The Yes Men: Gilda, the Golden Skeleton, and the Dow Acceptable Risk Calculator

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 12, 2005

DOW REJECTS PROPOSAL TO CLEAN BHOPAL USING FIRST-QUARTER PROFITS

The same man who appeared on BBC World TV last December as a Dow representative to announce that Dow would finally clean up Bhopal [1] showed up today at Dow's Annual General Meeting (AGM) to suggest the same thing to Dow's board of directors and shareholders.

"We made an incredible $1.35 billion this quarter," said "Jude Finisterra," aka Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men [2]. "But for most of us, that'll just mean a new set of golf clubs. Let's do something useful instead - like finally cleaning up the Bhopal plant site, or funding the new clinic there [3]." Dow Chairman Bill Stavropolous responded to "Finisterra's" suggestion with a curt dismissal [4].

The Yes Men joined other shareholder groups in Midland, including Amnesty International, which condemns Dow's lack of response to the Bhopal crisis as a human rights issue [5].

BANKERS EMBRACE "GOLDEN SKELETON" MASCOT

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

STATE DEPARTMENT FINDS FAKE DOW WEBSITE USEFUL

Dow may not appreciate the DowEthics.com website--but the US State Department finds it quite useful, and refers requests for information about Bhopal to various of its pages: see www.dowethics.com/statedeptfoi/ for an example.


CONTACT: dowmedia@theyesmen.org

NOTES TO EDITORS:

[1] See theyesmen.org/hijinks/dow/bhopal2004.shtml

[2] Yes Men Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno had been given one Dow "proxy" each by actual shareholders, giving them the right to attend the annual meeting and address the Dow board.

[3] Two weeks ago, the Sambhavna Trust Clinic of Bhopal opened a new wing to serve the victims whose numbers continue to grow due to groundwater contamination from the uncleaned plant site. See www.bhopal.org for information on how you can contribute.

[4] See theyesmen.org/hijinks/dow/2005agm.shtml for complete statements and responses, including Yes Man Mike Bonanno's feverish, red-eared tirade in a neck brace.

[5] See www.amnestyusa.org/business/dow_letters.html. See also www.proxyinformation.com/dow/summary.htm and www.TRWNews.net

(via nettime)

Oxyrhynchus

[image source]

For more than a century, it has caused excitement and frustration in equal measure – a collection of Greek and Roman writings so vast it could redraw the map of classical civilisation. If only it was legible.

Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed.

In the past four days alone, Oxford’s classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for millennia. They even believe they are likely to find lost Christian gospels, the originals of which were written around the time of the earliest books of the New Testament.

The original papyrus documents, discovered in an ancient rubbish dump in central Egypt, are often meaningless to the naked eye – decayed, worm-eaten and blackened by the passage of time. But scientists using the new photographic technique, developed from satellite imaging, are bringing the original writing back into view. Academics have hailed it as a development which could lead to a 20 per cent increase in the number of great Greek and Roman works in existence. Some are even predicting a “second Renaissance”.

From http://weblog.physorg.com/news1612.html

The following is from a post to the Paglia List by Damion Matthews:

The Oxyrhynchus site has been updated to reflect a translation from a newly transcribed papyrus of a work from Archilochus.

This is a "tentative reconstruction" of the fragment, written by project leader Dirk Obbink of the University of Oxford, and Universty of Michigan. Obbink is a 2001 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship. A recent BBC interview with him can be heard at http://audio.theworld.org/wma/2005/05037.wma ).

Archilocus, unread for almost 2,000 years:

"One doesn't call it weakness and cowardice, having to retreat under the compulsion of a god. No, we turned our backs to flee quickly. There exists a proper time for flight. So, once, Telephos from Arcadia routed the great army of Argives, spear-men though they were. And the fair-flowing river Kaïkos and the plain of Mysia were filled with corpses as they fell. And being slain at the hands of this relentless man (Telephos), the well-greaved Achaeans turned-off with headlong speed to the shore of the much-resounding sea. Gladly did the sons of the immortals and brothers, whom Agamemnon was leading to holy Ilium to wage war, flee to their swift ships. On that occasion, because they had lost their way, they arrived at this shore. And they set upon the lovely city of Teuthras where, while snorting fury along with their horses, they came in distress of spirit. For they thought they were attacking the high-gated city of Troy, but in fact they had their feet on the wheat-bearing Mysia, land of miraculous growth. Then Heracles, shouting out, issued a command to his brave-hearted son Telephos, fierce and pitiless in cruel war, who, inciting unfortunate flight for the Danaans, strove alone in battle to gratify his father."

There is also a fragment from a version of the "Metamorphoses", recounting the suicide of Narcissus. It is being attributed to Parthenius of Nicaea, who was an influence on both Ovid and Vergil (for instance, he wrote about Daphne turning into a tree before Ovid did.)

