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Category Archives: Social Progress
The AI Road to Serfdom?
February 23, 2019 by dinobeano
by Robert Skidelsky
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/automation-may-not-boost-worker-income-by-robert-skidelsky-2019-02
Estimates of job losses in the near future due to automation range from 9% to 47%, and jobs themselves are becoming ever more precarious. Should we trust the conventional economic narrative according to which machines inevitably raise workers' living standards?
Estimates of job losses in the near future due to automation range from 9% to 47%, and jobs themselves are becoming ever more precarious. Yet automation also promises relief from most forms of enforced work, bringing closer to reality Aristotle's extraordinary prediction that all needed work would one day be carried out by "mechanical slaves," leaving humans free to live the "good life." So the age-old question arises again: are machines a threat to humans or a means of emancipating them?
In principle, there need be no contradiction. Automating part of human labor should enable people to work less for more pay, as has been happening since the Industrial Revolution. Hours of work have fallen and real incomes have risen, even as the world's population increased sevenfold, thanks to the increased productivity of machine-enhanced labor. In rich countries, productivity – output per hour worked – is 25 times higher than it was in 1831. The world has become steadily wealthier with fewer man-hours of work needed to produce that wealth.
Why should this benign process not continue? Where is the serpent in the garden? Most economists would say it is imaginary. People, like novice chess players, see only the first move, not the consequences of it. The first move is that workers in a particular sector are replaced by machines, like the Luddite weavers who lost their jobs to power looms in the nineteenth century. In David Ricardo's chilling phrase, they become "redundant".
.But what happens next? The price of clothes falls, because more can be produced at the same cost. So people can buy more clothes, and a greater variety of clothes, as well as other items they could not have afforded before. Jobs are created to meet the shift in demand, replacing the original jobs lost, and if productivity growth continues, hours of work can fall as well.
Notice that, in this rosy scenario, no trade unions, minimum wages, job protections, or schemes of redistribution are needed to raise workers' real (inflation-adjusted) income. Rising wages are an automatic effect of the fall in the cost of goods. Provided there is no downward pressure on money wages from increased competition for work, the automatic effect of technological innovation is to raise the standard of living.
This is the famous argument of Friedrich Hayek against any attempt by governments or central banks to stabilize the price level. In any technologically progressive economy, prices should fall except in a few niche markets. Businessmen don't need low inflation to expand production. They need only the prospect of more sales. "Dearness" of goods is a sign of technological stagnation.
But our chess novice raises two important questions: "If automation is not confined to a single industry, but spreads to others, won't more and more jobs become redundant? And won't the increased competition for the remaining jobs force down pay, offsetting and even reversing the gains from cheapness?"
Human beings, the economist replies, will not be replaced, but complemented. Automated systems, whether or not in robot form, will enhance, not destroy, the value of human work, just as a human plus a good computer can still beat the best computer at chess. Of course, humans will have to be "up-skilled." This will take time, and it will need to be continuous. But once up-skilling is in train, there is no reason to expect any net loss of jobs. And because the value of the jobs will have been enhanced, real incomes will continue to rise. Rather than fearing the machines, humans should relax and enjoy the ride to a glorious future.
Besides, the economist will add, machines cannot replace many jobs requiring person-to-person contact, physical dexterity, or non-routine decision-making, at least not any time soon. So there will always be a place for humans in any future pattern of work.
Ignore for a moment, the horrendous costs involved in this wholesale re-direction of human work. The question is which jobs are most at risk in which sectors. According to MIT economist David Autor, automation will substitute for more routinized occupations and complement high-skill, non-routine jobs. Whereas the effects on low-skill jobs will remain relatively unaffected, medium-skill jobs will gradually disappear, while demand for high-skill jobs will rise. "Lovely jobs" at the top and "lousy jobs" at the bottom, as LSE economists Maarten Goos and Alan Manning described it. The frontier of technology stops at what is irreducibly human.
But a future patterned along the lines suggested by Autor has a disturbingly dystopian implication. It is easy to see why lovely human jobs will remain and become even more prized. Exceptional talent will always command a premium. But is it true that lousy jobs will be confined to those with minimal skills? How long will it take those headed for redundancy to up-skill sufficiently to complement the ever-improving machines? And, pending their up-skilling, won't they swell the competition for lousy jobs? How many generations will have to be sacrificed to fulfil the promise of automation? Science fiction has raced ahead of economic analysis to imagine a future in which a tiny minority of rich rentiers enjoy the almost unlimited services of a minimally-paid majority.
The optimist says: leave it to the market to forge a new, superior equilibrium, as it always has. The pessimist says: without collective action to control the pace and type of innovation, a new serfdom beckons. But while the need for policy intervention to channel automation to human advantage is beyond question, the real serpent in the garden is philosophical and ethical blindness. "A society can be said to be decadent," wrote the Czech philosopher Jan Patočka, "if it so functions as to encourage a decadent life, a life addicted to what is inhuman by its very nature."
It is not human jobs that are at risk from the rise of the robots. It is humanity itself.
Robert Skidelsky, Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at Warwick University and a fellow of the British Academy in history and economics, is a member of the British House of Lords. The author of a three-volume biography of John Maynard Keynes, he began his political career in the Labour party, became the Conservative Party's spokesman for Treasury affairs in the House of Lords, and was eventually forced out of the Conservative Party for his opposition to NATO's intervention in Kosovo in 1999.
Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Creativity and Innovation, Economic and Social Policy, Economics, Education, Global Issues, Macroeconomics, Political Economy, Project-Syndicate.org, Social Progress.
'The Vagina Monologues': Untold stories of womanhood
by Som Kanika / Khmer Times
https://www.khmertimeskh.com/50578880/the-vagina-monologues-untold-stories-of-womanhood/
Each of the monologues deals with an aspect of the feminine experience. KT/Som Kanika
It was in 1996 when Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues" premiered in New York City. More than two decades on, the episodic play continues to draw women together and inspire them to embrace their bodies and womanhood. During last week's Phnom Fem Fest, "The Vagina Monologues" was brought again to Phnom Penh to empower Khmer women, writes Som Kanika.
Drawing inspiration from the an episodic play "The Vagina Monologues" written by Eve Ensler and was first performed in 1996, a group of local and expat women worked hard to bring the motivational play to Cambodia in time for the Phnom Fem Fest which began on February 15.
"The Vagina Monologues" explores consensual and nonconsensual sexual experiences, body image, genital mutilation, direct and indirect encounters with reproduction, sex work, and several other topics through the eyes of women with various ages, races, sexualities, and other differences.
The monologues use the female reproductive organ as a tool for empowerment. KT/Som Kanika
Shauna O'Mahony, Men Sonita, Emily Marques, Phoebe Ray and Alex Kennett – the directors of the Phnom Fem Fest – said that playing the thought-provoking "The Vagina Monologues" story in Phnom Penh was meant to inspire and empower Cambodian women to embrace their womanhood and fight for their rights. With its three-night run from February 15 to 17, the play drew a large crowd at the Chinese House on Preah Sisowath Quay.
The Vagina Monologues is made up of various personal monologues read by a diverse group of women. Originally, Eve Ensler performed every monologue herself, with subsequent performances featuring three actresses, and more recent versions featuring a different actress for every role. Each of the monologues deals with an aspect of the feminine experience, touching on matters such as sex, sex work, body image, love, rape, menstruation, female genital mutilation, masturbation, birth, orgasm, the various common names for the vagina or simply as a physical aspect of the body. A recurring theme throughout the piece is the vagina as a tool of female empowerment, and the ultimate embodiment of individuality.
The play – first performed Off-Broadway and in locations around the world by Ms Ensler – delves into the mystery, humor, pain, power, wisdom, outrage and excitement in women's experiences. V-Day grew out of the play which exploded onto the scene in 1998, breaking taboos about women's sexuality and shattering silence around violence done to women and girls. Strong language and sexual content. Recommended for ages 16 and older.
Having committed in the play writing and rehearsal for more than three months, Ms Sonita, emphasised that, "In this country, the word 'vagina' is one of the most sensitive topic and not too many women have the courage to talk about it. However, we can see that there are many issues that we need to know and discuss about vagina, such as health issues, its beauty and function. But talking about these seemed to cause condemnation before because it contradicts the code of conduct set for women in Cambodia. By creating this festival and performance, we want to change how women and the society in general see this sensitive topic. We want to break taboos in term of discussing a woman's body in publich. We want to encourage more women to talk about the importance of their body because there's really nothing to be ashamed of."
Ms Sonita further note, "The inspiration leading me to take part in this festival and performance is my family. I grew up in an environment where my family gave me freedom to follow what I believe is right, and they listen to my opinion. And taking part in this festival and creating it up is part of my core desire to see Cambodian women in the next generation to have this kind of freedom, too."
"The Vagina Monologues" producer and director Alex Kennett, who has been living in Cambodia for 21 months now, noted that the play had been performed in Cambodia a few times before and people enjoyed it very much. "But this year, we would like to change some things including the Khmer translation and the participation of Khmer women performers, which is really important to us because what the monologue has to say is something that is for women everywhere. And I find that the ideas are really powerful so we wanted to bring it here."
One of the interesting facts about the three-day Phnom Fem Festival and "The Vagina Monologues" performances was the producers and directors' choice of highlighting specific issues that are relevant in Cambodia's present situation.
Some of the actors of the thought-provoking play. KT/Som Kanika
"Each year they make a new issue that they want to focus on and for this year one of among the three spotlights is 'incarceration of women' which was in line with the 40th anniversary of the end of Khmer Rouge. It talked about the story of imprisonment of women at that time," Ms Kennett said.
A theater performer and enthusiast, 22-year-old Ham Sovanpidor, was glad to be part of the play and deliver a strong message to her fellow women.
"This event is created for women and having women to participate in is really important in a way that shows Cambodia women should have a courage to talk more about her sex matters because the performance will feature many aspects of feminine experiences related sex beauty, menstruation, organism and more which are all related to women in general and it is vital for them to know too," said Ms Sovanpidor, a student at the Department of Media and Communication.
Phnom Fem Fest is a registered international V-Day event, and this year's V-Day spotlight was focused on ending gender-based violence and supporting previously incarcerated women. All profits from Phnom Fem Fest would go directly to Early Years Behind Bars, an initiative from a local human rights NGO that supports women, mothers and children in Cambodian prisons.
Posted in Cambodia, Character and Integrity, civil society issues, Critical Thinking, Democracy, Global Issues, Human Rights, Phnom Penh, Social Progress.
Our Infant Information Revolution
by Joseph S. Nye
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/infant-information-revolution-by-joseph-s–nye-2018-06
In the middle of the twentieth century, people feared that advances in computers and communications would lead to the type of centralized control depicted in George Orwell's 1984. Today, billions of people have eagerly put Big Brother in their pockets.
CAMBRIDGE – It is frequently said that we are experiencing an information revolution. But what does that mean, and where is the revolution taking us?
Information revolutions are not new. In 1439, Johannes Gutenberg's printing press launched the era of mass communication. Our current revolution, which began in Silicon Valley in the 1960s, is bound up with Moore's Law: the number of transistors on a computer chip doubles every couple of years.
Information provides power, and more people have access to more information than ever before, for good and for ill. That power can be used not only by governments, but also by non-state actors ranging from large corporations and non-profit organizations to criminals, terrorists, and informal ad hoc groups.–Joseph S. Nye
By the beginning of the twenty-first century, computing power cost one-thousandth of what it did in the early 1970s. Now the Internet connects almost everything. In mid-1993, there were about 130 websites in the world; by 2000, that number had surpassed 15 million. Today, more than 3.5 billion people are online; experts project that, by 2020, the "Internet of Things" will connect 20 billion devices. Our information revolution is still in its infancy.
The key characteristic of the current revolution is not the speed of communications; instantaneous communication by telegraph dates back to the mid-nineteenth century. The crucial change is the enormous reduction in the cost of transmitting and storing information. If the price of an automobile had declined as rapidly as the price of computing power, one could buy a car today for the same price as a cheap lunch. When a technology's price declines so rapidly, it becomes widely accessible, and barriers to entry fall. For all practical purposes, the amount of information that can be transmitted worldwide is virtually infinite.
The cost of information storage has also declined dramatically, enabling our current era of big data. Information that once would fill a warehouse now fits in your shirt pocket.
In the middle of the twentieth century, people feared that the computers and communications of the current information revolution would lead to the type of centralized control depicted in George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984. Big Brother would monitor us from a central computer, making individual autonomy meaningless.
Instead, as the cost of computing power has decreased and computers have shrunk to the size of smart phones, watches, and other portable devices, their decentralizing effects have complemented their centralizing effects, enabling peer-to-peer communication and mobilization of new groups. Yet, ironically, this technological trend has also decentralized surveillance: billions of people nowadays voluntarily carry a tracking device that continually violates their privacy as it searches for cell towers. We have put Big Brother in our pockets.
Likewise, ubiquitous social media generate new transnational groups, but also create opportunities for manipulation by governments and others. Facebook connects more than two billion people, and, as Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election showed, these connections and groups can be exploited for political ends. Europe has tried to establish rules for privacy protection with its new General Data Protection Regulation, but its success is still uncertain. In the meantime, China is combining surveillance with the development of social credit rankings that will restrict personal freedoms such as travel.
Information provides power, and more people have access to more information than ever before, for good and for ill. That power can be used not only by governments, but also by non-state actors ranging from large corporations and non-profit organizations to criminals, terrorists, and informal ad hoc groups.
This does not mean the end of the nation-state. Governments remain the most powerful actors on the global stage; but the stage has become more crowded, and many of the new players can compete effectively in the realm of soft power. A powerful navy is important in controlling sea-lanes; but it does not provide much help on the Internet. In nineteenth-century Europe, the mark of a great power was its ability to prevail in war, but, as the American analyst John Arquilla has pointed out, in today's global information age, victory often depends not on whose army wins, but on whose story wins.
Public diplomacy and the power to attract and persuade become increasingly important, but public diplomacy is changing. Long gone are the days when foreign service officers carted film projectors to the hinterlands to show movies to isolated audiences, or people behind the Iron Curtain huddled over short-wave radios to listen to the BBC. Technological advances have led to an explosion of information, and that has produced a "paradox of plenty": an abundance of information leads to scarcity of attention.
When people are overwhelmed by the volume of information confronting them, it is hard to know what to focus on. Attention, not information, becomes the scarce resource. The soft power of attraction becomes an even more vital power resource than in the past, but so does the hard, sharp power of information warfare. And as reputation becomes more vital, political struggles over the creation and destruction of credibility multiply. Information that appears to be propaganda may not only be scorned, but may also prove counterproductive if it undermines a country's reputation for credibility.
During the Iraq War, for example, the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay in a manner inconsistent with America's declared values led to perceptions of hypocrisy that could not be reversed by broadcasting images of Muslims living well in America. Similarly, President Donald Trump's tweets that prove to be demonstrably false undercut American credibility and reduce its soft power.
