Does This Mean the Dinosaurs Might Come Back?

I was given a college assignment which asked to pick a geopolitical topic of our choice and write about it. I chose to write about biodiversity and its losses:

 

Flick to the environmental section of any magazine or website and chances are you’ll plenty of articles regarding what style of bike to buy, why to shop at a farmer’s market and guides on how to live without power, you know, just in case. Choose to read a newspaper instead and you may more daunting reads, including updates on peak oil and the dreaded global warming. However, there is a subject that doesn’t seem to receive the same hysterical media coverage, and that subject is the biodiversity crisis.

Biodiversity is basically the variety of life forms within a certain area, or ecosystem. For Earth’s ecosystems to remain healthy, they require many varying kinds of plants and animals, from forests to insects.

However, many biologists and environmentalists believe that biodiversity is in serious trouble, claiming we are in the beginning stages of a global mass extinction not experienced since the age of the dinosaurs.

There have been at least five mass extinctions in the history of life on our planet, with the last occurring 65 million years ago, which is known to be the instigator of the end of the Cretaceous period.

In 1998, the American Museum of Natural History carried out a survey with 400 biologists, with almost 70% believing that they were in the beginning stages of a global mass extinction.

You may be asking what ‘s so interesting about this. Clearly it’s not the first time it’s happened, so why are those with scientific experience getting so worked up?

The difference between previous mass extinctions and the current one is us. The last one wasn’t a result of people going around killing dinosaurs with rocks and elaborate Wile E Coyote style traps. Yet many scientists agree that human activity is the root cause of the deterioration in our biodiversity.

The expansion of human settlements, mining, farming and pollution have all been blamed, as well as the seemingly obvious over-exploitation of certain species, such as shark-finning and whaling. There was even a study released in January stating that researchers are killing wild chimpanzees by inadvertently giving them colds.

A 2004 article from the “Nature” journal suggested that by 2050 around a quarter of the world’s plants and animals could die, as a result of global warming. The article was a result of a global collaboration of 19 scientists., each of which fed field data into a computer that simulated the ways that different species are expected to respond to climate changes.

The World Conservation Union has found that animals are becoming extinct at 100 to 1,000 times the usual rate.

My point to all this is: why is this not being reported on the same scale as global warming or peak oil? Does it not matter?

The media have seemed to embrace environmentalism, as seen in this year’s widespread coverage of Earth Hour. I agree that raising awareness of power consumption is worthwhile, but so surely is raising awareness that we’re killing many groups of species that help to keep us alive, through purifying water, carrying out photosynthesis and pollinating crops.

Actually, that last one is interesting. One of the insects largely known for pollinating crops are bees, which have been disappearing from their colonies in recent years. The possible cause is something called Colony Collapse Disorder, which results in a hive empty apart from a few survivors. The others simply leave, with many apparently dying off soon after. CCD, is it’s known, is reportedly occurring in twenty-two U.S states, Poland, Spain, and much of Europe.

The thing is though, bees are a lot more important than we take them for, and I was surprised when I started reading about this. Insects pollinate around one third of the human diet, with bees being responsible for 80% of that third. Some people believe that if bees were to go completely extinct, humans would last no more than 4 years. The theory goes that no bees means no plants, which feed animals, so there’d be no more animals. Animals feed us, so there’d be no more us.

Whether this is exaggerated or not, it is interesting nonetheless. The idea that one species going under could be responsible for the destruction of human live, in four years(!), makes me stop and think.

 I think the reason that nothing is being done with this issue (from a political standpoint) could be down to the belief that this is a natural occurrence, that has happened before, therefore nothing can be changed. Therefore, we may as well continue building, forcing animals out of their habitats and leveling foresty and green regions.

The other reason I can come up with is that, compared to other topics like pollution, offshore drilling and how nuclear power is going to kill us all, spending all your time talking about saving frogs, penguins and pretty little blue flowers seems very self-indulgent and almost weak. Yet, even for a swaggering pile of testosterone like myself, it’s a tough topic to take a concrete stance on – would you rather see people die from hunger due to a lack of cropland, or a few birds?

Looking ahead, the human population is expected to grow at its current rate of 6 million people a month. By 2030, that’ll be 132,000 extra people, requiring current world food production levels to rise by 50% in order to feed them. Obivously those people will have to live somewhere, and food will have to come from somewhere, so that probably means spreading out into more habitats, which probably means a further loss of species.

