Yesterday marked the one hundredth anniversary of the garment factory fire in New York City that killed 146 workers, the majority of whom were women. Democracy Now! devoted the whole March 25^th episode to this story. They played an excerpt of Amy Goodman’s interview from 1986 (the 75^th anniversary) with the fire’s last survivor. The workers who died had been active in the labour movement in the lead-up to the tragedy. The deceased were largely blamed for their own deaths in the ensuing court case. Their compensation for working at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was roughly $3 per hour, in today’s money.

On December 14^th last year a Bangladesh factory at Hameem caught fire, killing twenty-nine workers and injuring over one hundred. The rate of pay there is $0.28 per hour. Labels that produce clothes at this plant include Gap, Phillips-Van Heusen, JCPenney, Abercrombie & Fitch and Target.

Something to think about.

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Since I have my headphones pretty much permanently jammed into my head I am able to do the following thing for you: provide you with a list of favourite podcasts, amongst which you may find something quite interesting.

Start here

Infallible opinions follow… (categories from iTMS)

Name & cover	Reason for awesome	Archives
Savage Love	Dan Savage. Everything you ever wanted to know about sex and preferred that someone else asked. Funny as hell. Brought to us by the Tech-Savvy At-Risk Youth. Dan’s voice, also pretty marvelous. (Category: Sexuality.)	iTMS, website (2006–)
Democracy Now!	Amy Goodman. A daily digest of the news that matters with fascinating interviews and debate. People in their own words. Every show a driven, inspiring and unflinching look at national and global events. (Category: News & Politics.)	website (1996–)
Background Briefing	ABC journalists. Consistently the most relevant, well-researched and informative investigative journalism on the radio. Looks at emerging social, economic and political topics. Props to Dan for the recommendation. (Category: News & Politics.) See also…	website (1995–)
This American Life	Ira Glass. Wonderful collections of stories organized by theme. American culture served with humour, pathos, insight and a dash of longing. Occasional collaborations with other journalists. (Category: Society & Culture.) See also…	website (1995–)
The Conversation	Dan Benjamin. Thoughtful interviews with movers and shakers in web and software development with forays into design, production, and online culture. Candid talk that’s low on jargon; well-produced. Dan Benjamin is doing great things. (Category: Tech News.)	iTMS, website (2010–)
All in the Mind	Natasha Mitchell. Fascinating interviews with experts in the areas of psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience and the occasional bit of philosophy. The conversations with Thomas Szasz are fantastic. (Category: Science & Medicine.)	website (2002–)
The Bugle (paywall)	John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman. Gut-clenching satirical take on the week’s news. Think hilariously accented, ginger mopped, ancient history major and the guy from The Daily Show. (Category: Comedy.) See also…	iTMS since 2009 (2007–)
Point of Inquiry	Chris Mooney, Robert Price and Karen Stollznow. Formerly D.J. Grothe. Consistently challenging interview program promoting skepticism and science in the public interest. (Category: Social Sciences.)	iTMS, website (2005–)
The Moth	Shorts from performances at The Moth in New York City and on tour. Straight out fantastic live storytelling. Introduced each week by Dan Kennedy, whose own Moth story is particularly good. (Category: Performing Arts.)	website (2008–)
Astronomy Cast	Fraser Cain and Pamela Gay. Program by astronomy experts that’s pitched at a general audience. Though they cover some, um… hard physics stuff. Try wrapping your head around the theory of inflation. Good times. (Category: Natural Sciences.) See also…	iTMS, website (2006–)

Honorable mentions

Coming soon…

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In honour, perhaps, of Winston Smith.

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A Pew study views news as inherently difficult to sell:

All these findings speak to the natural disadvantage of news content: Most news is covered by more than one organization and people do not place enough value on the difference between the various reports. In other words, if a user had to pay for a New York Times article on Haiti, evidence suggests that he or she would just look for another source that could provide the basic information. The nuances of depth or breadth in the pay story may not be valued enough to induce payment over a free alternative.

