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March 18, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The Great Recession has begun to push through to basic public services that affect us all. Education funding has dried up and across the country, cities facing major budget shortfalls are taking the radical step of shutting down schools in order to address the budget crisis.
March 13, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
El ciber-diálogo de Gender Links, para el jueves, 4 de marzo 2010, efectuó una conversación robusta sobre cómo mejorar el ambiente mediático de la Copa Mundial del 2010 respecto a los derechos de la mujer. Los, partícipes, en Nueva York y en Sudáfrica, se entrevistaron, cambiando ideas y comparando ambientes socio-culturales según favorezcan o no la entrada de las mujeres y las niñas en el ámbito del fútbol. Un ejemplo clave fue el caso de Estados Unidos, donde las niñas muchas veces tienen acceso a programas de deporte de la comunidad o a através de la escuela y donde las figuras más conocidas del fútbol internacional son mujeres como Mia Hamm.
March 10, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
On the second morning of the 54th Commission on the Status of Women, Gender Links and the African Woman and Child Feature Service —through the Gender and Media Diversity Centre— hosted a roundtable dialogue involving Marren Akatsa-Bukachi of the Eastern African Sub-regional Support Initiative for the Advancement of Women (EASSI), Francisco Cos-Montiel of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Revai Makanje of Hivos, Norah Matovu-Winyi of the African Women’s Development and Communication Network, and Jennifer Lewis of Gender Links as facilitator, with Mwendabai Yeta Mkhize and myself providing event support and reporting.
March 1, 2010 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The International Museum of Women, an online art gallery, which aims to foster dialogue and promote new educational directions for women and in relation to issues of women’s rights and opportunity, is hosting an exhibit called ‘Ecomomica’, which explores the role women play in the evolving global economy.
February 27, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
‘Psychic numbing’ is a relatively new term, assigned to the phenomenon which shows people tend to feel less urgent compassion, and tend to give less, when the suffering in question is shown to be more systemic and more pervasive, or affecting larger numbers of people. Some psychologists believe it is linked to our intuitive sense that if one suffers alone, the suffering is worse, but if one is accompanied, there might be some security in numbers, not just emotionally, but practically.
February 14, 2010 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Esperanza Spalding, a rising star in the jazz world, and an increasingly recognizable face at high-profile cultural gatherings, performs “Tell Him” at last year’s White House Poetry Jam, in this video. The song is a moody, jazzy blend of love and meditation, an apt message for a weekend on which we celebrate both the virtues [...]
January 30, 2010 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Pres. Barack Obama yesterday attended a first-of-its-kind question and answer session, as part of a Republican Congressional caucus conference in Baltimore. The president took some aggressive questions, classed by media analysts as “grandstanding”, from some Republicans who pushed the party line on the refusal of Democrats to deal with them. Obama adroitly and with a [...]
January 22, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
The Supreme Court of the United States has taken a special interest in the case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which regards the claim that campaign finance regulations limiting the amount an entity can donate to a political party are an infringement on freedom of speech. Yesterday, the Court issued a 5-4 ruling against those campaign funding limits that is now expected to unleash a wave of virtually unlimited corporate funding for political campaigns. Numerous observers have claimed the integrity of American elections would be threatened.
January 14, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The disaster response for the Haitian earthquake has been swift and coordinated, channeling massive international resources to the affected area. But the logistics of deploying the resources, personnel and technology needed to deliver comprehensive disaster assistance, are beyond complicated, with roads and transport overwhelmed, and means of contacting the wounded almost non-existent.
January 9, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
It is a serious question whether distance learning holds virtues that are ignored due to a prejudice that holds that physical presence of the instructor is necessary for learning. Clearly, in some cases, this is entirely untrue, and there may be an over-emphasis in some circles on the idea of physical presence as the metaphysical prerequisite to consider that learning is occurring. However, it is not clear that physical presence and phonocentrism —emphasis on the spoken word as the more effective mode of instruction— amount to the same “fixation”, when it comes to the question of how best to communicate knowledge.
January 4, 2010 :: Carmen Visna :: No Comment Yet
La luna se aleja, no veo el camino; estoy lista, medito, pero el futuro no me pertenece. Por lo tanto, no duermo. Busco en las tinieblas, hacia las cuatro, mi nombre; ya no existe. Esta experiencia desconcertante me gusta, porque ayuda a definir los límites; sé hasta dónde tengo que limitarme en sociedad. Imagino que el yo, en general, es un fenómeno menos comprobado que lo que pensamos.
December 15, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Barack Obama’s campaign for the United States Senate, in 2004, was driven by a clear moral commitment to the need to make government more open and more accountable to the people. His record of work in state government to tackle predatory lending, corruption and ethics conflicts, helped make him a national figure almost upon entry into the Senate. He sponsored and pushed the most sweeping ethics reforms in over a generation, to make government more transparent, and promised to do so as president. Now, the White House has issued a studied and comprehensive open government directive that will ensure greater transparency and a freer flow of information to the public.