Public diplomacy and the power to attract and persuade become increasingly important, but public diplomacy is changing. Long gone are the days when foreign service officers carted film projectors to the hinterlands to show movies to isolated audiences, or people behind the Iron Curtain huddled over short-wave radios to listen to the BBC. Technological advances have led to an explosion of information, and that has produced a "paradox of plenty": an abundance of information leads to scarcity of attention.–Joseph S. Nye
The effectiveness of public diplomacy is judged by the number of minds changed (as measured by interviews or polls), not dollars spent. It is interesting to note that polls and the Portland index of the Soft Power 30 show a decline in American soft power since the beginning of the Trump administration. Tweets can help to set the global agenda, but they do not produce soft power if they are not credible.
Now the rapidly advancing technology of artificial intelligence or machine learning is accelerating all of these processes. Robotic messages are often difficult to detect. But it remains to be seen whether credibility and a compelling narrative can be fully automated.
Joseph S. Nye
Joseph S. Nye, Jr., a former US assistant secretary of defense and chairman of the US National Intelligence Council, is University Professor at Harvard University. He is the author of Is the American Century Over?
Posted in Character and Integrity, Civil Rights, Creativity and Innovation, Critical Thinking, Demoracy, Diplomacy, Economic Policy, Ethics, Foreign Policy, Freedom, Geo-Economics, Global Issues, Goverance, Humanitarian Crisis, Knowledge, Leadership, Liberalism and Open Society, Meritocracy and Competence, Najib Razak, Philosophy of History, Public Accountability, Rule of Law, Science, Self-Determination, Social Progress, Technology, Uncategorized.
Democracy and Press Freedom
by Amb. Dennis Ignatius
COMMENT | Democracy brings with it its own dividends. One of them is press freedom.
Freed from the shackles of government control, the Malaysian press is already exploring the limits of its new found freedom to articulate news, views and opinions. Our dismal ranking – near the bottom of the list in the World Press Freedom Index (145 out of 180 countries) – will now improve dramatically. Perhaps we might even become a poster boy for press freedom, at least in ASEAN.
No More Vandalism of the Media
I anticipate that with time we'll once again have a noisy and assertive press. There are lots of enterprising and intrepid reporters out there who are just raring to do their job once again. We must release them to their professionalism and passion if we want to strengthen our democracy.
I've been a columnist and commentator for almost 10 years now. I know what it's like to be censored, to feel anxious about crossing some invisible line, to worry about whether I might run afoul of some foul law or upset some powerful person somewhere.
Journalists, columnists and commentators should never have to fear the state. But that's over and done with; I feel freedom's caress in a very real way now as I write.
We cannot afford to be complacent about the press ever again. A free press is fundamental to democracy, fundamental to keeping our government honest and accountable, and the people informed.
To that end, we must insist that our new government act quickly to rid our nation of every single repressive law. No journalist should ever have to worry about exposing wrongdoings, malfeasance or corruption no matter who is involved. No editor should ever have to worry about a call from the Ministry of Home Affairs. Both government and public officials need to operate in the full glare of public scrutiny.
Abdul Rani Kulup–King of Police Reports–is out of business
As well, we should stop the childish behaviour of making police reports whenever someone says something unpleasant against the prime minister or other public figures, as a group in Kedah did recently (claiming that someone had said something offensive about Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad). Public figures don't deserve special protection from criticism or insult. In any case, Mahathir himself won't be losing any sleep over being called names; he's been called worse before and look where he is now.
Television and the print media should also be free of government control or influence; it gives them too much power to impose their views on the nation. Political parties, too, should get out of the media business. Hopefully, the new government will act decisively to free the media from political control. We certainly don't want to see the mainstream media now become unthinking and fawning echo chambers of the new government.
Coming back to life
The air of freedom that is already penetrating mainstream media is now forcing them to reinvent themselves. Suddenly, public broadcasting and the print media are coming back to life.
Hooligans and Racists like Jamal Yunos and his Red Shirts will now have to bear the full brunt of the law if they intimidate journalists and disrupt public order
One TV channel, for example, carried a banner encouraging their viewers to celebrate our democracy. Another long-repressed reporter who had for years considered Mahathir a dirty word suddenly found the courage to give him advice on democracy. Strong stuff by the standards of our hitherto moribund mainstream media but it's a good beginning.
For the first time, I find myself watching the news on local TV instead of automatically switching to CNN, BBC or Al-Jazeera.
I once wrote for a major English daily but resigned in disgust after a few years and refused to buy any of the local newspapers. Like many Malaysians, I refused to support the 'dummification' of the media, refused to be party to lopsided, blatantly dishonest reporting.
Well, I bought my first copy of a local newspaper a few days ago and I confess the content and tone have improved. Perhaps I can now look forward to once again spending part of my day, teh tarik in hand, reading the local papers.
Online news portals like Malaysiakini, Free Malaysia Today (FMT) and the now defunct Malaysian Insider have kept the flame of press freedom burning through the long dark years of oppressive government. So many of their journalists worked long hours with little pay and endured harassment and rejection because they were passionate about their profession.
Malaysiakini: Free at Last to pursue responsible journalism
Many of us will always be grateful to editors like Steven Gan, Nelson Fernandez and Jahabar Sadiq for their courage in publishing all our highly critical and near subversive articles about Umno-BN and the Najib administration when no one else would. They upheld freedom of expression and the right to criticise the government when both were abandoned by mainstream media. They and their staff ought to be hailed as heroes of our democracy.
In the new environment of press freedom, online media like Malaysiakini and FMT will now become mainstream. Perhaps it's time for a print version of Malaysiakini or an FMT daily or even a KiniTV channel. One thing is sure: competition will result in better and more qualitative news coverage and lead to a flowering of investigative journalism. What a thrilling prospect! Politicians take heed.
Whatever it is, the sooner the media is revamped and given the freedom to do their duty without fear or favour, the safer our democracy will be.
DENNIS IGNATIUS is a former ambassador. He blogs here.
Posted in ASEAN, Berish 5.0, Civil Society, Democracy, Freedom, GE-14 Malaysian General Election, Governance, Human Rights, Justice, Law and Order, Malaysia, Malaysiakini, Pakatan Harapan, Politics, Press Freedom, Public Accountability, reform, Rule of Law, Social Progress, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad.
Making Academia Matter Again
by Abraham Loeb
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/academia-support-diversity-innovation-by-abraham-loeb-2018-04
Academics can no longer afford to pat themselves on the back and celebrate their own privileges. If they are to defend the freedom of their enterprise, they must restore dialogue with the broader public and ensure that the relevance of their research – and how research actually occurs – is well understood.
CAMBRIDGE – Academic freedom is a precious commodity, critical to ensure that discovery of the truth is not encumbered by political or ideological forces. But this does not mean that intellectuals should hide in academic bunkers that, by protecting us from criticism by "non-experts," allow ego to flourish and enable a focus on questions that are not actually relevant to anyone else. We experts should have to explain ourselves.
The University of Cambodia, Phnom Penh
This means, first and foremost, that researchers should be communicating their results in a way that supports accountability and confirms that public funds and education benefits are being used in ways that are in taxpayers' interests. The duty to communicate findings also ensures that the public is educated, not only about the topic itself, but also about the way research actually works.
Scholarly books and journals often give the impression that the truth is revealed through a neat, orderly, and logical process. But research is far from being a pristine landscape; in fact, it resembles a battlefield, littered with miscalculations, failed experiments, and discarded assumptions. The path to truth is often convoluted, and those who travel along it often must navigate fierce competition and professional intrigue.
Some argue that it is better to hide this reality from the public, in order to maintain credibility. For example, in 2014, physicists collaborating on a project known as BICEP2 thought that they had detected gravitational waves from the beginning of the universe. It was later realized that the signal they had detected could be entirely attributed to interstellar dust.
H.E. Dr. Kao Kim Hourn, University of Cambodia (UC) Founder, Board and Trustee Chairman, And President seeks to create a Research Culture at UC,Phnom Penh.
Some of my colleagues worried that this revelation would undermine faith in other scientific predictions, such as those involving climate change. But would hiding the truth from the public really do more for scientific and academic credibility than cultivating a culture of transparency? Probably not. In fact, being honest about the realities of research might enhance trust and create more space for innovation, with an informed public accepting that risk is the unavoidable and worthwhile cost of groundbreaking and broadly beneficial discoveries.
Another way to ensure that academia continues to innovate in useful and relevant ways is to blur the traditional boundaries among disciplines – the frontiers where invention so often happens. To that end, universities should update their organizational structure, moving away from clearly delineated departments in order to create a kind of continuum across the arts, humanities, and sciences. Students should be encouraged to take courses in multiple disciplines, so that they can weave those lessons and experiences into new patterns of knowledge.
To make this process sustainable, universities should ensure that the courses and curricula they offer help students to develop the skills that a fast-changing labor market demands. This means not just creating new curricula today, but also updating them every few years, in order to account for new trends and discoveries in areas ranging from artificial intelligence and Big Data to alternative energy sources and genome editing.
Professors, for their part, should approach their job as mentors of future leaders in science, technology, the arts, and humanities, rather than attempting to mold students in their own intellectual image. Of course, the latter approach can be useful if the goal is to advance the popularity of one's own research program and to ensure that one's own ideas and perspective endure. But that is not the fundamental mission of academia.
The louder the consensus in the echo chambers of academia become, the greater the ego boost for those who inhabit those chambers. But history shows that progress is sometimes advocated by a soft voice in the background, like that of Albert Einstein during his early career. Truth and consensus are not always the same. Diversity of opinion – which implies diversity of gender, ethnicity, and background – is vital to support creativity, discovery, and progress.
That is why it is so important for prizes and professional associations to be used not to reinforce mainstream perspectives, but rather to encourage independent thought and reward innovation. This does not mean that all opinions should be considered equal, but rather that alternative views should be debated and vetted on merit alone.
We in academia cannot continue to pat ourselves on the back, celebrating our own privileges and failing to look at the world in new and relevant ways. If we are to defend the freedom of our enterprise, we must restore dialogue with the broader public and ensure that the relevance of our work is well understood – including by us.
Abraham Loeb is the chair of Harvard University's astronomy department, the founding director of Harvard's Black Hole Initiative, and the Director of the Institute for Theory and Computation within the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Posted in Academic Freedom, Creativity and Innovation, Democracy, Education, Freedom, Intellectual Development, Knowledge, Meritocracy and Competence, Public Accountability, Social Progress, Techo Sen School of Government and International Relations, University of Cambodia.
GDP Should Be Corrected
by Urs Rohner@www.project-syndicate.org
The hazards of relying solely on gross domestic product as a measure of overall economic activity have become obvious over time, especially as corporate profits have outpaced GDP growth in key economies. But none of the flaws in GDP are fatal, and policymakers should focus on fixing them, rather than seeking an entirely new framework.
ZURICH – Respected economists have long pointed out that gross domestic product is an inadequate measure of economic development and social well-being, and thus should not be policymakers' sole fixation. Yet we have not gotten any closer to finding a feasible alternative to GDP.
One well-known shortcoming of GDP is that it disregards the value of housework, including care for children and elderly family members. More important, assigning a monetary value to such activities would not address a deeper flaw in GDP: its inability to reflect adequately the lived experience of individual members of society. Correcting for housework would inflate GDP, while making no real difference to living standards. And the women who make up a predominant share of people performing housework would continue to be treated as volunteers, rather than as genuine economic contributors.4
Another well-known flaw of GDP is that it does not account for value destruction, such as when countries mismanage their human capital by withholding education from certain demographic groups, or by depleting natural resources for immediate economic benefit. All told, GDP tends to measure assets imprecisely, and liabilities not at all.
Still, while no international consensus on an alternative to GDP has emerged, there has been encouraging progress toward a more considered way of thinking about economic activity. In 1972, Yale University economists William Nordhaus and James Tobin proposed a new framework, the "measure of economic welfare" (MEW), to account for sundry unpaid activities. And, more recently, China established a "green development" index, which considers economic performance alongside various environmental factors.
Moreover, public- and private-sector decision-makers now have far more tools for making sophisticated choices than they did in the past. On the investor side, demand for environmental, social, and governance data is rising steeply. And in the public sector, organizations such as the World Bank have adopted metrics other than GDP to assess quality of life, including life expectancy at birth and access to education.
At the same time, the debate around gross national income has been gaining steam. Though it shares fundamental elements with GDP, GNI is more relevant to our globalized age, because it adjusts for income generated by foreign-owned corporations and foreign residents. Accordingly, in a country where foreign corporations own a significant share of manufacturing and other assets, GDP will be inflated, whereas GNI shows only income the country actually retains (see chart).
Ireland is a prominent example of how GNI has been used to correct for distortions in GDP. In 2015, Ireland's reported GDP increased by an eye-popping 26.3%. As an October 2016 OECD working paper noted, the episode raised serious questions about the "ability of the conceptual accounting framework used to define GDP to adequately reflect economic reality."
The OECD paper went on to conclude that GDP is not a reliable indicator of a country's material well-being. In Ireland's case, its single year of astonishing GDP growth was due to multinational corporations "relocating" certain economic gains – namely, the returns on intellectual property – in their overall accounting. To address the growing disparity between actual economic development and reported GDP, the Irish Central Statistics Office introduced a modified version of GNI known as GNI*) for 2016.
The gap between GDP and GNI will likely close soon in other jurisdictions, too. In a recent working paper, Urooj Khan of Columbia Business School, Suresh Nallareddy of Duke University, and Ethan Rouen of Harvard Business School highlight a misalignment in "the growth in corporate profits and the overall US economy" between 1975 and 2013. They find that, during that period, average corporate-profit growth outpaced GDP growth whenever the domestic corporate-income-tax rate exceeded that of other OECD countries.
In late December, this disconnect was addressed with the passage of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. By lowering the corporate-tax rate to a globally competitive level and granting better terms for repatriating profits, the tax package is expected to shift corporate earnings back to the United States. As a result, the divergence between GDP and GNI will likely close in both the US and Ireland, where many major US corporations have been holding cash.
Looking ahead, I would suggest that policymakers focus on three points. First, as demonstrated above, the relevant stakeholders are already addressing several of the flaws in GDP, which is encouraging. Second, public- and private-sector decision-makers now have a multitude of instruments available for better assessing the social and environmental ramifications of their actions.
And, third, in business one must not let the perfect become the enemy of the good. We have not solved all of the problems associated with GDP, but we have come a long way in reducing many of its distortions. Instead of seeking a new, disruptive framework to replace current data and analytical techniques, we should focus on making thoughtful, incremental changes to the existing system.
Urs Rohner is Chairman of the Board of Credit Suisse.
Posted in Economic Assessment, Economics, Economy, Holistic and Balanced Development, Macroeconomics, Political Economy, Social Progress.


