by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Dec 5, 2019 | Climate Change, Extended Producer Responsibility, glyphosate, Industrial Epidemics, Industry Documents, philosophy of science, pollution, Syndemics, Talks, Tobacco Industry
Today I gave a talk at the Stanford History of Science and Technology Workshop on Industrial Epidemics. It was a pleasure to discuss the ins and outs of public health, corporate malfeasance, and glyphosate in particular with the students and professorate of the...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Sep 6, 2019 | beyond idealism, Discursive Gap, e-waste, Extended Producer Responsibility, Greenwashing, Industrial Epidemics, normalization, pollution, Publications, Side-effects, Systems thinking, Tobacco Industry
In the flurry of the semester starting, I’ve been remiss in updating this blog with a couple important articles that have come out in the press discussing the environmental harms of electronic cigarette (ecig) electronic waste (ewaste). Both The Guardian and...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Sep 6, 2019 | beyond liberalism, Climate Change, Communication, cruelty, Dante Alighieri — 'The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.', death, Decolonization, deus ex machina, Discursive Gap, duh, Energy, Environmental Justice, exploitation, Fake Freedoms, folly, Greenwashing, Industrial Epidemics, Normal is Over, Oil Barons, parasitism, Perverse Incentives, pollution, Priorities, the real, transportation
Who is fueling the Alice in Wonderland media world which slowly is infecting and deceiving people around the world, spreading the ignorance virus? Let’s take the way that Trump wanted to roll back the Obama-era federal fuel emission standards as an example. While...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Aug 26, 2019 | agroecology, animals, Bad Advertising, beyond idealism, beyond liberalism, Biomimicry, Biophilia, Bureaucratic quixotic, Climate Change, Communication, Conferences, conservation, Decolonization, Discursive Gap, duh, eating animals, Energy, Environmental Justice, exploitation, Extended Producer Responsibility, folly, Greenwashing, Harm Reduction, Industrial Epidemics, meat, Normal is Over, Perverse Incentives, pollution, Syndemics, Systems thinking, Unpleasant Design
The ISEE, or the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology, is an organization that one would expect to walk its talk. After all, it has been around for 31 years with its annual conferences, and is one of the most sophisticated and cutting edge of the...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Aug 13, 2019 | Uncategorized
Many colleagues and students ask me what books or authors I would recommend. So, I’ve decided to start an archive of the best tools on the web, and the most impactful books I know of for social and personal evolution. (this is a work in progress, that I will be...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Aug 9, 2019 | Bad Advertising, beyond liberalism, Bureaucratic quixotic, cruelty, death, Decolonization, exploitation, Fake Freedoms, Industrial Epidemics, Perverse Incentives, Semiotics, Side-effects, Syndemics, Unpleasant Design
Introducing: The inverted guillotine Having lived for the better part of my life in the San Francisco Bay Area, I have put in my time on the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system. From it’s loud, overcrowded, clunky, and infrequent trains, to the spate of BART...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Jul 29, 2019 | Bureaucratic quixotic, e-waste, exploitation, Extended Producer Responsibility, Fake Freedoms, folly, Industrial Epidemics, Perverse Incentives, pollution, Syndemics, Tobacco Industry
About a decade ago, the “American Vaping Association” railed against RJReynolds (later RAI, now part of British American Tobacco (BAT)) for attempting to persuade the FDA to “ban the sale of open-system e-cigarettes, including all component...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Jul 11, 2019 | Uncategorized
The Rhone Glacier has been wrapped in blankets for the past 8 years by the Swiss. For the last 8 summers, Switzerland has been wrapping glaciers in blankets to stop them melting. These desperate strategies are increasingly becoming more common as our ecosystems...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Jul 8, 2019 | Biosemiotics, Conferences, Talks
After a successful 2019 Biosemiotics Gathering in Moscow, I’m happy to be sharing a deeper look at my project at the University of Tartu, in Estonia, giving a talk on Multi-level semiosis – and the impact of supernormal stimuli in the human superorganism and...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Jun 26, 2019 | Uncategorized
https://www.eshub.nl/podcast-2/ I gave a talk a few weeks ago for the Erasmus Sustainability Hub which is now online. I had a great time being interviewed by Wallerand Bazin. They did a great job too in assembling a set of links to some of the major themes I covered....
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Jun 18, 2019 | Environmental Justice, Fake Freedoms, fake loops, folly, Fragmentation, glyphosate, Greenwashing, Industrial Epidemics, pollution, Priorities, Public Health, Semiocide, Semiotics, Syndemics, Systems thinking
The original article, published here, takes a rather pro-industry “we’ll engineer our way out of this” approach. Rather than observing a fundamental problem in putting artificial inputs unsustainably into agriculture, the article plays to the upbeat...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | May 22, 2019 | Harm Reduction, Industrial Epidemics, Perverse Incentives, Publications, Syndemics, Tobacco Industry, Wolves in sheep's clothing
My colleagues Manali Vora, Jesse Elias, and Pam Ling and I at the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco just Financial Conflicts of Interest and Stance on Tobacco Harm Reduction: A Systematic Review. (Also...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | May 22, 2019 | Uncategorized
My review of the 2018 Biosemiotics Gathering that Terry Deacon and I organized at UC Berkeley is now a Featured Article and Open Access at the Journal of Biosemiotics. The Biosemiotics Gathering this year will be in Moscow.
