Thursday, December 27, 2007
The 10 most underreported humanitarian stories
People struggling to survive violence, forced displacement, and disease in the Central African Republic (CAR), Somalia, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere often went underreported in the news this year and much of the past decade, according to the 10th annual list of the “Top Ten” Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories, released today by the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). - link
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
a lovely poem
May your happiness increase like the petrol price!
May your sorrows fall like the Zim dollar!
And may your joys fill your heart like corruption in South Africa !
Have a wonderful Day
May your sorrows fall like the Zim dollar!
And may your joys fill your heart like corruption in South Africa !
Have a wonderful Day
Monday, December 03, 2007
The greatest living Englishman?
Who is the greatest living Englishman? It would be hard to argue against the merits of Tim Berners-Lee, the sole begetter and inventor of the world wide web, an organism whose initials, www, have (in some languages, including our own) three times more syllables than the phrase they're abbreviating, which is perhaps the only flaw in Berners-Lee's grand design.The story of how he devised the hypertext transfer protocol (http) and the entire language and structure of the web on a Steve Jobs NeXt computer at Cern in Switzerland in 1990 has passed into legend, though I would certainly recommend reading his own excellent and highly readable account, Weaving The Web. Sir Tim remains an idealist, passionately committed to an open, free and wholly public web as he guides the W3 Consortium towards an unknown future from his base at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Incidentally, that flaw... the unwieldy name and initials, www, came about as a result of the inventor's extraordinary and entirely endearing modesty. Originally he had come up with the name The Information Mine, but he found the initials, TIM, embarrassing. No less egocentric (especially in French-speaking Switzerland, where he was working) was another thought, the Mine Of Information, so he settled on good old www.
I had the privilege of meeting the great man recently and he showed me the browser equivalent he is working on at MIT for the new Semantic Web (another time, another article perhaps) - an application called The Tabulator. He had failed to notice that his full initials feature prominently in TaBuLator and it was perhaps wrong of me to point it out, but the squirms of self-deprecation were marvellous to watch. This is a man who could have taken a hundredth of a cent for every commercial transaction for just five years and been rich beyond computation, he could have linked himself with corporations, put his name about in public, branded himself and offered his opinions on everything and everyone. Instead, he chooses quietly to work on ways to ensure a future web of even greater openness and neutrality in scientific, intellectual and political exchange. He is what my grandfather would have called a real mensch.
I remember trying to persuade the then deputy director general of the BBC, John Birt, that the BBC should get hold of the domain bbc.com for web and email purposes. He had no idea, and I don't blame him, what I was talking about. This was about 1993 and only sad acts like me had heard of the internet. About six months later, however, it was too late and bbc.com had been snapped up by a cable-winding company somewhere and so the ill-fated beeb.com and the good old bbc.co.uk were acquired. Actually, bbc.com now redirects one's browser to the mother page (how much did the corporation have to pay for that, one wonders?) which brings me to the gripe with which I will leave you.
How come we British are just about the only nation on earth who have to make the tedious and entirely unnecessary three extra keystrokes every time we type a URL? I could be stephen.fr in France, stephen.za in South Africa, stephen.ru in Russia, stephen.nl in Holland, etc, etc, but here? Oh no, it's stephen dot co dot bloody uk. How annoying is that?
All right, not very in the great scheme of things, but nonetheless, who was responsible for getting us trapped into it? Did they think the nation was getting an extra fancy couple of initials which would lend a commercial gravitas that might be equivalent to America's .com? Well, they were deluding themselves if that's what they believed. All they got was the puzzled contempt of other nations. Let's fight for a pure .uk, I say. The BBC can lead the way by becoming bbc.com now that they've finally bought the domain.
This could be the campaign that finally unites our apparently fractured and broken society. Hurrah.uk letitbeso.uk.
Taken from The Guardian Saturday December 1 2007
Thursday, November 22, 2007
The Coolest 35 Facts You’ve Never Heard
1. Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
2. Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.