It’s a tricky subject for me to get my head around. The fact that all this around us is the result of 4 billion years of evolution must mean something, and for us to watch as it dies off must be saying something about us, I’m just not sure what.

In the end, though, maybe there’s nothing we can do. Maybe it’s just a part of Earth’s random evolvement, and this time we’re part of it. But surely the relentless building of suburbs isn’t helping.

In the meantime, though, I’m going to try and get out and see a bit more of it, before it all turns into concrete and tower blocks.

 

last song i heard – “cheerio chaps, cheerio goodbye” – wild beasts

 

Rathergate and the Usefulness of Blogs.

I was given an assignment to write about the “Rathergate” “scandal”:

 

If I’m being honest, I think that the amount of time it takes to find a decent blog that doesn’t simply descend into one-sided ranting every couple of sentences could be spent doing something else.

I know that blogs are expected to be the future of everything – journalism, debate, entertainment – but for me, it’s hard for me to take them seriously as the saviour of the media. There’s too many egotistical folk out there. Filled with anger, Smirnoff ices and terrible self-centric poetry, these lot (mostly teenagers) force the minutest details of their lives onto the general public. It gets even worse when those people grow up. With most of them believing themselves to be Gandhi incarnant, they offer philosophical stodge and promotions to love your brothers, man. Oh, along with photos of themselves at arm’s length in a limo.

To me internet debate is, for the most part, a waste of time. There’s always someone with more time than you and a thesaurus by their hand, ready to shoot down anyone foolish enough to post a comment on their turf. You can’t win.

Yeah, I’ve got a few bookmarked. Music ones, mostly. A few friends. A couple of columnists. But I’d say that only about 10% of all the blogs I’ve ever seen have some real purpose, or a catch, to them.

So I was quite surprised when I started reading about “Rathergate”, when a load of forum posters and bloggers started working together towards examining documents presented by “60 Minutes” which attacked George Bush’s National Guard Service. A “virtual think-tank” was formed, beginning with the analysation of the style of the font used in the documents, eventually reaching a conclusion that they were faked.

Is what it means to be a citizen journalist? I’d like to think so, as it’s a good example of ordinary people (who seem to know a worrying amount about typewriters from the 1970’s) doing a better job than the mainstream media corporations. I know that the big media corps have the advantages of advertising revenue, large staffs and other resources available that most people don’t, but they can also suffer from arrogance and the decisions to hold back certain stories, due to the the terrifying prospect of financial support that can be withdrawn in a second if the wrong words get printed.

Rathergate has shown that ordinary people can make a change, on a scale that most people could never have expected. Blogs are showing the big media that there is now a healthy independent alternative that can be free of bias and slant, which is still found in many of today’s newspapers regardless of what they say. Of course there’s bias on blogs, but you can read enough of them easily enough in a short amount of time to come up with your own opinions, which is what journalism is really all about.  In the end, I’d say that if this an example of what blogs can do when they’re serious about it, then maybe I’ll be able to put up with the poetry, obnoxious know-it-all “forumer”s and endless “Myspace photos”.

last song i heard – “if i sit still maybe i’ll get out of here” – this town needs guns

 

The Future Of Journalism.

Answering to “Post 3 – The Future of Journalism – Any topic related to the future of journalism.”

Probably the most talked about aspect of “the future of journalism” (preferably screamed from the side of a road along with other end-is-nigh observations) is the increasing involvement of ordinary people in important topics and issues. There’s always been letters pages in newspapers and call-in opinion segments on broadcast stations, but in the past five years ( – from what I’ve noticed, maybe it’s been going on longer – ) the media have become really keen on wanting to see viewer’s sides and interpretations of issues.
This trend seems to have begun, from what I’ve seen, with the rapid mainstream accessibility of e-mail around 2000.
From what I can make of the topic, “amateur” journalism really kicked off with the World Trade Towers in 2001. The immediate impact of the shaky citizen videos, mostly at street-level, let us see the “real” or “human” side of what was going on, rather than footage of a TV reporter standing behind security barricades half a mile away. This style of footage, mostly shot by public citizens with cheap household video-cameras and mobile phones, was seen again during Hurricane Katrina, the Boxing Day (2004) Indian Ocean earthquake, and the London (2005) and Madrid (2004) public transport bombings.
As more people now have access to a computer, the internet and some cheap sort of photography equipment – these days usually a mobile phone – than ever before, it seems that the news media industry had realised that they were no longer only competing between each other, but almost with the readers/viewers themselves.
You can now find places to upload your videos, photos and (usually opinionated)writings on various news sites, the most prominent examples that I’ve found being CityNews in Toronto and the BBC’s website.
From what I’ve seen of audience material, I hope for the sake of the industry that it’s left to the professionals.

