Into the Middle of Things
Hello there! Well it has been a while. I read once it was bad form to apologise for not having posted for some time, but I think in this case I feel like some sort of acknowledgment of my absence is warranted.
It has been a 'busy' few months, although I do dislike using the word 'busy'. Busy doesn't tell us very much, does it? It is like 'fine'; an empty word that describes the status quo and adds no real value to a sentence. It is there as a social nicety, which is something I suppose. 'What has been keeping you busy?' has been my go-to question of late, rather than 'what do you do?'. It makes for a more interesting conversation.
Occasionally, I include a twist and amend it with 'what has been keeping you busy mentally?'
In my case, it has been a couple of months of growing up. Mentally, I have been devoting a lot of time to issues around gender, access to opportunity and diversity across decision making places. I've also been thinking a lot about unconscious bias, how that plays a role in our society and how we can move past it...
Big issues, big questions. Too much for one blog post perhaps.
So instead, let me pepper you with some links to say hello again, and hopefully the next update will not be so far away.
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I was recently alerted to this wonderful website: 'Into the Middle of Things', where Australians from around the country are interviewed about their life. The first one I saw was below and it is a beautiful few minutes with Abe, a Sudanese-Brisbane lad:
Born in a Sudanese jail in the midst of a civil war, Abe escaped a possible future as a child soldier and managed to make it to Australia as a refugee with his seven brothers and sisters. The secret emotional and mental toll of this is still catching up with him today.
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Shonda Rhimes is an awesome strong black woman and is doing some cool things with the various TV series she writes.
"I get asked a lot by reporters and tweeters why I am so invested in 'diversity' on television," Rhimes said, according to Medium's text of her speech. "'Why is it so important to have diversity on TV?' they say. I really hate the word 'diversity.' It suggests something other. ... As if there is something unusual about telling stories involving women and people of color and LGBTQ characters on TV."
Rhimes offered an alternative to the term "diversity," saying she'd rather describe what she's doing as "normalizing."
"I am making TV look like the world looks. Women, people of color, LGBTQ people equal way more than 50% of the population. Which means it ain't out of the ordinary. I am making the world of television look normal," she said.
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Some awesome women learning to be engineers in remote areas in the Philippines. LOVE IT.
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Did n bit of a run down on various topics with the Triple J Hack crew for the Friday night Shake Up. What are your thoughts on some of these issues? Listen to the podcast here. Also did some radio in Arabic! Check it by clicking here.
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Loving this insta: Did I ever tell you I really used to love drawing cartoons?
90s Superboy cover for DC's Convergence! :)
A photo posted by babsdraws (@babsdraws) on Jan 14, 2015 at 6:06pm PST
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So anyway, what has been keeping YOU busy mentally?
In Sydney for Changemakers Festival! (and some links!)
Quick update: I'll be in Sydney this weekend! There are a couple of cool things happening: for one, Youth Without Borders Sydney is catching up (click HERE for details). I'll also be taking part in the 3things event through the Changemakers Festival which should be quite awesome - come along on Sunday morning if you're free (details HERE).
I've also been honoured to be highlighted as part of birdee's Changemakers - the guys and gals are too kind!
Don't forget to like / contribute to the campaign: Racism, Hatred, Bigotry: #NotInMyName
A couple of things to keep you busy on a Saturday morning:
Do you think the 'Age of Loneliness' is killing us?
An essay on 'Terrorism and the Muslim veil'
I really enjoy good graffiti and have begun using Instagram to record some of what I see around the world. Tag me if you find some #graf you've enjoyed...
