Thursday, December 31, 2009
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Thursday, December 17, 2009
"Fuck You Deputy"
Irish Green Party TD Paul Gogarty's use of unparliamentary language towards Labour TD Emmet Stagg.Someone had to say it.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
Friday, October 23, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
Paul Romer's radical idea: Charter cities
How can a struggling country break out of poverty if it's trapped in a system of bad rules? Economist Paul Romer unveils a bold idea: "charter cities," city-scale administrative zones governed by a coalition of nations. (Could Guantánamo Bay become the next Hong Kong?)
Totally cool idea, which could be employed in Africa, for instance.
Monday, September 07, 2009
Sunday, September 06, 2009
Preparing for China's urban billion
By pursuing a more concentrated urbanization path guided by action to boost urban productivity, China's local and national policy leaders would minimize the pressures and maximize the economic benefits of urban expansion. A two-part report details the scale, pace, and global implications of urbanization at the sector and city levels.Full report from McKinsey.
China’s consumption challenge
A panel of leading Chinese economists debates proposals to stoke private consumption in the world’s fastest-growing economy.
How China and the US will set the global climate agenda
The Brookings Institution’s Ken Lieberthal discusses the opportunities he sees for a China–US clean-energy partnership going into December’s climate change conference.
Saturday, September 05, 2009
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Kuroshio Sea
Kuroshio Sea ... just an example of what is in our oceans, that's rapidly disappearing, thanks to human plundering.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Saturday, July 04, 2009
Friday, July 03, 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Sunday, June 07, 2009
Saturday, June 06, 2009
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Chevron Texaco Ecuador Lawsuit - Behind the Scenes
The only thing wrong with this video is, it isn't actually news. It's propaganda produced by Chevron. Read more, here.
Monday, May 04, 2009
Friday, May 01, 2009
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Connecting climate change and economic recovery
Economist Nicholas Stern discusses the downturn and its effect on the climate change agenda.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Steven Pinker - The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Our conceptions of human nature affect every aspect of our lives, from the way we raise our children to the political movements we embrace. Yet just as science is bringing us into a golden age of understanding human nature, many people are hostile to the very idea. They fear that discoveries about innate patterns of thinking and feeling may be used to justify inequality, to subvert social change, to dissolve personal responsibility, and to strip life of meaning and purpose. In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker, bestselling author of The Language Instinct and How the Mind Works, explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. He shows how many intellectuals have denied the existence of human nature by embracing three linked dogmas: The Blank Slate (the mind has no innate traits), The Noble Savage (people are born good and corrupted by society), and The Ghost in the Machine (each of us has a soul that makes choices free from biology). Each dogma carries a moral burden, so their defenders have engaged in the desperate tactics to discredit the scientists who are now challenging them. Pinker tries to inject calm and rationality into these debates by showing that equality, progress, responsibility, and purpose have nothing to fear from discoveries about rich human nature. He disarms even the most menacing threats with clear thinking, common sense, and pertinent facts from science and history. Despite its popularity among intellectuals during much of the twentieth century, he argues, the doctrine of the Blank Slate may have done more harm than good. It denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces hardheaded analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of government, violence, parenting, and the arts.
The stuff of thought
In an exclusive preview of his book The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker looks at language and how it expresses what goes on in our minds -- and how the words we choose communicate much more than we realize.
Coaching for people, not points
With profound simplicity, Coach John Wooden redefines success and urges us all to pursue the best in ourselves. In this inspiring talk he shares the advice he gave his players at UCLA, quotes poetry and remembers his father's wisdom.
How ‘animal spirits’ destabilize economies
Robert Shiller is the Arthur M. Okun Professor of Economics at Yale University. In this video interview, he describes the role played in our economy by “animal spirits,” the subject of his new book written with George A. Akerlof, the Koshland Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. The text below is adapted from Animal Spirits.
Cute, sexy, sweet and funny -- an evolutionary riddle
Why are babies cute? Why is cake sweet? Philosopher Dan Dennett has answers you wouldn't expect, as he shares evolution's counterintuitive reasoning on cute, sweet and sexy things (plus a new theory from Matthew Hurley on why jokes are funny).
Why are we happy? Why aren't we happy?
Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want. Our "psychological immune system" lets us feel truly happy even when things don’t go as planned.
What positive psychology can help you become
Martin Seligman talks about psychology -- as a field of study and as it works one-on-one with each patient and each practitioner. As it moves beyond a focus on disease, what can modern psychology help us to become?
Martin Seligman is the founder of positive psychology, a field of study that examines healthy states, such as happiness, strength of character and optimism.
The Boy With The Incredible Brain
More on Daniel Tammet on Wikipedia:
Daniel Paul Tammet (born 31 January 1979) is a British high-functioning autistic savant gifted with a facility for mathematical and natural language learning. He was born Daniel Corney (later deciding to change his surname to Tammet), the first of nine children, to working-class parents in London. In his memoir, Born on a Blue Day, he talks about how having epilepsy, synaesthesia, and Asperger Syndrome all deeply affected his childhood.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Wes - Alane
More on Wes Madiko on Wikipedia:
Wes Madiko (born January 15, 1964 in Motaba, Cameroon), better known as Wes, is a Cameroonian musician. He is probably best known among Western audiences for In Youpendi, a song from The Lion King II soundtrack, as well as work with Deep Forest and his own 1997 hit "Alane".