December 14, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Intellectual property laws designed to help protect the ability of researchers to retain compensation for major innovations have led to a uniquely problematic “innovation” in the laws themselves, where specific genes, or the informational access to them, are patented, barring individuals or their physicians from dealing directly with those genes except through the for-profit patent-holders.
December 10, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The deepest image ever taken of the universe, using the ultra-powerful Hubble Space Telescope, known as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, shows there to be 100 billion galaxies in the universe, some projecting light from a distance of 47 billion light years. A study of the Doppler redshift of galaxies speeding away from the Hubble’s vantage point has allowed astronomers to create a 3-dimensional projection of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image, the deepest photograph ever taken of the observable universe.
November 23, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Malaria is one of the 21st century’s great plagues. It is responsible for anywhere from 1 to 3 million deaths per year, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Efforts to eradicate the disease are mounting: in the year 2000, just 3% of children under 5, in sub-Saharan Africa, slept with mosquito nets; by 2008, that figure had risen to 56%. Aid groups now project that aggressive preventive measures can protect 100% of the population by the end of 2010 and reduce the number of deaths to near zero by 2015.
November 21, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Through the work of writing, I have learned first and foremost that nothing is what it tells us it is, because there is always another level, another way to play at naming, with reality, to bend untruths to be more true, as medicine, as savior, as demon filtered for taste, as a ritual mark of [...]
November 11, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
One of the smears Republican opponents of heathcare reform have been pushing is the idea that the reforms passed by the House and under consideration in the Senate would “allow government bureaucrats to get between you and your doctor”, and make decisions about what treatment you can receive. In fact, this is an outright lie, put forth by interests that already do interfere with your doctor’s discretion and deny you care, for profit, and they’re pushing the lie because they don’t want people to know the bill bans any insurance provider —including the government— from dictating treatment options.
October 30, 2009 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
It’s a busy day as usual in the city-centre, with everyone moving about their daily business. Looking around, it seems that you will mostly find women and girls sitting by the roadside selling fruits and vegetables, while men are operating bigger businesses, like construction.
October 28, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Intellectual property rights are complicating and expanding at an unprecedented rate. Now, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, lawyers are writing contracts that require artists to sign over all potential distribution and marketing rights for their work, “across the universe” and “in perpetuity”.
October 20, 2009 :: Denver Lessing :: No Comment Yet
ewsmax had in recent weeks tried to debunk Keith Olberman’s report that conservative blogs, political action committees and front groups were buying Sarah Palin’s book in massive quantities to rig book sales, by claiming they are doing the opposite, with the following claim: “But the truth is that Newsmax has not purchased one book from Amazon. In fact, we are offering the book both FREE and at an incredible discount to Amazon.”
October 13, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
An attractive woman, 34-ish, drives a compact station-wagon, late model, over a still-cobblestone side street in the center of Madrid. She advances slowly, toward a red light, and talks on her cell phone. She seems equally concentrated on both activities. Driving an automobile is a potentially dangerous activity, in which one’s own life or the lives of others may be at risk, while a casual conversation is not so much that. Yet she seemed to give equal weight, her body, her manner, seemed to give equal weight to both activities.
October 2, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The phenomenon of “re-tweeting”, reposting and linking back to items already posted on the real-time updated short-message feed site Twitter, has allowed for the emergence of what sometimes turns into a global roundtable discussion, made up of short, sometimes superfluous, sometimes provocative ideas, and in many cases links to surprising but potentially effective online sources that spread a message or expand and deepen awareness of an issue.
September 30, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
Apple’s long-awaited tablet computer, likely to run a version of Mac OS X and to merge the touchscreen stylings of the iPhone and iPod Touch with the full functionality of the MacBook line, is expected to be aimed at revolutionizing the way print media deliver text to readers. If true, the device would again put Apple at the cutting edge of a field where Amazon, Microsoft, Sony and others, are trying to set the standards for e-book distribution and licensing.
September 29, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The field of ecological research and reporting is a part of the basic human urge to engage the world through reason and a quest for understanding. It is not about seizing control of society’s urges and services and limiting the freedom of anyone, but rather about making sure we have the information we need to make the best choices, then advocating for those choices, when inertia and custom stand in the way of better health — for individuals and in the manner in which human individuals respond to their social and natural environments.
September 25, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
DVR is an increasingly popular consumer-oriented technology which simultaneously liberates viewers from strict TV viewing schedules and also imposes new constraints on recording freedoms (including sharing). DVR is a concession by content providers, advertisers and infrastructure (connectivity) providers, to the advantages of digital technology, and to the common individual demand for more freedom to control when information (content) is accessed. And the technology is framing a new logistics of consumer access and corporate control.
