What does it mean to be Human (question posed on Wired.com):
NVDL: How we intuit the answer is what it means to you to be human. What does it mean to me. Wonderful and terrible possibilities. I agree that abstraction makes us different, but I prefer to see how human beings are part of Nature, rather than find ways to separate us from the world based on how 'special' we think we are. Our imagination may well be what saves us from our depraved thoughts and shallow beahviours.
In the end, the meaning of being human is found in each person and adds up to an aggregate score. As such we share responsibility for everthing that we do, including what is done by 'others'.
On The Media Reinforcing Negative Stereotypes.Stimulating Xenophobia:
Whether media are feeding stereotypes or whether actual events reinforce them is an interesting avenue for research. A self-fulfilling prophecy might be in operation: reportage on actual events gives rise to stereotypes, which are then reinforced by further coverage in the media. Whatever the case may be, media are in a better position than other centres of power in society to combat stereotypes (or enforce them), and therefore carry a grave responsibility. On this note it is rather ironic that Brazilians were never linked to crime, even when one major cocaine route runs between the airports of Sao Paulo and Johannesburg. Despite the fact that Brazil is one of South Africa's strongest economic and political BRIC partners, 63% of coverage on Brazilians as foreign nationals was directly linked to Carlos Parreira.
KunstlerCast:
Duncan Crary: Well, I want to talk to you about this. In The Long Emergency you go through a number of different alternative fuel sources, and you basically say they’re all fantasy. I know that people can drive a car across the country on used French fry oil, but as you said, you can’t power the American automobile fleet on this stuff.
James Howard Kunstler: Well, it’s a matter of scale. They don’t scale. They don’t scale up. Yeah, you can do all of these things on the science project basis, and you can do some of them even on a somewhat larger basis. But can you do it on the basis of powering the whole society on this? And the answer is, “No.”
We’re already beginning to see all kinds of unanticipated consequences from this ethanol program that we put in place about two years ago. And it’s reverberating in parts of the system, really quickly, that people never expected, that are leading down the path of hunger and famine because gas tanks and hungry bellies are now competing for the grain supply.
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