Showing posts with label waste. Show all posts
Showing posts with label waste. Show all posts

Friday, March 18, 2011

The Lightbulb Conspiracy


New World Notes News
Vol. 4, Nos. 12 & 13 -- March 18, 2011

This fortnight in New World Notes, radio programs #159 & 160, March 22 & 29, 2011

The Lightbulb Conspiracy

In brief

A 2-part radio adaptation of an interesting documentary film. It's about a 20th-century innovation in product design: "planned obsolescence." That is, about consumer products designed to fail early so that another must be purchased--and about the bad effects on our lives and on the environment of this wasteful strategy.

Topics include the international lightbulb cartel ("Phoebus"), which agreed to greatly reduce the service lives of bulbs, . . . nylon stockings, originally nearly indestructable then intentionally made flimsy by DuPont, . . . the original ($400) iPod, with a soldered-in battery designed to fail early (which the user could not replace and Apple would not replace), . . . the Epson InkJet printer, which has a chip that makes the unit stop working after a set number of copies, . . . and other outrages.

Plus (in Part 2) the environmental effects in developing countries of the electronic waste we dump there. And we'll meet some engineers and other crusaders who are trying to produce products that are environmentally friendly, long-lasting, and easily recycled.

Part Two (NWN #160) also includes Edition # 2 of The Book Report. This week Ken reviews Russ Baker's good work of investigative journalism on the Bush dynasty, Family of Secrets. Fascinating revelation: Nixon appears to have been innocent of "Watergate"--& framed by G.H.W. Bush (Chairman, Republican National Committee) and other oilmen.

1959 Dodge Custom Royal Lancer. Changes in design alone can lead consumers to replace a product before the end of its service life--another type of planned obsolescence. Click to enlarge.

Notes, credits, & links

The original film was directed by Norway's Cosima Dannoritzer. Most of this radio adaptation was produced by Robin Upton. Robin's contributions include translating the film's spoken Spanish, French, and German into English for overdub. (In his copy of the film, the subtitles are in Norwegian!) Robin previously broadcast his adaptation on his radio show, Unwelcome Guests . I have condensed and slightly rearranged Robin's adaptation to fit the half-hour format of New World Notes.
Fun fact: In the Livermore (CA) firehouse is a lightbulb (above) that has been burning continuously since 1901--for 110 years. (They don't make 'em like they used to!) Check out the latest Webcam photos. By the way, their first Webcam lasted all of 3 years before breaking; they're now on their second.

A free software fix for the Epson InkJet printer is described in Part 2 (NWN #160). No, it's not from Epson.

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "gun") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford.

You can listen to any installment of New World Notes online or else download it (as an mp3 audio file) for later listening. The show is archived at both radio4all.net and (from #90 onwards) The Internet Archive. Either link should get you a reverse-chrono listing of available installments. Or browse the show's Web site: Each installment has a page, and each page has links to the recorded audio.

Series overview: Political and social commentary in a variety of genres. Exploring the gap between what we want ... and what they're trying to make us settle for.

Above: Epson's InkJet printer (Model C62). A Doomsday chip inside InkJet printers makes them stop working after a certain number of copies. You can get them working again with some free software (see above). Below: One result of planned obsolescence: mountains of waste, very little of which can be recycled. For a nice photo-essay on the disposal of "e-waste" in (or "onto") a Chinese town--from which essay this photo is taken--see here: http://www.mygreenaustralia.com/2009/12/e-waste-in-guiyu/

Pro bono

We heard some of independent journalist Anne McClintock's fine reporting on the Gulf disaster back in October. Anne has recently published a nice first-hand report on the popular rebellion in Madison, Wisconsin, complete with a 20-photo "slideshow" taken by herself. The slide show is at the bottom of the page. Click on the image to advance to the next slide.

Coming soon (Tuesday air debut date shown)

  • April 5 & 12 -- Renegades (2 parts)
Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):



A-Infos Radio Project http://www.radio4all.net


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Saturday, October 17, 2009

Can WE Save the Environment?

Listen to or download this radio program now (192 kbps HiFi -- 41 MB)
Listen to or download this radio program now (40 kbps MedFi -- 8.5 MB)
List all . . . and listen to or download any . . . installments

This week in New World Notes, radio program #85, Tuesday, October 20:

Can We Save
the Environment?