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Apr 26, 2019 | beyond liberalism, Bureaucratic quixotic, Discursive Gap, folly, normalization, parasitism, Wolves in sheep's clothing
In doing some background research for my book, I remembered that I had read about a year ago of a US Congressman who was working to get rid of the imperative for US health insurers to take patients with preexisting conditions, who shortly thereafter was diagnosed with...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Apr 14, 2019 | Uncategorized
John Rawls’s (1971) notion of national self-sufficiency in terms of resources is about as far from our current globalized world as we can get, in terms of theory aimed at non-ideal applications. Globalization is a fact of life. And yet, with each displacement in...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Apr 8, 2019 | Fake Freedoms, Industrial Epidemics, Talks
Advertising and Agency: An ethological account of how social infrastructure compromises or sustains our autonomy May 16, 2019 12:00 – 13:00 Bayle Building, J5, Erasmus University RotterdamHumans like to think of ourselves as autonomous agents, freely making our...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Mar 26, 2019 | Uncategorized
Notes from a debrief of Philip Morris’s 1998 Litter Focus Group read: “Non-smokers tend to give smokers a lot of slack about throwing down a butt,” claiming that “throwing it on the ground eliminates fire risk,” and that litter is a “natural result of outdoor smoking...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Mar 14, 2019 | Aphorisms
With research, be as exhaustive as possible without it becoming exhausting. (March 13, 2019) Superstitions are killing the planet. (Viz., the idea that we need x in order for y to happen or not to happen; that we need more bunkers, armor, weapons, food, etc., in order...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Mar 9, 2019 | Uncategorized
In Erasmus University Rotterdam’s weekly online magazine Erasmus Magazine, a condensed version of my speech I gave Monday March 4th, 2019 for the Opening Ceremony of the Erasmus Sustainability Days is now published. It’s also available in Dutch [in...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Mar 3, 2019 | Environmental Justice, Talks
March 4th, 2019, I’ll be giving a keynote to 1500 or so students at my home university, Erasmus University Rotterdam, as part of their Sustainability Days. They asked me to be fiery and inspirational, so I’ll try my best. The paper will be put online...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Mar 1, 2019 | agroecology, Conferences, Environmental Political Theory, exploitation, Extended Producer Responsibility, folly, glyphosate, Industrial Epidemics, Normal is Over, Perverse Incentives, philosophy of science, Plants, pollution, Side-effects, Syndemics, Systems thinking, Talks
My Erasmus University Rotterdam colleague Alessandra Arcuri and I are organizing a day-long workshop on the most used pesticide in the world: glyphosate. Glyphosate, the active ingredient in RoundUp, Monsanto’s flagship herbicide, has been linked with cancer by...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Feb 5, 2019 | Communication, Talks
I’m pleased to be giving my welcome lecture to the students and faculty of the Erasmus School of Philosophy, where I have been an Assistant Professor since November 2018, on March 13, 2019. In this lecture, I will survey my research career thus far, in light of...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Jan 20, 2019 | beyond idealism, Climate Change, conservation, deus ex machina, Discursive Gap, Energy, Environmental Justice, exploitation, Extended Producer Responsibility, folly, Greenwashing, Industrial Epidemics, Normal is Over, normalization, object-oriented-ontology, Perverse Incentives, pollution, Priorities, Side-effects, Systems thinking, the real, Wolves in sheep's clothing
I was perusing Kickstarter when I happened upon a solution to a problem that I didn’t know was that big of a deal: spices going bad. As it turns out, it’s not that big of a deal, it’s what could easily be classified as a “first world...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Jan 20, 2019 | beyond idealism, beyond liberalism, Bureaucratic quixotic, Climate Change, Communication, cruelty, death, Decolonization, Discursive Gap, exploitation, folly, Industrial Epidemics, normalization, Perverse Incentives, Priorities, the real, Wolves in sheep's clothing
There is an epidemic of thoughts and prayers in America. It seems the more politicians think and pray, the more school shootings happen, the more places of worship get gunned and burned down, and the more people die. Maybe to reverse this trend, politicians need to...
by Yogi Hale Hendlin | Nov 23, 2018 | Uncategorized
My article, “I Am a Fake Loop: the Effects of Advertising-Based Artificial Selection,” just appeared in the journal Biosemiotics. You can read it here for free. In this piece, I explore Niko Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz’s ethological understandings of...
