March 2011
218 posts
The Ottawa Treaty: Non-Signatory States
The 1997 Ottawa Treaty (or the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction) bans the use of anti-personnel land mines.
Thirty-nine states have yet to sign.
- Armenia
- Azerbaijan
- Bahrain
- Burma
- China
- Cuba
- Egypt
- Finland
- Georgia
- India
- Iran
- Israel
- Kazakhstan
- Korea, Democratic People’s Republic of
- Korea, Republic of
- Kyrgyzstan
- Lao PDR
- Lebanon
- Libya
- Marshall Islands
- Micronesia
- Mongolia
- Morocco
- Nepal
- Oman
- Pakistan
- Poland
- Russian Federation
- Saudi Arabia
- Singapore
- Somalia
- Sri Lanka
- Syria
- Tonga
- Tuvalu
- United Arab Emirates
- United States
- Uzbekistan
- Vietnam
“Instead of aggregating news headlines, [The Study is] going to aggregate academic papers from universities and think tanks—a genre of writing and thinking that has a lot to add to the world but that doesn’t get much attention from the media. We’re going to marry this academic writing to the day’s headlines, tying together what people are talking about in the world as a whole at any given moment with what various researchers and thinkers have discovered about these topics. Hopefully, if we do a good job, this project will inject some unexpected and valuable perspectives into the political debate.”
—
Richard Just, The New Republic, Introducing ‘The Study’.
Just describes TNR’s hesitation about typical aggregation strategies but the necessity of implementing the practice in general. We think their idea is great and look forward to following as they proceed.
(via futurejournalismproject)
Interesting mash-up of scholarly analysis and news. // @amzam
(via washingtonpostinnovations)
As an academic, I heartily endorse this idea.
(via downlo)
This is kind of exciting.
Still Not Going To Do This Every Day: In Which This American Life Misses an EXTREMELY Important Point →
markcoatney.com
The other day, while listening to the very nice TAL episode “Original Recipe”, in which the show reveals the original recipe for Coca-Cola, Ira Glass notes that because Coca-Cola is made from coca leaves, a controlled substance in the U.S., all the leaves Coke uses are first shipped from South…
Phillips and Brubaker's Criminal is the finest thing in creation
Fact. CBR has a preview of Criminal: The Last Of The Innocent.
Fine-tuning the friends list: The next big thing in social media, maybe
GroupMe won SXSW’s Breakout Digital Trend award this year.
From The Economist:
Group messaging is simple. One texter sets up the group, online or with a smartphone, and invites others. The group gets its own phone number, and a text sent to that number goes to everyone in the group. Even people with dumbphones can take part. That makes it work for those stragglers who still do not have e-mail on their mobiles (although some of GroupMe’s competitors work only on iPhones and Android phones).
This is a handy variant of social networking. Sites such as Facebook and Twitter are essentially public (though users can restrict who sees their messages); indeed, they involve an element of performance. Group messaging represents a step back from broadcasting. It preserves some measure of intimacy and exclusivity. Beluga, for example, asks users to sort their contacts into “pods”, each serving as a distribution list.
It all sounds useful, but how is it going to make money? GroupMe, which raised $10.6m in January, is mulling advertisements tailored to groups. But users may not welcome a spambot suddenly weighing in on their dinner plans. Etiquette questions will also arise among friends. Group texting is logical when membership has already been delineated—for the team-mates on a project, for example. Among friends, there will surely be tiffs over who is in, and out, of which group. Despite such worries, group messaging looks destined to be old hat by the time next year’s SXSW comes around.
I cannot see myself using this ever.
Monkeys display basic numeracy
Victoria Gill, BBC News:
Old World monkeys have better numerical skills than previously thought, researchers have discovered.
In a basic numeracy test, long-tailed macaques were able to work out which of two plates contained more raisins.
Strangely, they only excelled in this test if they were not allowed to eat the raisins they were shown.
The scientists report in the journal Nature Communications that the animals have the ability to understand the concept of relative quantities.
The team of researchers from the German Primate Center in Goettingen initially tested the macaques by showing them two plates containing different numbers of raisins. When the animals spontaneously pointed to one of the plates, they were fed the raisins.
But in this test, the monkeys often got it wrong - choosing the smaller amount.
