Over at Goodreads I published a review of my latest read, Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom. The book is essentially a history of the spread of Christianity across Europe from the division of the Roman Empire in 330 to the reconquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders in 1099. It’s fascinating to see just how much Europe changed to adapt to Christianity and how much Christianity changed to adapt to all of Europe. But there is one thing I forgot to include in my review: the irony that Europe is now the least religious region in the world. In fact, you could even make the argument that, while Christianity became dominant in the 10th and 11th centuries in Europe, it has only survived because of its impressive colonial export during the 16th and 17th centuries. Today throughout Europe churches continue to close due to falling attendance and a lack of priests. Back in 2001 Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster, claimed that Christianity is nearly vanquished in Britain.

In one of the strangest twists of history, it is now up to African priests to save the souls of non-believers in Europe and North America. Trust me, if you would have told this to a priest in 15th century Italy he would have shit himself.

A couple weeks ago John Tierney of the New York Times penned an interesting blog post about the evolution of religion after having read Nicholas Wade’s The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures. (This topic has been in the media a lot this past year thanks to Robert Wright’s The Evolution of God, Christopher Hitchen’s God is not Great, Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, and Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God.)

Wade argues “that people have a genetically based urge to worship, engraved by natural selection in the mind’s neural circuits because of the tremendous advantage religion conferred on early societies.”

It is easier to see from hunter-gatherer societies how religion may have conferred compelling advantages in the struggle for survival. Their rituals emphasize not theology but intense communal dancing that may last through the night. The sustained rhythmic movement induces strong feelings of exaltation and emotional commitment to the group. Rituals also resolve quarrels and patch up the social fabric.

Tierney, noting that pious churches installed pews to discourage dancing during service, wonders if nonbelievers could develop new godless institutions that confer the evolutionary benefits of religion. He even suggests environmentalism as a possible secular, 21st century replacement to religion:

One possibility that occurs to me is a version of environmentalism, but with better music and with rituals that are more elegant than sorting garbage. A Church of Green could provide some of the same moral lessons and communal values as traditional religions, and I suspect it’s no coincidence that green fervor is especially prevalent in European countries where traditional religion is on the decline.

Meanwhile, in an interesting discussion on Bloggingheads.tv, Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus wonder if the transparent nature of the networked age is leading to a new omnipotent moral force. In other words, do we behave decently these days not because we’re afraid of the wrath of god or the afterlife, but rather because we’re concerned about how we will be perceived on Facebook and Twitter?

Did you know that the Canadian coal mining company Teck Resources is planning on increasing its production from 1.5 million to 8 million tons every year at he Ovoot Tolgoi mine, an open-pit coal mine in southern Mongolia? The huge increase in production is sure to have a large environmental impact in Mongolia, but until recently residents of southern Mongolia had no way to make their voices heard. The Mongolian environmental citizen news project Nomad Green is trying to change that by organizing workshops to teach environmental activists how to publish news about changes and threats to their environment. Learn more in Rezwan’s latest feature post, and by visiting Nomad Green itself.

There are also plenty of environmental threats in Madagascar. Patrick from Foko Madagascar tells us about the illegal logging of rosewood trees in eastern Madagascar which are exported to make guitars, billiard cues, furniture and luxury flooring. He tells us that the coup and political crisis that took place earlier this year has created an environment where people are able to evade the legal system. His own hometown of North Mananara has suffered as a result. This is something to think about the next time we buy furniture made out of rosewood. See photos from Patrick’s post, and read the latest from more Malagasy bloggers in Joan’s latest wrap-up.

“Every month when I do my roundups of what happened on the Ceasefire blog that month I think to myself, ‘It can’t get much better than this!’ And it always does.” So writes Ruthie Ackerman in her introduction to a recap of blog posts from Liberians living in Staten Island, New York and Monrovia, Liberia who are part of the Ceasefire Liberia project. Sticking to the environmental theme, make sure not to miss Saki G’s coverage of a Liberian youth group which organized an event to fight against climate change as part of the Road to Copenhagen campaign.

Optimal Energy CEO Kobus Meiring Presenting the Joule Electric Car

Who Killed the Electric Car? is a 2006 documentary which shows the roles of American automobile manufacturers, the oil industry, and the US government in stopping production of electric cars in the US, specifically the General Motors EV1 of the 1990s. That turned out to be bad news, both for General Motors and American consumers, but it also opened up opportunities for electric car manufacturers abroad.

