger and more global scale. I think that is extremely kewl.
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »“Moonaroo” has an interesting series of posts surrounding the raid last year of the Yearning For Zion Ranch/FLDS, and the forcible removal of 400+ children on allegations of child abuse, which were later dismissed by the Texas Supreme Court.
Her posts, in order, are here, here, and here. That last one is Larry King Interview with some women from the FLDS which set off all sort of warning bells for me.
Moonaroo was apparently inundated with comments many of which were rather rude, and the great majority of which were from guys. She’s looking to hear what the gals think.
Her posts raised an interesting question for me: Is polygamy “wrong”? “Wrong” is of course a shockingly loaded term. But I mean … is it inherently less ideal than monogamy? Is it inherently more dangerous and/or degrading to women than monogamy? Do the answers to these questions change based on culture/time? Why or why not? Etc.
For myself I wouldn’t want to be married to more than one woman. I love Megan, and she rocks, and I’m totally happy with her, AND sometimes it takes a great deal of concentration and commitment on my part to be a good husband to her (and no doubt vice versa). But I definitely don’t have enough concentration and committment to do that with two people, even if I wanted to, which I don’t.
But maybe some guys *do* have enough concentration and committment? Or maybe in some cultures that are less individualistic (there’s a loaded term) marriage in *general* is easier? Or maybe ….
There–I’m sure I’ve opened at least a couple of cans of worms, and no doubt garnered a great deal of trouble for myself by doing so. =) Your thoughts?
Posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments »Martin sent me a link to the brilliant story recently. H/T Keith Giles.
The story is about a high school foot ball game in Texas recently between Gainesville State and Grapevine Faith. As it turns out, Gainesville State is a team made up entirely of incarcerated high schoolers. They get escorted off the the field at the end of every game by security guards. Every one of their games has been on the road, and their record for the season was 0-9 (that’s 0 wins, 9 losses). They had only made two touchdowns the entire season.
Here’s an excerpt from the the story:
This all started when Faith’s head coach, Kris Hogan, wanted to do something kind for the Gainesville team. Faith had never played Gainesville, but he already knew the score. After all, Faith was 7-2 going into the game, Gainesville 0-8 with 2 TDs all year. Faith has 70 kids, 11 coaches, the latest equipment and involved parents. Gainesville has a lot of kids with convictions for drugs, assault and robbery—many of whose families had disowned them—wearing seven-year-old shoulder pads and ancient helmets.So Hogan had this idea. What if half of our fans—for one night only—cheered for the other team? He sent out an email asking the Faithful to do just that. “Here’s the message I want you to send:” Hogan wrote. “You are just as valuable as any other person on planet Earth.”
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »Read the rest of this news item »
The Jewdas Kiss
Thursday, January 15th, 2009A funny thing happened last week. Leaders of the British Jewish community, called the Board of Deputies, had organised an Israel solidarity march - perhaps in response to the large number of marches held in solidarity with Gaza across the country. Which they are entitled to do, of course.
Suddenly an email circulated amongst the Jewish community claiming the march had been cancelled.
It read:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - Board of Deputies of British Jews Cancels Sunday’s Solidarity Rally
The Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council, in consultation with a coalition of prominent organisations in the Anglo-Jewish community, have decided to cancel the planned Israel Solidarity Rally, due to occur on Sunday 11th of January.
This decision has been taken after intense discussions within the community, due to a feeling that such a demonstration would not be in accordance with the Board’s wish to bring the conflict to an immediate conclusion. It was thought that the demonstration might be perceived as the community taking one side in the tragic war in Gaza and Israel, and might be seen as supporting Israel’s military campaign.
Quite an amusing (and relatively harmless) tactic many of us thought. But then there were reports of an arrest for inciting racial hatred.
Now it turns out the hoax was send by a Jewish group called Jewdas
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Song for Gaza
Monday, January 12th, 2009 Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
Top 10 Humanitarian Crises of 2008
Tuesday, January 6th, 2009The amateur philologist in me loves that Latin plural for “crisis”.
Cool People Care asks us to spend five minutes educating ourselves by reading Doctors Without Borders’ list of the Top Ten Humanitarian Crises of 2008.
Five Minutes sounds so doable. What do you think?
Oh–look. They’ve produced a video that’s less than five minutes long, in case that’s easier than reading =)
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off
Thoughts and numbers (and links) from the week
Monday, January 5th, 2009
- During the current iteration of hot conflict between Israel and Gaza, I heard on the news, 400 Palestinians have died, and 4 Israelis have died. This works out to about a 100 to 1 ratio
This reminds me of a similar statistic. In 2008, in the hot conflict in Iraq, 9193 Iraqi civilians have died, and 332 Coalition soldiers have died. which works out to about a 27 to one ratio.
Would it be evil to conclude that “they” are worth somewhere between 1/30th and 1/100th as much as “we” are? Strangely, this holds up in terms of GDP. Which is to say that the Israeli GDP per capita is about 24 times the Palestinian GDP per capita, and the U.S. GDP per captia is about 14 times the Iraqi GDP per capita.
