zakdegrassi

New DNA data solves Darwin mystery.

How can something the size of a Labrador retriever end up on an island in sufficient numbers that a new population emerges and evolves into a new species?

What is capitalism?

Someone credible says there's something very wrong with our economic system. And it's not what a lot in the #tcot crowd want to hear.

Listen here and click "What is capitalism?".

The Lemon Tree.

About 20 years ago I read a book called "From Beirut to Jerusalem" by Thomas Friedman. It was the best book I've ever read on the Arab-Israeli conflict -- until this weekend. Sitting in the airport going and returning home from the black hole that is Laguardia Airport, I read a book called "The Lemon Tree" by Sandy Tolan. To Americans who have the attention span of a gnat, I say: read this book. To Jews who should already understand the hardships of Palestinians but don't, I say: read this book. And to Arabs who think they're the only ones legitimately bound to their land, I say: read this book.

To those on either side of the conflict who feel like their hearts have been hardened to the plight of their enemy, read it. If you really feel the same way afterwards, then you are indeed a special kind of lost cause. There are no easy answers in this book. In fact, there are no answers at all, simply a razor-sharp insight into the minds and hearts of people we have learned to hate but who we ought to understand, because they're really us, looking back in a mirror. --z

An epidemic of fear.

"Looking back over human history, rationality has been the anomaly. Being rational takes work, education, and a sober determination to avoid making hasty inferences, even when they appear to make perfect sense. Much like infectious diseases themselves — beaten back by decades of effort to vaccinate the populace — the irrational lingers just below the surface, waiting for us to let down our guard."

From a disturbing article in Wired about the anti-vaccine movement and the harm it's doing us all.

One thing worse than airlines.

I'm in a long-distance relationship. And over the last two and a half years, I've had to endure countless flight delays. Rain or snow or shine, it never matters. Whatever the airline, it never matters. If I'm flying into La Guardia or Newark, there's a delay. Sometimes half an hour, often enough, two or three. And I've discovered that airlines are one of the few industries where it really doesn't matter how bad the service is. You are completely held hostage to whatever excuse they give you. There is zero attempt to make it up to the customer because, in the end, there is zero accountability. In the rest of the commercial world, if I buy a widget and the widget doesn't work or breaks down, I go to the store and get a new widget, or they fix the one I have. When the plane breaks down or the flight is delayed, I simply have to wait an indefinite amount of time to get where I've been promised they would take me -- after all, isn't that what airlines are supposed to do? But no, for these big monsters, you just a get a smile: have a nice and fuck you.

So, all this time, I thought airlines were the worst. But I was wrong.

This week I discovered wireless carriers are the worst. Specifically wireless carriers like Rogers that exclusively offer the iPhone. Let me explain.

Last week, my gym locker was broken into. My wallet, my watch, my keys, my pants, my iPhone: all gone. The credit card companies were sweet enough to get me new cards in record time: 3 days. So nice of them. But it goes to show that when it's in a company's interest to be of assistance, they are. There's really no incentive for Rogers to get me a new iPhone because I've already signed a 3-year contract with them. They know full well I (a) can't break the contract, and (b) can't get an iPhone somewhere else and go to another wireless carrier, because they have exclusivity in Canada -- well there's "competitor" Fido, owned by Rogers.

Which explains the dickishness I've had to endure for the last week. The day after my phone was stolen, I called Rogers and was told the best they could do was order me a new one because they're out of stock. How long to wait? Seven to 21 business days. No guarantees.

Next question: so could I get a loaner phone in the meantime -- any piece of shit will do -- until they figure out the laws of supply and demand? Nope. That's "not their policy."

So what am I supposed to do for 21 days (or maybe more)? Their dickish answer: Buy a phone. I explain to them that I'm all for that, BUT THEY DON'T HAVE THE PHONE THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO SELL ME.