3. There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
4. The average person’s left hand does 56% of the typing.
5. A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.
6. There are more chickens than people in the world.
7. Two-thirds of the world’s eggplant is grown in New Jersey.
8. The longest one-syllable word in the English language is “screeched.”
9. On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament building is an American flag.
10. All of the clocks in the movie “Pulp Fiction” are stuck on 4:20.
11. No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple.
12. “Dreamt” is the only English word that ends in the letters “mt”.
13. All 50 States are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 bill.
14. Almonds are a member of the peach family.
15. Winston Churchill was born in a ladies’ room during a dance.
16. Maine is the only State whose name is just one syllable.
17. There are only four words in the English language which end in “dous”: tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
18. The characters “Bert” and “Ernie” on Sesame Street were named after “Bert the cop” and “Ernie the taxi driver” in Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
19. A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
20. An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.
21. Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
22. In most advertisements, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.
23. Al Capone’s business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
24. Los Angeles’ full name is “El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula.”
25. A dragonfly has a life span of 24 hours.
26. A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
27. A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
28. It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
29. The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.
30. In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.
31. The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
32. Mr. Rogers is an ordained minister.
33. The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
34. There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.
35. “Stewardesses” is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.
2. Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.
3. There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
4. The average person’s left hand does 56% of the typing.
5. A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.
6. There are more chickens than people in the world.
7. Two-thirds of the world’s eggplant is grown in New Jersey.
8. The longest one-syllable word in the English language is “screeched.”
9. On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament building is an American flag.
10. All of the clocks in the movie “Pulp Fiction” are stuck on 4:20.
11. No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple.
12. “Dreamt” is the only English word that ends in the letters “mt”.
13. All 50 States are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 bill.
14. Almonds are a member of the peach family.
15. Winston Churchill was born in a ladies’ room during a dance.
16. Maine is the only State whose name is just one syllable.
17. There are only four words in the English language which end in “dous”: tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
18. The characters “Bert” and “Ernie” on Sesame Street were named after “Bert the cop” and “Ernie the taxi driver” in Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
19. A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
20. An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.
21. Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
22. In most advertisements, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.
23. Al Capone’s business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
24. Los Angeles’ full name is “El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula.”
25. A dragonfly has a life span of 24 hours.
26. A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
27. A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
28. It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
29. The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.
30. In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.
31. The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
32. Mr. Rogers is an ordained minister.
33. The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
34. There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.
35. “Stewardesses” is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.
a modern adaptation of a passage of scripture?
Unless
Unless you become like a teenager it is very difficult to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Without possessing dreams,
without going against the grain,
without a taste for rebellion, and a craving for something better,
there is little hope of ever leaving this world to enter the next.
So don’t let your dreams be crushed.
Don’t be conformed to the world around you.
Rebel against the mediocre, the bland and the lukewarm
and always set your hopes high.
Then, with the currency of justice, mercy and humility you will walk with your head held high into a brave new world.
And nothing will stop you.
thanks from Youthblog
Monday, October 29, 2007
IMAP gMail
I have been using gMail for a couple of years now and I think it is great! And it has just got better! I keep all my mail online in my gMail account and can therefore access it from any computer connected to the internet. I use a couple of machines at work regularly and have my work email open most of the day. IMAP now allows me to check my personal mail inside the application that runs my work mail! Check out the settings at gMail: Help Center (link)
Friday, October 05, 2007
I have really enjoyed visiting this site...
The Ongoing Adventures of ASBO Jesus offers a wonderful insight into Christian satire. It really brightens up my day, thanks!
Thursday, September 13, 2007
I cannot believe 4 years have passed
4 years ago England won the RWC and now it is time for them to defend it - I am so looking forward to the next 6 weeks. Bring it on!
Thursday, June 14, 2007
What to pass onto your kids...
1. A lucky number. Memories accrete around specific things.
link
2. A passion for tax-free growth.
3. About £3,000. An inheritance cuts your kids' ambition in half, robs them of the satisfaction of making their own way, and keeps them from lessons worth learning. So you spend it.
4. A team to love. It's a durable pleasure, best passed from father to child.
5. A team to hate. Despising a team--with all the venom you can muster and for no discernible reason--is a gift that gives life shape.
6. A will. And prearrange a really, really, really inexpensive funeral, too. Rule: Money is best spent on people who are alive.
