Play Free Rice

I meant to throw this in on the last post. Help feed people and get smarter at the same time.

Free Rice

Earth to Waste Conversion

Climate change is a symptom of a much bigger problem. The way we think. They way our economic system works. Priorities, or lack thereof, depending on how you care to look at it. Where has all the common sense gone? Where is the F&@#$% logic in the way we conduct our daily business? An example that more than makes the point: Consider the throughput of our industrial systems. For every truckload of product of lasting value, there are 32 truckloads of waste.

Take a minute. Think about that. That, is a waste making system. Simply put, We cannot continue to dig up the Earth and turn it into waste.

Waste - I admit the word confuses me somewhat. It implies that something could have been done with the stuff in question, but instead, it was wasted. Like... you take something that is not useless, and decide not to use it. But many things we call waste, like Toxic Waste, can't be used for anything. Pollution on the other hand, is a word that leaves no question. All bad. But many things that we call pollutants, or that are forms of pollution created by various industries could be used for something else. Maybe getting the language straight will help us solve these problems.

Get the facts on pollution in your area from Scorecard.

Anything that you can reuse helps. Find out about free exchange of useful stuff at Freecycle.

You may have seen this before because it's 4 years old, but it's still a really cool project. Check out A Moment On Earth.

I might have posted this guy before, I'm not sure, either way, meet The Wombat. (has audio)

Compassion: Winning Hearts and Minds

The U.S. armed forces have been failing to meet their recruitment goals for the past several years as a solution they have continued drop the bar lower and lower still.

WASHINGTON - Under pressure to meet combat needs, the Army and Marine Corps brought in significantly more recruits with felony convictions last year than in 2006, including some with manslaughter and sex crime convictions

That means we end up with this:

Hope you feel proud

Eleven Lessons: The Fog Of War

I had a long chat with my friend Shep Messing on the tellyfone a while ago... and somewhere in the course of our discussion we got to talking about movies - what he'd seen lately - what I'd seen lately... He enthusiastically mentioned Errol Morris' new film Standard Operating Procedure. Shep is a self-professed 'huge' Errol Morris fan. One of his cited reasons is Morris' unique interview filming style style. He makes use of a teleprompter-like camera set-up that his wife named "The Interrotron". Morris and his subject each sit facing a camera. The image of each person's face is then projected onto the lens of the other's camera. Instead of looking at a blank lens, then, both Morris and his subject are looking directly at a human face. The end result is the subject talking directly to the camera while looking right at as if it were a person... as if it were you in fact... Staring right out of the screen directly into your eyes. This makes for some seriously compelling stuff.

The universe operating the way that it does, within two days of our phone conversation I found myself reading two pieces about S.O.P. in two publications I subscribe to. The first is a review by Michael Atkinson (see his review of Herzog's "Grizzly Man" here and his full listing of reviews and articles at Rotten Tomatoes). The second is a transcription of a phone conversation between Errol and his son Hamilton Morris.

The Atkinson piece is called "Errol Morris' Myopia". He criticizes Morris for not "considering the larger political implications, impact or context." He continues, missing the point: "He [Morris] may well be the only filmmaker in America who can make movies about atrocity and yet resists any sort of overt ethical inquiry." Atkinson shows no love for the film's visual style either:

Morris' famed dead-stare interview technique ... serves as counterpoint to the film's over-produced barrage of digital gimmickry, visual manipulation, re-enacted scenarios, double exposures (the "ghost detainees" become "ghostly," get it?), focus-smudged close-up montages and bulldozingly "poetic" slow-motion asides (a frying egg, tumbling bullet cartridges, a prison hallway dreamily filled with shredded documents), none of which serve to elucidate anything at all. It's as if Morris, with all of this foofaraw, seems determined to avoid real issues. Instead, he manufactures an impressionistic head-trip, a blitzkrieg of imagistic doodles about an Abu Ghraib-of-the-mind, not an investigation into the real prison.

He also seems bothered by the fact that Morris doesn't seem to take anyone in the Bush administration to task.

