You may remember the Yes Men spoof New York Times edition I mentioned earlier. It seems that some people didn’t think it was all that funny.

On November 12, 2008, a group of artists and activists unveiled a brilliant spoof of the New York Times, widely distributed to readers in New York and Los Angeles. This “July 4, 2009” version of the Times — which the real New York Times described as a “Grade-A caper” — boldly announced the end of the Iraq War, the nationalization of major oil conglomerates, the elimination of tuition at public universities, and the indictment of soon-to-be-former president Bush on charges of high treason. The poignant send-up, also available in an online version at www.nytimes-se.com, is a perfect example of parody in the 21st century. It certainly got its fair share of attention.

Could the lawyers be far behind? Not surprisingly, the corporate targets of the parody were not pleased. Now, in what is becoming an all-too-familiar trend, one of those corporations has attempted to shut down the site by putting pressure on what is often the weakest link in the online speech chain: the domain name registrar. Stymied by the First Amendment and other legal impediments, those who don’t appreciate critical commentary and other “objectionable” online content have found intermediaries — providers of indispensable technical services like domain name registration and web hosting — much easier to intimidate.

This time, the complaining (and overreaching) party was the South African diamond conglomerate De Beers, the target of a critical fake ad on the web version of the New York Times spoof announcing that diamond purchases “will enable us to donate a prosthetic for an African whose hand was lost in diamond conflicts.” Miffed by the criticism, De Beers responded not by confronting the authors (whose parody is protected by the First Amendment) but instead by threatening their Swiss-based domain name registrar, Joker.com. De Beers has demanded that Joker.com disable the spoof website’s domain name or face liability for trademark infringement.

Come on guys @ De Beers—have a beer, lighten up & grow a sense of humour. Read the rest of the article at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Is it time to call the wonderful iGTD software project dead? I’m afraid so. Further development seems unlikely at this stage. It’s a shame—it was one of my favourite Mac applications.

The project hasn’t been updated for nearly a year now. There are some forum posts on the subject: Bartek the developer has gone through a rough patch and has been unable to work on the project.

I don’t want to speculate much about the nature of his woes, but I have always wondered about the incredible speed of the updates & upgrades of the application. I deemed it unsustainable for a single person to update an application several times a month. Guess it all became too much for him.

Perhaps it is time to set the project free and allow others to take over? In any case, I wish you well Bartek. You’ve delivered wonderful free software, but it came at a price…

“Hey G, how come you’re a vegetarian?”

Like a lot of vegetarians, I am being asked this question frequently. And more often than not this happens while the inquisitor gorges on a slab of prime rib. Being the good-natured person that I am, I generally do not bite into this particular subject matter too deep during dinner. At that stage I simply politely state that I consider the taste & smell of meat rather repulsive, and that I generally don’t care much for eating anything that offends my nose or upsets my stomach.

More often than not other questions soon follow:

1. Where do you get your protein?
2. You eat chicken, right?
3. Can’t you just pick the meatballs out?
4. What if a monkey made you a sandwich? Would you eat that?

(Answers to these questions further down the page.)

Please note that I have no beef with other people eating meat. Each to their own I say.

Of course the taste issue is an important part of my vegetarianism. But there are other reasons. So for you, my dear inquisitive folks, here’s a list of some of them.

Ethical Issues

• I seek to live in harmony with my environment. Killing is not part of that aim. Respect for other life on this planet is. Unprovoked I see no reason to kill other sentient beings for nutrition when perfectly good vegetarian alternatives are available. Things would be different if I had to depend on hunting for survival, like numerous peoples around the globe still do.
• The manner in which most animals are being farmed & harvested is simply appalling. Personally I would have fewer objections to eating venison or livestock able to roam freely, having lived a good life (that being rarely the case these days). The meat industry appears to have turned into a textbook example of a multi billion dollar system based on rapidly extracting resources and turning them into profit with little regard for the environment. In this game, anything goes to maximise profit.
• Respect for life & death when we do kill. Few people in developed nations have killed an animal themselves these days. Would things be different if people were to kill their dinner at least once in their lifetime. Perhaps. Perhaps not. Would you kill a cow? A goat perhaps? Okay, an easy one: just a chicken will do.

Health Issues

• From a nutritional point of view we don’t need to eat meat or fish to survive or live a healthy life style.
• Among vegetarians there seem to be fewer occurrences of diseases such as bowel & lung cancer, heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis & arthritis.
• Eating vegetarian meals is by and large much safer than a diet that includes meat: I don’t have to worry much about E. coli, mad cow disease, worms and other parasites (to name a few).
• Not eating meat can help keep one’s weight under control.
• In intensive factory farming, the high density of animals increases the risk of livestock diseases. Therefore the animals are being administered vaccinations and large quantities of antibiotics. To maximise profits they may also be fed growth hormones. All these substances will eventually end up on your dinner plate. This could not only put your own health at risk, but that of the entire human population. Why? It has been suggested that such over-consumption may seriously undermine the effectiveness of antibiotics: bacteria are becoming immune to existing varieties, and it’s getting harder to come up with new antibiotics.

Environmental Issues

• Meat consumption has tremendous impact on the world’s resources, ranging from methane emissions, water consumption and clearing of forests for cattle and feed production.
• A few years back the Worldwatch Institute’s State Of The World suggested that if every person in China would eat as much fish as people do in developed nations, there would be no fish left in the oceans within a year.

Social Issues

• Meat consumption in developed nations isn’t particularly good for developing nations: it often results in stock feed monocropping (such as corn) to be used to fatten up livestock in developed nations. This frequently unsustainable way of farming, may damage fragile ecosystems that are unable to handle the pressure to produce high yield crops for prolonged periods. This often results in lasting and serious problems for these nations.

No Pity Pretty Please

• Don’t pity vegetarians for missing out. We’re not. Believe me—really.
• And please don’t prepare meat substitutes for us—there is no need for substitutes. Consider the following: I recently had dinner at a Thai restaurant; the owner kindly had her staff prepare a grain based vegetarian meal for me and went out of her way to ensure it tasted just like… chicken. Yuck!

Further Reading And Resources

• Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser provides an account of the state of factory farming.
• PCB contamination in killer whales. The effect of pollutants in our environment on creatures high up in the food chain. While carcinogenic PCBs have been banned since 1977, they may threaten killer whales for another 30-60 years
• UN report on the serious environmental impact of livestock.
• A few quick picks from forementioned UN report at No Impact Man

Answers

1. Mainly green leaf vegetables, legumes and nuts.
2. Of course not—a chicken is not a vegetable!
3. No thanks. That doesn’t do it for me. I’d rather go hungry.
4. As long as the monkey washed his hands I’d gladly take a banana sandwich from him.

“The Iraq War Has Ended” according to The Yes Men. If you enjoyed the movie by these anti-corporate pranksters, you’ll likely enjoy their latest attempt at bringing some satire on the politcal stage.

They managed to print over 1 million fake copies of The New York Times and distributed them in NYC and LA.

Brilliant way to make the headlines and bring your message across.

The spoof New York Times edition, dated July 4, 2009

Further Reading

• The spoof website that accompanies the paper edition
• The BBC News‘ take on the prank
• The Gaurdian‘s take on the prank
• See how they did it on the Laughing Squid
• The Yes Men on Wikipedia