" ... A cruel heart he had: he [Narcissus] hated all of them, until he conceived a love for his own form. Within a spring, he wailed, seeing his face delightful as a dream: he wept for his beauty. Then the boy shed his blood and gave it to the earth to bear."

From: http://www.papyrology.ox.ac.uk/monster/demo/Page2.html
and http://www.friends-classics.demon.co.uk/news.htm

Other resources:
Oxyrhynchus Online
ArsTechica: The "classical holy grail" or unholy hype?
Wikipedia: Oxyrhynchus
Classics at Oxford: Imaging Papyri

The Leafless American By Edward Dahlberg

How old are we?

We are still a horse and buffalo
people, heavy, lumbering cattle, with
prairie and grain virtues, and our avarice
is primitive wigwam barter; we ought to
adore the great fish god, for we are a
costal people, and New Mexico and Arizona,
which are saurian undersea country, breeding
pine, cactus, and snakes, are Galilean land.

We are passing from a morning horse
innocence to unusual vices, and we are not
ready.

Is Pike's Peak a hummock of old world
sin, or the Rockies Scythian debauchery,
or the mineraled Colorado dawn the Orient
pearl? It is hay and brook and sweet pony
corral, appled meadow garnished with odors
more virtuous than spiced Eden.

Take no stock in American turpitudes;
look to the Toltec of the Mayan for the
lascivious parrot and monkey.

The Platte River, the pine, the sage
brush are hardy character, but not history,
and I admit that nothing has ever happened
to me, and that I am mad for events.

Whatever we do is vast, unconscious
geography; we are huge space giants of the
mesa, surd, mad rivers that rush along, and
we do not care to be near each other; this
is not ancient wickedness, but solitary
prairie grazing.

We cannot bear each other because we
are immense territory, and our most malignant
folly was to closet us up in cities, and take
away our ocean past.

We should have the deepest reverence
for poverty, because we are New Testament
ground. Every day I offer a sacrifice to
the extinct bison, the horse and savage
Iroquois, who are our muse of cereal, yam
and maize, and when somebody strokes my
head, I walk to Mt. Shasta, or the Oregon
orchards which are my epistles to the
Cornithians.

Who is my Father?

The rising sun-man disappeared,
and the step-father, the petticoat parent,
is rearing the children since the tent,
the wagon, and saddle have gone.

The great, grassy basin, the Catskill
eagle made us tribal and fierce; the Pawnee,
leading the sorrel of the Platte by a bull-hide
rope, lessoned us in poverty, for want too
is a tough, rude god make out of dried buffalo
skin, to which we must offer our orisons, lest
we perish of sloth and surfeit.

Our forefathers were giant volcano-horses;
we were a hot earth animal as the elephant
shaped mounds found in Kansas show.

Give us back our origins, for I am out
of season in any other land, or plant except
the corn seeds of Quetzalcoatl, the yucca,
the cactus, and the Mojave joshua tree,
dearer than the desert tamarisk beneath
which Saul sat.

We have lost ground, city-cursed
that we are, left it behind us like the
Quiche did the Yaqui for whom they wept.

Return the Platte, the bison, the hoof-print
of the deer, for I am as hungry for them as
the wandering Quiche who had to smell the points
of their staffs to deceive their empty stomachs.

Our Mother paps were rabid gulches
in which the white and gray wolves howled,
and now that the Toltecs and the Pawnee
are dead, we are their evil genius, looking
for a relic, a flint arrow, a teepee, a
harness, a piece of bread.

I need confidence, the antelope, the
pack-mule, the Indian apple, but we have
killed the old bread gods made of plums,
incense and the coca plant. Until we find
the Quiche bread idol, we are orphans.

The word together has become a tabu
devil; everything is public except guilt,
which is hidden like hands that are pursed
and pocketed lest they be demanded for
hand-shaking, which is some uneasy, first
sin; touch a man and blood goes out
of his cheek; the mountains, the hills and
the grass are turning against men, and
every man dreads every man.

The mating season that once cattled
the fingers of the marriageable now brings
the alley tree, cemented in the side walk,
and the tuberose poodle together. Aging
men walk through the macadam auto ravines,
until magnolia dusk, and then they go to
their rooms, walking from faucet to window-hole.
They crawl under a mealy blanket seeking that
primeval night that came before creation, and
fall at once into a water of sleep, void of
vegetable, animal or root.

