"IT IS the economics book taking the world by storm. "Capital in the Twenty-First Century", written by the French economist Thomas Piketty, was published in French last year and in English in March of this year. The English version quickly became an unlikely bestseller, and it has prompted a broad and energetic debate on the book’s subject: the outlook for global inequality. Some reckon it heralds or may itself cause a pronounced shift in the focus of economic policy, toward distributional questions. This newspaper has hailed Mr Piketty as "the modern Marx" (Karl, that is). But what’s it all about?" The Economist promises to explain this (massive) book in four decent sized paragraphs. E.T.P. 4'
"Brussels, wrote Tony Judt, is “a metaphor for all that can go wrong
in a modern city”. The late historian, writing in 1999, was referring to
the civic neglect that has left much of the Belgian capital, home to
most institutions of the European Union, an unsightly mess of concrete
and roadworks with the worst traffic in Europe. But his words could just
as well apply to the string of terrorist plots and attacks that has
provided Brussels, and some other Belgian cities, with a scabrous
reputation as an incubator of jihadi ideology and a paragon of law-enforcement incompetence.
Belgium has long been the butt of European jokes, thanks in large
part to its dysfunctional politics. In 2010-11 squabbles over the rights
of Flemish-speakers on the outskirts of Brussels held up the formation
of a government for 589 days, a world record. But the terror threat has
exposed the darker side of Belgium’s maladministration, in the form of
uncoordinated security services and neglected areas like Molenbeek, a
down-at-heel Muslim-majority commune in west
Brussels. After the Paris attacks, French officials sniped at their
Belgian counterparts on learning that several of the perpetrators had
hatched their schemes in Brussels. Two had been questioned by Belgian
police earlier this year. One of them, Salah Abdeslam, fled to Brussels
after having driven three of the Paris suicide-bombers to their
destination.
(...)
We are all Belgians now
Yet no European country with a large Muslim minority has solved the
problem of integration. Britain and France take different approaches,
but each has seen scores killed in “home-grown” terrorist attacks. In
Sweden, towns like Gothenburg are partially segregated; this week the
government executed a screeching U-turn on its asylum policy. Even
Germany, which is embarking on its own experiment in integration after
having welcomed hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees, has struggled
to accept that it is a land of immigration rather than of Gastarbeiter
(“guest-workers”). In each of these countries and others,
anti-immigration parties are climbing in the polls; in some, they top
them.
Twenty years ago the main terrorist threat in Europe came from
regional separatists. Ten years ago it was spectacular attacks by
al-Qaeda, or groups inspired by it. It is now evolving into something
messier, directed against softer targets, organised across borders and
linked to gangland crime and weapons-trafficking. (Olivier Roy, a French
expert on extremism, speaks of “the Islamicisation of radicalism”.)
This raises urgent questions for officials across Europe, not least over
how far they are willing to share intelligence and data with their
counterparts elsewhere, whether within the EU or in other formats. It is
time to stop bashing Belgium. Much of Europe is in the same boat."
Venezuelans are famously inventive with words. After 17 years of "chavismo", the left-wing-ish ideology of the late Hugo Chávez, they have plenty of new material. " Insults aimed at his “Bolivarian revolution” abound; the regime, now led by Nicolás Maduro, hurls its own ammunition. With parliamentary elections due on December 6th, The Economist offers a sample." Read them all in The Economist. E.T.P. 2'
"It was the kind of diplomatic clumsiness for which the United States
has a unique capacity. On March 9th Barack Obama issued an executive
order declaring “a national emergency” because of the “extraordinary
threat to the national security” of the United States posed by
Venezuela. Really? Is Uncle Sam scared of a country with a government
that is incapable of organising a reliable supply of toilet paper, an
army whose best-known capabilities are coups, petrol smuggling and drug
trafficking, and a president who spent most of January touring the world
to beg for cash?
The explanation is that American law requires the administration to
use such language if it wants to impose sanctions on individuals in
another country. Congress has voted to do this in the case of Venezuela.
Critics of this initiative argued that its only practical effect would
be to give Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s embattled president, a propaganda
tool. That is what it has done." Read full article in The Economist. E.T.P. 3'
"Nowhere else has the collapse of oil prices has taken a higher toll
than on Venezuela, where crude provides 95 percent of the country’s
export revenue. Already facing recession, Venezuela is on the brink of
economic collapse.
As that revenue dried up, the country has been thrown deeper into
economic turmoil under President Nicolas Maduro. The economy is expected
to contract by 7 percent this year, inflation soared to 69 percent—the
highest in the world—and shortages of goods have forced shoppers to line
up for hours at supermarkets to buy basic foods and products. The
situation descended into the surreal
earlier this week when the Prime Minister of neighboring Trinidad &
Tobago proposed exchanging Venezuelan oil for Trinidadian tissue paper." Read full article in TIME Magazine. E.T.P. 2'
"In 2003, a beleaguered President Hugo Chávez imposed currency controls
to try to hold down inflation and prevent a speculative run on the
Venezuelan bolívar. Over the years that followed, these controls evolved
into the byzantine tiered system by which the government’s oil dollars
are sold at three different official prices — while hard-currency dollars fetch a fourth, higher price on the black market.
