Links, Links, Links - 26th December 2012

My regular collection of internet links and tidbits for your enjoyment…! Leave any recommendations or thoughts in the comments box below =)  Today we have 12 year old app developers, a little about Asian/Australian politics, why the password is defunct and much more!

The video below is a short, moving film dedicated to the children in Syria.

Forbes’ List of 30 under 30. Inspiring stuff! Makes you feel like you have underutilised your life perhaps…or just inspires you to do more – better late than never! =)

On another note, An All American Nightmare: Remember Guantanamo Bay? Yes. Torture as part of national policy isn’t acceptable, for any country. 

At what passes for trials at our prison camp in Guantanamo, Cuba, disclosure of the details of torture is forbidden, effectively preventing anyone from learning anything about what the CIA did with its victims. We are encouraged to do what’s best for America and, as Barack Obama put it, “look forward, not backward,” with the same zeal as, after 9/11, we were encouraged to save America by going shopping.

Bradley Manning, by the way, the lad allegedly responsible for taking the Wikileaks files, is being held “like an animal”. He could spend the rest of his life in prison if charged.  Isn’t it interesting he isn’t awarded similar recognition along with Julian Assange?

More after the jump…

Overeating is now a bigger problem than malnutrition, according to “the most comprehensive disease report ever produced”.  So that diet you were going on is actually helping combat a global disease, nice! The story has some other (good) news though on how we have dealt with disease more generally. 

20 most influential women (in Australia) of 2012. Great to see a Muslim lady up in there!

Malala, runner up Time Person of the Year. A young girl who is truly the epitome of bravery.

A really interesting look at how a website like Wiki deals with a mass shooting…

A thought provoking article on the ‘anxious’ language Australia has used over the last 100 years in terms of its relationship with Asia 

The Conversation calls for scientists to use the trust placed in them by the public to talk about and push the agenda of “future energy solutions” as people haven’t made their minds yet…but soon do so.

This is a 12 year old kid who is an app developer…awesome. Also, he is exceptionally confident at speaking in front of a large group of people – I know at his age, I didn’t use hand gestures nearly as well… (oh and my hands and knees shook like mad. Eyebrows were all over the place as well…)

We know so little about the new leaders of China…and they aren’t all engineers anymore.

In a 2009 speech in Mexico, Xi Jinping said that "some foreigners with full bellies and nothing better to do engage in finger-pointing at us." He then added, "First, China does not export revolution; second, it does not export famine and poverty; and third, it does not mess around with you. So what else is there to say?"

This is fabulous reading: Kill the Password: Why a String of Characters Can’t Protect Us Anymore

You have a secret that can ruin your life.

It’s not a well-kept secret, either. Just a simple string of characters—maybe six of them if you’re careless, 16 if you’re cautious—that can reveal everything about you.

Your email. Your bank account. Your address and credit card number. Photos of your kids or, worse, of yourself, naked. The precise location where you’re sitting right now as you read these words. Since the dawn of the information age, we’ve bought into the idea that a password, so long as it’s elaborate enough, is an adequate means of protecting all this precious data. But in 2012 that’s a fallacy, a fantasy, an outdated sales pitch. And anyone who still mouths it is a sucker—or someone who takesyou for one.

No matter how complex, no matter how unique, your passwords can no longer protect you.

Pimp my aid: A tongue in cheek site on international aid.

Don’t want to research when you buy products? TheWirecutter.com just gives you the single best product (in their opinion) of everything techy. Kinda awesome.

Jobs are hard to come by in this day and age.  Here are perhaps some ways you can use the awesome tool LinkedIn to network and help out (if you are looking for ideas…LinkedIn is a great tool. Seriously)

Freedom in the digital world? Questions Seth Godin wishes we were asking…

Should everyone, even the presumed innocent, be required to put their DNA in a databank so that violent criminals are much more likely to be found? If not, who should have their data shared? How many innocent people behind bars could we free (and guilty parties could we catch?)

