Friday, July 24th, 2009
Walter Cronkite died last weekend. And the world is a bit poorer place for it. He exemplified honesty and trustworthiness and transparency — and it wasn’t for some PR campaign. I couldn’t stop myself from sneering as I saw current “news people” pay tribute, the worthless sods. Here’s a great interview (brief) from a few decades ago, and well worth the read to compare Walter then and news now.
Bureaucracy can be amusing. At least in the hands of these creative people who’ve provided a site to allow one to funnel those messy events like, er, liking someone, onto the proper form. No word if triplicates allowed.
Such a small thing — helps. I still don’t know the significance of the phrase “three cups of tea”; I supposed I’d need to read the book (which, happily, is at my local library). But it’s lovely to have found this group (which I did via Nicholas Kristof) which provides education in an area where it’s hard to get (Afghanistan, N. Pakistan) to a population who’s least likely to receive it (girls).
Ah, Ireland. goddammit. Oops! Would that land me in prison? A great write up on Ireland and — yes — a blasphemy law. It’s more interesting than you’d think. The convolutions, the weaving of threads …
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Sunday, May 31st, 2009
Or have they come up with their own blend or “something entirely different” that seems to work rather well. Have started to read this most interesting article; will return to it.
American perceptions of European-style social welfare are seriously skewed. The system in which I have embedded myself has its faults, some of them lampoonable. But does the cartoon image of it — encapsulated in the dread slur “socialism,” which is being lobbed in American political circles like a bomb — match reality? Is there, maybe, a significant upside that is worth exploring?
LET’S FOCUS FIRST ON the slur. I spent my initial months in Amsterdam under the impression that I was living in a quasi-socialistic system, built upon ideas that originated in the brains of Marx and Engels. This was one of the puzzling features of the Netherlands. It is and has long been a highly capitalistic country — the Dutch pioneered the multinational corporation and advanced the concept of shares of stock, and last year the country was the third-largest investor in U.S. businesses — and yet it has what I had been led to believe was a vast, socialistic welfare state. How can these polar-opposite value systems coexist?
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Sunday, April 19th, 2009
I love clever, ingenius, effective, inexpensive engineering solutions to problems. That’s one reason I love the PlayPump. (Read my previous post discussing how water’s no longer a necessity of life but something for the privileged who can pay.)
So that’s why I love this cardboard oven that uses solar power to bake, boil – reducing the need to scavenge for depleted fuel. Cheers to you, Jon Bohmer. To read more, just google Kyoto Box.
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Tuesday, February 24th, 2009
Here’s a US-based volunteer match site and here’s an Australian volunteer match-up site.
And on the topic of “solutions” — here are about 10 tips (“low tech solutions for high tech problems”): cellphone batteries, remote car key, printer ink cartridge, cellphone in toilet, extend wi-fi, clean CDs and DVDs, camera flash, and crashed hard drives.
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