Lead researcher Vanessa Schmitt said that this was because, rather than thinking about quantities, the animals were thinking about how much they wanted to eat the raisins.
“This impulsiveness impaired their judgement,” Ms Schmitt told BBC News.
“But when we repeated the test, this time showing them two plates of inedible objects - pebbles - they did much better.”
To find out if the monkeys really could judge quantities, the researchers tried another experiment.
“We wanted to know if they could simultaneously maintain two mental representations of the food items, first as choice, and second as food reward,” said Ms Schmitt.
In this third slightly more confusing experiment, the monkeys were shown plates of raisins, but their reward for pointing to a plate was to be fed other raisins that were hidden underneath.
“They perform as well in this task as they do when choosing the pebbles,” said Ms Schmitt.
“This seems to show that they see the raisins as signifiers - representations of the food rewards they’re going to receive.”
progressive tumblogs
Can you fine people recommend me some progressive tumblogs? Besides commentary on the news of the day, I’m interested in:
- global politics
- Canadian politics
- economics
- the intersection of technology and politics
- political theory
- anti-oppression activism
- intercultural theory
- literary and cultural criticism (especially ~lowbrow stuff like comics, cartoons, pop music, advertising, kidlit, genre fiction)
- education (and the philosophy thereof)
- community development
- peace theory and activism
- war and security studies
- SCIENCE!
I know it’s a long list, but seriously. Must have moar content. Any recs?
“Income tax rates are now lower than they were under Ronald Reagan and far lower than they were under Eisenhower. And yet it has become a Norquistian non-negotiable that no taxes can be raised at all on anyone, let alone the beneficiaries of the last thirty years - and those who differ must be “leftists” - even when the US is facing debt of historic and dangerous proportions. Someone advocating what Eisenhower was perfectly comfortable with would be regarded by the Republican right today as a communist. And yet, of course, Eisenhower was emphatically not a Communist, whatever the John Birch society believed.”
—Andrew Sullivan (via pantslessprogressive)
Syrian Cabinet resigns amid unrest | AP →
google.com
Syria’s Cabinet resigned Tuesday to help quell a wave of popular fury that erupted more than a week ago and is now threatening President Bashar Assad’s 11-year rule in one of the most authoritarian and closed-off nations in the Middle East.
Assad, whose family has controlled Syria for four decades, is trying to calm the growing dissent with a string of concessions. He is expected to address the nation in the next 24 hours to lift emergency laws in place since 1963 and moving to annul other harsh restrictions on civil liberties and political freedoms. [read more]
“
Let’s boldly speak about the possibility of living in a country where bankers don’t make out like bandits while people lose their homes; where prisons aren’t seen as a “growth industry” and healthcare is a right instead of a privilege.
Let’s boldly say that ordinary people have the capacity for extraordinary deeds and can run society far more effectively than those who have been looting their pensions and destroying their jobs.
Let’s boldly proclaim that teachers are the best people to run schools, that nurses and doctors are the best people to run hospitals and that we can wield the remarkable tools of capital for human need instead of corporate greed. As Jack London wrote, we can “Take these mighty machines and make them ours.”
Let’s reintroduce a new generation to the dynamic hidden history of radical change from below. Socialism has been associated with top-down, smothering bureaucracies, but there is a different tradition that threads through the defining struggles of the last century: the battles for the eight-hour workday, women’s rights, desegregation, LGBT rights and global justice.
The fact that Stalinism and McCarthyism wrecked the Communist Party in this country should not blind us to the fact that it built an organization of 80,000 activists by 1938, without which there would have been no 1934 San Francisco general strike, no UAW, no CIO. The American left’s fear of creating its own political party, built on radical principles, remains an obstacle that we must find a way to overcome.
There is no question this will take work. We are talking about reclaiming a proud history of struggle from below while rejecting the part of that history that aligned itself with dictatorial change from on high. But if our ideas are going to have any kind of currency, then we will need more unions, more community groups and more people joined arm in arm that openly stand in the best of the socialist tradition. We will need to be out and proud in the battles to come.
” —David Zirin, Socialists, Out And Proud.Anarky crossed with Barbara Gordon. IT MAKES SENSE IN MY HEAD.
Ha ha ha, I love this.
