Tag: Media

#18 Collected Reading

Quote of the week

“I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining,
but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavor, a better and a
happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it;”

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
by Benjamin Franklin


1.Facebook and Twitter fuel iPhone and Blackberry addiction, says Ofcom 

“Of the new generation of smartphone users, 60% of teenagers classed themselves as “highly addicted” to their device, compared to 37% of adults.

Mobile, UK, Culture

Source :The Guardian

2. Israel’s secular middle class strikes back

“Israel’s school system is in the pits with class sizes of about 40; many Israeli women cannot afford going to work because childcare is very expensive; the public transport is that of a third-world country.”

Israel, Policy, Culture, Protest

Source : The Guardian


3. America’s First Great Global Warming Debate

“As a gentleman farmer in Virginia, Jefferson had long been obsessed with the weather; in fact, on July 1, 1776, just as he was finishing his work on the Declaration of Independence, he began keeping a temperature diary. Jefferson would take two readings a day for the next 50 years. He would also crunch the numbers every which way”

Environment, USA, Global, Culture, History

Source :Smithsonian Magazine

4. The Illusion of the Free Internet

“Since life expectancy in Nigeria is less than 50 years it is a fair assumption most people in Ogoniland have lived with chronic oil pollution throughout their lives,” the report says.”

Environment, USA, Global, Culture, History

Source : Slow Media.net

5. Why India Can’t Feed Her People

“As much as 40 per cent of all the fruits, vegetables and food grains grown in India never make it to the market. The country wastes more grain each year than Australia produces, and more fruits and vegetables than the U.K. consumes.”

India, Culture, Food, Policy

Source : The Star

Hope you like this collection. Please comment, share and most of all enjoy.

– Kaushik

#13 Collected Reading

Quote of the week

“When there is no longer any violence, there is no need for help Therefore you should not demand help, but abolish violence. Help and violence form a whole And the whole has to be changed” – Brecht

1. Holy cow, taxman! Featherweight activist fights battle against the dodgers

“It’s no coincidence that when this government came into power almost the first thing it did was raise VAT rates so that ordinary people would pay more tax and then cut corporate tax rates.”

Economics, Policy, Tax Rate,UK

Source :The Guardian

2.Connective Spaces in Medellín

“Juan Carlos’ comments about countering gang activity through positive use of public space strike an important tone in the role of public space in Medellin.”

Community, Culture, Place, Urban

Source : Connective Spaces


3.When Sweden Rules the World

“Acceptance of failure. Finally, if all of this so far makes Swedes sound like superhumans, take heart. They do in fact fail – pretty often, as it turns out. But here again a good cultural pressure-release valve comes to their assistance: a willingness to accept and learn from failure. While other cultures might blindly contend that failure is not an option, Swedes generally accept that some failure is bound to happen.” 

Culture, Policy, Sweden

Source : Creative Social Blog

4. Adam Curtis Blog: RUPERT MURDOCH – A PORTRAIT OF SATAN

“When Murdoch heard the news that John Major had been re-elected he was on the lot at Twentieth Century Fox. He said two words: ” We Won” “

Media, UK, Culture

Source : BBC

5. There Is No Such Thing as a Free Market 

“Thus seen, the ‘freedom’ of a market is, like beauty, in the eyes of the beholder. If you believe that the right of children not to have to work is more important than the right of factory owners to be able to hire whoever they find most profitable, you will not see a ban on child labour as an infringement on the freedom of the labour market. If you believe the opposite, you will see an ‘unfree’ market, shackled by a misguided government regulation.”

Economics, Culture, Markets, Global, Policy

Source : Truthout

Hope you like this collection. Please comment, share and most of all enjoy.

– Kaushik

#8 Collected Reading June 12th, 2011

Quote of the week

“We see a regulation when we don’t endorse the moral values behind it.
– Ha-Joon Chang”

 

1.V&A Illustration awards 2011: the shortlists in pictures

“The winners of this year’s V&A illustration awards were announced last night. Take a look at some of the shortlisted work”

Illustration, UK

Source :The Guardian

2.The Slow Media ManifestoSlow

“The Slow Media ManifestoSlow Media focus on quality both in production and in reception of media content: Craftsmanship in cultural studies such as source criticism, classification and evaluation of sources of information are gaining importance with the increasing availability of information.”

