Unforeseen protractedness

A blog in four parts, that is much longer than I had initially intended
Cake will be awarded for guessing the title theme


The End
My last days in Cambridge were a storm of good times and good people: playing ultimate frisbee for the last time, going out to Gwyn Jones's in Carlisle again (this time by train), seeing all of my favourite people in town, going to a couple of great milongas (tango dances), Bikes Not Bombs, and Daf and Laura conspiring to bake me a birthday cake (it was a really sweet surprise-- it's never happened to me before).

Life was so grand I almost didn't get on that aeroplane.


Carry That Weight
Singapore is as weird as ever. Aside from the excellent food (which I keep hearing is stolen from Malaysia, and is better there anyway), there's not a lot to like about it here. I've always found it a socially/culturally trying place, and have a hard time doing all the things I want to do, that I can do in a place like Cambridge (for example, get around by bike. Singapore is a TERRIBLE biking city).

Leaving my personal life out of the equation, I compiled a short list of reasons to hate Singapore. Whilst these don't (or rather, have not yet) affected me, I have an intense philosophical and principled problem with them.

One party system: If you've ever looked at (for example) the democrat/republican squabbling in the US and thought to yourself, "hey, what a bunch of fools," get this: Singapore has had ONE party in pretty much absolute and dominant power, since its independence. It's called the PAP and its priorities are, in no particular order, control, stability, and image (trading for it the human rights enjoyed in most high-GDP highly educated countries). Hence, all the counter-critic action, all the population control laws (see below) and all the gerrymandering (the government routinely changes voting district boundaries in order to ensure its MPs are elected) and regulations on smaller opposition parties to ensure that they will never be able to compete with the PAP.

Freedom of assembly: Singapore used to limit-nay-deny the freedom of assembly by requiring a police permit for gatherings of more than five people. In 2009-ish, it changed to require a permit for any outdoor gathering that was related to any cause. In January, 2009 they arrested a two-man protest of the unfair treatment of and earlier protest of the Myanmar government during their whole constitutional referendum debacle.
Get this: the new bill also allows police to stop people from filming law enforcement "if it could put officers in danger." This is the worse confusion of reason I've ever heard used to create an unconstitutional policy.

Freedom of speech: Singapore has severely restricted freedoms of speech. It's got a speaker's corner, modeled on the famous one at Hyde Park in London, but be damned if you think you can speak your mind there. Here's a fun little article that demonstrates how absurd things can be.

Freedom of press: Follows freedom of speech as abysmal. Examples are pretty easy to find on the internet

Black Bagging: Singapore's Internal Security Act allows the government to arrest and detain individuals indefinitely without warrant or trial. This piece of legislation is a relic of 1960, where it was written to control communists (which is unconstitutional in and of itself, might I point out). It was used more liberally in the 1960s through 80s to control social activists and opposition parties (which is grossly inethical, might I point out). It has even been used as recently as June 2010. Whilst the details of the recent case are unclear, I must point out that there is absolutely no reason to detain anyone at all without trial. It is against any constitution and every human right.

Here's the icing on the cake:
Charismatic churches (pastor disaster, ha ha!): In recent times, Singapore has experienced a bloom of swanky churches, where mass / service is attended by a highly unrepresentative population of, on average, extremely wealthy people. They donate (as is recommended by the bible, and I hear, quite well enforced by the church) a tenth of not just their salary --Chinese businessmen are too savvy for that-- their net income, from assets and from paycheck. Their pastors drive Mercedeses and BMWs, live in big houses and often own a number of others. I don't know how they can go along with churches that are basically donation clubs for rich Singaporeans, let alone trust their BMW driving pastor's guidance.
A recent investigation uncovered extremely sneaky means by which church leaders are able to circumvent laws and regulations to benefit from these donations. It involves the church making large donations to other churches, outside the jurisdiction of Singapore law, such as in the Philippines (as an example, and not to pick on them in any way), with the catch that they must invite the pastor to speak at their church, for which the fee is, say, half of what that large donation was (Singapore can't force the church in the Philippines to hand over information on the transaction). And for the church in the Philippines of a million dollars is a lot of money, and half is better than nothing, eh?

and, I almost forgot- put this in your pipe: Singapore has one of the highest income disparities in the world, on par with many African (politically corrupt, might I add) countries. Its neighbours on the big list? Burundi, Kenya, Iran and Nicaragua. I guess this is not so far off from the USA, where taxes and other policies that have favoured the rich for generations. From recent Singapore newspaper articles I've read, the poorest people here are starting to find that they make less than a living wage.


