Sanctions are “genocide”

During the course of the third US Presidential debate, both “leaders” wanted tougher sanctions against Iran. Here’s a take from a former UN official, who says Iraq sanctions are “genocide”. As an aside, I watched the debate live on the internet, & followed along on Twitter (for some interesting real-time perspectives)

eek books!

Imagine this situation: You walk into a book store, find a book whose title seems interesting, browse through it, & decide to buy it. You come back home, & put it on your bookshelf. A couple of days later, a book store employees walks into your house, & takes away the book, because they don’t like who you are associating yourself with.  Outrageous? Essentially what happened to Norwegian Linn Jordet Nygaard  with her e-book collection on her Kindle.

Alain de Botton – Pleasures & Success of Work [TED Talk]

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.”

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?

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.”