• Fish from the sky: “As if the denizens of London did not already have enough to worry about trying to safely navigate muggers, backpackers and street performers, they now face a new threat: piranhas falling from the skies.” (yes, this is an actual quote from the article)
• Answers to the age-old question, “Has Text-porn finally made computers ‘human’?” A jaunty pop-culture take on the Turing Test challenge that looks at, among other things, spam (the e-mail kind) and salacious SMS chat. Interesting thought: a porno-bot (aka the Natachata chatbot) that dupes people into believing it really is another person was, in fact, conceived by a rocket scientist.
• Arianna Huffington’s Latest Column talks about, curiously enough, porn. Arianna points out that, amidst cuts to housing, veterans’ programs, and the NIH, the current administration is actually dumping more money into fighting porn. Which, maybe they think it’s a gateway vice to terrorism —who knows.
• Lies, lies, lies. Quick: who’s more likely to lie, someone talking on the telephone or someone writing an e-mail? Answer: person on the telephone. Surprised? Apparently (at least according to the research cited in this article) several factors come into play. One is the immediacy of phone calls vs. e-mails, e-mails giving the would-be liar a chance to come clean. E-mails also giving the would-be liar a potential source of embarassment later on, when the saved e-mail, lies bald-faced (or in some cases bold-faced) and intact, comes back to haunt her. I.e., “People appear to be afraid to lie when they know the communication could later be used to hold them to account.”
• Harper’s Weekly Review (2/3): “A federal judge tried for the third time to impose punitive damages on the Exxon Mobil Corporation for the Exxon Valdez oil spill fifteen years ago; Exxon Mobil said it would appeal the $4.5 billion judgment.” (compare: Exxon’s profit in 2003 was $21.51 billion). More here, here and here.

This, an ad thanking Citigroup, which has been decried as the Most Destructive Bank in the World by the Rainforest Action Network for its reckless funding of development projects that endangered indigenous peoples, tropical rainforests, etc.? Thanks to a corporation fraught with malicious business practices, issues of questionable political funding, and so forth?

“Thank you Citigroup.” And the ad is by—get this—the Rainforest Action Network, no less! And does a single “policy declaration” by the world’s largest financial institution (formerly known as the world’s most destructive bank) suddenly make the world a happy place?

The appropriate answer here is probably: yes and no.

Mostly no and partly yes, but the important thing to keep in mind is that there’s some yes in the answer.

As much as I love to hate Citi, I reckon this is a start. Hopefully. There’s this statement explaining the “understanding” between Citi and RAN. Most of it’s fairly vague, generic “yeah, we can’t just ignore the fact that people and forests have value,” but again: it’s a start. And something to hold the company to; particularly phrases like this, which, given the corporate context, are actually quite remarkable:

“Citigroup and Rainforest Action Network recognize that every institution has a role to play in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the decrease in dependence on the carbon intensive fuels.”

Something to consider here is that Citigroup is GIANT. Like, humongous. With revenues upwards of $100 billion and assets in the neighborhood of $1+ trillion. So in other words, this small, admittedly fairly timid step by this giant financial services company offers some leverage against other companies, and a way to move forward.

To wit (from official RAN letters found here):

January 22, 2004
Mr. William B. Harrison, Jr.
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
JP Morgan Chase
270 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017

Dear Mr. Harrison,

…

I am writing to invite you to join Rainforest Action Network in the global effort to preserve the world’s last remaining old growth forests and their traditional inhabitants and to confront global warming as one of the most pressing ecological issues of our time. Today, Citigroup, the world’s largest financial institution, raised the bar as the world’s first major bank to commit to a global policy addressing the crisis in the world’s forest and climate. This landmark announcement clearly signals a sea change in how the financial sector commits itself to these challenges.

…

Sincerely,
Michael Brune
Executive Director

If you feel like it, you can send your own letter. Anyway, maybe there’s hope yet.

GloFish: a genetically engineered zebrafish (Danio rerio) with a fluorescent protein from jellyfish and coral. Initially designed as a kind of pollution detector—the idea being that the fluorescent proteins would “turn on” when in the presence of certain kind of toxins—what the researchers got instead was a fish that glowed all the time.

GloFish	Zebrafish

This permanent-glowing fish fed immediately into a whole host of marketing possibilities; the fish were first sold in Taiwan in 2002, 100,000 of them being sold in less than a month (at $18.60 a pop). Yorktown Technologies introduced the fish to the U.S. at the beginning of 2004.

These fish are not without question, of course. Unlike most inanimate marketed consumer products, for which we only wonder why?, the GlowFish treads into territory that makes some people uncomfortable and other people ecstatic: genetic engineering. While it can be argued whether or not selective breeding is qualitatively different from genetically engineering, the GlowFish is almost certainly the first genetically modified pet to hit the U.S. market. To boot, a very, very brief overview of links (we’re talking exceptionally cursory, here) corresponding to each side:

Pros: GloFish™ Fluorescent Fish Guiding Ethical Principles FDA Statement Regarding Glofish (Dec 9, 2003) First Genetically Modified Pet (*.pdf) (Yorktown Tech. Press Release)

Cons: GloFish draw suit (The Scientist: Jan 7, 2004) Campaign on Genetically Engineered Fish (Center for Food Safety) GloFish Risk (ScienCentral News: Dec 23, 2003)

Yorktown (the company marketing the fish in the U.S.) claims, on a press release (dated Nov 21, 2003):

“The company spent more than two years researching fluorescent zebra fish to reach a broad consensus with leading scientific experts and state regulatory agencies that GloFish™ fluorescent fish are safe for the environment. Their findings unambiguously show that fluorescent zebra fish will have no advantages over non-fluorescent zebra fish, and would not be able to establish populations in the wild.”

So, okay, the fish probably almost definitely, without a doubt, no maybes about it, will not be able to displace wild fish when it escapes, and probably won’t survive. (Under every scenario imaginable? Right. How about under every unimaginable scenario? Er, well…)

Another question, of course, has to do with the precedent being set. Which could be that any GE pet, as long as it’s thoroughly studied, etc. etc., is okay to be introduced and sold and all that jazz. Since there aren’t any laws explicitly governing this, however, there’s lots of wiggle room (as I like to call it). In other words, potential trouble. The GloFish seems like it could provide a nice, innocuous pet with which to work out any glitches in the basically nonexistent approval system for these types of things. What’ll probably happen, though, is that we’ll have to work out these problems with a pet (or animal or something else) that is more obviously a potential threat and/or ethical quandary.

We’ll see.

Of course, there’s also the question plaguing us all: What will happen to me if I eat one of these fish?

Are you on the list?

“U.S. security agents have a master list of five million people worldwide thought to be potential terrorists or criminals, officials say. ‘The U.S. lookout index contains some five million names of known terrorists and other persons representing a potential problem,’ Brian Davis, a senior Canadian immigration official in Paris, said in a confidential document obtained by the Sun.

“Names on the list are compared against those applying for visas or on flights travelling to the U.S..” (emphasis added)

Aside from being horrendously ungrammatical, this last sentence has other, more serious problems. Though in fairness, the problems don’t have as much to do with the sentence as they do with the logic being bandied about by it. Specifically, something that Canadian visa officers are quick to pick up on:

“Davis said Canadian visa officers abroad do not keep an extensive list like the U.S. because terrorists can use bogus documents and change their identities.”

Imagine that.