7. Love of country. The quiet, grateful kind.
8. A decent carving knife.
9. A dented wheelbarrow. Associate yourself with stupid donkey work, as in moving this stuff that's here, over there.
10. A fragment of inspiring verse. Memorized, so they'll always have it when they need it.
11. Stories of your screwups. In the interest of less pedestal, more human, be sure they've heard tell of your greatest misses.
12. A holy book. Your copy of the Bible or Torah, if either has sustained you. Your Huck Finn or Heart of Darkness, if you're of a literary cast. An atlas of the world around which a pilgrim is free to roam.
13. Enthusiasm for two movies: one stupid, one stirring. Say, Caddyshack and Braveheart.
14. A tattered road map. An old-fashioned, service-station map of a region you've traveled a lot with the family. It should have a few words scribbled on it, a couple of routes highlighted in yellow. Some of the crease lines should be torn from wear.
15. A baseless prejudice in favor of a particular make of car. Everybody knows that [fill in name of car manufacturer here] makes the best cars on the road. Period. End of story.
16. A family catchphrase. A brief yelp that captures your take on life and can invoke your spirit long after you're dead. More in the manner of "Onward!" than "Life's a bitch, then you die."
17. Respect for baby steps. Most work gets done an inch at a time. Teach them to just break ground.
18. A coat. Barn jacket, tweed topcoat, or camo hunting shell, there's something warm about the old man's coat.
19. REMOVED - not relevant!
20. Savings bonds. They seem the very symbol of hope.
21. A handwritten description of a happy day. So what if you're not Tolstoy? Scribble a few contented lines about that 16th of October and stash it in your desk for post-death discovery.
22. A pleasure in people. Some get annoyed that people are so odd; lucky folks know that's the fun part.
23. A maintenance jones. If they see you changing the oil in the driveway, they'll learn to get more service from their stuff and have deeper friendships.
link
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Facebook F8 Keynote Speech
Mark Zuckerber’s pitch to 800 developers at the San Francisco Design Center about Facebook Platform is available on video. (http://developers.facebook.com/videos.php)
some of the highlights:
* Facebook adds over 100,000 users per day
* Current user base over 24 Million (growing at a rate of 3% per week since opening network to the public in Fall 2006)
* Expected to reach 50 Million active users by end of 2007
* 50% of users not in college, by end of year estimated to be 75% not in college
* 25 and older is the fastest growing demographic
* 50% of users use Facebook everyday (including yours truly)
* Recently passed eBay in daily traffic, and working on passing Google (yay!!)
* Number one photo sharing application on the ‘Net despite lacking features of others like Photobucket
* Facebook’s Events application more used than Evite
some of the highlights:
* Facebook adds over 100,000 users per day
* Current user base over 24 Million (growing at a rate of 3% per week since opening network to the public in Fall 2006)
* Expected to reach 50 Million active users by end of 2007
* 50% of users not in college, by end of year estimated to be 75% not in college
* 25 and older is the fastest growing demographic
* 50% of users use Facebook everyday (including yours truly)
* Recently passed eBay in daily traffic, and working on passing Google (yay!!)
* Number one photo sharing application on the ‘Net despite lacking features of others like Photobucket
* Facebook’s Events application more used than Evite
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
The Truth?
We watched this movie tonight. Some very thought provoking images and comments by Mr Al Gore. Maybe all is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but still very concerning. We need to do more and probably will! Any thought?
Where people now meet!
This is not the first and will not be the last, but it proves a point about where people are at. Thanks to JP Rangaswami for this.
to block or not to block
The BBC looks at the following..."Internet law professor Michael Geist says attempts to block social media sites such as Facebook are misguided.
Facebook has seen rapid growth Facebook, the enormously popular social media website, has attracted a remarkable amount of attention in recent weeks." - link
Friday, April 27, 2007
Happy Birthday to my girls!
Here is wishing Anna (26th) and Melanie (27th) a very happy birthday. may the year ahead bring you happiness and lots of fun.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Now I have read it all!
South Africa's Springbok rugby squad faces the threat of having their passports confiscated unless more black players are picked for this year's World Cup, media reported on Tuesday. - link
Friday, March 23, 2007
A fine tribute to the memory of Bob!
