Category: politics
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The World is Flat – Audiobook Giveaway
The Other Side of Outsourcing is a Discovery Channel documentary by Thomas Friedman on high-tech outsourcing to India. In it Friedman visits a call centre in Bangalore to interview the young Indians working there, and then travels to an impoverished rural part of India where he debates the pros and cons of globalization with locals.…
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Barackbook
Republican site Barackbook mocks Obama’s Facebook support. With ‘his’ status set as “Barack is hoping to settle on an Iraq policy before November”, Barackbook attempts to highlight some of Obama’s “more controversial real life ‘friends,’ while cheerfully mocking his much-hailed online sheen”. In all, the site is a shockingly clever 21st century twist on the…
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Man-in-the-Middle Attacks
Bruce Schneier on Man-in-the-Middle attacks: The Wall Street Journal reported how this gambit played out in Colombia [FARC tricked into releasing 15 hostages]: “The plan had a chance of working because, for months, in an operation one army officer likened to a ‘broken telephone,’ military intelligence had been able to convince Ms. Betancourt’s captor, Gerardo…
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Male and Female Privilege
Following on from yesterday’s post on white privilege, here are two further lists on male and female privilege: The Male Privilege Checklist I will never be expected to change my name upon marriage or questioned if I don’t change my name. If I have children but do not provide primary care for them, my masculinity…
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Legal Cases That Changed Britain
The Times has now concluded its series on The (Legal) Cases That Changed Britain: 1785 – 2006. DPP v Ray July 27, 1973 This case settled an important principle of law applicable to people caught legging it out of restaurants without paying. It has been applied countless times since. After eating a meal in the…
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White Privilege
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, is an article by Peggy McIntosh on the invisible privileges of being white. I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my…
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Media Ownership and Mergers
Neatorama on media ownership – The Big Six of US media (via Link Banana). Last year I linked to a similar chart, from 1991, showing the media ownership of The Big Ten multinational conglomerates. Mother Jones has an appealing visual representation of 25 years of media mergers and how the biggest media conglomerates in the…
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The Disadvantages of an Elite Education
William Deresiewicz on the foibles of the Ivy League elite: Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds, not careers. […] With respect to class, these schools are largely—indeed increasingly—homogeneous. Visit any elite campus in our great nation and you can thrill to the heartwarming spectacle of the children…
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Using Cognitive Bias: Politics and Policy
You may have noticed that I’ve recently been fascinated by everything cognitive bias. With the release of Nudge—a book looking at how politicians around the world are using cognitive bias—the general public are now going to be hearing about it a lot more too. The Times has a nice case-study where the theories are used…