The Yosemite Sam guide to coping with death

Alan Watts, the philosopher and theologian, uses a neat little metaphor when he talks about life. He says that when we’re born, we’ve been pushed off a cliff. We’re going to hit the bottom at some point, and this terrifies us. So we find ways to deal with the fall. Maybe we pray. We convince ourselves that the earth rushing up at us is not actually the end, that there is another, better fall just beyond it, but that we can’t see. We try to convince ourselves that whoever kicked us off the cliff in the first place had a very good reason for doing so, and that he (she? Probably he.) would not have sentenced us to end in a mere “kersplat.” Kersplat is not noble enough for us fallers.

Maybe, if we lose our trust in the Great Kicker, we try and find ways to prolong the fall. We throw shovels and bombs down at the earth beneath us, hoping the craters they create will buy us more time. We try and pull parachutes, so as to fall slower. Once we realize that this isn’t going to work indefinitely, we try to distract ourselves. Maybe we drink to forget the fall. Some people lose hope or get bored with the fall, and decide to prematurely hasten the oncoming kersplat. The very few people who survive jumping off of the Golden Gate Bridge unanimously say that the moment they stepped off the Bridge, they regretted it. I imagine that regret is something along the lines of, “Oh wait, this is going to happen anyway, why am I helping it along?” Grappling with the Big Kersplat is hard.

Some of us meet someone else who is falling and spend a lot of time with them. Maybe we like this person very much, and decide to fall together with them, eventually having some kids of our own, effectively pushing them off the cliff, with the hopes that their falls will outlast ours, that their falls will be nicer, that there’s a big cushy pillow at the base of their fall, or that perhaps we develop solar powered jetpacks before they hit the bottom, thus saving them from the inevitable kersplat.

Watts doesn’t use the word kersplat. He also doesn’t mention jetpacks. He just came up with the fall idea. I’m the one beating the metaphor to death with a shovel. Beating metaphors to death is a very effective way of distracting myself from the kersplat.

It’s a great metaphor for a number of reasons. The first is that “the Big Kersplat” is a much more exciting phrase than “death,” and the second is that we are literally falling all of the time. The earth is falling around the sun. The sun’s falling around the galaxy. The galaxy is falling through… something. I don’t understand physics particularly well, but I believe the general gist is that big things fall around bigger things, and small things kinda do whatever the fuck they feel like.

It’s also a great metaphor because it allows me to imagine myself as my favorite character from my favorite cartoon, which is, of course, Yosemite Sam in High-Diving Hare. Falling off of high things and then hitting the bottom with a “kersplat” is one of the primary themes in Looney Tunes. Wile E. Coyote does it all of the time. Bugs Bunny does it occasionally, usually with some sort of book to read or maybe with a parachute that turns out to be an anvil. Once, his plane failed to crash, and he says, “I know it’s against the law of gravity, but I never studied law.” It’s certainly funnier than a kersplat, but it’s also cheating.

But no one falls like Yosemite Sam. Yosemite Sam does everything humans do during their falls. He prays.

He panics.

He rages.

He deludes himself.

And then he kersplats.

Watts’ solution for the kersplat problem is a Buddhist one -- it’s to “live in the now” and enjoy the fall. Yosemite Sam’s, I imagine, is more of a “rage, rage against the dying of the light” approach.

I personally find the Big Kersplat harder to deal with on some days rather than others, and I usually prefer to rage against the dying of the light than to enjoy the fall. It’s hard not to fixate on that messy end and to view it with a wee bit of trepidation. But today, I went walking on the beach, and I could hear the cold sea wind whistling through the whiskers of my beard, and for a rare moment, I didn’t see what Yosemite Sam was raging about. Falling is nice.

Here's how to offset your carbon emissions as a world traveler

THE TRAVEL COMMUNITY OVERLAPS pretty heavily with the environmentalist community. This isn’t surprising: it’s hard to go out and see the world and not want to preserve it as much as possible. But this presents a dilemma for travelers: unless you’re traveling by hand or bike or maybe some sort of solar powered car, you’re contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. The activity that made you care about the planet in the first place, paradoxically, is actually harming the planet.

There are, of course, ways that you can try to limit your carbon emissions while traveling -- you can travel by motorcoach, you can carpool, you can fly economy instead of first class -- but ultimately, the emissions are still getting into the atmosphere, and sometimes, taking a motorcoach isn’t an option. And how do you weigh the value of becoming a kinder, more well-rounded, tolerant person against the value of protecting the environment? There’s no common currency in that trade off -- no matter how you justify it, you’re going to be rationalizing one way or the other.

The good news is that there are a couple of ways to still travel and, at the very least, take a few actions that will make your trip carbon neutral.

Carbon Offsets

Carbon offsets were originally a tool that were first conceived of as a way to help businesses try and reduce their overall carbon emissions. The way it does this is simple: you try and match the amount of emissions you actually put into the atmosphere by putting money towards programs that absorb or reduce greenhouse emissions at the same level that you’ve put them into the atmosphere.

There are a lot of carbon offsets out there, and not all are created equal. But the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) has put together a short guide to buying offsets. They recommend using independently certified projects, such as the ones that are approved by Green-e Climate Certified Carbon Offsets. These projects include landfill gas capture programs, cattle methane capture programs, and coal mine gas capture programs.

Stand for Trees

Similar to carbon offsets are programs like Stand for Trees. Trees are nature’s natural carbon absorbers, so when people advocate for sustainability, they frequently advocate the planting of new trees. But even more effective is to simply protect our already-existing forests. A major source of a lot of our environmental and climate problems is massive deforestation, as when trees are chopped down, they cease to absorb carbon, they release their carbon back into the air as they decay, and they cease to be a home for vital ecosystems.

Stand For Trees allows you to make donations to specific projects that are protecting forests and ecosystems around the world, and also tells you, by protecting forests that may otherwise have been chopped down, how many tonnes of greenhouse gasses you are offsetting. It’s surprisingly cheap -- $10 per tonne -- and it also is cool in that it allows you, if you want, to pick specific spots in locations in Asia, South America, Africa, Oceania and the Caribbean that you can put your money towards.

How to do it

First, go to this carbon emissions flight calculator and enter in your flight origin, destination, and whether you’re flying first class or economy (first class tickets are bigger carbon emitters because they take up more space on the plane which might otherwise have sat more passengers to split the emissions between). This will tell you the amount of greenhouse gasses your flight can be expected to emit. For example, a roundtrip flight from New York to LA will emit about 0.75 tonnes of greenhouse gasses.

Then, you can buy carbon offsets for that amount. This is easier on the Stand for Trees page, as they generally are geared towards smaller amounts of money, which offsets may not be. Grist recommends, if you want to go the offset route, simply investing or donating money to your local renewable energy products or to nearby environmental groups -- this may ultimately have the same effect, and may cut out the middleman.

It’s important to note that the best thing for you to do isn’t to just keep emitting greenhouse gasses at your current rate while simultaneously buying carbon offsets. It’s better than not buying offsets, sure, but overall, the point is to try and lower your personal emissions as much as humanly possible. But regardless, this is one way that you can cancel out some of the harmful effects of your travel without having to give it up entirely.

This article was originally published on the Matador Network.

Airplane seats are getting less comfortable. Here's how that's good for the environment.

IF IT FEELS LIKE AIRLINE SEATS have been shrinking over the past few decades, you're not crazy: seats were 18 inches wide in the 1970's, prior to airline regulation, and they have sense dropped to 16-and-a-half inches wide, according to the New York Times. But at the same time, the average man and woman have become 30 and 26 pounds heavier, respectively. All of which means that airplanes have become horrifically uncomfortable for anyone who is of a remotely normal size.

The good news for people who hate discomfort is that the US Congress is considering a bill that would set limits to how small seats could get. And this is a smart call: smaller seats have a direct correlation to deep vein thrombosis, a potentially life-threatening blood clot that could lead to a pulmonary embolism if you're cramped into a tiny seat over long periods of time. At the same time, tiny seats may also make it harder for economy class passengers to get off the plane in the case of an emergency, which could potentially result in fatalities as well.