Following the tragic and untimely death of Bob Woolmer at the 2007 ICC Cricket World Cup in the West Indies, a Trust Fund has been established to raise money for a number of projects that he was involved with at the time of his passing.Full details of this Trust Fund can be found here - link.
Poo Paper
This is sustainability! Paper from Elephant dung! Check out the site - linkYour source for hand made paper stationary.
The making of paper starts with the collection and processing of the dung pulp. Elephant dung is typically full of short to medium grained fibrous materials from the elephants diet which when processed makes excellent paper:
- We collect naturally dried elephant dung from elephant conservation parks and bring it back to our paper-making factory.
- We then pre-rinse the elephant dung with water, leaving only the fibrous materials from the grasses, bamboo & fruits they've eaten.
- Afterwards, we place the fibers into a giant pot of boiling water to ensure the fibers are super clean. After this thorough cleaning, any color that we may want to add can be added.
- Natural fibers from banana trees & pineapples are added to the dung mixture so the paper will be thicker & stronger.
- Once this is all mixed together, we separate the moist fibers into small “cakes' or “wafers” of about 300-400 grams each.
- The cakes are spread evenly over a mesh-bottomed tray measuring about 60cm by 90cm.
- The tray is leaned up against a tree, angled toward the sun and allowed to dry naturally for a few hours.
- Once dry, we peel the sheet of paper from the mesh tray and start making Poo Poo Paper products.
This is how we made the hand made paper stationary and our how to make recycled paper process!
I will view chocolate in a different light now!
This Easter, the chocolate industry cannot guarantee our chocolate is Traffik Free.Nearly half the world's chocolate is made from cocoa grown in Côte d'Ivoire, West Africa.
The 2000 US State Department Human Rights report said "It is estimated that some 15,000 Malian children work on Ivorian cocoa and coffee plantations. Many are under 12 years-of-age, sold into indentured servitude for $140, and work 12-hour days for $135 to $189 per year."
They are trafficked into forced labour so we can eat chocolate.
"I will tell you how I lost my arm. I tried to escape, but I could not. They caught me and tied me to a papaya tree and they beat me and broke my arm. From here my life was ruined."
Anonymous. Personal Interview, Côte d'Ivoire. Dec. 2005. ILRF (International Labour Rights Fund)
A young boy called Victor trafficked from Mali said:
"Tell your children that they have bought something that I suffered to make. When they are eating chocolate they are eating my flesh."
We have the power to help Victor and the thousands of children like him.
Change your buying habits. By eating Fairtrade chocolate we can guarantee that no trafficked labour has been used in its production. Use the STOP THE TRAFFIK Good Chocolate Guide to find out which chocolate is Traffik Free.
What do we want the chocolate companies to do? Give us a Traffik Free Guarantee on all their chocolate.
thanks Rob
Friday, March 16, 2007
Some quotes by Bono
"Where you live should no longer determine whether you live.""And this wise man asked me to stop. He said, "Stop asking God to bless what you're doing. Get involved in what God is doing -- because it's already blessed."
"Freedom has a scent like the top of a new born babies head."
"Distance does not decide who is your brother and who is not. The church is going to have to become the conscience of the free market if it's to have any meaning in this world - and stop being its apologist."
"Every age has its massive moral blind spots. We might not see them, but our children will."
"What can I give back to God for the blessings he's poured out on me? I'll lift high the cup of salvation - a toast to God!",
"The attention of the world might sometimes be elsewhere, but history is watching. It's taking notes. And it's going to hold us to account, each of us."
"At a certain point, I just felt, you know, God is not looking for alms, God is looking for action."
"When the story of these times gets written, we want it to say that we did all we could, and it was more than anyone could have imagined."
"To be one, to be united is a great thing. But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater."
"It's not enough to rage against the lie...you've got to replace it with the truth."
"Isn't equality a son of a bitch to follow through on. Isn't "Love thy neighbour" in the global village so inconvenient?"
"When you sing, you make people vulnerable to change in their lives. You make yourself vulnerable to change in your life. But in the end, you've got to become the change you want to see in the world."
"But my point is that the world is more malleable than you think and it's waiting for you to hammer it into shape."