Maybe so. This is a car crash model of consumption: people want immediate, “basic information” about catastrophic events and would be equally satisfied by driving by it as by reading about it online. Obviously, sometimes true. But there are other problems. Most news is just not reported well, or in equal measure, or with any sense of conviction, which gets to matters of competence, selection and trust. Baldur Bjarnason:

If there’s one thing I learnt over the last three years and the tremendous news coverage that Iceland has been getting it’s that mainstream media is incapable of writing even one news item without getting something substantially wrong… Mainstream news isn’t worth £2 a week or a year because it doesn’t have enough facts to qualify as news and is too boring to qualify as fiction.

Here the biggest problem stems from the commodification of news, but manifests in frustrated consumption: news supplied by the mainstream media companies lacks “voice”—that embodied synthesis of:

1. authority,
2. reliability,
3. validity, and
4. perspective

that comprise the necessary conditions of believing what is told to you and wanting to hear it.

The frame of reference is the blind spot. If you understand news as an elementary information product then its consumers will appear to be acting instrumentally, snacking it quickly, grabbing it at the lowest possible price, or walking away from it at the slightest barrier. News appears to be nothing more of less than fast food.

But if, instead, you view news consumption as the search for moments of assurance—as willful participation in acts of telling, delivered by a “subject supposed to know”—then any kind of voicelessness amounts to failure. Not taking a position is abandoning the process that gives the product its value.

The best news sources are the ones that succeed at being “supposed to know.” Having the basic facts is not enough. You have to convey that you know them, so that we are not just receiving facts from you, but we are, first and foremost, being assured by your knowledge of the things you tell us. Audio, video, text, paper, screen—doesn’t matter—as long as we sense the guiding hand.

We want to consult the oracle.

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Nothing to worry about here Tony. Climate change freak out dupes, kindly return to your porch rockers and resume whittling. I mean, it’s obviously a conspiracy, and I wouldn’t expect any different from the Greenies. But I just can’t believe that so many scientists have been taken in by it. I used to think scientists were smart and sensible people. I suppose they will come to their senses eventually. Purple skies—yeah right. Good one NASA. Kidders. Bunch of Photoshop junkies. Go launch a rocket!

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• All points on the Prime Meridian are at 0° longitude
• All other points on the earth have longitudes ranging from 0° to 180°E or from 0° to 180°W…
• Unlike the parallels of latitude, which are defined by the rotational axis of the Earth, the Prime Meridian is arbitrary

It was an informative article — aside from all the venerable Greenwich Obervatory, historical import, British sea power ra-ra-ra — though I couldn’t shake the feeling that every time you said “arbitrary” you also meant “(but somehow so right).”

The counterfeit nature of our economy is troubling enough, given that financial power is concentrated in the hands of a few key players—“300 white guys in Manhattan,” as a former high-placed executive puts it. But over the course of the past year, that group of insiders has also proved itself brilliantly capable of enlisting the power of the state to help along the process of concentrating economic might—making it less and less likely that the financial markets will ever be policed, since the state is increasingly the captive of these interests.

Steel yourself for this one.

† Via Zed Shaw.

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I insist merely that Canada is a country separate from the United States and the United Kingdom. We need our own solutions to our own problems. Only a special kind of cultural sellout would object to that sentiment. You are that kind of sellout. Put that in your Twitpic and smoke it.

Be sure to read the whole thing for context. This excerpt comes from right at the end of Clark’s post. It’s an interesting problem, and one with which most Australians are all-too-familiar. I love Clay Shirky too, but Clark has a point about the power law effect.

• broke up with eMusic last month → much happier
• The Stone Roses (1989): last great find on eMusic
• Vampire Weekend (2008): I… don’t get it
• The Moon & Antartica (2000), Modest Mouse: “the Universe is shaped exactly like the Earth”
• Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not (2006), Arctic Monkeys: nice
• Revolutions Per Minute (2003), Rise Against: love it, Elena not so much
• (500) Days of Summer (2009): so I can tolerate Regina Spektor
• No More Shall We Part (2001), Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds: intense beauty, deep sorrow, can’t fail
• Sunday was Dire Straits day thanks to Cutlers-style serendipity; four hours of uninterrupted bliss:
  • Dire Straits (1978)
  • Love Over Gold (1982)
  • Alchemy (live album) (1984)
  • Brothers in Arms (1985)
• Muse (Absolution) and Portastatic (Nature of Sap, Sour Shores) interlude, from the archives
• and now… The Wash EP (2009) by The Last Minutes, thanks to Wesleying: yep!