But while cramped airline seats are an actual nightmare -- and can in some cases be dangerous -- they may actually be better for the environment. The reason? The more people you pack on a plane, the fewer greenhouse gasses are being emitted per person. The Union of Concerned Scientists has long advocated taking economy class seats rather than first class seats for this exact reason: first class seats are luxurious and spacious, but that spaciousness comes at the expense of another seat or two. And being able to transport more people on a single plane means potentially fewer trips, which is great from an emissions standpoint, as airplanes are really terrible greenhouse gas emitters.

This, of course, is not why airlines are making seats smaller. It pays for them to pack their passengers like sardines because it means they can get more bang for their buck. But the result is the same regardless of the intent. So it may be good for airlines to keep seats small. Or, possibly, get a bit more creative about how they pack passengers. I personally have always wanted to be able to hop into a bunk bed when I get on a plane, like in a train sleeper car, and just sleep all the way to my destination. But this doesn't look like the direction airlines will likely be going: they are designing "stand up" seats which look like absolute nightmares. Absolute nightmares that will be really great for the environment.

This article was originally published at the Matador Network.

6 documentaries you can stream online that will make you a better global citizen

I’M SURE THERE ARE A PLENTY of times that you, like me, don’t really have any interest in engaging with the world around you, and just want to hang out and binge-watch crappy shows on Netflix from time to time. It’s okay: no one else can judge. But if you want a half-baked justification for spending all your time in front of the TV, we’re here to help: as it happens, there are a huge number of documentaries and movies available on the major streaming services that are geared towards you, the worldly global citizen. Here are some for you to check out:

Maidentrip

In 2012, Laura Dekker became the youngest person to sail solo around the world. The documentary that follows her is a deeply human portrait of a 15-year-old Dutch girl who goes through normal teenaged tribulations like homesickness, rebellion, wanderlust, and pirate avoidance. It’s funny, it’s touching, it’s beautiful, it’s inspiring, and it will make you want to learn to sail, see the world, and challenge yourself.

Available on: Netflix

Exit Through the Gift Shop

Banksy’s strange and hilarious 2010 quasi-documentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop is very possibly a hoax: the main character in it, Thierry Guetta, is a man who follows around his street artist friends with a camera only to become a famous street artist himself while producing insanely derivative versions of Banksy’s work. It’s bizarre and fun, but most importantly, it’s a look into the vibrant, anarchic world of graffitos and street artists which has spread rapidly across the world in the last few decades. It will, if nothing else, make you want to get out into the streets to explore and, you know, maybe make some mischief.

Available on: Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu+

Food, Inc.

Unlike another recent food documentary which veers into half-baked conspiracy theories and vegan propaganda (looking at you, Cowspiracy), Food, Inc. is a profound, balanced, well-researched look at how humans interact with their food. In a rapidly globalizing world where climate change is becoming a more pressing issue on a daily basis, every small thing we consume can have major impacts. Food, Inc. will help you rethink how you eat and what you eat.

Available on: Hulu+ and Netflix

The Search for General Tso

If you’re an American and have eaten Chinese food, you’ve probably had General Tso’s chicken at some point. But who was General Tso? And why does no one in China seem to have heard of the most popular Chinese dish in America? The Search for General Tso is an awesome (and relatively short) documentary on how a simple plate of chicken perfectly illustrates America’s relationship with the rest of the world.

Available on: Netflix

This Changes Everything

Naomi Klein, the Canadian writer and activist, manages to buck the trend of depressing “Oh man, we’re totally screwed” global warming documentaries by offering a different way of thinking about the global crisis: it may be, she believes, that this is our best chance ever to turn our world into a better place.

Available on: Amazon Prime

Citizenfour

When Edward Snowden leaked documents from the NSA to journalist Glenn Greenwald, he invited along documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras to film the entire process from beginning to end. The resulting movie is absolutely electrifying: you get to watch Edward Snowden in real time as, over the course of a few days, he becomes the number one target of the world’s largest superpower. At the same time, the documentary manages to focus on the larger issues of NSA wiretapping and how privacy may not be a thing in a post-internet world.

Available on: HBO GO

This article was originally published on the Matador Network. Photo: Mike Mozart

Want to show someone you love them? Give them a Valentine's gift that saves the world

VALENTINE’S DAY, AS A BILLION Hallmark cards have told us, is about love. Usually, the focus is on romantic love, but it’s just as often love between parents and children, brothers and sisters, or totally platonic friends who are definitely not going to hook up after a night of drinking wine together while whining about being single.

There’s no reason, though, that the love we celebrate shouldn’t extend even further. Why not celebrate love for our fellow man? Why not celebrate love for our planet? So maybe instead of spending money on a restaurant that’s jacked up its prices for the holiday, you should buy your partner a different kind of present: one that says, “I want to make this world a nicer place for you.” Here are some gift ideas.

Save a tree.

Trees are one of the most effective solutions to the problems of climate emissions: they naturally absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen, cleaning the air of the crap we pump into it. So naturally, it’s a big problem when trees are chopped down.

Stand For Trees is a non-profit which focuses on saving forests, and for Valentine’s Day, they’re doing a project called “Love You A Tonne,” in which you can pledge money to a specific forest. Generally speaking, a $10 donation takes 1 tonne of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Save a child.

You know all of those friends of yours who have November birthdays? Those are Valentine’s babies. There’s no shortage of children who owe their existence to holidays and celebrations -- the NFL highlighted so called "Super Bowl Babies" last week, for example -- so why not honor that by making a donation that will save a child? One of the most efficient ways to do this is to give to organizations like the Against Malaria Foundation, which provides mosquito nets for people living in areas with high incidences of malaria. Malaria kills around a half a million people every year, and of that half a million, about 70% are kids under the age of 5.

So giving a few bucks can go a long way towards saving kids lives. $100, for example, can protect up to 60 people from malaria for three or four years. That’s huge.

Save a mother.

Be honest: You don’t love anyone more than you love your mom. So if you’re going to give a Valentine’s Gift to your mother, it would make sense to give her a gift that saves other moms. One of the best ways to do this is to give to the Fistula Foundation. Fistula’s are particularly nasty medical conditions that tend to develop in areas where women get pregnant too young and don’t have access to proper medical care. In short, it’s a hole that develops between a woman’s vagina and her other internal organs after prolonged labor. The hole causes leakage, which can cause a horrible stench that makes the woman stigmatized in her community, and can lead them into even deeper poverty.

The good news is that there’s no reason for these to exist anymore: we have the technology to fix the vast majority of them, and it’s relatively cheap to do. The Fistula Foundation repairs fistulas in the developing world (primarily Africa and Southeast Asia) for an incredibly low cost. A donation to them could save a mother and her child from trauma and poverty.

Save a life.

Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, a professor at Ohio State and a social entrepreneur, says he received his best Valentine’s Day gift ever last year:

“Instead of candy and liquor, my wife suggested giving each other gifts that actually help us improve our mental and physical well-being, and the world as a whole, by donating to charities in the name of the other person.”

They did their research, and using an online calculator at the effective altruism website The Life You Can Save, they figured out how to make their money go the furthest. Tsipursky’s wife donated to the Against Malaria Foundation, while Tsipursky himself gave to GiveDirectly, a non-profit which does exactly what it suggests: it gives money to the extremely poor in Africa.

This article was originally published on the Matador Network.

These are the 10 most ethical places to travel in 2016

EVERY YEAR, THE NON-PROFIT Ethical Traveler puts together a list of the most ethical places on the planet for travelers to visit. The list is designed to only look at developing nations, and thus, places where your travel dollars are likely to make the most positive impact. The writers of the report said, in a blog post announcing the winners:

“During the past decade we have watched travel grow into the world’s largest industry, with a trillion-dollar annual footprint. This means that travelers possess more than curiosity; we have enormous power. Where we choose to put our footprints has economic and political reverberations that reach far beyond our personal experience.”

