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Richard Stallman's Political Notes

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Dangerous diseases

mercredi 5 mars 2014 à 13:00

In some states, so many parents reject vaccinations for their children that it puts them at risk of dangerous disease.

Threat to the Great Barrier Reef

mercredi 5 mars 2014 à 13:00

The Australian government uses falsehoods to defend its decision to damage the Great Barrier Reef for a new coal terminal.

The big threat to the Great Barrier Reef is the CO2 that the coal will release into the atmosphere. CO2 dissolves in the ocean and makes it more acidic. This and the higher temperature both kill coral. In a twisted way, this is rational. If you assume that coal is going to be burned, the Great Barrier Reef is toast and there's no use protecting it. (This is the same assumption that the US State Department used to disregard the harm that the Keystone XL pipeline is going to do.)

This is tantamount to assuming that billions of humans and millions of species are going to be wiped out. The temperature will keep rising (from CO2 already in the atmosphere, methane released from melting permafrost, etc.) long after civilization is no longer functioning sufficiently to transport coal from Australia to China.

Here are some other ways that global heating threatens extinction.

If the heating took place across a period of millennia, organisms might adapt to it. If so much land were not occupied by humans and their farms, organisms might move to new places to find the conditions they need. But this can't happen now.

Recent pipeline spills raise concern for the Great Lakes

mercredi 5 mars 2014 à 13:00

Recent pipeline spills have made people aware that underwater oil pipelines carrying corrosive tar sands oil could pollute the Great Lakes.

Can we believe the claim that these pipelines have never leaked? How would they know? If the pipelines ran across the bridge, leaks would be visible. Putting the pipelines underwater allows leaks to go unnoticed. They are now planning to use robots to inspect the pipelines 4 times a year. That means 90 days between inspections. I suppose that until now inspections have been even more infrequent.

App designed to help people pretend to pay attention to other people

mercredi 5 mars 2014 à 13:00

Broapp is designed to help people pretend to pay attention to other people while not really doing so.

I don't think there would be anything wrong with using something comparable to Broapp if you admitted that's what you were doing. The nasty aspect is that it's intended for pretending.

This is, however, disregarding all the things that are unjust about the technology it depends on. For instance, if it is obtained from an app store, then it is obtained with nonfree software. It probably is nonfree software.

Students suspended for not ratting on those who cheered for Pakistan's cricket team

mercredi 5 mars 2014 à 13:00

A university in India suspended all its Kashmiri students for not ratting on some of them who cheered for Pakistan's team in a cricket game.

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