Print

Mail

wiki links

Letter: Misguided award

Recently there has been some talk about so-called "intelligent communities" around the globe -- with Taipei receiving top honors as "foremost intelligent community" from the New York-based Intelligent Community Forum ("Taipei honored with intelligent community prize," June 11, page 3).

But living in western Taiwan with all the beetle nut juice on the bloody ground (read putrid, bacteria-laden sputum), detritus and debris, flotsam and jetsam and air pollution and the elderly Japanese couple leaving Taiwan because of such dirty surroundings, I have some burning questions.

Why does Taiwan, or others, window-dress Taipei? It is like emulating Beijing and Shanghai. I hope not to see plastic bags being handed out to people to spit in. It would be like carrying a colostomy bag, but smaller, and worse, plastic spitting-bags would lend belief that the "spitter" was a normal person. When Cro-magnons roamed the earth, it was normal.

Model cities are something to behold, but thousands of their sisters slowly rotting. And it's not the cities that are rotting. It's the flora and fauna, and people.

But before I digress, "who are these fine members of the Intelligent Community Forum?" And second, by which or whose measuring stick (read "ethics") are they able to confer such pristine gifts upon major -- or not -- cities around the world?

My first guess is that they are either Raelians, or computer geeks. My second guess is that they are repentant, guilt-ridden, but disillusioned retired elites from the Exxon daze. And my third is that this conference is another feeble attempt by US President George W. Bush to put Taiwan on the map, or at least, a ketchup bottle.

However, please forgive my Raelian slight, for there just may be some benign, loving aliens out there who would really love to prune our trees, or at least teach us how to use biofriendly fuels, if not to whisk us away to some bushy, lush planet. But the real killer is, I don't understand how any entity can confer upon anyone or community an award that totally neglects the "E" word -- environment.

Everything based upon this forum's fantasy of the notion of "intelligence" is grounded in the fundamentally destructive fact of progress.

Kevin Larson
Chiayi

This story has been viewed 1515 times.