The winners, then, are the ten developing countries which have the best records in four major categories: human rights, social welfare, environmental protection, and animal welfare. They also take into account how much the country has changed over time, in the hope that by promoting countries that have made positive steps, they can encourage the country to keep moving forward.

The winners are, in alphabetical order:

CABO VERDE

Cabo Verde is trying to reach a goal of getting 50% of their energy from renewable resources by 2015, and is doing a lot to protect the endangered animals along their shores. They got a perfect score on civil and political rights, and are also one of the strongest African nations when it comes to gender equality.

DOMINICA

Dominica is not only taking steps towards getting all of their energy from renewable sources, but is also planning on providing renewable energy to other Caribbean nations. They have the best access to healthcare of any Caribbean nation, excellent political and civil rights, and consistently fight against the whaling industry.

GRENADA

Grenada has been a key country in the fight against climate change, and has been doing a lot to protect its local coral reefs. It has made steps towards providing equal rights for the LGBT community, and has the second highest possible score in terms of civil and political rights.

MICRONESIA

Micronesia, like most of the island nations on this list, is doing a lot to fight climate change: they are trying to have 30% renewable energy by 2020, and are establishing a lot of protected areas on their islands. They’re expanding internet access so as to improve education rates, and have the best possible score in civil and political rights, according to Freedom House.

MONGOLIA

Mongolia, along with Panama, had the lowest number of unemployed on the list, and also is the best at providing end-of-life care for its citizens. They’ve set aside nearly 15% of their land for parks and protected areas, and they’re on their way towards abolishing the death penalty. They’ve also got the second highest possible score on civil and political rights — an impressive feat given their very powerful (and not-so-great in this respect) neighbors to the north and south.

PANAMA

Panama was second place in terms of environmental protection. They’ve gone a long way towards bringing back their rainforests and in encouraging sustainability. They’ve ratified the conventions on ending child labor, and have banned dogfighting and greyhound racing. They are also seventh place in terms of well-being, life expectancy, and ecological footprint — that’s seventh place not on this list, but in the entire world.

SAMOA

Samoa plans on relying 100% on renewable energy sources by next year. They have also taken steps towards ending domestic violence, and have begun monitoring the human rights of women, children, and people with disabilities so they can continue to make improvements.

TONGA

Tonga was the winner in terms of environmental protection. A lot of island countries are the most at risk when it comes to the negative effects of climate change, and as a result, are doing the most to fight climate change. Tonga also has pretty solid political and civil rights, though it almost got bumped from the top 10 because of its treatment of women.

TUVALU

Tuvalu is one of the most at-risk islands when it comes to climate change, and they aren’t sitting still about it — they’re part of the Vulnerable 20 group, which seeks to put pressure on the rest of the world to take steps on preventing the worst effects of climate change. They also criminalized all forms of domestic violence in 2015 and expanded their internet access.

URUGUAY

Uruguay ranks highest in terms of social welfare. They have a long life span, a solid education system, and a good standard of living by most world standards. They are also the top performer in green energy, with a mind-boggling 90% of their energy coming from renewable sources. Uruguay also extended what many consider to be basic human rights to animals: freedom from hunger and thirst, freedom from pain, and freedom from fear and distress.

To read more about how the winners were chosen (and also which countries were knocked off of the list from 2015), check out the full post on Ethical Traveler’s website.

This article was originally published by the Matador Network. Photo:Jargalsaikhan Dorjnamjil

5 ways to be a better global citizen in 2016

THE WORLD NEEDS MORE PEOPLE like you this year. People who see humanity not as separate, distinct groups which should never mix (and of which theirs is coincidentally the best), but as a single mass of people who are all in the same boat, who all have the same basic fears and wants. People like you — whether you call yourself a global citizen, a cosmopolitan, an internationalist, or just a chill dude who wants to live-and-let-live — are the people who are going to make the world a better place in 2016.

That sounds like a daunting task, but it’s not, really. There are 7 billion of us, after all, and the world is ours to make. You can do small things, here and there, and all of those small things multiplied by 7 billion will turn into big things. But if it still sounds daunting, here are a few more things you can do to be a better global citizen.

1. Get on board with fighting climate change.

Easily the biggest challenge facing our world right now is climate change. All of our other problems — war, poverty, famine, disease — will only get worse with climate change, and the window on stopping the worst effects of climate change is getting smaller by the day.

This is a huge project that requires global cooperation, but there are a few simple things you can do to help:

• Get your home better insulated and turn down your heat and air conditioning this year. This is one of the biggest energy sucks in the home.

• Eat less meat. Especially beef. Meat contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, so if you can, go veg as much as possible, and if you can’t, at least try cutting back. Try meat-free mondays.

• Donate to green-friendly charities. Check out the ones on this list at Project Greenify.

• Vote for politicians who aren’t in denial about climate change.

2. Fight global poverty.

There’s actually good news on this front: on a global scale, we’re winning the fight against poverty. It is far from over, but, as The Atlantic reported in December, this was the best year in humanity’s history for the average human. We beat the terrible ebola outbreak in Guinea and Sierra Leone, we cut child mortality in half since 1990and world hunger is on the decline.

But a lot still needs to be done. You can start by donating to charities like Give Directly, which just gives your cash straight to extremely poor individuals in Kenya and Uganda. GiveWell, an organization that ranks the effectiveness of charities, lists them as one of the most effective charities on the planet. You can also use popular microfunding sites like Kiva, or extremely effective charities like Oxfam. If you want to make sure you get the best bang for your buck, check out the charities on GiveWell, and also on effective altruism site The Life You Can Save.

3. Support global education

A smarter world is a better world, and unfortunately, many people — especially in the developing world — don’t have access to quality education. Unfortunately, as GiveWell points out, improving education in the developing world is an incredibly difficult process, and it’s a process that can’t be done exclusively from the outside. The only charity GiveWell has given their stamp of approval is Pratham.

4. Support women's rights.

Women’s rights is a pretty great place to start if you want to bring an end to things like violence and poverty. Experts have found that when women in developing countries are given control of the money, they are more likely to use the money to life themselves and their families out of poverty than men are, and educating women in developing countries makes them more likely to avoid unwanted pregnancies and more likely to start making money on their own, breaking the cycle of poverty.

Oxfam has some simple tips for how to support global gender equality.

5. Vote.

For people who are American citizens as well as global citizens, 2016 is going to be a pretty big election year. By voting in the upcoming election — and by paying attention to all of the races and not just the presidential one — you’re participating in democracy and making your country a stronger place. Democracy anywhere is a good thing, and while voting alone does not a democracy make, it is a vital element.

This article was originally published on the Matador Network. Photo:Sai Mr.

5 ways to be a better global citizen in 2014

FROM THE BEGINNING, 2014 seemed intent on proving to us that humanity’s biggest challenges transcend national borders. Ebola wasn’t interested in respecting borders, and spread to several other countries around the world. Political problems in Ukraine managed to result in the deaths of 298 mostly Dutch passengers on a Malaysian plane. Several of the dead were prominent AIDS researchers, a loss that could have an effect on all of the millions of people worldwide with the disease. And the year’s biggest scientific achievement, the landing of a spacecraft on a comet, was accomplished by the European Space Agency, which has 20 member countries.

2014 was right: the world needs less partisan and national division and more global citizenship. So for those of us who consider ourselves to be “global citizens,” here are some things we can do to make our world a better place this year.

1. Get serious about climate change.

Climate change isn’t going away. Its existence isn’t even a debate anymore. 2014 saw predictions that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet was in the process of collapsing — something that could raise ocean levels by several feet over the long term. 2014 also saw the world’s first climate refugees. This is obviously an issue that could drastically change and destabilize our planet, so it’s on top of the list of things good global citizens need to help with.

But where to start? The Environmental Protection Agency offers a list of things you can do in your daily life to limit the greenhouse emissions directly caused by your actions. It’s simple stuff like recycling, using energy efficient lights, planting trees, and insulating your home. But the problem has to be fought at the international level, too. So try donating to carbon offset programs or nonprofits that fight climate change, and contact your US representative and let them know that you’re a voter who cares about climate issues.