An
importer who pledges to purchase basic necessities to bring into the
country can buy a dollar for about six bolívars. But walk up to a bank
teller and the same dollar costs 178 bolívars: nearly 3,000 percent
more. For the 264 bolívars that it cost at the time of this writing to buy one black-market dollar, you could buy 42 dollars at the official rate." Read full article in The New York Times. E.T.P. 4'
Interesting short article in The Economist about the Sillicon Valley compulsion of building massive HQs that increasingly look less like office buildings and more like monuments to the ego of the new tech pharaohs. "Marc Andreessen knows a thing or two about Silicon Valley’s penchant for
status symbols and its braggadocio. As a venture capitalist and serial
entrepreneur, he has helped turn more than a few minnows into high-tech
giants. As an investor, he serves these days on the boards of Facebook
and Hewlett-Packard, among others. Along with avoiding such cardinal
sins as going public too soon and being too eager to cash out, Mr
Andreessen is adamant that his charges must refrain, at all cost, from
pouring huge sums into glamorous new headquarters.The compulsion to build monuments to a ruler’s power and prestige has
existed since history began. But flush with cash and with interest rates
near zero, Silicon Valley’s leading lights are now competing with each
other over who can build the most lavish digs, to feed their corporate
egos as well as to attract and retain talent." Read full article in The Economist. E.T.P. 3'
Having read only negative critics and reviews about the Björk exhibition at MoMA I feel that I have to post them here. Have any of our readers had the (bad) luck of visiting the exhibition? I would love to hear from you! Meanwhile, here's a fragment of the Prospero article in The Economist: "As a subject, Bjork is indeed worthy of formal scrutiny. She has
spent decades crafting music that transcends genres. Her compositions
are full of surprises, mixing techno beats with string arrangements,
layering bells, beeps and purrs of wildlife. An avid collaborator, she
has worked with many film-makers, fashion designers, producers and other
artists, reliably coaxing out some of their best work. Then there is
that voice—high, strong, clear, sometimes girlish, always unmistakable.
No one sounds like Bjork. With this show, several years in the making,
MoMA could have set a new template for a multimedia museum experience,
blending music and video, text and artefacts. This retrospective could
have mapped out Bjork’s creative process, placing her prodigious talent
in some kind of context. Oh, this show might have done so many things.
Alas, the only thing it reliably does is waste people’s time." Read full article in The Economist. E.T.P. 3'
The New Yorker's Peter Schjeldahl published an article on the same lines of The Economist one: MoMA's embarrasing crush with Björk. " rare consensus of critics has
greeted the Museum of Modern Art’s show “Björk,” which is centered in a
two-floor pavilion, in the museum’s atrium, packed with audio and visual
exhibits tracking the Icelander’s career. Weighing in early, Ben Davis
of ArtNet News predicted “an immense Eyjafjallajökull-sized ash-plume of
critical bile to appear over midtown any second now.” And sure enough:
tick tock, boom. New York magazine’s Jerry Saltz adjudged the show “a discombobulated mess,” and Jason Farago, in the Guardian, called it a “fiasco” and, not to waffle, a “disaster.” Roberta Smith, in the Times,
zeroed in the “ludicrously infantilizing and tedious” audio narration,
by the Icelandic poet Sjón, that accompanies a viewer’s pavilion tour
with treacly sentiments about the progress in life of “a girl.” “Insure
that you experience this journey as thoroughly as possible,” the
unctuous voice urges at the start. What follows confirms the general
rule that whenever anything artistic is described as a “journey,” you
can be pretty certain of going nowhere. . . And yet Björk is unscathed." I'm so intrigued by this exhibition. Read the article here. E.T.P.
We are here again my friends. This will be -as you might have imagined- the last Procrastinator of the year 2014, and before going into the specific of this edition I have to ask you to really take a moment to reach out to us and tell us what do you like of The Procrastinator and what could we be doing better. If you read us, please take 5 min of your time to give us your always appreciated feedback. This is the only Christmas gift we will be asking from you.
However if you want to give a little more, and considering that the Ebola crisis in Africa is a big part of this edition, here's an article about how you can help in an efficient way. Medecins Sans Frontiers is generally on the top of all the lists about organizations that have been most visible and useful during the outbreak, here's a link to their website. You can also contribute with The School Fund that is a nonprofit organization linking students in the Third World to funders across the globe. 100% of online donations go directly to students' school fees. Or you can chose a different cause to contribute from these NGOs.
Now talking about this last 2014 edition: in our News section we are sharing an extensive report about TIME Magazine's person of the year: the Ebola fighters. And some extra info about the economic consequences of the Ebola outbreak via AFP and Vice. Oil prices falling and the historic announcement of Cuba and the US resuming diplomatic relations, are also in this section.
In Science & Technology, 9 giant steps women made this year and Google is heading for an exit in Russia. Our Culture & Entertainment section is filled with films, reviews, lists and links, because enjoying a good movie is the best holidays procrastination. Also political shock art in Russia and the word of the day. The 32 dog selfies that changed the world in 2014 (!) and the amazingly cute Juntowa in this week's In Dog We Trust by La Guía del Perro. And finally we asked our friends, contributors and fellow procrastinators about the books they loved the most procrastinating with during 2014 and we made a list! Have a look for interesting reading options to procrastinate with in 2015 and if you want you give us your recommendations in the comments, go on share the joy of meaningful procrastination!
