When Ivan Karamazov
is reciting his wracking disquisition
about the evils perpetrated
on children, opining whether
human salvation would be worth
a single child's suffering,
you know he's close to breaking
down, sobbing in shame
and remorse, and I wonder
if he'd imagined our whole planet,
the children with it,
wagered in a mad gamble
of world against wealth,
what would he have done?
--C.K. Williams, "Night"
For a start, he wouldn't buy Exxon, wouldn't buy Esso.
Brian today brought popcorns (hopefully not GEed) in the office. They had an unexpected success, maybe because we all skipped lunch or maybe because we just like munching while typing. We'll definitely repeat this experience, but next time we'll test the edgy and innovative popcorn fork.
Hopefully sacking employees for blogging will not become common practice.
We (the new media folks) at Greenpeace Int'l went to our annual "retreat" last week. I just want to give you a list of the highlights:
- Tom being in charge of organising a train trip leading to a location where we can practice rafting, free climbing and bunjee jumping. You know, all that team bonding stuff.
- Danielle considered, after some advise, buying a coffee-powered alarm clock.
- Bruno and Alex will dream for the next few weeks about the movie "The giant bugs attack".
- We need more veggie sandwiches (always).
- Jenever is the right tool for a productive meeting.
and, last but not the least,
- Skill-sharing works better if done between a Mongozo and a good meal eaten with your hands.
As part of the call Dow day I made a call. Again just confusion and lame excuses on why they are not cleaning up Bhopal.
Many others also ensured Dow got the message. A great way to ensure a company cannot ignore public opinion, and fun too!
Say "No!" to war laying down naked on the frozen grass. Activism, art and nudism put together.
Imagine living in a home made of natural and recycled materials, where renewable energy is your power source. Imagine also a home where the interiors are designed to be a bit hobbit-like and with a certain Gaudi' style. What you get is a Earth ship.
Sure there are some cons in having a off-the-grid house, but I can imagine myself laying down in my cozy living room staring outside through my Star Trek bridge-like windows.
Maybe some choices are too radical, but if I can reach some compromises (location and cable modem) then I want one.
Heroines of the day: Jean Tune and Gerry Coffey, 79 and 62 years old respectively, arrested for speaking out against GE food in a supermarket.
Interesting but weird article, about jumping frogs, Rosie the Ribiter, frog refuges, the Frogtown Major, and environmental impacts. Gribbit!
No sex for 10,000 years, poor fruit:
Time for a "More sex for bananas now!" campaign to ward off the threat of a GE fruitbowl?
I used to sail a lot when I was 15, but Sebastian did much more than that.
Simon St.Laurent wrote an update of his "Outsider's Guide to the W3C". Very interesting considering that a lot of web folks are actually working on W3C recommendations without knowing what that is.
Searching google news on Friday turned up this gem:
Above the Law! A new show starring Dow Chemical
morons.org - 03 Jan 2003
Between suing survivors of an incident they caused and suing an ISP for hosting a parody of their company, Dow Chemical is clearly run by bastards. ...
That is the kind of intro that makes me want to read further anyway...
Yeah! Almost weekend! Last week I worked hard on the upcoming elections in the Netherlands. We made some nice cartoons to display the positions of the different political parties. I think it looks quite funny! If you want you can have a look yourself!
If somebody has ideas of what you can do with cartoons, let me know! It's the first time I worked with it.
Enjoy your weekend!
cartoons
.... sorry, it's in Dutch
Did the orcs know about their rights under the Geneva convention? Why did the Riders of Rohan take no prisoners?
Outstanding piece from the Washington Post about layering Tolkien metaphors upon real world tensions and the looming war. Is today's Sauron Osama Bid Laden, with his Al-Quaeda Orcs at loose in the world? Or is the lidless eye of Mordor actually America, ever questing the ring of ultimate power in all corners of the Earth? If I were casting for this one, I'm afraid Bush just couldn't pull off a credible Dark Lord. He'd have to settle for Gollum. "Sssssssadddam, we hates it forever...."
Recently I have found it hard to follow the mainstream media as war frenzy builds up and analysis of the reasons why or acts carried out in the "war on terror" go unreported. However maybe there is still some balance out there. Check out this front page of a major UK tabloid yesterday.
I have seen versions of this image before but would never have expected it to make a major newspaper!
William Gibson has a new book coming out, and a blog to boot! I got his first book, Neuromancer, from a guy named Marco Kaltofen who used to be a Greenpeace campaigner in the Boston office in the early 80s. Marco was visiting the office in Lewes, in England, where I was working. He was raving about this new author. He hadn't finished the book, so he couldn't loan it to me, and it wasn't out in England yet, so I couldn't buy it, so Marco did the only sensible thing and ripped the paperback in half, leaving the me with 156 precious pages. It took me three months to find a complete copy, but by then I was totally taken in by this futuristic world that Gibson had created, where corporations ruled the world, brand names were saturated into daily life, computers spied on people and Boston to Atlanta was one continuous urban landscape. Because it wasn't a vision of the future -- it was simply a hyper-now.
Marco, by weird Sci-Fi coincidence, ended up befriending a young writer named Neal Stephenson, who eventually modelled his book "Zodiac" on Marco and his Greenpeace adventures -- pushed only slightly into the realm of fiction.
Ikea has grown so much that it can now be considered a multinational corporation (in the bad sense?), however this requires a lot of management resoponsibility. And concerns starts to come out.
Wonders of the new media world #597 - an empty instant messenger list
Yep, that must mean that friends/collegues across the globe are sensibly taking some time off before coming back to work on Monday. Even the workaholics who leave the office and get online at home are no where to be seen?
Must be time to leave a cold empty office and enjoy the wekend. Rumours abound of the first winter snow in Amsterdam in the next few days, fingers crossed....
Not to be outdone by the meanness of Nestle, Dow has decided to attack any protests that reveal darker side of the company. Not content with initiating the shutdown of website hosting for lots of groups they are now suing Bhopal survivors - the very people they should be helping. But cracking down on protest, rather than dealing with the real problem only makes a corporation look more stupid. The story can now be seen on adbusters, wired and slashdot.
Will they ever learn that PR and spin cannot hide the skeletons in the closet? Thankfully most of the public can see the real wood through the forests of PR.
Here it is: 2003. For many not a big deal, for others another opportunity to get drunk or blow their fingers off with fireworks. Myself, I still don't know what to think, I'm father for the second time and I'm still in the post-partum mood. Not that I've done much, you actually feel quite powerless in these situations and we, men, will NEVER understand what's really happening to women in those moments/minutes/hours (for some, days). What I do feel, though, is happiness and a sense of relief, there are so many things that can go wrong during a pregnancy that your mind cannot ever really rest.
But now it's over, welcome Noa.