2. Donate your time and money to worthy causes.

You could probably afford to take $25 a month that you would otherwise spend on beer or pizza and donate it to a cause that could desperately use it. If you’re interested in donating to nonprofits that will spend your money effectively, check out efficient giving sites like The Life You Can Save.

You can also volunteer. It might be harder to volunteer for causes that focus on global causes in your town or city, but don’t let that stop you: by making your small community a better place, you’re making the world a better place. The best spot to find good local and international volunteer gigs remains Idealist.org.

3. Share your stories, and listen to other people’s stories.

One of the things we believe in here at Matador is that the best person to tell your story is you. The world needs more voices — especially marginalized or minority voices — to speak out about their experiences and their culture. The more perspectives we’re exposed to, the more open minded we become.

I don’t want to make Twitter and Facebook sound more important than they are (your cat picture is cute, but it’s not really making the world that much better of a place), but in 2014, trends like #YesAllWomen and #BlackLivesMatter helped expose male or white Americans to the experiences that they may not have had in their lives. Any time people start to stop and listen to the stories of others, things get better.

4. Support an open and free internet.

We live in an awesome age. We get to hear what’s happening around the world as it’s happening, and we are no longer limited in our choices of news sources. And we get to make friends with people no matter where they are. This new interconnectedness is one huge reason that we can feel hopeful about the future of humanity.

The reason all of this is possible is because we have a free and open internet. It’s a thing worth supporting, so check out Google’s Take Action page for free web issues and give to organizations that fight for net neutrality.

5. Get on the legalization train.

In the past couple of years, Washington, Colorado, and Washington, DC have decriminalized pot. This has reduced crime, increased tax revenues, and made it harder for minors to get pot; one presumes that it will also result eventually in fewer people being jailed for nonviolent drug offenses.

The War on Drugs is a global catastrophe, and it’s distracting us from our much bigger problems. The US drug war fuels the even more violent drug wars in Mexico, Colombia, and Afghanistan, so ending it here would help end it in those places, too. Even if you’re not a pot smoker, supporting legalization helps make the world a better place. DrugPolicy.org has a great toolkit for activists, as well as resources for other things you can do to help end the War on Drugs, so check them out. You can also donate to the Marijuana Policy Project if you want to help change legislation at the national level.

This article was originally published on the Matador Network.

All your favorite holiday specials are anti-capitalist

A Christmas Carol

Scrooge is a capitalist. He is the type of person who would be called a "job creator" today. He makes a ton of money and he hoards it. He's basically a caricature of an Ayn Rand character (because Ayn Rand's characters totally aren't caricatures already), written 62 years before she was even born. He's so rapaciously capitalist that it was probably inevitable that Disney turned him into a hero.

After Scrooge has been haunted by the ghosts of Christmas Present, Past, and Future, what does he suddenly become concerned in? Higher workers wages. Healthcare for the families of his employees. Giving out free meals to the poor. In essence, Socialism*. God would bless us, every one, if God wasn't a creation of the bourgeoisie to keep the proletariat in check, Tiny Tim.

*You could, theoretically, make the argument that Scrooge is not so much a socialist as a sudden convert to trickle-down economics.

A Charlie Brown Christmas

This anarcho-Christian fable shows children acting like rapacious capitalists. Sally wants "tens and twenties" for Christmas. Lucy wants "real estate." As Charlie Brown and Linus leave the school play to shop for Christmas trees, everyone demands fake, gaudy aluminum trees. This line even gets busted out:

Linus, the story's left-wing hero, explains that "Christmas has not only gotten too commercial, it's gotten too dangerous." He then gives a speech about the true meaning of Christmas. This shouldn't be called A Charlie Brown Christmas. It should be called The Kingdom of God is Within You, Charlie Brown!

It's a Wonderful Life

I mean, the main villain is a capitalist banker who is trying to destroy the protagonist's dream of building a housing project. Next.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas

We all know the Dr. Suess was a treehugging commie, right? The Lorax is an insidious attempt at subliminally turning all of our children into virulent anti-capitalists, and Yertle the Turtle was actually used as anti-fascist propaganda in the Second World War.

The Grinch has become the second most-cited Christmastime villain, along with that other great capitalist, Scrooge. The Grinch, a small-hearted furry who lives in a swanky mountain mansion above Whoville, despises their hand-holding, peacenik communitarianism, and looks to cure them of it by depriving them of material goods. But what the Grinch learns is that the heart of the revolution comes from its people, and that impoverishing them will only make them stronger. The revolution is coming. It cannot be stopped.

Home Alone & Home Alone 2

Far be it from me to suggest that these movies are one and the same in terms of structure or plot, but they both carry the same message: adults - i.e. "the man" or "the system" - are incompetent, dumb, or criminal, and children - i.e. anarchy and chaos - will inevitably win the day.

A Christmas Story

One of the most chilling anti-capitalist fables is A Christmas Story, a cautionary tale in which a middle class family's constant grasping for material things - leg lamps, Zeppelins, Red Rider BB Guns - is disrupted by their lower class neighbors starving dogs. The allegories in this movie just keep coming: Santa - the capitalist symbol of Christmas - is portrayed as demonic and uncaring. The Father futilely grasps at a higher standing in life, not recognizing that his status symbol, the leg lamp, is gaudy and obnoxious, and was doomed from the beginning. Ralphie is conned into believing that his mindless radio entertainment was ever anything more than just a cynical attempt to sell him Ovaltine. A grim reminder if there ever was one that underneath the shiny facade of capitalist society lies a dangerous, violent world of bullying, greed, and shattered dreams.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

A more lighthearted communist tale, Rudolph admits that sure, materialism is nice, but it deftly points out that those outside or beneath the capitalist system are callously cast aside to the so-called "Island of Misfit Toys." Those misfits (shall we call them a "vanguard"?) then save the day when a climate related disaster of excessive fog causes the fragile, materialistic holiday to collapse. Is it a coincidence that Rudolph's nose is red? You be the judge.

5 travelers who never came back

YOU’VE ALREADY HEARD OF THE mystery of Amelia Earhart: the trailblazing golden-age pilot who mysteriously disappeared in 1937 during a circumnavigation of the globe. But Earhart is hardly the only traveler to have set out on a journey only to have vanished into thin air. Here are 5 other travelers who went out exploring — and never came back.

1. Ambrose Bierce

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Ambrose Bierce was an all-around badass. The author basically invented the twist ending with his classic short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, he inspired generations of horror writers with his creepy stories like An Inhabitant of Carcosa, and he became one of the world’s most eloquent misanthropes, writing the classic Devil’s Dictionary, and going by the motto, “Nothing matters.”

But he was also a kickass journalist. Late in life, he went to Mexico to report on the escapades of Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa. The last trace of him was a letter sent to a friend the day after Christmas reading, “As to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination.” Bierce was never seen again.

Rumor in Mexico is that he was executed by firing squad in a cemetery (he was known to be critical of Pancho Villa), but there has never been any proof of this. Despite hundreds of theories, there has never been any substantial proof as to what happened to the great Ambrose Bierce.

2. John Franklin and his Crew

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

In the 19th Century, the British Empire was insistent on discovering the Northwest Passage — the fabled route from the Atlantic to the Pacific over the top of Canada. But what they didn’t know was that the route was almost always covered with pack ice.

One of the most infamous expeditions sent to discover the passage was that of Sir John Franklin. The expedition, made up of two boats, the Erebus, captained by Sir John, and the Terror captained by veteran sailor Francis Crozier, and made up of 127 crewmen, sailed into the winter ice in 1846 and became trapped. The ice didn’t thaw the next summer, and, after spending two winters there (and after losing 24 men, including Franklin, to disease, accidents, and scurvy), Captain Crozier took the remaining men out over the ice in a mad dash for civilization.

They were never seen again. Inuit gave reports of wandering, starving men who refused to ask them for help, and said that the men had resorted to cannibalism to survive. Some reported that Crozier and another crewman had survived and were near Baker Lake, some 250 miles away, nearly a decade later, but what really happened mostly remains a mystery — though the sunken Erebus was discovered underwater in 2013.

