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The overpopulation myth

April 23, 2010 / Klint Finley

peak population

Interview with The Coming Population Crash: And Our Planet’s Surprising Future author Fred Pearce.

Global environmental problems are not, and will not, be mainly a problem of overbreeding Indians or Africans. First, their birthrates are coming down fast, with Indian women, for instance, having fewer than three children on average today; and even African women have falling fertility. And secondly, because overbreeding — in the sense of women having more than replacement levels of children — is almost entirely in countries with a very low per-capita footprint on the planet. For instance, the carbon emissions of one American is the same as that of 20 Indians, 30 Pakistanis, 40 Nigerians and 250 Ethiopians. If, as economists suggest, the world economy will grow by 400 percent by 2050, then no more than a tenth of that will be a result of population growth. The issue is consumption, and that puts the onus right back on the conspicuous consumers to do something about their economic systems, not least before more developing countries follow the same model.

So these worries about overpopulation are unfounded?

When Paul Ehrlich wrote his famous book [“The Population Bomb”], women were having an average around the world of five or six children; now they’re having an average of 2.6. Fertility rates around the world have halved. That’s not just true in Europe and North America; they’re way below replacement levels in most of East Asia now. Not just China but Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Burma have replacement rates of fertility or below. Around the world, fertility rates have been coming down really sharply. So the population bomb as we’ve conceived it before really isn’t there. There’s still population growth going on, but that’s going to stabilize. […]

If chaos theory taught us anything, it’s that societies head off in all kinds of directions we couldn’t predict. Fifty years ago, if we had taken a slightly different path in industrial chemistry and used bromine instead of chlorine, we’d have burned out the entire ozone layer before we knew what the hell was going on, and the world would have been very different. There’s always scary stuff out there that we may not know about. You can’t predict the future. You can just try and plan for it.

Salon: “The Coming Population Crash”: The overpopulation myth

(via David Forbes)

Third World solutions to First World problems

April 14, 2010 / Klint Finley

Design for the First World

I’m not sure if this is a joke or not, but it is a good idea:

Our fellows in the first world often come to visit and give us their well intentioned but often very problematic “solutions”. We thought, why don’t we pay back?

Dx1W is a competition for designers, artists, scientists, makers and thinkers in developing countries to provide solutions for First World problems. […]

The activities carried out under the International Year focus on:

*Reducing obesity.
*Addressing aging population and low birth rate.
*Reducing consumption rate of mass produced goods.
*Integrating the immigrant population.

The Dx1W competition is addressed to the developing countries of the world: All creative solutions depend on having a powerful idea. Whether it’s great resources, military, politics or government, power and size are not enough without having a powerful vision. The First World needs our ideas to solve their problems. First World problems demand Simple Third World solutions. From today on The Third World will bring ideas to redesign the future of the First World.

Design for the First World

(via Chris Arkenberg)

The psychology of torture and the future of interrogation

April 5, 2010 / Klint Finley

Torture

Last year, Basoglu discovered that the trauma associated with CIDT [“cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,” considered separately from physical torture but also illegal] has two further aspects that increase its psychological impact (American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, vol 79, p 135). His study of 432 torture survivors from Turkey and former Yugoslavia revealed that when several techniques are applied at the same time – such as hooding while forced to stand naked in a stress position – the effects of each one compounds the effects of the others. In addition he discovered that CIDT has a cumulative impact over time, fuelled by the sense of helplessness that it engenders. This means that it makes little sense to ask whether any specific CIDT amounts to torture, Basoglu says, because the overall impact cannot be judged separately from the context in which it is administered.

The same study revealed that people who had been subjected to CIDT were at greater risk of developing long-term mental health problems than those who had been subjected to physical torture alone. Basoglu suggests that this might be because torture stimulates the victim’s body to release pain-relieving opioids, and this process is triggered more rapidly with repeated exposure to pain. Victims often report that the anticipation of torture is worse than the torture itself, during which they describe a general numbing of the body.