Links, Links, Links! 17th November 2013
Here are a few great pieces I came across on the internet this week:
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"The Logic of Stupid Poor People"
Why do poor people make stupid, illogical decisions to buy status symbols? For the same reason all but only the most wealthy buy status symbols, I suppose. We want to belong. And, not just for the psychic rewards, but belonging to one group at the right time can mean the difference between unemployment and employment, a good job as opposed to a bad job, housing or a shelter, and so on. Someone mentioned on twitter that poor people can be presentable with affordable options from Kmart. But the issue is not about being presentable. Presentable is the bare minimum of social civility. It means being clean, not smelling, wearing shirts and shoes for service and the like. Presentable as a sufficient condition for gainful, dignified work or successful social interactions is a privilege. It’s the aging white hippie who can cut the ponytail of his youthful rebellion and walk into senior management while aging black panthers can never completely outrun the effects of stigmatization against which they were courting a revolution. Presentable is relative and, like life, it ain’t fair.
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The not-so-secret secrets to success
We imagine ultra-successful individuals being endowed with almost superhuman talents. In so doing, we surround greatness with a certain kind of mystique and deem it somewhat inaccessible to the average person. However, success is not contingent on having extraordinary, innate ability. Nor does greatness depend upon some mysterious approach to life. There are no secrets to success—only simple truths, principles, and disciplines that have been around for thousands of years. Sadly, we obscure the reality of success by making a number of misjudgments about it.
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The Lost Female Scholars of Islam
Dr Akram Nadwi is soon to publish his 40-volume collection on Muslim women scholars. In 2007, Mehrunisha Suleman and Afaaf Rajbee analysed the lost legacy of women scholars and its impact on today's world in emel's feature on The Lost Female Scholars of Islam.
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Since women today participate so little in the teaching of Hadith and the issuing of fatwas, there is a wide misconception that historically they have never played this role. As Shaykh Akram describes, “when I started, I thought there may be thirty to forty women,” but as the study progressed, the accounts of female scholars kept growing and growing, until eventually there were no less than 8,000 biographical accounts to be found. Such vast numbers truly testify to the huge role that women have played in the preservation and development of Islamic learning since the time of the blessed Prophet Muhammad. The women encountered by Shaykh Akram were far from mediocre when compared to men, indeed, some excelled far beyond their male contemporaries. There were exceptional women who not only actively participated in society but also actively reformed it. Most striking was the high calibre of their intellectual achievements and the respect that they received for this.
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Senator Nova Peris's Maiden Speech
It is what it is. The past is the past and no matter how hard we try we cannot change that history.
But let’s start to undo the wrongs with what is right and just. I urge all my Parliamentary colleagues to become champions for the recognition of Australia’s first nations people in our constitution.
To Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples this has always been part of our story of struggle, injustice and heartache. But we are here today – I am here today – because of this history. Aboriginal Australians are symbolic of triumph over adversity. We represent knowledge and wisdom held in land and country.
Because in our hearts we know that we do not own Mother Earth, the Earth owns us.
As a child growing up, I dreamt big.
Most people would have looked at an Aboriginal girl from the Territory, where the statistics of alcohol abuse, youth suicide, domestic violence, imprisonment rates and sub-standard education point to every reason why you should not succeed.
But I was determined to be successful.
And yes I am a product of that history, and I continue to live in a society whereby the odds are stacked against Aboriginal people.
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As a senior executive with one of the charities says: ''I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, worried that one day we may have to face a royal commission and have to answer for the conditions under which these people were treated and which we didn't have the guts to challenge the government on.''
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Economics students demand an education that reflects post-crash world
The economic crash brought back a host of long-forgotten truths, or rather lack of truths, as academic economics closed itself away from the beauty of competing, different ideas. Classroom economics failed to adapt itself to the essence of the world and fails to search for its own failures, to seek and wrestle with new truths.
We now have an opportunity to extend economics beyond the orthodoxies, to reach out to branches of economics that do not allocate resources through simple supply and demand, but theories that directly address the issue of sustainability and aim to ensure people's decisions are born out of social responsibility.
It is essential that future financial and commercial leaders realise the direct consequence of their actions on the wider society, and the best way to do this is by expanding the range of economic thought they are able to engage with.
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The Saturday Paper is coming to town!!
THIS IS GOING TO BE AWESOME.
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Of course, there was also the pieces on this blog in case you missed them, published in the Financial Review and lamenting on what to do with our lives (fulfillment?)
What have you read that you really enjoyed or found thought provoking?