3. Frank Lenz

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Frank Lenz was basically the Amelia Earhart of cycling. He was a Philadelphian cyclist, and he decided he wanted to ride his bike around the world. Although it had already been done once before, a magazine hired Lenz to do it himself in 1892, as Lenz was an excellent photographer and would be able to capture the trip on film.

He started in Washington, D.C., and peddled to San Francisco, where he caught a boat to Japan. From there, he biked through China and through the dense, almost impassable jungles of Burma. From there, he rode through modern day India and Pakistan (then part of the British Empire), and then into what is now Iran.

He was last seen in Tabriz in Iran, peddling out of the city towards Erzurum in Turkey. He was never heard from again.

4. Percy Fawcett

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Percy Fawcett might be the swashbucklingest person to have ever lived. The British Lieutenant Colonel and archaeologist was the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, and that other swashbuckling archaeologist you may have heard of, Indiana Jones.

In his 30s, he became fixated on the mythical “Lost City of Z,” sometimes popularly known as the golden city of El Dorado. With his son and his friend, he set off into the Brazilian Amazon to find the city in 1925. His final letter, sent from the jungle, read, “You need have no fear of any failure…”

The nearby Kalapalo tribe passed down an oral story of three explorers who came into their village one night and stayed for a while. The explorers then moved on, and for five days, the Kalapalo could see the smoke from their fires. On the fifth day, the fires stopped. No one knows what happened after that.

5. Ettore Majorana

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Ettore Majorana was a famous Italian physicist who worked with the likes of Heisenberg, Bohr, and Enrico Fermi (who called him a genius). He was known for his work on neutrinos, and was considered a brilliant mind, but his health was poor, and in his later years, he became a hermit. In 1938, one day, while he was living in Palermo, he withdrew all of his money from his bank account, and sent this letter to the director of his University:

“Dear Carrelli, I made a decision that has become unavoidable. There isn’t a bit of selfishness in it, but I realize what trouble my sudden disappearance will cause you and the students. For this as well, I beg your forgiveness, but especially for betraying the trust, the sincere friendship and the sympathy you gave me over the past months. I ask you to remember me to all those I learned to know and appreciate in your Institute, especially Sciuti: I will keep a fond memory of them all at least until 11 pm tonight, possibly later too. E. Majorana”

But shortly after, he sent a telegram saying he had canceled his plans. He’d bought a ticket from Palermo to Naples, and then was never seen or heard from again.

Some believe he escaped to Argentina, others believe he committed suicide, others believe he was killed or kidnapped due to the possibility of his participation in building an atomic bomb, others believe he simply left to become a beggar or a monk. But no solid proof has ever been found of what happened to Ettore Majorana.

This article was originally published on the Matador Network.

How to lower your carbon emissions while traveling

TRAVELERS TEND TO THINK of the world as something worth preserving, which forces them to confront a problem: Travel can actually be pretty damaging to the environment. A lot of forms of travel have high carbon emissions, and a lot of tourist activities do significant damage to the sites being visited.

There are plenty of things you can do, of course. There’s the famous “Take only photos, leave only footprints,” mantra, there’s ecotourism, and there’s political involvement. But on a more personal level, how should you travel if you want to travel with the lowest possible carbon emissions?

The obvious answer is to travel by your own power. This could mean walking, biking, kayaking, paddleboating, skateboarding, scootering, or pretty much any other form of travel that doesn’t involve an engine. You could sail, or you could put together a skiff like Huck Finn and only visit places that are downriver. In a lot of cases, like international travel, these aren’t practical. Here’s how to travel with the lowest carbon emissions possible while still using an engine.

How to get there greener

Back in 2008, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) put together a guide titled Getting There Greener. It basically took apart each mode of travel and calculated its total carbon emissions over certain distances. The answer isn’t as cut-and-dry as you might suspect — there are three main factors you need to consider when you’re calculating total carbon emissions for your trip.

The first is the distance you’re traveling, as some options become more efficient and more reasonable over longer distances. For example, planes tend to be big carbon emitters. But if you’re traveling a distance of a thousand miles, the plane is going to be running for about two hours while a car could be running for 15 to 20.

The second thing you have to consider is how many people are traveling with you. If you’re traveling in a car and you have two people instead of one, you’ve already cut your collective carbon emissions in half. If you’re traveling on a plane, you’re splitting those emissions with anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred other people. But if you’re in first class, you’re taking up more space on that plane — space that could seat another passenger.

The worst modes of travel

Unsurprisingly, the worst mode of travel is first-class airplane travel. This is because of the high emissions of the plane and because of the space you’re taking up. That said, if you’re traveling on your own and are traveling more than 500 miles, the worst way to travel is by SUV. SUVs are huge polluters, but this doesn’t mean that in some situations they aren’t a viable option — if you’ve got a family of four or more, an SUV comes in the middle of the pack for efficiency.

But flying first class is always a mistake, and is never recommended by the UCS. If you can, book your trip on an all-economy flight, and fly direct whenever possible. If you have to make a connection, still try and travel in as straight a line as possible.

For one person going long distances, even the average car is a big polluter. Back during World War II, US propaganda attempted to convince Americans to carpool to save on fuel. The famous tagline was “WHEN YOU DRIVE ALONE, YOU DRIVE WITH HITLER!” A little heavy-handed, yeah, but now we could just as easily say, “WHEN YOU DRIVE ALONE, YOU DRIVE WITH MASS EXTINCTION!”

In short: When it comes to cars, carpool whenever you can.

The best modes of travel

It turns out there’s a single answer to this in literally every scenario: If you can’t bike where you’re going, take a motor coach. Every time. This is especially good news for budget travelers, because in the absence of a solid public transportation system in America, we’ve seen an influx of budget bus companies like Megabus and BoltBus. These are not only some of the cheapest modes of travel, but they’re universally the best. And, hey, free wifi!

The reason is that, while buses use a lot of gas, you’re usually splitting it with a couple dozen people, and that dilutes the emissions more than any other form of travel. So take the Megabus if you can.

If buses aren’t your thing, the next best option is usually to take the train. Trains have way more in the way of carbon emissions than motor coaches, but they also split them among hundreds of passengers. The Northeast United States is the best place to take trains because there’s more of them here, and many run on electricity rather than diesel.

If you’re traveling with a family of four, though, it turns out the second-best mode of travel is actually taking a road trip in a typical car, and if there’s just one or two of you traveling, and you’re going a long distance, the second-best way is to fly economy.

A few more tips

The UCS did a full chart of travel modes by rank. They also provided some useful tips as well. If you’re traveling by car, for example, try to travel when there’s little or no traffic, as traffic increases your emissions. And obviously, if you travel with a hybrid, an electric car, or at least a car with very high fuel efficiency, you’ll be doing a lot to lower that carbon footprint.

Do your research before traveling. You can still see the world and keep your carbon footprint to a minimum.

This article was originally published on the Matador Network. Photo:Thorsten Koch

5 ways to be a greener traveler

1. Travel slow.

The slow travel movement was started somewhat separately from just trying to reduce environmental impact. It was initially an attempt by travelers to more fully immerse themselves in the places they were traveling by spending more time in a place and allowing themselves to get to know the people and culture, rather than flying in, ticking items off a tourist to-do list, and then flying out. But as it turns out, slow travel is pretty compatible with ecotourism.

By moving slowly and intentionally, you’re likely to spend less time on forms of transport that emit a lot of pollution and greenhouse gases. You may even choose to bike or walk from place to place, if you have light enough luggage. And ultimately, human-powered means of travel are the most environmentally friendly ways of getting around.

2. Know the traveler’s hierarchy of carbon emissions.

If you have to travel in a way that leaves a carbon footprint, try to keep it as small as possible. The Union of Concerned Scientists put together a handy guide for the best way of doing that, and while the best method of getting from place to place changes depending on the number of people you’re traveling with and the distance you’re going, there are some basic rules you can follow.