Years later, we'd have reason to hope that Morris' movie would come
packing a meaningful revelation or two. But it doesn't. What's worse,
the film helps support the Bush administration's official "bad apples"
explanation.
Focusing the Abu Ghraib phenomenon on clueless and undertrained
service members deflects complicity away from the chain of command
that, in fact, insisted torture and abuse be instituted. (Alberto
Gonzales isn't mentioned once.)
Remarkably, Congress, which instantly demanded then-Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld answer for the behavior at Abu Ghraib, could be
said to have had a more conscientious grasp of the crisis than Errol
Morris.

Mr. Atkinson is obviously less than thrilled with this film, taking a final jab at it in his last few lines.

Morris thinks he's dealing with only photographs but, in fact,
whether he likes it or not, he's up to his knees in human suffering and
the culpability of state power. Standard Operating Procedure
may be useful to an awakening somnambulist looking to catch up on the
last half-decade of bad news. The rest of us, however, deserve
something deeper and more responsible.

As you will soon see, I think this man has missed the point. He is unwittingly trapped in this robotic cultural narrative-play that society goes through every time something unconscionable happens on the national or world stage.

• Dastardly deeds are discovered.
• The public is outraged at the dastardly deeds.
• The media reports the publics outrage to the point of excess.
• Leaders make statements condemning the deeds as dastardly and vow to investigate.
• The leaders have various government bureaucracies and initialed agencies investigate.
• The guilt of certain parties is declared in the media.
• Finally, the fate of the guilty falls into one of two catagories: A)The guilty parties are fired/ostracized/punished/imprisoned with the media dilligently reporting on whether or not they showed remorse or were 'sorry'. B) The guilty parties retire or disappear quietly (often with exorbitant sums of money), are promoted, given raises or are awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (as has been the case when it comes to Iraq).

Atkinson doesn't like this film because he can't. It doesn't fit into the cultural narrative he has been force fed. His brain won't let him. He probably doesn't know that, and unless his brain is re-imprinted (more later) there is not much hope of changing that. (What the thinker thinks, the prover proves.)

Full disclosure: I should make it clear that I have not seen this film. I am very familiar with the subject matter however. All things Iraq, including Abu Ghraib, have been a preoccupation of mine since before the invasion. I just wanted to clear that up.

The Hamilton Morris piece is called "Abu Ghraib Prison Experiment - Errol Morris Wants You to Wake Up and Face the Moral Nightmare". The father and son phone conversation directly addresses the issues that bother Atkinson. The first question Hamilton asks his father has to do with people criticizing him for not being 'hard enough' on the 'bad apples'. A criticism he received after The Fog of War for being easy on McNamara, and is hearing again now for Standard Operating Procedure. Errol's response speaks directly to these comments.

"...I'm not exactly sure what I was supposed to do - make him [McNamara] cry? Or make him say he's sorry? Because I think people really, really like that sort of thing.
...
...I think it's not so different here [with S.O.P.]. I hear people saying to me, "Well, they don't show any remorse. They don't say they're sorry." I have to say that a lot of these responses puzzle me, because that wasn't the goal. You know, I don't see myself as the Dr. Phil of documentaries."

I added the emphasis on that last part. I think that line pretty well sums it up right there. In answering the next four questions, Errol illuminates the crux of the film and then drives his point home.

HM: ...Attempts to quantify hurt are usually a bit sticky. It could be argued, for some of the 'bad apples', that their punishment was disproportionate to their abuse. I believe the movie cites an example of one 'bad apple' being imprisoned 10 months for throwing a Nerf ball at a detainee's leg. The idea is that the MPs don't know whether to apologize or not. It's not clear that thy feel remorse, because it's not clear if what they did was really that bad. Maybe remorse is not warranted.

EM: The idea is, somehow, this movie should just declare these people are bad. And we should show how bad they are. And then, they should express remorse at the end. And when it doesn't take that form, people get really pissed off. They fail to ask the one central question: Was there something for those individuals to apologize for? It's not clear what they should have done. It wasn't clear to them at the time. And it's not clear to me now. They were in a morally ambiguous nightmare-like situation: They were in the military; they were required to follow orders; they were required to do certain kinds of jobs, and to try to do them well, or as well as they possibly could, whether they liked them or not. They were told they were part of the war effort, trying to secure the freedom of Iraq, and to protect their fellow soldiers. They were told a lot of things. I mean, my goal is to capture the moral nightmare, the moral ambiguity of it all. And it makes people seriously uncomfortable.
Yeah, I think that is the crux. The movie's power lies in it's uncertainty. It is laid out on the table, in all of it's ambiguity, for people to be confused by, troubled by, disturbed by, angered by, depressed by, et cetera.

