Fire and Knowledge

I just found out that there are more people in slavery now than at any other time in human history:

In its 400 years, the transatlantic slave trade is estimated to have shipped up to 12 million Africans to various colonies in the West. Free the Slaves estimates that the number of people in slavery today is at least 27 million…. Three out of four slavery victims are women and that half of all modern-day slaves are children.

And if you think it’s just “out there” and not in the US, think again:

Estimates by the US State Department suggest up to 17,500 slaves are brought into the US every year, with 50,000 of those working as prostitutes, farm workers or domestic servants.

According to the CIA, more than 1,000,000 people are enslaved in the US today. Thousands of cases go undetected each year and many are difficult to take to court as it can be difficult to prove force or legal coercion.

At least some of the decline in [political] civility arises from the fact that, from the press’s perspective, civility is boring. Your quote doesn’t run if you say, “I see the other guy’s point of view” or “The issue’s really complicated.” Go on the attack, though, and you can barely fight off the cameras.

—Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope (2006), p. 126

For the broad public at least, I am who the media says I am. I say what they say I say. I become who they say I’ve become.

—Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope (2006), p. 121

The other day I typed “why” on Google Suggest, and the first auto-suggestion was “why did i get married.”

At first I was surprised that the term was so popular and had over a million results. It seemed odd that humans, though admittedly a very strange mammal, could think Google could answer the question of why they got married.

But then I saw there was a movie by that name. A reasonable explanation after all!

An unsanitised history of washing is more interesting than it sounds. I’ve never thought of cleanliness as being inherently cultural until now.

I’ve often thought the nightly news will die a slow death, so of course this caught my eye:

Network newscasts are a holding effort. They are a rearguard action. They are prisoners of demography and cultural shifts that are as irreversible as the physical laws of the universe. Namely: fewer Americans have the time or inclination to watch a half-hour TV newscast at 6:30 in the evening; those who do will ultimately die; those who do not presently are not—unlike the generations before them—developing the habit as they get older. (James Poniewozik, “Life After Katie“)

When you can get more information in 5 minutes scanning CNN.com, why sit in front of a TV for 30 minutes at a specific time? Why scan the channels for weather when you can have all the weather you want in 10 seconds on your cell phone or computer? It’s a dying model.

[N]ot putting cupholders in a car is a serious mistake. I read a couple of years ago that Volvo had to redesign all its cars for the American market for this very reason. Volvo’s engineers had foolishly thought that what buyers were looking for was a reliable engine, side-impact bars, and heated seats, when in fact what they craved was little trays into which they could insert their Slurpees.

—Bill Bryson, I’m a Stranger Here Myself (Broadway Books: 1999), p. 71.

Everywhere, every day, local life is being discomforted, disrupted, endangered, or destroyed by powerful people who live, or who are privileged to think they live, beyond the bad effects of their bad work.

A powerful class of itinerant professional vandals is now pillaging the country and laying it waste. Their vandalism is not called by that name because of its enormous profitability (to some) and the grandeur of its scale. If one wrecks a private home, that is vandalism, but if, to build a nuclear power plant, one destroys good farmland, disrupts a local community, and jeopardizes lives, home, and properties within an area of several thousand square mile, that is industrial progress.

—Wendell Berry, “Higher Education and Home Defense” in Home Economics (1986), p. 50.