In an attempt to fight global warning the EU, USA, Canada, Australia and the Philippines are now phasing out old-fashion lightbulbs with fluorescent or halogen lamps. It seems like a great idea since these new lamps use only 20 percent as much energy as the old ones. But once you starting doing the math a picture emerges.
The question is, will this really make a difference? According to EcoBridge, “In 2002 about 40% of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions stem from the burning of fossil fuels for the purpose of electricity generation.” And 40 percent of the total electricity is residential. So some 20 percent of the CO2 emissions were due to household electricity. But lighting is only nine percent of household electricity and therefore accounting for 1.8 percent of the emissions.
Does this mean that lighting contributes with 1.8 percent to global warming? No, not by far. CO2 accounts for 85 percent of the greenhouse gases as measured in absolut quantity, but the other main gas, methane is much more harmful so something like 70 percent is probably more reasonable.
So around one percent of global warming is due to household lighting. Can we at least fix most of that on percent by changing to the new lamps? Sadly, no. In a temperate climate the old inefficient light bulbs are a part of the heating system. So you don’t actually save 80 percent with the new lamps unless you are willing to freeze. In fact, if your electricity is hydro or nuclear and your heating system comes from natural gas or oil you may actually add to global warming if you change your bulbs. But regardless of that you’ll never save 80 percent. So far I haven’t found any estimate on what you actually save, but given that the old bulbs mainly produce heat it must be very little. The inevitable conclusion is that changing your light bulbs will not make a noticeable difference on global warming.
Meat production, on the other hand, is said to account for 15-20 percent of global warming – not of CO2 emissions but of all greenhouse gases. So why are politicians so insistent that we switch to the new supposedly energy saving light bulbs while they say nothing about meat? Simply because the are more interested in getting re-elected than fighting global warming. Voters will not take kindly to a politician who demands meat rations. We live in a culture of comfort and short term gratification and no leader is going to do anything about that because if he tries we’ll just replace him.
As a believer in meritocracy I can’t help to interpret this situation as the beginning of the end of democracy, at least in its current form. If voters can’t be persuaded to do anything more against global warming than the charade of changing light bulbs, then we will all just ease into disaster.
The remedy? New voters. There are already states in USA where some criminals aren’t allowed to vote. But a better set of criteria would be things like intelligence, altruism and idealism. These things can be measured in different ways and used to decide who gets to vote and how much his or her vote should count. Or we could just sit back and watch it all go south…
Filed under: Environment, Politics, Society | 3 Comments
Tags: global warming, light bulbs, meat procuction, meritocracy
Let’s forgive Roman Polanski
Roman Polanski has been arrested in Switzerland and is now facing a possible extradition to the USA to stand trial on a rape charge, a crime he committed back in 1977. It was then that he drugged and raped a 13 year old girl named Samantha Geimer.
A lot of people are applauding this development. But I feel it’s time to forgive Polanski. Especially after hearing what his victim has to say about it. According to her, the media did much more damage to her than Polanski did. “I don’t wish for him to be held to further punishment or consequences” she says.
The fact that Polanski fled was due to the fact that the judge in the case first approved of a plea bargain agreement but then changed his mind. This according to Geimer and others because he realized that he could get his fifteen minutes of fame by giving Polanski a harder sentence. So it wasn’t his responsibility Polanski was running away from but a derailed judicial process.
But legal technicalities aside, it’s just time to move on. This is over 30 years ago and his victim has forgiven him. But other people – whom he have done nothing to – cannot forgive him. Why is that? I think some people simply need to hate. They certainly need to read stories about sex and celebrities. And the media will happily supply whatever is in demand. So who is to cast the first stone?
Filed under: Celebrities, Crime, Ethics, Media, Society | 18 Comments
Tags: Roman Polanski, Samantha Geimer
According to Nature scientists have now managed to give color blind monkeys full color vision using gene therapy. I wonder what that would be like, to see new colors after having lived all your life without them. Perhaps shocking, but the monkeys seem okay.
It’s a bit strange that around 1 man in 12 are color blind to some extent, but only once have I heard someone admit to having this condition. Is it somehow shameful? I read somewhere that in Greece people are secretive about having the sickle-cell gene, but sickle-cell anemia is a serious disease. Color blindness is a very mild handicap.
