Blue Marble’s myopia
That Blue Marble wants to open an ice cream parlor in Rwanda seems clever, to hippies especially, but anyone who has lived there knows it’s a dumb idea. That Blue Marble only wants Rwandans to handle the business makes it a tragically dumb idea.
Destined to fail: let’s bet on it.
Americanism Abroad
A couple of years ago I applied for a Marshall Scholarship and, in the application, there was a section that asked you to detail the languages you speak. This is what I wrote:
They say if you speak three languages, you’re trilingual.
If you speak two, you’re bilingual.
And if you speak one, you’re American. I am an American.
Cherie, my good friend from Singapore, told me that this one joke probably sank my application, because the British don’t laugh during working hours.
A few days back, the NY Times did a slideshow about Chinglish, which I wrote about here. They did one better with a collection of reader pictures of signs from the world over.
My favorite? Number 23, from Khobar, Saudi Arabia. Fishing prohibited in toilet.
UPDATE: Apparently, lots of these signs have been recycled from sites on the internet. NY Times doesn’t do its fact-checking like it used to…
Clarification, in 60 Minutes
A couple of episodes of 60 Minutes will corroborate a few recent posts.
Firstly, about AIDS in Uganda:
And here’s one with Michael Lewis, author of The Big Short, along with Michael Burry:
Part II, which reflects exactly my opinion of the whole fiasco (Finally! Someone understands the consequences of interest-free loans):
Emily Oster, you are welcome.
Apparently, I’m not the only one in the world that can say Oster is flat-out wrong:
And, most devastating of all, old-fashioned prevention has flopped. Too few people, particularly in Africa, are using the “ABC” approach pioneered here in Uganda: abstain, be faithful, use condoms.
For every 100 people put on treatment, 250 are newly infected, according to the United Nations’ AIDS-fighting agency, Unaids.
The real problem is that the ABC approach was a fad. It was popular because the bzungu were into it and became unpopular when the bzungu left and the millenia-old tradition of polygamy took over once again.
It’s these cultural factors, invisible to so many, that I believe drive the AIDS pandemic today.
Emily Oster, you idiot.
So I’m taking a break, eating my Waitrose pesto pasta salad, feet up on the table, and decide to watch something on TED.com. Emily Oster’s talk, about “flipping” our thinking on AIDS in Africa catches my eye and, I have to say, it was hard to keep myself from gnawing at my keyboard.
She’s wrong. Oster sounds like someone who has never been to Africa, yet conducts epic analyses with data presumed to be accurate, then claims to know much more about the continent than Africans themselves. Don’t believe me? See for yourself.
A huge problem here is that she’s making lots of assumptions about the data. AND SHE’S TAKING CORRELATIONS TO MEAN CAUSATION. Just because one data set looks like another when you plot them on a graph DOES NOT MEAN THEY ARE RELATED. It only means they’re correlated. Correlations might suggest predictive ability, but they DO NOT PROVE predictive ability.
This is science at its worst.
This is economics at its worst.
Emily Oster, if you want insight into African crises, move to Africa. Live there. Not forever, if you’re not inclined, but at least a couple of years. Long enough to learn things, like how people don’t die when they get malaria (there’s an immunity developed amongst most locals, which is actually the reason for its prevalence), and how disparate beliefs and contexts play a massive role in HIV infection rates — a role that easily confounds your assumption that Egyptians and other Africans differ only in that Egyptians don’t die early from AIDS.
Peepoo: poopee.
Anders Wilhelmson has created a biodegradable bag called the Peepoo, which sounds like a great idea, if only people would buy it. Basically, it’s a bag you take a dump in, then, after tying it off and burying it, the bag decomposes and turns the fecal matter into fertilizer.