Fyi: Anarky is an anti-authoritarian super-person. Barbara Gordon is Barbara Gordon.
Which fictional character do you think I resemble the most, in terms of personality?
Oh narcissism. So what do you think?
“As Republicans seek to defund Planned Parenthood and deny vital health care services to American women most in need, they want to spend taxpayer dollars to support crisis pregnancy centers, which have become anti-choice groups’ sneaky alternative to legitimate reproductive health clinics.”
—
Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Cal.) in an email to MoJo’s Kate Sheppard. After attempting to strip all funding from Planned Parenthood (citing, among other things, fiscal discipline), some House Republicans want to pour federal dollars into “crisis pregnancy centers,” which tell women that abortion can cause breast cancer and suicidal tendencies.
To recap: Taxpayer funding for an organization that provides accurate information and valuable resources to women: bad! Taxpayer funding for organizations that provide false and misleading information, to advance an often undisclosed religious agenda, with little regard for actual health issues involved: good!
(via motherjones)
*people with uteri and/or women
(via stfukyriarchy)
The Kill Team photos →
rollingstone.com
TRIGGER WARNING: Violence, dehumanization, racism, government violence.
The “kill team” – members of the 5th Stryker Brigade stationed near Kandahar – took scores of photos chronicling their kills and their time in Afghanistan. Even before the war crimes became public, the Pentagon went to extraordinary measures to suppress the photos, launching a massive effort to find every file and pull the pictures out of circulation before they could touch off a scandal on the scale of Abu Ghraib.
The images – more than 150 of which have been obtained by Rolling Stone – portray a front-line culture among U.S. troops in which killing innocent civilians is seen as a cause for celebration. “Most people within the unit disliked the Afghan people,” one of the soldiers told Army investigators. “Everyone would say they’re savages.”
Many of the photos depict explicit images of violent deaths that have yet to be identified by the Pentagon. Among the soldiers, the collection was treated like a war memento. It was passed from man to man on thumb drives and hard drives, the gruesome images of corpses and war atrocities filed alongside clips of TV shows, UFC fights and films such as Iron Man 2. One soldier kept a complete set, which he made available to anyone who asked.
Each photo is accompanied by notes on the Kill Team’s activities.
The Kill Team—full article.
I read the whole thing but didn’t view the photos or video. It’s really upsetting. I believe it needs to be spread around but please take care of yourself first.
That bolded part up there about how these images were passed around on hard drives/thumb drives? It made me think about the push to credit revolutionary movement making to social media. And how none of the people who have been all—social media y’all! IT WILL CHANGE THE WORLD!—are talking about this type of social media. And how social media is related to violent colonialism and military intervention, just as strongly as is it to revolutionary movement making. Would we ever see/believe a headline like THUMB DRIVES CAUSED GENOCIDAL OBLITERATION OF AGHANISTAN TOWN!!!!!!!! Then why would we/should we see/believe a headline like FACEBOOK, SPARKING REVOLUTIONS WORLDWIDE! for Facebook?
And think of the bad business it would be for thumb drives if it was constantly pounded home that their product was linked to genocide. Could it possibly be good business for facebook to pound home over and over again, FACEBOOK—LIBERATION!!!!!!
I think there’s something to be said about the fact that this stuff WASN’T shared on social media, as well—that it was kept on nominally private things like thumb drives. But yet it became public because you can’t control information in bits and bytes as easily as you can information on paper. You can copy it off a thumb drive in seconds and no one will know…
Headachy and off to a funeral. But I wonder.
wrt the Social Networking Revolution narrative: We get these massive inundations of Social Media Is Good M’kay? stories, followed by a round of stories scoffing at the liberatory potential of Twitter et al. Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s bad journalism. All technologies have emancipatory and oppressive potentials. The real story is in the details: how are these technologies being used? who are they being used by and for whom? and finally, who’s making money off of them?
It’s irresponsible for Western journos to gush about the role of internet activism and organizing in the Arab revolutions, without also talking about state crackdowns on telecommunications—driven by technologies developed in the West, aided by Western firms. And like bunnehears points out, you can’t talk about ‘Facebook revolutions’ without recognizing how the now hard linkage (Facebook is revolutionary, and will support your revolution) is really good for business. Hell, I’ll just quote zir, “Social media is related to violent colonialism and military intervention, just as strongly as is it to revolutionary movement making.”