The highways have no ancestors;
the 19th century American was kinless
iron, and these men of the
20th are houseless sepcters because
they have never claimed the continent.
They have destroyed the old, rooty
deities of the Cherokee and the Huron
which are now howling in their dead,
double-breasted coats and pants. The
city auto man has killed everything,
going through the unowned land without
branch, leaf, trunk or earth. The
autumn comes, and he has no foliage
to shed, and the winter appears, and
he cannot rest or sleep or die until
April, and his destiny star, too, is
dead. He has no green May shoots and
no loam in which to sprout. He feeds
listlessly and is alone when he genders
with his wife. He is an unseeding,
hating man who has forgotten to plant
a street, a blue-bell, a house.

Prophecy, O lost people without
a fate, is seeing the quick of the
instant. You have no porch, no yard,
no steps, you are groundless, and bitten
by gnats because you have slain the
earth. Can you die? Death is sweet
and dear, for it is quiet. But there
are no hills to appease you, and no
mountains to give you hard, striving
will, or rivers to wash your eyes to
make them see.

Homeless, denatured ghost of many
leafy races, where do you blow? who
will gather you up?

Copyright © Estate of Edward Dahlberg; Reprinted by Permission of the Publisher, McPherson & Company, from The Leafless American and Other Writings; All Rights Reserved.

Etymology of Bikini: actually begins with a non-velarized labial stop

From piloklok:
Anyway, the story for the word in its modern English use is that the two-piece bathing suit was introduced in 1946, and in search of a name for it, the designer chose Bikini, in reference to an (inhabited but evacuated) atoll in the Marshall Islands which had just been used for testing the atomic bomb. (The joke was, this bathing suit is as hot as a recently irradiated tropical island - ha ha ha).

It's observable that "kini" has become a cran-morpheme, appearing in forms like monokini (a one piece, or maybe topless form) and tankini (whose top is like a tank top). The brief ADS discussion suggested the backformation [bi+kini] was purposeful. Regardless, Nikolaev was unable to find help regarding the origin of the place name, as his summary several weeks later indicates:

I thank all who got in touch with me and who shared their know-how on the subject. However, no Marshallese connection was established and I still do not know for certain whether the bi- in bikini, by any off chance, came from the Latin bin, bis. While at this point we do not have the Marshallese etymology of the word bikini, I suggest that we do not close the current discussion.
The original query seemed innocent enough, but the sum kind of lets on speculation that the bi portion of the word bikini was always the latinate bi. (I think. Nobody (hopefully) would suggest the Romans made it that far east, or west, so I assume the null hypothesis is that there is a place called Kini to which a creative designer attached bi-.)

When I first saw the post I meant to write to Nikolaev after simply reaching behind me to crack open Abo, Bender, Capelle, and Debrum's Marshallese English Dictionary. But it was not behind me; instead, it was tucked away in the stacks on the 7th floor of Davidson Library. But the other day I was reminded of the issue when browsing the news and finding this story and photo.

So I went to get the dictionary, which I knew has a helpful section just on Marshallese place names. However, Marshallese orthography is opaque. The letter [b] is used, but stands for a velarized labial stop, which other Micronesian spelling systems express with [pw]. Also, the vowels are unusual: symbols like a, e, i, o, and u are all used, but are distributed over a four-height series in which each vowel has 3 (or so) allophones in the backness dimension.

What this means is that in looking for the Marshallese word bikini, you need to cast a wide net, especially since there is no such representation using that exact string of letters. Instead, it seems that the spelling of bikini is probably an English transliteration of a Japanese or German rendition. So I had to check b-words spelled with any vowel.

I scanned through the b-words in the place-name list and regular Marshallese-English section, with little luck. There were some leads, including bokwan [beqan], a recurring place-name formative, būkien [bikiyen] "its cape", būkōn [biken] "cape", bukun [biqin] "grove", and bok [beq] "sand" -- nothing quite close enough.

Frustrated, I wondered if the transliteration is actually a p-initial word. That is, perhaps the place name actually begins with a non-velarized labial stop, which Marshallese spells [p]. Then I found a place name Pikinni [pikinniy], which evidently is composed of pik "surface" and ni "coconut". It's listed in the place-name section of Abo et al, but it's not clear there whether the word applies specifically to the Bikini atoll.

I found confirmation, though, by looking up some official resources on the Marshall Islands. First I found their US Embassy, which links to a visitor's site, which links to an online library, with this entry on the Bikini atoll. In short, its name in Marshallese really is Pikinni. The probable trajectory is that the real place name was transliterated as Bikini, whose spelling precipitated the backformational removal of bi-.

(via Language Hat)

Boris Vallejo's Depiction of the Agony of Jesus on the Cross

You see the link Jesus Christ! [dead ebay link removed] and immediately pause. Do I really want to see what's after the jump? Why not? And then, the image below. Gave me the biggest smile I've had all week. I wonder what Vallejo's Buddha might look like? (via goldenfiddle)

Boris Vallejo, Jesus Christ
Oil on Masonite, 1969