"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do."
- Samuel P. Huntington (via thepeacefulterrorist)
(Source: gardariki, via fortunatelight)
"The implications of such findings are clear: if those promoting the sharing economy agree on the need for a shift in public awareness that can effect real change in society, we need to emphasise the wider environmental and social benefits of sharing and not the purely personal benefits, such as financial savings. Stimulating values that go beyond self-interest in this way is far more likely to encourage social and environmental activism of the kind sorely needed today. Without much more effective public engagement in the politics that maintain unsustainable lifestyles, it will be impossible to address the long term solutions to inequality and climate change."
- Values and the Sharing Economy (via azspot)
(via azspot)
"When women are sexualized, it reinforces the idea that women exist just for a man’s needs. … Even in princess movies, however harmless they may seem, still show girls sexually. In G-rated movies, female characters look just as sexy or revealing as they do in R rated movies, a study shows. These characters, with busts big and waists small, ride off into the sunset at age 16 with a prince they barely know."
- SPARK at the 57th United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (via misterbone)
(Source: cockchomp, via thecouscousqueen)
Will giving the internet eyes and ears mean the end of privacy?
The internet has turned into a massive surveillance tool. We’re constantly monitored on the internet by hundreds of companies — both familiar and unfamiliar. Everything we do there is recorded, collected, and collated – sometimes by corporations wanting to sell us stuff and sometimes by governments wanting to keep an eye on us.
Ephemeral conversation is over. Wholesale surveillance is the norm. Maintaining privacy from these powerful entities is basically impossible, and any illusion of privacy we maintain is based either on ignorance or on our unwillingness to accept what’s really going on.
It’s about to get worse, though. Companies such as Google may know more about your personal interests than your spouse, but so far it’s been limited by the fact that these companies only see computer data. And even though your computer habits are increasingly being linked to your offline behaviour, it’s still only behaviour that involves computers.
The Internet of Things refers to a world where much more than our computers and cell phones is internet-enabled. Soon there will be internet-connected modules on our cars and home appliances. Internet-enabled medical devices will collect real-time health data about us. There’ll be internet-connected tags on our clothing. In its extreme, everything can be connected to the internet. It’s really just a matter of time, as these self-powered wireless-enabled computers become smaller and cheaper.
(Source: azspot)
Race in the Eye of the Beholder
Americans tend to think of race as a fixed characteristic defined by descent. During the early 20th century the “one-drop rule” crystallized legal segregation. Anyone with any known African ancestry was to be classified and treated simply as black. The rule applied even to people who appeared to be white, such as Walter White, a prominent early member of the NAACP.
The very fact that the United States tried so hard to impose such sharp distinctions suggests that race was not so much a biological or genetic characteristic but a socially constructed one. If racial differences were “natural,” how could the same person be considered blanca (white) in Brazil, or perhaps mestiza in Mexico, but black in the United States? How could the same person be described by the Census as “White” in 1910, “Hindu” in 1930, “Other” in 1960, and “Asian Indian” from 1980 on?
Nevertheless, most Americans still think a person’s race is fairly obvious and unchanging; we know it the minute we meet him or her. Similarly, most academic research also treats race as fixed and foreordained. A person’s race comes first and then his or her experiences, education, job, neighborhood, income, and well-being follow. My research with Andrew Penner on how survey respondents were classified by race over the course of their lives, calls into question this seemingly obvious “fact.”
(Source: azspot)
"Demonstrators today are using their bodies to send a message to Eric Holder that it is time to stop shielding the big Wall Street banks from prosecution. Hundreds of homeowners who have been playing by the rules while the big banks have cheated them are risking arrest at the Department of Justice to make an unmistakable statement: it is about time for the government to side with poor and middle class folks who the bankers have screwed rather than those banks who have been cheating them."
- Mike Lux: The Courage to Put Yourself on the Line (via azspot)
(via azspot)
The Revolution is Upon Us
Around 500 A.D., “barbarians” sought to subjugate Rome by wiping out its underlying religion. Christianity went underground. In abbeys like Iona, monks painstakingly copied Scripture and civilization’s great writings, in effect saving Western civilization itself.
Around 1000 A.D. came the “Great Schism,” when the Western church based in Rome and the Eastern church based in Constantinople fought over creeds and doctrine, political power and cultural hegemony. That split endures to this day between Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism.
Around 1500 A.D. came the Protestant Reformation, when nationalism born of exploration in the New World and new commercial wealth demanded an end to Rome’s domination of European life. That split, too, endures.
Now comes a new millennium, and Christianity wears so many different faces that it’s difficult to speak of a single “Christian movement.” We see more than 1,500 denominations in the U.S. alone, by one count. There’s a vast chasm between “First World Christianity” and the booming churches of Africa and Latin America; the virtual collapse of both Reformed and Roman churches in Europe; and now a relentless decline of institutional Christianity in North America.
(Source: azspot)
Why Is Tumblr Worth $1.1 Billion to Yahoo?
This business model would grind to a halt if a form of opt-in, as the European Union is now considering, is required before data supplied to one outlet, say Tumblr, is shared with other prying eyes, be they of corporate or government entities. As it is, sites such as Tumblr and Instagram became popular because they appeared to bestow a measure of privacy by not offering advertising. An aggressive ad program of the kind Yahoo needs to recoup its investment could fatally alienate Tumblr’s core constituency.
But shredding privacy is the essence of Tumblr’s appeal to Yahoo, and even though it has said it will retain the social networking site’s founders in key positions, one way or another that very personal data will be mined and inevitably fall into what users will discover to be the wrong hands. That is truly scary, for private space is the necessary incubator of personal freedom.
(Source: azspot)