This makes several assumptions, however. The first is that you’ve got the science and engineering right and won’t spread disease when using human feces as fertilizer. That’s a big one. The second is that people will use it as instructed. I mean, think of it this way: sure, you have a bag to pee in but no toilet paper to wipe your ass with. That creates all kinds of problems, namely, infectious bloody diarrhea. That said, this product wasn’t meant to address that anyway. The poorest of all these assumptions is that people will actually buy it. Think about this one: who buys bags to poo in? No one, normally, except for avid backpackers…
And that, actually, is the right market for this: sell it to backpackers and hippies; hope that USAID and other aid groups buy a bunch as a result. Trying to sell this outright to aid groups is a crappy idea (no pun intended). It’s too much of a gamble and requires too much sensitization — and that’s only acceptable in an emergency (e.g., Haiti or Chile).
Here’s an article in the NY Times.
Aquaponics: my future backyard “what the hell is that?”
A look at Rob Torcellini’s greenhouse.
It’s all part of a home experiment he is conducting in a form of year-round, sustainable agriculture called aquaponics — a neologism that combines hydroponics (or water-based planting) and aquaculture (fish cultivation) — which has recently attracted a zealous following of kitchen gardeners, futurists, tinkerers and practical environmentalists.
A couple quick video explanations makes it more clear:
Here’s some great engineering:
Faith and Sustainable Technologies offers free plans.
If you know of bigger or more easily scalable systems, let me know: jsong@jamessong.com
Your shoes hurt.
Modern footwear is causing us to change the way we move and, as a result, hurts our feet.
[New research from Harvard evolutionary biologist Daniel E. Lieberman ’86] examines how runners coped with the force of collision on their feet before the introduction of the modern running shoe in the 1970s. Comparing habitually barefoot runners with shoe-wearing runners, Lieberman and his fellow researchers found that runners who run with footwear tended to land on their heels, while runners who run barefoot tended to land on the front or middle parts of their feet.
Because humans do not have rigid bodies, only a certain percentage of human body mass—called effective mass—can feel the force of an impact.
Abstract, via Nature:
Humans have engaged in endurance running for millions of years, but the modern running shoe was not invented until the 1970s. For most of human evolutionary history, runners were either barefoot or wore minimal footwear such as sandals or moccasins with smaller heels and little cushioning relative to modern running shoes. We wondered how runners coped with the impact caused by the foot colliding with the ground before the invention of the modern shoe. Here we show that habitually barefoot endurance runners often land on the fore-foot (fore-foot strike) before bringing down the heel, but they sometimes land with a flat foot (mid-foot strike) or, less often, on the heel (rear-foot strike). In contrast, habitually shod runners mostly rear-foot strike, facilitated by the elevated and cushioned heel of the modern running shoe. Kinematic and kinetic analyses show that even on hard surfaces, barefoot runners who fore-foot strike generate smaller collision forces than shod rear-foot strikers. This difference results primarily from a more plantarflexed foot at landing and more ankle compliance during impact, decreasing the effective mass of the body that collides with the ground. Fore-foot- and mid-foot-strike gaits were probably more common when humans ran barefoot or in minimal shoes, and may protect the feet and lower limbs from some of the impact-related injuries now experienced by a high percentage of runners.
My, how things have changed.
What’s new:
1. Apparently, the Ugandan government has been on a standards binge, bearing down on Chinese businessmen for failing to import things of quality. The problem? The measures they use are largely subjective (e.g., pulling at shoes to see if they come apart), and some items they are complaining about are actually made in Uganda.
2. Cissy, my hapless lawyer, got married.
3. The migration of workers from China is palpable. Children no longer shout ‘mzungu,’ but ‘China’ instead. And Ugandans have started to adopt a sensitivity to the Chinese: they nearly all try to speak with a Chinese-inspired accent, which, in typical Ugandan fashion, sounds as ridiculous as it seems.
4. Those meddling European consultants keep trying to improve working conditions in Uganda, but are just fucking it all up. For instance, Uganda’s thinking about a minimum wage. The problem is that it’s just another tax on foreign investment, since Ugandans are the ones who set the market wages to begin with, and are the only ones able to flout regulations with ease.
Europe, America, just leave Africa alone. Clearly, the progress you’ve failed to make in the last 50 years should tell you that you’re not helping anyone.
