Jello Biafra's H2K Keynote

Hyena writes "Jello Biafra's surprisingly brilliant H2K address is now available online compliments of 2600, with many more H2K panels to follow. Expect further civil unrest in coming years." Here's a description of the speech written at the time. Despite being given at H2K, it isn't technical in nature, it's primarily a reflection of Biafra's decidedly anti-establishment views.

Comments

Jello's Platform

[1010011010]

Jello's Platform -- he's running for President, you know.

Main Platform:

• Enact a maximum wage
• Abolish the Military
• Withdraw from NAFTA and the World Trade Organization
• End the war on drugs
• End Police Brutality
• Lower the Voting Age to Five
• Education Reform

Other Ideas:

• Limit junk mail to one 3 x 5 card per mailing
• Ban drug and lie-detector tests of employees and students, and forbid the drugging of schoolchildren against their will.
• Give out giant waterproof Yuppie Parasite decals containing a skull and crossed cell-phones to be plastered by concerned citizens on all sport utility vehicles until they are eradicated from urban and suburban areas.
• Convert giant sports stadiums into homeless shelters until the maximum wage imposed on today?s sports stars funds the necessary low-income housing.
• Fight gentrification by allowing those under siege to spray whipped cream on those who flaunt their upwardly mobile invader status until the interlopers leave town.

And, finally:

• Don't hate the media, become the media

________________________________________

Malaria Cured? NOT.

[edwardames]

I'm not sure if you're kidding, but since your silly linkage is absurd and what you're trying to imply with it is so so misguided, I've got to put in my thoughts on it.

I fully realize that malaria and a couple of other awful tropical diseases are completely off the personal radar of most of the world's population of computer users, and thus of slashdot readers, and so I apologize to one and all for sounding pedantic, but this inane statement needs to be put down hard.

While drug companies have developed vaccines for some diseases that once upon a time plagued populations that could pay for the drugs, Malaria, Cholera, and Dengue Fever, to name just three, continue to kill millions of people every year. Research into vaccines which could save these millions of poor folks lives has been very slow, simply because there is no money to be made in it. Basicly it's an altruistic enterprise, so vaccine research does attract funding from rich donors, concerned governments, and international organizations.

But what it does not attract in any significant amount whatsoever, is research funding from pharmaceutical companies. Money spent on Viagra does not go to research a malaria vaccine, or a cholera vaccine, or a dengue fever vaccine.

Personally, my experience has been with Malaria. Having spent a considerable amount of time in certain parts of the world where that nasty disease is endemic, I can assure you there is no "cure" for it. There are prophylactic measures that can be taken, among them some expensive drugs. By expensive I'm thinking of Lariam, which costs $US5 to $US10 for a week. Protection with Lariam is not a reasonable notion when you are talking about preventing malaria in a population of folks who earn one dollar a day if they're lucky. Lariam or one of the other drugs will work on the individual scale, but not on the population scale. And there are also treatments which can ameliorate the syptoms of the infection, but in most cases the disease doesn't really ever go away completely. Certainly there are traditional herbal remedies used by people for thousands of years, and I'm sure some of these work to an extent, but they are no substitute for a vaccine. A vaccine is the only real cure for the malaria problem, and that is what Jello Biafra is talking about.

What's needed is basic vaccine research. With a vaccine you can protect a whole population in the cheapest and (hopefully) most effective manner.

Not really meaning to say a nice word about that man in Redmond, but Bill Gates's philanthropic work is the way to go. If the the market won't fix this problem (and this is a problem where the market does not provide incentives) then people and governments, and maybe some of those corporations, need to step up to the plate, and make up for this particular deficiency of the market.

I've gone on long enough. If anybody cares enough and wants me to dig up links, say so and I'll post later, but a decent google search will supply you with all the info you could ever want on these issues and then some.

Ed