However, the line between a citizen and a professional is becoming increasingly blurred, mostly due to the rise of blogs. I have to say I enjoy “blogging” (though I don’t enjoy saying that word), and I like the fact that more people are able to show their opinions, rather than having to go through the trouble of printing a fanzine/newsletter like in the old days of yore, though the fact that most blogs are simply opinion – in some cases almost propaganda – shows that there is still a need for accurate, balanced reporting.

In the future of the industry, I honestly can’t see how it’s going to go. Media concentration could continue until there’s about one or two companies controlling a continent worth of news, or a “red” side and a “blue” side. We already know that China routinely block off sections of the Internet, and in all honesty I could see that happening in the West eventually.

In the aspect of online journalism, I’ve heard about the idea of having to pay for a “upgrade” version of the Internet, which uses higher bandwidths, more updates and easier-accessible information, while the “regular” or “current” version of the Internet would then be free, but suffer from clogging over-capacity (because nobody wants to pay for anything), slower connections and less new updates of information, much like when DVDs took over from VHS – you start seeing less and less until they were gone.

Then there’s the Twitter idea – news outlets could adopt Twitter’s global map feature and apply it to news stories, showing you what’s happening where with a little marker, and how it could link to something far away (i.e: such as political stories), ending up kind of like a airline route map. That idea sounds great to me. We already have things like Google Earth, which lets you zoom right down to streets and buildings anyway in the world, so I hope that that idea could develop in some way.

Overall though, it’s an exciting (but sometimes worrying) time to be going into journalism, and I’m interested to see where it’ll go.

Some links:
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/mark_bowden/20070617_The_Point___Journalisms_future.html

http://www.newcommreview.com/?p=64

http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2008/03/06/ten-ways-journalism-has-changed-in-the-last-ten-years-bloggers-cut/

http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/EDITORIAL/oped0701.shtml

That Internet Thing – What’s that about?

“Human Bandwidth -
We have access to more information than at anytime in history. The question remains: How much information are humans able to process?”

It seems that the term “information overload” has never been as relevant as it is today. You can access hard news, weather, celebrity news, traffic updates and pointless little games all through a portable device (if you can afford one), any time of day, almost anywhere. Since the Internet really began picking up speed around 6 years ago, multi-tasking is now the norm, and anything else is considered a waste of time.
You can take your laptop and get free internet connections in coffee shops, trains, and in some cases even on street corners. You can buy a t-shirt that shows you if there are any Wi-fi networks in the area around you, and if so, how strong they are.

There are around 20 million words recorded on the Internet every day. It is believed that there has been more new information produced in the last 30 years than in the previous 5000.

Dr David Lewis wrote a report called “Dying for Information?” in the 90’s, based on the results of a worldwide Reuters survey which stated that an excess of information in the business world, mostly caused by the frenetic speed of technological updates, was resulting in mental stress and in some cases even physical illness in all levels of management.
He coined a term called “Information Fatigue Syndrome” or IFS, which includes sypthoms such as being unable to perform in-depth analysis, irritability, feelings of helplessness, fatigue, failing eyesight, headaches, forgetfulness, bad temper and something non-academics have named “computer rage”, all of which, according to Lewis, lead to “foolish decisions and flawed conclusions”.

It seems to me that the problem is that most of the information we receive is largely irrelevant. Personally I think that RSS feeds, which I wasn’t aware of until a couple of months ago, are a godsend – making the Internet work for you (finally!) instead of trawling through the same sites every day, looking for new headlines that may be of interest to you.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s went onto the Internet looking for research and ended up buying CDs through Amazon. How I end up in these (somehow embarrassing) situations I’m not sure, but it is an interesting topic. Why are we so easily distracted these days?

I don’t know, but I typed “information overload” into Google and ended up with 1,770,000 results.

There are believed to be more than 100 million webpages created every month.

People worldwide are being given choices that they don’t fully understand, or don’t have time to understand – when do you know when to stop reading/researching? And do you feel as though you’ve missed something important when you do stop?