September 23, 2009 :: Evelyn Winston Perez :: One Comment
The issue of women’s equality is a question as old as human history. And even now, in the most modern of democracies, which guarantee more or less political and economic equality for women, there remain fundamental imbalances in rights, privileges and enforcement. Women are often guaranteed freedom from discrimination, but nevertheless suffer essential inequalities that do in fact alter the landscape of their choices and freedoms.
September 16, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Caster Semenya, the 18-year-old track-and-field phenomenon from South Africa, is a woman whose hormonal chemistry is unusual for the average adult female. Test results are reported to show that her body naturally secretes three times the normal female levels of testosterone, the dominant “male” hormone, which some competitors say gives her an “unfair advantage”. The issue has raised perhaps the most serious challenge to the notion of fairness in sport, and to conventional attitudes about gender.
September 15, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Capitalism is “survival of the fittest”… capitalism is rooted in the idea of merit; everyone should be compensated according to his or her contribution (to the common good?)… capitalism is about the movement of capital; the more it moves, the richer everyone gets… capitalism is an upgraded feudalism, where the capitalist is an overseer of an abstract terrain made up of investments, not of arable lands… capitalism is democracy; the free spirit of an open society requires capitalism to support the liberties of individual citizens, and protect against government overreach… capitalism is virtue… or, capitalism is the absence of virtue…
September 11, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
In matters of electoral rights and campaign financing freedoms, no corporation or registered multi-party organization will be afforded the specific electoral rights afforded individual citizens under this Constitution.
September 10, 2009 :: staff :: 2 Comments
But the problem that plagues the health care system is not just a problem for the uninsured. Those who do have insurance have never had less security and stability than they do today. More and more Americans worry that if you move, lose your job, or change your job, you’ll lose your health insurance too. More and more Americans pay their premiums, only to discover that their insurance company has dropped their coverage when they get sick, or won’t pay the full cost of care. It happens every day.
September 8, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Is the very thing we demand of our computers the thing that will make them intolerant of our humanity, if and when they awaken to an artificial intelligence? One of the fundamental problems in achieving a state of computational agility and independence that would allow us to say a synthetic entity has acquired ‘artificial intelligence’ is the problem of autonomy. If we give real autonomy to artificially intelligent machines, can we trust them to cooperate with us, in the ways we, as human beings prefer?
September 6, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Amazon’s Kindle family of e-book readers has changed the game on e-books and e-book distribution, by making an intuitive, easy to use e-paper reader into a mass-market publishing platform. Books are now sold on many websites as “Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle”, referencing the format of the book’s publication in varying editions. Now, a hacker has put a variation of Linux on a Kindle 2, raising the question as to what Amazon might do to enhance the device’s range of operative capabilities.
August 31, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Apple’s iPhone App Store is reported to be bringing in $200 million per month, roughly $2.4 billion per year. Such soaring earnings reflect that high value users place on the App Store system and its ability to deliver targeted-use software “widgets” that do one thing well. But doing just one thing is far from the goal of the App Store.
August 30, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Like the Amazon Kindle family of e-readers, the Sony Reader Touch Edition uses an e-Ink e-paper display. But it’s interface works like a touchscreen. The advance is a major improvement for the standards of design in e-paper e-book readers. The touchscreen standard may be the most significant challenge Sony has put forth for the Amazon Kindle readers, none of which uses a touchscreen interface.
August 30, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
At yesterday’s funeral service for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, his son Teddy —Edward, Jr.— gave a stirring eulogy, one of many, in which he lauded his father’s spirit of perseverance and his ability to infuse others, himself included, with that optimistic spirit. He tells of his father’s lessons to him as a boy of besting more talented opponents by superior preparation and by working harder and longer to out-perform and outlast them when the time came.
August 30, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
One of my closest friends in the world is a committed Republican, as is my father, whose father was a Republican elected to various offices in our state. The friend —whom we’ll call “Dutch”— often chides me for our differences of opinion, and we often have energetic philosophical debates in which we try to detail the workings of the universe according to our own personal abstractions or tastes.
August 24, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Outrage ensued when it was announced that Europe could extract electricity from the Grand Inga dam project, in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, deep in sub-Saharan Africa. At present, less than 30% of the African population has access to electricity, and in some countries, the figure is below 10%. The World Bank has found that the diversion of electricity to wealthier customers in Europe may be necessary to fund the project.
August 21, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
The Internet Archive is joining with major internet-related firms, such as Yahoo and Amazon, to fight Google’s settlement with the Authors’ Guild, allowing Google Books to publish copyright-protected materials online, if they are out of print, and to compensate authors according to the sales generated by the display of the copyrighted text (possibly 70% going to publishers or copyright holders, including a cut of ad revenues). The Coalition plans to fight the legal settlement on anti-trust grounds.
