There are great benefits to connectedness, but we haven't wrapped our minds around the costs.
Sunday NYT Sampler for 22 April 2007 | Part IV
Topic: Miscellaneous
11:13 am EDT, Apr 22, 2007
If these reunited bands meant something to you in an earlier time, perhaps you’re feeling the dirty power of money, or the lameness of aging.
Featuring a shadowy, half-coherent narrative involving a nefarious plot by Bill Gates to acquire jewels from the princess of Monaco, it asks its audiences to travel into the depths of Chinatown, into the back room of a restaurant in Little Italy and even onto the Brooklyn Bridge. Along the way the gaggle of audience members (no more than 10 a show) must decipher puzzles and read crude maps to figure out the windy route.
I realized that you have to play off the specificity of a locale in order to arrive at something universal.
When in 2003 Chirac told the Eastern Europeans who backed Bush and Blair on Iraq that they had "missed an opportunity to shut up," his blunt talk upset a lot of people and did little for France’s popularity. But in all of this, he has been proved right.
Car bombings and other violence now kill an average of 100 people a day. Two out of three Iraqis have no regular access to clean water.
"It’s not an easy decision for a woman to give up her monthly menses," said Ronny Gal, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. But if the new pill, called Lybrel, is approved, Mr. Gal predicts an onslaught of advertising meant to persuade women to do just that.
I know I am back in the States because at the hotel breakfasts they are all talking about money.
A urology resident finally managed to get a catheter into the bladder. Urine gushed out -- nearly half a gallon of it. A full bladder normally holds only a quarter of that. The urology resident looked at the intern: "I guess now we know why his kidneys weren’t working."
"I have reached the point where I get phantom vibrations, even when I’m not carrying the thing," he said. "That sure doesn’t sound too healthy, does it?"
... the stated yearning to stay abreast of things may mask more visceral and powerful needs ... "It’s idiotic in terms of substance. ... But it’s vital in terms of meaning."
The idea was to erect an island of intellectual freedom where young people could probe and question and develop their own ideas before reality closed in and everybody went to work for a private equity firm.
"It was an underground thing, but then it took off."
In practically all the foxhole memoirs there is a common villain: standardized testing, which the authors agree has been so overemphasized that it is now an obstacle to the very education it was supposed to measure.
Martin likes to say that he is of an age now when looking at himself in the mirror in the morning is like watching a low-budget horror movie with particularly lurid special effects.
I’m entirely with Dawkins in condemning redneck fascists from Texas to the Taliban. But the trouble with Dawkins is that he thinks that’s what religion is.
We’re seeing the winnowing of the live-music era in America, as well as the end of belief in the album.
For a left-winger like me, the problem is that either your children out-left you or they become fascists.
She nails the central question -- of her memoir and perhaps of her life -- with an extraordinary quote from Simone Weil. "One has only the choice between God and idolatry," Weil wrote. "If one denies God ... one is worshiping some things of this world in the belief that one sees them only as such, but in fact, though unknown to oneself imagining the attributes of Divinity in them."
McKibben’s aim in "Deep Economy" is relatively modest -- to change minds, to present "a new mental model of the possible." It’s a good time to try.
"I instantly knew that a life of ‘divine debauchery’ should be mine." He soon came to see that divine drudgery was more like it.
In 1890, a drug manufacturer who wanted every bird found in Shakespeare to live in America released 60 starlings in Central Park. ... there are now upward of 200 million across North America.
It seems now that the audience position for rock is coming closer to that of jazz around the mid-1970s. Most of the forefathers are still with us; increasingly, they seem to have something important to teach us. And we are developing strange hungers for music of the not-so-distant past that might be bigger and deeper than the hunger we originally had.
"I don’t think that they need more packaging. I think that they need context."
From now on, they said, at least 50 percent of the reports about Russia must be "positive."
The wall is one of the centerpieces of a new strategy by coalition and Iraqi forces to break the cycle of sectarian violence. ... The soldiers jokingly call it "The Great Wall of Adhamiya."
The settlers are calling their compound "House of Peace," but are also considering "Martyrs’ Peak."
"Statements made by the chain of command during interviews for this investigation, taken as a whole, suggest that Iraqi civilian lives are not as important as U.S. lives, their deaths are just the cost of doing business, and that the Marines need to get the job done no matter what it takes."
... he is confident that he can convert one of the world’s last big non-soccer-crazy nations to the sport, while also influencing the type of films that Hollywood produces ...
Why the Shootings Mean That We Must Support My Politics
Topic: Politics and Law
3:22 pm EDT, Apr 18, 2007
Many people will use this terrible tragedy as an excuse to put through a political agenda other than my own. This tawdry abuse of human suffering for political gain sickens me to the core of my being. Those people who have different political views from me ought to be ashamed of themselves for thinking of cheap partisan point-scoring at a time like this. In any case, what this tragedy really shows us is that, so far from putting into practice political views other than my own, it is precisely my political agenda which ought to be advanced.
Do you know, or are you guessing? Do you know, or are you guessing? You're guessing, aren't you..? No points! 0! You don't get any points for guessing!
Debunking third-world myths | Hans Rosling on TED Talks
Topic: Health and Wellness
8:32 pm EDT, Apr 17, 2007
If you enjoyed using the Gapminder web site when it was recommended here back in September, or again last month, you'll be interested to know that a fascinating presentation by Hans Rosling, from TED 2006, is now available online.
You’ve never seen data presented like this. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called “developing world” using extraordinary animation software developed by his Gapminder Foundation. The Trendalyzer software (recently acquired by Google) turns complex global trends into lively animations, making decades of data pop. Asian countries, as colorful bubbles, float across the grid -- toward better national health and wealth. Animated bell curves representing national income distribution squish and flatten. In Rosling’s hands, global trends — life expectancy, child mortality, poverty rates — become clear, intuitive and even playful.
MemeStreams now supports direct embedding of Al Jazeera.
The world's first English language news channel to have its headquarters in the Middle East; covering the world, bridging cultures and setting the news agenda.
These videos are drawing very few viewers ... one of the more popular programs is called "The Fabulous Picture Show":
The Fabulous Picture Show (FPS) is Al Jazeera English's international film show, hosted at the Everyman Cinema Club by the network's Entertainment Editor and Presenter, Amanda Palmer.
FPS brings filmmakers from across the world face-to-face with an international audience, by inviting our cinema audience to question filmmaker guests in a lively, insightful, and often revealing debate. And of course, all cinemaphiles are welcome!