5. Plastic scrap is now sold at a whopping 1000 shillings a kilo. Who would’ve known it could go so high?
6. Traffic is now everywhere, all the time (we’re up to the UAM series of license plates).
7. Nakumatt may be going down the tubes: I’ve never seen so many closed shops.
8. Puppies! Chicken and Beef procreated, making 8 more. Naturally, I’m calling the one we’re keeping McGangbang, a fusion of chicken and beef.
What hasn’t changed:
1. URA: still bureaucratic as ever.
2. The guys at Surgipharm are still rude.
3. Emirates service still sucks (it figures: Beatrice has gone to Canada).
I survived Uganda and all I got was this lousy…
Michelle Barnes, survivor of Marburg Fever.
When scientists trying to develop a Marburg vaccine at the National Institutes of Health heard about Ms. Barnes, they were eager to take blood samples from her. She agreed. They invited her and Dr. Fujita to Bethesda, Md., last June, to present her case to a standing-room-only crowd of researchers who had never seen a Marburg survivor.
Reason for dying.
I am not the type of man to mess with.
I have trained extensively in Muay Thai kickboxing for the last 15 years under Guru Surachai and Kru Mark Dellagrotte. Before moving to Uganda, where I learned how to streetfight out of necessity, I trained with Renzo Gracie in NYC. I have a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and am proficient with a variety of killing tools, including stick, machete, and 2×4 (”dos manos” escrima). Oh, did I mention I can handle an AK-47 with relative ease?
I usually keep my martial arts training a secret, since “dangerous” is not something I like being associated with (I do, after all, make balloon animals for kids in my spare time); however, something happened today that’s made me re-evaluate that.
You see, I had a lab meeting today. At this lab meeting, where I drank champagne and had ONE chocolate-covered biscuit, I started to get sick (which sucks, because any lab meeting where champagne is served is worth attending). Naturally, when I left the lab meeting, I decided to go to the UCL toilet to have a bit of alone time… if only to reflect on why I needed to eat that sole biscuit.
After working long days at Fuji Bank, where I was an intern once upon a time, I learned to take catnaps on the toilet, and this evening, post-biscuit and all, seemed like a particularly good time for a momentary rest.
So, I’m in the toilet, paper barrier over seat in place, resting comfortably, when, suddenly, someone crashes against the door in front of me, which annoyed me a bit, momentarily, the way clean laundry taken out and thrown down on a dirty floor annoys its owner. But what could I do, really? I let it go…
A couple of minutes later, someone starts kicking my door. I can see the shadow of his legs moving in the space underneath. It’s a rapid scissor motion, as if he were a miniature Rockette.
I ignore the first barrage, but upon the second, the kicker calls out to me.
“What!” I answer.
“COME OUT, NOW! Right this minute!” he scowls back.
“Here comes the party,” I think to myself.
I pull up my jeans and button the top button around my waist. Belt still undone, I open the door so the yelling can begin.
“What did you chuck over at me?” he growls, repeatedly.
“I didn’t throw anything,” I reply, repeatedly.
I know a fight is brewing, so I start calculating. His face is just far enough in the stall for me to smash it with the open door. (Why he would move in towards a pot full of shit is beyond me.) So I do. And miss.
I miss spectacularly; the deafening slam causes the door to break along with all its metallic trimming, confusing everyone in the crowded bathroom for a few moments — precisely enough time to adjust my jeans above my waist.
With jeans properly buttoned, I open the door… and approach.
By now, he has picked up a metal rod that has broken off from the door, and is standing with knees bent, wild-eyed, threatening to kill me. I stand in front of him, confident, knowing I have been hit by much larger, heavier things.
Then, hilariously, the guy realizes that he can’t possibly win, so he drops the rod and walks out of the bathroom, mumbling something under his breath.
“Incredible. A hapless imbecile and yet, so smart,” I think.