Can't wait to share!
Cheers,
Yassmin Abdel-Magied
Links Round Up on the ALP's Refugee Policy
[box] “23,000 persons per day leave their homes and seek protection elsewhere – more than the total number of asylum seekers arriving in Australia in a year[/box]
Since the Kevin Rudd announced the new ALP policy on refugees and asylum seekers last Friday afternoon, I have been at a mental and moral loss. Still trying to get my head around it, I thought I would put together a few of the interesting articles and pieces written about this so we can try gather enough information to have a reasoned debate. Here are a few of those pieces...
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A fine piece examining the detail behind the policy and what it means.
Morally, though? There are real questions that need to be answered, not least of which is: at what point did we decide we would no longer even consider processing boat-borne refugees – any refugees – on our own land?
That’s what is important here. Not hysteria, not deliberately misleading headlines, not hodge-podge rallies responding with the speed of a knee-jerk to a few bullet points.
Asking the right questions. Calmly, implacably, and constantly.
A really well written piece by a professor of international law:
The average Australian enjoys extraordinary fortune by world standards, but privilege has bred concern for ourselves not others. In the internet age, it would take little effort for Australians to educate themselves about the real state of the world's refugees. Not enough could be bothered to do so, yet still feel entitled to express an opinion on the subject.
Great visual via the Antibogan:
The Conversation is one of my favourite places for good information on politics and policy in Australia. On this topic they are no exception. Here is an explainer on our international obligations, whether or not turning back boats is legal, experts' response on the announcement and an explainer on the fact that the policy probably doesn't comply with international law.
[box] There is some irony in Australia unloading its problem onto its developing neighbour while at the same time seeking to show international leadership on the broad issue.[/box]
Michelle Gratton talks about how this policy is largely to shift the problem into someone else's backyard.
In his [Rudd] news conference on the night of the 2010 coup against him he warned against a lurch to the right on asylum policy.
Now he has taken his own huge step to the right.
He says one has to respond to changing circumstances.
On each occasion he has managed to sound sincere and convincing as he articulated his position. That is his political skill.
A perspective from The Guardian on the situation in PNG.
A strange article on the ABC implying the 'policy is working'.
Muhammad Asif, who spoke to the ABC via a translator, asked the Government to take pity on asylum seekers and said Australia should fund the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to help process their claims.
"He said 'after I saw this, I will never go by boat. I'm decided to go join UNHCR'," the translator said.
"Before he see this he says he wanted to go by boat with most of his friends. They wanted to go by boat.
"One thing he requests ... from Australia, [is] to push the UNHCR. Please let it be faster.
A great PDF fact sheet on Australia's refugee burden versus the world.
Julian Burnside's opinion piece (worth reading!!)
A satirical piece that hits a lot of spots.
Rest easy, Australia. Our borders are now safe from illegals. They always were, of course, as seeking asylum has always been legal. As Julian Burnside pointed out yesterday, “Under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights every person has the right to seek asylum in any territory they can reach.” But now we are safe from legal illegals. And besides, we have no obligation to accept refugees and allow them to live here. Well, yes, OK, technically as a signatory to the Refugee Convention we do have that obligation, legally and morally, especially given our involvement in international conflicts that is partially responsible for people fleeing their country...
Have you read any good pieces or perspectives on this topic since the announcement?
**New updates on the 23rd of July**
White Nationalists welcome Rudd's Policy: Satire by Aamer Rahman
Further analysis by The Conversation on what a truly regional solution would look like.
Links, Links, Links - 31st December 2013
So the year didn’t end. However, what does the trend of “end of the world” myths tell us about our psyche? The Conversation investigates.
A great article on the trend of young, white, male men and their role in… well, it seems that is the stereotype for mass shooters. I wonder how the discussion would change if the shooters were religious or coloured? Why is it in those cases, the motives are related to the background, culture or beliefs but in the case of white, young male shooters it is seen as a one off tragedy? Ah, the perils of living as the ‘Other’.