They don't care. Nothing they can do. I am without a wireless phone for the foreseeable future. The next day something dawns on me and I call Rogers back. Er, so during this iPhone purgatory, you won't be charging me my $120 in monthly wireless charges, correct? Answer: Yes, we will charge you. That's our policy. (Notice how they happen to have a policy for this!)

In the end, I've managed to borrow a hunk of shit Blackberry until Rogers sends me my new iPhone. But the bottom line is once again, accountability. I know Rogers isn't responsible for stealing my phone (-- or at least I hope not). But why not be decent about it? I spend $4,000 on various Rogers services every year. Wouldn't it be in their interest to throw me a bone? Apparently not because they are big and I am small. They have me my the balls and they know it. I'm a "valued customer" when they want something from me. But when I ask for something from them, I'm their bitch.

I know eventually I'll get my phone. What I won't get back is any respect for Rogers. Like loveless marriage I'll stick with them as long as I'm forced to. And the moment I can ditch them, they'll lose me forever -- at least until they call me back to tell me how important I am to their business.

Welcome to the real world of the "free market." Airlines move over. There's one level lower in capitalist hell.

This much I know.

Came across some lovely observations to live by, by British philosopher AC Grayling. Here are a few of my favorites:

A human lifespan is less than a thousand months long. You need to make some time to think how to live it.

The democracy of blogging and tweeting is absolutely terrific in one way. It is also the most effective producer of rubbish and insult and falsehood we have yet invented.

I am putting together a secular bible. My Genesis is when the apple falls on Newton's head.

I would imagine Jesus was a kind of Jewish reformer. If you were looking for an equivalent to the figure you dimly perceive through the gospels it would probably be a Richard Dawkins.

I'm a vegetarian, but I wear leather shoes. Some people say that's a contradiction; I say I'm doing my best.

I'm passionately in favour of legalising heroin and cocaine. But I despise people who depend on these things. If you really want a mind-altering experience, look at a tree.

Science is the outcome of being prepared to live without certainty and therefore a mark of maturity. It embraces doubt and loose ends.

I'm not sure it is possible to think too much. You don't refresh your mind by partying in Ibiza.

More here.

The great American bubble machine.

Click below for tidbits from an illuminating exposé from Rolling Stone magazine's Matt Taibbi on just how rancid the financial industry is in the US. I can't help thinking that if we thought we were screwed after the bottom fell out of the market, we ain't seen nothing yet. We're about to get gang-banged and there's probably not much we can do about it. Iran has the mullahs. The West has Goldman Sachs.

The Great American Bubble Machine

The plane crash.

None of us can really say we didn't see it coming. When Michael Jackson died last week,  I didn't feel shock in the least. After all, this wasn't just a train wreck -- one can jump from a train, this was a plane crash -- we heard the engines conking out long ago, we all saw the fuselage hurtling faster and faster to the ground below, probably even Michael did, but there wasn't a thing any of us could do about it. And there certainly wasn't anything he could do. After all, he was and has always been trapped inside himself.

My emotions, rather, centered in the areas of sadness and relief. Sadness that someone so talented, who has given the world so much culture- and generation-transcending music, was gone forever. And relief that this tormented soul, whose life was destroyed first by his abusive and demented parents, then by the cockroaches who circled around him all his life, was finally free of all of them. At last.

I don't want to deify Michael. He wasn't perfect: he was probably a child-molester, certainly a drug abuser and clearly addicted to needless plastic surgery, which disfigured a once adorably handsome young man. And he was almost certainly gay, even if his own demons never allowed him to be who he really was. Regardless of any of this, no one doubts his musical legacy is secure. When the memories of his eccentricities and failings are long forgotten, we'll still be humming his music and (no doubt unsuccessfully) attempting his moon walk.

If I believed in a god, I'd say he's in a better place. I don't, and he's not. But the torture is over. And the vultures who circled him for 40 years will soon disperse in search of someone else to torment. Michael Jackson has left the building.