It's clear that my ideologies differ from the leadership's in some pretty fundamental ways, but is this the kind of place anyone would want to live in? If they had a choice? If they were well informed? All the information I used to write this (besides floating in my head) is easily available in open channels, and on the internet. I think that people are on the whole well suppressed and well misled, coddled with a bit of comfort and had the wool pulled over their eyes.
Singapore's really well developed economically, but really needs to wake up and grow socially, culturally, intellectually, and all the other -allys they've missed.


Through the Bathroom Window
Singapore's got a great little theatre scene, in which they make fun and jest of and generally celebrate the precious little culture of and little big news and happenings around Singapore, sometimes even poking fun at the government. And it's surprisingly good, with loads of original music and lots of Singapore in-jokes. It usually makes me smile and laugh.

Living inside Singapore's great little theatre scene is Singapore great little gay theatre scene.

In a country where not only is same sex marriage not lawful, but where there is still an "unnatural sex" law that prohibits homosexual sex explicitly and homosexual relationships implicitly, there is a thriving gay club scene, as well as a gay theatre scene where some very gay plays (featuring some very prominent local celebrities) take on the issues of being gay in Singapore in really big ways. Often funny, sometimes very poignant and sad.

I'm super proud and appreciative that they dare do this in Singapore, and that they pulled it off so well. Every show I've been to has been packed.


Majesty
What really earns Singapore a special place in my heart (at this moment, as much as I hate to admit it) is the tango. Tango in Singapore has been so much fun: people have been really friendly and welcoming, and dance very well. Singapore is also one of those rare places that (I know from personal experience) men will dance with men (it's quite common for women to dance with women, it seems/I hear). Why is this important to me? I started to write but it got long, I'll explain this another time.

When I dance in Boston, I usually never stay til the end of a milonga, but the first night I went out dancing in Singapore, I stayed out til two in the morning (way way past my bedtime). It was just great-- I couldn't leave.

Why is this important? It's a hint that I can find something I like doing, and something that makes me happy, anywhere, even in Singapore.

pots and kettles

I was at Chicago O'Hare airport on my way to Singapore when I saw a political ad on the telly accuse Obama's administration of policies that destroyed jobs and favoured large corporations over small businesses (what I thought was a classically republican move).

Every other word I hear in democrat AND republican propaganda alike is "jobs", and the other word(s) is(are) "small businesses." So, does this mean that both republicans and democrats are trying to create jobs and to spur the growth of small businesses? Whilst they accuse the other party of destroying jobs and small businesses?

Are either of them doing anything other than slinging charged words at each other? Will we ever get to the bottom of this?

This might be worth reading.

Blasts from the pasts

The fun theory: how doing "right" things can be made into enjoyable activities /or/ how to incentivise socially positive behaviours.

Ages ago, I blogged about the fun theory (or rolighetsteorin for the swedishly inclined): this was in their beta days when they had two projects and were just getting off the ground. Now they are (relatively) huge and have a growing community great deal of momentum behind them: they're crowd sourcing to come up with new ideas and are implementing a whole host of fun projects.

They're also taking on increasingly important topics. In the past they played with convincing people to take the stairs over the escalator and throwing trash in the bin, but these days it's about encouraging people to recycle and not to speed, all with novel ideas of how to incentivise these good behaviours.

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I used to talk about the Happy Planet Index a lot, back when it was the Happy Planet Index 1.0, and I was still in college studying economics ):

The Happy Planet Index is based on the idea that we humans live for something that is not captured by measures we often get hung up on, like our personal income, and Gross Domestic Product. Indeed, humans live in the pursuit of things like happiness, health, love, whatever have you, but our often limited and sometimes misguided understanding of how to achieve them leads us to focus on our work and on measures of economic progress rather than how these means (not ends!) actually contribute to making us happy.

The greatest problem that this quite simple misunderstanding creates is our impact on the planet: humanity as a whole is producing too much stuff and pursuing much too aggressive economic growth at the expense of natural resources and the environment. And if we carry on at this rate, (quoting Sebastian) life is gonna be de bubbles under de sea.
HPI gives a way to link a country's consumption of natural resources and damage to the environment (which is pretty well correlated with GDP) to how happy, and how long its citizens live.
Translated: HPI gives a way to show how efficiently a country uses its available resources to build long and happy lives for its citizens.



This might be a good time to bring up Gross National Happiness (an oldie but a goodie), possibly the first concerted effort to base a country's (Bhutan's) economy not on production and growth, but the happiness of its citizens. I wonder how they're doing.

Une simple histoire

Yikes, I recently back-blogged five entries.

Also, past entries from India, etc. are now complete with pictures. Enjoy!

Montezuma Fuller vs. Muhammad Gandhi

Hippy hoppy

After visiting IDDS, I had a great week-and-a-half in Santa Fe and other places, NM. I stopped on the way back for claw fights atop Mesa Mentosa and camping at Ghost Ranch (one of the most beautiful places I've ever been), and happy fun times camping with the Stupin family in Colorado (on the way to and from IDDS). New Mexico is one of the most beautiful places on earth*.