Happenings on the Net

  I’ve been working on my tagging skills =) This is one that I did for a workmate. Getting better…

An interesting perspective from Attentional Austerity on multitasking: It’s sometimes assumed that in the world the Internet created, those who excel at multi-tasking and endlessly partitioning their attention will have the advantage. I’m not so sure. It rather seems like we are turning our digital devices into horcruxes of the mind. Instead, I’m betting the advantage will go to the person who is able to cancel out the noise and focus with ferocity. 

Read more after the jump!

Useful procrastination – Improve your vocabulary with this nifty little website…

This guy only owns 39 things. Learn from him..

I’m right and your wrong and other political truths…

I don’t like this expression ‘First World problems.’ It is false and it is condescending. Yes, Nigerians struggle with floods or infant mortality. But these same Nigerians also deal with mundane and seemingly luxurious hassles. Connectivity issues on your BlackBerry, cost of car repair, how to sync your iPad, what brand of noodles to buy: Third World problems. All the silly stuff of life doesn’t disappear just because you’re black and live in a poorer country. People in the richer nations need a more robust sense of the lives being lived in the darker nations. Here’s a First World problem: the inability to see that others are as fully complex and as keen on technology and pleasure as you are.

Teju Cole (via semperes and areyoumyghost)

I found this article particularly poignant. Piety alone is supposed to cure all ills and fix centuries of delays in development.

Instead, Arabs have turned into the best consumers of Western products—from oil pipelines to skyscrapers—while smugly believing that they are in possession of religious truth. In other words, the only thing left the Arab world is its conviction that Islam is better than other religions or beliefs and Sunnis are better than Shiites. Such convictions may help one feel good but they don’t help nations progress or win gold medals.

Just as political systems need to change, the Arabs’ relationship to Islam needs to be reformulated for the times if they are to move ahead. They need to make a concerted effort to keep the spheres of religion and politics wholly separate. This, however, requires active dissent from within. Muslim-majority Arab societies need heretics, people who are not cowed by the fear of hellfire and the popular condemnations of moralists to nudge their fellow coreligionists out of their paralysis. They need to instigate a cultural revolution, not just a political one, if there is ever any hope for Arabs and Muslims to have a real place in contemporary civilization. Magical thinking about reviving 7th-century Islam is not going to get them gold medals at the Olympics, a soccer world cup, give them the knowledge to invent new technologies, improve their universities, cure dangerous illnesses, overcome poverty and illiteracy, and temper the flames of extremism. Only a well-defined secular, contemporary project can get them there.

An oldie but a goldie...

Links, Links, Links - 17th November 2012

Satire at its finest!

The Good Giraffe

A man who dresses up as a giraffe and carries out random acts of kindness towards people across Scotland has said he does it to feel good.

Child Labour in Pakistan, a photo journal

Talking about the different parts of you and your present voice…

I find myself struggling with being both content and restless. I have ridiculed myself for being the researcher, therapist, wife, and friend separately, constantly feeling as though I am lying to someone.

Three career paths…

Choosing a career seems endlessly difficult, but actually, most of work falls into just a few categories, and most of what we love to do falls into just a few as well. Look at your choices. They probably reveal to you which of the three paths you should take.

 The psychology of tetris

Since Tetris was launched on the world in 1986, millions of hours have been lost through playing this simple game. Since then, we’ve seen games consoles grow in power, and with it the appearance of everything from Call of Duty to World of Warcraft. Yet block and puzzle games like Tetris still have a special place in our hearts. Why are they are so compelling?

Really clever app…

India no longer a receiver of UK aid.

Lowy Institute’s ‘Interpreter’ article on why Israel’s Gaza escalation is a calculated risk.

Great article on doing good

The terrifying truth is that I’m making a difference no matter what I do, whether I like it or not. The math is right there: Everything else being equal, my actions amount to 1/7,047,833,249th of human existence, give or take whichever babies are being born right now.