Certainly platform matters. Framing matters. But we need to be suspicious of absolute technological determinism, because this kind of vulgarized McLuhan (by way of technocratic tech fandom), removes the human element. If we keep on distilling this argument, eventually we’re left with: the video games did it; the widespread use of drones did it; social networking platforms did it.
Play
fuckyeahsocialthought replied to your link: The Kill Team photos
I really should have listened to your trigger warning. I am beyond disturbed.
I’m sorry bb.
The story as a whole should come with ALL THE TRIGGER WARNINGS. The full Rolling Stone piece (The Kill Team) is without graphic images, but let’s face it—it’s difficult, painful, and triggering reading regardless.
“
Gay men remain banned for life from donating blood, the government said Wednesday, leaving in place — for now — a 1983 prohibition meant to prevent the spread of HIV through transfusions.
The Food and Drug Administration reiterated its long-standing policy on its Web site Wednesday, more than a year after the Red Cross and two other blood groups criticized the policy as “medically and scientifically unwarranted.”
” —MSNBC
The Kill Team photos →
rollingstone.com
TRIGGER WARNING: Violence, dehumanization, racism, government violence.
The “kill team” – members of the 5th Stryker Brigade stationed near Kandahar – took scores of photos chronicling their kills and their time in Afghanistan. Even before the war crimes became public, the Pentagon went to extraordinary measures to suppress the photos, launching a massive effort to find every file and pull the pictures out of circulation before they could touch off a scandal on the scale of Abu Ghraib.
The images – more than 150 of which have been obtained by Rolling Stone – portray a front-line culture among U.S. troops in which killing innocent civilians is seen as a cause for celebration. “Most people within the unit disliked the Afghan people,” one of the soldiers told Army investigators. “Everyone would say they’re savages.”
Many of the photos depict explicit images of violent deaths that have yet to be identified by the Pentagon. Among the soldiers, the collection was treated like a war memento. It was passed from man to man on thumb drives and hard drives, the gruesome images of corpses and war atrocities filed alongside clips of TV shows, UFC fights and films such as Iron Man 2. One soldier kept a complete set, which he made available to anyone who asked.
Each photo is accompanied by notes on the Kill Team’s activities.
The Kill Team—full article.
And so ends microbiology weekend.
I hope you enjoyed the bio microscopy picspam. And if you didn’t enjoy it, my apologies—hope you won’t mind this Sertoli-cell-only syndrome (a form of male sterility) slide! Yes, this is my solution to boring my audience. MORE OF THE SAME.
Next weekend is all about ROBOTS ROBOTS ROBOTS. The stranger, the better.
PS. Would you guys kill me if I started doing weekly contemporary art spams?
But what do you do?
A couple of people asked if I work in or study science. If you follow me on Twitter, you already know the answer because I cannot shut up about my homework. (Everyone needs a character flaw). But no, I’m a liberal arts student. My undergrad is in lit/political science. Next fall I’ll (most likely) be doing community development and getting my TESOL certification. The dream is a masters in political theory, somewhere down the road. As for work, I tutor and work in retail (excitement!).
At one point, I’d planned to study biology, but the pull of Dostoevsky and Ranciere was too strong! Now I’m just a weekend science fangirl. THE UNIVERSE IS AMAZING, OK!?
Enough about me. Back to microbiology weekend!
Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek
Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek: The father of microbiology.
He is best known for his work on the improvement of the microscope and for his contributions towards the establishment of microbiology. Using his handcrafted microscopes he was the first to observe and describe single celled organisms, which he originally referred to as animalcules, and which we now refer to as microorganisms. He was also the first to record microscopic observations of muscle fibers, bacteria, spermatozoa and blood flow in capillaries (small blood vessels). Van Leeuwenhoek did not author any books, although he did write many letters.
— Wikipedia (yeah, I know but it’s accurate and accessible)
The really cool part? The dates of his discoveries:
- the infusoria (protists in modern zoological classification), in 1674
- the bacteria, (e.g. large Selenomonads from the human mouth), in 1676
- the spermatozoa in 1677. Van Leeuwenhoek had troubles with Dutch theologists about his practice.
- the banded pattern of muscular fibers, in 1682