Maybe it is in our nature to conceal our flaws and weaknesses. It makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. Maybe women don’t want to have children with colorblind men because it may make the children colorblind as well. I don’t know.
It’s funny I to think that I must know dozens of colorblind men (and maybe a woman or two). I have probably commented on various nuances of colors on cars, buildings and so on. And they have just played along pretending to know what I was talking about. People are truly strange sometimes.
Filed under: Biology, Health, Psychology, Science, Society, genetics | Leave a Comment
Tags: colorblindness, social stigma
Obama gives children false hope
Obama’s speech to America’s school children has been held by many people before and it boiles down to this: You can achieve success and be whatever you want to be if you only apply yourself. “Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.”
In America, and everywhere else, this is bull crap. You have to have intelligence if you want to be an inventor, writer, architect et cetera. This is hardly controversial since the Scholastic Aptitude Test for admission to college is nothing more than meassure of intelligence. It correlates so strongly with IQ-tests that Mensa will admit you on your SAT scores (if you’re looking for extra boring company that is).
And intelligence is a highly hereditary trait, around 70-80 percent according to most experts. Also, it is very resistant to environmental influence. Numerous efforts have been made to boost the IQ scores of children and they have all failed. There are also personality traits, most notably conscientiousness and impulsivity, that effect scholastic achievements. Both of these are also highly hereditary – impulsivity around 80 percent.
But let’s say there was some magic way of making all children apt students. Would that make manual labor redundant? Would the floors sweep themselves out of sheer respect for this collective accomplishment? Am I full of rhetorical questions?
If everyone got a Phd then obviously someone would still have to do the manual labor. Only it would be someone with a Phd, a low income and a lot of student loans. This will never happen of course but it illustrates how far from reality Obama and like-minded people have distanced themselves.
If you wish for all children to have a good life then start thinking about how that society would look like. I think it would be a more equal society where social standing didn’t mean so much. Where everyone could evolve on their own terms. I know that may sound a bit dreamy, but it is nowhere near as dreamy as thinking that everyone can be at the top if they just try hard enough.
Filed under: Biology, Education, Politics, Psychology, Science, Society, genetics | 2 Comments
Tags: intelligence, Obama's speech to Americas school children, Scholastical Aptitude Test
As the elections in August 20th in Afghanistan draws nearer the Talibans are doing their best to make potential voters stay at home. More soldiers from the ISAF-force are being killed than ever before. Now the capital Kabul is also under bombardment. You have to ask yourself: are we winning this battle? There are a number of factors that makes this unlikely.
First off, the Talibans must have some popular support. Otherwise the Afghans would have rid themselves of them a long time ago. These supporters are no doubt religious fanatics. The harsh reality is that they will never be accept democracy or basic human rights. They can only be killed or suppressed, but never won over. Should we kill, say 10 percent of the Afghan population, or monitor them indefinitely?
Secondly, Afghanistan is the world’s leading opium producer. The drug trade is controlled by the Taliban and many farmer’s are thus economically dependent on them. Cutting their ties with Talibans means financial disaster with the bonus risk of getting killed. But it’s not just the poppy farmers. In 2007 half of the Afghan GDP came from opium. This means that most people are benefiting from the opium trade one way or the other.
Thirdly, the purely military aspect. It’s a big, mountainous country with very little infrastructure. This is an advantage for the Taliban who know the terrain and have the voluntary or involuntary support of local civilians. They can always hide whereas the NATO troops will usually give away their position, making them sitting ducks. The Taliban may not have any fancy weapons but with common RPGs they can take out stationary vehicles at 500 meters and helicopters at 300 meters. Also, recent events may suggest that the Taliban have stinger missiles or some other weapon that can take down supersonic jet fighters. Apart from the casualties this means that the war could become extremely expensive.
So, what can we do? We can legalize heroin. It’s already been done in Portugal and seems to be working out fine. Terrorism isn’t cheap. A single grenade for an RPG can cost a 100 dollars and many miss their target. The drug money ultimately provided by Europe and the USA is essential to the Taliban’s military strength. We can also increase border control and implement stricter immigration laws to prevent terrorists from entering our own countries. These are simple and effective means to protect ourselves from terrorism.