text:
« Email is your secret weapon
How to find what you're looking for on Right to Know »
By Luke Bacon | Published: January 16, 2015
A mess of post-its: collecting and sorting observations made while speaking with our supporters.
Over the last couple of weeks we've been reviewing and trying to improve the way the OpenAustralia Foundation handles donations. While there are tens of thousands of people using our projects, over the past few years we've only received a very small amount of funding from small donations by individuals.
We know that many people are enthusiastic about our projects and so contribute their time and skills. Last year we launched a monthly meetup for people like this and it's been a great success. There are also other people who aren't able to contribute code or are busy. They can still support us with financial donations. We'd like to make this process a lot simpler and rewarding for those people, and of course increase this kind of donation.
Research aims and process
Reaching out and getting to know the individuals that have donated to us has been an one key goal of this mini-project. We've been follow the process for design research set out in Erika Hall's excellent book, Just Enough Research:
Define the problem
Select the approach
Plan and prepare
Collect the data
Analyse the data
Our goal, or problem statement is:
Describe the kinds of people who donate to the OpenAustralia Foundation and why they do it.
Because the number of number of people who had donated to the Foundation is quite small, we decided to contact them with a small survey and then conduct short semi-structured interviews with as many as possible. This would give us a chance to thank these awesome people, establish a connection with them and find out how they see the world. To quote Hall:
The goal of interviewing users is to learn about everything that might influence how the users might use what you're creating.
Finally we would collect and analyse our data and then present the findings in a blog post (here it is).
We sent a very short Google Forms survey to the 160 people who have donated to the OpenAustralia Foundation.
The questions were:
Roughly, how old are you? (Under 20, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, Above 80)
What is your occupation?
Which OpenAustralia Foundation projects are you familiar with?
Do you regularly donate money to organisations or projects?
Why did you donate to the OpenAustralia Foundation?
Would you be happy to have a brief chat to help us learn more?
The idea was to try and keep the survey as short as possible so that people would fill it out and be happy to chat, whilst prompting some useful insights.
So far we've received 38 responses. Here's a basic summary of the responses:
Over 90% of respondents were over 30 years old, with 75% being evenly distributed between 30s, 40s and 50s.
After categorising the occupation responses, IT/Tech was the most group, followed by retired and professional services. There were two smaller groups working in government and in civil society organisations.
75% of respondents said they were familiar with PlanningAlerts, 65% OpenAustralia.org and 50% Election Leaflets. 45% were familiar with They Vote For You, 40% Right To Know and 10% morph.io.
65% of people said they regularly donated money to organisations or projects.
While we are dealing with a small amount of data, this information is helping turn some of our assumptions into knowledge.
Twenty-one people were happy to be interviewed and so far we've spoken with eleven. It's been a pleasure to learn about the people who use our projects. A few very generous people even made donations after speaking with us.
While the survey was a few basic questions, the interviews were a deep dive. We wanted to get to know these people and find out about their relationships with NGOs, their needs and concerns.
So what did we learn?
Passionate and knowledgeable in their area of focus
The people that we spoke to were passionately interested and knowledgeable in their chosen area of focus. For a number of them, that was local planning and they were either working professionally in the area or were members of resident action groups.
These people are using one of our projects as part of a wider project or campaign they were active in.
Here are some of our observations about who these donors are:
These donors are generally quite self directed. Many of them were self-employed, involved in community action groups, or had established independent projects of some kind.
A number of people were involved with local community organisations.
The people we spoke to who were using PlanningAlerts (most people), had acted upon information they had received in an alert by making a submission to council.
People who donated made little use, if any, of more than one OpenAustralia Foundation project. They were often aware of a number of them, but were only an active user of one project. In the survey, a quarter of people selected just one project that they were familiar with.
Most people we spoke to had discovered their first OpenAustralia Foundation project by being directly introduced to it, often by someone from the foundation, rather than finding it through Google or social media.
Everyone we spoke to had found the OpenAustralia Foundation through one of the projects, not the other way round.
Everyone we spoke to was computer and web savvy, a number of them having experience with programming or data management.
People donated because they use the projects and support OAF's broad work towards better access to civic information
In the survey there were two very clear themes in the responses to the question "Why did you donate to the OpenAustralia Foundation?"
Because they support the values of the OpenAustralia Foundation
Because they get value from an OpenAustralia Foundation project and want it to continue
These two themes came through strongly in the interviews—in particular it was clear that these people were successfully using one of the projects.
"I believe in freedom of information, open and transparent government, open data"
In the survey the majority of people mentioned their support for the general mission of the OpenAustralia Foundation to create better access to civic information. Some examples:
"Because I believe in OpenAustralia and the ideals therein"
"I believe public, open access to parliamentary records is important, and that politicians need to be held to greater account. They Vote For You is a step in the right direction to holding politicians accountable."
"Believe in freedom of information, open and transparent government, open data – that governments should be more transparent, should publish the information they produce – briefings, data, revenue and expenditure detail – as a matter of course, without the need for FOI requests from the public or journalists."
"I believe in your open data/technology agenda whole heartedly. Democracy is a closed broken old boys club and needs to be re-designed and re-built."
"Because it provides a service I use!"
Many people also said they donated because they were getting value from one of the projects and wanted to support it. Examples:
"Because of the free service offered and that donations are what keep [organisations] like this going."
"As a small thank you for the emails (about my MP's speeches in Parliament) that you make it possible for me to receive without having to read/search all of Hansard!"
"I use the PlanningAlerts service and I value it. I also highly regard OpenAustralia Foundation and the sense of transparency and freedom it brings into the society"
"Because it does provide a useful service, making me aware of up coming proposed planning applications in my immediate neighbourhood that I might otherwise have not been aware of. Due to this early notification I have had some success with council and even VCAT in influencing the resulting plans to maintain respectful scale and privacy within my immediate neighbourhood."
"i use it"
People don't need to know much about OAF to donate to it, but appreciate a clear explanation when they ask
The majority of people that we spoke to knew very little about the OpenAustralia Foundation. Those who did know about the Foundation had an accurate picture of our size and structure. No-one thought the OpenAustralia Foundation was a large, well funded institution.
A number of people who had donated also donated to other non-profit websites. Wikipedia, Getup, Mozilla and Black Box Voting were mentioned.
There were quite a few questions about how the OpenAustralia Foundation is funded. A majority of people mentioned that they were concerned by the amount of money NGOs put into marketing rather than their core mission. They appreciated it when they received a clear answer from the NGO they were questioning.
People like to receive updates but appreciate brevity
Donors were generally positive about receiving regular email updates from the organisations or campaigns they supported. There were strong bad reactions to being signed up to campaigns they did not support.
People who receive organisation update emails from liked concise messages that were quick to read and scan.
A few people mentioned that the email newsletters they liked were ones that gave them some actionable information: TV shows to note down to watch or facts about the issues they were interested in to discuss with friends.
In designing the way we handle donations, we don't want to just follow the standard path. Everything we do should be focused on making our projects more useful and effective to more citizens.
The insights gained through this initial research will provide a basis for more experiments to see how we can help new groups of people get use from and support our work. We've already got some on the boil.
This entry was posted in OpenAustralia Foundation and tagged donations, Erika Hall, research. Bookmark the permalink. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Well Fishing folks, it's spring time in South West Florida and summer is quickly approaching!!! That means Tarpon Fishing for us local Floridians, and our pool of Fishing guides have started the early season with a bang. Big groups of fish are being found on the beach front before first light. If you are first to the party, you can sneak a few bites in before the big groups get broken up. Fish from 60-180 lbs. we're caught last week, the bite is on crabs with low light and fin fish once the sun pokes out. Pictured is a beast of an early season fish pushing 180lbs!!! There has never been a better time to be fishing in South West Florida!!!
The latest Palm Island area fishing report by Capt. Mike Slattery.
The Fishing is getting good again with rising water temps. It seems that we are in a vicious cycle with cold fronts in spring. Let's hope we don't see another cold front in the month of April. Our Gulf temperatures should hit 80 degrees soon, with that the snook fishing is heating up. Big fish are moving down edges and shorelines making their way to the passes. Double digit snook half days are happening now with good quality fish being landed. It's a great time to be fishing in South West Florida.
The warm weather has set in, with that the snook Fishing has been down right good. This week multiple morning trips have yielded keeper snook, as well as a few afternoon trips. A slot of 28"-33" is tough to hit, but there are some quality moving throughout the bay. The nearshore Fishing is getting rolling. Big Amberjack and Cobia have been caught on our nearshore reefs inside 9 miles. While bottom fishing, our Guides have been utilizing flat lines out the back for the aggressive and curious reef fish. It is now a great time to be fishing in South West Florida!


