emjohnson | December 16, 2009Congratulations on four years of blogging to Martin Rundkvist at Aardvarchaeology (he's also the reigning deity behind Four Stone Hearth) and Abel Pharmboy of Terra Sigillata (who celebrated his yesterday). Here's to many more!
emjohnson | December 16, 2009
The blogosphere's best (and only) anthropology blog carnival has just been posted at Anthropology in Practice. Krystal has collected together some fascinating posts that are sure to titillate the intellect and get those cultural juices flowing.
emjohnson | December 15, 2009This week may be sporadic as I focus on my graduate work, so here are the top ten posts from November as chosen by readers:
#1 - I Am Extremely Terrified of Chinese People, But I'm Not Racist
This cracks me up, in more ways than one.
#2 - Reciprocity and the Anthropology of Organ Transplants
Thanks to the readers of Mental Floss who found this one of interest.
#3 - University of Illinois Graduate Students Vote to Strike
By the way, they won.
#4 - Breaking the Chain: Ardipithecus Is Not A Missing Link
This would have been my top choice, but what do I know?
#5 - The Gay Animal Kingdom Should…
emjohnson | December 15, 2009Sex workers in Denmark have offered free sex in response to Copenhagen Mayor Ritt Bjerregaard's attempt to discourage prostitution during the COP15 Climate Change Conference. The City Council had postcards delivered to 160 hotels where conference delegates and associates of COP15 would be staying and paid for advertisements in local newspapers that read:
'Be sustainable: Don't buy sex!'
However, prostitution is legal throughout Scandinavia and sex workers have formed unions to protect themselves from exploitation and harassment. In response SIO (Sexarbejdernes Interesse Organisation; or…
emjohnson | December 15, 2009The Guardian environment editor John Vidal, who first reported on the "Danish Text" that would seek to eliminate the Kyoto Protocol and allow wealthy nations to maintain double the carbon pollution as poor nations, has filed this report from Copenhagen. The outrage by developing nations was felt again last night as wealthy delegates met secretly and held "informal consultations with selected countries."
emjohnson | December 14, 2009"Even the best of modern civilisations appears to me to exhibit a condition of mankind which neither embodies any worthy ideal nor even possesses the merit of stability. I do not hesitate to express the opinion that if there is no hope of a large improvement of the condition of the greater part of the human family; if it is true that the increase of knowledge, the winning of a greater domain over nature which is its consequence, and the wealth which follows upon that domain are to make no difference in the extent and the intensity of want with its concomitant physical and moral…
emjohnson | December 14, 2009ScienceBlogs has the funniest ads sometimes. This image adorned the right hand side of my screen this morning (maybe now it's there twice). Intrigued I wanted to know more:
Compassion believes it takes more than education, healthcare and social programs to make a difference in the life of a child and help nations escape from poverty.
Finally, someone's advocating the abolition of all third world debt. Or they're suggesting that there needs to be a nonviolent civil uprising to remove authoritarian regimes throughout the Global South and expose the multinationals who support them. Exposing…
emjohnson | December 14, 2009Image: Jesus! vs. Darwin! by The Searcher
It's a tired old routine, yet time and again the same argument is taken off the shelf, dusted, buffed and then presented with a sly smile as if it were something new. Evolution, it's asserted, is only progressive and builds on earlier adaptations in its march forward through natural history. Therefore, if there is any evidence that a species adapted "backwards" it must mean that natural selection is flawed. However, the fallacy in this argument is that natural selection has nothing to do with progress, it's merely one of the mechanisms by which…
emjohnson | December 14, 2009Uncensored video below.
Yes, this is juvenile. But then, you're the one who clicked on it.
H/T Max Blumenthal
emjohnson | December 13, 2009Alfred Russell Wallace, co-discoverer with Darwin of the theory of natural selection, was so great an admirer of the English philosopher Herbert Spencer that he named his first-born son Herbert Spencer Wallace on June 22, 1867. Ironically, Wallace later became a socialist, a view that was diametrically opposed to Spencer's right-wing libertarian views.