I hope 2015, the year of the goat (and any other way you'd like to name the immediate future), will be a great year where a lot of things start falling into place after a very hectic and chaotic and definitely exciting 2014. I know it will be awesome and I hope you feel that way too!
Merry everything and happy reading!
NEWS
‘Ebola fighters’ have been named as the Time magazine person of
the year for 2014 for their “risk, persistence and sacrifice” in the
battle against the disease outbreak that has killed more than 6,000
people, reports The i100. Nancy Gibbs, editor of Time commented: "The rest of the world can sleep at night because a group of men and
women are willing to stand and fight. For tireless acts of courage and
mercy, for buying the world time to boost its defenses, for risking, for
persisting, for sacrificing and saving." Have a look at the full report (large article and a couple of videos 11' and 6') in Time magazine. E.T.P. 1 hour.
Also, Vice's Samuel Oakford and Kayla Ruble wrote on Vice how the economies of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone Have Been Wrecked by Ebola. "Months before the Ebola virus crossed over the border from
neighboring Guinea, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon described Sierra
Leone as "an inspiring experience for international peace-building
efforts." The country, ravaged by a civil war that spanned the 1990s and
early 2000s, was seemingly on track for economic growth and social
stability." Read full article on Vice. E.T.P. 7'
Finally AFP reports that up to one million can be facing hunger in Ebola-hit countries. "Border closures, quarantines and crop losses in West
African nations battling the Ebola virus could lead to as many as one
million people going hungry, UN food agencies said on Wednesday. The deadly haemorrhagic fever that has killed 6,800 people has
severely disrupted daily life in the worst-hit nations of Liberia,
Guinea and Sierra Leone, the latter two of which have gone so far as to
ban Christmas celebrations. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme
said the disease and the resulting restrictions had "caused a
significant shock to the food and agriculture sectors in the affected
countries". Read full article in Yahoo. E.T.P. 2'
Photo via Hamodia.com
The late
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez helped keep the Cuban regime propped
up, but that's not possible in an era of low oil prices, writes Girish Gupta in Time Magazine. "It is likely not a coincidence that talks between the United States
and Cuba—which culminated yesterday in an announcement that the two
countries would begin to resume full diplomatic relations—began just
after the death the former Venezuelan president who had bankrolled
Cuba’s Revolution.
Photo via The Economist.
"THE oil price has fallen by more than 40% since June, when it was $115 a
barrel. It is now below $70. This comes after nearly five years of
stability. At a meeting in Vienna on November 27th the Organisation of
Petroleum Exporting Countries, which controls nearly 40% of the world
market, failed to reach agreement on production curbs, sending the price
tumbling. Also hard hit are oil-exporting countries such as Russia
(where the rouble has hit record lows), Nigeria, Iran and Venezuela. Why
is the price of oil falling?" The Economist explains it, read full article here. E.T.P. 3'
The Economist shared a couple of days ago the Good Country Index, and index that tries to measure how much each country on earth contributes to the planet and to the human race.
"Released on June 24th by Simon Anholt, an independent policy advisor,
aims to overcome this. It ranks countries based on how much they do for
others globally. Ireland and Finland come on top; Libya is rock bottom.
The measure is based on 35 datasets broken down into seven areas, such
as technology, health and culture. The idea is clever but the execution
is tricky. The index often scales countries on a GDP basis to give poor
countries a chance against rich ones." Although the index is flawed is some aspects, it is important (for me) to highlight how after 16 years of ""revolution"" (yes, doble inverted commas), Venezuela is now in the bottom 10 in Technology, Culture, Prosperity and Equality, that means that the contribution of Venezuela in those areas to the world is close to nothing... not that we didn't already know that. Anyway. Find out more about the nuances of this peculiar index in The Economist. E.T.P. 3'
Hello dear friends! It's already December and you already know that, but come on, this seriously deserves a wow. So, wow! Hope you have some nice, meaningful, warm and sweet procrastination planned for this Christmas holidays. I know I am (:
In our News section; Ferguson verdict consequences and the trick the genius town of Wunsiedel in southeastern German, used to make neo-nazis march against themselves. In Design, Business and Innovation: a privacy lawyer explains what the new Terms and Conditions of Facebook will mean to you; bank notes that celebrate science and not presidents; and a nice article about how to take a productive approach to procrastination via Fast Company and our friend Jorge (obrigada!). Two great articles about the power of melancholy and alter-egos in our Culture & Entertainment section. Nine emerging trends in pet food for gourmet dogs only, and the adorable Beans in this week's In Dog We Trust by La Guía del Perro. And finally, for Our Weekly Procrastination we visited two nice exhibitions of two great photographers: Roman Vishniac and Martin Parr.
As an extra in this week's editorial we invite you to visit the project of our great collaborator, fellow procrastinator and zoanthropic friend Marie: The Pink Pony. A social enterprise that is looking to create meaningful connections between business organisations and local communities in London through play. Sounds fun, right? Well, it is. Visit the brand new Pink Pony website and find out more about this great project and ways to get involved (:
Hope you have a lovely, festive, and not too cold, couple of weeks. Happy Sunday and happy reading! x NEWS
Photo via The Economist.