As férias estavam quase a acabar e era dia de irmos conhecer a Cala Mitjana. Dizer que andamos muito para lá chegar, é dizer pouco. Andamos MUITOOO! No caminho, consolava-nos o pensamento de que, pelo menos, a praia não ia ter muita gente! Andava-se tanto para lá chegar que era impossível ter muita gente. Como estávamos enganados! A praia é lindíssima, mas foi sem dúvida a praia com mais pessoas por metro quadrado que visitamos.
Our vacation were almost over and it was time for us to visit Cala Mitjana. To say that we walked a lot to get there doesn't make it justice. We walked A LOT to get there. On our way we were comforted by the thoughts that, at least, there wouldn't be a lot of people on that beach, it would be impossible, with such a long walk. Oh, were we wrong! We arrived to a wonderful beach, but it was the beach with more people for square meter that we have visited so far.
I guess we were spoiled by the previous wonderful beaches we saw, not nearly as crowded, so we weren't satisfied with that. We went on a trail hoping to find another beach nearby. We walked and we climbed and we walked and we climbed, until we got here. It was worth it for the wonderful view, but it was not a beach. So we went back down and went on the other side's trail (a lot easier, by the way). We came to a place with pratically no sand, but with such a beautiful water that left us crazy to take a dive - and that's what we did.
Brincos/earrings: c/o Zaful (aqui/here) - 10% off with the code "ZFIGPTMODA6"
Essas fotos estão brutais!!! Que lindaaaas!!!
Beautiful dress and your earrings are so pretty!
You absolutely look like a model!
Amazing photos and outfit :) This place looks so lovely!
Estas fotos não podia estar mais lindas a sério. O meu coração não aguenta!
Linda, linda! Esses brincos são lindos de morrer, nossa!!
Mais uma série de imagens formidável!


