Month: November 2008

A review of Taras Grescoe’s new book on how to "how to eat ethically in a world of vanishing seafood":

After detailing the myriad and often complex problems with seafood, Grescoe then goes on to suggest how we can do something beneficial for the world’s oceans without giving up seafood entirely. As suggested by the title of his book, the author advises us to become bottomfeeders ourselves, to eat pelagic fishes, such as blue whiting and Atlantic herring; schooling fishes, such as sardines, pollock and mackerel; shellfish such as crabs, lobsters, oysters and mussels; and he points out that we will be doing the oceans a big favor if we especially focus our culinary energies upon jellyfish. (He even mentions peanut butter and jellyfish sandwiches at one point.)

Ginger Anyhow has embroidered a series of romantic text messages received 02/06 to 04/07. Running through the photographs gives one a sense of the relationship’s rise and fall in a abstract but deeply intimate way. The act of stitching the conversations changes easily discarded text messages into poetic keepsakes. And the mixing of contemporary technology with a age-old craft is oddly gratifying.

(Hat tip: Notcot)

Scott Horton points to this paragraph by Patricia Wald, a former federal appellate judge who served as a war crimes tribunal judge for Yugoslavia. Scott:

There should be no confusion about what is being said here. One of America’s most prominent judges–and one of our few judicial experts on war crimes–is saying that the factual basis exists to charge officials of the Bush Administration. The test is fairly simple: is the United States now prepared to apply to itself the same legal standards that the United States applied to political leaders in the former Yugoslavia? It is in the end a simple question of justice. And a question of whether the United States is prepared itself to live by the standards it imposes on others.

Netanyahu completely plagiarizes Barack’s website. Smart. The Obama web campaign will be copied and copied and copied again. Because its structure is exactly where media and campaigning are headed.

Felix Salmon doesn’t agree with the the bailout vs. bankruptcy meme surrounding the big three. Yglesias makes a similar argument for making the best of a unique situation and fusing the two concepts:

Everyone says that part of the conditions of doing a bailout is going to have to be some major restructuring of this and that. But normally Chapter 11 bankruptcy is precisely the means through which such restructuring is done. If unusual circumstances mean we can’t do Chapter 11 and we need extraordinary congressional intervention, then it seems to me that the extraordinary intervention should be aimed at making Chapter 11 possible. Of course key GM stakeholders on both the management and the union side would prefer to avoid that scenario. But the reason they’d prefer to avoid it is precisely that they’d prefer to avoid major restructuring.

On October 30, the Vatican issued new rules that

urges seminaries to enlist the aid of psychologists in screening candidates for homosexuality and other "psychic disturbances."

It seems to me that the Los Angeles Times is correct in noting that no APA credited psychologist should ethically cooperate with this kind of bigotry and psychological illiteracy. Apart from a tiny fringe, American pscyhologists have not viewed homosexuality as a "disturbance" or indeed in any way a problem. Neither, of course, did Freud.

You seen Beyonce lately?

David Talbot reports on how cell phone banking is changing microfinance for the better. Two key paragraphs:

In one of a handful of such initiatives in India, a Bangalore startup called mChek is plunging into microfinance. Its software is already used by 500,000 people, who can use their mobile phones to pay their phone bills and purchase a limited number of goods and services, such as airline and movie tickets. Through a pilot project, as many as 5,000 borrowers will begin using the system to manage their finances–tapping keys on their cell phones to access bank accounts and execute transfers, make payments to Grameen Koota [a microfinance institution], and possibly even do business with local merchants.

Several borrowers should be able to share one phone. The new system could help Grameen Koota achieve its goal of roughly quadrupling its lending efforts by 2010. "All this will get eliminated," Krishna exclaims, pointing to photos of his loan officers poring over stacks of rupees. "All our transactions will be captured digitally. The back-office functions will become automated. It will become so much more efficient and save a lot of time. So we can add on more borrowers."

If this and similar efforts succeed, the concept could be extended to millions–even hundreds of millions–of Indians, giving them access to banking and credit for the first time. And India’s national economy would stand to gain as well. Money that is electronically lodged in accounts earns interest for banks and account holders. Money sitting in wallets, or under mattresses, does not–and right now, 95 percent of financial transactions in India are conducted in cash. "You are talking about tens of billions of dollars in organized commerce on an annual basis," says Mohanjit Jolly, the executive director of the Indian office of the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, which has invested in mChek. "Treasury coffers will have a lot more money, and villagers will start earning interest on this money. Overall, the cost of capital will get reduced, liquidity will get increased, and you will see phenomenal changes in terms of what the villagers will be able to do. The bottom line: it’s education, it’s connectivity, it’s improved quality of life … [and] this mobile connectivity, this mobile transaction, is one of the key ingredients."