"We're not here today for a victory lap; we're here to pick up the pace. Because AIDS is outrunning us,"
"Eight million people die every year for the price of going out with your friends to the movies and buying an ice cream. Literally for about $30 a head per year, you could save 8 million lives. Isn't that extraordinary? Preventable disease - not calamity, not famine, nothing like that. Preventable disease - just for the lack of medicines. That is cheap, that is a bargain."
"Senators, I spend a lot of time in this country. Maybe too much for your liking. I spend a lot of time in buses. At truck stops. In town halls. In church halls. I do all this, and I'm not even running for office."
If I could, you know I would. If I could, I would let it go. This desparation, dislocation, separation, condemnation, revelation, in temptation, isolation, desolation.
"I believe in the kingdom come. Then all the colors will bleed into one."
"But you know what's amazing? Everywhere I go, I see very much the same thing. I see the same compassion for people who live half a world away. I see the same concern about events beyond these borders. And, increasingly, I see the same conviction that we can and we must join together to stop the scourge of AIDS and poverty."
"Sing the melody line you hear in your own head, remember, you don't owe anybody any explanations, you don't owe your parents any explanations, you don't owe your professors any explanations. You know I used to think the future was solid or fixed, something you inherited like an old building that you move into when the previous generation moves out or gets chased out. But it's not. The future is not fixed, it's fluid. You can build your own building, or hut or condo, whatever;"
"We have to have a very simple standard of doing business, which is: If you are not tackling corruption, if you are not allowing civil society to do their job, we are not giving you any money. Outside of famine, and outside of those kinds of catastrophes, which need money pumped in no matter who's in charge. We are not marching the streets to redecorate presidential palaces for anyone."
"Even then I prayed more outside of the church than inside. It gets back to the songs I was listening to; to me, they were prayers. "How many roads must a man walk down?" That wasn't a rhetorical question to me. It was addressed to God. It's a question I wanted to know the answer to, and I'm wondering, who do I ask that to? I'm not gonna ask a schoolteacher. When John Lennon sings, "Oh, my love/For the first time in my life/My eyes are wide open" -- these songs have an intimacy for me that's not just between people, I realize now, not just sexual intimacy. A spiritual intimacy."
"I'm not in a position to be seen as a spokesman for a generation. I mean, how can you be a spokesman of a generation if you've nothing to say, other than 'Help!'"
"My heroes are all alive. I never have worshipped at that altar of burnt-out youth."
"But we've got to follow through on our ideals or we betray something at the heart of who we are. Outside these gates, and even within them, the culture of idealism is under siege, beset by materialism and narcissism and all the other "isms" of indifference"
"But with Christ, we have access in a one-to-one relationship, for, as in the Old Testament, it was more one of worship and awe, a vertical relationship. The New Testament, on the other hand, we look across at a Jesus who looks familiar, horizontal. The combination is what makes the Cross."
"But I'd be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I'd be in deep s---. It doesn't excuse my mistakes, but I'm holding out for Grace."
"You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics—in physical laws—every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It's clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the universe. I'm absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that "as you reap, so you will sow" stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I've done a lot of stupid stuff."
"I'm not doubting. I don't doubt God. I have firm faith absolutely in God. It's religion I'm doubting."
"Take this soul stranded in some skin and bones. Take this soul and make it sing."
"And I know it aches. How your heart it breaks. You can only take so much. Walk on"
"Yahweh Yahweh always pain before a child is born. Yahweh Yahweh still I'm waiting for the dawn."
"I will admit that we are attracted to issues that unify people rather than divide them."
"Take these hands, teach them what to carry. Take these hands, don't make a fist. Take this mouth, so quick to criticize. Take this mouth, give it a kiss."
"I am a friend to God, a sworn enemy of the saccharine and a believer in grace over karma."
"Every era has its defining struggle and the fate of Africa is one of ours. It's not the only one, but in the history books it's easily going to make the top five, what we did or what we did not do. It's a proving ground, as I said earlier, for the idea of equality. But whether it's this or something else, I hope you'll pick a fight and get in it."
"Yes, I sometimes fail, but atleast I'm willing to experiment."
