Honey Moan by Entrance - YouTube

Link: Honey Moan by Entrance - YouTube

A favorite of the summer. A friend described Entrance as a cross between Robert Johnson and the Pixies. I think I’d agree.
This music gets me through slow days of sub par hitchhiking.

How many Michel Foucaults does it take to change a lightbulb?

None.  Under modern regimes of governmentality the lightbulb is simply an effect of state power which, acting through disciplinary institutions that surveil, sort and evaluate lightbulbs, is internalized into the subjectivity of the lightbulb inducing it to change itself.

How many light bulbs does it take to change a bureaucrat?

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How many Peace Corps volunteers does it take to change a lightbulb?

Peace Corps volunteers don't change anything. 

Not a lightbulb joke:

An optimist sees the glass and says it's half full. A pessimist sees the glass and says it's half empty. A Peace Corps Volunteer sees the glass and says "Hey, I can take a bath in that!"

Breeding the Nutrition Out of Our Food

Link: Breeding the Nutrition Out of Our Food

oops

Cut down the last redwood for chopsticks, harpoon the last blue whale for sushi, and the additional mouths fed will nourish additional human brains, which will soon invent ways to replace blubber with alestra and pine with plastic, humanity can survice just fine in a planet covering crypt of concrete and computers. There is not the slightest scientific reason to suppose that such a world must collapse under its own weight, or that it will be any less stable than the one which we know inhabit.

-Peter Huber, “environmental economist” and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, as well as a regular columnist for Forbes magazine.  

These people exist, and that is a terrifying reality. 

"Wind back the tape of life to the early days of the Burgess Shale; let it play again from an identical starting point, and the chance becomes vanishingly small that anything like human intelligence would grace the replay." - Stephen Jay Gould, Paleontologist.

From Keuhls, Thom. “Beyond Sovereign Territory: The Space of Ecopolitics.”

So interesting to wrap ones mind around this concept— nature is not clockwork. Time is not a ‘linearly progressive element’. The presence of humans on this planet is not deterministic. Time is contingent, a chaotic element, without order or regularity. Wow. 

When Food Isn't the Answer to Hunger

Link: When Food Isn't the Answer to Hunger

Interesting stuff to think about as I consider more and more what I might be doing in the Peace Corps. Although its only somewhat related.

I think that the video of Bill Clinton admitting he messed up is pretty crazy. 

 

"When the Indian Ocean tsunami hit in December 2004, killing more than a quarter-million people, the great global humanitarian machine sprung to life. First on the list of donations, of course, was food — bags of food began arriving by airlift and sea, especially into Aceh, the hardest-hit region.

But was it the right kind of aid? The Acehnese who lost their livelihoods needed food, but there was actually plenty of food to be bought. Indonesia’s foreign minister told the world not to send rice. The coast had been devastated, but not far inland life was normal— in fact, harvests had been excellent. What was disrupting the food market was not the tsunami, but the sacks of rice that were coming in. So many people were getting rice for free that local markets couldn’t sell it. Farmers were undercut and supply chains fell apart.

“It seemed counterproductive to ship in commodities and undermine local producers,” said Gawain Kripke, director of policy for Oxfam America. “Shipping in food was doing more harm than good.”

Adam Curtis's Blog

Link: Adam Curtis's Blog

This guy must be my favorite “journalist,” because he redefines what the role of journalists should be in the modern world.

All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace, his most recent series is absolutely fascinating.