First, the worst way to travel is almost always by airplane in first class. You’re taking up a lot of space on that plane, and the plane is spewing a lot of bad stuff into the atmosphere. Second, the best way to travel in pretty much all of the scenarios is to take a motor coach. Yes, buses have carbon emissions, but you’re sharing those emissions with dozens of other people. Third, if you have to drive, carpool, and always drive in the most fuel-efficient cars possible. Check out the other tips and travel methods here.

3. “Take only photos, leave only footprints.”

This aphorism changes depending on what you’re doing — for scuba divers, it’s “Take only photos, leave only bubbles” — but the basic sentiment remains the same. The rule is usually geared towards people taking part in outdoor activities, and basically means, “Hey asshole, don’t leave your plastic water bottle in the woods in Yellowstone.” But it can just as easily apply in cities. You should still try to recycle as much as possible, and you should still never litter.

4. Use water like there’s a finite amount of it.

Peak water is a thing, and it turns out those of us living in the developed world use a lot of it unnecessarily. It’s estimated that the minimum amount of water needed for drinking, cooking, bathing, and sanitation per person per day is 13 gallons. The average person in the US uses between 65 and 78 gallons. Honestly, this is an average you should try to work down a bit in your daily life even if you’re nottraveling, but it’s important to remember while traveling, too, especially if you’re in a country that struggles with water scarcity.

Most of the ways of doing this are fairly simple. Follow the “If it’s yellow, let it mellow” rule in your hotel or hostel, make sure the hotel doesn’t wash your towel every day, turn off the water in the shower when you’re not rinsing off, turn off the water while you brush your teeth, and so on. For more tips on how to conserve when you travel, check out this post at The Frog Blog.

5. Do your research before you leave.

If you’re planning a short trip or an excursion, make sure you read up on the places you’re going ahead of time. Does that dive shop take care of the local reefs? Is that hotel a known polluter? Is there a way I can give back to the community I’m visiting while I’m there?

Keep in mind that just because something claims to be “ecotourism” doesn’t mean it’s actually helping the environment. Ecotourism is still a niche of tourism, and some less scrupulous tour operators will use the label to pull in well-meaning tourists. You should also keep in mind that many of the ecosystems you travel to may be quite fragile, and that your desire to “get out into nature” and having a low impact on the environment around you may not coincide.

For example, if you were to travel to a national park, you may want to leave the trail to get away from any trace of humankind. But there may be an environmental reason the trail goes through one section of the park and not the other. Know the rules and then follow them when you go.

This article was first published on the Matador Network. Photo:Kyle

Meet the woman who swims with Great White Sharks

GREAT WHITE SHARKS are on the brink of extinction, and Ocean Ramsey is doing something about it: She’s swimming with them. Ramsey, a professional scuba instructor, marine biologist, conservationist, model, surfer, and free diver — I definitely just got winded typing out that resume — has been bringing attention to the plight of great whites and other sharks by getting out of her shark cage and swimming with them.

This culminated recently with an incredible video Ramsey shot with a GoPro:

She has now swum with 32 different shark species, including the great white, and she says she’s doing it to try and dispel the myth that sharks are “killing machines,” a myth that has been lazily propagated by the media and pop culture ever since the movie Jaws.

“In truth,” she writes on her website, WaterInspired.com, “sharks are intelligent, calculated and generally very cautious about approaching humans. More importantly, sharks play a vital role in maintaining a healthy ocean ecosystem. Many people are unaware that sharks are being over-fished to the point of extinction. As the Senegalese environmentalist Baba Dioum said, ‘In the end people will only protect what they love, and only love what they understand…’”

Photo: Ocean Ramsey

Great whites are apex predators, which means they’re at the top of their food chain and have virtually no natural predators of their own. Apex predators are absolutely crucial to the stability of their environment.

For example, when Yellowstone National Park recently reintroduced wolves — the habitat’s natural apex predator — into the wild, the effects were astonishing: Not only did it bring some measure of balance back to the ecosystem, but it increased biodiversity, helped trees grow taller, and even changed the course of the rivers.

So it follows that the loss of apex predators such as wolves or great white sharks can be absolutely catastrophic to their environment. But that doesn’t stop us from killing them in absolutely staggering numbers — somewhere between 23 million and 200 million sharks a year are killed in the senseless and inhumane act of finning, where fishermen catch a shark, cut off its fin for shark fin soup, and then just dump the animal back into the ocean to die.

Which species, again, is the killing machine?

Photo: Ocean Ramsey

Sharks kill an average 11 humans per year, while we kill around 11,417 sharks per hour. “There are estimated to be less than 400 white sharks in the North Pacific and less than 3,500 great white sharks left worldwide,” Ramsey writes.

“More than eighteen million people die from starvation and 1.2 million from car accidents. Crocodiles kill more than 2,500 people per year, and even they are protected in many areas. The world offers little to no protection for sharks. Sharks are vital to the oceans and planet. They need and deserve to be protected.”

Photo: Ocean Ramsey

This isn’t to say you should go for a swim the next time you see a shark, as Ramsey explains: “I’m not advising that people go out and just jump into the water with white sharks or tigers or other large species, just as I wouldn’t recommend jumping into a yard with a strange dog. Sharks do need to be respected as wild animals and appreciated for their role as top predators in the ocean ecosystem.

“My shark experiences have all been positive in part because, while I know sharks are not mindless man-eaters, I simultaneously have respect for their capabilities, a lot of experience interacting with animals and reading body language, behavior, and I am comfortable with my own water abilities while also trusting my dive partner.”

Photo: Ocean Ramsey

If you’d like to help in this cause, first: Don’t eat shark fin soup in your travels. It’s brutal and unsustainable. Second, Ocean Ramsey’s site has provided a ton of awesome petitions you can sign to help, and a bunch of projects and charities you can donate to.

This article was originally published on the Matador Network.

6 ways to be a better global citizen in 2014

ONE OF THE side effects of international travel is that you lose the luxury of thinking of yourself only as the citizen of your hometown or country. Unless you cloister yourself in a walled resort, you’re going to come into contact with citizens of other countries and places, and you’re suddenly going to realize how closely your lives are linked — your politics, your economies, your environment.

Becoming a good global citizen is a difficult thing to do, and it can be incredibly overwhelming if you’re confronting your place in the world for the first time. Here are some easy things you can do in 2014 to make yourself a better global citizen.

1. Learn about the stuff you buy.

Look, for the time being, we live in a capitalist’s world. We’re not getting rid of consumerism and rapacious free markets any time soon. But as a relatively affluent member of a relatively affluent country, you have the ability to buy your food, clothes, and gadgets not because they are cheap, but because they are ethical. Of course, it’s insanely difficult to be a totally ethical consumer: Should I eat meat? How do I find locally made gym shoes? Does the company that makes my Extra Virgin Olive Oil actively campaign against gay rights? Does my bubble tea company pay its employees a living wage?

And so on. There are some things you just can’t buy ethically, and to some extent, you’re probably going to fail in your effort to be a conscious consumer. But here’s one hugely positive step you can take: Get out your smartphone — yes, the one made with conflict minerals — and download the Buycott app. Buycott allows you to join user-created campaigns that you believe in, like “Campaign for Ecological Responsibility” or “Say No to Monsanto” or “Equality for LGBTQ.” Next, take your phone into your pantry, closet, or fridge and start scanning your products’ barcodes. Buycott will tell you — based on your campaigns — which of your products are ethically made, and which aren’t.

You may not be able to buy everything ethically, but you can certainly start.

2. Travel sustainably.

Unfortunately, travel can leave a pretty huge carbon footprint if you’re not careful. So how can you get from Point A to Point B without poisoning the lungs of your great-great grandchildren? If you have the time, try traveling by bike, or walking, or kayaking, or sailing, but if you need to be moving a little faster than that, check this out: The Union of Concerned Scientists put together a guide a few years back for traveling green. Turns out, the best way is one of the cheapest: Take a motor coach. You can see the best travel methods ranked here (they depend on the number of people you’re traveling with and the distance you’re going), but the worst ways to travel are to fly first class or drive in an SUV.