The Ferguson verdict in black and white: Police officers who sometimes employ excessive force are almost never indicted for it, and such
impunity, that in cases like this appears to be the norm, is for saying the least insidious. "We shouldn't be at all surprised by the grand jury's verdict. While it
is generally easy to get an indictment, it is extremely difficult to
indict a police officer. This is especially true for homicide, as Jamelle Bouie writes.
While 410 "justifiable homicides" were reported by the FBI in 2012,
there were virtually no indictments of police for killing people. FiveThirtyEight's Ben Casselman wonders
whether the difference is based on jurors being more inclined to trust
police; prosecutors being less inclined to make cases aggressively
against police; or prosecutors being forced to bring weak cases against
police, due to political pressure." Read full article in The Economist. E.T.P. 5' Read also The Ferguson Veredict. E.T.P. 2'
Policemen are standing next to banners of the
action group "Wunsiedel is Colorful" along the route of a demonstration
by far-right extremists. (Fricke/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images) Via Washington Post.
"For decades, neo-Nazis have traveled to the southeastern German town
of Wunsiedel, where Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler's deputy, was buried until
2011. The right-wing extremists march through the town in commemoration
of Hess year after year, glorifying the horrors of the Third Reich.
This
time, however, everything was different: Although Wunsiedel's
inhabitants had observed the march from a distance over the past years,
this Nov. 15, some of them welcomed the neo-Nazi protesters effusively
with rainbow confetti and even cheered for them. . . The group Rights versus Rights (Rechts gegen Rechts) had come up with a
new way to protest the annual neo-Nazi march: For every meter the
neo-Nazis walked, local businesses and residents would donate $12.50 to a
nongovernmental organization devoted to making it easier for neo-Nazis
to leave behind their hateful politics." Simply brilliant! Watch the video in The Washington Post. E.T.P. 2'
In our News section we have three articles about the Ayotzinapa tragedy in México via Vice, AlJazeera America and Fusion. Oh Mexico, I really feel you, and I'm not the only one as this past week there were protest in several cities across the globe organized mainly via social media by people that want to express their solidarity with the Mexican people and their outrage and disgust to the Mexican government. On the contrary, in Venezuela -and I can't not mention this, I'm sorry- our students were brutally murdered, also by thugs and the police, and jailed in the worst prisons and without due process and nobody but us seemed to care. I guess that human rights violations powered by drug money look a bit worse than the ones powered by oil-money. But believe me, they both hurt the same.
Anyway. We are sharing an AlJazeera America article that summarizes the Ayotzinapa situation in around 3 min, for those of you who have not heard much; the trailer of a Vice soon-to-come documentary, you know these guys are good at their immersive journalism stuff; and a nice op-ed
article in English written by Enrique Acevedo titled: What the
Ayotzinapa tragedy says about Mexico. If any of my friends that live in México want to share
more (I don't necessarily know the best sources), please do.
In our Science & Technology section: Americans seems to be super concerned about privacy, but they act as they don't, and the reason is that often they don’t have real choice, all that and your brain in magic mushrooms. Are you waiting for a stroke of genius that change your life forever? Good, me too. Just keep calm and get older, read
about it in our Design, Business & Innovation section. In Culture & Entertainment, the relationship between art & anthropology, 10 things we can learn about Bill Murray and the most widely used adjective derived from the name of a modern writer... can you guess which one it is? Finally in Our Weekly Procrastination, some photos from Inside, the wonderful exhibition currently at the Palais de Tokyo.
NEWS
Protesters at a government building in Chilpancingo, Guerrero. (Photo by Hans-Maximo Musielik) via VICE.
"On September 26, teaching students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School in
Mexico were intercepted by police forces en route to a protest in
Iguala. In the ensuing clash, six people were killed, and 43
Ayotzinapa students were taken away by the police. Investigations over
the following weeks led to the startling allegations that the police had
acted at the behest of the local mayor, and had turned over the
abducted students to members of the Guerreros Unidos cartel. All 43
students are now feared dead." Check out the trailer, related links and the rest of the article in Vice. E.T.P. 3'
Photo via Huffington Post.
"The Mexican Revolution, which launched on Nov. 20, 1910, was the
first major political and social revolution of the 20th century. It
brought an end to Porfirio Díaz’s 34-year dictatorship and transformed
Mexico through land reform, the implementation of presidential term
limits and the nationalization of natural resources. Today, on the 104th anniversary of the revolution, Mexico faces another defining moment. . .Though drug-war-related violence has not let up during the first two
years of President Enrique Peña Nieto’s term, he has largely ignored it.
What’s more, his administration has changed the narrative to focus on
Mexico as an economic success story . . . But now Peña Nieto, as well as the foreign investors he has worked so
hard to court, can no longer avoid acknowledging the pervasive
violence, corruption and impunity that continue to plague Mexico. The
Sept. 26 abduction of 43 students in the southwestern state of Guerrero
has eliminated whatever credibility his pivoting to economic issues
might have had." Read full article in AlJazeera America. E.T.P. 4'
Photo via Noticieros Televisa.
"Mexico is a nation of stark contrasts. A country where
obesity and acute malnutrition coexist; the home of the world’s richest
man and 53 million people living under the poverty line, almost half of
the population. Nonetheless, there is a historic gap that explains Mexico
better than any other disparity. This is the fracture created by the
absence of the rule of law, one that divides those who infringe norms
with ease and the victims that suffer from rampant impunity.
In some countries, justice in the court system can be
bought, in Mexico it has become a luxury that only a few can afford.
