How better to celebrate 'Buy Nothing Day' than by giving away a load of stuff..?

Today is the day most think of as "Black Friday" and a few think of as "Buy Nothing Day". I learned today that "Black Friday" is so named because it's the day the merchants go out of "red" and into "black", that is sell enough that they become profitable for the year. Supposedly it's the first major day of Christmas shopping. What it's turned into is a massive orgy of shopping with massive sales and massive crowds to take advantage of the sales.

Every year during Christmas season I get distressed over how the real purpose of the season is being ignored. The corporations have twisted our society around in knots so that we spend a lot of money to "celebrate" the season. Is that the purpose of this season? Did Jesus throw the money changers out of the temple, did he get murdered upon the cross, so that we would commit an orgy of spending 2000 years later? No. He did all that to bring us some spiritual teachings, and most are collectively ignoring those teachings because the season has been twisted out of proportion so that the real meaning has been lost.

In any case today I was wondering how to "celebrate" Buy Nothing Day. And it occurred to me, the best celebration of Buy Nothing Day would be giving stuff away.

Seems like the perfect antidote. Not grabbing... letting go. Rather than Buy, to Give Away. Yeah, perfect.

I put together a pile of stuff to take to Goodwill, and brought it over there.

(see: TechnoSanity #35: Buy Nothing Day, and What did you do for Buy Nothing Day?)

Some thoughts on making tea

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Everything we do has an impact on the world, even the lowly event of making a cup of tea. The first step to breaking the patterns that hold us in creating ecological disaster is to recognize the patterns for what they are. Only after recognizing the harmful patterns in even the most mundane of our activities can we begin to change the patterns.

Some thoughts on making tea

Links: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJxOhSbFR8Y

What's the best/greenest/cleanest way to recycling or dispose of old cassette tapes?

The 80's, yeah, they existed. The proof is the pile of cassette tapes you laboriously made and coveted back in the day. But do you use them now? Nope. They're taking up space, and as all clutter, it's a weight in your life. It's best to dispose of clutter to free up space in your life for new things, supposedly. If nothing else getting rid of your old cassette tapes will free up space in a cupboard or cabinet and it's up to you whether to fill it with something else, or to enjoy the empty space.

Normalthink would have you simply toss the stuff into the trash and forget about it. But as someone who thinks about long term effects of my actions I want to do the responsible thing. Cassette tapes are made of plastic, plastic contains nasty chemicals and just throwing it away will aid and abet the escape of those chemicals into the environment. It would be better, now that those bits of plasticy thingy's exist, to ensure the chemicals get sequestered somewhere appropriate.

One may find themselves clinging to specific tapes. Being cassette tapes the recording may have sentimental meaning. But is sentimental meaning a reason to keep it around? Maybe first one should get the same recording on newer media or digitize it, so that you can dispose of the cassette tape.

Clinging to things is one way that clutter builds in ones life, is it not?

The first thing to consider is reusing the tapes or handing them to someone who will take care of them. But being cassette tapes the chances of that is somewhere between slim and none. That probably means you'll decide to dispose of the tapes, so lets move on to the best disposal method.

There are various crafts or widgets one can make out of old cassette tapes. The tape can be a ribbon or used to tie things up. But if you think about it that only delays the inevitable need to avoid throwing the stuff into the trash. The goal is to avoid sending stuff to the landfill.

Green Disk (http://www.greendisk.com/) can recycle a wide variety of what they call "technotrash". It's implemented as a "technotrash can" for collecting up to 70 lbs of stuff, and one puts in their office. After collecting a full can, you ship it to Green Disk office. Obviously this is not suitable for an individual to recycle a few tapes, but for a business to properly dispose of stuff.

Green Citizen (http://greencitizen.com/what_we_recycle.php) recycles a wide variety of electronic stuff including tapes. They charge $.50 per pound.

Our Earth (http://www.ourearth.org/recycling/) contains a directory of recycling programs that is an excellent way to find the place for you, especially their extensive list of "Curbside and local programs". Another good resource is your city whose website probably includes a directory of recycling programs.

Donating old digital cameras to support worthy causes

I have a slew of old digital cameras that are taking up space in my humble abode. The feeling I get from possessing unused things is a heavy weight. They take up space, and the space costs money to maintain. I believe in keeping a smaller number of possessions, if only to keep the clutter monster at arms length. But the question is how to properly dispose of the cameras.