A great article on how to build professional networks: Little Gifts…
A critical analysis of the critically acclaimed series, Homeland…
Homeland intends its liberal viewers to experience some discomfort about Carrie’s domestic spying, but it also knows that guilt intensifies the pleasure we take in things that are bad for us. If Homeland were the anti-24 that it claims to be, it would finally have to deny its viewers this pleasure: Carrie would, in fact, be deranged and wrong. But she’s never wrong, because the current logic of liberal politics dictates that although paranoia may be deranged, it must also be correct.
It was interesting reading this article on marriage and settling. Marriage in Islam is seen as extremely important to someone’s Iman, or belief – in fact, it is “half one’s Iman”, and as such the structure around marriage is a little different. In the West however, marriage is sold as "happily ever after” and all about “your one true love…”. This article challenges that, and interestingly in doing so, reflects sentiments I have been exposed to in the more traditional Islamic/cultural circles…
It sounds obvious now, but I didn’t fully appreciate back then that what makes for a good marriage isn’t necessarily what makes for a good romantic relationship. Once you’re married, it’s not about whom you want to go on vacation with; it’s about whom you want to run a household with. Marriage isn’t a passion-fest; it’s more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane, and often boring nonprofit business. And I mean this in a good way.
On the topic of implicit racism or perhaps ingrained bias… Are you racist without knowing it? Find out more!
Fairy tales for twenty somethings…
A lovely tumblr I came across that frames the dilemmas of our twenties through beloved fairy tale characters of our childhood…
Prince Charming searched near and far for Cinderella. He even checked the event page for the ball but she totally wasn’t even on the guest list!
Lucious Linksies: 3rd November 2012
Veteran social entrepreneur Leila Janah of Samasource recently co-launched a new project to crowdfund medical treatment for the very poor. Think of it as Kiva for surgery: An amazing initiative – crowd sourcing surgeries for women in need, an interesting way of doing things…looking forward to finding out more.
Malala expected to make a full recovery. What an inspiration.
This is a must see, and links in with a topic I have previously broached.
Some people liken a bad day at work to being in a war zone but for the photojournalists chronicled in HBO's upcoming documentary series "Witness," that's not an exaggeration.
The series, which premieres on November 5 and will air every Monday for the rest of the month, follows photojournalists in Mexico, Libya, South Sudan and Brazil as they navigate violence to report issues such as drug trafficking, gang violence, corruption, and ethnic warfare.
Crucial tips for communicating criticism! Hint: It’s all about you!
The video below is a great compilation…
A really interesting piece on the past and the state of design…
What I know is that this nostalgic trend a lot of people are talking and writing about these days has something to do with that the socio-economic change driven by the analog-to-digital transformation. The main progress that we have made in the last 30 years is not aesthetic or mechanical. What we have seen since the mid-90s is a progress in simulation technologies. Cars look more or less the same, music and fashion is also moving into a state of simulation of what is supposed to be authentic. And often the simulation outperforms the original.
Aren’t these chalk illustrations a fantastic way to inject something a little different into the everyday dreariness of cement paths? Click on the image for more…
Fair call Seth Godin: we do need to get over ourselves.
The Weekly Grapevine: First Week of October 2012
Can you believe it is October? I spent the week learning about killing wells and trying to get decent phone reception… but enough about me, this is what I found on the net!
How politicians get away with dodging the question: The Pivot: "Politicians," he says, "are exploiting our cognitive limitation without punishment."
This ought to go down well with my fellow uni students: why lectures are ineffective.
Top myths about the Iranian Nuclear Program
It is alleged that Iran has threatened to annihilate Israel. It has done no such thing. Iran has a ‘no first strike’ policy, repeatedly enunciated by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has expressed the hope that the ‘Zionist regime over Jerusalem” would ‘vanish from the page of time.’ But he didn’t threaten to roll tanks or missiles against Israel, and compared his hopes for the collapse of Zionism to the collapse of Communism in Russia. Iran has not launched a conventional war of aggression against another state in all of modern history. Israel aggressively invaded Egypt in 1956 and 1967 and Lebanon in 1982 and 2006. The list of aggressive wars fought by the US, including the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, is too long to detail. So why is Iran being configured as the aggressor?