"We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong."
"Fear is the opposite of faith."
"The music that really turns me on is either running toward God or away from God. Both recognize the pivot, that God is at the center of the jaunt. So the blues, on one hand -- running away; gospel, the Mighty Clouds of Joy -- running towards. And later you came to analyze it and figure it out."
"If I could put it simply, I would say that I believe there's a force of love and logic in the world, a force of love and logic behind the universe. And I believe in the poetic genius of a creator who would choose to express such unfathomable power as a child born in "straw poverty"; i.e., the story of Christ makes sense to me."
"As an artist, I see the poetry of it. It's so brilliant. That this scale of creation, and the unfathomable universe, should describe itself in such vulnerability, as a child. That is mind-blowing to me. I guess that would make me a Christian. Although I don't use the label, because it is so very hard to live up to. I feel like I'm the worst example of it, so I just kinda keep my mouth shut."
"There are potentially another 10 Afghanistans in Africa, and it is cheaper by a factor of 100 to prevent the fires from happening than to put them out."
"Imagine if a third of the kids at your local primary school were AIDS orphans. That's a reality in Africa where the parents of 13 million children have been killed by AIDS."
"All the best songs are co-written by God, y'know!"
"There are many side roads and back streets to rock 'n' roll, and most of us get lost down them at times."
"Those songs we sang on tour really helped me through the death of my dad. The problem with grief is bottling it up and that's when it can really floor you. You have to express it and face it and I was doing that every night."
"I'm not a whinging liberal. I'm no hippie with flowers in my hair."
"I'm tired of dreaming. I'm into doing at the moment. It's, like, let's only have goals that we can go after."
"Politicians don't turn me on, politics doesn't turn me on, the way music does. I have a lot more respect for them than I used to. They work a lot harder than I thought...but I don't want to be one."
"I could never be a politician because I think I'm too selfish, and I think I like to have fun: the right to be irresponsible is a right I hold dear."
"I've had the best life that a man's ever had: I don't just mean with U2, I mean with my family and even my father, whose loss I feel every day."
"We used to look at bands who could play better and look better, and we used to say, 'They have everything but 'it.'' We had nothing but 'it.'"
"You have worked your ass off for this. For four years you've been buying, trading, and selling, everything you've got in this marketplace of ideas. The intellectual hustle. Your pockets are full, even if your parents' are empty, and now you've got to figure out what to spend it on."
"Look at what happened in Southeast Asia with the Tsunami. 150,000 lives lost to the greatest misnomer of all misnomers, "mother nature." Well, in Africa, 150,000 lives are lost every month. A tsunami every month. And it's a completely avoidable catastrophe."
"Every age has its massive moral blind spots. We might not see them, but our children will. Slavery was one of them and the people who best served that age were the ones who called it as it was--which was ungodly and inhuman."
"Segregation. There was another one. America sees this now but it took a civil rights movement to betray their age. And 50 years ago the U.S. Supreme Court betrayed the age May 17, 1954, Brown vs. Board of Education came down and put the lie to the idea that separate can ever really be equal. Amen to that. Fast forward 50 years. May 17, 2004. What are the ideas right now worth betraying? What are the lies we tell ourselves now? What are the blind spots of our age?"
"Well, the going rate for change is not cheap. Big ideas are expensive."
"So my question I suppose is: What's the big idea? What's your big idea? What are you willing to spend your moral capital, your intellectual capital, your cash, your sweat equity in pursuing outside of the walls of the University of Pennsylvania?"
"I love the bit when Christ asked for his greatest hits and he says, 'OK, love God, and love your neighbours as yourself.' Christianity is not complicated, that's what it is."
"Joy is a subject I go on and on about. It's one of the only emotions you can't contrive. It's impossible. Despair and anger are easier to convey. Great rock 'n' roll, the raw stuff, is pure joy. It's that sense of being alive, of being grateful for your pulse."
"One of the greatest contradictions of rock 'n' roll is that it's very personal, private music made on a huge public address system."
"Our music is rooted in the feeling that much more is possible than you think."
"There's a great freedom when you have your feet in two so called mutually exclusive worlds: The world of irony, and the world of soul, The world of flesh, and the world of spirit, The world of surface and the world of depth."