I danced some tango in Santa Fe, which turned out to be really nice. Santa Fe (and surrounding area) has some great dancers, who are super friendly and sweet. I haven't been dancing so much lately, and I forgot how having awesome dances with just a few people can make my evening.


I drove up to Taos, NM with Laura Stup, Papa Stup, and Carla Tennenbaum (artist extraordinaire from Brazil, who was at the last two IDDSes) to see the Earthship office/visitor center.



















Earthships are SUPER AMAZING!

There are a few basic principles of Earthships (Earthships are houses people live in). They (quoting Earthship Biotecture):

-Heat and cool themselves naturally via solar/thermal dynamics
-Collect their own power from the sun and wind
-Harvest their own water from rain and snow melt
-Contain and treat their own sewage on site
-Produce a significant amount of food
-Are constructed using the byproducts of modern society like cans, bottles and tyres

Whilst most of these principles are really quite common-sensical (from just a simple efficiency viewpoint), what is really impressive is how well the Earthship folks design and build an integrated system that efficiently and effectively accomplishes the design goals, and continue to improve and optimise their system as they gain knowledge and experience.

The best part? They claim to be pretty much on par with the cost of conventional construction, per square foot. This is a really powerful thing: people no longer need to make an economic sacrifice to achieve an ideal or principle goal.






(Photo by Carla)







This feels like the future to me: it's low impact, it's beautiful, it makes economic sense (of course, don't get me started on how I think that the true costs of producing goods and electricity and disposing of waste are not presented accurately to the consumer, encouraging people to live unsustainably), and, to use the words of the Earthship folks, if your pocket is deep enough [they] can design and build anything you want.


Still, I'm not one hundred percent satisfied with where Earthships are, just yet. There are two things that I'm just a little unsettled by:

The simpler of the two to explain is that many of their buildings use aluminium cans and glass bottles as "bricks"/filler material for concrete or adobe, to make walls. This is in line with their principles of using recycled materials, and also allows neat designs (in the case of bottles, it lets light pass through walls). I have a problem with them using cans in construction because aluminium is such a high value recyclable material. (glass does not have this feature) It takes a fraction of the energy to smelt new aluminium to melt down old aluminium and re-use it. And it takes a ton of energy to smelt new aluminium.

It just struck me as a little bit careless.

The second thing that unsettled me was a conversation between a visitor and a staff member. It wasn't quite a conflict as a clash of ideals: the visitor had a house that was hooked up to the electrical grid, had an array of solar panels and was able to sell electricity back to the grid (produce a surplus of energy) despite using electric stoves and electric heat. The staff didn't seem to approve of being connected to the grid, as if it might undermine the house's energy independence -- even though the house was actually energy positive, and Earthships rely on propane, a fossil fuel, for cooking and heating.

I didn't have a problem with the ideas put forth per se, but was surprised by the defensiveness and disapproval.















Still, final verdict: Earthships are super awesome! One day I'll live in a house that works just like that, harvests water and solar power and grows crops and has chickens (for eggs) and fish (for fish) which eat micro organisms that feed on the sewage stream of the house. Maybe goats?


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All photo credits: Laura Stupin

Open for business

I never wrote about IDDS, did I?

In 2009, I went to Ghana for the 3rd International Development Design Summit, which is all about designing for people in developing countries, who are traditionally overlooked by companies and industries that design and manufacture products and services.

It's estimated that 90% of all design work today serves 10% of the world's wealthiest people.

IDDS combines a few key principles, such as collaborative and participatory design, where the designers work with their end users to find the best specifications to suit them, and exchange of ideas: IDDS brings together people from many fields (doctors, farmers, mechanics, students, social workers...), countries, and all ages to work on the same problems.

That year, about ten (if I remember correctly) teams came up with ten prototypes of different technologies or products that were appropriate for different people in developing countries. The problem is, we had ten prototypes and very few plans for what we would do with them next. In fact, this happened with the first and second IDDSes as well.

This year, IDDS took place in Fort Collins, Colorado, and focused on developing (business) strategies for the distribution and dissemination of technologies. About ten (ish) teams took ten already-developed or prototype technologies and worked on strategies that would turn them into effective businesses that were financially viable and spread important and useful technologies to people who needed them most.

I was extremely impressed by the final presentations (check them out if you can!) at this IDDS; It was great to see that teams were very sure of themselves and knew exactly what they were going to do over the next five years.

I also got to talk (again) to Paul Polak (founder of IDE), a brilliant and visionary old man with a wicked sense of humour and no respect for anyone at all, who was delighted to hear I would be working with his old friend Bob Nanes at IDE Ghana come January 2011.

Wowee!