New Scientist: Beyond torture: the future of interrogation

Disputed Bay of Bengal island ‘vanishes’ say scientists

March 26, 2010 / Klint Finley

new moore island

A tiny island claimed for years by India and Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal has disappeared beneath the rising seas, scientists in India say.

The uninhabited territory south of the Hariabhanga river was known as New Moore Island to the Indians and South Talpatti Island to the Bangladeshis.

Recent satellites images show the whole island under water, says the School of Oceanographic Studies in Calcutta.

Its scientists say other nearby islands could also vanish as sea levels rise.

BBC: Disputed Bay of Bengal island ‘vanishes’ say scientists

(via FJennings)

US Army claims WikiLeaks is a security threat

March 19, 2010 / Klint Finley

Julian Assange

(Above: WikiLeaks spokesperson Julian Assange)

To the list of the enemies threatening the security of the United States, the Pentagon has added WikiLeaks.org, a tiny online source of information and documents that governments and corporations around the world would prefer to keep secret.

The Pentagon assessed the danger WikiLeaks.org posed to the Army in a report marked “unauthorized disclosure subject to criminal sanctions.” It concluded that “WikiLeaks.org represents a potential force protection, counterintelligence, OPSEC and INFOSEC threat to the U.S. Army” — or, in plain English, a threat to Army operations and information.

WikiLeaks, true to its mission to publish materials that expose secrets of all kinds, published the 2008 Pentagon report about itself on Monday.

Lt. Col. Lee Packnett, an Army spokesman, confirmed that the report was real. Julian Assange, the editor of WikiLeaks, said the concerns the report raised were hypothetical.

“It did not point to anything that has actually happened as a result of the release,” Mr. Assange said. “It contains the analyst’s best guesses as to how the information could be used to harm the Army but no concrete examples of any real harm being done.”

New York Times: Pentagon Sees a Threat From Online Muckrakers

See also this interview with Julian Assange.

(via Wade)

The Next Global Superpower is… Korea?

February 28, 2010 / Klint Finley

Haeundae Marine city, Busan, Korea

Korea?! Are you scoffing? Readers, when you spied my headline did you think, “Mr. Hyena’s insane! Korea’s not a superpower; it’s a dwarf peninsula shuddering in China and Japan’s shadow! Korea’s a bisected baby-tiger south / starving-hermit north mess! Korea? Superpower?! Absurd!” Hear me out, netizens. I’ve categorized abundant facts explaining why a unified Korea (or even a solitary south) will emerge as world leader. It’s already preeminent in crucial categories. South Korea is not the destitute orphan pickled vegetable of the 1960’s or the laughable Hyundai of the mid-1980’s. SK is wired, willing, savvy, sexy and it works harder than any other hominid nation. Reunited with its surly sibling, it’ll be the Seoul center of the planet.

The reasons (explained in detail at the link):

Direct E-Democracy

Hardworking Economy

Robot Future

Military Might

Massive Mineral Wealth

Education & IQ Edge

Green Goals

Cyber Warriors

Seductive K-Culture

(Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hero8989/3952513186/ / CC)

(via Wade)

Fortress Iceland? Probably Not.

February 22, 2010 / Klint Finley

iceland

Throwing some cold water on the expectations Iceland as journalism haven:

, the problem is that whatever Iceland does, it can’t change the 500-pound gorilla of international media law: the principle that publication happens at the point of download, not the point of upload. The poster child case for this principle is Dow Jones & Co., Inc. v. Gutnick, a case that reached the High Court of Australia in 2002. In that case, Gutnick sued Barron’s Online for publishing an allegedly defamatory article about him, and despite the fact that no one in Australia other than Gutnick’s lawyers actually read the offending article, the judges unanimously ruled that Australian laws applied, and thus Dow Jones (publisher of Barron’s Online) was liable to Gutnick. At least at the time, the High Court of Australia was the highest court worldwide to hear a case involving this issue, and for better or worse, its ruling has carried the day in similar cases around the world since. […]

With the Gutnick ruling setting the current paradigm for international jurisdiction, the IMMI is not nearly the journalistic fortress it’s meant to be. Plaintiffs will still be able to sue in a libel-friendly jurisdiction (like London, for example) and thereby circumvent all the protections the IMMI is meant to offer. To be sure, if the publisher and his assets are entirely within Icelandic jurisdiction, the plaintiff may not be able to do much about the publication.