But who would want an old digital camera? These cameras are still functional and useful, so it would be silly to just throw them away. Even if one of them were broken, these are electronics items and to be ecologically sound one must give them to an organization which will do the right thing.

Since these cameras are still good and useful it would be better to hand them over to someone who will put them to use. But these old cameras are not the new hotness cameras that are so much better that camera buyers are be looking. These old and tired cameras from previous years were good, in their day, but who would want them now. That's the way of modern electronics, isn't it, a rapid retirement of perfectly good widgets because newer ones have surpassed them. These cameras could be sold via eBay, but that's a bit of a hassle. I often give things to Goodwill or other charities but am concerned what Goodwill will actually do with them. Turns out there are some worthy charities who have interesting models to recycle old camera's into new uses.

I searched and found these following organizations. In each case their web sites claim to be running programs that funnel cameras to worthy causes. I sent emails to each one and they did not respond. Given the lack of response my cameras will be going either to Goodwill or one of the charities who use Recycling for Charities.

Photo Voice - http://www.photovoice.org/ - They focus on giving cameras to Palestinians and others who have traditionally been the focus of documentaries. It's a kind of turning the tables on the documentary world, giving cameras to those who normally are the subject of documentaries and ask them to produce their own documentation of their own life. Another catch phrase is "empower some of the most disadvantaged groups in the world with photographic skills so that they can transform their lives." And by "establishing in-field photojournalism workshops ... individuals find confidence in their voices and are enabled to speak out about their challenges, concerns, hopes and fears." Sounds great. They are a UK based charity.

Global Classroom Connection - http://www.classroom-connection.org/ - They aim to connect students around the world by pairing classrooms with peer classrooms in distant countries. With the increasing interconnectivity of the world it's vital that we and our children more deeply understand other cultures. A way of doing so is to connect children classroom to classroom. "By tapping into the vast social and economic network that is the internet, and familiarizing themselves with the technologies of the future, the youth of the world can better enable themselves to stride confidently into the 21st century." One method is with photography, and they assemble camera kits to send to "disadvantaged" classrooms. They are a US based charity located in Berkeley CA.

Lens of Vision and Expression - http://www.lensofvisionexpression.org/ - Their vision is "To transform the lives of marginalized children through creativity and to impact the attitude, beliefs and actions of others by providing a window into another world." They do this by providing "photography workshops to non-profit organizations that work with marginalized children." Donated camera's will be used in future training programs. They are a US based charity located in Aurora, IL.

Democracy Now - http://www.democracynow.org/get_involved/donate - the internationally acclaimed news program is continually asking for cameras and other equipment to help them produce the show. One occasionally finds other organizations like schools or wildlife clubs asking for camera donations that in turn are used in their programs.

The Sustainable Electronics Coalition at the Univ of Illinois has a long list of organizations involved with recycling or reusing electronics including digital cameras. http://www.sustainelectronics.illinois.edu/resources/resources.cfm?i=21&s=78 The U.S. EPA has a similar list Where Can I Donate or Recycle My Old Computer and Other Electronic Products? http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/conserve/materials/ecycling/donate.htm

Eco Squid - http://ecosquid.com - 1800recycling - http://1800recycling.com - are search engines for recycling programs.

Recycling For Charities - http://www.recyclingforcharities.com/ - This is a "donate for charity" organization that puts a recycling spin on it. As they say the best form of recycling is reuse, so they determine among the donated goods which are worthy of reuse and find places to sell the usable items (such as via eBay). The money raised from the sales is what's donated to charities. Hence they cannot guarantee what the reuse of the camera is, only that money flows to charitable organizations. Charities in turn are enlisted to put banners on their sites saying "Donate old cell phones etc to fund charity".

Thank you for the two bucks Nielsen, but doesn't tempt me into watching the TV wasteland

In the mail today was an envelope reading "We've produced the TV Ratings for over 50 years!" Good for them. Really. I'm sure that's important to someone. Their market research though was wasted because they might have been able to discover that I do not own a television, do not take part in that cultural wasteland, and have no interest in getting involved. But here it was, an opportunity to become a Nielsen Family, if I so wanted. To become one of the few who are influencing the garbage that infests the television spectrum. It was possibly a chance to become an influencer over television and who knows what might have resulted if they had my opinion thrown into the mix. But somehow I doubt they'll be enrolling in the program after I truthfully told them I own zero televisions or DVR's.