Optimal Energy, a Cape Town-based company, is trying to position itself as a leader in the field with its Joule all-electric vehicle, which was first unveiled two months ago at the 2008 Paris Motor Shop.

We visited Optimal Energy’s offices – scattered throughout an upscale shopping plaza – earlier this week to see a business presentation by CEO Kobus Meiring. He made a convincing case for the Joule, which was summed up nicely by fellow blogger Chris Morrison.

The car itself didn’t really do it for me – I am a much bigger fan of public transportation projects, like South Africa’s 2010 public transport plan, than any mere personal automobile. But what did fascinate me is how Meiring’s career evolution – from developing military helicopters to telescopes to electric cars – is representative of the evolution of South Africa’s engineering field. Now that South Africa is no longer ruled by a White nationalist government focused on strengthening its military, the country’s engineers are able to work on projects and start companies that make a positive social impact.

Going back to my question of trade versus aid, what is the social benefit of investing in a company like Optimal Energy? On the surface such an investment seems promising. Nearly 100 engineers are given jobs to design the cars. South African construction companies are employed to build manufacturing plants. And hundreds of semi-skilled workers are given decent paying jobs to manufacture the vehicles. This largely explains why Optimal Energy’s largest investor is the Department of Science and Technology of the South African government.

But a question by Graeme Addison, a veteran science journalist and one of the organizers of our tour, revealed an obstacle to South Africa’s multicultural integration of engineers and other professionals. In not so many words Addison essentially asked Meiring how many of his engineers are Black South Africans. We didn’t get a figure, but I would assume only a handful. The Black Economic Empowerment program of February 2007 set a quota system which ensures that a certain percentage of managerial and directorial positions are given to non-White South Africans. Addison later told me that this often means that young Black South Africans straight out of university are given managerial positions without ever going through the apprenticeship and training programs which lead to real skills development.

Meiring, however, said there has been a recent increase in the number of Black engineers graduating from universities and thinks that integration in the field of engineering is progressing. Still, I think that so-called philanthro-capitalist foundations could do a great thing by investing in Optimal Energy, but with the clause that they must hire and train more Black and female engineers. Such an investment could derive both a large social and economic return.

And Optimal Energy sure wouldn’t mind the extra capital. A post written last month by Domenick Yoney says the recent financial collapse has stalled the Joule’s launch and that Meiring and company will need to raise another $130 million before they are able to build an assembly plant and get their product on the road.

You can listen to an MP3 of Meiring’s entire presentation on the Brand South Africa Blog.

I’ll be joined by fellow American bloggers Renee Blodgett and Ray Lewis of down the avenue, Zadi Diaz of Epic Fu, Mona Gable from the Huffington Post, John Gartner of Matter Network, Chris Morrison of Venture Beat, Eliane Fioret of Uber Gizmo, and Graeme Wood of The Smart Set and The Atlantic.

Also present will be South African bloggers Simon Barber of Brand South Africa, Nick Haralambous of SA Rocks, and Ndumiso Ngcobo, irreverent author of “Some of My Best Friends are White” (which I hope to pick up and read).

All of our blog posts during the 10-day trip will be aggregated and featured on We Blog the World.

I have finally added a disclosure page to this here blog so that it is completely transparent whenever I get any perks for what I write about. Which begs the question, why is the International Marketing Council of South Africa inviting a bunch of bloggers to come tour and write about their country? According to their website:

Blogging is one of the most powerful forms of communication today. Top bloggers are global opinion-formers, read widely by media and decision makers in the public and private sectors. Because blogging features direct personal opinion, there is no sense of mediated messages – the writer tells it like it is.

They aren’t the only ones who think that bloggers are serious influencers. A couple months ago a few of my friends were kicking it with Bill Clinton the evening before his foundation’s big annual meeting. It has always been standard procedure to call a press conference before such an event to help attract attention, but this time around, one of Clinton’s adviser’s must have convinced him that it was more worthwhile to invite bloggers instead of traditional journalists. Whether this is because bloggers are more likely to repeat talking points instead of asking hard-hitting questions or because some bloggers have actually become more influential than their mainstream counterparts is something I’m still trying to figure out.