Those that don’t have the money or the influence are left defenseless,
at the mercy of savage criminals and corrupt government officials, who
occasionally act like one and the same, as we’ve seen in Iguala where
six students were killed and 43 others went missing.
Our worst nightmares materialized last Friday when Mexico’s
Attorney General, Jesus Murillo Karam, detailed the gruesome acts
behind the kidnapping and murder of the Ayotzinapa students. We all knew
the chances of finding them alive after more than 40 days were slim at
best. But no one imagined the brutal way in which their lives allegedly
ended – asphyxiation, their bodies burned in a pile, their bones
crushed.
The remains have been tampered with to the point where they
had to be sent to the Innsbruck Medical University in Austria for DNA
identification." Read full article in Fusion. E.T.P. 4'
Marcus Wohlsen's Wired article explicitly called "How Facebook Could End Up Controlling Everything You Watch and Read Online" would have been quoted so many times in a second part of my dissertation about information on the move... but since that imaginary second part is not happening (anytime soon, at least), at least I get to share it here. Anyone interested in the future of news, journalism, publishing, content creation and marketing, and well, the Internet in general, should have a look. Here's a fragment of the article: "Given that links appear to be more clickable when shared on Facebook,
online publishers have scrambled to become savvy gamers of Facebook’s
News Feed, seeking to divine the secret rules that push some stories
higher than others. But all this genuflection at the altar of Facebook’s
algorithms may be but a prelude to a more fundamental shift in how
content is produced, shared, and consumed online. Instead of going to
all this trouble to get people to click a link on Facebook that takes
them somewhere else, the future of Internet content may be a world in
which no video, article, or cat GIF gallery lives outside of Facebook at
all." Read full article in Wired. E.T.P. 5'
Image via The Economist.
And obviously related to the previous article, Alexandra Suich writes for The Economist print edition a nice piece about how technology is profoundly changing the advertising business. This is fragment of Little Brother: "In 1963 David Ogilvy . . . wrote: 'An
advertisement is like a radar sweep, constantly hunting new prospects as
they come into the market. Get a good radar, and keep it sweeping.'
Half a century later advertisers are at last taking him at his word.
Behavioural profiling has gone viral across the internet, enabling firms
to reach users with specific messages based on their location,
interests, browsing history and demographic group. Ads can now follow
users from site to site: a customer who looks online for flights to
Frankfurt will be inundated with German holiday offers. Conversant, a
digital-marketing firm, uses an algorithm to deliver around 800,000
variations of an ad to its big clients’ prospective customers to make it
as irresistible as possible. . . Extreme personalisation in advertising has been slow to come, except in
search advertising, where Google, Yahoo and other engines have been
serving up ads tailored to users’ interests for years. But now it has
arrived in earnest. According to one poll by Adobe, a software company,
most marketers say they have seen more change in the past two years than
in the previous 50." Read full article in The Economist. E.T.P. 6'
Back in 1959 Asimov participated in a series of work sessions with a group of scientists, contractors and military working on approaching the American ballistic defense system in an innovative way. Regardless of the money spent in research, the people involved in the project didn't manage to actually think 'outside of the box', that's where Asimov -invited by Arthur Obermayer- started collaborating with them. After a few meetings though, he decided to leave because he didn't want to know any classified information that would limit his freedom of expression. However, before leaving he wrote this essay that is publish in the MIT Technology Review. Have a look. E.T.P. 6'
Photo: New York, by William Klein. Courtesy HackelBury Fine Art via The Guardian.
Sean O'Hagan interviewed some of the world's greatest photographers like Nan Goldin, Juergen Teller and Martin Parr to find out which photobook would they grab in a fire. Great names came out: Nobuyoshi Araki, William Klein, Ryan McGinley and Boris Mikhailov. Find out who rescues who in The Guardian. E.T.P. 4'
Photo via The Economist.
"The Musée Picasso enjoys virtually sacred status in France. It
symbolises the union of Pablo Picasso, the most prolific artist of the
20th century, and Paris, the city he loved and lived in. The 5,000 works
in its collection have peerless provenance; they belonged to Picasso
himself, and were given to the French state by his heirs in lieu of
inheritance tax. The museum reopens its doors on October 25th after a
five-year renovation of its stately home, a 17th-century hôtel particulier in the city’s fashionable Marais district." This goes straight to the To Do List! Read full article in The Economist. E.T.P. 3'
Hello friends, happy last September Sunday (*long scream in mute*).
In the News section firstly we have an article about Venezuela's almost impossible fall to bankruptcy (almost impossible, sadly does not mean impossible); secondly, an interesting op-ed article in which Paul Mason lists the things that a city needs to be perfect (in his very personal opinion, and to some extent, also in mine); and finally, Julian Assange on Google: "it really wasn't personal, until yesterday". In our Design, Business & Innovation section we reflect on how design have moved from aesthetic realm to the worlds of strategy and collaboration; plus Alibaba, the new worldwide giant; and the digital version of (y)our beloved Post-Its. The Culture & Entertainment section showcases the wonderful collaboration between photographer Sandro Miller and John Malkovich; "A Life Worth Living", Albert Camus and the search for meaning; and the project "Is the New" via The Diagram. In Dog We Trust by La Guía del Perro shares with us 21 facts about dogs that will blow your mind (yes, they will blow your mind like an Upworthy headline), and the influence of Lassie and 101 Dalmatians on our dog preferences. Finally, for Our Weekly Procrastination we visited the Dennis Hopper exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, have a look (:
If you still don't follow us in Twitter, well... you should. And if you still don't have a Procrastinator Tote Bag, well... you could. Just saying.