As for Afghanistan itself we can help in many ways, but ultimately they have to decide their own destiny.
Filed under: Human rights, Politics, Religion, Terrorism | 2 Comments
Tags: Afghanistan, ISAF, Taliban
The psychological thriller is ideally a genre that blends drama and suspense into a succesful combination. It prevents the drama from becoming to heavy or slow and it prevents the suspense from becoming to superficial. Ideally, that is.
But this book doesn’t accomplish that. The plot – ingenious according to the Telegraph – is so thin it’s barely storytelling at all; just a bit of portraiture of a bunch of loosely related characters. Sure, there is a love story as the main plot, but it is so thin and uninteresting that the female part, Ella, has a more interesting relation with a side character Joel. And I’m pretty sure that is unintentional.
There is not much suspense either. Just a few moments here and there that I’m not going to disclose in case you still want to read it. This however is nothing compared her earlier book, like Thirteen Steps Down and even more The Bridesmaid. In these there is a creepy atmosphere throughout the book. This one is 95 percent mundane dreariness.
Parts of this book is also so rosy and shallow they read more like Mary Higgins Clark than Ruth Rendell. I can’t help wondering if this is due to anti-depressants or early onset Alzheimer’s.
This may be “her new bestseller” as it says on the cover, but it doesn’t deserve to be that. If you haven’t read her before I’d recommend The Bridesmaid instead.
Filed under: Arts & Culture, Books | 2 Comments
Tags: Portobello, review, Ruth Rendell
Those weird Lithuanians have passed a bunch of laws against informing children about homosexuality, polygamy, gambling, bad hygiene, hypnosis (!) and so on. At least in positive terms. You’re still allowed to say that gays are sick or that hypnosis is evil.
Why is this country that was so eager to be a part of NATO and EU now turning the clock back? Most likely because it’s a rural, catholic country that has been in a state of suspended animation during the Soviet era. There is no tradition of human rights, but the catholic church has been there all along, planting its seeds of intolerance into the hearts of people.
This is not to say that the Western countries have a perfect record on human rights. A lot of countries in Europe have laws forbidding people to say demeaning things about gays. They think of this as tolerance but these laws are just as intolerant as the Lithuanian law, only based on other values. The real beacon in this area is USA which by its First Amendment basically guarantees that anything but defamation goes. Something for both Lithuania as well as the rest of EU to strive for.
Filed under: Crime, Gender issues, Human rights, Politics, Society | 2 Comments
Tags: anti-gay law, freedom of speech, Lithuania
Enough with Jacko already
I know it’s customary to talk well of the recently departed, but the massive glorification of Michael Jackson is beginning to get on my nerves. I can understand why many appreciate him as an artist, but the quotes from memorial ceremony go way beyond that. Here are a few quotes from civil right activist Al Sharpton to illustrate what I’m talking about:
“Michael Jackson made culture accept a person of color way before Tiger Woods, way before Oprah Winfrey, way before Barack Obama”
“I want to say to Michael’s children, there wasn’t nothing strange about your daddy, it was strange what your daddy had to deal with. He dealt with it anyway. He dealt with it for us.”
“If you look at how they deal with Michael’s so-called shortcomings and then the shortcomings of Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley, it’s nowhere in the same world.”
Michael Jackson bleached his skin, narrowed his nose and straightened his hair – he did everything he could to look as white as possible. As a “person of color” he seems to have been ashamed of him self.
As for his personal conduct, I too would like to say to his children that there was nothing strange about him. But that’s simply not true. If a grown man has sleep-overs with children there is something very strange about him. If he pays 22 million dollars to shut their parents up then in my book he is a child molester. I know some will say “innocent until proven guilty”. But in that case rich people who can settle out of court are always innocent. At some point you have to rely on your own judgement. And if you can’t puzzle this one together you’re simply in denial.
I don’t think we should judge Jackson too hard though. He was by all accounts robbed of his own childhood. And he might have had a genetic predisposition. Who knows what made him what he was? There is good and bad in all of us. But like congressman Peter King says, it’s the soldiers, firemen, people who work with aids patients and so forth that should be honored. The media have indeed disgraced themselves by treating him as some kind of saint.