Among the most enduringly popular motives for murder, in films as in life, is the desire to remove an impediment to happiness—to get somebody, once and for all, out of the way. In life, of course, the goal of freeing oneself by canceling the existence of another human being is frequently thwarted by the haste and clumsiness of the means, the hot urgency of the killer's drive overriding his better judgment about the care required to escape detection. His guilt becomes obvious, he gets caught, and that desperately hoped-for happiness flies out the window. Clever murderers—of whom there are, thankfully, many more in fiction and movies than in life—temper their homicidal passion with meticulous calculation, arranging their dark deeds with the tender artifice necessary to make unnatural death look natural. They're artists, of a sort. And the fact that there is no such thing as a perfect murder or a perfect work of art has never stopped either a murderer or an artist from trying.
Henri-Georges Clouzot's cool, clammy, twisty 1955 thriller Diabolique is an almost perfect movie about a very nearly perfect murder, a film in which the artist's methods and the killers' are ideally matched, equal in cunning and in ruthlessness. The screenplay, adapted by Clouzot and three other writers from a novel by the crack French crime-fiction team of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, is a fantastically elaborate piece of contrivance, but the scrupulous realism of the direction makes the unnatural tale somehow feel entirely likely. From the opening shot—of a stagnant, scummy pool, which later proves to be both an important element of the plot and an apt metaphor for the film's unwholesome conception of human nature—the director and his cinematographer, Armand Thirard, place us in a murky, overcast, oppressively drab world, the kind of physical and mental landscape in which nothing ever seems to happen, and anything can.
The three main characters, who work at a boys' boarding school just outside Paris, are presented initially as weary prisoners of a numbing quotidian routine. The headmistress and headmaster are an unhappy married couple, Christina (Véra Clouzot) and Michel Delassalle (Paul Meurisse); Christina, who is from a wealthy South American family, supplies the funds, which Michel manages, stingily. Nicole Horner (Simone Signoret), the science and math teacher, is a voluptuous blonde with a dubious past and is also, quite openly, Michel's mistress. Not that M. Delassalle appears to appreciate the two attractive and intelligent women in his life. He abuses both, physically and verbally, and revels in his petty power. He abuses his position at the school, too, doling out disproportionate punishments for his pupils' most trivial infractions and pinching pennies with unseemly relish: the children are underfed and the staff dines on bad fish and cheap wine, two small, strictly rationed glasses per meal.
Michel Delassalle is, in short, begging to be killed, for the general good; he's pretty much the Platonic ideal of a deserving murder victim. So it's really no surprise that his wife and his mistress should become, for this worthy purpose, partners in crime. But because they will be the obvious suspects, their crime has to be uncommonly artful—a meticulously constructed fiction of accidental death. It would probably be unwise, and certainly inconsiderate, to reveal more here. Diabolique is a movie whose effect depends crucially on surprise, on the detonation of exquisitely timed little shocks to the audience's system, and ultimately on the pleasure of realizing how cleverly you've been played. The film even includes an end title sternly warning viewers not to blab about what they've just seen ("Don't be devils!").
Diabolique was Clouzot's seventh feature, and it represents, arguably, the peak of his critical and commercial success. The film was extremely popular in France, won the prestigious Prix Louis-Delluc, and became a major international hit. Alfred Hitchcock, who had once toyed with the idea of filming the story himself, was an admirer; it's reported that he screened it for the writers of both Vertigo (1958)—which was, like Diabolique, based on a Boileau-Narcejac novel—and Psycho (1960). André Bazin, the great critic of Cahiers du cinéma, acclaimed it as Clouzot's "most perfect" film, though he considered it a "minor" achievement compared with the director's previous picture, The Wages of Fear (1953), an ambitious and excruciatingly suspenseful adventure story about men transporting a truckload of nitroglycerin along some very, very poorly maintained South American roads.
When Clouzot was allowed to direct again, in 1947, he came out with one of his richest films, the theatrical murder mystery Quai des Orfèvres, in which the thick, sensuous backstage atmosphere and the tangled passions of the flamboyant characters are so beautifully detailed as to make the whodunit plot seem almost irrelevant (though he does also supply, for genre fans, a wonderfully peevish police detective, played by Louis Jouvet). After a couple of less successful projects—an adaptation of l'Abbé Prévost's classic novel Manon Lescaut, called simply Manon (1949), and the failed comedy Miquette et sa mère (1950)—he returned to suspense with The Wages of Fear, and hit his stride again. With that film and Diabolique, he became, for a time, one of his country's most celebrated directors. His status gave him the freedom to take a risk: his next movie was the extraordinary documentary Le mystère Picasso (1956), in which the great artist creates dozens of drawings and paintings before our astonished eyes, each brushstroke seeming to take shape directly on the screen. The film was a flop at the box office; it has since been declared a national treasure by the French government.
Clouzot's position in the French film industry may have seemed an enviable one in the midfifties, but over the next few years, that industry began to change dramatically, and well-established directors found themselves losing their footing, buffeted by relentless gusts of hostility from younger critics and would-be filmmakers. Bazin's youthful colleagues at Cahiers du cinéma, who included François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, and Jacques Rivette, wrote furious diatribes against successful older directors like Clouzot, whom the young Turks saw as cautious, conventional, sclerotic—as obstacles to the development of a vital French cinema. The Cahiers du cinéma critics had a sneering name for the older generation: the Tradition of Quality.
Whether Clouzot belonged in that company or not is debatable. One of Cahiers du cinéma's beefs with the older generation was its penchant for filming safe, respectable material, such as adaptations of the classics of French literature; Clouzot did that exactly once, with Manon. But it's true that his filmmaking techniques were relatively traditional and highly controlled, and that he tended to work in genres that afforded some prospect of commercial success. The critics who scourged Clouzot were plotting the revolution that, not long after, became known as the nouvelle vague, and revolutions are messy, as the French, of all people, should know. Some victims are innocent. Not every head that rolls deserves to.
Clouzot's reputation was collateral damage. Although none of his carefully wrought films (he made only three more, of diminishing interest, after Le mystère Picasso) have much in common with freewheeling nouvelle vague works like Breathless or Shoot the Piano Player (both 1960), he wasn't a stiff either, and his mordant vision of human iniquity doesn't suggest an artist who slavishly courted acclaim and respectability. Quai des Orfèvres, with its buzzing profusion of vivid minor characters and its tangy evocation of the theatrical life, at times almost recalls the Jean Renoir of the thirties, and even in the claustrophobic Diabolique, the unusual vigor of the compositions and of the performances helps keep the on-screen action consistently alive, even—though of course it's an illusion—natural. The schoolboys are marvelously unruly and peculiar; the other teachers (one of them played by Michel Serrault, later famous as the drag queen Albin in La cage aux folles) are hilariously pedantic and passive-aggressive; Signoret, whose every gesture is brusque, irritable, quietly violent, gives a superb portrayal of a dangerously bitter woman. And again Clouzot provides a memorable and unconventional detective, here a sly and deceptively amiable old man played by the wrinkly, slow-moving Charles Vanel. And he manages both the complicated plot and the film's visual metaphors (water chief among them) with unusual grace: his technique is so sure that it seems, paradoxically, a kind of freedom.
Henri-Georges Clouzot was, at his best, as in Diabolique, a terrific filmmaker. And he was an artist who, in his dedication to his own demons, his pitch-black vision of human nature, fulfilled at least some of the aesthetic criteria laid down by the Cahiers du cinéma critics and nouvelle vague revolutionaries. It's a shame they felt that they had to get him out of the way.