(via Jay Rosen)

Cyber warfare: don’t inflate it, don’t underestimate it

February 17, 2010 / Klint Finley

inside cyber warfare

Interview with Inside Cyber Warfare author Jeffrey Carr:

MS: For China in particular: what are the things to consider and what are the things to look out for?

JC: China clearly has a lot of problems internally. Their economy is growing, but it’s still relatively fragile and highly dependent on the U.S. The difference in economic conditions varies radically from the countryside to the cities. On the other hand, they own over a trillion dollars of U.S. debt. That gives them incredible leverage. So that’s a balancing act that’s going to be very interesting to watch, especially over this Google issue. But they’ll never concede to eliminating censorship on their Internet. They’ll walk away from Google if that’s what it takes.

People inflate fear about China, but China has no interest in attacking the U.S. They want the same things that any country would want. And they’re going about it the same way that we would go about it. We’re doing espionage. We’re looking after our interests. We’re exerting our will as a nation. It’s silly to try to take the moral high ground here. It doesn’t serve any useful purpose.

MS: One of the interesting points that came out of the Google-China analysis is the idea that Google has its own foreign policy now. Do you think that’s the case?

JC: Honestly, I don’t see it as anything new. The idea of a new, more sophisticated attack against Google that we’ve never seen before, I think that’s overblown. The idea that you have hackers who gain entrance to a network and then exploit data from that network, that’s not new. This is all just espionage. Google is just another company that has something of value.

But Google does represent a turning point because it’s getting so much press. It’s raising the issue to the point where the U.S State Department got involved. That’s all good.

(via Chris Arkenberg)

Iceland aims to become an offshore haven for journalists and leakers

February 12, 2010 / Klint Finley

Iceland

Insanely interesting:

On Tuesday, the Icelandic parliament is expected to introduce a measure aimed at making the country an international center for investigative journalism publishing, by passing the strongest combination of source protection, freedom of speech, and libel-tourism prevention laws in the world.

Supporters of the proposal say the move would make Iceland an “offshore publishing center” for free speech, analogous to the offshore financial havens that allow corporations to hide capital from authorities. Could global news organizations with a home office in Reykjavík soon be as common as Delaware corporations or Cayman Islands assets?

Nieman Journalism Lab: Iceland aims to become an offshore haven for journalists and leakers

(via The Breaking Time)

Critique of John Robb’s ideas about open source warfare

February 11, 2010 / Klint Finley

iraqi insurgents

From Reason, February 2008:

What most of the global guerrilla groups have managed so far is to not lose. It’s a truism of counterinsurgency that “guerrillas win by not losing,” but successful guerrilla movements eventually win by winning. It’s much harder for global guerrillas to “win” than Robb thinks, because most of these groups have larger goals than he acknowledges.

This oversimplification relates to another of the book’s conceptual problems. Robb refers to the damage a global guerrilla attack causes as its “return on investment”: Spend $2,000 to attack a pipeline, as MEND did in one of Robb’s examples, and get a “return” of $50 million in lost revenue to Shell. But this isn’t really a return on investment as the term is used in economics, because the attackers don’t have $50 million when they’re done. Shell has lost $50 million or so, and the insurgents clearly have increased their utility somewhat; they obviously wanted to destroy that pipeline more than they wanted the $2,000. But it seems implausible to value their increased utility at anything close to $50 million. It’s a perfect illustration of the Australian economist John Quiggin’s dictum that war is a negative-sum game. The combined MEND/Shell system is worth a lot less after the exercise than it was worth before.

This point matters because the relative unattractiveness of open-source insurgency may prove more limiting than anything senescent nation-states do to combat it. Global guerrillas have proven they can keep weak states from functioning but not that they can forge strong states of their own. Iraq’s Sunni insurgents are depriving not just the country’s Shiites of electricity and potable water but themselves too.

Reason: Open-Source Warfare

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