Friday, June 15, 2007

Memetix Report on the State of America

OK, it's time for me to switch gears and present links to a dozen representative articles that reveal the mimetic state of the United States, as of June 2007.

On reality cognition: First, what everybody already knows about SUVs ... it's all about vanity, and the illusion of safety without any of the reality:
In the history of the automotive industry, few things have been quite as unexpected as the rise of the S.U.V. Detroit is a town of engineers, and engineers like to believe that there is some connection between the success of a vehicle and its technical merits. But the S.U.V. boom was like Apple's bringing back the Macintosh, dressing it up in colorful plastic, and suddenly creating a new market. It made no sense to them. Consumers said they liked four-wheel drive. But the overwhelming majority of consumers don't need four-wheel drive. S.U.V. buyers said they liked the elevated driving position. But when, in focus groups, industry marketers probed further, they heard things that left them rolling their eyes. As Keith Bradsher writes in "High and Mighty"—perhaps the most important book about Detroit since Ralph Nader's "Unsafe at Any Speed"—what consumers said was "If the vehicle is up high, it's easier to see if something is hiding underneath or lurking behind it. " Bradsher brilliantly captures the mixture of bafflement and contempt that many auto executives feel toward the customers who buy their S.U.V.s. Fred J. Schaafsma, a top engineer for General Motors, says, "Sport-utility owners tend to be more like 'I wonder how people view me,' and are more willing to trade off flexibility or functionality to get that. " According to Bradsher, internal industry market research concluded that S.U.V.s tend to be bought by people who are insecure, vain, self-centered, and self-absorbed, who are frequently nervous about their marriages, and who lack confidence in their driving skills. Ford's S.U.V. designers took their cues from seeing "fashionably dressed women wearing hiking boots or even work boots while walking through expensive malls. " Toyota's top marketing executive in the United States, Bradsher writes, loves to tell the story of how at a focus group in Los Angeles "an elegant woman in the group said that she needed her full-sized Lexus LX 470 to drive up over the curb and onto lawns to park at large parties in Beverly Hills. " One of Ford's senior marketing executives was even blunter: "The only time those S.U.V.s are going to be off-road is when they miss the driveway at 3 a. m."
Speaking of the illusion of safety: when the EPA discovered asbestos in their Little League fields, the residents of idyllic El Dorado Hills rushed to protect themselves—from reality:
The civic leaders of El Dorado Hills had spent many months trying to stave off [asbestos] tests, scrambling to protect the community not from potentially toxic substances, but from the EPA's potentially toxic information. Taking the lead was Vicki Barber, the superintendent of schools. A stout woman with compressed lips and an unwavering gaze, she recently won an award for being "a person who does not accept the word 'no'...when it comes to what is good for students." After asbestos was found during the construction of a high school soccer field in 2002, Barber questioned a costly epa-mandated cleanup. When a citizen formally asked the epa to test the town's public areas for asbestos in 2003, Barber quickly emerged as the agency's most determined local foe. Before the study was even under way, she began writing to the epa as well as to senators and congressmen, questioning whether the agency had the "legal and scientific authority" to conduct what she called a "science experiment" with "limited benefit to the residents." At least four state legislators and one congressman responded by putting pressure on the epa, which in turn agreed not to declare El Dorado Hills a Superfund site, regardless of what it might find there.
And while we're on the subject of environmental disconnects: Massacres and paramilitary land seizures are behind the "Biofuel Revolution":
Armed groups in Colombia are driving peasants off their land to make way for plantations of palm oil, a biofuel that is being promoted as an environmentally friendly source of energy.
Oh shoot, while we're here, we might as well deal with the externalization of environmental costs to developing nations:
It was once a gently flowing river, where fishermen cast their nets, sea birds came to feed and natural beauty left visitors spellbound. Villagers collected water for their simple homes and rice paddies thrived on its irrigation channels. Today, the Citarum is a river in crisis, choked by the domestic waste of nine million people and thick with the cast-off from hundreds of factories.
See the picture above. That's a river, not solid ground! A related article: Polymers Are Forever. Don't even get me started on China and Walmart.

On the illusion of anonymity: Kevin Flaherty reports on the ugly truth about online anonymity:
So, you want to be anonymous in a world that was thought up by the U.S. Department of Defense? Most computer users don’t have what it takes, in terms of technical skills, or discipline, to pull it off. I’m sorry if that sounds harsh, but it’s absolutely true.

...

As you might already know, I studied information warfare in college and I did several years of time in corporate IT environments. I knew about the types of surveillance and control that are possible at the client, server and network levels. I looked at the challenge as all IT people look at all IT related challenges: Assume the absolute worst. I went even further with this. I made irrationally negative assumptions. I assumed that everything I did online was compromised. I assumed the worst tinfoil nightmares about commercial operating systems. I assumed that my ISP was a subsidiary of the NSA, etc.

Got the idea?
As if Kevin were prescient, EFF released unredacted court documents related to the ATT/NSA intercept case. Kevin summarizes:
A company called Narus has developed the NarusInsight Intercept Suite: a purpose built network surveillance system that is capable of analyzing (in real time) ALL of the data passing through the largest network nodes in existence. This system is capable of applying sophisticated targeting rules to the traffic, as well as recording entire, individual sessions for later analysis.
This leads us to our next topic...

On the snarling police state: Man faces seven years in prison for videotaping traffic stop; woman faced jail time for “staring” at a police dog.

On appreciation of beauty: The Washington Post arranged to have one of the best classical musicians in the world play some of the most difficult and beautiful music in history on a three million dollar Stradivarius, anonymously in a DC Metro station. And almost nobody noticed, except... every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away.

On terrorism and security: The head of Arkansas GOP openly states that we need more ‘attacks on American soil’ so people will better appreciate GW Bush. Read that again...

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2 Comments:

Blogger IN2CREATION said...

Alice Walkers' The Color Purple addresses The subject of environmental disconnects: Massacres and paramilitary land seizures are behind the "Biofuel Revolution".

Nettie, while acting as a missionary in Africa during the 1920's, witnesses "paramilitary land seizures" . The English colonist destroy the Olinka tribes' village to plant rubber tree plants. Not only does this devastate the actual ecology, but also the spiritual ecology.

The Olinka grew a plant called "Roofleaf" . This is what the Olinka thatched their roofs with. It was so important, that it became a God. The villagers would even make their roofs out of Roofleaf for others(newlyweds ie) as they built their mud huts.

When all the Rootleaf has been eradicated to plant Rubber Tree Plants, the plantation owners had tin roofs delivered to the village for the Olinka to use as roofs( they also made the Olinka pay for the tin roofs).

The Olinka swore never to live in a dwelling not covered by their God.

I think that 'Massacres and paramilitary land seizures' have far reaching social consequences far beyond ecological ramifications , as dramatized by Miss Walker.

7:39 AM  
Blogger astrolil said...

The analysis of the SUV buyer may have caught something. My SUV. Yes I have one, but before it was called an SUV, well, my SUV was purchased by just the kind of person described in the analysis: narcissistic. But I continue to drive it just for the reasons stated-- I'm short, and see better driving that vehicle, but not necessarily at the current gasoline prices, so I only use it on long trips! Don't know what that means but not ALL drivers who drive SUVs are, in fact, as described. Purchasers, maybe.

12:56 PM  

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