It has me curious though about the long term trending showing a drop or decline in TV viewership. For instance are movements like the TV Turn-Off week (What's the point of TV Turnoff Week?) actually having any effect? Are any significant number of my bretheren humans also eschewing television? Or are most of my fellow humans still wasting their lives being fed with memes by which the corporate masters want us to live our lives?

What came up immediately in searching was of course a Nielsen report, the Three Screen Report to be exact. The report comes from their "Anytime Anywhere Media Measurement" initiative, and clearly intends to be a measure of where "the market" is watching video media content. The three screens are actually five screens, "TV in the home", "timeshifted TV", "Internet", "Video on the Internet" and "Video on a mobile phone".

Hurm, I wonder how they'd count the latest generation iPod Touch I just got? (It's not a phone)

The chart is from 3rd quarter 2009, and does not show a decline in viewership. It shows tremendous growth in watching via unconventional means like DVR's or over the Internet, but still strong growth in people watching this garbage.

Reading the report I'm struck at how it characterizes the audience they're measuring. What they're looking for is how to gauge the amount of time our fellow humans are spending time watching video material. If they were neutral observers not out to influence viewing habits it would be one thing, but of course this company is selling data to organizations who wish to maximize the impact of where they spend advertising dollars and in turn sell the most widgets.

They are characterizing (and ranking) the audience (that is, us) by viewing time. This report is used to look for increase or decline in viewership. A hidden agenda in the report would be ensuring viewing time does not decline. A serious decline in viewership would threaten the Nielsen's existence as well as the companies to whom they sell market data.

Good thing for them the report shows strong growth in viewership and especially technological widgets like DVR's or the Internet are growing as popular ways of watching video media. My contention of course is that this is a vast wasteland and to be sad for my fellow humans who have been snookered into watching this stuff.

I wonder what would happen if there were a serious decline in viewership? Obviously these companies would take a viewership decline as a threat and make some effort to counter such a trend.

An example might be Twitter Quitters Post Roadblock to Long-Term Growth, a study of traffic trends on Twitter. It finds there is a large number of twitter users who don't return after the first month. In other words, twitter has a retention problem. "People are signing up in droves, and Twitter’s unique audience is up over 100 percent in March. But despite the hockey-stick growth chart, Twitter faces an uphill battle in making sure these flocks of new users are enticed to return to the nest."

Replace "Twitter" with "Television" in that report and would there not be a lot of worried articles in the news saying "Nielsen ratings show the death of television, woe is us, what can we do?" Right?

One can dream...

Their site is full of other marketing insights so here's a random collection revealed by trawling around.

Number of U.S. TV Households Climbs by One Million for 2010-11 TV Season This report shows the rising number of sheeple being led to gorge themselves on televised junk.

Can Neuromarketing Research Increase Sales? Describes research into scientists using gizmo's to track brain waves and eye movements while a customer is looking at a widget they intend to sell. By looking at neurological responses they're able to detect which version of a given widget elicits the desired response, presumably with the desired result of more sales.

The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper

HOMEWORK: Comment on Bertrand Russell's statement, "The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper." Go to Freewillastrology.com and click "Email Rob." Hope he doesn't min me making a blog post out of it ;-)

The universe is surely full of things. Atoms, molecules, planets, galaxies, peoples, atmospheres, rocks, etc. Things are strewn from one end of the universe to the other and no doubt the other universes are full of things too.

Surely as our knowledge increases our human society has been able to shape the things in the universe in new and interesting ways. Also as our knowledge increases we've been having a growing understanding of the complexity of this universe we inhabit.

But .. what could make this "magical"? What could make the things in the universe magical?

For starters the existence of the universe itself is rather wondrous. What caused this universe to exist? A big explosion? What caused the explosion? How did an explosion create the stuff of the universe? There's a lot of unanswered questions there.

It's easy to walk down the street looking at trees and birds and whatnot that the universe is rather simple. It's essentially a bunch of rocks and atmosphere and water whizzing around with no real apparent purpose. Is there any ultimate goal to the existence of the universe? Or is it just meaningless randomosity which created the universe with no long term purpose?

A literalist might think the pile of rocks we live on simply exists because of randomosity. That certain constants had to be right in physics equations for this place to exist, that's a matter of fortuitous luck.