It is frenzied and terrific. Yet The Coalition often seem hesitant with new ideas, using them too sparingly before returning to the (still satisfying) core combat. You don't want a game padded with gimmicks, of course, but when Gears 4′s campaign is a little fond of dropping in wave defense stand offs you find yourself hankering for more of the inventive stuff.
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"At times we are enemies and at times we are friends. When it comes to commercial negotiations, everyone is back on their high horse but we are all there in partnerships to grow our businesses," she says. "I don't want to be only dependent on their innovation but I am always happy to talk and participate in their innovation, too.".
It's probably not difficult to make your site mobile. If it's a small, not so complicated site, simply buy a new template, install it, and make some tweaks. Platforms like WordPress make this very easy. I have seen some of the greatest capacities for love and compassion mobilized under the name of patriotism. In the wake of the atrocities in Syria for instance, Canadians from coast to coast opened their homes and their hearts to those seeking safety. In doing so, that long standing national story was employed that our country would be a place of refuge for those fleeing war, that people such as my mother, a refugee from civil strife in Lebanon, could be welcomed for no other reason than because our people were proudly, patriotically, Canadian..
Replica Valentino So, John Edwards had a brief affair with a woman who is over forty, and it's a scandal. Elizabeth Edwards was ill at the time, and so John is especially naughty for being so callous, and yes I gave money to his campaign, but then, I never thought adultery was a big deal in the abstract, because, as we all know, I am a liberal, and I think denying people healthcare, swindling the taxpayer, starting an unnecessary war by forging documents and lying, and stealing the oil belonging to other nations is a lot worse than adultery. If every working person in America were to be free to join a union and if we had mastered that global warming thing, then I could start worrying about adultery, and be glad of it Replica Valentino.