Source: David Stack, The First Darwinian Left: Socialism and Darwinism, 1859-1914 (Cheltenham: New Clarion Press, 2003), 47.
emjohnson | December 13, 2009Journalist Robert Eshelman is blogging from Copenhagen throughout the UN Climate Conference and offers this cogent observation:
If there's going to be an agreement, it will come down mostly to money. The E.U. might offer more money and the U.S. might provide a counteroffer. There might be some movement on emissions targets from the E.U. but with the Senate's recent reduction of its emissions target, the door seems to be closed on Obama offering greater cuts. Offers of financing, particularly around addressing deforestation, might woo a number of developing and poor countries and secure their…
emjohnson | December 13, 2009Canadian journalist Naomi Klein, author of the international bestsellers The Shock Doctrine, No Logo, and the recent Rolling Stone article "Climate Rage," gave the following talks at the KlimaForum09 alternative climate conference in Copenhagen. As the US is insisting on a mere 17% reduction in carbon pollution based on 2005 levels (when the IPCC Working Group III Report calls for a minimum safe reduction of 25 - 40% from 1990 levels) she highlights how this conference will not come to an agreement that adequately meets the challenge we face. In order to do that, she argues, it will require…
emjohnson | December 10, 2009Yep, this is pretty much how it works. Marc Roberts has this brilliant comic that sums up the spectacle currently underway in Copenhagen. Here's a taste, but make sure to click the link to see the whole thing.
emjohnson | December 10, 2009Sharon Astyk is a writer, teacher and small farmer living in rural upstate New York and now writes at Casaubon's Book, after the character in the George Eliot novel Middlemarch who attempts to put everything in history within a single narrative. She writes and speaks frequently about peak oil, climate change and depletion issues. Here is a sample from one of her latest posts. In bemoaning the so-called "Danish text" that would allow rich nations to produce twice the carbon pollution as poor ones she writes:
This should not surprise us - at every level our energy and environmental process…
emjohnson | December 9, 2009The so-called "Danish Text" agreement that was leaked to the Guardian newspaper has resulted in a firestorm of controversy. By far the most hostile reporting about the outrage that poor nations have expressed has been from the Financial Times.
FT Commentator Fiona Harvey wrote yesterday that:
The more the spotlight falls upon this Danish text, the more like a Danish pastry it looks.
Here's an assertion from Newsweek:
"Under the plan, by 2050 poor countries would have to limit per capita emissions at 1.44 tons, while rich countries would be given extra leeway at 2.67 tons per person."
Really…
emjohnson | December 9, 2009The following is an unconfirmed draft of the speech that President Obama plans to give before the Nobel Prize Committee in Oslo later today. Daniel Simpson has transcribed the draft:
EMBARGOED UNTIL DECEMBER 10, 2009(Check against delivery)
Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Excellencies, Distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Dear Friends around the world, My fellow Americans.
I stand here today humbled, more than ever, by the task before us, grateful for the honour you've bestowed, and mindful of the sacrifices we must make to do it justice.
Twenty Americans before…
emjohnson | December 9, 2009Executive Director of the South Center Martin Khor and Journalist Naomi Klein are interviewed in Copenhagen:
Martin Khor: I think that the US has a positive role to play in the climate negotiations, which it has yet to play, by allowing those countries who are in the Kyoto Protocol--and that's all the developed countries except the US--to remain there and to take their commitments there and to take high commitments there to reduce their emissions by at least 40 percent. . .
Now, the reverse is happening, as we have seen in the Danish text, that those developed countries in the Kyoto Protocol…
emjohnson | December 8, 2009Kyoto would be replaced with a protocol run by the World Bank, says Guardian.Photograph: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty Images
[updated below - Update II - Update III (Thurs.)]
The Guardian newspaper last night published a leaked draft of a climate agreement entitled only Draft 271109 but known as the "Danish Text" by UN delegates in Copenhagen. The revelation has driven a wedge between rich and poor nations as the draft proposal makes significant changes to the Kyoto Protocol and would place undue pressure on developing nations who had little to no role in the climate crisis to begin with.
As…
emjohnson | December 8, 2009
(updated below)
Media Matters is reporting that on December 4th Fox News manipulated the evidence from a poll to suggest that 94% of the US population thinks that scientists falsified evidence to support their beliefs about climate change. As can be seen, however, their numbers added up to 120%.
What happened? Well, here's the Rasmussen poll Fox & Friends cited. They asked respondents: "In order to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming, how likely is it that some scientists have falsified research data?" According to the poll, 35 percent thought it very likely,…
emjohnson | December 8, 2009There has been much ado about the hundreds of pages of stolen e-mails from climate scientists at the University of East Anglia. The reality of course is that this is about creating a wedge by those who are opposed to the regulations necessary to circumvent climate change and is not about the scientific realities. This strategy has been understood for nearly a decade and has even been acknowledged by those involved.
As The New York Times reported in 2003:
Most scientists believe that [global] warming is caused largely by manmade pollutants that require strict regulation. Mr. Luntz [a…