Friend (and coworker) Ivan Kanevski got props from the mainstream media last night for his work in creating the non-mainstream presidential candidate chooser, Glassbooth.

Totally rad!

I love this:

When I start seeing rap stars flashing euros instead of U.S. dollars, I know our economy is in trouble.

It strikes me that there is a communicative phenomenon where the messenger is often judged more important than the message.

This first occurred to me consciously a while back with regard to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Though Democrats voted in favor of war (in a show of national unity I suppose), they later came out in public against the war. However because Democrats are stereotyped as being soft on military matters, their subsequent calls to end the occupation fell on deaf ears.

Presumably coming out against the war was seen as predictable or kneejerk on their part. It didn’t convey any information. In binary (or information theory) terms, Democrats were 0s shouting 0s. Not interesting. No (new) information conveyed, except that the message was the same.

On the other hand, each Republican who calls for the end of the war these days is like a 1 changing to a 0. These announcements become major news stories. These events turn the tide against the war. Each 1 that changes to a 0 is more valuable than a whole sea of 0s who’ve been shouting 0 all along. I find this disturbing. When coordinated, it gives a stubborn minority a strange power over the majority.

I see this effect in my personal communication. Let’s say I hold a well-known viewpoint on a given subject. If the people around me are talking about this subject (and know that I hold a strong opinion), I often find that I’ll hold back and not immediately chime in with my viewpoint—even if it happens to align with the general consensus.

This is partly a persuasive technique I think. People with opposing viewpoints tend to dig in their heels (even if presented with copious evidence to the contrary) when the messenger appears to be coming from “the other side”. Especially when that person’s association with the other side is well known.

I find that people are more susceptible to change their opinion if I just hear them out first. I think it’s partly because it relaxes them into thinking I’m on their side. Now granted, in the moment, I’m not consciously thinking all this. Listening just makes good communicative sense. And there are of course times when really listening to someone changes or redirects my own opinions.

But it does make me wonder, for the political health of the country, could people on opposite sides of the aisle please just listen to each other?

After one glass of wine tonight, I’ve decided I hate our two-party political system. If there was one thing I could destroy, it would be the Republican and the Democratic parties. Oh wait, I guess that is two things.

That is all. Carry on.

1. Brita On Tap Filtration System, $30
2. Rubbermaid 2.25qt covered pitcher, $3.41
3. Nalgene 16oz HDPE Narrow-Mouth bottle, $5

Total initial investment: $38.41. Yearly filter cost: ~$60. Drinking guilt-free bottled water: priceless.

So recently I read on Boing Boing:

There have been lots of stories lately about the inefficiency and environmental damages caused by bottled water…You’ll never want to drink Fiji again.

In the post was an excerpt from an article in Fast Company by Charles Fishman entitled Message in a Bottle (which Anton also mused on today in Water, water). This part caught my eye:

In fact, since the plastic for the bottles is shipped to Fiji first, the bottles’ journey is even longer. Half the wholesale cost of Fiji Water is transportation—which is to say, it costs as much to ship Fiji Water across the oceans and truck it to warehouses in the United States than it does to extract the water and bottle it.

Ouch. I could just see Fiji’s sales tanking thanks to Boing Boing’s amplification effect. I too felt my internal value system adjust to avoid bottled water more consciously in the future, though in actuality I purchase very little of it.

As it happens, I was at Trader Joe’s yesterday, and Stephanie picked up a bottle of Australian olive oil. I thought to myself, “Now wait, how is that any different? What about wine? What about anything that ends up in any grocery store?” Someone had to bring it there. Some amount of fossil fuels were burned in that process, whether via container ship, airplane, or truck. Why single out water?

Trader Joe’s sells a lot of water, but I instantly thought of the uber-environmentally and socially conscious Whole Foods. What about the gallons of water they sell? How do they justify it? Luckily I didn’t have to wait for an answer. Charles Fishman interviewed their CEO, John Mackey, in his article. Turns out his thoughts mirrored my own:

“It’s unfair to say bottled water is causing extra plastic in landfills, and it’s using energy transporting it,” he says. “There’s a substitution effect—it’s substituting for juices and Coke and Pepsi.” As for the energy used to transport water from overseas, Mackey says it is no more or less wasteful than the energy used to bring merlot from France or coffee from Ethiopia, raspberries from Chile or iPods from China. “Have we now decided that the use of any fossil fuel is somehow unethical?” Mackey asks. “I don’t think water should be picked on. Why is the iPod okay and the water is not?”

As penance for saying earlier that Northern California is crazy for not having A/C everywhere, I went out to see An Inconvenient Truth at the Rialto with Mark tonight. It was good. I mean, I’d heard it was good, so I pretty much expected it to be.

I didn’t expect the film’s format to be a very polished, if not beautiful “powerpoint” presentation (Keynote actually). I thought it’d be more of a Discovery Channel style strum und drang with Al Gore doing the dramatic narration (a la March of the Penguins) which is maybe why I wasn’t chomping at the bit to go see it.

The movie’s tagline was “by far the most terrifying film you will ever see.” I wasn’t really phased. Maybe it’s my optimism, or maybe, global warming just isn’t news to me. I believe in science. And I’ve been exposed to protecting the environment and recycling since grade school. What is depressing is how out of touch I feel with my government and elected officials, how I don’t feel like they are doing much to protect the health, well-being, and future of individuals over the interests of corporations.

But I want to do something. So my first something is this post, and a link to the movie’s website climatecrisis.net. And a suggestion that you, dear reader, might want to go see “An Inconvenient Truth” if you have the desire. See a matinee showing. If only for the graph that shows the automobile emissions requirements for new cars by country over the next several years. The US is so dead last it’s embarrassing.

Which brings me to my last thought, which is really a message intended for Al Gore and Davis Guggenheim (the film’s director). Since I don’t know how to contact them directly, here’s hoping the blogosphere will carry this suggestion on my behalf:

Once “An Inconvenient Truth” leaves the theaters, rerelease it under a Creative Commons Attribution license. Make it available via BitTorrent, YouTube. Allow people to re-edit it, excerpt it, put clips on their blogs. You may discover that people will translate it, subtitle it, annotate it, mash it up with other films. Allow this work to go farther than the theater.