"There is a fire burning over the Earth, taking with it plants and animals, ancient skills and visionary wisdom. At risk is a vast archive of knowledge and expertise, a catalogue of the imagination, an oral and written language composed of the memories of countless elders and healers, warriors, farmers, fishermen, midwives, poets, and saints. In short, the artistic, intellectual, and spiritual expression of the full complexity and diversity of the human experience. Quelling this flame, and rediscovering a new appreciation for the diversity of the human spirit as expressed by culture, is among the central challenges of our times." Wade Davis, 2009 Massey Lectures

Parsing a "No-Nonsense" Guide to Globalization

Having followed the "globalization" phenomenon for more than ten years, and TA'd a course on the topic, I've started to form an opinion... (yes, just one) that "globalization" should be renamed. Am I asking too much? Here's the trouble, the descriptor "globalization" is simply too general. It could apply equally to any number of global trends, from arts to culture to micro-finance, and yes, to the insidious creep of Western-style capitalism.

I'd suggest a different label, something like "global homogenization and cross-cultural exploitation" as a more accurate label for the cultural and economic trends currently encompassed by "globalization". Not as catchy, but also not prone to linking greater global interconnectedness with the exclusively negative outcomes associated with economic and cultural hegemony.

The danger I see is that if "globalization" is the problem, then "localization" pops out as the apparent solution. Trends towards increased global awareness and interconnectedness are not inherently a problem. However, the superficial concept of "globalization" leads to an apparently obvious panacea of "going local". Yes, re-localizing is part of the solution to global homogenization and foreign exploitation, but so equally is global awareness and interconnectedness. Peter Dicken has written an excellent text book on globally-integrated economies. I highly recommend it as a complement to the No-Nonsense Guide.

Kudos to students at the U. of Waterloo for continued creative activism in the struggle to build climate awareness.

music for the coming holocaust

this is beautiful... what a joy it would be to work on a project like this.

Analogous thinking about what it means to "work"

This is interesting... I've been thinking about what it means to "work", as in "to find work", "to do work". We don't often think of the connection between "work" as it relates to employment and "work" as it's defined in Physics.

In physics, work is "the amount of energy transferred by a force acting through a distance." So in a physical sense, work has kind of two conditions; a force must act, and energy must be transfered through a distance. If the force acts, but energy isn't transferred over a distance, then no work is done. In other words, for something to be "work", it must move something (e.g. mass, energy) over a distance. And then you can think about what "distance" means in an employment setting. The other component of work is force, which is defined using mass and velocity (" style="vertical-align: middle; ">). Velocity has both a direction and speed. Speed is just the rate of change of velocity, so that's pretty straightforward. More difficult in relating this concept back to employment, is defining direction. What it means to move "forward".

Think about an industrial-scale solar plant, tens of thousands of photovoltaic panels spreading across the landscape. Does this fit our sense of what it mean to move forward? Are the people building infrastructure like this truly what we would consider "workers"?

Perhaps it's not always possible to move forward; perhaps sometimes you need to go sideways, or even backwards before you can move forward. If building a centralized solar plant gets you into a position where you can begin to build distributed rooftop solar applications, perhaps then there's value in it. But the energy exerted to build the centralized plant doesn't become "work" until it moves... what? mass? What's the mass? Mass then could be analogous to society, in which case work is only done when society moves, that is, when society changes.

Therefore, if you're not changing society, you're not doing work. Huh...

Expressed in a positive sense, if you are spending energy and changing society in a forward (i.e. desirable) direction, then you're doing work.

Sting plays Robert Schumann and releases his Un-Christmas album

Hey, I found out this morning on CBC that the letters of Robert and Clara Schumann have been revived in a new stage production, starring (wait for it) Sting and Trudie Styler! That's a show I wouldn't mind seeing in theatres, or on DVD.

http://www.cbc.ca/radio2/programs/saic/2009/12/02/sting_schu.html

Sting's latest album is on a winter theme, but watching this video, it doesn't quite seem to achieve that air of romance and authenticity you'd hope for. My read on it is that Sting's stardom makes it tough to connect on a personal level with the other musicians in the room; it looks, if not wholly staged, perhaps like a rich man's fantasy playhouse.

I think he's also too much of an ironic figure to embody the sort of deep, winter spirituality that you find on, say, Cockburn's High Winds, White Sky.

And he definitely cannot pull off that beard... actually, maybe can, "pull off the beard" if it's as real as it looks!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFAleFnbRgw

Ah, the Sting phenomenon offers me no end of amusement....

Personal GHG emissions (Canadian Average)

[Source: Created by Ted Sherk with data from Zerofootprint, 2008)]

This figure represents per capita emissions for Canada, based on data from ZeroFootprint.  Please contact me for a detailed methodology.