"U2 is about the impossible. Politics is the art of the possible. They're very different, and I'm resigned to that now."
"There was a badness that had its way. But love wasn't lost. Love will have its day."
"And I know it aches, how your heart it breaks. You can only take so much, walk on, walk on."
"Home, hard to know what it is if you've never had one. Home, I can't say where it is but I know I'm going."
"If I am close to the music, and you are close to the music, we are close to each other."
"To touch is to heal, to hurt is to steal. If you want to kiss the sky, better learn how to kneel."
"Our music never had a roof on it."
"I want to play the guitar very badly, and I DO play the guitar very badly."
"In some ways, success is a lot easier to achieve than relevance. Being 40, we have to come up with extra reasons for people to put us on the radio."
"One love, one blood, one life. You got to do what you should. One life with each other sisters, brothers. One life but we're not the same. We get to carry each other, carry each other"
"I think most people who I'm dealing with accept that the way I look, dress or act, doesn't take away from the rigours of the arguments I'm making."
"Mock the devil and he will flee from thee. Fear of the devil leads to devil worship."
"The truth is when that singer is saying something that comes from right down within him, and it affects you right down within you. That's when you start talking about great music, as distinct from nice music."
"The final mark of greatness, I think, is emptiness. That is true of music, painting, of anything. The less you can do it with, the more powerful you are."
"It's annoying but justice and equality are mates. Aren't they? Justice always wants to hang out with equality. And equality is a real pain in the arse... Seriously. I mean, you think of these Jewish sheep-herders going to meet with the Pharaoh, mud on their shoes, and the Pharaoh goes, "Equal?...Equal?" And they say, "Yeah, that's what it says here in the book here -- 'We’re all made in the image of God,' sir."
"But the one thing we can all agree, all faiths, all ideologies, is that God is with the vulnerable and the poor. God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house... God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives... God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war... God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them."
"Here's some good news -- [looks at President Bush] -- for you, Mr. President. After 9-11 we were told America would have no time for the World's poor. We were told America would be taken up with its own problems of safety. And it's true these are dangerous times, but America has not drawn the blinds and double-locked the doors. In fact, you have doubled aid to Africa. You have tripled funding for global health. And Mr. President, your emergency plan for AIDS relief and support of the Global Fund -- you and Congress -- have put 700,000 people onto life-saving anti-retroviral drugs and provided 8 million bed nets to protect children from malaria."
"Do unto others as you would have them do to you." Jesus says that [Luke 6:30]. "Righteousness is this: that one should... give away wealth out of love for Him to the near of kin and the orphans and the needy and the wayfarer and the beggars and for the emancipation of the captives." The Koran says that [2.177]. Thus sayeth the Lord: "Bring the homeless poor into the house, when you see the naked, cover him, then your light will break out like the dawn and your recovery will speedily spring fourth, then your Lord will be your rear guard." The Jewish Scripture says that. It's Isaiah 58 [verses 7-8] again. It's a very powerful incentive: "The Lord will watch your back." Sounds like a good deal to me, especially right now..."
Friday, March 02, 2007
Cool news about Adobe
Hoping to get a jump on Google and other competitors, Adobe Systems plans to release a hosted version of its popular Photoshop image-editing application within six months, the company's chief executive said Tuesday. - link
Monday, February 19, 2007
well done, sharks!
Well done to the Super 14 teams on winning their third consecutive match, placing them at the top of the log. I know it is early days in the competition, but here is holding thumbs!Craig, how was the match live?
what am i watching?
I have just started watching series 5 of 24. I missed all of the series thanks to us not having Sky, but now I have the opportunity to watch the whole series in one sitting. I don't think I have the time to do this, as I am sure the wife will give me other chores to complete. But there is always a chance to watch an episode late in the night. You know where I will be in the wee hours of the morning!
All I ready need to know I learnt...
(a guide for Global Leadership)
All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.
These are the things I learned:- Share everything.
- Play fair.
- Don't hit people.
- Put things back where you found them.
- Clean up your own mess.
- Don't take things that aren't yours.
- Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
- Wash your hands before you eat.