In 1990, Neil Postman, the media theorist and cultural critic, gave a speech in Stuttgart called “Informing Ourselves to Death”, which was a play on a title of his previous (and most famous) book, “Amusing Ourselves to Death”.
In the speech, he references a quote by George Orwell, who said that the average person today is just as naive the average person in Medieval times. They lived their lives believing that religion was the basis of everything, and today, we live our lives believing that science is the main authority. Back then they thought that their religion gave them a purpose, a background and a fate, but now, with more people turning away from religion at a quickening pace, we’re left with no world view, no sense of meaningful existence, and are simply left wondering what is important in our lives and what isn’t. It’s all a bit depressing if you think about it.

In the end, though, it all seems like a act of balance. I’ve seen a few websites that offer tips on how to relax your mind, some of which include “be still”, “learn to flow” ( – make a checklist every day), and “drink water”(?). To be honest I don’t think you need to go as far as to meditate and start yoga, but just try to slow down. You can use books/magazines/newspapers/the Internet all you want, but the key is to ignore the consistent barrages of irrelevance (which I learnt today is called “Passive Information Intake”) that are thrown at you. Whether we can learn to do that, or whether we simply continue destroying our attention spans, I suppose only time will tell.

Links -

http://www.ilmarefilm.org/W_E_4.htm – trailer for a great documentary on Joseph Weizenbaum.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/andrewkantor/2007-06-14-internet-organization_N.htm

http://www.law.com/jsp/legaltechnology/pubArticleLTN.jsp?id=1200418106898&rss=ltn

http://www.acm.org/crossroads/xrds1-1/mnelson.html

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Reporting Just the Facts.

A reply to:

“We know there is a vast morass of information out there that our audiences want us to try to make sense of. The danger consists in trying to leap above it, not by getting more dramatic or salient or verifiable facts, but by analyzing, speculating, predicting, interpreting – by drawing definitive conclusions while the bodies are still warm.” Paul Knox, The Globe and Mail

In today’s Internet age, most people have easy access to as much information as they want (or don’t want) to absorb. You can read world-renowned newspapers views on events and stories, or read (or watch) everyday people’s opinions on the same story, most of which (that I’ve seen) don’t feel obliged to stay on the fence of a subject, a lot of the time simply descending into slagging matches if a commenter opposes their views. As bloggers and citizen journalists begin to find stories (and rumours) and run with them, without any training of an ethical journalistic standpoint, facts are becoming lost in the rush as the newsrooms try to get the information out first.
I’m not saying this happens all the time, and I’m not criticizing citizen journalism, which often does a good job of putting a different, sometimes more human, angle on a story or event.

But when (supposedly) reliable media outlets begin publishing information while having no idea whether it’s true or not, but publish it anyway to gain more readers and higher sales – this can bring the whole industry into a state of disgrace. A recent (and ongoing) example of this has ironically been brought into the headlines by the Madeline McCann case.
For anyone that doesn’t know the case, a young girl days short of her fourth birthday was abducted from an apartment while on holiday in Portugal, in May last year. Her parents said that they had left her with her two-year-old twin siblings while they ate at a restaurant about 120 metres away. After investigation by the Portuguese police, there seemed to be strong evidence that Madeline may not have been abducted at all, but may have died in the room. Meanwhile many possible sightings flooded in to support websites and news organisations.

Her parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, stated they didn’t want to leave Portugal until their daughter was found. But after an initial suspect was found, the police began to name the parents as suspects. In the end, the McCanns flew back to England in September, five months after the incident. Cue bedlam from the British media, who were waiting at the airport to watch the plane come in, and follow them back to their home. Fast forward to just last week, when four newspapers (from a single group) published front page apologies to the McCanns, after begin sued for publishing more than 100 articles claiming that the parents played a part in the disappearance of their daughter.

Personally (and I’m falling off the fence here, how I’m going to be a journalist I’ll never know), I think this is nothing short of a disgrace. For four (four!) national papers to underlie their reports with innuendo shows the length that the media can go to to gain a foothold in the sales game. These articles have (shock horror) been unscrupulously placed just to sell newspapers. Nothing more, nothing less. Of course, this is only four papers, but the damage has been done – journalists, and the British media in general, are now virtually labeled as liars.

Although the story has barely had any impact in North America, I think it’s an ongoing example that should remind us to check your facts (and names, and everything else we’ve been taught) before publishing it.
We’re (potentially) the ones that will be giving the public their information, whichever medium we end up in. In this age when there’s more information flying about quicker than ever before, we need to remember that the facts are the only bit that matter, and however you choose to interpret them, they still need to be there.