Trade Versus Aid

Do I have any problems getting carted around in luxury with the expectation that I will have nice things to write about a country positioning itself to receive more foreign investment? Not so much. First of all, I write what my eyes see not what’s expected of me (which has lost me a few small battles, but I still think it is the way to go). Second, I have no problem with showering some deserved attention on Africa’s first all-electric car or the region’s impressive open source software community. Other topics might be more sensitive – like discussing Soweto’s history without getting into contemporary South African race relations or weighing out the pros and cons of modern mining. But what I am sure about is that the world would not be worse off with some more positive coverage of a country like South Africa.

At TED Africa the main discussion thread could be summed up with three little words: trade versus aid. Many of the attendees argued that development aid is paternalistic, often ends up doing more harm than good (funding corrupt regimes), and creates an unhealthy post-colonial dependence in which only certain communities learn the NGO parlance and therefore benefit from its money. These laptop-toting tech savvy critics argued that rather than giving money away to inefficient development programs, well-meaning foreign governments and philanthropists should be investing in Africa’s up-and-coming entrepreneurs.

The counter-argument is that great ideas don’t always lead to sustainable companies, or even great products. Good accounting, robust marketing, multiple channels of distribution, and efficient business organization are all parts of the picture and they are the skills that development programs try to instill in their participants.

One of my guiding questions throughout the South Africa Blogger’s Roadshow will be, Should the international development community focus its priorities and budgets on traditional USAID-style development programs or should it be investing – through low interest loans – in the kinds of technological and scientific start-ups that we’ll be getting to know on the tour? Also, as a leader in Southern Africa, how can South Africa’s business community spread entrepreneurialism throughout the region without having a negative impact on local cultures, sovereignty, and the environment?

My poor lady friend has come down with something nasty. Fever, cough, dry throat, head ache – the whole package. She’s not the healthiest cat in the litter and every time she gets sick, I’m reminded how lucky I am to have a batting average of one cold a year.

So, while she sleeps and sweats away her sickness, I’ve got about 30 tabs of today’s New York Times, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, and WorldNews.org open in Firefox and I figure I’ll catch try catching up with the world and jotting down some notes here.

An SAT Without Analogies is Like: (A) A Confused Citizenry…

I, like most other Southern Californian teenagers in the early 90′s, was a pretty regular listener to Love Line on KROQ. And like most other SoCal teenagers, I was mildly disappointed when we were told Dr. Drew would have yet another new sidekick, this time a whiny Jewish kid named Adam Corolla. He was no Ricky Rackman we figured, but we’d give him a shot.

Pretty soon though, he started really feeling comfortable, getting into his groove, and in one show he’d spit out like four or five analogies that completely blew you away. And the next show maybe 10 … and never once have I heard him repeat one of his clever analogies. There is no doubt, Adam Corolla is the maestro of the analogy.

I remember also once thinking that, at one point in my life, I wasn’t so bad with the analogy logy myself. For whatever reason though, I eventually either stopped concentrating on analogies or stopped coming up with them. But I do have to agree with this Cohen fellow that some very shameless or very stupid pundits are coming up with wilder and wilder analogies to support their causes … and it almost always has something to do with the Holocaust or Slavery.

Damn this is a good song … a gustito con la vida – how would you translate that? I have no idea, but it’s how I feel. OK, next article.

Dish It Out, Ladies

Good ol’ Maureen Dowd always reads my mind. I had no idea that there was an “in the trade” scuffle going on about female columnists, but she certainly is right that there is a national shortage. Make that international shortage. Here in Mexico it’s even worse. I’ve been reading El Norte most mornings and if there is ever an Op-Ed piece by a woman it is always about something church or community related. I’ve not once seen a woman write an opinion piece about politics since I’ve been down here. It’s tempting to assume that the El Norte editors are discriminatory and keeping sharp minded female pundits off the editorial page, but when I look throughout the Monterrey blogosphere, the women seem to always stay away from politics. Is this something cultural or has the technology just not fallen into the right hands yet?

Chandrasutra recently posted an extensive (but not close to complete) list of well known female political bloggers. In my opinion, those bloggers should get together and form an action network to, as Dowd says, “find and nurture” more female political bloggers around the world.

