Facetruth: I Took Off My Hijab

An interesting post by Facetruth:

Apparently, the type of cloth you place or wrap around your head defines how you will be treated.

Facetruth: I Took Off My Hijab

How to monitor system temperature on Linux

Dan Nanni posted an interesting read on monitoring system temperature in Linux (Modulo.com). Previous laptops of mine had problems with overheating , probably due to the fact of bad air circulation and the hot climate in Ghana, but still I couldn't pinpoint the problem for sure.

Once back in Europe, with my second hand ThinkPad, got solved. So no more complaining.

Still, for reference sake: the article.

Poverty is what’s crippling public education in the US—not bad teachers

(c) Reuters/Romeo Ranoco

An article by Anthony Cody on Quartz.com.

Taken from the article:

While conservative economists such as Hanushek wish to focus our attention on “bad teachers,” in actuality by far the largest factor affecting school performance is family income. In fact, the achievement gap between rich and poor has grown to be twice as large as the black/white performance gap in America.

Einde aan 13-jarig correspondentschap van Greet De Keyser in de Verenigde Staten

Na 13 jaar correspondentschap in de Verenigde Staten, sluit Greet De Keyser af met een overzicht van de Amerikaanse ontwikkelingen in die periode. Hierna neemt haar collega Tom Van de Weghe de fakkel van haar over.

Ik beslis om nog een tijd in een Amerika te blijven waar er groeiend begrip komt voor mensen die niet in een god geloven, voor mensen die samen gelukkig willen zijn, onafhankelijk van hun geaardheid. Ik blijf in een Amerika waar er eindelijk echt wordt nagedacht over de vele doden door vuurwapens. Ik blijf in een Amerika waar de rijken een beetje meer gaan moeten betalen en waar iedereen vanaf volgend jaar een ziekteverzekering zal hebben. Ik blijf in een Amerika waar de president eindelijk belooft om het milieu te respecteren en waar immigranten opnieuw welkom zijn.

-- Greet De Keyser op deredactie.be

Zie ook:

• Inauguratie Obama in 10 vragen (Tom Van de Weghe, 21 januari 2013)
• "Inburgeren in Amerika" (Tom Van de Weghe, 8 februari 2013)

Unrest marks Tunisia revolution anniversary event

Illustration by Amin

Protesters have thrown stones and tomatoes at Tunisian leaders at a ceremony marking two years since the start of an uprising that changed regimes around the Arab world. (The Miami Herald, December 17 2012; deredactie.be, December 17 2012)

It is indeed two years ago that Mohamed Bouaziz, a street vendor set himself on fire, to protest the regime of president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. This sparked demonstrations that spread around Tunisia and several Arab countries, known as the Arab Spring.

More:

• Overview Middle East protests (Wim, February 21, 2011)
• Revolutionary times (Wim, February 20, 2011)

De vloek van het groene vingertje

‘[Our] way of life is not negotiable.’ zei George Bush senior al op de eerste milieutop in Rio. In zijn essay "Vrijheid in tijden van smeltende poolkappen" (gepubliceerd als "De vloek van het groene vingertje" in Knack Extra van 21 november 2012) legt Gert Goeminne inderdaad de vinger aan de wonde: in wezen gaan de klimaatonderhandelingen helemaal niet over CO2, maar over onze levensstijl.

Skeptici lachen met het groene vingertje, we moeten stoppen met voor doemprofeet te spelen en starten met te benadrukken dat een ecologisch alternatief niet noodzakelijk moet inboeten voor de oh zo heilige keuzevrijheid.

Maar garandeert ons huidige beleid wel degelijk die vrijheid? Is onze vrijheid niet net beperkt tot wat de supermarkt aanbiedt? En in welke mate kan een overdaad een mogelijkheden niet net beperkend zijn, en hoe vaak vallen wij in herhaling met ons voedselpatroon net omdat er zo veel mogelijkheden zijn om uit te kiezen?

The 'Busy' Trap (Tim Kreider)

Earlier this year, Tim Kreider wrote an interesting essay which got published in the New York Times: "The 'Busy' Trap". Is indeed necessary that we are always this 'busy'? Is it inevitable and does it even help us to lead a happier life?

Some interesting quotes that set me thinking:

The present hysteria is not a necessary or inevitable condition of life; it’s something we’ve chosen, if only by our acquiescence to it.

More and more people in this country no longer make or do anything tangible; if your job wasn’t performed by a cat or a boa constrictor in a Richard Scarry book I’m not sure I believe it’s necessary. I can’t help but wonder whether all this histrionic exhaustion isn’t a way of covering up the fact that most of what we do doesn’t matter.

What work really matters in life? The classic question is still "Are working to make a living, or do we live to work?". In plenty of interviews, when I present myself to possible future clients, inevitably the question gets raised "who is Wim, what is important to you, what makes you 'tick'?". Again and again I notice that I am willing to take almost any project, as long as it fascinates me, it challenges me and it makes me feel that my efforts are useful and have a result in the end.

Your thoughts?

Social consensus

From the brilliant Randall Patrick Munroe's webcomic xkcd.

More:

• Saturday
• Money is just a social consensus (Time Bank Belgium)

The road to freedom (Zen Pencils)

Inspiring reminder by Gavin Aung Than from Zen Pencils (link to original post).

Roses on my table (by Ethan Silverstein)

An inspiring video on the impact of a community within your neighborhood, be they anarchists or what not: Roses On My Table from Ethan Silverstein.

"Shop till it stops!"

Taken from Brand Aid

The following article is an extended reading list following the seminar "Consumer-behavior and funds to fight AIDS in Africa":

• about the book 'Brand Aid: Shopping Well to Save the World' by Lisa Ann Richey and Stefano Ponte
• presentation of the lecture: PDF
• lecture notes, review of the book 'Brand Aid': PDF
• Daniel Ben-Ami on the 'American Express RED' card (Spiked)
• Official website of RED: Designed to help eliminate AIDS

Books vs eBooks

What's the point of a bookshelf full of books other than as an antiquated trophy case of written ideas trapped in awkward, temporary physical relics?

The Internet will not kill the book. But it will change their form permanently; books are no longer pages printed with atoms, they're files printed with bits: eBooks.

To make it worthwhile, I believe publishers need to do two things: eBooks should be inexpensive and eBooks should be a near-perfect replica of the print book.

Generally the experience is good. For books that are entirely text, with very little layout, the various eBook formats do a great job [but the layout of more visual books sometimes gets distorted]

Jeff Atwood from Coding Horror on books vs ebooks: Books: Bits vs. Atoms

Nonviolent Force

Comic by Kirk Anderson, click on the image to read it in full:

More:

• original article in Waging Nonviolence
• "Molotov Comix" by Kirk Anderson
• Online Course on Civil Resistance starts in April

Time Bank Belgium

Recently, a time bank has opened in Belgium. What is a time bank? Time banking is a tool by which people can exchange their time and skills instead of buying goods or services as in a conventional market system. Time banking is a way of creating an alternative economic model. (more)

Wikipedia describes time banking as "a pattern of reciprocal service exchange that uses units of time as currency. It is an example of an alternative monetary system.".

As we all understand, 'money' is purely abstract and the currency that we use (euro, dollar, ...) is actually nothing more than a convention, an agreement to use that certain type of denomination. In theory there is no reason to limit our economy to only the standard currency, and we could be free to use anything we want.

In other news...

Taken from Selling Costa Rica

From time to time, there are news items that I would like to comment on without elaborating at length, making it plainly not worthy of its own post. So I will just list them up, here are the items that caught my attention during the past weeks.

Read more on Belgian's change of constitution, the coup d'état in Mali, the arson in a mosque in Brussels, the Post Millennium Development Goals, tactics of nonviolent activism and the Occupy Wall Street Movement:

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Ronald Reagan R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

Netscape/Mozilla.org co-founder and now dance club proprietor Jamie Zawinski has found this obscure tag during his visit at SXSW: 

original post, origin unknown

It is a parody on the H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulu mythos, where ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn translates to "in his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming".

It also reminded me of the hilarious emailservice 'reagan.com' where for $39.95 a year, you can get your own @Reagan.com-email address and help Michael Reagan "end the left-wing's dominance of email service providers".

A new story...

A new story of self, a new story of the people: Sacred Economics

• The traces of money...

"[To make money] you have got to find something that people once got for free or did for themselves or for each other. Then take it away and sell it back to them."

Short film by Ian MacKenzie, repost from Adbusters.




More:

• "Debt, the first 5,000 years" by David Graeber: 1, 2
• Goldman Sachs is everywhere
• Director leaves Goldman Sachs out of moral objections
• The Credit Crisis visualized (by Jonathan Jarvis)
• European Central Bank explaining
• Protest on Wall Street
• Revolutionary times
• Ending Aid Dependence
• Dead Aid: a counter proposal
• Verzet tegen de "rijkentaks"
• Ons leven is zoveel meer dan de economie alleen (Franky Aelbrecht)

The Credit Crisis visualized (by Jonathan Jarvis)

Good animation explaining the credit crisis, made by Jonathan Jarvis of The Crisis of Credit.


More:

• Director leaves Goldman Sachs out of moral objections
• Goldman Sachs cons European Central Bank
• European Central Bank explaining
• Infographics on the Libor scandal
• deRedactie.be special rond de economische crisis
• Europa wil ratingbureaus aan banden leggen

European Central Bank explaining

This is a repost from Franky.Aelbrecht. The video is from 19th January 2012, but it clearly demonstrates how the banking sector in general is evading to answer any critical question. This makes it impossible to do good journalism or to even inform the public.

In the video: journalist Vincent Browne asks Klaus Masuch "why the Irish people have to pay billions to unguaranteed bondholders for debts they didn’t take on". A question the Belgians should ask about the Dexia bank (second bailout in 2011), and the very question on the minds of all the tax payers in other bailout countries.

Excerpt of transcript by the Irish TheJournal.ie as quoted by keeptalkinggreece:

Vincent Browne, TV3: Did the taxi driver say that we were bewildered about having to pay unguaranteed bondholders for debts we didn’t take on? Simply to bail out European banks? If you had been asked that, what would you have said?

(There is now a procedural row about whether Vincent can ask a follow-up.)

Masuch from the ECB says he had answered a similar question from Browne two years ago, and says he understands that it’s a difficult decision, “no doubt about it”. But there are different aspects of the problem which must be balanced against each other, and in order to ensure confidence in the banking sector, those bonds must be repaid.

14.23 – 7a. Browne, again, says Ireland has to repay “billions on unguaranteed bonds” for a “defunct bank” simply to help the banks of other countries. Explain that to a taxi driver. The ECB’s Masuch says he’s answered that, but Browne disagrees.

“Why are the Irish people required to pay billions to unguaranteed bondholders, under threat from the ECB?… You people are intervening in this society and causing huge damage… Now could you explain why the Irish people are inflicted with this burden?” 

Masuch says he has “given an answer”.

More:

• Goldman Sachs is everywhere
• Director leaves Goldman Sachs out of moral objections
• Sacred Economics

Norway!

To celebrate the new month, I got myself a cheap ticket to Norway!