HM: And I don't know if you were the first person to do this, but the movie addresses the irony that the hooded man on the box, the most iconic photograph taken at Abu Ghraib Prison, the photograph which drew attention to the abuses and is generally considered to embody the abuses, was not legally considered an abuse.

EM: Yes. That's correct. I think I am the first person to do that. It's incredibly ironic that the man on the box, the poster child for torture, was not officially 'tortured'. It was standard operating procedure, by the Army's own definition, and it was described as such by the Army's own prosecution expert. [Brent Pack, CID]

HM: It's inevitable that people will make comparisons to the Stanford Prison Experiment or the Milgram experiments.

EM: Philip Zimbardo, who conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment, even served on the defense team for Ivan 'Chip' Frederick [staff sergeant convicted and sentenced to eight years for abuses.]

HM: Well, there is an interesting flaw in the interpretation of these experiments. The Stanford Prison Experiment is used as an example of how average people, given the power to abuse others who are powerless, will do so with zeal. But when you take a step back, it is also about how Philip Zimbardo will allow average people to abuse others with zeal. Zimbardo orchestrated the abuses, knowingly allowed them to continue, and was not identified as the perpetrator. I think his role is a lot more telling about human nature and Abu Ghraib than the guards in his mock prison.

EM: Yes. One of the things that really interests me about these soldiers, most of whom are really, really young - Lyndie [England] was 21. Sabrina [Harman] was 25. I mean, they're young. And they're not all thinking the same thing. (reality tunnels - more later) They're not automatons. They all were thinking about the experience in different ways, and dealing with it in different ways. Also, to compare an artificial experiment, where you take undergraduates, and you convince them to engage in some kind of role-playing, is in no way similar to the military, where people are really expected to follow orders. They're in a combat zone that's being mortared constantly. People are being killed. There are horrible problems with equipment, with supplies. They're understaffed. They're outnumbered by the prisoners, well over 100-to-1. It's a nightmare. You report up the chain of command and get nowhere. For example, if someone says that this is unacceptable abuse, and the chain of command reports back to you and tells you to shut the fuck up, where are you supposed to go? What are you supposed to do?

After reading the interview the editors of the magazine went back and asked Errol one more question: What are you supposed to do?

EM: I'm not sure what we can do. The important thing is to be aware that the wrong people got punished. The big guys walked away and pinned medals on their chests. The little guys got court-martialed and in many instances, imprisoned. Is this the kind of country we want to live in? Everyone shoud ask themselves the question: What if it were me?

One of the big guys at the top of that chain of command didn't get any medals. Although no promotions, and forced retirement hardly seems like much of a punishment. For more of the picture please watch Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez on the Charlie Rose program posted earlier.


The conversation Shep and I had moved on, away from movies, before I had the chance to mention that "The Fog of War" is one of my favorite films. Watch it even if you don't care for documentaries. I think that film is especially relevant today. It was released in 2003 - the year of the Iraq invasion - and as the rest of the title indicates, it contains "Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara". For anyone that doesn't know Robert McNamara, he was Secretary of Defense from '61 to '68 during the Vietnam War.
It's obvious to me McNamara's 11 lessons haven't been learned, or they've been ignored. Except maybe #9. Same result either way... but you can judge for yourself:

1. Empathize with your enemy.
2. Rationality will not save us.
3. There's something beyond one's self.
4. Maximize efficiency.
5. Proportionality should be a guideline in war.
6. Get the data.
7. Belief and seeing are both often wrong.
8. Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning.
9. In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil.
10. Never say never.
11. You can't change human nature.