But physicists who study such things are finding all kinds of crazy stuff when they look closely. They're able to create conditions where light particles exist at two places at the same time. They're able to demonstrate instantaneous communication over long distance. They're able to demonstrate precognition in humans. They're able to demonstrate an ability for humans to project energy over distance to improve healing response of others.

Surely as our collective wisdom grows even more we'll find even more wild and crazy stuff in the fundamental makeup of the universe.

Are we "mean" if we're "green"?

A recently published study titled Do Green Products Make Us Better People? somehow has led to some articles suggesting that "green" consumers are meaner than non-green consumers. Hmm? It's clear that some are making "green" lifestyle choices (buying Prius's or shopping at Whole Foods) because of a kind of moral stand. In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore repeatedly talked about the morality and ethics issue. It's likely that some people take their green choice as a way of internally telling themselves they are holier than everybody else and have more leniency to commit other sins. One might prefer however that people making a stand for higher morality would make other higher morality choices in their lives. But that may be a naive thought; for example the number of spiritual teachers who commit sexual transgressions (such as pedophilliac priests) indicates that we all have struggles with living to our moral standards and it doesn't matter how morally pure or impure we strive to live.

The study (link below) involves some experiments that are very abstract. Partly this has to do with the practice of Science where they like to isolate variables to minimize the number of external influences. But this leads to wholly artificial contexts that the human subjects are put in. This study for example had the subjects "shopping" in a totally artificial "online store" and drawing conclusions from their behavior in the artificial store. That is they did not study their real behavior in real stores in their real life, but their behavior in an artificial store.

After subjecting their subjects to an artificial store, they then subjected them to artificial social interactions meant to gauge their willingness to share money with others. First there's an assumption that a moral person shares money with others. But is it truly moral to share money with others? Let's say you're walking down the street and see someone with a sign out asking for money, what's the moral stance you take? I look at that person and decide between several choices based on who they appear to be, whether they appear to be capable of earning a living on their own, etc. It's not a simple choice based on simplistic formulation of "sharing money" is more moral than other choices.

While I have lots of qualms about the study the writeup has some interesting things to say.

"In the past few decades, consumers have become increasingly attentive to social and ethical considerations in areas such as energy consumption, animal husbandry, and trade" Great .. yeah .. there are other considerations to our purchases than how much money is spent. It's very important and I've written over and over about this. "This increased concern and feeling of responsibility for society has led to remarkable growth in the global market for environmentally friendly products" Yeah, I do see more products that label themselves as "green". However I'm not always convinced that the products in question actually are any better than other products. "...the assumption that purchasing choices express not only price and quality preferences, but also norms, values, and beliefs..." This is very true for me and to my understanding this is true for everyone. Probably these effects are buried in the subconscious as are so many of the other factors affecting our choices. "People do not make decisions in a vacuum; their decisions are embedded in a history of behaviors." Yeah.. what I just said.

One thing about the study and that "history of behaviors" comment is that they did not appear to connect the choices of the research subjects with their own history of decisions.

"Although mere exposure to green products can have a positive societal effect by inducing prosocial and ethical acts, purchasing green products may license indulgence in self-interested and unethical behaviors." As a main conclusion of the study it's rather interesting. However embedded within the statement and other discussion in the study is this concept of "priming" behaviors through exposure to concepts. They referred to a study where people were shown pictures of fancy restaurants and that affected whether the people then went on to eat with high society manners, or not. Hence a conclusion is that presenting certain images of positive social consequence could lead others to practice positive social behaviors. Or contrariwise shown images with negative social consequence could lead people to practice negative social behaviors.

In other words perhaps people playing violent video games will be influenced to more violent behavior?

But I draw another idea from this. These are psychologists studying the behavior of "consumers". I've heard about how the most brilliant psychological research is done around consumption and buying practices. The idea is that if a company can understand the buying psychology they can worm their way into the subconscious of consumers and cause them to buy more stuff. Hence stores are probably full of subtle psychologically derived cues that induce purchasing behavior.

It's helpful for the corporations to have consumers buy more stuff because that's how corporations live, by having more money flow to their coffers. But is it "green"? If one overconsumes "green" products with impeccable green credentials the truth still is that one has overconsumed. Part of the ecological problem we have is overconsumption. But if the companies cause us to overconsume because they have studied the psychology of green consumption and found the psychological cues to induce green consumption the result will still be non-green overconsumption.

Links: 

Do Green Products Make Us Better People?

Links: 

Greener is (Literally) Meaner According To New Study