Cognitive Conga: a blog

Compact fluorescent light bulbs (a.k.a. compact fluorescent lamps, or CFLs) are becoming de rigeur in the UK now, because incandescent bulbs are being phased out but solid-state lighting (which would otherwise be preferable) is still expensive. As a result, increasingly many people in this country find themselves in the position of having to dispose of compact fluorescent light bulbs when those bulbs stop working. Doing this in an environmentally-friendly way isn’t, however, entirely straightforward, because on the one hand the bulbs contain the toxic element mercury and should therefore not be thrown away with general waste, and on the other hand, recycling points which accept CFLs are still few and far between.
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I first heard of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society many years ago at a London gig by Ignite. I was reminded of them when I bought a Propagandhi single about a year ago, and since then, I've taken a peripheral interest in their activities.

In this article, Margaret Visser says, Our culture divides the world into the public and the private. The public is for business, impersonality, contracts, cold reason, politics, officialdom, money and legal obligation. The private is everything the public is not — warm emotional involvement with family and friends, love, the unofficial, the uncalculating.

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The title of this post comes from a phrase taught in the medical profession, the intended interpretation of which is along the lines, given an existing problem, it may be better to do nothing than to do something that risks causing more harm than good. As with intervention by doctors, intervention by police, especially violent intervention - however well-intentioned - has the possibility of being more harmful than helpful. It is important that police officers are aware of this, and that they are imaginitive enough to consider and assess the likely outcomes of the different courses of action available to them when handling an incident.

Despite growing up in England, I'm not fond of many English drinks. The school canteens, vending machines, newsagents, mini-supermarkets and pubs at which, in my youth, I sought refreshment typically offered no healthy options except overpriced still mineral water. The fruit juice was thin and sharply acidic and everything else was carbonated (bad for the teeth, because of carbonic acid), sugary (also, obviously, bad for the teeth - but also very high-GI), loaded with dubious artificial sweeteners like aspartame (laxatives; possible carcinogens; and more's the point, an unnecessary industrial adulterant), or some combination of these. In the US, on the other hand, it was easy to buy fresh drinks with wholly natural ingredients: horchata, for instance, or fruit smoothies. I longed for these to be available in the UK. They're delicious, affordable, hydrating, nutritive, and have, if I'm not mistaken, a lower GI than conventional sugary soft drinks.

There's a lot to be said for Street View. I've wanted something like this to exist ever since I realised that the Encarta '95 globe barely let you zoom in at all. I wanted full zoom on the world! And Google, via Google Maps, Google Earth, and Street View, have pulled this off - finally - to an impressive degree.

Jon Stewart's public dissection of Jim Cramer reminded me of an activity pattern I try to exercise whenever there's an appropriate opportunity. It's a pattern I think of as moving attention upstream. It's something that I feel driven to do on a slightly subconscious level, but I'll try to explain it nonetheless.