Great for friendships as well as dating..I found it interesting.

It happened to me, I was a lazy welfare mum…and interesting story about surviving on welfare

External Essay: The “IRL” Fetish

Hanging out with friends and family increasingly means also hanging out with their technology. While eating, defecating, or resting in our beds, we are rubbing on our glowing rectangles, seemingly lost within the infostream.

I came across a great essay on the false separation between what we see as offline and online and the fetishisation of the offline…read on for more.

Facebook doesn’t curtail the offline but depends on it. What is most crucial to our time spent logged on is what happened when logged off; it is the fuel that runs the engine of social media. The photos posted, the opinions expressed, the check-ins that fill our streams are often anchored by what happens when disconnected and logged-off. The Web has everything to do with reality; it comprises real people with real bodies, histories, and politics. It is the fetish objects of the offline and the disconnected that are not real.

Those who mourn the loss of the offline are blind to its prominence online. When Turkle was walking Cape Cod, she breathed in the air, felt the breeze, and watched the waves with Facebook in mind. The appreciation of this moment of so-called disconnection was, in part, a product of online connection. The stroll ultimately was understood as and came to be fodder for her op-ed, just as our own time spent not looking at Facebook becomes the status updates and photos we will post later.

The clear distinction between the on and offline, between human and technology, is queered beyond tenability. It’s not real unless it’s on Google; pics or it didn’t happen. We aren’t friends until we are Facebook friends. We have come to understand more and more of our lives through the logic of digital connection. Social media is more than something we log into; it is something we carry within us. We can’t log off.

Solving this digital dualism also solves the contradiction: We may never fully log off, but this in no way implies the loss of the face-to-face, the slow, the analog, the deep introspection, the long walks, or the subtle appreciation of life sans screen. We enjoy all of this more than ever before. Let’s not pretend we are in some special, elite group with access to the pure offline, turning the real into a fetish and regarding everyone else as a little less real and a little less human.

Read the article here: The IRL Fetish: Published at The New Inquiry, NATHAN JURGENSON, 28th June

***

We’re not friends until we are Facebook friends…

Isn’t that the truth these days? We speak about our “online” lives as if they are a different life but in reality, it is nothing more than an carefully curated extension of ourselves. 

Online cannot exist in a vacuum, and Nathan highlights this in his piece.  The internet and “social media” (as if it is a “thing” that can be defined), is only another tool for us to interact with as we see fit.  In the same way that the clothes we choose to wear are an outward reflection of our beliefs or the image we wish to project, the parts of our lives we choose to share speak volumes about how we wish to be seen. 

However…

I can’t stop myself from thinking about how everything I say and write on the internet is there forever, which at times (quite often, in fact), makes me hesitate. That permanence makes me apprehensive. Makes me think twice, three times, four even, before choosing to share something.  Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of our oversharing culture? Doesn’t it fly in the face of presenting the “raw” individual?  Isn’t that why we follow celebrities and athletes on facebook and twitter, to get a glimpse behind the polished curtain of their presentation and see the person underneath?

***

Perhaps I am a little old fashioned and believe that not everyone has the equal right to access all parts of me.  Some parts should still be earned. I still believe in the concept of privacy, however laughable that may be in the 21st century.  There is still a space in society for the private and the public sphere, and you can choose to erase the line between the two or keep them completely delineated… that is still a personal choice that exists.

After all, Facebook, Google, Amazon and every damn Silicon Valley company may be able to track every move online, bank details, movements and purchases… but they still have no idea what we are thinking.  We still have the power to buck our supposed trends and preferences, be erratic, unpredictable and unplug.

That is the beauty of being human. 

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!

See more here…

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!

I love quote pictures.

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.

Weeeekly Liiiiiinks

You know what it is! Here are some interesting internet tidbits I came across this week…

Above: French rapper shocks her fans by wearing the hijab!

