The groups argue that reporting of rape often focuses on the victims – their clothes, whether they were drinking alcohol, and their relationship with the perpetrator – rather than the person who has committed a crime, perpetuating myths of a “perfect rape victim”.
Source : The Guardian
“In the space of just two years, police in plain clothes were found to have stopped and searched 45,000 people “simply on suspicion based on dress, appearance, behavior, and – above all other indicators – skin color.” Over 37,000 of these arrests proved groundless, and 8,000 did not stand up in court, leaving only 4,000 legitimate arrests — a paltry return of 1 in 11.”
Source :Polis
She recently carried out a study to see if the ways mothers interacted with their toddlers differed depending on whether they were playing with more traditional toys –a shape sorter, a book, a toy animal – or battery-powered equivalents. She found that with the electronic toys, “Parents were not less affectionate, but they were less responsive, less encouraging and did far less teaching. It was almost like the toy was interfering.
Source : The Guardian
It’s ironic that this global network reminds us how important non-technological solutions are to good working practice. The web makes it possible for some to do their jobs without being bound to a physical place, but technology isn’t going to replace face-to-face contact. In fact, it makes it more essential. How’s that for a growing pain?
Source : The guardian
“It must be admitted, however, that life in More’s Utopia, as in most others, would be intolerably dull. Diversity is essential to happiness, and in Utopia there is hardly any. This is a defect of all planned social systems, actual as well as imaginary.”
— History of Western Philosophy (Routledge Classics) – by Bertrand Russell
“Now of course Hoffa is a union boss and he would say that, wouldn’t he. But the point he raises is nevertheless sobering. Not only is patriotism a completely outmoded concept for major technology companies, but so also is the idea that these corporations have any wider social responsibility to the societies which provide them with the skilled and educated people who make them so innovative and profitable. Welcome to Tom Friedman’s flat world.”
culture,economics,policy, usa
Source :The Guardian
“The Leeds-based researchers are promising that their jelly batteries are as safe as polymer batteries, perform like liquid-filled batteries, but are 10 to 20% the price of either..”
environment,innovation, uk
Source : BBC
“Why would the Treasury want more longer-term debt? Let’s think of an analogy. Imagine that you had two loans: a 30-year mortgage fixed at 3% and a 1-year loan at 0.5% that you have to roll over annually. Although that one-year loan is cheaper now, you know that in a couple of years it will cost you more than 3% to continue to roll it over — and your spending habit won’t allow you to pay it off. As a result, it makes sense to consolidate that short-term loan into your mortgage if you are able.”
culture,economics,policy,usa
Source :The Atlantic Magazine
“We were thinking: ‘what would be a way forward, how could Europe define a strategic route for laser power production to take advantage of these developments?’ And that was the kernel of Hiper.”
environment,innovation,uk
Source : BBC
“Now studies on a group of children trained to use a “mental abacus” suggest the technique frees mathematics from its usual dependence on language.”
Asia,Mathmatics,Method,thinking
Source : New Scientist
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– Kaushik
“Brazil was the first country to pass a law guaranteeing a minimum income: in 2004, President Lula signed the law guaranteeing “an unconditional basic income, or citizenship income” for every Brazilian citizen or foreigner resident for five years or more. The payment will be of equal value, payable in monthly amounts and sufficient to cover “minimal expenses in food, housing, education and health care,” taking into account “the country’s level of development and budgetary possibilities.”
— Living in the End Times :by Slavoj Zizek
“Osterman also doesn’t believe it’s necessarily a bad thing. “We are becoming a school for ambitious immigrants,” he said.
But as I was leaving his school, one of his students, Mohammed Mahmoud, put it differently. “This is a school for criminals,” he declared, to laughter. “Nobody’s working in this school, because no one here has any future.”
education,sweden,policy,culture
Source :The Guardian
“Instead, base your career decisions (at least in part) on what hope to say when you look back on your life. You may not always succeed, but are unlikely to look back with regret on those decisions that gave you the opportunity to reach your aspirations.”
culture,life
Source : Harvard Business Review
“I do not enjoy Facebook — I find it cloying and impossible — but I am there every day. Last year I watched a friend struggle through breast cancer treatment in front of hundreds of friends.”
media,culture,usa
Source :New York Magazine
“The dominant ethos of ‘I buy, therefore I am’ needs to be challenged by a shift of emphasis from material to non-material values.”
capitalism,uk,riots,culture
Source : The Guardian
“The authors of a new study said their findings suggested that current United States business policy was rewarding tax avoidance rather than innovation.”
economics,policy,tax rate,usa
Source : The New York Times
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– Kaushik
“If the Western world is still determined to rule mankind by force,” the 1945 conference declared, “then Africans as a last resort, may have to appeal to force in the effort to achieve freedom, even if force destroys them and the world.” The demand for freedom came alongside the demand for socialism: “We condemn the monopoly of capital and the rule of private wealth and industry for profit alone.”