a transparent or translucent, usually portable, case for enclosing a light and protecting it from the wind, rain, etc.
the chamber at the top of a lighthouse, surrounding the light.
a tall, more or less open construction admitting light to an enclosed area below.
any light, decorative structure of relatively small size crowning a roof, dome, etc.
an open-sided structure on a roof to let out smoke or to assist ventilation.
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text:
On Being 18 Again
First published in The Oxford Journal on Wednesday, July 11 by Sara Mattinson.
Reading about Abigail Wood's valedictory speech to Oxford graduates in last week's paper touched a nerve in me, one that might have remained numb if I wasn't working at this paper.
According to the article, Abigail said, "We have the ability to do great things, even when people, ourselves included, tell us we can't...The future is ours, the upcoming possibilities and opportunities are endless..."
Remember what if feels like to be 18 years old? Your entire life stretches way out, so long in years that you can't imagine what you're going to be doing in five years, let alone 10 or 20. You have plans – lots and lots of plans – and you truly believe they will come about. The hope and optimism of an 18-year-old is a wonderful, fleeting state of mind. What Abigail and her fellow 18-year-old graduates don't know is that sometimes, those plans, all those endless possibilities and opportunities, don't happen at all. Or, more significantly, they don't happen until many years later, when you've exhausted all the other possibilities and opportunities that you thought were the ones you wanted.
The nerve the OREC valedictorian unwittingly touched in me is the memory of what happened to me when I was 18 years old. When I accepted to university, I couldn't wait to get there and work for the campus newspaper. As soon as I was settled, during Frosh Week when I was supposed to be partying with my fellow freshman, I walked into The Queen's Journal and said I wanted to be a reporter.
But the dream was withered before it could blossom.
I wrote three stories, none of which appeared in the paper as I had written them. I had no training for newspaper reporting and no idea how to do it. So I stopped. I never went back to the paper, never again tried to write another article.
Because I was a young 18, because I didn't know yet about that inner compass that guides us so expertly, I gave up. I didn't have enough confidence or self-awareness to go to the editor and say, "I really, really want to work here but obviously I need to learn. Where do I start?"
Leap forward 24 years. I'm working at a newspaper and it's called The Oxford Journal. The dream didn't die; it just lay dormant until my inner compass guided me (on a very winding road) to the right place at the right time. Even then, it took me a year to make the connection with that pivotal moment in 1988. So for the past week, since reading about Abigail's speech, this column has been writing itself in my head.
This is what I want to tell the graduating class of 2012: Say yes to everything. Ask for help. Don't ever, ever walk away from something you've been longing to do. Find your inner compass and pay attention to it. Even though the moral of my story is that whatever you're meant to do will eventually happen, 24 years is a long time to wait. I could have saved myself a lot of money, heartache and mileage if I'd said Yes instead of No when I was 18 years old and full of eagerness, optimism and naiveté.
As well as a self-defeating fear of failure.
"Let's not be afraid to take chances and try something new," Abigail said, "because that often leads to the greatest reward."
She's right. How did she get so smart at the age of 18?
Posted by Sara Mattinson at 9:11 am No comments:
Keeping Cool During The Heat Wave
It's worth the long, hot walk along the rail trail to give the dogs a chance to romp in the River Philip.
In Conversation With...Jennifer Houghtaling
First published in The Oxford Journal on Wednesday, July 4, 2012 by Sara Mattinson.
At Jennifer Houghtaling's booth at the Pugwash Farmers' Market, richly glazed mugs and bowls mingle with bags of homemade granola, plastic containers of honey and several varieties of bread. To one side hang hand-knitted toques, but there is no sign of her other weaving. When I tell her I'm asking for one of her blankets as a Christmas gift, she says, "Oh, I've got to get back to that. I haven't done any weaving since February."
My mother, standing next to me, calls her lazy and tells her she should be doing more.
Jenn laughs and holds her hands out on either side.
"Clay in one hand on the wheel, shoving the shuttle on the loom with the other."
Then she raises one foot off the ground.
"And I could bake bread with my feet."
We're teasing but there must be days when this 32-year-old wife and mother of two young children feels like she is juggling many things with her hands and feet. There is no question she has a formidable work ethic but she also follows her passion, and her heart, a journey that has taken her from a childhood in British Columbia to Fredericton, Vancouver and Thailand then to Pugwash.
Jenn was born and raised on a 400-acre ranch near Prince George, B.C. Homeschooled until Grade 5, she was driving a tractor by the time she was 8. She went to university to study nursing but only completed one semester. She then went to college but can't even remember what she took.
"When I was 21, I was working in a convenience store and waitressing," she says, "and one day, my supervisor told me I was going to be the supervisor soon."
She remembers this with a grimace and says, "I immediately quit my job and went tree-planting."
In the middle of that five-year career, which involves intense, non-stop work for three months of the year, Jenn followed her boyfriend, Ben, a fellow tree-planter and a musician, to Fredericton. Before they broke up, Jenn discovered a place that would change her life: the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design
"It blew my mind," she says. "I didn't know there was a place where they taught you to be an artist."
Finally, she had found what she wanted to do yet even as she immersed herself in textiles and pottery, she felt the need for futher self-exploration. Instead of paying the tuition for her final year of school, she hopped on a plane for Thailand (the trip ended after three months only because her money ran out).
"I went because I wanted to know if I could go somewhere far away from everybody I knew, all by myself, and be okay," explains Jenn. "I wanted to be able to trust the world, to put myself out there and not get hurt. Part of the reason I picked Thailand was because there was this mediation centre there where you could go for a 10-day silent meditation," she says. "As soon as I finished it, I swore I would go back at least once a year but I never have. Because when I got back home, I got pregnant."
After returning to Vancouver and reuniting with Ben, after another tree-planting season, Jenn discovered she was pregnant. They couldn't afford a home in Vancouver so they packed everything they owned in a cube van and headed east. They arrived in Nova Scotia in February, when their son was 4 months old, and lived with Ben's mother in Amherst until the house they bought on Crowley Road was fixed up.
They arrived only with ideas and ambition, love and friendly dispositions.
"I knew I was going to do pottery because I had dragged the contents of my entire studio here," Jenn says. "And we've always gardened."
She also brought with her a lifelong love of cooking.
"My grandmother taught me to bake," Jenn says. "She lived a kilometre away from us until I was 14 and we baked almost every day. She taught me to crochet and knit."
So the Pugwash Farmers' Market is a natural fit for Jenn, who thrives on connections with other people and believes handmade crafts and food should be available everywhere. At first, she saw the market as a place to sell her pottery and their spring greens then she took over bread-making from two women who were withdrawing from the market.
"Doing the farmers' market for me is just as much about having stuff available to the community as it is a business," she says. "I really like the idea of selling local produce. I want that stuff to be available in the community. I don't want them to have to drive to get it."
Their Crowley Road property is a blooming mess of productivity and creativity. With Ben's various enterprises flourishing, a 50-foot greenhouse in the middle of their raised beds, and the completion of a stand-alone pottery studio, plus two bright, wild-haired children scampering around, it appears Jennifer's winding road of self-discovery has culminated in a life vaguely reminiscent of the place where she began.
"I feel rooted now," she says. "We have a good, solid foundation. We have no intention of moving anywhere."
The village of Pugwash has won the latest round in the Kraft Celebration Tour with TSN. Pugwash will get a $25,000 upgrade to its ball field and a huge donation of peanut butter to the local food bank .
As correspondent Mary Patterson wrote in her community news for this week, "Pugwash was pitted against Port Hawkesbury, which has a population of nearly three times that of our village, so everyone had their work cut out for them. Just goes to show you what can happen if everyone pulls together, which they did in this case. Many stayed up all night at Pugwash's CapSite and took turns voting. Now that is dedication."
TNS will broadcast live from Pugwash at 7 pm on Monday, August 20.
Posted by Sara Mattinson at 12:35 pm No comments:
Music for the Spirit
Christina Martin, who lives around the country corner from us, released her latest CD at the cafe in Pugwash on Saturday night and we were thrilled to be part of the crowd. I was thrilled when she winked at me during a song she knows is difficult for me to hear. These are the opening lines (as accurate as I can get them) of her song, "There Is A Light":
'I asked my love
On the back porch yesterday
What's the name they call this thing
That drives my thoughts away?
It's not my heart
And I hope that she will stay
That it won't take the man I used to be
The love from you to me.
When it turns on, there is love...'
Christina, brilliant songwriter, wrote this song as part of her work with dementia patients and their caregivers during her past year as an artist-in-residence at Dalhousie University's Geriatric Medicine Research in Halifax. It puts into song what I believe was my father's experience with the disease.
The first time I heard this song, it was the encore at the Pugwash CD launch for her husband, Dale Murray, and I wasn't expecting it so I bawled my eyes out. Now I can hear it without breaking down.
But it was good of her to find me in the crowd.
This writer is inspired and encouraged by that writer.
Listen (over and over) to the whole song, There Is A Light, at Christina's website:
http://www.christinamartin.net/?cat=140
Cover of her latest CD
Posted by Sara Mattinson at 11:59 am No comments:
Rural Nova Scotia & the Old Goat
First published in the June 27, 2012 edition of The Oxford Journal by Sara Mattinson.
Rural: "of, pertaining to, or characteristic of the country, country life, or country people; rustic."
Nowhere in that definition are the words "boring", "redneck", or "hell hole". Nor could I find a definition that suggested, "End of civilized life as we know it."
Raise your hand if you are tired of the country bashing. As in, "Omygawd, you want me to move to rural Nova Scotia? You can't be serious. I'll quit my job before I move to rural Nova Scotia."
It' so senseless to move certain jobs out of one community and into another just to make it appear that something is being done to re-populate rural areas. Moving jobs around isn't going to fix the problem; creating jobs, bringing businesses and industries to these areas, keeping our born-and-bred labourers in the province, now that would fix the problem.
(Which leads to this question: How can Amherst, which is losing six Justice Department jobs, not be considered rural? It may be a town but it's surrounded by...ruralness. Many people who choose to live in the country rely on jobs located within the limits of a nearby town or village.)
And while I'm all for the media shining a light on the truth, a columnist in the province's major newspaper, which has been on the Save Rural Nova Scotia bandwagon for months, described us as "road-obsessed rural Nova Scotia".
What an unfair slag. Our complaints about rough, pot-holed roads, narrow shoulders and bush-filled ditches are legitimate. His negativity reduces us to a one-issue population but his comment bolsters the need for community newspapers. Ever noticed how the major media in this province rarely report west of the toll plaza? Cumberland County is the gateway to this province yet our significance and our opinions don't rate investigation.
There is nothing wrong with this province that a swift reality check (two decades ago) wouldn't fix. We can't rely on industries that are renewable in theory but not in practice; we can't thrive on seasonal employment; and we can't repopulate areas by force. Rural areas flourish when people want to live there, when they choose to live there. That's when they make the most of everything the country has to offer – and that's more than fishing and forests.
The problem is we're trying to close the barn door after the horses (and cows and pigs) are already gone. Farming is a good example of losing an industry that should be stable and enduring. Every single person needs food but both provincial and federal bureaucrats have done everything to undermine farming. Bigger isn't always better and now that the public is caring about the quality of food and demanding small-scale farming at the local level, it's too late. We've lost both the farms and the next generation of farmers while small, determined producers try to get noticed at farmers' markets and the side of the road.
There may be one animal left in the barn, an old goat everyone has ignored for years: tax cuts. The reality of life in rural Nova Scotia is that it costs more to live here. You want people to live in rural Nova Scotia? You want to create jobs and bring in business? Provide tax relief.
The answer to the problems in rural Nova Scotia isn't big bailouts of obsolete industries or huge handouts to successful businesses. The answer is to make rural areas as attractive to businesses as they are to tourists.
It's time the government pandered to us for a change.
Thoughts Wilder Than The Weather
For some reason, my brain has stopped functioning, which isn't good since I am heading into town not only to walk with Jane and Sam but also to pump a lot of gasoline in my CRV.
(That's the downside to working only ten minutes from home: I forget to check the gas gauge because I don't feel like I'm driving that much.)
So this is what a writer does: She sits down at the computer and writes anyway.
Yard sale was a resounding success. The secret? Decent stuff, prices too low to resist. And we still made more than we wanted to. With the proceeds, we're buying new lawn chairs. Good quality ones, I think, since the elements are hard on that cheap plastic stuff and I get tired of buying lawn chairs every year. Maybe I'll start making twig chairs. Put all those alder trees to good use.
It poured rain at 11 yesterday morning but we had such a rush between 7:30 and 10 am, it didn't make that much of a difference.
Now I'm happy because that huge chore is over with. We've been storing a lot of boxes and plastic totes because of Mum downsizing and moving in here and it took all day Friday to organize everything onto six tables plus other stuff scattered around. Big sale! Managed to sell down to three tables. I'd hoped the 12 for $1 magazines would take care of all of them but I still have too many left over. I guess this means I really will have to do that Life Map workshop this fall that I've been thinking about hosting for a while now. Other stuff will be donated, some good stuff going to the hospital auxiliary and that makes me feel good.
Most fun this weekend? Sitting on the deck watching the storm blow in last evening. Could use another to blow through right now to unclog my brain but that would kibosh the walk, wouldn't it?
Something wonderful happened on the walk.
On our way back along the old rail bed trail, a speck of red caught my eye.
"The raspberries will be early," Jane said. There wasn't any to eat, just the hint of sweetness to come.
Further along, a true bounty. Like bears, we squatted in a large patch of blueberries and stuffed our faces with warm, ripe, wild blueberries growing along the side of the trail.
Sam ate some off the low bushes. Abby wondered why we were standing still.
Posted by Sara Mattinson at 2:47 pm No comments:
A gardener's delight this morning: Woke up to heavy showers but now, before nine, the sun is shining. So two days of rain and three evenings off from watering.
The robins are busy pulling worms from the ground. It's fascinating to watch even if totally unappetizing. I took a really good photo of my lace Wyandott hen grabbing a worm and eating it but when I showed my mother, she said she wasn't going to eat my eggs anymore.
"Now that I know what goes into them," she said.
We're getting ready for a large yard sale here tomorrow on the rural route and the biggest hassle isn't going to be sorting through everything we've collected since last summer (from the renovation and my mother's move here); the big hassle will be keeping my mother from taking back half the stuff she decided last year didn't need any longer.
In Conversation With...Darold, Reta and Donna Kaluza
First published in The Oxford Journal on Wednesday, June 20 by Sara Mattinson.
It's hard to be the daughter who lives far away, to return home for a visit and notice your mother doesn't have a vegetable garden, your father isn't fishing. The changes seem so obvious yet to your parents, nothing has really changed. Body parts may not work as well, the cane may be in constant use now, fewer chores are getting done but these adjustments have happened gradually and your parents live with them, keep the same routines. What matters to them is that they are right where they want to be.
In their own home.
Donna Kaluza is a retired RCMP officer who lives in British Columbia and comes home every summer to visit her family, including her parents, Darold and Reta Kaluza.
"I was concerned about the circumstances," Donna says about this particular visit. "I'm not used to Dad not being swift. I was concerned about his mobility. This all started when we talked about getting orthotics for him. Instead of playing a lot, we've done more medical exploration."
Darold has had a series of health challenges over the years but the truly life-changing event came in 1998. He developed transverse myelitis, a neurological disorder caused by inflammation around the spinal chord and Darold ended up with his left leg virtually paralyzed and in constant pain.
While he is able to get around his bungalow and drive his truck, he had to hang up his tiller.
"I'm going downhill," says the 86-year-old. "Everything is getting worse."
No wonder Donna is concerned.
"Mum does so much and they really work as a team so I wanted to know if there was something else that could be done," she says. "The receptionist at the doctor's office gave me this pamphlet for the Senior's Health Centre. It was just a call. Anyone can do it. You don't need a doctor and there's no charge. I was amazed. Within a couple of days, a registered nurse was here."
Here being Darold and Reta's house. Because that's the point of the program that operates out of the hospital in Springhill: keeping seniors in their own homes.
"The nurse came to do an assessment of both Mum and Dad in their home with the goal to make things easier and safer for them," Donna explains. "What I found so great about it is that they come here where Mum and Dad are comfortable and safe. She spent two hours and she could have spent more time. There was no rushing. She had a look at the environment, she talked to them, saw them move. It was all about facilitating them to do better at home."
Doing better at home means remaining in their own home. To that end, an occupational therapist also checks out the house.
"They're going to look at the bathroom and other places where we might need bars to save us from falling," Reta explains.
Neither Darold nor Reta consider any of this an invasion of privacy or an admission of weakness. Perhaps this is because five years ago they had a taste of how they would cope if something happened. Something like Reta falling off a ladder and breaking her leg.
"I did the washing, I did the cooking, I did the cleaning, and looked after Mum," Darold says of the six months Reta was laid up. "And I looked after the yard and the gardens."
But as his leg and spine pain him more and more, he is less able to take over if something should happen again to Reta, still doing yoga at the age of 80 but not promising to stay off ladders.
"Even if my parents don't need a lot of help, at least in my mother's case, she is linked in and has the knowledge about where to go and who to call," says Donna. "It didn't exist when Mom was hurt but it would have been a great place to call to find out what's available."
Her relief at leaving her parents in good hands, and in their own home, when she returns to BC is clear.
"It's tough when I phone and Dad says he's in pain and not feeling well," she admits. "I'm a long ways away and when I'm here, I get a bit aggressive, I guess, because I have a finite amount of time. I pushed them really hard this time, likely pushed my luck, too, but I want to try and help when I'm home."
Darold and Reta have been married for 58 years and have lived in this house for 30 of them.
"What did you do for a living?" I ask Darold, and he tells me he was a mechanic. That explains the many references to the garage next door. And now the conversation slips away from ageing and aches, doctors and directives, and into memories.
As Reta tells the story about working under the heist, helping Darold while wearing a pink dress, then heading outside to pump gas with a grease streak down the front of the dress, she proves the point of a program like the Springhill Senior's Health Centre.
Family stories belong at home, and so do the people who tell them.
For more information, contact the Senior's Health Centre at 597-2027 or www.cha.nshealth.ca
When Your Neighbours Are Fish Hawks
Thanks to the distinctive cries of the ospreys, we know when breakfast, lunch and dinner are arriving:
There are only two babies in the pictures but Dwayne is firm in his sighting of three. Soon they'll be jumping around the nest, from side to side, practicing their wing flaps. The first flight -- it's an amazing moment to witness (three times) and this is the fourth summer we've been lucky enough to see it.
In Conversation With...Darold, Reta and Donna Kalu...


