[LINK] Can of Worms - Was - Another phone tracking story

Tue Apr 26 11:23:35 AEST 2011

> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Jan Whitaker
> Sent: Monday, 25 April 2011 10:39 PM
> To: link at mailman.anu.edu.au
> Subject: Re: [LINK] Another phone tracking story
> 
> 
> At 12:43 PM 25/04/2011, Steven Clark wrote:
> 
> >we don't get to choose between privacy and convenience. 
> convenience is 
> >what is on offer, privacy is an afterthought - and increasingly one 
> >that's more of a marketing positional 'configuration option' than a 
> >serious architectural - more symbolic than substantial.
> >
> >casting privacy as some kind of 'consumer choice' issue 
> about 'sharing 
> >data' sidelines privacy as something that only prudes and paranoids 
> >bleat about ... there is far, far too much money to be 
> 'made' through 
> >aggregation and manipulation of data about 'consumers' for 
> any serious 
> >corporation to blithely pass over.
> 
> I can't put my finger on what triggered this thought, but doesn't 
> this remind you of the tobacco company executives standing before 
> various legislatures and saying tobacco doesn't cause cancer? That 
> smokers should be given a choice? All that is despite the fact of the 
> additives they put into their products to make them even more 
> addictive. Does that equate to 'convenience'?

Consumer Choice. An interesting concept. This is the topic that Link is
actually about.
Education of the masses through crowd sourcing information so never
again can corporations 
mislead millions for the sake of a few cents in share dividend payouts.

Mayhap the GFC was the tipping point for Truth and Honesty to be able
rise from the Phoenix Shell game  laughingly referred to as our stock
markets. [10]

Smoking
----------
In the last century Doctors were used to endorse cigarettes as "healthy"
in billboard advertising.[9]
And young women were urged to "Reach for a Lucky rather than a
sweet".[8]

Yet already there were naysayers [1915 anti-smoking billboard] [6]

By the seventies we were bombarded with the Cigarette healthy lifestyle
info;

Quote/ [Ref [7]]
COMMERICAL VOICEOVER: The clean cigarette that's kind to your throat.
Because the filter's right, the flavour's right.
RICK BOLZAN: Advertising is all about telling lies. If it tastes a bit
awful, they say it tastes nice or it tastes fantastic.
COMMERCIAL VOICEOVER: She'd packed a lunch, and did I eat! Now, a
cigarette would be a treat. 
/Quote

These days, the Australian Government has bravely attacked these
cancer/respiratory disease incubating corporations and future
generations will discover how "uncool" smoking is, which will in fact
save billions in Health costs. 

Food
--------
Fructose is clearly labelled on our foods.
Yet long-term fructose ingestion clearly causes liver dysfunction and
eventual probable diabetes.[1]
The consumer has the choice.
What the consumer lacks is the knowledge.

The most extreme example I could offer is Nauru[2]. With 1.6 per cent
per annum annual incidence of noninsulin-dependent diabetes increase!
[3] ABC Video & [11] Paper

Quote/  From: [4] 
Today, according to Zimmet, the diabetes rate in Nauru is 40-45%. "It's
a disaster," he says. "Type 2 diabetes used to be something we saw
mainly in people over 55. Now children are getting it. In Nauru and
other Pacific islands, we're seeing 10-year-olds with type 2
diabetes-kids who by the time they hit their 20s may have developed any
of the complications, including heart disease." 
/Quote

Yet how many of us read the labels in Supermarkets... That tiny tiny
writing that almost needs a 100x oil immersion ocular apparatus to see
that this ____ contains:

Quote/ [From: Australian and New Zealand Food Additives Codes -
Numerical List [5]]
Colour. 100 - 181
Preservative, colour fixative, acidity regulator. 200 - 297
Antioxidant, anti-caking, acidity regulator, humectant. 300 - 385
Emulsifier, thickener, stabiliser, gelling agents. 400 - 492
Anti-caking, foaming, firming, gelling, bulking agents . 500 - 586
Flavour enhancer . 620 - 641
Sweetener, humectant, thickener, stabiliser . 900a - 968
Enzyme, thickener, stabiliser, humectant. 1001 - 1521
/Quote

(Linkers, don't read the list and then cross reference the contents with
academic conclusions thereon - 
it WILL stop you shopping at supermarkets).

We who have access to all this information don't really know what's in
our foods or the long term effects.

E.g.: 1 in 130 persons in Australia are diagnosed as Coleac suffers
(wheat intolerance).

I, unfortunately discovered this about myself recently. Along with an
intolerance for wheat, 
comes a lactose intolerance and the resultant damage to the ozone layer
from the sudden explosive 
unwanted emissions.

The unfortunate statistic is that most Coleac suffers are never
diagnosed. (Hint... dry flaky elbow skin)

My shopping now takes three times as long, accompanied with a magnifying
glass and a list of 221, 330, 416 etc etc.

Linkers, it's amazing how many foodstuffs have wheat in them. Soy sauce,
jelly babies, potato chips (yep, the stuff that 
adheres the salt and flavour to the chip is wheat based.) 

So what chance do us future diabetics sorry, consumers, really have ?

I am starting to understand the reasoning behind the class actions
against fast food companies.

The Internet is a leveller, allowing young and old to band together
against the evil aspects of corporatism. 
We, the baby boomers created this corporatism and consequently we will
be extinguished early because of it.

The next generations have the benefit of the Internet and the systems we
are developing to ensure that the Internet remains unfettered,
unfiltered and becomes ubiquitously peer to peer to continue to offer
consumers knowledge about their consumer choices.

The systems ? Well Wiki & Goggle would appear to be the obvious winners,
yet I can't help but wonder if anyone (apart from the Google) is working
on an Synonyms Thesaurus powered Wiki with automatic [probability
percentage] hyperlinks... 

Now that would be cool.

Tom

[1] Beyond glucose: metabolic shifts in responses to the effects of the
oral glucose tolerance test and the high-fructose diet in rats
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21350749 2011 May 1;7(5):1537-48.
Epub 2011 Feb 24.
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru
[3] http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2010/08/16/2984209.htm (Transcript
removed...)
[4] http://www.time.com/time/pacific/magazine/20010820/medicine.html
[5] http://home.iprimus.com.au/foo7/additives2.html
[6]
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/one-of-the-first-anti-smoking-billboards
[7] http://www.abc.net.au/gnt/history/Transcripts/s1248541.htm
[8] High Society: How Substance Abuse Ravages America and What to Do
About It
 By Joseph A. Califano, Jr.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=-2O4LFFK7YoC&pg=PA12&lpg=PA12&dq=doc
tors+%2B%22billboards%22+%2Bsmoking&source=bl&ots=h4_2ByM8vN&sig=A_Fm-70
UvBQ8ZR-hjwUbiiuf3bo&hl=en&ei=rQC2TfHHIYmUvAPFs6WnDw&sa=X&oi=book_result
&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CFIQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=doctors%20%2B%22billboa
rds%22%20%2Bsmoking&f=false
[9]
http://notionscapital.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/docs-cigarette-doc-one
-small.jpg
[10] A father teaches his child the art of the con
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16uzfBFuAwg
[11]FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH THE DEVELOPMENT OF DIABETES IN THE
MICRONESIAN POPULATION OF NAURU
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/122/4/594.abstract