To celebrate Uganda’s lack of foresight in attempting to pass legislation against homosexuals, I would like to make a public announcement: from here on out, if you threaten me or those I care for, you must be prepared for the consequences. I have a skill-set reserved only for specialized military personnel — i.e., people who pay the bills by killing other people. Thus, if you threaten me with a weapon, I will assume I am in a life-threatening situation, where anything goes. So, THINK AHEAD OF TIME. Please. Especially when I’m on the toilet and I’m thinking of wiping my ass on your broken face. (Note: Christian asserts ending a fight this way is gay. Adam and I, however, believe there’s a certain something to wiping your ass on your opponent’s face in victory. We have all agreed to settle upon a final answer whenever someone decides to threaten me in a bathroom again.)
Premature Ejaculator
I like Obama. He’s personable and intelligent and writes about himself well. I think his latest decision (as well as his decision to accept the Nobel prize) however, reveals moments of complete and utter stupidity.
Briefly, he wants to lift a 22-year-old ban on HIV+ people traveling to the States. The glaring problem here is that people with HIV tend to be young; and young people have a biological predilection for sex. Lots of it. The argument he’s making is that the US is a world leader in AIDS treatment. Well, you’re wrong. As far as treating AIDS goes, we’re pretty much doing the same things everyone else is doing.
Mr Obama said the ban was imposed 22 years ago when visitors to the United States were treated as a threat.
He said: “We lead the world when it comes to helping stem the Aids pandemic - yet we are one of only a dozen countries that still bar people with HIV from entering our own country.
“If we want to be the global leader in combating HIV/Aids, we need to act like it.”
Mr Obama, being the leader of the world when it comes to stemming the spread of AIDS is IN NO WAY TANTAMOUNT to having a liberal immigration policy. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for curing AIDS — I even put in a couple of years looking for one; all I’m saying is that your decision has little to do with fighting AIDS and more to do with stupidity (i.e., your feigning of expertise outside of your field of study): we would obviously quarantine travelers with Swine Flu or SARS or any other pandemic.
Obama, buddy, you’re busting a nut before we’re ready for it. You should wait until AFTER we’ve found a cure before letting people come in for treatment.
WrongAnswer Box
It’s bad enough that so much of the information found online is bunk, but Question Box takes it to a whole new level: In Uganda, they’ve created a knowledge database because the internet runs too slow there, which will only compound internet inaccuracy and human error.
Kampala Burns
Juanita calls me this morning to tell me Kampala is burning to the ground. The Daily Monitor reports that the riots are the result of a tribal squabble between the Buganda Kabaka (king) and settlers in the Kayunga district.
While my factory (Namuwongo) is still operating, TIC Plastic (Nalukolongo) is running at half staff, with management sleeping in the rest areas, unable to leave. We figure the trouble will last until Monday (either that or it blows up and lots more people are going to die).
Sometimes, Life Just Isn’t Fair.
Imagine that you were born a black man. That you grew up in a small Congolese village, somewhere near Goma, near the Rwandan border, around soldiers and UN peacekeepers. Life is hard. You eat bananas every day, when you can get them. You walk in your bare feet, and, having few clothes, sometimes sleep without a shirt on the cold dirt floor.
Then one day, after a long day of working (collecting enough roots and bananas to eat tomorrow, really), some guys come into your hut and rape you.
Sometimes, life just isn’t fair.
Weapon of Choice
There are many reasons why I don’t carry a gun when walking. Only two are important: first, guns are heavy, and, second, guns invite thieves who carry guns. I, alternatively, choose to carry an assortment of weapons, depending upon where I need to be and when I need to be there.
The first of these is a Chinese-style knuckle duster, bought for a couple of dollars in Chinatown. It’s cheap and dirty, and breaks open the skin the way you need to when you’re surrounded by five guys in daylight and need to scare them quickly.
Next would be a telescoping baton. After 15 years of Escrima, how can I not be comfortable with this in my hand? It’s my insurance policy during off-hours, in the middle of the night, when no one is around and 12 very angry men want to see how well stones bounce off my head.
The third is pepper spray. I usually only carry this when I know there’s going to be a riot and I might need to find a way through the crowd. It’s also the reason why I don’t deal with knives. I always thought a knife fight was a lose-lose situation — mace offers enough of an advantage against a knife or machete that I no longer deal with the bending and accidental cutting involved with carrying them.
