exciting for some, but in this humble writer’s opinion, scary as hell.

Machines will achieve human-level artificial intelligence by 2029, a leading US inventor has predicted.

Humanity is on the brink of advances that will see tiny robots implanted in people’s brains to make them more intelligent, said Ray Kurzweil.

The engineer believes machines and humans will eventually merge through devices implanted in the body to boost intelligence and health.

“It’s really part of our civilisation,” Mr Kurzweil explained.

I got this from Auckland’s Burning, who is taking a break from blogging right now.

I remember the first time I heard about this. It sounded straight out of a science fiction novel. I can see it now. By the end of the book, the existence of human clones eliminates natural conception altogether and, ultimately, touching of any kind is made illegal.

But seriously, there has to be a logical explanation here; one that explains exactly how this could have happened. I mean a survey in 2005 by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that two-thirds of US consumers were “uncomfortable” with animal cloning; nearly half believed food from clones would be unsafe to eat.

(I’m a bit more than “uncomfortable” about it myself…)

“The FDA based their decision on an incomplete and flawed review that relies on studies supplied by cloning companies that want to force cloning technology on American consumers.”

Oh right, of course. Still, more questions persist. I mean, who are these cows, these pigs? Who are their parents? How will we view their lives? What are we to make of the notion that we have “cloned” life into this world, not actually to give it a life, but to exploit and kill it?

”Well as far as I know, there’s no difference between a cloned cow and a bred cow,” Regan said.

If you read between the lines of this ABC article, you would infer that this guy, farmer Frank Regan, was so inspired by the checks he received for his “four-time Iowa fair winner and top-quality milk producer,” that he immediately gave a bunch of money to a cloning company and PRESTO! Now he has three cows! Of course farmer Frank doesn’t see any difference between a cloned cow and a bred cow…they were never really cows to him in the first place.

Here are the major real-world problems with cloning animals for human consumption, as preached from under the concrete. Yes, malnutrition and poverty is a growing problem. But it’s not because of a lack of food. The problem lies in the way we use and distribute available food.

Most of the world’s food is already grown to feed livestock, the very livestock they’re cloning more of. Most of the water available goes to water fields of food for livestock.

Further, basic real-world economics tells us that when there is an abundance of food present, the population will continue to grow. The human population exploded with the advent of the agricultural revolution, which was the first time we were able to produce and store more food than we needed. The word “revolution” makes it all sound like it was some kind of event though. It’s as if it already happened. But we are still in the midst of the agricultural revolution. And soon we will see the end of it.

As the human population continues to grow, more and more farmland will be needed to feed all these animals for all these people (and to power their vehicles). If the whole world ate prime rib the way we do, there would be nothing left.

This is just another symptom of our culture’s death urge.

I didn’t mean for this post to come off like the film, Rosemary’s Baby or anything. You know, oddly upbeat and innocent in the beginning, then eerie and ponderous at the end? I mean, the film just left you hanging in that weirdness. We don’t get to see Rosemary’s Teenager do we? Wouldn’t it shatter someone to raise Satan’s baby, especially someone like Rosemary?!?

Maybe it would be a lot like a mother cow trying to raise a cloned replica of the cow in the cage next to her. Maybe not. I’m not a cow.

I wanted to cite another section from that Kirkpatrick article I quoted last week, and apply it to some news I read today from the Environmental News Network. The quote is a critique of technology. 

In composing/researching this thesis, I learned more about myself as a writer and thinker than through any other project I’ve ever undertaken. For those that don’t know, I wanted to figure out a way to discuss rhetoric, masculinities, and the environment within one central theme: I chose pickup truck advertising. There are still a lot of problems with it, I think. Though I’m going to work this semester to glean material from all of this to produce two solid scholarly journal articles: masculinities will be the focus of one, and environment (greenwashing, sustainability…etc.) will be the focus of the other.

