Group items tagged

"The Story of Catherine's iPod"

The disconnect here is so weird. It begins with people digging in the mountainside with sticks, and ends with a tiny, sleek, lightweight computer that makes images flick past at the swipe of your finger and makes music. It's like magic, except instead of the instead of using "toe of newt and eye of frog" the world is making these products by allowing people to be greatly mistreated. Beyond educating people, as Arshia and Alison said, it seems we must either: find other materials to make electronics out of (although that doesn't strike me as very likely?) or pressure companies (who have the money and the leverage) to enforce better regulation. To follow up on Catherine's video, I put three t's into google and got an article about an investigation into the mining in the Congo (maybe Catherine has already seen this): http://africarising2010.blogspot.com/2009/11/tracing-3-ts-from-congo.html. It says: "Even though they found that it is relatively easy to determine the source of minerals based on different coloration and texture based on the source mine, there is insufficient regulation to make this work....Export companies are required to register with the government, but their method of determining the source of minerals they buy is to merely ask the seller whether their goods are from conflict mines. There is no system of confirming what the seller says."

This presentation kept shocking me. I was surprised to hear that basic parts of the iPod (the Three Ts) originate in the Congo rather than China. I was then shocked (and horrified) by the rape statistics. I had heard the statistics before, but not in relation to the acquisition of the Three Ts and production of products that we use. The story about the woman whose brother was ordered to rape her and then stabbed to death when he refused was particularly awful. I was also In summary, I was appalled at all the crimes that took place in the Congo- before the Three Ts even got to the factories in China that Catherine talked about. When Catherine started talking about the factories in China, I was again shocked at the working conditions- 100 workers sleeping to a room and clothes locked in a bucket with no visitors allowed (to protect the secrecy of Apple's product plans) while workers worked 15 hour days. The suicide reports from the FoxCon (spelling) factories were also shocking, as was the revelation that workers make just half of what they did in the 1800s. It was sad that the factory earns only $4 per iPod sold- while Apple earns $80. This presentation was very thought provoking- I had never assumed that Apple would be one of the "bad" companies with very questionable labor and humanitarian practices (a la Wal-Mart). Thanks for bringing it up, Catherine. I'm now thinking about it in a whole new light.

Swiss aristocrat founds boarding school for child brides in North Indian villages so that they may finish their high school education before being sent to their husbands.

What if you could replace the petroleum molecules that we use in fuel, foods and so many other products with a biotechnology substitute made from algae? Harrison Dillon, co-founder of Solazyme, gives the talk of his life, one day before his company delivered 150,000 gallons of algae-derived Soladiesel® fuel to the U.S. Navy.

This article is pretty interesting, it describes how recently some rebel forces in Syria were ambushed by Assad's army. It also puts into perspective just about how many people have been killed through this whole civil war, which I had not known before.

March 19 marks the 10th anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq. But the U.S. conflict with Iraq began long before that. Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, and American forces were fighting Iraqis continuously for the 13 years that followed in order to enforce UN-mandated no-fly zones, punish Saddam Hussein for attempting to assassinate former President George H. This timeline lays out (literally) all of the United States' involvement in Iraq. Again, it's very important to have a thorough understanding of the history of a country before analyzing the present as you can see patterns and determine motivations based on past occurrences and trends.

"SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. - Heavily armed attackers terrorized this city on Wednesday, killing at least 14 people and wounding at least 17 at a social services center before leading the police on a manhunt culminating in a shootout that left two suspects dead and a possible third in custody."

Before the British colonial government set up hospitals for native Nigerians, Catholic Missions not only set up hospitals but were responsible for the training and education of nurses while many doctors were educated in Europe. The British government set up hospitals but initially these hospitals were only for Europeans, It was not until after WWII that the British government tried to expand medical and hospital access to native Nigerians and medical education. After Nigerian independence a federal republic was set up and ownership of health facilities is distributed between the federal government, the states, and local governments. States hold the largest share of hospital beds at 43% and the federal and local governments at 13% and 11% respectively.

