Thought Protein: The Empty Calories of Smug Policies

Committed Environmentalists generally prefer as friends the people who care deeply about extinction, sustainability, and the environment, strongly over those that don't care.

If you are truly passionate, however, you must also strive to think critically and deeper than slogans and groupthink.

If thinking critically is equated to 'criticism', social popularity takes a hit.

I often hear the argument that a popular message is important to momentum, which is valuable to policy change. However, if popularity is measured with a small smug group and not broad swath of humanity, it quickly sours into useless moral licensing and posed indignation.

The worst possible outcome is a poorly tested 'cure' which has negative environmental outcomes, increases costs on others, and which dissuades a democracy from making other regulations and changes. Many voters have a justifiable resistance to entrusting Authority To The Smug.

Revolution Number Nine: Apple, Google, Taiwan, Korea...

From Digitimes:

4Q12 trends in the Greater China touch panel industry

In the global touch panel market, handset applications will account for the highest proportion of shipments at 76.2% in 2012. In second-half 2012, the main change in the handset touch screen market is the release of Apple's iPhone 5 that uses in-cell touch screen technology. The supply chain for Apple's panels will be shifted from Taiwan-based panel makers to Japan and Korea- based ones, which will cause shipments for panels used in handsets to decrease for Taiwan-based panel makers from 41.3% in first-quarter 2012 to 26.9% in fourth-quarter 2012. Additionally, China-based panel makers will benefit from low-priced handsets in China. Due to such handsets having strict cost requirements, they will be beneficial for China-based touch screen makers. This will allow the makers' shipments of touch panels used in handsets to increase from 32.7% in first-quarter 2012 to 39.4% in fourth-quarter 2012.

This is about the split between Taiwan Display Engineers and the "old rivalry" between South Korea and Japan.  Apple will probably try to keep developing more expensive touch displays with some micro-improvement.  They will try to use Apple software to make sure people use it.  It was the Apple way of the 1990s, to shun "cheap" PC-clone manufacturers which manufacture for the "Good Enough Market".

Happy Loving Day 2012: Right to Share Lives

This is a terrific website, set up to celebrate the outcome of the Loving Case of 1967.  I wrote about the Loving case on Valentine's day.

Don't have time to write much more about it today.   Mr. and Ms. Loving were a real couple who fought for their right to marry regardless of race.

This pertains to Fair Trade Recycling very simply.  The case made in defense of the Virginia law banning their marriage was based on statistics and fear.   They tried to justify the ban on interracial marriage with horrible anecdotes about all the things that can go wrong.

That is how the backers of HR2284 describe my trade with Las Chicas Bravas, refurbishers in southeast Asia, and geeks in Africa.   Because it might go wrong, I should be banned from doing business there.

So we ban Peace Corps volunteers from starting small businesses aimed at proper recycling, repair and refurbishment in the countries they lived in.  Perfect thinking.  It helps you to imagine the attitudes of the people, long passed away, who argued against women's suffrage, argued against voting by non-land-owners, who argued against popular democracy.

We are lucky to be arguing about fair trade recycling, at least from our side of the ocean.  The people being accused of being primitive idiots and having their containers of computers seized by dictators in Africa - not so much.  A ban on the export of used computers, as "e-waste", is based on what someone else is accused of doing, not what we are doing, and not even what most exporters are doing.  The right to share my life with people who repair and recycle computers in countries which need it is not something EPA or Congress or Vermont ANR should attempt to infringe on based on photos of black children taken at landfills.

Spotlight: Pakistan Computer Association

From your keyboard to God's eyes.  Munawar Iqbal, the President of the Pakistan Computer Association, successfully defends against and reverses the "ban on used computer imports" initially attempted by Pakistan Government.

Bravo to Pakistan Computer Association for successfully, thoughtfully, overturning the image of "primitive wire burning" be documenting the baby being thrown out with the bathwater.  This should be the position of other democracies, such as Egypt, India, Indonesia, Malaysia.  Recognize your geeks, embrace them, they are your future.

Read the PAC statement by Hina Mahgul Rind

KARACHI: The Computer importers, dealers, and representative body of IT education institutes have rejected the proposed ban on import of used computers and paraphernalia, asserting that it will deprive IT institutes and students from acquiring cheap equipment. The chief executive of local computer assembling firm said that they don’t have any issue with import of used computers as the market was divided into various segment with each catering to its targeted clientele. The Pakistan Computer Association (PCA) General Secretary Arshad Janjua while talking to The News said that PCA rejected the proposed ban on the import of used computers and IT accessories being considered at ministry of information technology, which he claimed, was on behest of some vested interest groups. Janjua said that the reason given to ban import of used computers that it is an environmental hazard and it is adding more pollution in the environment. There are thousands of things, which are dangerous to health and environment and generating pollution but nothing is being done to control them. Only to ban the import of used computers is a conspiracy of some vested interest group only to benefit the multinational companies dealing in new computers. The move would take computers out of the range of students and affect livelihood of thousands of vendors dealing in used computers.