With this project, I was able (hopefully) to illuminate the ways in which feminist and environmental activism are constrained and affected by the same power structures, the same issues of entitlement, control, and dominance. This year, I’m hoping to put some of this into action, forming coalitions between my work with The MARS Project (men against rape and sexism) with local environmental groups. If, for some reason, there is anyone who wants to read the whole thing (like 95 pages), I’d be happy to send it through email as long as all the copyright stuff is respected.

The entire thesis is called: Power Under the Hood: Pickup Truck Advertising, Hyper-Masculinities, and Denial in the Age of Ecological Apocalypse

Members of American culture would be hard pressed to imagine an advertisement for a pickup truck that didn’t display a rugged individual behind the wheel, navigating his new mud-splattered F-150 through towering canyons, his truck clawing its way over jagged boulders and rapid streams—spitting up water and gravel along the way—only for it to rest at an impossibly jagged cliff among the desolate, pristine wilderness that lays before him. The other dominant image depicted in these advertisements, of course, is a construction site. In this advertisement the viewer catches up with the same rugged individual as he finishes loading his new Silverado with 2 x 4’s; he hops into the cab, leaving the construction site in a cloud of dust, just in time for a catchy, masculine slogan to run across the screen such as “built Ford tough,” “size matters,” “like a rock,” or “high performance starts here.”

In this world, pickup trucks—and the men in them—are invincible. They are in the driver’s seat, paving their own destinies. They are in control, they are steadfast, they are confident. Such a man is just as much a part of the truck as the truck is a part of him. There is nothing a man and his truck cannot conquer in the world created by pickup truck advertising. It is a world not affected by the environmental impacts of combustion engines, or the destructive wake of heavy off-road tires. It is a world where men are fueled by aggression and sustained by power, control, and dominance over alternative masculinities, women, and the natural world.

Analyzing the rhetoric of pickup truck advertising reveals intersections between rhetoric, masculinity, and the way our relationship to the natural world is constructed. An analysis such as this is crucial in that it allows us to rediscover what it means to be authentic, autonomous, and fully human members of a culture outside of generic and confining gender roles. Once we sift through the negative effects of the cultural norms, deep-seated within the rhetoric of advertising, we can begin to uncover what it means to be fully human and, thus, interact with one another and the natural world in a way that is truly meaningful and reciprocal. In order for this to happen, a careful examination surrounding the discourse on sustainability and so-called “green” automobiles must be interrogated as well. If our culture is, indeed, in the process of a transformation to a sane and sustainable way of life, the disconnection between ideology and action must be united. The world illustrated in the rhetoric of pickup truck advertising gives members of American culture false and harmful representations of masculinity. By portraying the dominant masculine ideology as virtuous in the rhetoric of pickup truck advertising, a myth is further propagated that, through the implementation of domineering technology, man can transcend the needs of the natural world. In the narcissistic world of pickup truck advertising, violence, aggression, control, and domination are portrayed as innate, as natural and predictable as the setting sun.

Meanwhile, in the real world, nearly one-third of American woman will “report being physically or sexually abused by a husband or boyfriend at some point during their lives” (Katz 21). Approximately one in four or one in five women will experience an attempted or completed rape in college (Katz 21). Over 99% of the perpetrators of rape are men (Katz 5). But men don’t just attack women; “Between 50 and 70 percent of men who abuse their female partners also abuse their children” (Katz 21). The dominance of patriarchy—and particularly a masculinist ideology— also fuels a strong sense of homophobia in our culture. In 2005, 13.8% of all reported hate crimes were motivated because of sexual orientation (FBI). Of the 1,213 victims targeted because of sexual orientation bias, 61.3 percent of the victims were homosexual men (FBI stats). Though the FBI doesn’t list statistics on how many of these crimes were perpetrated by men, “the Bureau of Justice Statistics say that over 85% of violent crimes in the U.S. are committed by men” (Katz 79).