August 13, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
Pres. Barack Obama yesterday hosted 16 new Medal of Freedom recipients at the White House, honoring their lifelong contributions to the expansion of human understanding and the promotion of individual liberty and human dignity. Among the recipients were scientists and activists, soldiers and political leaders, preachers and athletes, native Americans, African Americans, Latin Americans, Africans and Asians. The 16 laureates exemplify not only rare talent and indomitable spirit, but also a devotion to human dignity and understanding.
August 11, 2009 :: l.johr :: No Comment Yet
Instead of going on a cruise this year or flying off to dream-like destinations, more people are choosing to tour locally. No matter what constitutes ‘local’, there are likely enough interesting and stimulating activities to last a few hours or a few days’ worth of leisurely investigation. Finding a new restaurant, park or museum will not only help boost the local economy, but it might also help to boost your spirits while saving some money.
August 5, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
Now, we face unprecedented challenges to the right of people everywhere to access information intended for public consumption. Repressive governments are building state-of-the-art censorship , tracking and filtering mechanisms (the ‘Great Firewall of China’, for example), and internet service providers (ISP) are seeking to establish profit-dr… that limit users’ access to certain websites or content-producers.
August 1, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Is the creative act a mission, a success, a failure? Is it a process? Are there geniuses, or do we all carry filaments and thunderclaps of genius deep within? Gilbert explains that as a writer, as someone devoted to a creative process, she’s been subjected to countless discouraging suggestions about how likely failure is and how failing at a creative life can be so destructive, so much an engine for suffering and marginalization.
July 31, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
In an odd exchange between neoconservative luminary Bill Kristol and comic news anchor Jon Stewart, Kristol found himself, perhaps inadvertently, arguing that government run healthcare for the US military was “first class healthcare” and that the rest of the public did not deserve such high quality. Stewart, delighted, challenged the logic of Kristol’s argument, pointing out that Kristol was at once arguing that the public should get its health insurance entirely from the private sector, but that what the public ’should’ have would be less quality than the government-run military healthcare service.
July 28, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
The Amazon Kindle DX is a beautiful device. Its design is user-friendly, intuitive and cohesive. It is clean-edged, minimal and thinner than many major magazines. Its format size is comfortable and makes tactile sense; it feels like something you hold in order to read, giving it a useful aesthetic kinship to books or magazines, a vast improvement on smaller e-reading devices. It is, in point of fact, far more comfortable than planting yourself in front of a computer monitor to read large amounts of text.
July 27, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The Financial Times is the latest publication to weigh in on mounting expectations that Apple will release a touchscreen tablet computer this fall. There are rumors the computer maker is hoping to counter the rise of cheap netbooks with something lower-cost than their standard Macs and with a larger screen based on the model of the iPod Touch and the iPhone. The news could mean a breakthrough in personal computing standards and even portability of the workplace.
July 26, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
In a tucked-away corner of the New Zealand coastline, a couple, both architects, Lance and Nicola Herbst, have designed a self-sustaining “off-the-grid” home that lends flavor and mood to everyday living. Their cedar-clad bungalow is designed to interact with the natural environment and optimize its use of resources, such as energy, water and nutrients.
July 23, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Access to the internet must be a basic human right, across the globe, for a number of reasons. First of all, legitimate, transparent democratic processes of government require in today’s world that information flow freely and that citizens be empowered to share information and to find information, according to their choices and their needs.
July 20, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
America’s banks have, over the last decade, entered into a dangerous fictional world of projected automatic wealth in which they expect that all payments they might receive will without fail materialize, regardless of circumstance. They treat the human beings with whom they have major financial relationships as if they were nothing more than endless fonts of easy money. This is the crisis of reasoning and cash flow we are, as a people, as a global society, trying to solve.
July 19, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
The Khmer Rouge sought to establish a red Khmer empire in Cambodia, with some ambitions of expansion beyond the nation’s borders, by stamping out any human life or mind that varied from the project, as narrowly conceived by Pol Pot and his murderous regime. The “killing fields” that ensued, with the mass slaughter of an estimated 1.5 million people, were an attempt to establish a new break in time, the time before and the time after the purification —as the regime proposed— of all Cambodia.
July 18, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
American journalism has lost one of its elder statesmen. Walter Cronkite was one of the founding fathers of broadcast journalism, pioneering a warm, conversational style for delivering facts with detachment and gravitas. The old-style newsman delivered news to the American viewing public about John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam war, the protests of the 1960s, the Moon landing (40 years ago Monday), Watergate and other major moments of crisis and achievement.
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