All of this is not to say I don’t carry my appearing cane from time to time. There’s something about a good magic trick that scares the shit out of people that I just can’t get over.
Dear Diary
I’ve been in Uganda exactly one week now. Here’s what I’ve been doing:
Monday (June 15): Slept for 5 hours then worked all night. Threatened to kill someone for starting a fire near a pile of plastic.
Tuesday (June 16): Threatened to cut someone’s hand off with a butcher knife. Initially thought I might be having a fit of rage, being jetlagged and all, you know, the kind of rage that comes when you’re not thinking straight and desperately need a blowjob to calm you down. But six hours later I threatened to cut Peter’s hand off. Turns out it was just that kind of day.
Wednesday: Found out that the thugs that wait for me outside of my factory had died from eating some local herbs they’d stolen. There is a god, after all.
Thursday: Slept, then worked for 20 hours. An askari (security guard) begged me to teach him kung-fu.
Friday: Worked, then drank. Apparently, a whole new club scene opened up in Kampala while I was away.
Saturday: Waited outside my factory gate until 5am to assess how many thieves would come to attack me. Turns out everyone there knows me now and won’t bother me — a terrible thing since they attacked Robert just a few months ago.
Sunday: Saw Robert and had a look at his elephantitis. Jesus.
All in all, a great start to my summer holiday. Kisses.
No. . . Really?
An internal evaluation of the World Bank’s AIDS projects around the world reports they are not performing well.
Seven of 10 AIDS projects that the bank financed around the world — and 8 of 10 in Africa — had unsatisfactory outcomes, according to the evaluation, released Thursday.
The projects were typically too complex for the weak or inexperienced bureaucracies carrying them out, researchers found. And coordinating the plethora of donors, nonprofit groups and government agencies involved made delivering results very difficult.
Funny. In Africa, the World Bank and Global Fund are what government officials use to finance their nice homes and cars. All the expats living there know that. Maybe, then, you should’ve hired someone with relevant experience before doling the money out. (And yes, maybe the governments involved are incompetent — but it’s your show, so it’s your responsibility.)
Ross Bleckner’s BS
Ross Bleckner, painter and now UN goodwill ambassador, recently traveled to Gulu district, Uganda, to teach former child soldiers and abductees how to paint.
Using thousands of dollars’ worth of paint, brushes and paper shipped from New York Central Art Supply in the East Village, Mr. Bleckner, 59, worked with a group of 25 children — former abductees and ex-soldiers — for more than a week at a Roman Catholic aid center. The children made 200 paintings that will be sold at a benefit at the United Nations headquarters next month at which Mr. Bleckner will be appointed goodwill ambassador. Several of the luminous paintings are now on view in the front window of the clothing store Moschino in the meatpacking district, whose company is providing money to support the Gulu project.
Fantastic. Use the suffering of children for commercial gain. What a great way to desensitize the masses to the problems in northern Uganda.
“One of the things we realized about a fine artist, a painter, in this role is that the work that emerges from it really needs no translation, no dubbing like a documentary or music — it’s immediately accessible to anyone who sees it,” said Ms. Monasebian, whose office estimates that human trafficking generates $32 billion a year in profits, third only to drug and arms trafficking.
Wow. . . this is unadulterated ignorance. Artistic work actually does, at times, require explanation. J.D. Salinger, for instance, suggested people nowadays are too dumb to understand his subtext. And art, as it relates to painting, is sometimes confusing to laymen. Take Jackson Pollack. Most people do not “get” his work right away — sometimes never. People tend to say “my kid can do that,” but what they fail to grasp is Pollack’s deep understanding of color: you can’t approximate Pollack’s work because you don’t have the color mastery that he had. This knowledge is not intuitive.
In addition, children’s paintings, too, can be abstruse. Sometimes, especially within therapeutic play contexts, a child might draw things that require professional interpretation (for instance, relative size of self compared to others, relative size of genitalia); moreover, remember Columbine and Virginia Tech? These situations all show that we are poor interpreters of obvious attempts to communicate. It is not immediately accessible.