New Signs on the Arab Street

Mister Thomas Friedman and his never ending free trade propaganda. He’s right … the Egyptian protests were news worthy items. He’s also right that free trade agreements encourage participation and cooperation amongst a specific class (the business class) across borders. He’s even right that free trade usually gives a boost to the middle class. There’s no greater example of all of this than right here in Monterrey. This is a first world city in a third world country and the reason it has done so well is because it’s situated itself as Mexico’s official trade post within NAFTA. The business class here in Monterrey (those managers and executives I teach English to each week) is aware of NAFTA’s impact and is just as pro-free-trade as Friedman.

But very few of them have traveled to Chiapas or even Vera Cruz to see the hardships endured by coffee and sugar farmers because the technology of their great grandparents can’t compete in a global marketplace (especially with hypocritical U.S. subsidies) And I assume the same is true in Egypt – that in addition to those angry for being left out of the free trade zones, there are those who are even angrier because of the very existence of free trade.

Don’t call me a protectionist though. I’m all for efficiency and all for cross-border cooperation. But if you’re going to take jobs away from the agricultural sector, you need to train those people so that they’re not left jobless to increase profits of investment companies in New York and Monterrey. Maybe Paul can enlighten us on Egyptian free trade.

Partisans Gear Up for High Court Fight Ahead

Association President John Engler said that for too long social and civil rights issues have defined Supreme Court nomination battles, even as economic cases fill most of the court’s docket. “I think the president framed the issue right during the campaign,” Engler said. “We should have justices who interpret the law, not make it.”

That’s an appealing, but misleading statement. I’m no supreme court expert here, but maybe Abo and DD can help me out since they so enjoy surfing through legalese. When has the supreme court ever actually made a law. What Engler is really implying here is that when the Supreme Court interprets a law conservatively that they are doing just that, interpreting. But when they interpret a law liberally, they are making laws themselves.

Anyway, conservatives certainly seem to be ready to pounce once a vacancy is made. I wonder if HP has one of those cards folded up in his wallet.

Shock the Casbah, Rock the French (and Vice Versa)

postmodern North African dance-punk

That’s a genre I’ll definitely have a listen to. (By the way, I’m listening to that City of God soundtrack right now and it’s really good – Afro-Brazilian-electro-funk is what I’ll call it. Damn … this track is incredible – make sure to check out track number 14 if you download/buy the album. You know, sometimes I get upset with myself for setting down the guitar. In the entire past year I’ve probably played about 30 minutes whereas two years before I probably averaged at least an hour a day.

Jihadists Take a Stand on the Web

Hmmm, Ethan Zuckerman pretty much sums up my thoughts about this article here:

And, while there’s no doubt that a robust, distributed, potentially encrypted communications medium is a powerful tool for terror, it’s my contention – and hope – that it’s an even more powerful tool for personal connection, storytelling and international understanding, all of which are longterm ways to attack terrorism and increase security.

Zuckerman also has an interesting post on Kofi Annan’s speech at the Madrid Meeting on Terrorism.

QUESTIONS FOR CHARLIE JARVIS: AARP’s Antagonist

We’re talking about TV, radio, Internet ads, large-scale direct mail and e-mail and telephone alerts. And the telephone alerts, for example, are extraordinarily inexpensive. I can call every household in South Dakota in just four hours. And it would cost only $10,000.

The New York Times Magazine interviews are so good. Takes about two minutes to read and well worth it. I have to admit, I find witty conservatives endearing. There are so few of them.

Saturday Night Lite

Brooks is almost always referred to as one of the key highbrow mouthpieces for the Neo-Con movement. He certainly does use big words (pusillanimous and an allusion to TS Elliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock), but what I find frightening is how often I agree with him.

I blame the titans of corporatism. Fitness is now the prime marker of capitalist machismo, so the higher reaches of corporate America are filled with tightly calved Blackberries in human form, who believe that extremism in pursuit of moderation is no vice. They have become such obsessive time-maximizers that all evening, in what used to be known as social life, they keep an eye on the need to be up, fit and early, for the next day’s productivity marathon.

I once took a medical anthropology class at UCSD with some 80 year old sex freak named Lola Ross. She was probably the wittiest professor I had in college, but also god damn competent and respected in her field. (still today, well into her 80′s she’s still teaching Human Sexuality on campus) Anyway, on our last day of class before our final I assumed we’d have an intense review and she’d give one of her witty, well versed, lectures tying it all together. But instead she went on for about 30 minutes warning us to never let ourselves get addicted to stress.

