If you’ve not heard Alain de Botton‘s keen & (witty observations), & are (or know someone who is) in a job-threatening situation, well worth the 15 minutes of your busy life! “Because it’s bad enough not getting what you want, but it’s even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn’t, in fact, what you wanted all along.”
Author: neil
How to write about poverty [Book Review]
In a review of two books based on India’s oft-portrayed poverty, Martha Nussbaum posits on how to write about poverty. The two books she critiques are Katherine Boo’s BEHIND THE BEAUTIFUL FOREVERS & Siddhartha Deb’s THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE DAMNED. ” What should we think about a social environment that creates hope and then so often frustrates it?
Just Give Me A Job [Article]
Dan Miller has some advise for Gen Y
Reign of the Techno-Nanny [Essay]
Jathan Sadowski argues that apps are like techno-nannies and essentially we are becoming too reliant on them. And not all of it is a good thing. It is a great, thoughtful and well argued essay. Reign of the Techno-Nanny. “We’ve all heard stories of people driving into rivers because their GPS told them to. We might laugh at them for so blindly following directions, but that’s only because it’s an over-the-top example of what we do every day. We tend to be quite adept at following the technological prompts we’re presented with. Not driving into the river is one thing, but knowing when to defer to the phone is not so as simple as resolving to make prudent, conscious decisions about the technology’s limitations.”
The SuperSonic Man [article]
A 2-year old interview with Felix Baumgartner, who, last week, jumped out of a helium balloon 39km in the sky, & lived to tell the tale.
Don’t go Baghdad on Tehran
Rolf-Ekeus & Malfrid Braut Hegghammer explain why the West should avoid doing the same mistakes with Iran as it did with Iraq. As they say, “The West’s approach to Iran today mirrors the way it handled Iraq. Then, as now, the emphasis is on force, pressure, and uncovering evidence of an ongoing weapons program.”
Tying your shoelaces!
100 people answer the question, “How old are you?
in Dutch, of course. Watch the video (150 seconds) & read about its creator, Jeroen Wolf.
An AIDS Ad
The AIDS Council of Finland draws you in with sex in this advert, and then jars you using Facebook “Places” as a creative linchpin.
Scientists Read Dreams
This may have been rather difficult for the participants in the experiment, waking up every 10 minutes to record a dream, while their brain waves were simultaneously recorded using EEG. “Knowing more about the content of dreams and how it relates to brain activity may help us to understand the function of dreaming”