We also live in a world where roughly three percent of old growth forests remain intact in the United States (San Francisco Chronicle). An average of 150 species of animals go extinct every single day (BBC News). According to the U.S. Geological Survey, there are carcinogens in every single stream in the United States (U.S.G.S.). Ninety percent of all the large fish in the sea are gone (National Geographic News). It is predicted that by 2030, a quarter of all the earth’s mammals will be gone, forever (Podger). There are, of course, many systematic and institutional reasons for these striking figures, but most of them can be summed up as due to increasing loss of habitat. This is particularly true if, in the definition of habitat, we include drinkable water, breathable air, and sustainable food sources. Much like the trucks described above, as our culture has extended its colonization of wild habitats, it has destroyed, in whole or in part, everything in its path.

In short, our culture is very violent. Statistics support the notion that this violence can, in part, be attributed to the dominant masculine ideology, which functions as a cycle from which narrow, and, indeed, harmful interpretations of what it means to be a man are encouraged throughout development, reproduced in the media—particularly through advertising—and ultimately rewarded in the capitalist society at large. Like a fish unaware of its own liquid environment, it is important to recognize the difficulty inherent in questioning the impact of one’s surroundings and how these surroundings influence behavior, world-views, and motivations. This project is particularly concerned with the role that advertising in the mainstream media plays in the construction of world views. Long after the marriage between production and promotion, products have been linked symbolically to the “world of social values,” whereby accepting the “selling message is to accept the values it presupposes” (Wernick 23). By looking critically at today’s advertising, we can begin to understand what is being “sold” or “promoted” beyond the product itself.

So why, one may ask, have I chosen pickup trucks and not, say, SUVs? I am deliberately omitting SUVs, insofar as I can, from my analysis and, instead, focusing specifically on pickup trucks for two main reasons. First, though many women do drive pickup trucks, advertising, by and large, is generally geared towards men. In fact, a Chevrolet marketing campaign from 2005 called, “Long Live the Truck,” was according to the marketing director, “aimed at men, who make up 87 percent of the full-sized pickup’s buyers” (Geist 1). Rob Schwartz, creative director for Nissan, specifically identified the full-sized truck market as a “male-dominated category” (Halliday 2). Further, SUVs are a relatively recent phenomenon while pickup trucks represent a long tradition of masculinity and men’s roles in American culture.

Before such a formal analysis of these commercials as cultural texts can take place, however, it is important to get a sense of the way advertising works and how the focus of advertising has shifted from logically-based appeals to those that attempt to exploit our deepest emotions. Further, it is crucial to understand how these appeals to emotion specifically reinforce, and thus promote, traditional gendered stereotypes and worldviews characterized by false and limiting dichotomies. This will lead into a demonstration of the way in which this mindset negatively affects men’s relationships with women and alternative masculinities. In addition, I shall examine how the consequences of this hegemonic gendered identity alongside the rhetoric of pickup truck advertisements converge in a manner that justifies the on-going destruction of the environment.

High fives to Sale Kirkpatrick for writing this fantastic essay. It’s few years old, but pretty on point with my thoughts on the Live Earth fiasco (here and here. I found it when I was researching my thesis and meant to post it. Here is a great excerpt.

The whole individualist what-you-can-do-to-save-the-earth guilt trip is a myth. We, as individuals, are not creating the crises, and we can’t solve them. Take our crazy energy consumption. For the past 15 years the story has been the same every year: individual consumption – residential, by private car, and so on – is never more than about a quarter of all consumption; the vast majority is commercial, industrial, corporate, by agribusiness and government. So, even if we all took up cycling and wood stoves it would have a negligible impact on energy use, global warming and atmospheric pollution. I mean, sure, go ahead and live a responsible environmental life; recycle, compost, ride a push-bike; but do it because it is the right, moral thing to do – not because it’s going to save the planet.

If we really want to understand why this happened we have to ask ourselves another question: ‘Why is it that we seem willing to live with the threat of apocalypse rather than trying to seriously alter a world where consumption, of anything, is seen as unrelieved virtue, production, of anything, is regarded as a social and economic necessity, and more, of anything (like children or cars or chemicals or PhDs or golf courses or recycling centres), is unquestioningly accepted?’

The Ecologist is rad.

From Derrick Jensen’s new anti-zoo book.