Realizing that no leadership on environmental crises will come from our political "leaders," ordinary Americans have begun making changes on their own. But what to do?

The show explores several approaches people are taking and advocating--including bicycling, recycling tap water, modifying everyday behavior, and raising chickens ... then reads Derrick Jensen's essay on why only political action will make any difference at all ... and ends by advocating all of the above.

Bucky Buckaw (Robert McMinn) & friend

Credit where due

Thanks to producers Joseph C. McGuire ("Everyday Environmentalist") and Robert McMinn ("Bucky Buckaw's Backyard Chicken Broadcast") for audio rebroadcast here. Produced for WWUH-FM, a community service of the University of Hartford, West Hartford, CT.

Derrick Jensen

This week's music: James McMurtry, God Bless America

Coming soon -- Tuesday debut dates on WWUH shown:

  • October 27 -- Michael Parenti interview *
  • November 3 -- Resisting War: Dahr Jamail in Hartford (9-20-2009)


Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):

Dr. Michael Parenti (plaid shirt)

* Footnote:

A voice frequently heard on New World Notes--Michael Parenti's--can be heard live and in-person, at the University of Hartford at 7:30 PM on Wednesday, November 4. The acclaimed and popular political scientist and political analyst will speak on "Civil Liberties and Economic Democracy," in Wilde Auditorium of the University's Harry Jack Gray Center.

Admission is free, but tickets/reservations are required. To reserve your free ticket, call the University Box Office at (860) 768-4228, or toll-free at 800-274-8587.

I'll be there recording the talk (in the control room at the rear of the auditorium)--so please look me up and say hi. I'll be glad to see you again or else make your acquaintance! (I'm the chubby, bearded guy in his late 50s.)

Catch my recent conversation with Michael Parenti on next week's New World Notes.



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Wednesday, January 14, 2009

The Story of STUFF


Volume 2, Number 3 -- January 20, 2009

This week in New World Notes, #48 -- January 20 & 23:


Apart from the speaker's voice, this is great radio! I know: we're getting pretty close to, "Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?" But hear me out.

Annie Leonard is a serious person; a good researcher, writer, and editor; and a talented filmmaker. On-screen she's dressed and made-up comfortably and very plainly, with only a smidgeon of conventional femininity--as though she planned to go out back and dig up the garden as soon as filming was over
.
But her voice! It's the cutesy, squeaky, faux-kindergarten-teacher style: high-pitched, with too great a range of intonation. She's the lady on the supermarket PA system, cooing about how your cat will love Acme-brand Kitty Treats . . . and you! But speaking twice as fast. Melanie Griffith on amphetamines. (Shirley Temple, for you old-timers.)

But don't touch that dial! Two minutes into her talk, the voice was bothering me much less. Three minutes in, I stopped noticing entirely. What she was saying was a brilliant, cogent synthesis of politics, science, and economics. She was explaining--clearly, persuasively, and in ways almost anyone could understand--why our globalized system of production, consumption, and disposal is bad news for almost everybody everywhere and also completely unsustainable.

Let's go back a few steps. Leonard produced a 20-some-minute video called The Story of STUFF. It's available, free, on the Internet. The visuals alternate between her (speaking to the camera/viewer) and some animated stick-figures drawn in pencil. This was the easiest video in the world to adapt for radio, since the heart and soul of the work are Leonard's spoken words. Though, I hafta admit, the stick-figures are awfully cute.


Auld acquaintance and now acclaimed Lefty folk-singer Anne Feeney turned me on to the video. Thanks, Anne! Later I discovered that the Unwelcome Guests Collective (http://www.unwelcomeguests.org/) had already broadcast the piece on their nationally-distributed radio program. Well, if you live in southern New England, you may have missed it, so here's another chance.

I still have no idea why God gave the world Melanie Griffith. I should check the Book of Job for clues. But Annie Leonard's contribution to the universe is easier to discern. Everyone--especially every American--should either see her video or else listen to a fine radio adaptation of it, such as . . . well, modesty forbids. . . .


This week's music:
  • Chumbawamba, The Good Ship Lifestyle
  • Intro: Warren Zevon with Something Happens, Werewolves of London

Catch New World Notes . . .


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