There are actually three sets of lessons tied to the film. The 11 above, 10 additional lessons written by Mcnamara as a companion to the film, and "11 lessons from Vietnam" that provided the concept for the 11 in the film from McNamaras 1996 book: "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam"
Here are the rest, 11 originals first:

1. We misjudged then — and we have since — the geopolitical intentions
   of our adversaries … and we exaggerated the dangers to the United
   States of their actions.
2. We viewed the people and leaders of South Vietnam in terms of our
   own experience … We totally misjudged the political forces within the
   country.
3. We underestimated the power of nationalism to motivate a people to fight and die for their beliefs and values.
4. Our judgments of friend and foe alike reflected our profound
   ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the
   area, and the personalities and habits of their leaders.
5. We failed then — and have since — to recognize the limitations of
   modern, high-technology military equipment, forces and doctrine.
6. We failed as well to adapt our military tactics to the task of
   winning the hearts and minds of people from a totally different culture.
7. We failed to draw Congress and the American people into a full and
   frank discussion and debate of the pros and cons of a large-scale
   military involvement … before we initiated the action.
8. After the action got under way and unanticipated events forced us
   off our planned course … we did not fully explain what was happening
   and why we were doing what we did.
9. We did not recognize that neither our people nor our leaders are
   omniscient. Our judgment of what is in another people's or country's
   best interest should be put to the test of open discussion in
   international forums. We do not have the God-given right to shape every
   nation in our image or as we choose.
10. We did not hold to the principle that U.S. military action … should
    be carried out only in conjunction with multinational forces supported
    fully (and not merely cosmetically) by the international community.
11. We failed to recognize that in international affairs, as in other
    aspects of life, there may be problems for which there are no immediate
    solutions … At times, we may have to live with an imperfect, untidy
    world. *Underlying many of these errors lay our failure to organize the top
    echelons of the executive branch to deal effectively with the
    extraordinarily complex range of political and military issues.

10 additionals:

1. The human race will not eliminate war in this century but we can
   reduce war, the level of killing, by adhering to the principles of a
   just war, in particular of proportionality.
2. The indefinite combinations of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will lead to the destruction of nations.
3. We are the most powerful nation in the world — economically,
   politically, and militarily — and we are likely to remain so for
   decades ahead. But we are not omniscient. If we cannot persuade other
   nations with similar interests and similar values of the merits of the
   proposed use of that power, we should not proceed unilaterally except
   in the unlikely requirement to defend the continental US, Alaska and
   Hawaii.
4. Moral principles are often ambiguous guides to foreign policy and
   defense policy, but surely we can agree that we should establish as a
   major goal of U.S. foreign policy and, indeed, of foreign policy across
   the globe : the avoidance in this century of the carnage — 160 million
   dead — caused by conflict in the 20th century.
5. We, the richest nation in the world, have failed in our
   responsibility to our own poor and to the disadvantaged across the
   world to help them advance their welfare in the most fundamental terms
   of nutrition, literacy, health, and employment.
6. Corporate executives must recognize there is no contradiction
   between a soft heart and a hard head. Of course, they have
   responsibilities to their employees, their customers and to society as
   a whole.
7. President Kennedy believed a primary responsibility of a president — indeed the primary responsibility of a president — is to keep the nation out of war, if at all possible.
8. War is a blunt instrument by which to settle disputes between or
   within nations, and economic sanctions are rarely effective. Therefore,
   we should build a system of jurisprudence based on the International
   Court — that the U.S. has refused to support — which would hold
   individuals responsible for crimes against humanity.
9. If we are to deal effectively with terrorists across the globe, we
   must develop a sense of empathy — I don't mean sympathy but rather
   understanding to counter their attacks on us and the Western World.
10. One of the greatest dangers we face today is the risk that
    terrorists will obtain access to weapons of mass destruction as a
    result of the breakdown of the Non-Proliferation Regime. We in the U.S.
    are contributing to that breakdown.

That's a lot to mull over. Doesn't seem like we have heeded much if anything McNamara has to offer. I mean, what would be the point of actually learning from the past?




If you've read this far and are still interested, I recently saw an excellent Documentary on the first days of the Iraq invasion. It is called "Make Peace or Die - The First Days of War in Iraq with First Battalion, Fifth Marines". The film was directed and edited by this guy, a buddy of mine from college. I can't say enough about it, get your hands on it and watch it. And, no he is not paying me to plug it for him.

On This Date...

On the Firth of Forth just across and to the north of Edinburgh, in County Fife, is found a town called Kirkcaldy; it is here, in the year 1723 that Adam Smith was born. His exact date of birth is unknown, but thanks to good church records we know that he was baptized today, June the 5th.