A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, this heightening it meaning. The city is like poetry it compress all life, all races and breeds into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines.
– E.B. White on NYC
Tag: Culture
Why Are So Many Americans Single? : The New Yorker
Most people who were brought up in the past half century have been taught to live this way, by their own rules, building the world they want. That belief—Klinenberg calls it “the cult of the individual”—may be the closest thing American culture has to a common ideal, and it’s the premise on which a lot of single people base their lives. If you’re ambitious and you’ve had to navigate a tough job market, alone can seem the best way to approach adulthood.
Source : The New Yorker
Will Self: Walking is political
The Stoic philosopher Epicurus maintained that free will was only an illusory sense we experience when the actions necessitated for us by circumstance fortuitously coincide with what we happen to want – it’s my belief that this perfectly characterises the psychotic spatial awareness of the vast majority of contemporary urban dwellers; while the existential threats afflicting women, and the state-sanctioned ones that impinge, in particular, on young black men in British cities, have been internalised even by those – the white, the middle-aged and the middle class – who have no reason to be so trammelled.
Source : The Guardian
The Tribes of Androids and iPhones
Though big cities have more than their share of trailblazers, with gentrification they’re attracting wealthier and more risk-averse, group-oriented types,” says Richard Florida, author of “The Rise of the Creative Class,” which explored the question of which cities are most creative and why. “Hipster urban cultures can be just as monolithic, homogenous and creativity-squelching as any other,” he says.
Source : WSJ
Europes lost generation
It’s not just Italy, of course. Eurozone unemployment is at a record. According to Eurostat, the EU’s statistical office, 16.3 million people are out of work in the 17 countries that joined the euro. The story of a lost generation is becoming the scandal of a continent. In Spain, 51.4% of those aged 16-24 are jobless. In Greece, the figure is 43%.
Source : The Guardian
War On Words: NYC Dept. Of Education Wants 50 ‘Forbidden’ Words Banned From Standardized Tests « CBS New York
The word “dinosaur” made the hit list because dinosaurs suggest evolution which creationists might not like, WCBS 880′s Marla Diamond reported. “Halloween” is targeted because it suggests paganism; a “birthday” might not be happy to all because it isn’t celebrated by Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Source : CBS local
French parents to boycott homework
A statement from the FCPE said: “Either a pupil has understood the lesson and succeeded in doing the exercises in class, in which case homework is a waste of time and stops them reading, for example, or they haven’t understood and it’s not at home in the absence of a teacher that they’re going to do better.
Source : The Guardian
The unintended consequences of Nick Kristof’s anti-sex trafficking crusade | Aziza Ahmed | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
We must interrogate when advocacy puts lives at risk and shuts down HIV services for the most marginalized. Kristof has become the pied piper of anti-sex trafficking efforts for many well-meaning people and organizations in North America and beyond. To follow without question is dangerous.
Source : The Guardian
Multitasking: Switching costs
Although switch costs may be relatively small, sometimes just a few tenths of a second per switch, they can add up to large amounts when people switch repeatedly back and forth between tasks. Thus, multitasking may seem efficient on the surface but may actually take more time in the end and involve more error. Meyer has said that even brief mental blocks created by shifting between tasks can cost as much as 40 percent of someone’s productive time.
Source : APA
Time management sustain your soul
When we imagine a better life, it tends to be one in which there are simply far fewer stretches of time devoted to any one thing in particular. The opposite of work is a category, relatively new in history, that we are calling “free time”, a period cherished for the very fact that it contains no appointments whatsoever.
Source : The Guardian
Collected Reading 