There are a ton of other ways to travel more sustainably. National Geographic has a set of tips, as does Conservation.org. The basic rule, though, is to just do your research, and don’t be a dick.

3. Volunteer locally.

The popular maxim is “Think Globally, Act Locally.” If you’re trying to help make a better world, the best place to start is in your own little corner. One way to do that is to volunteer. If you’re at all like me, you always mean to but never quite get around to it. Here are a few resources to help you get over that hurdle.

The first is VolunteerMatch. Punch in your location, your email, and the causes you’re interested in, and each week they’ll send you a newsletter with opportunities nearby that you can sign up for. Another similar site is Idealist.org, which can do the same but with jobs as well as volunteer opportunities.

4. Donate, but donate smart.

Philanthropy is important to being a good global citizen, but it’s far from the most important thing you can do, and is also one of the most fraught decisions you can make. You may have read the excellent Three Cups of Tea a few years back, about an American named Greg Mortenson who built schools for girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It was an awesome story, so naturally a ton of people rushed to donate to Mortenson’s charity, the Central Asia Institute. Problem was, a lot of Mortenson’s story was a lie, and his charity was horribly managed. So if you donated money, it likely wasn’t going towards building those schools.

How can you know which charity to trust? Fortunately, there are a number of sites that do this work for us. The first is The Life You Can Save, an organization founded by philosopher Peter Singer that’s focused on giving your charity money the most bang for its buck. Very few charities meet their very high standards, but they hope to add to their list over time.

Another site to check out is Zidisha, a microlending site. You’ve probably by now heard of Kiva, the more famous microlending site that allows you to lend money to causes and small businesses around the developing world. Zidisha is similar but cuts out intermediary institutions, making it more of a peer-to-peer website than Kiva. Zidisha also has a much lower interest rate for borrowers, which is important for those that worry that microlending simply puts the borrowers into serious debt. Kiva, on the other hand, has a slightly higher repayment rate. Since this is, in fact, lending and not giving, you could theoretically use the same $25 over and over again endlessly, and support countless small businesses in the developing world.

For a full breakdown of the differences between Kiva and Zidisha, check out this article.

5. Read everything you possibly can.

This sounds simple, but one of the best ways to engage with your world is to read everything you possibly can. If you aren’t a big reader, start listening to podcasts. If you’re a more visual person, start watching the news. If you aren’t a big TV person, try comics journalism. Seriously — it’s a thing, and it’s incredible.

The point is that, to a critical reader — a reader who’s skeptical of the source and its bias and engages with the material instead of accepting it — nothing is harmful. Not even bullshit-heavy conservative mouthpieces like Fox News. And this isn’t even limited to nonfiction — there’s no shortage of thought-provoking fictional material out there. The goal, with your reading, is to get yourself thinking in different ways and to be more engaged in the world around you. To find new stuff, check out Goodreads, TasteKid, and Shelfari.

6. Get involved in politics.

Volunteering is great, but at the end of the day a lot of the problems with the world are systemic, and volunteering is usually focused on a more personal level. Fortunately, most of the people reading this page right now are probably in democratic countries, where there are plenty of avenues to legally make a difference in the political system.

Getting involved in politics can mean any number of things (and don’t believe the assholes who tell you democracy ends at the voting booth, and that if you don’t vote, you don’t have the right to complain). The quickest way is to start letting your representative know what you think about the issues that are important to you. If you’re in America, here’s a tool to find your Congressperson’s Twitter account. Here’s how to find their email. Trust me — someone’s at least gonna glance at your missive.

If you don’t like your representative, campaign for their rival. The New Organizing Institute is a great organization with a ton of awesome resources designed to help you organize for political campaigns. You can also, on a lower level, give to campaigns you approve of. It may sound boring, but politicians do operate on money, and they do need your money just as much as they need your time.

Finally, if you belong more to the “We Shall Overcome” crowd, Lifehacker put together a great guide on how to safely protest, the law blog LegalFish did a piece on how to legally protest, and the Economist explains why, if you’re going to break the law protesting, you should do it peacefully.

This article was originally published on the Matador Network. Photo: Stallkerl

Why I don't take photos when I travel

THE MOTHER GIRAFFE reached to the top of the tree, pulled off a leafy branch, and then bent down to give it to her child. We sat dead silent in the armored Jeep about 40 yards away. I had “The Circle of Life” playing in my head, and was trying desperately hard to not burst out with “NAAAAAAAAAHHHHH SEVENYAAAAAAH! NABABEECHEEBABABA!” and thus prove myself the biggest asshole on the safari.

I was saved this embarrassment by the woman who leaned over to the driver and said, “Um, excuse me? Can we move along? We’ve already seen a bunch of giraffes.” The Jeep started, the giraffe ambled off, and we drove on in search of more interesting wildlife.

South African safaris involve less meaningless animal killing than they did in Hemingway’s day, but they are still basically the same: You are driven around the reserve by knowledgeable guides, who lead you to all of the places the animals like to hang out, and then when you see them, you shoot them. The only difference is it’s a camera doing the shooting. They even have held on to the tradition of hunting the fabled “Big Five,” the five animals that were traditionally the toughest to hunt and kill (the lion, the elephant, the black rhino, the cape buffalo, and the leopard), and are now, for whatever reason, the most exciting to see. A trip isn’t complete if you haven’t seen the “Big Five.”

I had been in South Africa’s Kruger National Park for about three days, and while I told myself I was there to witness nature’s majesty or some other weak shit, I was really there to pollute my Facebook feed with pictures of the “Big Five,” thus making my friends at home (the ones who hadn’t sunk 17 grand into an around-the-world study-abroad program) insanely jealous. The trip had been a wild success. I was getting so many likes.

So when the woman asked if we could move on from the giraffe, my first thought was, “Yeah, fuck this shit, I’ve got three hours of safari left and I still haven’t seen a leopard.” Four out of five was ridiculous. It simply would not do.

Then, an image popped into my head: the heads of a lion, an elephant, a rhino, and a cape buffalo mounted on my wall, with an empty mahogany plaque just beyond them. A brass plate on the empty plaque read, “Leopard,” and I sat across the room in a smoking jacket and a monocle, lamenting my failure to obtain the final trophy.

“Hoo boy,” I thought. “That’s not okay.” I tucked my camera in my bag and didn’t pull it back out for the rest of my visit.

My desire for souvenirs, trophies, and general documentation that I am an interesting person has long gotten in the way of actual travel for me. As a kid, I collected rocks, keychains, bottle openers, and t-shirts so I could show off my vacations to friends. When my parents bought me a camera, the souvenirs became photos. The problem was that photos required much more of my attention during the traveling itself, and I found that when I got home, the images in the photo had replaced the images in my memory. Photography allowed me to experience travel later, and not be present to it now.

Now, when I travel, I only take pictures when my parents’ emails become excessively hostile about the lack of photographic proof of my travels. I write instead. It’s impossible to write about something you’re distracted from. It’s why the literature on the experience of tying your shoes is so pathetically thin. When I started writing, my traveling instantly got better. My stories instantly got better. My memories became clearer. I no longer had the false memory of the photograph to fall back on.

Good photographers, of course, are fully present on their travels. They notice small details, and that’s what makes their photos so damn good. But most travel photographers are more along the lines of the parents in that atrocious Nokia Lumia commercial, which shows them fighting over getting the best smartphone view of their child’s recital, instead of just watching their kid perform like a decent fucking parent.

If you’re a good photographer, by all means, keep taking pictures. I need something to fuel my nostalgia addiction when I’m trapped in my cubicle at work. But if you’re not a great photographer, put down the camera. Enjoy the giraffe.