This article reviews an ad run in Australia advocating a no vote on the marriage equality postal survey. I think it is interesting because I've never seen an ad like this before. Perhaps this is because I live in a liberal environment, but I was still interested to see such an ad and also their take on the issue.

This article from the BBC talks about how many Democrats are calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump just days before he is officially out of office. Trump has not been able to make any public statements yet because he has been suspended from Twitter and many other platforms.

It will be interesting to see if house democrats wait until after Biden's first 100 days to impeach Trump or will they be voting on it before the inauguration. Nonetheless, I don't believe the Senate will vote until after it.

List of top false info stories circulating before election

"Well, we live, today, in a country, the United States, that is more politically polarized than it's been in either of our lifetimes, ever. And that just seems to be getting worse by the day." What Hayhoe and others are pointing to is another way of communicating about climate change.

"A new investigation shows the oil company understood the science before it became a public issue and spent millions to promote misinformation"

While Ukraine has been able to use social media to their advantage by spreading information, increasing awareness of the problems they face, and pressuring companies and governments to aid them, Russia has been fighting back with national and international and propaganda campaigns. This struggle has caused a different kind of war to rage on between them, a cyber-war.

Because of how strict much of Russia's information laws and restrictions have been even before the war, getting accurate information about the conflict from inside Russia is nearly impossible. Along with that, it is extremely easy for misinformation to spread across social media and news outlets.

Interesting observations, Subby, Juliana, Slava and Matteo. Add to this the fact that under Vladimir Putin's iron hand, censorship within Russia is intense. Opposition to Putin's government has been effectively silenced within Russia, and is being replaced by shows of strength and prosperity. Good article about this in Monday's NYT here: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/06/world/europe/moscow-war-ukraine-mood.html

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are tying to do whatever they can to avert the attention from Ryan losing the Vice Presidential debate. The main area of contention is whether or not the US Embassy in Benghazi asked the American government for extra security before the attacks on September 11th that killed 4 Americans. Biden claims that he and the president were not asked to enhance security measures, while sworn testimony from the staff of the embassy said that they asked for more protection. In my opinion, there is a lot of ad-libbing in the debates, therefore to put a candidates word choice under so much scrutiny is pointless. Mitt Romney's camp seems to be jumping on biden's every word to make up for the insufficiencies in his own platform.

Its unfortunate that the campaign race has become something of a food fight of gossip and rumors. It has gotten to the point where no one can tell who is telling the truth or not. Romney seems determined to portray the President as incompetent especially his comparison between Joe Bidden and Paul Ryan.

Although I agree with both Matt and Rory, I would like to point out that the criticism of the campaign is very much focused on the Republican party. I think it's important to note that perhaps Biden did, in fact, distort the truth in the debate; saying that he didn't know about something if he did is not a simple slip of the tongue. factcheck.org put Ryan's falsehoods at 6 and Biden's at 3. Although it is clear who lied more, this is a disgusting statistic: the candidates lied NINE TIMES during their debate. Although there is a lot of information they have to cover, I think that one must hold Biden as responsible for his lies as one does Ryan.

Further development in the relationship between the US and Russia in Syria. John Kerry will meet with Russia's Sergey Lavrov in Lausanne, Switzerland on Saturday along with foreign ministers from a few other countries that support the rebels and possibly Iran (which supports Assad). PS: This article is way more interesting than my first one so I recommend this one more unless you're in the mood to question humanity and be sad.

I read this article and Aleisha's article about the Syrian civil war, and I was surprised at how complicated the conflict is. I also was not aware of the growing tension between the United States and Russia, so it was interesting reading about the power dynamic happening again. The CNN article, published just one day before the NYT article, portrays US involvement very differently, so I'm interested to see how that develops.

The World Bank is raising its 2017 forecast for crude oil prices to $55 per barrel from $53 per barrel as members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) prepare to limit production after a long period of unrestrained output. This isn't that significant or interesting in itself, but I'm curious about what it means for a lot of foreign policy, particularly for the US in the middle east.

Three years ago, oil was selling at $100+/BBL. I wonder when the price will rise again--I bet before 2020. That changes everything.