I know we have heard so much about the video and the backlash, but here is an interesting take by an American Muslim on the analysis…
…that’s not to say the film is an “excuse.” The film rather is a “last straw.” The attack on the embassy in Cairo following the one in Libya was not an attack on America but an attack on American intervention of Egyptian affairs. This is why it is so crucial for Egypt to establish its own democracy without Western influence. It restores a fundamental inseparable right of a people to determine their own government, and the morality of this principle on which America was founded means less war and less hostility. And it means more opportunity for us to focus on our own defense and build it in the event of an attack against a single nation (rather than five total wastes of military occupation).
They don’t hate our freedom; they hate that we think it’s ours.
10 favourite TED talks by a fellow blogger; these are great!
An interesting article: The Trouble with South Africa that highlights the issue of representation in the media of figures and groups not as “human beings with stories”, but more a collective that thinks and acts as a single monolithic non-relatable entity.
I’ve been puzzled and not a little disturbed by the lack of empathy on South African social media with the horrific events at Marikana, where 34 protesting miners were killed by police on August 16th. …
So what’s going on? Partly, it’s to do with people’s tendency to believe and react to images over text….
But it also has to do with the way most media have covered and continue to cover the strike. This was pointed out by academic Julie Reid, also in the Daily Maverick. Her piece also argues that the day-to-day event-based coverage has also helped obscure a very worrying much larger trend of police violence against citizens. Beyond a lack of investigation and intelligent mining of the data, I have not come across any article that has attempted to get into the lives of the miners, show them to us as individuals, and help us genuinely understand their daily struggles. Much (if not everything) of what has been written lately glosses over miners’ past, dreams, desires, frustrations, etc. Short: their lives. The failure to give attention to those details made it impossible to imagine what it would mean to live a miner’s life, which has allowed the debate to be sucked into a very ordinary South African debate — a spiral of numbers, acronyms, figures, maps and politicking that works as a cover to say: we haven’t got a clue.
This is sad: An interesting recent piece of research on farmer suicide.
The study revealed numerous male suicide clusters of high risk from across Australia, but generally not (state/federal) capital city regions. Only the capitals of Adelaide and Darwin were found to have male clusters, although these are the fifth and eighth largest of Australia’s eight capital cities, respectively. The Adelaide cluster has also been found to have a higher incidence of mental and behavioural disorders. Suicide rates tended to be highest in areas that were both of lower socioeconomic status and with a higher concentration of Indigenous inhabitants. Only one female cluster was identified and over 40% of statistical local areas (SLAs) had no female suicides at all during the study period.
“Win an Adventure to Africa” -- Sounds exciting, but a it does frustrate me sometimes that going to Africa is seen as one single destination: Africa is a continent made up of over 50 wildly diverse countries…
This does sound amazing though: UNREASONABLE AT SEA
Aussie Racing Legend, Jack Brabham and a chat with SPEED
The West and the rest of the world will not know peace until critical thinkers in the Arab and Muslim worlds start speaking out and getting an audience from the global media. There is no alternative to native dissent to the suffocating culture of the sacred. Muslims are as intellectually capable as anyone else in the world, but their minds are almost hopelessly shackled by taboos, big and small, social and political. Instead of producing a culture of critical thinkers, Muslim societies are teeming with thin-skinned moralists.
Meanwhile, Muslim-majority nations, those whose flags display stars, crescents, and swords, can’t compete with a nation like South Korea in contributing to global scientific research, or invent anything to save their lives.
Muslims are struck in an impossible bind: They are totally dependent on the West for all the good things in life but are fanatically attached to religion as a marker of their separate identity. By being unable to be fully Western, they have forced themselves into an orthodox corner. Fanaticism is the result.
Westerners and Western-educated folk who apologize for Muslims by invoking the depredations of the West are not helping make things better. Muslims don’t need to indulge in a victim mentality; they need to develop their societies, build stronger economies, cultivate the arts and and encourage innovation and critical thinking in all fields. Neither self-pity nor piety will get them there.