“What this mission accomplished is what I call microcreativity,” Mr. Bleckner wrote in a catalog of the children’s work. “It is a personal interaction which gives someone the tools to create something that they can be proud of, and which can help them on the arduous path to restoring their dignity and sense of self-worth.”
What my mission in Uganda accomplishes is what I call EMPLOYMENT and EDUCATION. It’s a personal interaction which gives people the tools to FEED THEIR FAMILIES and BETTER THEIR LIVES — things they can be proud of, which can help them on the relatively easy path to restoring their dignity and sense of self-worth.
I don’t understand this continuing celebration of mediocrity. It’s as if we’re all too easily fooled by flash and sparkle. It’s like we’ve left intellectualism and probity thrashing in the wake as we sail forward for the sake of sailing forward. Where we are going is uncertain.
I can’t believe it’s not bullshit
The Associated Press is going out on a limb for Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse, the hapless Somali pirate currently awaiting trial in New York.
It was a steamy day at their crumbling home in central Somalia with no running water or electricity, and the mother’s face glistened with sweat after a morning of selling milk. He looked up from the bowl of rice she had just served him and said: “I am saddened by the way we live,” the mother recalled.
You’ve got to be kidding. Examine the facts:
1. Living ANYWHERE when you’re poor is difficult. The fact that Muse’s family had rice to eat and SO MUCH MILK THEY COULD SELL THE EXCESS does not make me sympathetic. Example: Robert, my manager at Song Industrial, used to sweep the streets of Kamapala for 60 cents a day. He would buy himself a cup of porridge as his only meal of the day, every day. Robert didn’t have rice, he didn’t have milk. But you know what? He never stole from me — ever. And that’s why he’s now my top guy at SI — because he has the guts to make an honest living, irrespective of his circumstances. I HAVE NO SYMPATHY.
2. Note that it states very clearly that Muse’s family has neither water nor electricity. When you put Muse, then, in a temperature-controlled cell with unlimited running water and electricity, YOU ARE NOT PUNISHING HIM.
3. It is highly likely that the punishment for any kind of stealing (hell, we’ll lump piracy into this) in Somalia is death. Hence, PRISON IS NOT A PUNISHMENT.
4. How do you hope to rehabilitate Muse in an American prison? You will teach him how to eat our food and live in our society and wear our clothes and follow our rules. Then you’ll send him back to Somalia, where none of that applies. Yeah… very clever.
They waited and only one of the other sailors came out of hiding. Muse was told that the others were afraid to surrender as long as the pirates were armed — and so the teen put down his gun. He then took off with a flashlight to explore the ship, at one point shining his light on one of the crew members who was hiding in a darkened engine room.
During a struggle that ensued, Reza stabbed Muse in the hand with a knife. They were able to overpower Muse, tying his hands, according to the complaint. They then took him to the safe room.
Just kill this guy. Just drop him back into the ocean. YOU PUT DOWN YOUR GUN? You don’t deserve to live.
Muse’s mother sold milk in the local market, earning just enough to pay $15 in rent for her single-room house and her son’s school fees. The house has no running water, and once a week Hassan scrimped to pay for three jerry cans full of water, hauled into town on the backs of donkeys. It was enough to cook — but not enough to bathe, and she said she could only afford to allow her children to wash themselves once every two weeks.
“How can we wash ourselves every day? There is no such thing,” Hassan said. “I don’t own any sheep, or goats. I don’t even have enough money to own my own chicken.”
She said her son attended a private school where he studied English. Crew members say that on the Alabama, he was the only one of the pirates who spoke English — and perhaps for that reason, he took the lead, giving out orders.
Note the facts: Muse comes from a good family. They put school ahead of basic needs, and I admire that. However, Muse committed a crime. And the punishment for that crime must be just that — punishment. If you did not let Muse wash every day, took away his access to running water and power, and gave him one or two small meals a day, that would not be cruel; that would be “meeting his needs.” Yes, that makes me sound harsh, but THOSE ARE THE FACTS.
“His plan was to make lots of money,” said 17-year-old Mohamed Warsame, who used to play soccer with him. “He wanted to marry a beautiful girl and he thought that a marriage could only be successful if the man had lots of money. His plan was to make his family rich. He always talked about his family’s poverty.”