I am fully aware that even a young bear can kill me. I am also fully aware that humans have lived comfortably side by side with bears and other wild animals for tens of thousands of years. Nature is not scary. It is not a den of fright and horrors. For almost all of human existence, it has been home, and the wild animals have been our neighbors.

Right now worldwide, more than five hundred thousand people die each year in road accidents. Two-thirds of these deaths involve pedestrians, of whom one-third are children. Just in the United States about forty six thousand people die per year because of auto collision. About thirty thousand Americans die each year from respiratory illness stemming from auto-related airborne toxins. Yet I am not afraid of cars. Perhaps I should be. One hundred thousand Americans die every year from toxins and other workplace hazards. Around the world, two million people per year are killed through direct violence by other people. Almost five million people die each year from smoking. And how many people do bears kill? About one every other year in all of North America.

We are afraid of the wrong things.

The way to meet this challenge of energy and global climate change is through technology–George W. Bush

right….technology, once again, the cause of and solution for all our environmental problems.

US President george W Bush has seized the initiative on climate change in a move that pleased some fellow world leaders but infuriated his environmental critics.

In a striking change of tone, he says he wants America to be part of a global climate deal when the first period of the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012.

Meanwhile the G8 Summit is taking place in Germany next week, which makes this “skepticism” all the more relevant:

“This is a transparent effort to divert attention from the president’s refusal to accept any emissions reductions proposals at next week’s G8 summit,” said Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust in America.

“After sitting out talks on global warming for years, the Bush administration doesn’t have very much credibility with other governments on the issue,” Mr Clapp added.

I’m interviewing Derrick Jensen over the phone for the April issue of The Noise. I was trying to figure out how I can record our conversation so I don’t misquote him. Chuck’s letting me borrow a cord that I can hook up to my minidisc player that has a phone jack on the other end. All I would have had to do is buy a splitter for the piece that goes into the wall.

The bass player from an old roommate’s band broke the attachable remote control for the MD player years ago and it doesn’t seem like I am able to erase discs without it. Also, I can’t find blank Minidiscs anywhere in Flagstaff…..I just grabbed some off ebay. Did they stop making these?

I have to say, MD Players/recorders are probably the most underrated piece of audio technology out there. Andy and I used to record music with them. I went back and listened to some to see how much time was left on the discs. Not enough on any of them. I taped over some good stuff when I went to Europe and I regret that; what did hear, though, was mostly terrible. We used to stay up until four playing songs with titles like “the country song,” “the spooky song,” and probably the greatest song ever written,“4:34.”

I’m starting to think of how technology becomes part of our lives. The MD Player holds a great deal of aesthetic appeal to me because of the way in which I used it. But my good memories are of making music with a close friend, so that’s where the emphasis is, not on the technology. The MD Player is, more adequately a symbol that has tokenized my experience (that’s my tribute to you, Jeany B!). Maybe this is all too deep right now. I just came back from my Grandfather’s funeral and I think death makes people feel kinda strange for a while.

My roommate suggested that I look into recording it through a free internet site. I wouldn’t even need a phone if both parties have microphones on their computers. I have this thing though about third parties that I don’t know. I think that is the way technology is moving though. I think before we know it, there will be a technological business that acts as the mediator between nearly everything we do. I guess, to an extent, that’s already the case now. I mean, I certainly didn’t make the clothes I’m wearing (if I’m wearing any at all! Oops, did it just get creepier in here?), but it’s getting weirder than that:

A new study shows that 20 percent of human genes have been patented in the United States, primarily by private firms and universities.

Yikes!

On a side note: I broke down and ordered that part I needed for the MD player. This is the first time I saw this disclaimer though, written in “ATTENTION-red”:

IMPORTANT NOTICE TO CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS - California requires a Recycling Fee to be added to all orders for products or parts that include LCD screens and/or picture tubes larger than 4 inches. The fee varies based on the size of the part. This fee will be automatically added when your order is invoiced. The order total above does not include the Recycling Fee. The amount of the recycling fee will be noted on your confirmation email and packing list. It will be included in the tax amount noted on your order.

What can I say, they’re changin’ the world out there in California.