Happy Sunday and happy reading.
NEWS
Illustration via The Economist.
"Venezuela’s streets are calmer now than earlier this year, when clashes
between opposition protesters and government forces left more than 40
people dead. The reshuffle appears to have strengthened Mr Maduro’s
position. Bondholders may well keep getting paid. But the price of the
revolution’s survival seems to be the slow death of Venezuela." There is not much to be add, just read full article in The Economist. E.T.P. 3'
Photo via The Guardian.
From a close body of water warm enough to swim in to cab drivers who are banned from giving you their opinion, Paul Mason, the economist editor of Channel 4 news, inspired by George Orwell's great imaginary pub Moon Under Water, lists the 10 (real) things that a perfect city needs. I love his list and his invitation to dream on. "For the Economist, it's Melbourne, Vienna and Toronto; for Monocle
magazine, it is Melbourne, Tokyo and Copenhagen; for the global
recruitment consultancy Mercer, the index of "most liveable cities" begins with Vienna, Zurich and Auckland. When
I read these lists, which are nearly always topped by cities in
Australia, Canada and Scandinavia, I imagine them being compiled by a
terrified, monogamous young couple dressed head to toe in Uniqlo or Gap.
Their typical criteria – low crime rates, cheap private schools and
access to world-class outdoor sports – always seem to match those of the
stereotypical modern salaryman, not the complex real-world individual." Read full article in The Guardian. E.T.P. 5'
Photo via The Guardian.
James Camp on The Guardian: "How does a wanted man have a book party? On Wednesday night
at Babycastles, a Manhattan videogame-art collective, Julian Assange
celebrated the publication of his new book, When Google Met WikiLeaks.
He was present via videochat. The collectivists projected him on their
walls. A crowd had formed to see the shining-haired hacker king –
youngish New Yorkers, mostly. They stood or sat and drank beers as
Assange talked about the internet.
Assange said: “Compare the mission statements of Google and
the NSA – the NSA, who literally say, ‘We want to collect all private
information, pool it, store it, sort it, index it, and exploit it.’
Whereas Google says, ‘We want to collect all private information, pool
it, store it, sort it, and sell those profiles to advertisers.’ Really,
they’re almost identical.” Read full article in The Guardian. E.T.P 4'
This week's edition include an article about the controversial European elections highlighting that the results are only the reflections of what it awaits when the left (in this particular case, but it can be the other way around) fails to live up to its promises. Self-driving cars and surveillance is it something that we should be worrying about? Read about it in our Science & Technology section. In Design, Business and Innovation the cheapest 3-D Printer developed by Frog Ventures, and why is the dead of the hompage give rise to news that's more about
readers? Nan Goldin taking children and Instagram via Dazed Digital and an interesting discussion on the perspectives of humanities Ph.Ds graduates via The Atlantic in our Culture & Entertainment section. In Dog We Trust talks about breeds and sterotypes, what happens if your dog behaves differently than he is "supposed" to, and introduce us to the incredibly cute Vegas, the boston.
"The extraordinary success of Marine Le Pen’s National Front, in
France, and of other right-wing, populist parties has, with good reason,
been the main story of last weekend’s European Parliamentary elections.
Running on an anti-euro, anti-immigration platform, Le Pen won a
historic twenty-five per cent of the vote, handily outpolling France’s
main conservative party, the U.M.P., which earned only twenty-one per
cent, and trouncing the Socialist Party of President François Hollande,
which received an alarmingly small fourteen per cent. But Sunday’s
election also produced another surprising, historic result, which has
received much less attention: in Italy, Matteo Renzi, of the Democratic
Party, won forty-one per cent of the vote, the largest total ever for a
left-of-center party in Italy, a curious countertrend on a day marked by
the advance of the right.
Placed in juxtaposition, the result in
Italy helps us to understand why the vote in France turned out as it
did; the French election could serve as a sobering warning to Renzi
about what may await him if he fails to live up to his promises." Read full article in The New Yorker. E.T.P. 5'
Photo Reuters via The Economist.
The World Cup is still two weeks away, but for children worldwide (plus disturbing number of adults), the race to complete the Panini Brazil 2014 sticker book started long ago. Panini, an Italian firm, hast produced sticker albums for World Cups since the tournament in Mexico in 1970; this year's version has 640 stickers to collect. The market for the stickers is not just for kids, however; it is also for micro-economis. Getting every slot filled delivers an early lesson in probability; the value of statistical tests; the laws of supply and demand; and the importance of liquidity. Read full article in The Economist. E.T.P. 3'
THE
World Cup is still two weeks away, but for children worldwide (plus
disturbing numbers of adults), the race to complete the Panini Brazil
2014 sticker book started long ago. Panini, an Italian firm, has
produced sticker albums for World Cups since the tournament in Mexico in
1970; this year’s version has 640 stickers to collect (Brazilians are
being forced to find nine sponsor cards, too). The market for the
stickers is not just for kids, however; it is also for micro-economists.
