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Pencil: Object
Women: Not an Object
A demographic portrait of humanity if the world were 100 people. Best thing since Toby Ng’s World of 100 infographic posters.
#understandtheworld
The sages of the Talmud offered the same piece of advice to anyone who wanted to join the faith: don’t do it, it’s seriously not worth it, it’s just an objectively bad idea. The ancient rabbis suggest that you ask a potential convert, “Are you not aware that today the people of Israel are wretched, driven about, exiled and in constant suffering?” It’s a rhetorical question. But if the person replies that he or she indeed embraces wretchedness and constant suffering, you explain to him or her how taxing it is to practice the religion. You mention the gruesome punishments for breaking the Sabbath and other laws. You try very hard to dissuade any would-be applicants. You mess with them—and that is how you welcome them. Joining, in other words, happens through a process of opposition, irony, and dissent. If you’re going to join a messed-up club, you have to pass the messed-up entrance exam. You enter into the sect only when you push back, when you finally say, Listen, I don’t care what you tell me. I know it’s a bad idea, but I’m determined to do it, and I will do it.
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/02/elizabeth-gilbert-versus-philip-roth-is-writing-torture.html#ixzz2Ke3VXlMZ
Adversaries, not enemies.
Politics as war makes all compromise as dishonourable. There is a short step towards making all politics impossible.
The game is as important as who wins the game. All politicians have a double loyalty, to your party, who put you there and to the system itself. You don’t want to do anything to disgrace democracy. Leave the system no worse than you found it.
The referee is always right and voters are the ref. You have to accept democratic closure as a principle of the system.
Refute ideas, not people.
For every complex problem there is a simple solution and it is WRONG.
Take NO as a question, not an answer.
Don’t do things at people or for them but WITH them.
Capitalism is NOT a self-sufficient system, it depends on ecological, family, community.
Social Impact Bonds: Raise money to invest in diverting teens from crime and you get paid back according to how successful your projects are.
The problem, Rose says, is that in balancing expenses and revenues, governments don’t have a good way of valuing “costs avoided.” The blackouts that won’t happen because you buried the electrical lines, the businesses that won’t be shut down because you retrofitted the subways — these things have long-term value that doesn’t count in our fiscal thinking.
Bill Keller outlines a New Manhattan Project
1) A leader to cross jurisdictions
2) Think Big and Long
3) Green. Swamp, porous pavement.
4) NSTB: Don’t put the wing back on the plane, build a better plane
5) Learn. Don’t rebuild in a dumb area.
6) Regulate electricity and gas stations to prepare better
7) Budget: add in the avoided costs. Sandy cost $50 Billion
Don’t miss Andrew Revkin’s Dot Earth Blog
TED Talk: Brilliant designs to alter population density by Kent Larson
Niall Ferguson in Colossus. He argues brilliantly that the US is a new kind of empire, and that like all before it that it will fall. Hopefully, gracefully.
Read this post election column by Niall and realize that partisan and ego can blind even the most insightful minds.
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