The Procrastinator (some) Times Sunday 20th of July Edition

EDITORIAL

Dear friends, this is a very special edition for us, because is the Anniversary Edition (insert 'fiesta' emojis here). Yes, tomorrow is our birthday! A year has passed and we've come a long way (if you don't believe me, have a look at the First Edition.) Thanks to all the contributors, random collaborators, thank you for your feedback, for following us on Twitter, for sharing our articles, for letting us know that you enjoy and procrastinate by reading this little newspaper-ish edited with love for you.

This Anniversary Edition is also the official beginning of the summer in the Procrastinator HQ's (you know how it is, we do things in our own time), and that means that during the summer, the editions of the Procrastinator will be fortnightly and not weekly.

News about the situation in Gaza; about France and the elephant in the room: the race talk; and about London, who apparently is going to be the city most visited in the world in 2014 (hope that means you are coming to visit me!) In Science & Technology, flying cars can be real in just two years! In Design, Business & Innovation, explore the science of cool via Fast Company; and of course, in this edition we have to have an article about Grumpy Cat... or well, to be precise, Grumpy Cat's human. In Culture & Entertainment, Maria Konnikova on how to be a better online reader (very interesting!); George Clooney demonstrates he is monster-proof in his battle against the Daily Mail; also, you can brush up on your French with a nice flow-chart. In Dog We Trust celebrates with a summery edition, read it if you want to find out if animals have sense of humor, and also to have a look at the lovely dogs of the Instagram of the week because they are the best. Germán, prepared a very beautiful Sunday (Some) Times cartoon, I personally love it. Finally, one Special Section that we call Written Procrastination, from our lovely contributor Kerilyn Tacconi who send us for this edition a nice essay called Parallel Utopia, where she explores the possibility of escaping temporarily by not being where one is supposed to be. This is very close to the concept of procrastination as a mini-act of rebellion championed by David d'Equainville, creator of the Procrastination day.

Hope you enjoy our Anniversary Edition and get ready to celebrate tomorrow with us!

Happy Sunday, happy reading, happy summer, and if you STILL haven't done so, follow us on Twitter.




NEWS

Photo by Maha Shawan taken in Bit Hanon, Southern Gaza on Sunday July 13th  via The Huffington Post.

Taken on Sunday in Bit Hanon in southern Gaza, it shows a little boy outside what remains of his home. The bittersweet picture shows despite the destruction around him, something as simple as a balloon is still able to bring a smile to his face.

Seumus Milne in The Guardian thinks that the idea that Israel is defending itself from unprovoked attacks is absurd and that certainly occupied people have the right to resist: "For the third time in five years, the world’s fourth largest military power has launched a full-scale armed onslaught on one of its most deprived and overcrowded territories. Since Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip began, just over a week ago, more than 200 Palestinians have been killed. Nearly 80% of the dead are civilians, over 20% of them children. Around 1,400 have been wounded and 1,255 Palestinian homes destroyed. So far, Palestinian fire has killed one Israeli on the other side of the barrier that makes blockaded Gaza the world’s largest open-air prison." Read full article in The Guardian. E.T.P. 5'

Bernard Avishai writes in The New Yorker: "We may think we have been here before, but we haven’t. The images of escalation are the same: exhaust tracing through Israeli skies; Gazans frantically picking through rubble; Israelis glued to their televisions, reduced to observers of spectacle, some poised to run for shelter but most affecting readiness, protected by rocket science and probability, fascinated by the deadpan proficiency of military officials whose mission may confuse them but to whom they suppose they owe their lives." read full article in The New Yorker. E.T.P. 6'

Thousands of people have marched through central London to call for an end to Israel's ground campaign and air strikes in Gaza. Protesters marched from Downing Street to the Israeli embassy in Kensington. A police blockade stopped them from gaining access. Whitehall, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly and Hyde Park Corner were closed. Before the event up to 15,000 people were expected to attend. Read full article in the BBC. E.T.P. 2'

Photo via The New Yorker.

Since I moved to London, the most multi-cultural city I've ever lived in, I started filling legal forms that asked for my race. Surprisingly (or maybe not), I don't fit into any of the UK default race descriptors, and I end up ticking the less friendly of all: "other mixed background". That's why it surprised me discovering that the French don't gather data about race. This very same fact makes Alexander Stille ask in The New Yorker: Can the French talk about race? "France, with its revolutionary, republican spirit of egalité, likes to think of itself as a color-blind society, steadfastly refusing, for example, to measure race, ethnicity, or religion in its censuses. And yet France is, undeniably, a multicultural, multi-ethnic, and multiracial society, and has been at least since the nineteen-fifties, when large waves of immigrants began arriving from its former colonies. It has significant problems of discrimination, and of racial and economic segmentation, but limited tools to measure or correct them. The obvious answer—to many American scholars and to some French ones—is to begin to gather better data." Read full article in The New Yorker. E.T.P. 3'

Photo via The Economist.

LONDON is likely to be the world's most-visited city this year, according to a forecast by Mastercard, a credit card company. It reckons that 18.7m foreign visitors will come to Britain's capital in 2014, not including those that use the city as a brief stop-over on the way to somewhere else. The firm thinks Bangkok, with 18.4m visitors, will be the second most popular, followed by Paris (15.6m), Singapore (12.5m) and Dubai (12m). Read full article in The Economist. E.T.P. 2' (And if you're planning to come and visit (me), hurry, you have exactly 3 months!)