Filed under: Arts & Culture, Crime, Entertainment, Ethics, Media, Racism, Society | 2 Comments
Tags: Michael Jackson, Peter King
According to a recent poll 17 percent of the population in eastern Germany, formerly the DDR, say that the communist era was better than the current situation.
This may seem surprising since DDR was a totalitarian society with one Stasi agent on every 166 inhabitants, spying and reporting on what people were talking about in private conversations. Anyone saying the wrong things about the government risked prison or even an informal execution without trial.
The other side of the coin is that most people were fairly well off and didn’t have to worry so much about money. Not that they were rich but no one was outright poor either. Just being a citizen of the DDR meant that you had access to healthcare, education and such things that many in the West have to struggle for without necessarily achieving it. This, no doubt, gave rise to a sense of pride.
Today eastern Germany is the poor underdeveloped part of the country that isn’t getting anywhere. Many realize that the freedom of capitalism without money is sometimes less than the freedom back in the DDR. And the pride of being Germans was also lost when they became the “Ossis”, a financial burden of the “Wessis”. In the poll 52 percent say they feel like second class citizens.
I news-googled this poll and got one (sic) hit, this paper in Singapore. Apparently this is not something the mainstream media wants to talk about. But that’s less surprising since they are in deep symbiosis with the political establishment.
I sometimes wonder if capitalism is like a pyramid scheme: best for the early adopters and the gradually worse the later you’re on board.
Filed under: Politics, Society | 4 Comments
Tags: DDR, Ossis, Stasi
Film review: Knowing (2009)
In 1959 a group of schoolchildren send messages in a time capsule in the form of drawings depicting how they imagine the world will look like in 50 years. Except for one disturbed little girl, Lucinda Embry (Lara Robinson), that writes down a code. When the capsule is opened 50 years later Caleb Koestler (Chandler Canterbury), son of MIT professor John Koestler (Nicholas Cage), receives the code, which his father deciphers to find a dark and prophetic message to him personally. He know abandons his scientific world view to confront a different form of reality as the events foretold by Lucinda come true.
I liked most things about this movie: the acting, the cinematography, the story. It does tap into the supernatural experience in a suggestive way that I think a lot of viewers will appreciate. It’s not just a lot of New Age elements cobbled together; it’s done in a way that rings true. The special effects were okay, but nothing more than that – which is a good thing in a film that works more on psychological than visual level.
What I didn’t like was the blending of genres. It starts out very much like a supernatural thriller in the vein of Dean Koontz (more of that please!), but changes towards the end into something more like a religious drama. That was a bit disappointing because the build up of the thriller then ends in something completely unexpected but also somewhat anticlimactic.
But the end – which I won’t give away here of course – was not so bad as to ruin the film, far from it. So all in all, I’d recommend this one.
Filed under: Arts & Culture, Entertainment, Movies & TV, Religion, Science, The Paranormal | 1 Comment
Tags: Knowing, Nicholas Cage, review
Recent Entries
- The Light Bulb Syndrome – pretending to fight global warming
- Let’s forgive Roman Polanski
- The weird stigma of colorblindness
- Obama gives children false hope
- Why we should pull out of Afghanistan
- Book review: Portobello (2008) by Ruth Rendell
- Lithuanian intolerance and EU hypocrisy
- Enough with Jacko already
- DDR nostalgia – why do some people prefer totalitarianism?
- Film review: Knowing (2009)
- Why feminism makes women unhappy
Categories
- Animal rights (2)
- Anthropology (3)
- Archeology (4)
- Arts & Culture (25)
- Biology (17)
- Blogs (4)
- Books (7)
- Celebrities (10)
- Crime (21)
- Economy (8)
- Education (5)
- Entertainment (31)
- Environment (7)
- Ethics (23)
- Gender issues (1)
- genetics (4)
- Globalization (7)
- Health (14)
- Human rights (2)
- Internet (4)
- Language (2)
- Media (16)
- Miscellaneous (2)
- Movies & TV (26)
- Music (1)
- Politics (49)
- Psychology (21)
- Racism (8)
- Religion (16)
- Science (32)
- Society (55)
- Technology (4)
- Terrorism (10)
- The Paranormal (3)