I have found myself truly stirred and inspired by this school girl, who was brutally shot in Pakistan for simply wanting to learn…

Classic; on sexism and recent rulings for sole parents:

Making two unconnected issues part of the same debate is a classic response to "women’s issues". The government can then claim "We are taking care of one category of poor women so we can’t afford the other". The tendency to connect two separate issues, both about women, illustrates a much deeper political sexism than the legitimate anger about sexist tweets and commentaries.

What is it like to date a model?

…and then there was peace? A deal has been struck between the two Sudans, but where does that leave them, and will it all work out?

We all need leaders who challenge the tribe. We benefit even more when our leaders have peers who push them to be even better.  Wise words from Seth Godin

You can make it without being a sociopath or middling to the point of uselessness. But it's going to take some insight

Great article on the true role of the World Bank

This is why the World Bank is so valued by the US government and Wall Street: because it is instrumental to expanding the sphere of Western capitalism, a role not dissimilar to that which colonialism once played for Europe. This may be a good way to overcome flagging corporate profits and to stop stagflation at home, but it does not countas a serious strategy for global poverty reduction.

We have to face up to the fact that the World Bank will never be an effective tool in the fight against poverty without fundamental changes in its power structure.

Inside the real-world Double-O section of Her Majesty's Secret Service: How to become a ‘real’ James Bond

So far from pistols, chop-socky or irresistible sexual magnetism, a normal SIS officer's primary tools for motivating foreigners to do what he wants are bribery, bullshit and in certain circumstances blackmail. The only Bond-like quality a normal SIS officer will be required to show is the ability to drink heavily and remain functional, as any diplomat must on the embassy cocktail circuit.

This chick’s face:

I love maths used in every day sort of problems. Did you know the probability of having two people with the same birthday is 50-50…in a group of only 23 people?

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/in-depth/future-of-resources

The dawn of LI-FI…This is technology innovation being AWESOME.

 The weird square dance in lifts

An interesting piece on Facebook’s diminishing returns…

Let your career passion follow you…

Nice to see something written by a fellow hijabi on “what it is like to wear the Hijab..”

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 Muslim Dilemma?

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

What’s on the net…

A little collection of a few things that caught my eye… Between the Flags: A great little Tropfest video that shows the humanity beyond the mob mentality, a throwback to 2005 and the Cronulla riots…

I honestly wish I had thought of this when I was in first year…I always wanted to do a massive practical joke but couldn’t think of anything exciting enough! Kudos to these cats.

I work in a male dominated field for sure…But I have never considered what it would be like to work as another one: a taxi driver? "What's a girl doing here?" from Narratively on Vimeo.

An interesting essay On the Joy of Giving

"For a lot of us, what really defines us in the world is having so much money. We're exceptionally wealthy compared to the average," he says in the precise, logical voice of the studious, overgrown schoolboy he resembles. "Once you get used to the idea, I think you realise, wow, this is a really nice position to be in, to be able to help people."

He suggests giving away 10% of your income might, like vegetarianism, one day become a social norm. And he suggests philosophers should pay more attention: "Quite a few people think obviously it's good to donate to charity, so we're not going to talk about it. I think that's a mistake, because you can go further and say, do we have an obligation to do it? Is it not merely something that's nice, but something we really have to do? And I think the answer is yes."

An oldie but a goldie…a little cynical perhaps, but a fair bit of truth there:

Gas is the next big thing in energy, and a few interesting articles in the Australian on this issue caught my eye.  It is quite a contentious area, especially here in Queensland where many of the gas wells are on prime farmland.  However, in today’s society, money talks, and when push comes to shove, will people be willing to reduce their energy consumption or be willing to pay more for their electricity?  In my typical fashion I am not one to side either way just yet, but more play the devil’s advocate…

Randomly, the first massive internet hoax…from the Museum of Hoaxes, an interesting and trivia filled way to spend an afternoon *cough*

This is a useful little infographic… How to make the most of Google!