This article was originally published on the Matador Network. Photo: Rohit Gawaikar

Living on "the worst street in London" in the shadow of the Ripper

About a year before I moved to London, I read Alan Moore’s graphic novel, From Hell, a fictionalized account of the Jack the Ripper killings in Victorian England.  The book was probably one of the most stunning works of fiction I’d ever come into contact with.  At times a left-wing conspiracy theory implicating Queen Victoria and the Freemasons in the murders, at times times a rumination on the century that followed the Whitechapel Murders, and at times a depiction of the history contained in the stones of London, I finished it and found that it had given me nightmares – a thing I hadn’t experienced in over a decade.

Then, around a month after I finished the book, as I was planning to move to London to get my master’s from the LSE, I was offered a room in Lilian Knowles House, a graduate student dormitory in the East End of London.

Lilian Knowles House sits on Crispin Street. Running perpendicular to Crispin street is an unnamed alley.  This alley – where you see the Parking sign and the Dallas News – used to be Dorset Street, which was widely known as “The Worst Street in London,” and inspired Jack London to write his book People of the Abyss.

The little indentation in the roof of that building would be approximately where Miller’s Court used to be, which was the site of the final Jack the Ripper murder – that of Mary Jane Kelly (whose throat was cut and then, since the Ripper had some privacy, was chopped to pieces).

Miller’s Court is gone, but the Providence Row Night Refuge and Convent – a place where Mary Jane Kelly once worked and many men, women, and children stayed a night when they had nowhere else to go – still exists.  Now it’s a dorm for the London School of Economics, called Lilian Knowles.

The door that used to be the women’s entrance…

Via

…had become my kitchen window.

Via

Some of us were mildly excited to live on such an infamous street, and the guy who put together the Facebook group for our building dubbed us “The Rippers.”  Then we moved in and found that “Ripper Tours” were walked passed our kitchen window every single day.  The tourists would stand there and take pictures of the “Women” sign, which happened to be just above my stove.

So every day around dinner time, a campily dressed, top-hatted tour guide would stop beneath our kitchen window and say, “Back in Jack’s day, this was where the poorest of the poor used to live.  Now, it’s student housing.  Some things never change.”

“Haha!” the crowd would say.

“I should’ve worn fucking pants into the kitchen,” I would say.

I never took the Ripper tour myself, which was maybe an oversight, but I had other things to do, like study and drink.  I’ve also never been the morbid type.  Even Law & Order is a bit much for me.  Like, I’m into horror as long as it’s the campfire kind, and not the “hey, look at this lady who was chopped into a billion pieces.”

I left London almost a year ago, and in a bizarre fit of nostalgia a couple weeks ago, I bought From Hell for my graphic novel collection (12 books and counting!) in the hope that at some point, I would glimpse the Providence Row Night Refuge, or at least see it mentioned in the appendices.  It wasn’t, though there were a few times I thought I saw what could possibly have been the fence along the front of it.

One of my favorite parts about living in London was that it felt like history was in every stone.  “Oh, Oscar Wilde used to hang out at this pub,” or  “This is where Karl Marx used to drink,” or  “Jack the Ripper stalked his victims in the Ten Bells,”  (Most of British history involves pubs).  But the neighborhood I was living in was not the same neighborhood it had been 125 years before I arrived.  It has become posh and gentrified, no longer a street renowned for it’s near-constant murders and bar fights.  Around when I was leaving Keira Knightley was  moving into the neighborhood.  Just a few decades earlier, she wouldn’t have gone there for fear of being mugged.

We’ve become detached from our history.  It has been sanitized and cleaned up in nearly every regard.  In Britain, it’s a place where we can tour the sites of horrific murders and feel a pang of nostalgia.

In the U.S., we view people like Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jefferson as heroes, and we are willing to ignore their mistakes.  We gloss over slavery, the American Indian genocide, or our current exploitation of immigrants and sweatshop workers across the world, and say – constantly, incessantly, abhorrently – on the floors of Congress that we are the “greatest nation on earth.”

Americans don’t even like to remember their history.  I can’t trace my family much further back than my grandparents.  The idea is that we’re here now, and that’s all that matters.  But there are consequences to not being able to recall a time before the automobile.  There are consequences to history being that clean.

You can’t clean up Jack the Ripper.

During the Mary Kelly murder scene in From Hell, as Jack the Ripper is tearing apart her corpse, he starts to hallucinate.  He suddenly finds himself transported to an office in the 1980’s, and as he looks around at the people around him, he says:

Your days were born in blood and fires, whereof in you I may not see the meanest spark!

Your past is pain and iron!

Know yourselves!

With all your shimmering numbers and your lights, think not to be inured to history. Its black root succours you. It is INSIDE you. Are you asleep to it, that cannot feel its breath upon your neck, nor see what soaks in its cuffs?

See me! Wake up and look upon me! I am come among amongst you. I am with you always!

Victory in Europe: Can a war be just?

Today was Victory in Europe Day, or VE Day, which is when the Allied forces finally defeated the Germans in World War II.  I spent my day, rather fittingly, touring the beaches of Normandy, where the Allied invasion of France – the one that resulted, ultimately, in the defeat of the Nazis – began.

I have the same basic feelings about war as I have about getting my asshole waxed.  I don’t really want the experience, but I want to see what it feels like afterwards.  I usually think of myself as a lovable coward, but it’s hard to know what I’m really like in extreme situations because I generally go out of my way to avoid them.

But today, I stood at the edge of the tide on Omaha Beach.  The beach is shallow, so while at high tide, the waterline is up by the dunes, at low tide, it’s several hundred yards out.  That space is flat and featureless, and on the hills above, you can see the cement remains of gun pillboxes pointing down at the beach.  Those pillboxes would be a very good place to shoot little pieces of hot metal out of in a menacing manner.

Standing at the edge of the tide, I thought, “Yup, I’m a coward.”  Throughout the day, me and my Dad would trade facts we knew about D-Day, and the rest of my family and I had long discussions about the nature of war, whether a war could be just, and where, possibly, they might sell good cheese sandwiches.

Part of me wished that, while I was standing on the beach, I could slip through a wormhole and onto that beachhead nearly 70 years ago, under (and possibly on) fire.  I’d like to see if I would shit my pants.  I’m pretty sure I would, even allowing for a moment of orientation after my time travel.

I’ve thought excessively about war, and about what causes I’d be willing to fight and die for.  I would not be willing to fight and die blindly for my country, as the title of my blog might suggest.  I do have a lifelong love of supporting underdogs, though, so I can see myself as being quite amenable to fighting fascists to the death.  Whether I could do so without soiling my pants is another matter.

Another thing I noticed about Normandy was that most of the American graves were crosses, except for the few with the Star of David.  There weren’t any other types of graves, which I’d assume accounted for the general lack of Muslims in the armed forces at the time, but I was expecting a few non-crosses, non-stars for the nonbelievers.  There HAD to be some killed at Normandy.  If it were only Christians and Jews killed in World War II, if all the atheists got off the hook, I would think it would sow a bit more doubt into the hearts of the believers.

My point is that the assumption that they died for their country – as the memorials all said – seemed a bit presumptuous.  I wouldn’t die for my country, but I’d fight with it if it were fighting fascists thugs, if I believed it was going to do the fight right.  And why wouldn’t that earn me my own type of tombstone?

Normandy is beautiful, for those who are thinking of coming.  If you go with your family, you can talk about war one moment and then giggle about how your little sister actually says “Hiccup” when she hiccups, and how your Mom, despite the fact that she is over half a century old, still cannot even think of the word “fart” without laughing.

It’s pleasant.

Happy Victory in Europe day, everyone.  Here’s to the memory of the people who fought for reasons we know nothing about.  Here’s to the memory of the people who died for reasons we know even less about.  Here’s to fighting fascists.

“What shall we drink to, sir?”

“Down with Hitler.”

“All the way down, sir.”

A very political diagram about miracle babies that went off the rails

I've always been annoyed when people call babies "miracles." Not because I'm anti-baby, but because I think we should maybe push our standards a little higher for what we consider "miracles." So I decided to make a Venn Diagram about it. But this is when I was really obsessed with Battlestar Galactica... so it kinda went off the rails.

Apparently, I was a big fan of every-word capitalization at the time, too.