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July 31, 2004
Why a new golden age of philanthropy may be dawning
Now, another golden age may be about to dawn, and for similar reasons: inequality is a friend of philanthropy, and large fortunes encourage individual generosity. Bill Gates of Microsoft and Pierre Omidyar of eBay are today's Carnegies: successful entrepreneurs who are rebranding themselves as imaginative philanthropists.
And yet to predict another golden age requires a leap of faith. The latest figures published by Giving USA, an annual survey compiled by the Centre on Philanthropy at Indiana University, do indeed suggest that America's giving has risen: it has been 2% or more of GDP since 1998, following more than two decades below that mark, and last year total contributions were 2.2% of GDP, only a whisker below the all-time high of 2.3% in 2000 (see chart 1). But sceptics ascribe this recent rise to the dotcom boom, which caused an unexpected surge of wealth that has not yet shrunk back into line with the slowdown in the economy.
Posted by thdyck at July 31, 2004 | Comments (0)
Fun border anomalies
The Northwest Angle: Minnesota's Northwest Angle (a peninsula attached to Manitoba) was created by accident due to mapmakers' vague conceptions of the origins of the Mississippi River. When the river turned up south of where they expected, the border dropped down too, leaving an isolated 390 square kilometre piece of the U.S. appended to Manitoba. About 100 Americans call that piece of land home.
CBC News Indepth: Airport Security
Posted by thdyck at July 31, 2004 | Comments (0)
Pre-Olympics Olympics
This is where I'd like to be this weekend. A great idea!
In Nemea, the US archaeologists didn't just find the running track, but also uncovered the running track, the changing rooms and the tunnel through which athletes passed before competing in front of the large crowds.
The games here like those in ancient Olympia, Delphi and Isthmia were the forerunners of today's Olympics.
The archaeologists then teamed up with the local community to revive what they believe to be the true spirit of the ancient games.
All you need to do is sign up and you can take part. There are no sponsors, no medals and no spectacular ceremonies.
BBC NEWS | Europe | 'True Olympics' begin in Greece
Posted by thdyck at July 31, 2004 | Comments (0)
July 29, 2004
"Folk process" described
Guthrie may be right that Pete Seeger was the first to coin the term "folk process", but the process of oral song-transmission through through variation and selection was being analyzed even before Pete Seeger's birth in 1919. And the process itself has been operating as long as there have been songs. The folk process was described, though not so named, by Cecil Sharp in 1907:
[Development of a folk song] involves the three principles of continuity, variation, and selection. (English Folk Song: Some Conclusions, London, 1907, p.16. Italics in original
Sharp's 1907 treatment contains errors and shortcomings, but the terminology of "continuity", "variation", and "selection" remains useful.
How this folk process might operate can be illustrated by examples from traditional ballads.
(seen at BoingBoing)
Posted by thdyck at July 29, 2004 | Comments (0)
July 25, 2004
CBC: Sgro wants churches to scrub sanctuary for illegals
OTTAWA - People facing deportation from Canada should not be given sanctuary by churches, says Immigration Minister Judy Sgro.
She plans to meet with church officials to ask them not to harbour people fighting for refugee status. Currently half a dozen people, mostly failed refugee claimants, are hiding out in churches.
CBC News: Sgro wants churches to scrub sanctuary for illegals
Posted by thdyck at July 25, 2004 | Comments (0)
First responsibility of a leader
26. Reflect self-mastery in your story
Dee Hock has had conversations with thousands of people about leadership. He notes that when he asks each person to describe the single most important responsibility of any manager, the incredibly diverse responses always have one thing in common: they are downward-looking. Management inevitably is viewed as exercise of authority -- with selecting employees, motivating them, training them, appraising them, organizing them, directing them, controlling them. That perception is mistaken.