I know, I know. You don’t stumble across music criticism this astute every day. Count your blessings, dear reader.

Some points made in the interview:

• White people in Australia use a discourse of possessiveness when talking about their relationship to the country. This gives any discussion of citizenship—especially questions about what it means, who has it, and who deserves it—an inherently possessive quality. In fact, Moreton-Robinson argues that citizenship itself is inherently possessive.
• The very presence of indigenous people “ontologically disturbs” whites. Aborigines are, in a sense, upsetting to the Australian mindset in their very existence. Anyone who wants to get an indigenous issue on the agenda—whether in government policy, in public discussions, in talking with their neighbours, in trying to establish a program or a radio station, in trying to get access to resources, etc.—always faces a struggle. The “unfinished business” between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians hangs over every encounter.
• A misconception about race relations in Australia today is that the Mabo decision in 1991 overturned the legal doctrine of terra nullius (that the land belonged to no-one when Europeans showed up). It did not; it diminished terra nullius by acknowledging the existence of native title rights to land, but it maintained the legitimacy of the state’s right to Aboriginal land.^†
• Mabo saw the development of a specific white fear: that Aborigines would take over peoples’ homes by staking a claim to their properties and surrounding land—and, in a sense, forced the reassertion that “Australia is a white country.” A lot of talk by Australians since then about what Indigenous people receive from the state has unfolded in light of this panic.
• The Keating government brought legislation following Mabo intended to clarify some of the issues raised by the decision, but it stopped short of resolving the right-to-land question. It established some Indigenous rights, namely the right to hunt and gather, but it did not establish a right of residence for Indigenous people. Indigenous sovereignty is still in a murky place legally, and therefore every other way, as a result.

Moreton-Robinson and Kauanui also discuss the Howard government’s Northern Territory intervention in August of 2007, the importance of the “children overboard affair” in Howard’s 2001 election win, and the Rudd government’s apology to Australia’s Indigenous people for the “stolen generations” (the subject of the film Rabbit-Proof Fence) on February 13, 2008. I urge you to check it out; it’s a pretty great interview.

† For those who are interested in the Indigenous perspective on terra nullius and the arrival of European settlers, the book Follow the Rabit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington (a.k.a. Nugi Garimara) has a lot to say (not to be confused with the film which, though excellent, doesn’t really touch on this).

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For now, it may be best not to travel alone. If you must go outside, try to bring a fellow fanboy with you. If you still start to feel weak, download some new apps for your GodPhone. That should help. Also, spend some time looking at your photos of me. Best of all, come to San Francisco this Wednesday, or at least tune in to our event. We’ll have shiny new objects which will restore your sense of childlike wonder. I promise you will be dazzled and re-hypnotized. Until then, peace out.

Sublime fake bloggery.

Yesterday Diebold sold its e-voting division, known as Premier Election Systems, to ES&S, one of Premier’s competitors. The price was low: about $5 million.

ES&S is reportedly the largest e-voting company, and Premier was the second-largest, so the deal represents a substantial consolidation in the market. The odds of one major e-voting company breaking from the pack and embracing up-to-date security engineering are now even slimmer than before. Premier had seemed like the company most likely to change its ways.

Democracy FTW.

Liz Kelleher on Edward Kennedy:

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes Ted Kennedy was still a sh*tty guy. He was hell on his first wife, it took him years of drinking and womanizing to get straight, years that no ordinary working person would likely be loaned. He and the rest of his clan are T Wealthy, the born-rich, born-connected, two percent of Americans who have fifty percent of the power in this country, and worse, pass it on to their kids, at the expense of yours, and I don’t forget that just because he’s a Kennedy and a Democrat.

But from the point of view of Ted Kennedy the man, I can admire the moral courage of getting up in the morning, walking out the door, and getting on with it. Having room in his heart for the sorrows and struggles of total strangers at that. Ted Kennedy, role model for the f*ck up in us all.