Getting every slot filled delivers an early lesson in probability; the
value of statistical tests; the laws of supply and demand; and the
importance of liquidity. - See more at:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/05/economist-explains-13?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/bl/ee/tr/theeconomicsofpaninifootballstickers#sthash.QXGp6ZiJ.dpuf
THE
World Cup is still two weeks away, but for children worldwide (plus
disturbing numbers of adults), the race to complete the Panini Brazil
2014 sticker book started long ago. Panini, an Italian firm, has
produced sticker albums for World Cups since the tournament in Mexico in
1970; this year’s version has 640 stickers to collect (Brazilians are
being forced to find nine sponsor cards, too). The market for the
stickers is not just for kids, however; it is also for micro-economists.
Getting every slot filled delivers an early lesson in probability; the
value of statistical tests; the laws of supply and demand; and the
importance of liquidity. - See more at:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/05/economist-explains-13?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/bl/ee/tr/theeconomicsofpaninifootballstickers#sthash.QXGp6ZiJ.dpuf
This week's edition features two articles about the victory of of Hindu nationalist Nadendra Modi in India's elections via The Economist and Forbes. Postal services suspended indefinitely and more airlines fleeing Venezuela. In our Science & Technology section Le nouvel Observateur asks if we are living a detox overdose, and Wired shares the story of Oculus Rift. Baratunde Thruston asks if brands will stop trying to 'join the conversation' and actually make products worth talking about in our Design, Business & Innovation section where you can also have a look at some of the Kickstarter projects in NYCxDesign at MoMA. While in Culture & Entertainment, Dazed Digital asks what was really on that famous Pulp Fiction briefcase. La Guía del Perro share with us articles about shelter dogs helping bullied kids and the wonderful Phoenix in In Dog We Trust. And finally Germán is back with a new Sunday (some) Times wishing you all a happy Towel Day!
Happy Sunday, happy reading!
NEWS
Photo via The Independent.
While The Economist appears to be 'economically content' with the election of Narendra Modi as India Prime Minister and dedicate its last cover to him saying that "now, for the first time ever, India has a strong government whose
priority is growth. Narendra Modi, who leads the Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP), has won a tremendous victory on the strength of promising to make
India’s economy work." They clarify that they do not endorse him, but 'looking at the big picture' wish him success anyway: "because we
believe that he has not atoned sufficiently for the massacre of Muslims
that took place in Gujarat while he was chief minister, we wish him
every success: an Indian growth miracle would be a great thing not just
for Indians, but also for the world." Read full article in The Independent. E.T.P. 7'
Forbes assumed a much more critical position and questioned if Narenda will be a Prime Minister of all Indians: "Unfortunatly India’s presumptive prime minister, Narendra Modi, was implicated in one
of the country’s worst episodes of sectarian violence. In 2002 in the
state of Gujarat, in which Modi served as chief minister, Hindu rioters
killed more than 1200 people, mostly Muslims, and forced 150,000 people
from their homes. Eventually the Indian military and national police
restored order. Critics charged Modi with both encouraging the violence
and failing to stop it. Investigations and court cases went on for
years." Read full article in Forbes. E.T.P. 8'
Photo: The Procrastinator (some) Times.
And in Venezuelan news, the postal service (that was extraordinarily bad already) has been suspended international mail deliveries. "Employees at the state-run company Ipostel
told local media that the service had fallen victim to an ongoing
dispute with international airlines over currency controls.
According to El Universal,
postal workers said tonnes of undelivered international mail had
accumulated at Ipostel sorting offices after deliveries to at least 29
countries were suspended.
"The company is practically bankrupt, not
only with its international deliveries but also its basic services
because we have no materials or equipment," said Jose Gallardo, of a
labour union in the eastern state of Anzoategui."
The same article in the Guardian explains that basically international deliveries are impossible because of a dispute
between Venezuela and international airlines as at least three major
carriers have stopped or reduced flights to Venezuela: Air Canada, Lufthansa and Alitalia. t has claimed more than 40 lives in three months. "According to the International Air Transport Association, Venezuela owes around $4bn to international carriers." Read full article in The Guardian. E.T.P. 4'
The Venezuelan government also owes US$4bn to the local pharmaceutical industry, and this is traduced in a major scarcity of medicines and treatments. Here is the article in El Universal (link in Spanish). E.T.P. 2'
This been another one of those weeks. Just when the international press started to forget about Venezuela, the government give them reasons not to. We feature news from The Economist, Mashable and El Universal, among others, and you can find the link to the Human Rights Watch report called "Punished for Protesting: Rights violations in Venezuela's Streets, Detention Centers and Justice System". The latest news about Boko Haram and the kidnapping of around 300 school girls in Nigeria can also be found in this section.
In our Science section, an interesting article about having or not having sex with robots, that is the question. Celebrities in ads, a great language exchange program and plans of building a train between China and America in our Design, Business & Innovation. In the Culture & Entertainment section the Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society takes off, Paul McInnes writes in The Guardian about Studio Ghibli after The Wind Rises and Semi Chellas interview Matthew Wiener for The Paris Review. Finally, In Dog We Trust shares interesting links about bullying and happy dogs in Australia.
Also, today is Mother's Day in Venezuela and I want to send a big kiss to my mum, my granny, and to all my lovely friends with kids in Venezuela (and I think in the US too!). Hope you have an amazing Sunday.