Rashni Punjaabi - Chant Of The Magic Flute
Be patient ... this is being streamed from China, and it's audio only.
Peter Gabriel & Deep Forest - While The Earth Sleeps
There really isn't a music video for this song.
Original lyrics in Macedonian ... English translation: Do you know, mother / How unlucky I am? / All day I sit at home / I am not allowed outside
Oceania (Hinewehi Mohi) - Haere Ra
Hinewehi Mohi is a Maori poet and singer. A little from Wikipedia:
Hinewehi Mohi was born in Waipukuraussa and currently resides in Auckland. She studied at the University of Waikato. Her first album was Oceania (1999), where she worked with Jaz Coleman with. The album was released internationally, and sold exclusively in New Zealand for platinum.Lyrics: My voice reaches out to you / Resounding over the highest mountain / Weaving through the contours of the land / Floating across oceans / I am love sick / You with gentle eyes, soft eye lashes / Warm to the touch / My love, my true love / You are the love of my life / My love, my heart
Geinoh Yamashirogumi - Kaneda
More on Wikipedia:
Geinoh Yamashirogumi (Japanese: 芸能山城組, Geinō Yamashirogumi) is a Japanese musical collective founded on January 19, 1974 by Tsutomu Ōhashi, consisting of hundreds of people from all walks of life: journalists, doctors, engineers, students, businessmen, etc.
They are known for both their faithful re-creations of folk music from around the world, as well as their fusion of various traditional musical styles with modern instrumentation and synthesizers. For example, in the 1980s, MIDI digital synthesizers could not handle the tuning systems of traditional gamelan music, so the group had to teach themselves how to program in order to modify their equipment. The album that followed, Ecophony Rinne (1986) was a new direction for the group : they had not previously incorporated computer-generated sounds into their work. The success of this album brought them to the attention of Katsuhiro Ōtomo, who commissioned them to create the soundtrack of Akira. The soundtrack is built on the concept of recurrent themes or "modules". Texturally, the soundtrack is a mix of digital synthesizers (Roland D-50, etc), Indonesian chromatic percussion (jegog, etc.), traditional Japanese theatrical and spiritual music (Noh), European classical, and progressive rock.
Geinoh Yamashirogumi has reproduced over eighty different styles of traditional music and performances from around the world, but despite having performed internationally to a high degree of critical acclaim, they remain relatively unknown.
It has been written that Yamashiro took his inspiration from a postwar 1950s group of similar characters that lived as a commune, but this could be apocryphal.
Dadawa - Sister Drum
Background info can be found on Wikipedia:
Sister Drum (阿姐鼓) is an album by Chinese singer Dadawa, which heavily focuses on the politics of Tibet. The album is notable for being the first Asian CD to ship over one million copies in China. The album sparked an outrage for white-washing China's relationship with Tibet and exploiting the Tibetan culture in a commercial manner. A music video was made for the title track.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Rep. John Shimkus: God decides when the "Earth will end"
From the March 25, 2009 hearing of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment -- people elect these fucking idiots -- stupid people.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Global Dimming
Countdown to Earth Day, 2009
We are all seeing rather less of the Sun. Scientists looking at five decades of sunlight measurements have reached the disturbing conclusion that the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth's surface has been gradually falling. Paradoxically, the decline in sunlight may mean that global warming is a far greater threat to society than previously thought.Global Dimming is a BBC Horizon documentary.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Sunday, March 08, 2009
The Music of the Watchmen Movie
My Chemical Romance - (Bob Dylan's) Desolation Row
Unforgetable - Nat King Cole
Bob Dylan - The Times They Are A-Changin'
Simon & Garfunkel - Sound Of Silence
Janis Joplin - Me And Bobby McGee
K.C. & The Sunshine Band - I'm Your Boogie Man
Leonard Cohen - Hallelujah
Jimi Hendrix - All Along The Watchtower
Some of the songs from the Watchmen movie ... and here's a review of the soundtrack.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Dog running in his sleep
Those with pets will not be surprised by this ... we've all seen our pets dreaming ... although this one is a bit to the extreme.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Saturday, February 14, 2009
David Merrill: Siftables, the toy blocks that think
Oh great! In the future, toys will be smarter than our kids!
Friday, February 13, 2009
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Sunday, February 08, 2009
What’s holding China back?
Long Yongtu, China’s former chief trade negotiator, brokered China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001. In this video from a November 2008 McKinsey conference in Beijing, Mr. Long reflects on the distance China still needs to travel in order to become a truly global player in business.
Saturday, February 07, 2009
Friday, February 06, 2009
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Monday, February 02, 2009
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