QandA is a great show but sometimes without the level of sophistication and depth in the discussion that the issues require:

If the producers of Q&A were serious about their adventures in democracy, they should seek to include such experts in all of their discussions. This would make the show more productive and could bring it into its fuller potential as a place of critical, enjoyable, and serious political debate for Australia.

Until then, it will just be the contrived gabfest we tweet at each week.

I do love this blog:

The touchiness of Muslims about assaults on the Prophet Muhammad is in part rooted in centuries of Western colonialism and neo-colonialism during which their religion was routinely denounced as barbaric by the people ruling and lording it over them. That is, defending the Prophet and defending the post-colonial nation are for the most part indistinguishable, and being touchy over slights to national identity (and yes, Muslimness is a kind of national identity in today’s world) is hardly confined to Muslims.

In India, dozens of Christians have sometimes been killed by rioting Hindus angry over allegations of missionary work. Killing people because you think they tried to convert members of your religion to another religion? Isn’t it because such a conversion is an insult to your gods?

In Myanmar, angry Buddhists have attacked the hapless Muslim minority, sometimes alleging they were avenging an instance of the rape of a Buddhist girl (i.e. these are like lynchings in the Jim Crow South).

Or then there have been Sri Lanka Buddhist attacks on Tamil Christians. In fact, Sri Lanka Buddhists have erected a nasty police state and shown a propensity for violence against the Tamil minority, some elements of which have had revolutionary or separatist aspirations (not everybody in the group deserves to be punished for that).

And, militant Israeli Jews have set fire to Muslim mosques in Palestine and recently tried to “lynch” three Palestinians in Jerusalem. If Maher thinks only Muslims are thin-skinned, he should try publicly criticizing Israeli policy in America and see what happens to him.

Since Iraq didn’t have ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and wasn’t connected to 9/11, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that 300 million Americans brutally attacked and militarily occupied that country for 8 1/2 years, resulting in the deaths of perhaps hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, the wounding of millions, and the displacement of millions more, mainly because Iraq’s leader had talked dirty about America. Now that is touchy.

To wrap it up…France in the year 2000… from the early 1900’s. Super interesting!

Have a great day!

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. 

Seth Godin

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.

Joe Saward on Change in Formula 1

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...

The Internet Never Forgets | Links: 19th August 2012

As per every week, here are a collection of some interesting reads that I have wandered across on this world wide web…

August 19 was World Humanitarian Day. This Beyonce tune brought chills to my spine…

Did you know Baskerville is one of the most “trustworthy and credible” typefaces out there?

Speaking of trust…

Trust in the Digital Age: This has been something on my mind for a while, and it is making me hesitate quite often before sharing thoughts, photos and experiences over the net.  I find myself thinking “oh, what will the be seen like in 20 years? What if it was taken out of context? Can someone possibly use this against me?” 

Apple controls the memory on our iPhones. Google keeps tabs on what we search for, and whom we write to, when we use Gmail. We unknowingly pledge allegiance to the companies we do business with.

“Now we have to trust all these entities,” Mr. Schneier warned. “Google has great customer service. Problem is, you’re not the customer.”

…“You should be mindful,” … “that the Internet never forgets.”

I love this little photography project, recreating photos from the past: Back to the Future

A great opportunity for any young Aussies out there interested in the South East Asia region…Youth Exchange Program with Indonesia.

For all my mates at uni…How to Procrastinate Better! I like this one, but I will probably finish reading it tomorrow… :)

The truth is that most procrastinators are structured procrastinators. This means that although they may be putting off something deemed important, their way of not doing the important thing is to do something else. Like reading instead of completing their expense report before it's due. Nevertheless, such people feel bad about being procrastinators and often annoy others. That is where I think I have something helpful to say.

Hope you all have a great week, and Happy Eid to all my Muslim Brothers and Sisters out there! Hope you enjoyed feasting! =)