What's good for society?
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Racism
Posted June 3, 2012; 04:17 p.m. by Staff "Don't Eat Fortune's Cookie" Michael Lewis June 3, 2012 — As Prepared (NOTE: The video of Lewis' speech as delivered is available on the Princeton YouTube channel .) Thank you. President Tilghman.
University - 2012 Baccalaureate Remarks
Two Cheers for Double Standards
Janet Van Ham/HBO, left; Ethan Miller, via Getty Images Bill Maher, left, and Rush Limbaugh What is a double standard? It’s a double standard when you condemn an opponent for doing or saying something you would approve or excuse if it were said or done by one of your buddies. The double standard that is in the news these days concerns Rush Limbaugh, who called Sandra Fluke, a law student at Georgetown, a “slut” and “prostitute” because she told Congress that her university’s health plan should cover the cost of contraceptives.
Introductory note : Russell delivered this lecture on March 6, 1927 to the National Secular Society, South London Branch, at Battersea Town Hall. Published in pamphlet form in that same year, the essay subsequently achieved new fame with Paul Edwards' edition of Russell's book, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays ... (1957). As your Chairman has told you, the subject about which I am going to speak to you tonight is "Why I Am Not a Christian."
Why I Am Not A Christian, by Bertrand Russell
The entire philosophy and method of IDEO, the product-design and innovation firm, is encapsulated in its bathrooms. First, the human-centered interface: in the San Francisco office, there are three bathrooms, but to save time or the awkwardness of lingering outside, each has a lamp above the door resembling a taillight. If it’s glowing green, the bathroom’s unoccupied. Second, collaborative brainstorming: painted across one bathroom’s white walls is a strip of black chalkboard paint for comments, ideas, projects. At the time of my visit, it had been set up as a vote counter for staff to pick and nominate ideas for summer classes, presumably organized during lunch hours. Topics included “cooking at work” (16 votes), “finance” (8 votes), and “lovemaking” (7 votes).
IDEO Takes on the Government
But there are also deeper questions about how best to make an impact — even about how to do something as simple as get more kids in school. Mortenson and a number of other education organizations mostly build schools. That seems pretty straightforward. If we want to get more kids in school around the world, what could make more sense than building schools?
Getting Smart on Aid
Women
taxes
Welcome to the Brave New World of Persuasion Profiling | Magazine
<img alt=" Photo: Brock Davis" src="/magazine/wp-content/images/19-05/st_essay_persuasion_profiling_f.jpg" title="Start" width="315" height="415" /> Photo: Brock Davis Welcome, [FIRST NAME], to the era of personalization.Statistics
families
A special report on feeding the world: The 9 billion-people question
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Can't we do both? Prioritizing organic farming at the local level doesn't necessarily have to compete with investments in large scale farming. Some initiatives are double wins: Investment in watershed management and reducing water waste among large-scale farmers(which i turn allows small farmers to also access water)/// Encouraging reuse of waste/composting - especially when leading to hyper-local farming in cities and suburbs to reduce pressure on farms to provide all food to cities, increasing nutrition and local varieties - this can happen in the developed and developing world/// Also finding ways of connecting rural farmers to markets, providing opportunities in rural areas, because having unused farmland won't necessarily be taken over by big, super-efficient farming. It could get taken over by desert or lie fallow/// Need to stop talking about big vs. little - how do we first invest in win-win situations that everyone can agree will be beneficial?? BOTH! by Mar 17
Ahmed Ezz, one of several NDP officials arrested since Egypt's revolution began [EPA] On February 16th I read a comment that was posted on the wall of the Kullina Khalid Saed's ("We are all Khaled Said") Facebook page administered by the now very famous Wael Ghonim. By that time it had been there for about 21 hours. The comment referred to a news item reporting that European governments were under pressure to freeze bank accounts of recently deposed members of the Mubarak regime.
A revolution against neoliberalism?
The bright side of wrong
There are certain things in life that pretty much everyone can be counted on to despise. Bedbugs, say. Back pain. The RMV.Transparency
February 01, 2011 | By Erica L. Green, The Baltimore Sun Until last summer, Baltimore City students probably didn't think that Michael Phelps and African step dancers would have much to do with their learning. But city school officials reported that middle-school students who used fractions to clock swimming lessons with the Olympic champion's coaches or calculated the proportion of rhythms by the performers showed significant progress in their ability to retain academic skills over the summer.
City schools' revved-up summer program gets results - baltimoresun.com
When Peru’s most wanted man was captured in 1992, a young ballerina went to jail too, for harbouring him at her studio. The story was turned into a novel and film, “ The Dancer Upstairs ”.
THE DANCER AND THE TERRORIST
The Hazards of Nerd Supremacy: The Case of WikiLeaks - Jaron Lanier - Technology
The degree of sympathy in tech circles for both Wikileaks and Anonymous has surprised me. The most common take seems to be that the world needs cyber-pranksters to keep old-school centers of power, like governments and big companies, in check. Cyber-activists are perceived to be the underdogs, flawed and annoying, perhaps, but standing up to overbearing power. It doesn't seem so to me. I actually take seriously the idea that the Internet can make non-traditional techie actors powerful. 1 Therefore, I am less sympathetic to hackers when they use their newfound power arrogantly and non-constructively.In one of the diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks Putin and Medvedev are compared to Batman and Robin. It’s a useful analogy: isn’t Julian Assange, WikiLeaks’s organiser, a real-life counterpart to the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight ? In the film, the district attorney, Harvey Dent, an obsessive vigilante who is corrupted and himself commits murders, is killed by Batman.
LRB · Slavoj Žižek · Good Manners in the Age of WikiLeaks
government
One year ago, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order directing the city’s departments to make their data public. Yesterday, the city’s board of supervisors turned that order into law. As far as we could establish, this is the first time any city in the U.S. has implemented an open data law. But given that other jurisdictions often follow San Francisco’s lead in this space, it’s likely not the last. The law is brief.
San Francisco Passes First Open Data Law
Simple steps to happier politics
It’s easy to be discouraged by our polarized political environment. A new study suggests there may be an easy way out. Right before the 2008 presidential election, prospective voters were asked to complete an online survey. Some of the participants were assigned a brief self-affirmation exercise, where they had to choose the personal trait (from a list of 10) that was most important to them and write a sentence or two explaining that choice. Other participants encountered the same list but had to choose the trait that was least important and explain why someone else might find it important.Talking about Capitalism