I think I agree with this. He appeared to be a man driven by his demons, trying to make right without apologising for being who he was. Rest in peace, Senator.

Via Kevin.

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The possibility of such a transition, after more than a half-century of nearly unbroken rule by the Liberal Democrats, has gripped the nation’s attention. A poll released Monday by the national broadcaster NHK showed that 90 percent of voters intended to cast their ballot, far above the 68 percent turnout in the last lower house election four years ago. […]

The Democrats have been trying to seize the moment by tapping Japan’s simmering discontent. The party has tried to position itself as the choice for voters fed up with rising social inequalities, stagnating wages and other changes for which many blame economic globalization. It recently issued a manifesto pledging new spending of $177 billion a year. While economists have characterized the Democrats as slightly left of center, and the incumbents as slightly to the right, both parties are promising new social spending to win key blocs like farmers, who were alienated by the small-government reforms of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

According to Fackler, neither major party has much to say regarding Japan’s deepening economic and demographic problems:

“This could be financial Armageddon,” said Naoki Iizuka, a senior economist at Mizuho Securities in Tokyo. “Foreign investors could see Japanese government bonds as worthless paper.”

Mr. Iizuka says Japan has at most five more years to get its fiscal house in order before facing the prospect of serious capital flight.

Japan must do this while confronting one of the world’s worst demographic problems. The low birthrate means that there will be fewer working-age taxpayers to support a growing numbers of retirees. In 2005, there were 3 working people per pensioner; that ratio will drop to 1.8 per pensioner by 2040, according to the Health Ministry.

Fackler’s account paints a DPJ victory as a possible means of breaking the grip of Japan’s entrenched interest groups, especially the elite bureaucratic level of the country’s civil service.

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LydiaT: “three reasons I like Californication.” Here are a few more:

1. Hank’s hatred of blogging and the fact that he does it anyway.
2. Baldy.
3. The sexy smurf.
4. The old Porsche.
5. Smoking (don’t do it, kids).
6. The memories and reveries.
7. That punch.
8. The music.
9. A healthy attitude towards modern art.
10. The word “vajanus.”

Baker’s dozen. But Lyds is right: the main reason is Duchovny, who is simply perfect. He is, hands down, my favourite actor.

Handle your business; your inability to hang on is no excuse for knocking others over.

Read the full list.

You might enjoy “Wind Power is Not Intermittent,” and other cartoons, by Stuart McMillen. Be sure to check out the Orwell vs. Huxley one (do a lot of people read those two back to back?—that’s how I was introduced by a friend at uni), and also Matt’s comment on the wind power story. This is a lot of fun. I really dig the earnest style. It reminds me of Larry Gonnick. (Via Fake Steve.)

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If you want your own corps of zealots, first you need some truly great technology. Don’t skip this part.

Then you need a philosophy that people adopt as a cause.

Then you need to state your opinions boldly. Make them as simple and direct and uncompromising as possible. The impressions of deep intelligence, candor, and certitude are key.

Your goal is to turn off the skeptical and analytical gears and ignite the pack-following engines.

Classic. “The ambition of every pack follower is to be the beta dog,” he goes on to say. You could substitute “truly great technology” with “novel argument” and you’ve covered the same phenomenon across most of academe as well.

Jon Pareles on a recent performance by Younger Brother in New York (same guys, but not the same event, above):

As Younger Brother remakes itself into a band from a studio project, its music has become less futuristic and more conventionally structured. But the music has also grown more human, approachable, dynamic and unpredictable, and that’s a worthwhile trade-off.

Their next album is expected in 2010. I hate this “waiting” shit.

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Not that I really want to be under anybody’s microscope. But if anyone’s going to be analyzing my phone calls, payment transactions, emails and IMs, I’d rather it be researchers who will publish their findings, instead of secretive intelligence agencies. If our communications aren’t going to be private, let’s at least use these capabilities for clear, transparent public benefit.

Here’s an e-affirmative action proposal: For every intelligence agent that has access to mass surveillance data, one academic researcher should have access to the same information. And report on it.

At least then we’d know what the heck was going on.

Not ideal, but certainly pragmatic.

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