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On Campus, the ’60s Begin to Fade as Liberal Professors Retire - NYTimes.com

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:56:38 -0000

Tags: no_tag

Posted by: meanthony

Strafe für Lewis und Nico

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:01:01 -0000

Tags: formel1 hamilton

Posted by: ericola

happiOCRACY: government made simple

Fri, 30 May 2008 06:06:47 -0000

Tags: happiocracy

Posted by: nariza

Dominanz in Rot. Istanbul-GP

Mon, 26 May 2008 20:53:48 -0000

Tags: formel1

Posted by: ericola

Farbenpracht im Sommer. Lantana Camara-Hybriden

Sat, 24 May 2008 09:51:45 -0000

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Posted by: ericola

Economics, the soulful science | openDemocracy

Sun, 18 May 2008 12:36:39 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

I believe (as I argue in my book The Soulful Science) that economics offers a uniquely powerful way of thinking about society, and how individuals make choices in their social context. Other approaches, those of the other social sciences, or history or literature and music, are valid too - I feel no need to dismiss them. But only economics with its choice-based models emphasises the opportunity costs and trade-offs that inevitably arise from the social and physical realities of our existence.

Perhaps the reason why so many 'non-economists' as well as non-neoclassical-economics are dismissive of neoclassical economics (even of the neoinstitutional sort) is that so many celebrated neoclassical economists combine study of a discipline whose assumptions are relevant only to a very restrictive set of uses, with arrogant and misguided proclamations that neoclassical economics is the savior of the social sciences. posted by pickinjava

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Posted by: pickinjava

Byzantium: always an Empire, never a Nation | openDemocracy

Wed, 14 May 2008 15:21:02 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

It does indeed sound a lot like the European Union, and not by accident. But actually it makes more sense to compare the Union to the Holy Roman Empire than to Byzantinium as in contrast to the later, they both lack an imperial center, a metropolis like Rome for the Roman Empire or Constantinople for Byzantinium, but are federal political structures. A comparison that has actually been made in the political science, for example by Jan Zielonka (Europe as Empire. The Nature of the Enlarged European Union). For some reason I cannot comment on the article ... ("please specify a valid author) posted by pmller

Tags: byzantium opendemocracy

Posted by: pmller

Tibet, Palestine and the politics of failure | openDemocracy

Mon, 12 May 2008 11:09:31 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

The victims of "post-colonial sequestration", by contrast, failed to make it past the barrier of independence and international recognition. Instead they fell into a state of half-recognised, but contested, existence. After the war of 1948-49 the "Palestine question" disappeared almost entirely from the international scene, only to re-emerge with the defeat of the Arab armies in the six-day war of 1967. Tibet too has undergone long years of neglect in the international arena, punctuated by periodic (and notably near-half-century) reincarnations of interest: the bloody British occupation of Lhasa in 1904-05, the insurrection against Chinese rule and flight of the Dalai Lama in 1959, and now the uprising of March 2008 (see Gabriel Lafitte, "Tibet: revolt with memories", 18 March 2008).

Tags: independence opendemocracy palestine postcolonial sovereignty tibet

Posted by: pickinjava

FT.com / Comment & analysis / Comment - Ethical finance standards must be restored

Fri, 09 May 2008 11:33:01 -0000

Comments:

Arabica - You wonder about intentions ... I am not sure that in looking at economies we need to think about intentions -- it is like looking at texts without thinking about authorial intentions. Outcomes, incentives, structural cause etc. all make sense without thinking about intentions. So does re-regulation. posted by tonycurzonprice

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

it should be apparent to all of us that sometimes senior executives, including the chairman, do not fully understand the businesses in which the company is involved.

The financial instruments now causing such turmoil were not properly priced for their inherent risk and managers were unaware of the integral problems with these instruments. Much of this was made possible by the advanced technology used to devise and distribute these instruments.

A good example of "strategic naivete". Financiers pretend they did not know that their structures of speculative greed would cause so much ruin. "Plausible deniability" posted by pickinjava

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Posted by: pickinjava

The food economy's missing link | openDemocracy

Fri, 09 May 2008 11:29:50 -0000

Tags: agribusiness agriculture food opendemocracy security

Posted by: pickinjava

Can democracy save the planet? | openDemocracy

Mon, 05 May 2008 23:48:39 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

The questions addressed included: can a world of 9-10 billion people vote its way to a sustainable future - or are new forms of leadership (even forms of authoritarian rule) going to be necessary? Are the rising global powers (China, India and Brazil among them) best placed to move towards more sustainable forms of development?