Some links –
http://www.gairrhydd.com/media/844/a-deceiving-web/

http://www.vernoncoleman.com/mccann.htm

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070512061804AAEUIiW

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/19/nmccann319.xml

http://truecrimemagazine.com/articles/399

Research Techniques Class – Peggy French Reflection Assignment.

During our Research Techniques class on March 14, we had a presentation from Peggy French, a librarian from the Fennell campus. The basis of the presentation was finding new ways to use the Internet to find information that is relevant to our studies.

One of the first points she made was her explanation that in order to find distilled information, you need to use keywords in a more specific sense. She showed us some links from the college’s main site to various databases, where you can choose to search e-books, newspapers articles and magazines, as well as seeing which college libraries hold which books.

One point of the discussion was when she explained that, when searching for information, we’re practicing a balancing act between “perfect precision” and “reasonable relevance”.
She went to to say that you can’t be too exact in your searches, as you run the risk of missing out too much information. Although if you’re too broad with your keywords, you may end up with too much information to manage.

I’ve found this to be especially true on Google. While researching for my politics class report, I searched “Greenbelt legislation” and ended up with 138,000 results. Use the word “Greenbelt” by itself and you get 4,840,000. This can be a problem when you’re looking for specific information, as it’s practically impossible to check all those websites (unless you’re really dedicated). Some of those only pick the words you use too – the article may have the searchwords in the text, but may be overall on a different topic altogether.
To try and solve this problem, she showed us some different search engines we can use, which offer different results that Google. These included dogpile, clusty, and kartoo, which is an interesting visual metasearch site, that “maps” your results, then links them all together.

She ended with explaining that the Internet is only as rewarding as you tell it to be – it’s up to you to find your information, and if you’re too broad when you’re looking for it, you may have a tough time.
Overall I think it was quite an interesting presentation, I can see myself using the search websites she showed us – I’m impressed with clusty – and the databases we were shown seem very helpful.

Photojournalism Ethics.

For my Social class, I have to answer whether it’s ok to change this photo, removing a black blemish on a white flower:

Looking at a photo of a white flower with a little black speck on it, it would be easy, and usually understandable, to remove the blemish. Many artistic photographers won’t even consider releasing a photo without re-touching it.
When we’re talking about journalism, we need to remember that the impact of the photo comes from the belief that the camera “never lies”, and that as a bit of machinery, simply records a moment in time, as the photographer saw it.
There are some editing processes that are allowed in news images, though. Some of these include cropping photos, lightning or darkening the image, or (legally advised) concealment of a person’s identity. It seems that as long as the original context of the even is not tampered, permission is allowed, and it’s probably just up to the editors decision.

It’s a subject that could be argued back and forth for weeks, but if we’re sticking with the flower, in my opinion, it shouldn’t be ok to remove the black dot. The reason?

Well, I know, it’s just a flower, and if it’s only a personal shot – a photo taken on holiday, maybe – no-one would blink if you removed it to make the image better, if you wanted to frame it or something. In that case it would be ok.
If it’s an artistic photo, which looks like it could end up in Ikea or Jysk (like this one), then that black dot could decide whether the buyers could buy it, or go and look at someone else’s portfolio. All on the basis of that little black smudge.
Now, I wouldn’t really call myself conservative, but I wouldn’t want to see someone go hungry just because they had enough morals not to wipe out a small black dot.
If the photo was some sort of scientific discovery, then it wouldn’t be ok to change it, leave it as it was found.

However, if it was going to appear in a magazine or some life section of a newspaper, then it wouldn’t be ok to change it. It’s the same as anything else that goes into a newspaper that is trying to get the truth out to the public. It wouldn’t be acceptable for a reporter to tamper or fabricate with quotes, therefore it shouldn’t be acceptable for a photographer to tamper with their shots.
In journalistic photos, it shouldn’t matter what is in the background or in shot by accident, it’s what was there at the time. Personally I think that cropping photos is going too far – what could have been cropped out of the shot? A person? A homemade sign or banner? All of this matters, it was there for a reason.

So to sum it up, in any form of journalism related aspect, it would be wrong to change anything. In anything else, it’s probably ok, it’s understandable. But personally, I still wouldn’t do it.

last song i heard – “Do You Get High” – Holly McNarland