A tune to finish off your reading: Skyfall from Adele, for the new James Bond film…
The Weekly Grapevine…
You know what it is! Every week, I link a few of the random quotes and articles that I have come across on the net that week… enjoy!
Since I recently started my working life, I have decided to take some time to sort out my Facebook persona…which is a little difficult but worth doing. Check out this link for a good head start: How to lock down your Facebook Account for MAX PRIVACY AND SECURITY
On a totally different note, I love it when I see examples of beauty such as the example of Balpreet Kaur, who totally schooled a user on Reddit and possibly changed the hearts and minds of many others. This quote is quite profound…
By transcending societal views of beauty, I believe that I can focus more on my actions. My attitude and thoughts and actions have more value in them than my body because I recognize that this body is just going to become ash in the end, so why fuss about it? When I die, no one is going to remember what I looked like, heck, my kids will forget my voice, and slowly, all physical memory will fade away. However, my impact and legacy will remain: and, by not focusing on the physical beauty, I have time to cultivate those inner virtues and hopefully, focus my life on creating change and progress for this world in any way I can.
Religious beliefs aside, the way she put this reflects my thoughts on the matter. Making that a reality is not always easy; it requires strong faith and belief in the personal choice as we are naturally influenced by society around us. However, constantly reminding ourselves how temporary our physical being is in the grand scheme of things we can strive to remain humble and focus on ensuring our actions reflect the legacy we want to leave.
Love this site, wish I had thought of it while I was in Sudan! EverydayAfricaTumblr…
What does this mean for the world of motorsport?
Please America, don’t vote this fella in?
If I were Iran, if I were Iran -- a crazed fanatic, I'd say let's get a little fissile material to Hezbollah, have them carry it to Chicago or some other place, and then if anything goes wrong, or America starts acting up, we'll just say, "Guess what? Unless you stand down, why, we're going to let off a dirty bomb." I mean this is where we have -- where America could be held up and blackmailed by Iran, by the mullahs, by crazy people. So we really don't have any option but to keep Iran from having a nuclear weapon. Mitt Romney, May 17, 2012
…and I thought Sudanese hospitals were bad. If medical errors were a disease, they would be the sixth leading cause of death in America—just behind accidents and ahead of Alzheimer's.
Interesting. Sometimes being top job, President, Prime Minister, whatever…is partly also about whether your body can handle it!
Interesting. Those in control; military leaders, politicians, CEOs, are less stressed than their lower working counter parts…
Foreign Policy News: Interestingly, not only is the South China Sea a disputed state of affairs, so is the East China Sea, with interesting anti-Japanese protests springing up in China recently. Sneaky Sneaky…
China reacted quickly to what it saw as Japan's reaffirmation of its sovereignty claim with a variety of measures, which state media called "combination punches."These ranged from Politburo members strongly denouncing Japan to Prime Minister Wen Jiabao vowing to "never yield an inch" to threats of economic retaliation to announcements of joint combat drills by China's navy, air force and strategic missile corps, including landing exercises in the Yellow Sea and the Gobi Desert.
But a quieter move may have more serious repercussions in the end. On Sept. 10, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced baselines to formally demarcate its territorial waters in the area. In Beijing's eyes, this move legally places the disputed islands under Chinese administration in a direct challenge to Japan's administration of the islands over the last four decades.
Ahh, someone has put my feelings into precise words. Where has this man been?!
"When I first heard about the [July 7] bombings, I thought: ‘Please God, [let the bombers] be some bloody foreigners’," he said. "The reality which slowly unfolded was as bad as it could possibly be — three of the bombers were British men of Pakistani origin. I had absolutely nothing else in common with them, but I still felt a guilty connection.
"I think, as with 9/11, we get sucked into a no-win situation due to tribalism. Even though we have nothing in common with these people — in terms of values, culture, beliefs, intellect, profession — we find ourselves being identified with them because of one or two specific characteristics, and then we are expected to express our apologies for what they did (and thus confirm the tribal commonality) or be condemned for not expressing enough outrage.