According to Hock, the first and paramount responsibility of anyone who purports to manage is to manage self: one's own integrity, character, ethics, knowledge, wisdom, temperament, words, and acts. It is a complex, unending, incredibly difficult, oft-shunned task. We spend little time at, and rarely excel in, the management of the self, precisely because it is so much more difficult than prescribing and controlling the behavior of others. However, without management of self, no one is fit for authority no matter how much they acquire, for the more authority they acquire the more dangerous they become. According to Hock, it is the management of self that should occupy fifty percent of our time and the best of our ability. And when we do that, the ethical, moral and spiritual elements of management are inescapable.
Blog: Steve Denning
Site: http://www.stevedenning.com
Posted by thdyck at July 25, 2004 | Comments (0)
July 24, 2004
Telltale Weekly
Cory Doctorow writes:
Marvellous classic audiobooks on Telltale Weekly
Some time ago, I blogged about Telltale Weekly, a site that records and posts audiobook editions of public domain texts, charging small sums ($0.25-$4 or so) for MP3/OGG/AAC downloads.
I just revisited the site and gosh, there's been a lot of good stuff posted since I last stopped by (there's an RSS feed for new titles that I've just added to my newsreader): classic stories and essays by Twain, Jack London, L Frank Baum, O Henry; poetry by Walt Whitman; political speeches and essays by Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass... My cup runneth over.
Boing Boing: Marvellous classic audiobooks on Telltale Weekly
Posted by thdyck at July 24, 2004 | Comments (0)
Elves, red sprites and blue jets are above us
The first Isual image was returned on 4 July. It showed red sprites - short fluorescent "tubes" glowing like neon lights - reaching to the ionosphere.
Another image showed a brilliant lightning flash with a trio of red sprites above it and a sprite halo encircling it.
...
The red sprites are formed in the regions of molecular disintegration. The blue jets, however, seem to come from the top of thunderclouds.
Elves are rapid bursts of light due to electromagnetic pulses from lightning jolts.
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | High-altitude light show in focus
Posted by thdyck at July 24, 2004 | Comments (0)
July 22, 2004
Role of widows in society
Widowed women accounted for 45 per cent of all women older than 65. Senior widows outnumbered senior widowers by four to one.
Women have a life expectancy of 81 years, compared to 75 years for men, so women are expected increasingly to live alone in their senior years.
CBC News: Widowhood difficult financially: Statistics Canada
Posted by thdyck at July 22, 2004 | Comments (0)
July 21, 2004
Wired article on Israel Kamakawiwo'ole
Bruddah Iz ("bruddah" is "brother" or "pal" in Hawaiian pidgin), as he is known to his fans, is hardly a household name outside Hawaii. Though he never had the radio saturation of major-label artists or captured paparazzi flashbulbs with his aloha shirts, his gentle voice and ukulele continue to make a lasting impression on music fans.
...
Iz recorded two versions of "Over the Rainbow" over 10 years ago. The medley with "What a Wonderful World" is included on Kamakawiwo'ole's album, Facing Future (which, oddly, is the top-selling album among Microsoft employees, according to Amazon). The "Over the Rainbow" single is available on Alone in IZ World. The songs have been featured in movies like 50 First Dates, Finding Forrester and Meet Joe Black. Both versions are in the top five on the world-music charts in the iTunes Music Store, too.
Wired News: Bruddah Iz Gets Belated Buzz
Posted by thdyck at July 21, 2004 | Comments (0)
A zooarchaeologist's data on human mortality (or why it is bad for your health to be a man)
In human populations, mortality varies by gender, age, and the size of social networks. Males die younger and more often than females across age categories, and "males die at greater rates of everything you can think of except for things from which males can't die," said Grayson. Under conditions of famine and cold, males, compared to females, are biologically disadvantaged by their greater size, higher basal metabolisms, and higher core body temperatures, which require greater energy to combat cold. Females, because they have more subcutaneous fat, are better insulated against the cold. In times of famine, if resources are shared, males are less likely to meet their energy needs than females.