I guess perhaps these aren’t very ideal measurements of people’s worth. There is some truth in there somewhere, however.
- Huffington Post recently ran a well reserached and well written story on child slave trafficking. Writer Rukmini Callimachi details the story of Shyima Hall, of Egypt, who worked as an unpaid “maid” for a wealthy family here in the U.S., living in their unheated garage, from age 14 for many years before she was finally freed.
- Martin recently sent me a story about the Dignity, a boat belonging to Free Gaza which was attcked by Israeli Defense Forces while trying to deliver humanitarian supplies to the besieged territory.
Your thoughts/comments in response to any of these are definitely welcome =)
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
Dear [insert name],
Sunday, January 4th, 2009We are currently in your area - flattening buildings - and thought you might be interested in our latest Special Offer. That’s right, for a very short time only, we are offering you the Deal of Your Life.
Here it is - if you tell us where to find the people we want, we won’t kill you. We can’t say fairer than that now can we?
All you need to do is call us on 02-5839749 (that is 00972 25839749 if you happen to be outside of Gaza - we wouldn’t want you to miss out on this special offer), or, you can email us on helpgaza2008@gmail.com
We wouldn’t want you to be short of paper, so we have also helpfully printed this on bits of paper and left them outside your door. Please do not hesitate to get back to us as soon as possible. Once you’ve left the hospital and buried the children, of course.
Your friendly occupying Army,
IDF
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments OffIDF letter to Gaza
Virginity Pledges are ineffective, dangerous, claims study.
Monday, December 29th, 2008A recent study in the journal pediatrics claims to show that so called “virginity pledges”, where teenagers sign a pledge to save sex until marriage, simply don’t work. The study found that contrary to previous studies’ findings, those who make such a pledge neither have fewer sexual partners nor do they wait longer to have sex.
In fact, the study found that the big difference between pledgers and non-pledgers was that pledgers were less likely to use a condom or birth control than were non pledgers.
This article points out that the federal goernment spends some $200 million per year on abstinence promotion programs, which include these types of pledges. The article ends:
Researcher Janet Elise Rosenbaum, PHD, of Harvard University, says the findings suggest that health care providers should provide birth control information to all teenagers, especially virginity pledgers.
Thoughts?
Posted in Uncategorized | 45 Comments »
Bombing Gaza–who is to blame?
Saturday, December 27th, 2008In many of the stories regarding the Israeli attacks on starving Palestinians today, one sees a phrase along the lines of “The U.S. blamed Hamas today for Israeli attacks on Gaza”. This because of the following statement from White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe
“”These people are nothing but thugs, so Israel is going to defend its people against terrorists like Hamas that indiscriminately kill their own people,” Johndroe said in Texas as President George W. Bush was spending the week before New Year’s at his ranch here. “They need to stop. We have said in the past that they have a choice to make. You can’t have one foot in politics and one foot in terror.”"
(one continues to wonder, even after eight years, if Bush spokespeople are even remotely aware of the neck deep levels of irony in their statements)
French President Nicolas Sarkozy seemed perhaps a bit closer to the mark.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy accused Israel of using disproportionate violence in its attacks on the Gaza Strip Saturday.
The bombardment must stop immediately, Sarkozy, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, said in Paris.
Sarkozy also condemned the launching of rockets by Palestinian militants on Israel from the Gaza Strip and called for an end to the “unjustifiable provocation” that had led to the current situation.
There was no military solution in the Gaza Strip, he said.
The only good bit of news: Egypt opened it’s border with Gaza to allow some of the victims to be transported out by ambulance.
I wonder if most Americans *do* blame Hamas for today’s attacks? Are the reporters getting it right–does Johndroe’s and the White House’s interpretation accurately reflect the average American’s take on it? I was speaking to a relative of mine about this on Thursday. He’s a reasonably well educated, smart, empathetic guy. He’s also retired military. I was surprised to learn that he *does* blame the Palestinians. He kept saying things like “They need to get over the fact that Israel took their land. That’s just the way it is. Someone is always taking someone’s land. The takers are often themselves the victims of such a taking.”
I asked him what he thought about McNamara’s idea of proportionality being important in war, and that the case right along (since the 1940’s, really) has been one where comparing the consequences for both Jews and Palestinians in terms of deaths, displacements, starvations, etc. etc. shows a really high degree of disproportionality. He said “Well, if you were the one person in Southern Israel whose daughter was killed by a Hamas mortar attack, wouldn’t *you* want something done?”
I imagine I would. And I like to imagine it would be something a bit more thought out and hopeful than something like what happened today.
Here’s my question: Does it have any bearing, on the question of who’s to blame, that the Israeli gross domestic product per capita is $26,800, while the Gazan gross domestic product per capita is $1,100? (the former number is approximately 24 times the latter) Why or why not?
(By the way, this puts Gaza at about number 165 in the world, just below Burkina Faso and just above Afghanistan. It puts Israel at about number 31 in the world, just below the Bahamas and just above South Korea.)
Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments »
