Links you may have missed (Dec 23, 2011)
Fun stuff and good news
Il giro in bici più pericoloso del mondo (la Repubblica) – video — I wouldn’t even be brave enough to walk this.
Solar-powered boat sails around the world (Aljazeera) – video
How to draw… dragons (Guardian) – absolutely brilliant! (click on thumbnail below to see photo series)
Europe
Germany in Europe: Christmas Presents from Merkozy (Social Europe Journal)
Can Italy survive the Financial Storm? (Social Europe Journal)
Egypt
Alaa al-Aswany: ‘Overthrowing Mubarak was too good to be true’ (Independent)
Underneath (Rantings of a Sandmonkey) – very discouraged local blogger. (Saw this link on Antony Loewenstein’s blog)
Planet earth
Major victory as Russia bans trade in harp seal skins (International Fund for Animal Welfare)
Odds and Ends
The Meme that Refuses to Die: Government Debt Must Be Paid Back (Angry Bear) (Saw link on Naked Capitalism)
Some Facts About Carrier IQ (Electronic Frontier Foundation) – lots of info here
And just because she’s so beautiful – my dog Amica (photo by Tarcisio Arzuffi)
Links you may have missed (Dec 5, 2011)
Some joys
Wine Tasting May Be An Art, But There Is Science In The Swirl (Worldcrunch)
Il giro del mondo in 30 colazioni (dissapore) – photo series - breakfast anyone?
Indottrinamento al cioccolato: esegue Gianluca Franzoni di Domori (dissapore)
Some things political, economic…
Is Germany’s future still European? (Eurozine)
The curious case of German leadership (Centre For European Reform)
Jean Pisani-Ferry video interview on eurobonds (Bruegel TV)
Jacques Delors interview: Euro would still be strong if it had been built to my plan (The Telegraph) – interview with architect of the eurozone
In Translation: Ahmed al-Sawy on the elections – “This isn’t the final bout” (The Arabist)
Some of the thinkers…
Umberto Eco: ‘People are tired of simple things. They want to be challenged’ (Guardian)
‘We’re blind to our blindness. We have very little idea of how little we know. We’re not designed to’ (Independent) – Nobel Prize winner for Economics analyzes how we make decisions — I’m going to buy his book.
What does seven billion look like? (Fathom) - – graphic illustration (saw this on fastcodesign.com)
Good to know
Attempted Malvertising on KrebsOnSecurity.com (KrebsOnSecurity)
One of the heroes
A Video Message from Carlo Petrini (Slow Food) – Italian w/English subtitles – click on screenshot below to see video
Romano Prodi calls out Germany
It is a brilliant stroke by Romano Prodi in an interview yesterday with Spiegel Online International when he parries a challenge from the interviewer by asking bluntly “Is Germany better off with the euro or without it?”
The interviewer has just referred to German PM Angela Merkel’s stated opposition to eurobonds, and to Germans’ fear that it is primarily Germany that will carry the financial burden for the bonds. Excerpt:
SPIEGEL: …By now, Chancellor Angela Merkel appears to be completely isolated, with all partners exerting huge pressure on her. Will that be effective?
Prodi: That is the way politics works. But let’s be rational. Is Germany better off with the euro or without it?
SPIEGEL: With the euro.
In a later section of the interview, the subject of a “two-speed” Europe comes up. Here also, Prodi offers an interesting perspective. And he goes on to talk about a major criticism that he says he hears increasingly voiced about Europe’s power globally.
You can read the full Q&A here, which also includes some discussion of the current and past state of things in Italy.
I do wish Prodi hadn’t retired from Italian politics (and I’m not the only one).
Links you may have missed (Nov 26, 2011)
Some joys of life
Is my dog barking? (The Independent)
Born To Smile: New Evidence That Laughing And Smiling Begin In The Womb (Worldcrunch) - photo above
Some of the hard stuff
At Durban, the big emitters will no doubt fail us again on climate change (Guardian)
Why Ms Merkel will blink (Social Europe Journal)
Three examples of disaster capitalism in action (Antony Loewenstein blog)
We Speak on PBS Newshour About Why No Bank Executives Have Gone to Jail (Naked Capitalism) – Yves Smith’s Naked Capitalism blog is one of the most informative there is — she speaks at 4:20 and 10:45 on the video.
Some of the heroes
Van Jones and Democratic Party Operatives: You Do Not Represent the Occupy Movement (october2011.org)
The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy (Guardian)
Some news of Italy
Italy’s women look to more equal future after fall of Berlusconi (Guardian)
Links you may have missed (Nov 20, 2011)
Italy’s ‘lost generation’ (Aljazeera) – video
While Rome was burning: Berlusconi and the politics of Italy’s patronage (openDemocracy)
Paghiamo le picconate tedesche (Epistemes.org) – Italian only
Germany’s Central Bank against the World (Spiegel Online International)
Journalists and the European Project (Huffington Post)
“We teach life, sir” – Palestinian Rafeef Ziadah (Antony Loewenstein blog) – video
Paramilitary Policing From Seattle to Occupy Wall Street (The Nation) – call for police reform from former Seattle Chief of Police
Neutrinos still faster than light in latest version of experiment (Guardian)
From Hemingway to Twitterature: The Short and Shorter of It (Journal of Electronic Publishing, JEP) – highly recommend the section on Twitterature.
Noel Fielding: The Scribblings of a Madcap Shambleton (Guardian) – audio slide show, click on screenshot below
Links you may have missed (Nov 14, 2011)
From the Failure of Europe to Possible Growth in the Real Economy (Social Europe Journal) – an Italian view of the state of things.