It seemed like a strange warning coming from a woman who would go off on tangents about orgasms for 30 minutes while lecturing about indigenous Guatemalan healing practices. But then about a year later, driving from one part time job to another, drinking my fourth cup of coffee, half listening to NPR, half thinking about the midterm I had that same night, which I would take after a fifth cup of coffee and then go to the gym to work out obsessively … and all of a sudden it hit me, holy shit, I’m completely addicted to this. I don’t even know how to stop. I’ve completely forgotten how to relax.

I still let myself get sucked back into it, but I think I’m more vigilant now about forcing myself to lay on the grass and do nothing for a day. Which is today.

‘I Have a Nightmare’

This is true with every movement – from environmentalism to feminism to animal rights – the extremists almost always do the movement more harm than good. There is a post sitting in my drafts section which deals with Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus’s essay, The Death of Environmentalism as well as what is often dubbed as the “Rise of the Creative Class,” but it’s not quite finished and I don’t know when it will be.

Apple Can Demand Names of Bloggers, Judge Says

Apple is absolutely killing its reputation with this case. Especially amongst the A-List Blogger crowd which has done so much to push Apple’s image these past few years despite practices which are often just as protectionist as Microsoft.

I have to admit, I want a powerbook just as badly as the next 20-something geeky weblogger because they’re so damn elegant, but I would never call myself an Apple enthusiast until they start breaking the silo mentality.

The Two Faces of Rising China

Everyone’s predicting China VS Taiwan to be the major international affairs conflict of the 21^st century. One thing for certain is a major, international, transparent diplomacy effort should begin as soon as possible to avert war at all costs. This is an example of where soft power (visa quotas, trade agreements, etc.) should be used to encourage peace treaties.

Battle Splits Conservative Magazine

This seems much less an ideological debate than a fight for publishing power. Anyway, Fukuyama’s new journal looks like it might be interesting:

In an interview, Mr. Fukuyama said that, to carry on the debate about the war in Iraq and American foreign policy, he now planned to start another journal, The American Interest, with three others from the National Interest board: Zbigniew Brzezinski, a liberal and President Carter’s former national security adviser; Eliot A. Cohen, a military scholar and neoconservative, and Josef Joffe, a leading German editor.

For Young Artists, All Roads Now Lead to a Happening Berlin

Maybe by 2001 Prague was already out of fashion, but I do remember a certain cultural and creative buzz about the city while Emily and I spent three weeks there in the late summer. If you were an aspiring artist, DJ, writer, or self-appointed young philosopher seeking cheap beer, good jazz, and meaningful late night conversation, Prague seemed like the place to be. Hemmingway’s Paris. And now it seems like Berlin is the spot. I never made it to Berlin during that short week I was in Germany, but it’s always called my attention. And now that I have a couple acquaintances in the city, hopefully I’ll pay it a visit before too long.

Latin America’s Forbidden Debates

Wow. This peace really sums up a lot of my political reflections these past few weeks here in Monterrey. Creating policy which encourages production without leading to an increased concentration of wealth is tough, but it needs to be done. And until it is, how it will be needs to be debated vigorously.

Making Old Age Less Safe

Moreover, Bush’s proposals won’t fix social security – unless they are accompanied by drastic benefit cuts. For how could they? He proposes diverting almost a third of the Social Security tax to private accounts. That means less money coming in. If benefits are not reduced, the gap between receipts and expenditures will increase. One doesn’t need a Nobel Prize to figure that out.

If there was a time to privatize social security (which I am neither completely for nor against – I think it would be an interesting experiment), this certainly is not it.

Political Evolution

I’m impressed. This is the first thing I’ve read of George A. Papandreou, but I’m going to keep my eyes out for more. Reminds me of a response Ray Bradbury once gave when asked what makes him angry:

It makes me angry when people stop thinking. When they become part of a true believing society. I hate political people. I don’t like knee-jerk Democrats or knee-jerk Republicans. I hate people who think politically, which means they don’t think at all. If you belong to a political party, you stop thinking. I don’t believe in playing politics. Just live your life and see what happens. But you can’t take your advice from communists or fascists or Democrats or Republicans or Catholics or Baptists or anyone who is a true believer. Go your own way.