Making lots of money should not involve piracy. What else can I say here? Everyone wants to make lots of money and marry well and take care of Mom and Dad. That does not justify crime.
Mahat Dore, a Somali who acted as a middleman in several ransom negotiations, said the pirates are not seen as criminals but as businessmen. “It’s obvious that piracy has now become the only lucrative job available in Somalia,” he said.
Bullshit. Skilled Somalis are employed by international companies (including airlines). Yes, pirates like Muse are hired and paid; however, when the C.I.A. recruits and trains field operatives, they too are hired and paid. Claiming piracy is a job is like saying spying is “just a weekend gig, you know, until my band gets that record deal.”
His court-appointed lawyers say Muse is completely bewildered. He does not understand the American legal system and only knows a world where justice is dispensed with brutality.
He had no contact with the outside world until his lawyers met him Friday at the courthouse. They encountered a teenager who looked very lost.
“Imagine yourself in Somalia,” said lawyer Philip Weinstein. “Imagine how overwhelmed you’d be.”
This is such bullshit! “Imagine yourself in prison,” said non-lawyer David Hasselhoff. “Imagine how overwhelmed you’d be.” Criminals generally do not presume they will be caught — that is why they commit crimes; hence, when criminals are apprehended, they are naturally overwhelmed. Sure, being Somali doesn’t help, but remember this photo of Nick Nolte? Does he not seriously overwhelmed? Does he not look very lost?
Look, these are the facts: Muse is a prisoner and the US people are seeking punishment for him. All I’m asking is that we actually punish the guy, so that, at the very least, when the movie they make about him (you know, after the book deal and all) comes out, it’ll be just a teeny-weeny-bit interesting.
Pretty please?
Piracy, Stupidity, and America
That pirates attacked an American-flagged ship earlier this month reveals an unsurprising truth: these are not smart people. Sure, they do what they do with some competence, but attacking a vessel whose capture might instigate retaliation is stupid; it’s like stealing a gun from a policeman — even if you get away with it, you’re going to be in more trouble than it’s worth.
The way America is engaging our new briny threat is, too, indicative of stupidity. Apparently, we’re interested in imprisoning African pirates. Great. Has anyone in the State Department let the FBI know that Somalis would love to be imprisoned in America? That three meals a day and modern facilities with electricity(1) are neither punishment nor rehabilitation for nearly all Africans?
You know what you have to do to increase attacks on American-flagged ships? Two things: show them you don’t kill mercilessly(2), and then reward the survivors by flying them to New York so they can have their smiling faces printed in American newspapers.
Notes:
1. An argument may be made that prison is not a nice place to live. Well, neither is Somalia.
2. Merciful treatment may be construed as weakness to a Somalian, as toughness is part of African life – the weak do not survive in Africa. This perceived weakness may be interpreted further as an invitation to attack, since the implications of attack are 1) you control the ship until ransom is paid, in cash; 2) if the attack doesn’t work out, run away as fast as possible to avoid being caught; 3) if caught, surrender immediately to avoid being killed; 4) the worst that can ever happen, if caught, is that you lose your weapons or go to New York City. Is the stupidity not apparent here?
Solomon’s Digging Tools
Solomon is one of my employees. His job is to support night operations and attend the gate after the sun comes up so the day crew doesn’t have to get into scuffles with the thugs at 7th Street. Recently, Solomon had the fingers on his right hand cut off because Jeremiah was screwing around and turned on the grinding machine while it was being cleaned. (There goes that law career . . .)
I found the following safety video on Buzzfeed. Sadly, it doesn’t quite do the job I need it to do (I just don’t want to be shooting and editing industrial video footage all summer), but it’s good for a laugh.
The Ethicist: Not so ethical
Randy Cohen writes The Ethicist, a NY Times Magazine column about doing the right thing when the right thing is not so clear. I started reading The Ethicist during long afternoons at Cafe Pap — once Kampala’s only free internet cafe (they have now started charging) — where it granted me momentary but wonderful pleasures: Cohen helped me remember what it was like to have manners and righteousness and, most importantly, clean fingernails — things which, like water and sunglasses, hold unreasonable value in Africa.
