midwest - transplant

Counta culcha

So, this is the part of the program where we talk about arts and culture, and I use up my one good bar story. Our subject today: the Yes Men, who are a group of "artists" that engage in culture jamming. There was a documentary filmed about them a couple of years back. Anyway, I was having fond memories of a certain class I took from one of their affiliates a while ago, and so I signed up for their newsletter, to keep it real (or something...). I'm not sure that I exactly approve of all their methods and pranks (aside from my ethical objections, there's something about this postmodern stuff I can't quite embrace. Maybe I'm just not angry enough), but I've gotta say: when this landed in my inbox, my jaw dropped, and I had to share:

Two weeks ago at a London banking conference to which they had accidentally been invited, two "Dow representatives" described a new Dow computer program that puts a precise financial value on human life.

The 70 bankers in attendance enthusiastically applauded the lecture, which described various industrial crimes, including IBM's sale of technology to the Nazis for use in identifying Jews, as "golden skeletons in the closet"--i.e. lucrative and therefore acceptable.

Several of the bankers then posed for photos with "Dow Acceptable Risk" mascot "the Golden Skeleton," and signed up for licenses for the "Acceptable Risk Calculator," which helps businesses determine the exact point where human casualties will start to cut into profit, and suggests the best regions on earth to locate ventures with potentially very high death tolls.

See http://theyesmen.org/hijinks/dow/acceptablerisk.shtml for video and photos of the event, and http://dowethics.com/risk/ to try out the "Acceptable Risk Calculator" for yourself.

posted by mideast-transplant @ 2:32 PM