- Flush.
- Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
- Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
- Take a nap every afternoon.
- When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
- Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
- Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.
- And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.
Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.
And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.
[Source: "ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN" by Robert Fulghum. See his web site at http://www.robertfulghum.com/ ]5 ways to use Video in Education
Lifehack.org posted an articletoday in which they declared this year the year of the InternetPresidency (in light of all of the recent announcements from UScandidates for president). They then went on to list five ways we couldall take advantage of the internet video. Great article… highlyrecommend for promoting your thinking caps.
Joining in the spirit of the year edutechie.com have put together a quick list of Five ways to use Video in EDUCATION this year!
- Record Class Presentations - Record classroom presentations.Your lectures will be a great resource for your students to look backon what was said in class. Make your lectures available to thestudents, but for heaven’s sake, don’t charge them for it.If you record student presentations keep those around (with thestudent’s permission of course) and show the best one’s toyour students in coming years of what a presentation or project shouldbe.
- Video Projects - Nothing motivates a student like usingexciting technology to create something amazing! Let the students havethe option of using that excitement in their projects for the class.You’ll be amazed how some of the students grab onto somethinglike this. If they post them online they will also be able to sharetheir work with family and friends.
- Instructional Video’s - Do you have a special topicyou are teaching that would be useful to take a little field trip. Goout a day or two in advance and record an on site explanation of thetopic. This will work great with science, history, archeology, and manyother subjects.
- Video Blogs - Create a class blogand have your students record their reactions to literary or otherassignments and post them on the blog. Give them specific assignmentsand have them post those on the blog.
- Use Online Video Already Available - There are massiveamounts of video already available online in all sorts of topic areas.Utilize that video in your curriculum. It will increase thestudent’s retention of the subject and encourage them to seek outeducational video’s as well. As more and more teachers get intomaking video’s there will also be more resources available.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
I am starting to dislike Google
When searching for Africa ingenuity it provided me with "Did you mean: American ingenuity". The cheek of it!
Friday, January 19, 2007
Sone thoughts about teaching with technology!
The BBC News website reports the following...
Too much technology in the classroom? by Hannah Goff (link)
"There was a time when teachers stood in front of the class, with chalk poised on the blackboard while pupils scribbled away furiously. Now teachers' presentations have to compete with the expectations raised by the technology children have at home - iPods, Playstations and home
computers.
But they do now have their own multimedia technology in the classroom, in the form of interactive white boards (IWBs). These are a virtual one-stop-shop that acts as an overhead projector, television, DVD player, photo album, computer and depending on your software - much, much more."
The next big thing, it appears from attending BETT (Technology Education Show in London) was the use of ipods and podcasting in lessons. Various education gurus are singing the praises of wikis and blogs in education. I think much of this makes sense when you are not examination driven. I have used podcasts in my A Level lessons, but I must admit they were probably not the most effective. I hope I have learnt from my mistakes.
Too much technology in the classroom? by Hannah Goff (link)
"There was a time when teachers stood in front of the class, with chalk poised on the blackboard while pupils scribbled away furiously. Now teachers' presentations have to compete with the expectations raised by the technology children have at home - iPods, Playstations and home
computers.But they do now have their own multimedia technology in the classroom, in the form of interactive white boards (IWBs). These are a virtual one-stop-shop that acts as an overhead projector, television, DVD player, photo album, computer and depending on your software - much, much more."
The article questions the reliability of the boards and dependence on its usage for a effective lesson (i.e. teaching and learning is effective). I know that one does free you need to use it if it has been installed in the classroom. I also know from personal experience that I never fully used all the functionality of the boards.
The next big thing, it appears from attending BETT (Technology Education Show in London) was the use of ipods and podcasting in lessons. Various education gurus are singing the praises of wikis and blogs in education. I think much of this makes sense when you are not examination driven. I have used podcasts in my A Level lessons, but I must admit they were probably not the most effective. I hope I have learnt from my mistakes. I have been invited to the Innovate Conference hosted by Oundle School, which should again provide some very insteresting information concerning technology in the classroom.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Happy 2007!
I know it is very late, but best wishes to all my readers. I hope that 2007 is better than 2006 and worse than 2008.
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