According to The Guardian: "Nigerian security forces were aware that an armed convoy of Boko Haram militants was approaching the town of Chibok almost four hours before the extremists kidnapped 300 girls from a school in the town, Amnesty International said on Friday. The
human rights group claimed the military was warned an attack was
imminent but did not send reinforcements because of a lack of resources
and an unwillingness to engage with well-armed insurgents. Read full article in The Guardian. E.T.P. 7'
Al Jazeera reports: "Nigeria's president has said that his country will
win its "war on terror", despite another attack by Boko Haram fighters
in the northeast that reportedly killed hundreds. Read full reportage in Al Jazeera. E.T.P. 6'
And finally The Independent adds: "Intelligence sources believe girls kidnapped
from a school in Nigeria may have been split into four groups after they
were taken by militant Islamist group Boko Haram, making finding them an increasingly difficult task." Read full article in The Independent. E.T.P. 8'
Photo: Carlos García Rawlins (Reuters) via Newsweek.
Earlier this week The Economist published an article about Human Rights violations in Venezuela that highlighting the findings of the Human Rights Watch (HRW) report called "Punished for Protesting: Rights violations in Venezuela's Streets, Detention Centers and Justice System". The Economist article describe how late President Hugo Chávez's revolution took off the "pretty revolution" mask and started revealing its (at least to the world, we've always know) real face.
"Since Chávez’s death last year from cancer,
the pretty revolution’s make-up has begun to peel. His successor,
Nicolás Maduro, has none of the comandante’s famous charisma,
and growth in oil income has stalled. Anger over food shortages and
uncontrolled violent crime spilled over in February into nationwide
protests. The government’s response has been a harsh crack-down that has
seen over 2,500 people detained so far. Human-rights groups say
excessive use of force, beatings and denial of due process have been
routine.
In the first detailed report on the subject by an international
body, released on May 5th, HRW accuses police and
national-guard members of “routinely” using unlawful force against
armed protesters . . . with the complicity
of prosecutors and judges, who both “turned a blind eye’ to human-rights
violations and deliberately hindered detainees’ access to their
families and lawyers."
Photo: Jorge Silva (Reuters) via El Universal.
Almost to prove HRW right, the Venezuelan government, just days after another round of violent attacks to some Venezuelan
universities like the UCAB in Caracas and the Fermín Toro in Lara (link in Spanish),
in a extreme (but not surprising) act of cowardice and abuse of power,
sent its security forces to dismantle four student camps across Caracas,
as Mashable says "in the wee hours of Thursday in coordinated raids
that ended
with the arrest of 243 students. It's one of the government's biggest
crackdowns on the student protests that have been sweeping the country
for more than two months."
Some people believe that the amount of students jailed in that operation
is bigger. And while the government congratulate its security forces
for putting in jail more than 200 students whose only "crime" was
protesting, there has been already 4860 people murdered in the first
four months of the year (link in Spanish),
that is around 40 people everyday. To stop insecurity and violence
State's security forces are far less efficient, or maybe they had not
even been instructed to do so.
Chart via CATO.org (click to enlarge).
Finally, to finish with the Venezuelan news of the week, the CATO Foundation published the Misery Index ranking of 2013, "the misery index concept can be applied to any country where suitable
data exist. A misery index — a simple sum of inflation, lending rates,
and unemployment rates, minus year-on-year per capita GDP growth — is
used to construct a ranking for 89 countries." Venezuela, of course, holds the Top Spot with an index value of 79. 4. Although, Steve H. Hanke, the author of the article in Cato.org adds: "I estimate that
Venezuela’s annual implied inflation rate at the end of last year was
278%. That rate is almost five times higher than the official inflation
rate. If the annual implied inflation rate of 278% is used to calculate
Venezuela’s misery index, the index jumps from 79. 4 to 301, indicating
that Venezuela is in much worse shape than suggested by the official
data.""The accompanying chart confirms Friedman’s observation. In Venezuela, 28% of basic products are not available."
Lucy Hunter Johnston in The Independent: "Fear of a robot taking over your job is growing. A One Poll
survey just out says that 31 per cent of us suffer from this anxiety.
Then again, it’s not all bad news when it comes to man and machine: 17
per cent of us would also happily hop into bed with them. It’s
a statistic that raises a number of questions. Is sex with a robot
cheating? Would there be an age of consent? But perhaps the least
obvious is: what do the other 83% have against the idea?" Interesting, huh? Read full article in The Independent. E.T.P. 8'
Photo: The Procrastinator (some) Times.
ELECTRONIC cigarettes made their American debut seven years
ago. People have bickered about them ever since. Some praise
e-cigarettes—which deliver a vapour with nicotine, but no tobacco—for
helping traditional smokers to quit. Others fret that they will promote
nicotine addiction and reduce the stigma of smoking, which in America
now ranks somewhere between theft and public indecency.
On April 24th American regulators stepped in (as the
European Parliament did in February). The Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) proposed rules for e-cigarettes. These would, among other things,
ban sales to children and require firms to list ingredients, include
warnings that nicotine is addictive and register new products with the
agency. The FDA did not propose banning flavours or advertising, but may
do so in future. It will accept comments on its plan until July 9th.
Even after it finalises this set of rules, it may later issue further
restrictions. The Economist. E.T.P. 4'
