Archive for category Ethics
Project 10 to the 100th
Posted by Michael Opperman in Consumption, Economy, Environment, Ethics, Google, Solutions on October 6, 2009
A call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible. Voting ends October 8, 2009.
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More on Newsweek’s Green Corporate Rankings (thanks to Joel Makower)
Posted by Michael Opperman in Business Models, Consumption, Economy, Environment, Ethics on September 22, 2009
“The Newsweek rankings assess the S&P 500 — the 500 largest publicly held companies that trade on either the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ, the two largest American stock markets — on three metrics:
1) an “environmental impact score,” based on more than 700 metrics, compiled by Trucost, a leading provider of data and analysis on company emissions and natural resource use;
2) a “green policies score,” an analysis of corporate policies and initiatives by KLD Research & Analytics, one of the pioneers in socially responsible investing research; and
3) a “reputation survey score” resulting from a survey of CEOs, corporate environmental officers, and academics conducted by CorporateRegister.com, an online directory of company-issued CSR, sustainability, and environment reports from around the world.
Each company’s score, and thus its ranking, was based on a weighted average of those three components: 45% for the impact score, 45% for the policies score, and 10% for the reputation score.”
Binyavanga Wainaina/District 9
Posted by Michael Opperman in Ethics, Kenya, Nigeria, Nonfiction, Politics on August 31, 2009
Rebroadcast of 2008 interview. Wainaina is, as usual, provocative and candid.
From his Granta article: How to Write About Africa:
“Always use the word ‘Africa’ or ‘Darkness’ or ‘Safari’ in your title. Subtitles may include the words ‘Zanzibar’, ‘Masai’, ‘Zulu’, ‘Zambezi’, ‘Congo’, ‘Nile’, ‘Big’, ‘Sky’, ‘Shadow’, ‘Drum’, ‘Sun’ or ‘Bygone’. Also useful are words such as ‘Guerrillas’, ‘Timeless’, ‘Primordial’ and ‘Tribal’. Note that ‘People’ means Africans who are not black, while ‘The People’ means black Africans.”
I listened to the interview after watching the troubling movie District 9, set in JHB, South Africa – an unrelenting study of colonialism, refugee-status, and class via genre film. I doubt the Nigerian tourism bureau is satisfied with the depiction of their nationals in the movie.
Cartoon Network Resignation
Posted by Michael Opperman in Advertising, Cartoon Network, Ethics, Guerilla on February 12, 2007
Jim Samples, GM of the Cartoon Network, resigned on Friday saying he ” felt compelled to step down, effective immediately, in recognition of the gravity of the situation that occurred under my watch.” This seems a sad result for someone who has been part of the Cartoon Network’s steady growth for the past 13 years. The act is noble, but I would be surprised if he had anything at all to do with the Boston guerilla stunt.
Some have called the campaign economical, but it hasn’t “translate[d] into much of a marketing boost for the show the network was trying to promote. The cartoon averaged 386,000 viewers last week among its targeted demographic of 18-to-24-year-olds, according to Nielsen Media Research. The previous week, the show averaged a virtually identical 380,000 among young viewers.” (New York Times)
Castranova or Bust
Posted by Michael Opperman in Ethics, Gaming, Virtual Economies on February 8, 2007
There are colleagues of mine that are likely enervated by my mention of Edward Castranova. The visionary academic explores the current contigencies of virtual economies, as well as predicts what they might mean. In a culture where someone buys a virtual space station for $100,000 with the calculated (and realistic) intention of subdividing it and making $2.4 million, we have to reckon with the cash on the barrel realities of these ‘virtual’ economies.
As Castranova points out, “economics is loosely defined as choice under scarcity.” And the only games that gain traction in the marketplace are those that effectively enforce scarcity and require struggle for success. This issue of scarcity driving value has come up repeatedly in the short history of videogaming. The makers and ‘owners’ Habitat, Ultima Online, Shadowbane, and EverQuest have all had to resolve user hacking/shortcuts/ingenuity that threatened the in-game scarcity that drives game play. With the ever increasing market for virtual goods that pay in real green, there are more concerns about regulation. Is Sarbanes-Oxley about to impact these economies? Will there be lawsuits for insider trading, deliberate inflations/deflations, etc? With millions of dollars at stake, this is not Pong or the now innocent-seeming goal of beating a big monkey.
Walmart
Posted by Michael Opperman in Ethics, Retail on January 9, 2007
Walmart has launched an ad campaign to change its perception.
Another approach is to simply change. There are a number of expressions for what Walmart is doing – the most effective talks about polishing something that resists polishing.