Mortality rates are normally higher for people aged 1 to 5, after which they drop. "They begin climbing again at about the age of 35 and then climb higher and higher and higher until everybody, in fact, is dead," said Grayson. People with larger social networks -- family and friends -- live longer. Married men live longer than single men. It is reversed for married and single women, explained Grayson.
INSIDE Chico State: The Donner Party
Posted by thdyck at July 21, 2004 | Comments (0)
July 20, 2004
excerpt from Shaba Deux
"In V. Y. Mudimbe's Shaba Deux, a young nun in Zaire struggles with faith in the midst of personal and social chaos."
I left him, my nerves on edge. Ran across Sister Veronique, who was coming back from the novices' quarters."We had a bewildering evening. Do you know Proust's questionnaire? You can't imagine the answers of those children."
"Proust's questionnaire? What questionnaire?"
She gave it to me. I became engrossed in the game and abandoned the idea of starting my reading of La Crise du Muntu by Father Eboussi. Let's see what answers I'm able to come up with.
What do you regard as the lowest depths of misery?
To deny myself.
Where would you like to live?
Right here, where I am now.
What is your ideal of earthly happiness?
To be a sign of joy.
What faults do you accept with greatest ease?
Those caused by poverty and abject misery.
Who are your favorite fictional heroes?
Samba Diallo in Cheik Hamidou Kane's Ambiguous Adventure, and The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.
Who is your favorite historical figure?
Francis of Assisi.
Who are your favorite heroines in real life?
Mothers of large families.
Words Without Borders -> from Shaba Deux: Les Carnets de Mère Marie-Gertrude
Posted by thdyck at July 20, 2004 | Comments (0)
A literary theorist on Harry Potter
We have, then, an invasion of neoliberal stereotypes in a fairy tale. The fictional universe of Harry Potter offers a caricature of the excesses of the Anglo-Saxon social model: under a veneer of regimentation and traditional rituals, Hogwarts is a pitiless jungle where competition, violence and the cult of winning run riot.
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: Harry Potter, Market Wiz
(from Kuro5hin)
Posted by thdyck at July 20, 2004 | Comments (0)
July 18, 2004
Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
A conservative version of the Singularity would start with the rise of smarter-than-human intelligence in the form of enhanced humans with minds or brains that have been overclocked by purely biological means. This scenario is more "conservative" than a Singularity which takes place as a result of brain-computer interfaces or Artificial Intelligence, because all thinking is still taking place on neurons with a characteristic limiting speed of 200 operations per second; progress would still take place at a humanly comprehensible speed. In this case, the first benefits of the Singularity probably would resemble the benefits of ordinary human technological thinking, only more so.
"What is the Singularity Institute? The Singularity Institute is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization for the pursuit of Friendly AI and responsible intelligence enhancement – a mission of immense potential and consequence."
Posted by thdyck at July 18, 2004 | Comments (0)
July 13, 2004
Ron Popeil and the conquest of the American kitchen
Technically, the Veg-O-Matic was a triumph: the method of creating blades strong enough to withstand the assault of vegetables received a U.S. patent. But from a marketing perspective it posed a problem. S.J.'s products had hitherto been sold by pitchmen armed with a mound of vegetables meant to carry them through a day's worth of demonstrations. But the Veg-O-Matic was too good. In a single minute, according to the calculations of Popeil Brothers, it could produce a hundred and twenty egg wedges, three hundred cucumber slices, eleven hundred and fifty potato shoestrings, or three thousand onion dices. It could go through what used to be a day's worth of vegetables in a matter of minutes. The pitchman could no longer afford to pitch to just a hundred people at a time; he had to pitch to a hundred thousand. The Veg-O-Matic needed to be sold on television, and one of the very first pitchmen to grasp this fact was Ron Popeil.
gladwell dot com-- The Pitchman
Posted by thdyck at July 13, 2004 | Comments (0)