Monti seeks to build new Italian government (Aljazeera) – short news video
The Eurozone Crisis and the Silence of Social Democracy (Social Europe Journal) – excerpt below:
Throughout the 20th century social democrats across Europe had won concessions at national level for workers and citizens. It was here that they forced compromises on business and secured social gains on pensions, wages, health and welfare provisions. It was a settlement that mainstream Christian Democracy accepted after World War Two. Globalisation has broken that hinge economically, while Thatcherism and neo-liberalism more generally have led the political assault. Currently, across Europe, they have turned a crisis caused by reckless financial globalisation into a crisis of government revenues and demanded a policy of austerity. The European Left has stood open-mouthed and paralysed in response.
“Così ho regalato il web al mondo” (la Repubblica) – interview published today with Tim Berners-Lee in Rome (Italian only)
Wired releases images via Creative Commons, but reopens a debate on what “noncommercial” means (Nieman Journalism Lab)
News24: Sydney papers work round the clock (editorsweblog.org) – a newspaper decides to embrace the pace of the web
Stefanie Posavec On Her Handmade Charts Of Famous Novels (Fast Company’s CoDesign) – data visualisation by hand!?
Dogs, scientists, men: Who needs the leash? (ohmidog!)
La ricetta perfetta: Carbonara (dissapore) – buon appetito! – click on screenshot below for recipe (Italian only)
Who wants to leave the Euro?
Surely I’m not the only one to take notice that the bulk of the doomsday talk these days about the imminent fall of the euro is coming either from outside Europe or from eurosceptics.
An underlying assumption of this dire talk, perhaps, may be the idea that eurozone citizens are so discontented that they are demanding return to national currencies. But where is there evidence of this? Even most Greeks, supposedly mad as hell at EU leadership, reportedly want to stay with the euro (see here, for example).
And, although it’s admittedly an anecdotal report, I can say I’ve not heard or seen either a peep or a scribble of any such San Pietro! let’s return to the lira talk here in Italy either. That is, except for the usual disgruntled voices of the northern far right who, more or less, want to exit everything including the southern half of their own country.
And then this just now in the UK Guardian‘s live blog on the eurozone crisis:
1.47pm: Almost four out of five Germans believe the 17-nation single currency will survive, according to poll for ZDF television. Some 78% of people asked said the euro would survive despite its problems while 56% felt chancellor Angela Merkel was doing a good job of managing the crisis. That’s an improvement on a similar poll in October which had her approval rating at 45%.
How much of a role does the European public play in the rise or fall of the euro? I have no idea really, given the murky fog that constitutes most financial reporting, and the politicians’ backroom political jockeying. But if eurozone voters’ support is needed to drive the currency into collapse, seems to me that’s a non-starter.
Links you may have missed (Oct 30, 2011)
No details, flimsy numbers: Varoufakis (ABC TV – Australia) — Greek economics professor Yanis Varoufakis interviewed about EU’s latest rescue plan for his country and the eurozone — not exactly a rave review. Video — click on screenshot above.
How Germany Became Europe’s Green Leader: A Look at Four Decades of Sustainable Policymaking (The Solutions Journal)
CONVEGNO: “UN’EUROPA. MOLTE LINGUE. NUOVE OPPORTUNITÀ” (Mediapolitika) — saw this thanks to Ivan Turatti — interesting Umberto Eco quote, “The language of Europe is translation.”
Looks like Congress has declared war on the internet (GigaOM)
Celebrate with us on December 10… TerraMadre Day (Slow Food)
In Honor of Bella – Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee Slideshow (The Elephant Sanctuary) – Bella died this week. Click on screenshot below to see slide show of Bella and her boon companion Tarra.
Links you may have missed (Oct 26, 2011)
I greatly pruned my recommended links collection from last week because I’m a bit late in posting them.
Soft toys make people more ethical (The Economic Times/India Times)
Mocking Europe, neo-liberals, shouldn’t make you feel good (Antony Loewenstein.com)
Revolutionary Daughters (Aljazeera) – video (24 min) – shows work of two young women activists in India.
Meet the Artist: Lang Lang (BBC Music Magazine) – video and intro – click on screenshot below.
A poet wins (Tomas Tranströmer)
Good news is never stale, so even though I’m a few days late, I want to post about the poet who won this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature. Announced by the Nobel committee last week, the winner is Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer.
Tranströmer has been translated into more than sixty languages and has written fifteen collections of poetry, according to the Nobel website. The first was published in 1954.
In a video interview following the award announcement, Ross Shideler, UCLA professor of Comparative Literature and Scandinavian describes Tranströmer’s poems:
“They were absolutely sort of revolutionary in terms of their minimal style and language. They could suggest huge amounts in the fewest possible words. And that style of poetry spread, I think, throughout all of Europe and influenced poets from a wide range.”
Asked about the themes of Tranströmer’s work, Shideler says:
“He is a kind of everyday visionary, I suppose. It’s hard to pin him down because he starts always with the very very simple image and then extends that up to really metaphysical levels. He clearly is interested in the connection between the most trivial moment and the spiritual…”
See the full interview here (8 min).
Five of Tranströmer’s poems are available for viewing on the Nobel website here. One I especially like, however, is the one here below that I found on UK writer John Baker’s blog — link here. Titled The Tree and the Sky, it is two stanzas:
There’s a tree walking around in the rain,
it rushes past us in the pouring grey.
It has an errand. It gathers life
out of the rain like a blackbird in an orchard.When the rain stops so does the tree.
There it is, quiet on clear nights
waiting as we do for the moment
when the snowflakes blossom in space.
You can read a bio of Tranströmer’s life on the Nobel website here.