-The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World – by Vijay Prashad
“the riots and its crowd-logics that recalls the frenzy that characterises financial markets today. Indeed it’s a strange though not necessarily ironic coincidence that the Blackberry through its private messaging network, BBM, was it is claimed, the method of organising London’s riots allowing people to group and regroup with mystifying speed. Not so long ago, the Blackberry was the singular device that symbolised the world of modern business.”
Riots, UK, Politics, Policy, Culture, Networks
Source :Domus
“It’s just the boredom,” she says. “Boredom causes trouble.”
Riots, UK, Politics, Policy, Culture, Economics
Source : The Guardian
“My immediate neighbour was drawn to the A4 sheet saying ‘we should be producers, not just consumers”
Riots, UK, Politics, Policy, Culture, Community
Source :Eye Magazine
“The irony of all this is that outside Britain, Europe and the US, the great story of 2011 has been the Arab spring, as the people of Syria, Yemen and beyond have taken to the streets. It seems that just as those nations demand the tools of democracy, we are finding them rusting and blunt in our hands.”
Riots, UK, Politics, Policy, Culture, Democracy
Source : The Guardian
“30 years ago riots broke out in Liverpool which lead to 160 arrests and 258 police officers needing hospital treatment. The four days of street battles, arson and looting lead to violent disturbances in many other British cities and have changed community relations and disorder policing in the country forever.”
Riots, Liverpool, Politics, Culture
Source : BBC Thinking Allowed
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– Kaushik
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
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– Kaushik
1. Calling all Dickens detectives
“Week in week out, for over 20 years, Dickens was at the helm of two of the most successful weekly magazines available in the mid-Victorian era, working with a tiny team out of bare offices in Wellington Street”
Literature, UK, Dickens, Editorial, Curation
Source :The Guardian
“Liberals: Obama will end two wars, ended DADT, created the CFPA, got $20b from BP in the face of strong opposition, saved Detroit, signed New START, and enacted universal healthcare – the defining goal of the liberal movement.”
Politics, Policy, USA,
Source : The Atlantic
“With few factories, the unpolluted air over Pyongyang is crisp and clear, though at dusk, with power stations struggling to crank out enough electricity to light up the streets, the city turns prison-grey. At night, dim 40-watt bulbs wink from apartments. The brightest-lit structures are the illuminated Kim portraits dotted throughout the city and the560ft Juche Tower, a monument to Kim Il-Sung’s deluded philosophy of self-reliance.”
Photography, Reporting, North Korea, Culture
Source : The independant
“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, Nigeria, Policy, Global, Corporations
Source : The Guardian
“Prison labor has already started to undercut the business of corporations that don’t use it. In Florida, PRIDE has become one of the largest printing corporations in the state, its cheap labor having a significant impact upon smaller local printers. This scenario is playing out in states across the country.”
Prisons, USA, Policy, Work
Source : The Nation
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– Kaushik
“To curb as if in fetters unbridled hopes and a mind obsessed with the future, and to aim to acquire riches from ourselves rather than from Fortune.” – Seneca
“Australia generates more carbon pollution per head than any other developed country, thanks to its heavy reliance on coal-fired power stations. With a population of 22 million, Australia is responsible for 1.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. By comparison, Britain, with nearly three times the population, produces just 1.7%.”
australia, environment, policy, politics
Source :The Guardian
“James Fothergill, the CBI’s head of education and skills, said: “Our recent research shows that 42% of employers are not satisfied with the basic reading and writing skills of school and college leavers and almost half have had to invest in remedial training to get their staff’s skills up to scratch.”
education,policy,technology,uk
Source : BBC
“Increasing numbers of children are dropping dead on the long trek to refugee camps. Those who do get there are more severely malnourished than ever before. And, says the UN, the number of people under threat has now reached 11 million – equivalent to every man, woman and child in Belgium facing starvation. Thus, the chronic food crisis of the Horn of Africa edges with every hungry day towards full-blown famine.”
africa,economics,policy,politics
Source : The independant
“Once deforestation and regrowth are taken into account, however, tropical forests have been essentially carbon neutral.”
environment,global,policy
Source : The independant
“Should this technology take off, the cellphone could become the central repository of not just bank account information but coupons, loyalty points, and membership cards, allowing companies such as Google to route deals to cellphones at just the right time and place.”
Technology, Culture, Economic, Global, Mobile
Source : Business Week
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– Kaushik
Collected Reading 