Treyarch have released a new patch for Call of Duty: Black Ops - fixing several exploits and adding a new feature - the details can be seen below.
- Addressed several Zombies exploits.
- Addressed an exploit that allowed players to get outside of the designated map boundaries on Nuketown and Kowloon.
- Added Mercenary (TDM exclusive) playlist to MP.
- Disabled Split-Screen play in Mercenary playlists.


I have a question and an issue with Tomcat 5.0 and IDEA 7523. I seem to have to run Debug mode twice (Debug, then Shutdown Tomcat, then Debug) in order to get my application to be deployed within Tomcat. This might be IDEADEV-22591, but it seems quite strange. Anyone else experiencing this?
Also, is it possible to hotswap JSPs with IDEA and Tomcat 5.0? If so, how is it done?


Our client is seeking a Service Driver for their dealership close to the Yeovil area.
A full and clean driving licence is essential for this vacancy.
The ideal candidate will be of smart appearance and used to dealing with customers.
This is a very important role as you will be one of the main faces customers will see when delivering or picking up vehicles.
Hours: Monday - Friday: 8am - 6pm. Flexible on start / finish times and afterhours would be paid as overtime.
This really is a great company to work for!


All we ask is that you register your guarantee below once your bathroom project is complete.
We'd occasionally like to send you relevant information regarding your bathroom and exciting new products. Please tick this box if you prefer not to receive correspondence from Utopia Bathrooms. We never share your information.


Architects, designers (and Bravura) know that scale is everything. A perfect design that's too small for its surroundings, is no longer perfect. With this fact in mind, Bravura created hardware scaled specifically for today's larger doors.


A candid introduction to the History of Haiti presented as a motherchild interaction. It approaches civism, patriotism and heritage pride in a way to interest young readers to be curious and interested to know more about their history. Additionally, it promotes family reading, dialogue and discussion. Recommended for grades 3 through 5.


After Frances Hooper donated her Kate Greenaway collection in 1980, the Institute mounted an exhibit and produced this annotated catalogue. In "Collecting, Kate Greenaway, and me," Frances Hooper detailed her collection and what it meant to be a collector. In "The singular vision of Kate Greenaway," Rodney Engen, noted scholar of the lives and work of Victorian illustrators, depicted Greenaway as an artist who longed to escape the grimy confusion of the city in order to stroll through country gardens. John Brindle's "Kate Greenaway's art in retrospect" examined the meaning of Greenaway's art today and its enduring popularity. Included was an annotated catalogue of selected artworks, books, manuscripts and miscellaneous items from the Frances Hooper Kate Greenaway Collection at the Institute. The book contained a number of color and black-and-white Greenaway illustrations.
Also accompanying the exhibition was Young ladies with flowers, a full-color reproduction of a previously unpublished watercolor by Greenaway and one of two done to illustrate the double title page of a manor guestbook, 22 × 28". A 16-page checklist was prepared for use by gallery visitors.


text:
The Sensational Spider-Man () — серия комиксов о супергерое Человеке-пауке, которая издавалась Marvel Comics с 1996 по 1998 год. Всего было выпущено 35 номеров комикса (Vol.1). Также существует The Sensational Spider-Man (vol. 2).

История

Впервые словосочетание The Sensational Spider-Man было использовано в названии книги The Sensational Spider-Man: Nothing Can Stop the Juggernaut (; ISBN 0-87135-572-8), вышедшей в 1989 году и содержащей в себе перепечатанные 229-й и 230-й номера серии The Amazing Spider-Man, первоначально изданные в 1982 году.

В 1996 году Marvel Comics запустила новую серию комиксов The Sensational Spider-Man с Человеком-пауком (Беном Рейли) в главной роли. Серия заменила собой Web of Spider-Man. Всего вышло 35 номеров, включая 0-33 и # -1, выпущенный в июле 1997 года между 17-м и 18-м номерами). Серия была закрыта в ноябре 1998 года.

В феврале 2003 года, начиная с 23 номера, серия комиксов Marvel Knights Spider-Man была переименована в The Sensational Spider-Man volume 2.

Ссылки
 Комиксы о Человеке-пауке на Marvel.com

Комиксы 1996 года
Комиксы о Человеке-пауке

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Constantine going mobile
by Stan on March 2, 2005
PSP News: one million coming to U.S.
The Top Ten
Warner Bros. Online announces [i]Constantine[/i], a new mobile adventure game that thrusts players into a battleground between heaven and hell, will launch on wireless handset platforms in the U.S. this
May. Based on the Warner Bros. Pictures film of the same name and the DC Comics/Vertigo "Hellblazer" graphic novels, "Constantine" is a mobile game title that blends elements of exploration and role-playing as mobile gamers embark on an unholy mission to uncover a demonic mastermind.
Warner Bros. Online is also launching a full suite of mobile content in conjunction with the release of [i]Constantine[/i], including wallpapers, screensavers and voicetones. More information is available on [a]http://www.wbmobile.com[aa]www.wbmobile.com[/a].
Mobile, News
MobileNews
Murder mystery Overboard! now available on Switch, PC, and iOS
by SquallSnake on June 2, 2021
80 Days meets Agatha Christie with a wicked twist in inkle's new narrative game Overboard! — available right now for Nintendo Switch, PC, and iPhone/iPad. (Surprise!) In this murder mystery, you're the one whodunnit. Now you have eight [...]
Metal Slug Mobile gameplay trailer here
by SquallSnake on May 17, 2021
TiMi Studio shared a gameplay trailer for the mobile Metal Slug game it is working on for iOS and Android devices. No date has been revealed for release as of yet. Players will experience the same side-scrolling shoot-em up action that has made Metal Slug [...]
Astro introduces new A03 in-ear monitor for console and mobile gaming
by SquallSnake on October 1, 2020
ASTRO Gaming announced the release of the newest addition to its award winning family of gaming audio products, the A03 In-Ear Monitor (IEM). Engineered specifically for Mobile and Console gaming, the A03 IEM differs from traditional earbuds thanks to the [...]


It's that time of year when the weather gets hotter and we trade in our pants for shorts. Are you ready for this or are you still so pale you're translucent? This possible freebie could help get you a glowing tan quickly and easily.
You can thank Toluna for this one. Right now you could possibly score a free Rimmel Self Tanning Cream from the company. That is if you're lucky enough to get in on the offer. Sign in to your account, choose "Test Products" from the drop down menu, and apply. Don't have an account yet? Join now so you can hopefully get in on the offer, too.


The project was a challenging assignment where we were given three words each by our professor: a food item, one animal, and a color. For me, it was borscht, giraffe, and turquoise. Using these three words, I had to come up with a fourth word which can connect all three. Drawing a mind-map, I ended up with the word "travel".
Giraffe Conservation Foundation (GCF) and San Diego Zoo have partnered up to raise awareness about endangered giraffes among kids. Since June 21st is World Giraffe Day, they are organizing the Giraffe Week from June 19th - 25th 2017.
A brochure is to be designed which consists of ticket prices, maps, and other information. Shorty - the Giraffe is the mascot of this event and will be present throughout the zoo in different forms like sign with the logo, people dressed as Shorty etc. Kids are encouraged to take pictures with Shorty and post it on Instagram and Twitter with hashtag mentioned. The brochure also has a finger puppet which can be just torn carefully along the dotted lines. The puppet can also be self-made (D.I.Y.) if turned around. There is a fun fact column which has some fill in the blanks. These can be completed to win a winner's stamp/badge. This will encourage people to read the information displayed in the Giraffe exhibit.
A computer script can also be written which randomly generates spots on the finger puppet giraffe as two giraffes do not have the same spots just like fingerprints of a person.
The paper is simple gloss ledger paper and is inexpensive as it'll be mass produced. It is 100% recyclable.