Cohen now writes The Moral of the Story, a blog on the NY Times website. In his first post, Cohen tackles Madonna’s recent attempt to adopt an African child. Sadly, Cohen is just flat out wrong here.
But as far as helping children, adoptive parents might do so more effectively simply by donating money (as Madonna has also done in Malawi). A fraction of the typical $20,000 spent on an adoption or the $250,000 it takes to raise a middle-class American child could assist a great many African kids. But the ethical obligation to help suffering children does not apply only to those who wish to adopt; it is a general duty we all share.
Cohen, shame on you. Yes, you can indeed donate money, but the majority of donated funds never reach those who need it, especially in Africa (ahem, corruption). And yes, while $20,000 seems like it could help lots of kids, that does not mean it will be well-spent; for instance, let’s say you want to use the $20k to buy 20 metric tons of porridge, so hungry children can eat. Well, you need transportation and storage and administration and cooking fuel and plates (or cups) and labor and, perhaps, licenses (because you can’t just start feeding kids without some kind of approval) — all of which might cost, say, $20,000. Moreover, once the food is gone, who will provide the next shipment? (In effect, you are creating dependence and disenfranchising the disadvantaged as they — and their leaders — look to you for their future survival.) So, while I do understand the overarching argument of having an obligation to aid suffering children, I think Cohen is incorrect in suggesting throwing money at the problem, to help many children, is more effective than committing to the well-being of a single child via adoption. What Cohen is advocating, in essence, is that we fulfill our obligation by causing harm.
I say this for two reasons. The first is that when we donate money to Africa, for whatever cause, it is generally conditional. That means the receiving government must fulfill some kind of obligation in return for the funds (e.g., meeting poverty-reduction goals or improved governance and accountability). While this has the veneer of righteousness, what it does in the background is undermine the democratic process. It should be the ruling government, expressing the people’s wishes, that decides what goals should be met or what things should be done within their country. This is the right of every voting citizen and, I believe, it is neither appropriate nor correct to assume that, because we are blessed with money and they are not, we can dictate terms with more weight than the indigenous voter.
The second reason is that adoption vs. institutionalization must be considered. Research shows that nurturing (via adoption) results in overall higher IQ levels than institutionalization. In addition, in this particular context, Madonna could have afforded the child a stellar education and diverse opportunities. Is it possible, then, that one Madonna-orphan could have a greater impact on humanity than 200 orphans in Malawi? This, too, must be calculated and weighed — and this careful deliberation of (hidden) issues is what I think Cohen needs to think about before committing to any particular remedy.
As The Ethicist, he’s got that obligation.
Rethinking Recycling
Plastic recycling, though relatively young, is very traditional in its ways. There are a few simple elements — supply chain, processing, delivery-usage — that see surprisingly little variation, even across diverse contexts and motivations. However, one concept continues to gnaw at me — it’s just that good: it refuses to be ignored.
Simply, the people who buy recycled plastic material tend to be plastic manufacturers that 1) are having credit problems and cannot finance the purchase of virgin (non-recycled) raw material or 2) use recycled plastic to make products where quality is not paramount (recycled plastic is notorious for its inconsistancy).
It seems to me, then, that plastic recycling can be reinvented as a financial services business. Specifically, the plastic recycler grants a line of credit (or loan) to the manufacturer which is paid in recycled plastic material in lieu of cash. The manfacturer can then focus solely upon manufacturing and, after selling the end product, can begin repayment with interest — an easy effort when you combine good repayment terms with profitability. Hence, the plastic recycler is invested in the health of both businesses, which, in turn, should enhance profitability for both parties (the recycler can buy plastic waste from the manufacturer at reduced fees via contractual stipulation and manufacturer is assured better support from the recycler as profitability becomes essential).
It seems like an obvious way to make an extra 6% a month; best of all, the recycler will finally have some leverage over the manufacturer in plastic bag production.