Internet, Media, Process

Source : Slow-Media


3. Why the Arab Spring Hasn’t Spread to India—but Should

“Two formal reports have independently estimated the proportion of Indians living below the poverty line as 77 and 50 percent, though the Indian government touts a third report, which found a more palatable 37 percent. But even this figure would put some 420 million Indians in poverty.” 

Democracy, Poverty

Source : The Atlantic

4. TRADING STORIES

“My first experience of hearing stories aloud occurred the only time I met my maternal grandfather, when I was two, during my first visit to India. He would lie back on a bed and prop me up on his chest and invent things to tell me. I am told that the two of us stayed up long after everyone else had gone to sleep, and that my grandfather kept extending these stories, because I insisted that they not end.”

Literature, Writing

Source : The New Yorker

5. Slash and burn: Brazil shreds laws protecting its rainforests

“Slash and burn: Brazil shreds laws protecting its rainforestsAbout 20 per cent of Brazil’s rainforest has already been destroyed, and the battle to preserve the remainder arouses heated debate. Yesterday, it emerged that a green activist, José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva, had been shot and killed in the jungle state of Para in northern Brazil. He recently predicted that he would be murdered for criticising deforestation by local ranchers”

Environment, Destruction

Source : The Independent

Hope you like this collection. Please comment, share and most of all enjoy.

– Kaushik

#6 Collected Reading : May 29th 2011

Quote of the week

“After visiting the slums of the metropolis, one realises for the first time that these Londoners have been forced to sacrifice the best qualities of their human nature, to bring to pass all the marvels of civilisation which crowd their city.” – Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844.

1.Single payer healthcare: Vermont’s gentle revolution

“Vermont hired Harvard economist William Hsiao to come up with three alternatives to the current system. The single payer system, Hsiao wrote, “will produce savings of 24.3% of total health expenditure between 2015 and 2024”

Health, Policy, Politics

Source :  The Guardian

2. Unspoken Truths

“Simon Hoggart of The Guardian (son of the author of The Uses of Literacy), who about 35 years ago informed me that an article of mine was well argued but dull, and advised me briskly to write “more like the way that you talk. – Christopher Hitchens”

Creativity, Voice, Life

Source :  Vanity Fair


3. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood poised to prosper in post-Mubarak new era

 “But Muntasser al-Zayyat, a prominent Islamist lawyer, believes the Ikhwan could end up controlling as much as 60% of parliament – because their secular and liberal rivals are divided and far less experienced than ex-members of Mubarak’s now disbanded National Democratic party, who are likely to stand as independents in their old constituencies.” 

Social, Networks, Culture

Source :  The Guardian

4. Tale of two halves reunited after a 360-year separation

“The art historian is passionate about this painting, one of about 650,000 treasures moved from China to Taiwan in the last stages of the Chinese civil war that are now on display in the Taipei museum or stored in its vault..”

Art, History, Curation

Source : The Independent

5. Social Media Distractions Are Costing Businesses Major Money [STUDY]

“While these distractions are money-wasters for companies, they also negatively effect individuals’ ability to creatively solve problems, think deeply about work-related issues, efficiently process information and meet deadlines.”

Media, Work

Source :  Mashable

Hope you like this collection. Please comment, share and most of all enjoy.

– Kaushik

#1 Collected Reading : April 24th 2011

This is the first in a series of collected readings. The best of what I read and see for a given week.

1.The Sharing Economy

“She asked the crowd what percentage of time the average person uses his car. “Across the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe, it’s 8%,” she said. “Which means that over 90% of the time, this thing that costs us a lot of money is just sitting around.”

Collaboration, Technology, SF

Source :  Fastcompany

2. Jemima Kiss: How I kicked my digital habit

“The more we connect, the more our thoughts lean outward”

Technology, Life, London

Source :  The Guardian


3. Maurice Glasman: my Blue Labour vision can defeat the coalition

 “To bring together previously separated political matter in the pursuit of the common good.”

Politics, Labour, London

Source :  The Guardian

4. Let’s work together.

 The Mill Co. Project and the collaborative work ethic

Collaboration, Work, London, Interdisciplinary

Source :  Eye Magazine Blog

5. A brief history of Minimalism

 “It was through one Brian Eno that the principles and practices behind minimalism would properly, and most lastingly, permeate the pop mainstream.”

Collaboration, Music, Interdisciplinary, Media

Source :  Fact

Hope you like this first collection. Please comment, share and most of all enjoy.

– Kaushik