"I won’t be defined by my DNA or by anyone else’s preconceptions." – Imran Ahmad
Final quote for the afternoon…
So if you want to keep the blood flowing through as many parts of your brain as possible, you need to read for fun, read for information, listen to music, look closely at art ... only by embracing a wide range of intellectual challenges can we help our minds to be all they should, and can, be. Alan Jacobs, The Atlantic
Linksies, Quotesies and Other Bits of E’s.
My recommended read of the week: Waleed Aly on the weekend riots.
"It feels good. It feels powerful. This is why people yell pointlessly or punch walls when frustrated. It's not instrumental. It doesn't achieve anything directly. But it is catharsis. Outrage and aggression is an intoxicating prospect for the powerless."
How far would you go to protect your kids from bullying? I think I would be pretty hardcore…but not sure if I would want my kid to go under the knife.
We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It’s easy. The first girl I ever loved was someone I knew in sixth grade. Her name was Missy; we talked about horses. The last girl I love will be someone I haven’t even met yet, probably. They all count. But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. These are the most important people in your life, and you’ll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years. But there’s still one more tier to all this; there is always one person you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of these loveable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and they’re often just the person you happen to meet the first time you really, really, want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else. Chuck Klosterman
This was a few days ago but sounds like a great idea! Giving out money to strangers can be quite a novel way to spend the day!
As we continually replace real life with ever shorter digital updates, what happens to the memories we build for ourselves and the people we serve? More and more, we don't remember what actually happened to us, but what we've encountered digitally.
I sometimes wonder how the minds of men like this work. It just makes me think of Flowers of Algernon to be honest >>> The Guy Who Solved Some Legendary Maths Problem
I don’t know what the right answer is, in terms of changing the sport to attract youngsters, but I do know that it is necessary to do something because despite what some people say the sport IS broken and does need fixing, even if it may not appear to be the case. The length of the races is always going to be a problem for the diehards because “it has always been like that”. Just like cricket was always five-day matches and white flannels until Kerry Packer came along and shook the tree a little.
Any sport needs to be open to new ideas, particularly one that sells itself on the idea of being fast-moving, cutting edge and innovative. One area where there is clearly a need for change is the sport’s involvement with the Internet.
I do secretly have an issue with retail therapy ;) The post asked some interesting questions about whether our possessions are actually broken promises?
My enthusiasm to acquire this new thing made me think: what are our possessions, really, but a bunch of promises? That dress promises to make us look stylish; that smartphone promises to keep us tech-savvy and connected; that cookbook promises to make us a culinary whiz; that moisturizer promises to take years off our face; that heirloom china promises to help us remember our grandmother.
Life is in all the gray...
Motorsport Munchies
Hello hello fellow motorsport lovers! Here is a little collection of links and videos that will keep you occupied and rev-happy for a bit!
First up: Great round up on the Technical side of F1
I really want to buy this book on engineering motorcycles…
The Formula Student Competition wraps up… A Swedish University comes out on top!
Summing up this year’s Formula Student, project manager Fiona Pawley said: “This year’s competition has been truly impressive, with many of the cars displaying world class engineering that wouldn’t be out of place in a Formula One paddock. These young engineers will mature into the motorsport team bosses and industry leaders of the future.”
Learn a little bit about what affects Pirelli Tires and their performance (layman's terms)
TOONED! Episode 3. Loving the new McLaren cartoon…”And here we have, just a few of the spare Ks from Mika Hakkinen's name” LOL.
Le Batmobile – Nothing more really to be said…
Ever wondered what is like from the F1 driver’s point of view? Wonder no longer…welcome to SPA!
A beautiful video for all motorsport lovers…
I want to be ...a F1 Driver
Interestingly in this video, Senna mentions his family’s unhappiness at his choosing motorsport as a career…The episode looks at the lives of a few drivers (current and up and coming), how they got there and the difficulties getting there.