What of the link between democracy and sustainable development? Most respondents held that voter pressure meant that democracy was of benefit to sustainable development. Yet consultation with a more specialised group of experts found that only 28% believed that capitalism (often paired with democracy in its liberal variant) aided sustainable development, against 36% who said that capitalism inhibited it. Overall, Doug Miller saw in the figures an activation of people's survival instinct: as the planet "speaks" through extreme weather events, citizens are starting to listen.

Many of the issues the roundtable addressed had been highlighted in a keynote paper commissioned ahead of the meeting from Ian Christie. This made four basic propositions about democracy, ecologically sustainable development, and environmental/sustainability campaign organisations (SD-NGOs). He argued that together, these phenomena offer a paradox about the relationship between democracy, civil society and sustainability; and that resolving it is now an urgent and complex task - for the west, for newly industrialised democracies, and for emergent democratic civil society in the global south.

Democracy poses huge problems for sustainable development. In the advanced liberal capitalist states, democracy is tightly coupled to the promise of economic growth, ever-rising consumption and individual freedom. Democracy in such states now entrenches the interests of the affluent majority and well-funded lobbies in the political system (a point analysed by, among others, JK Galbraith and Mancur Olson).

Environmental/sustainability campaign organisations (SD-NGOs) are a massive success for civil society worldwide. Without them, we would not have anything like the progress we have seen in the past half-century in protecting the environment, cutting pollution, raising resource efficiency, highlighting linked issues of environmental and social injustice, and saving wildlife and habitats from destruction. Without them, the discourse and practice of sustainable development would not have become established in governments worldwide, and huge issues such as climate disruption would not have been acknowledged or tackled sufficiently by governments and businesses.

SD-NGOs are a massive failure by their own standards. For nearly fifty years they have campaigned and educated citizens and governments and businesses worldwide; yet ecological damage continues on a vast scale, environmental injustices abound, and dangerous climate disruption seems to be unavoidable. SD-NGOs have achieved limited gains in specific areas of policy but have failed to mobilise and energise citizens on a large enough scale to put real pressure on politicians and businesses in the west and beyond. Moreover, they lack clear answers to challenges to their own legitimacy and accountability, and have sometimes spoken as though they were representative voices of "civil society", when in fact they constitute a small and highly unrepresentative section of it in many countries.

Tags: democracy development international opendemocracy sustainable

Posted by: pickinjava

openDemocracy Annotation: The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, by Jon Zittrain | openDemocracy

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 20:28:35 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

the Web.

The iPhone is an object of desire posted by tonycurzonprice

computer crashes

The Apple II was generative, waiting for a use, unlike the iPhone posted by tonycurzonprice

permission

iPhone developers need Apple's permission posted by tonycurzonprice

give up that freedom

Weariness with nasty surprises of the open PC may have made us receptive to the iPhone philosophy of secure closedness posted by tonycurzonprice

Tags: no_tag

Posted by: tonycurzonprice

Philanthropy on the commons | openDemocracy

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 00:09:36 -0000

Tags: democracy opensource peertopeer philanthropy social_change

Posted by: pickinjava

Philanthrocapitalism: after the goldrush | openDemocracy

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 10:03:43 -0000

Tags: business development international nongovernmental philanthrocapitalism philanthropy

Posted by: pickinjava

China and Tibet: the true path | openDemocracy

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 10:27:09 -0000

Tags: china opendemocracy tibet

Posted by: pickinjava

South Africa’s second coming: the Nongqawuse syndrome Achille Mbembe - openDemocracy

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 23:48:49 -0000

Tags: academia africa cultural globalization mbembe politics postcolonial theory

Posted by: pickinjava

ZNet |Activism | Online Activism 2.0: Movement Building

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 10:39:52 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Another successful story was my experience organizing against sweatshops with the Notre Dame Progressive Student Alliance as part of the United Students Against Sweatshops network. We were adequately connected to the network to model our local campaign on those of other groups – and we won.

It is critical, in the context of sweatshops, petroleum corporations and so on, to concentrate movement strategies on the global level. In this case, the connections (or lack of connections) with international sweatshop organizations should be more explicit. posted by pickinjava

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Posted by: pickinjava

FT.com | Economists' Forum: The dangers of living in a zero-sum world economy

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 11:02:49 -0000

Tags: anti-consumerism climate change economy

Posted by: tonycurzonprice

Subvert And Profit Unapologetically Targets YouTube

Sun, 30 Dec 2007 22:28:49 -0000

Tags: macarthur search

Posted by: tonycurzonprice

LaTéléLibre.fr

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 10:06:38 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

une énième TV...faitre des videos éparses... mais orientée poltic tout de même... les videos manquées sont ici posted by akozoom

Tags: etv info intox modem propagand reportage tv video

Posted by: akozoom