Archive for the 'Society' Category

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The war in Irak is fueling terrorism

Published on Sunday, September 24, 2006 in News, Politics, Society and War. 0 Comments

The Far East was already fragile prior to the US invading Iraq on false pretences. A classified report from US intelligence agencies called “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States” concludes that terrorism is now being fuelled by the war on Iraq.

Agencies “found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.”
New York Times

The discussion about the real motivating factors that led to the war in Iraq, the control of petrol by the US/UK rather than Russia/France that were successfully courting Saddam Hussein, has faded to a whisper. The cost in human lives alone to control the petrol in Iraq is enormous, but this report indicates that secondary effects may be more devastating.

A 30-page National Intelligence Estimate completed in April cites the “centrality” of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the insurgency that has followed, as the leading inspiration for new Islamic extremist networks and cells that are united by little more than an anti-Western agenda.
Washington Post

Although this does sound pretty logical, a previous NIE report had concluded Iraq was continuing to make weapons of mass destruction which became part of the pretext for the war on Iraq. The same report only described Bin Laden as a ‘terrorist financier’, with no mention of Al-Qaeda !
The Bush government explains it is fighting a war on terrorism. The report’s findings contest the effectiveness of how Bush has engaged the war on terror; top US intelligence agencies conclude the war on Iraq is directly helping terrorists to recruit. Are these findings the prelude to a succession of grounds to leave Iraq ? Even if such a move is likely to prompt civil war ?

Turning away from 9/11

Published on Wednesday, September 13, 2006 in Photos, Society, Thoughts and Unusual. 0 Comments

There is an intriguing article over at slate.com revolving around a controversial photo by Thomas Hoepker. Do check out the article and the photo. The photo shows a group of young people on the Brooklyn waterfront in view of Manhattan on 9/11. I read the first paragraph and then scrolled down to the photo. I would be really interested to know how people read the article and whether your views changed on the photo after having read the article like mine did.

The last two paragraphs changed my mind, the writer’s insight on what happened that day for many people and a simple explanation for the photo becomes pretty logical and understandable. It is also an interesting parallel with what the author describes as the ability of people to move forward.

Beware of the Pretext

Published on Monday, September 11, 2006 in Business, Society and Unusual. 0 Comments

The current HP scandal is the consequence of what is known as “pretexting”.
Over at the washingtonpost.com there is an article that covers the shady procedure of “pretexting” to obtain information about a person. Although you may like myself, be astonished and unaware that executives of the same company engaged in spying upon each other like this, it seems it is not uncommon !

pretext : a purpose or motive alleged or an appearance assumed in order to cloak the real intention or state of affairs
Merriam Webster

Have you ever wondered, when you get inundated with questions by some random telemarketer, “How many people live in your apartment ?”, “Do you own the apartment ?”, “Do you all work full-time ?” and so on… whether there is some hidden agenda ? Or worse, for the pure paranoid, whether they are planning to figure out when you’re not at home ?!

Green, environmentally friendly and trend setting: The Economist

Published on Saturday, September 9, 2006 in Advertising, Society, Trend and Writing. 0 Comments

The Economist is carbon-neutralized. The magazine decided that for its 16 page ‘Green’ section it would make a difference, not just in words, but in actions.

The idea sprang to life in the latest edition of The Economist, with a special environment section called “A survey of climate change”. The latest issue of the magazine has been carbon-neutralized. The Economist calculated the impact on the environment that the process of publishing this month’s issue would have, “so Carbon Neutral could trap the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide (118 tons) in a U.S. mine as a way of neutralizing the emissions created by producing the magazine — cost about $1,200.” (Ad Age)

green economist

When interviewed, Emma Duncan, Deputy Editor of The Economist, explained that advertisers were quick to jump on the idea of participating in this month’s issue, especially companies that are keen on getting an environmentally friendly message across. They even got ads from companies that rarely advertise !

However the Economist not only took a bold step on this issue, the whole section was nearly all produced by Ms Duncan. Her work spanned over a four month period, travelling around the world to write the various stories that appear in this special section. The Economist found a novel and highly appropriate way of getting the message across. Savvy to on-line trends, they have a podcast interview of Emma Duncan that you can download or play directly from the site.

“We need to think about climate change maybe as individuals think about insuring their houses: you spend maybe 1% of your annual income insuring your house not because you think it’s going to burn down, but because if by any chance it did burn down, the consequences for you would be disastrous.”
Emma Duncan, Deputy Editor of The Economist

So it’s an all round thumbs up for this prestigious magazine that will hopefully provide full access to their content soon.

9/11 Five years on, the statistics

Published on Wednesday, September 6, 2006 in History, News and Society. 2 Comments

The BBC has compiled a very interesting set of statistical charts combined with key event dates, giving a better idea of their impact on the statistics.

bbc usa 5 years stats

It is nicely presented and works well with the key dates, accompanied each time with an image and brief description. An interesting choice of statistics indicating which areas have dramatically changed due to 9/11.

The fight of the free in Newspaperland

Published on Tuesday, August 22, 2006 in News, Society, Trend and Writing. 0 Comments

London is the place to be for free newspapers. Soon there will be three free newspapers for Londoners to choose from !

The Guardian’s opening paragraph :

Newspapers are dying, but no one can accuse them of going quietly.

London is home to a “free frenzy” in Newspaperland. Next month there will be three free newspapers for commuting Londoners. Metro will be joined by a free newspaper from Associated and another from Murdoch. The battle is novel since unlike previous ones that entailed ‘price slashing’, free means no price wars ! Paris already has several free newspapers (one of them is Metro) and now it is London’s turn to have companies fight for the population’s reading time. Studies have shown however, as in Paris, how free newspapers actually create new reading time, in that many new readers of free newspaper didn’t read before. They didn’t read articles nor the adjacent adverts !

What can be referred to as ‘barriers of entry’, not only the price but the distribution barriers have been taken away. On top of being free, if Paris based free newspapers are an example then they can even be handed to you or placed conveniently on your way to work ! What more can you ask for ?

I find this interesting for several reasons :
- Newspapers are complaining about declining number of readers yet the example below of the Guardian shows that you cannot read the article before registering : access barrier
- Several newspapers like the WallStreet Journal and some sections at the New York Times cost members money to read : financial barrier.
(This model seems sustainable specifically to the WSJ which is a very specific case but for how long ?)
- Access to the Internet will soon be far easier/convenient than finding the closest newsstand/newsagents both at work and from home : distribution/access barrier
- Like the Internet the future of newspapers seems far more linked to advertising than circulation revenue
- Barriers are also barriers to viewing the placed adverts

The specifics of the current fight between Murdoch and Associated is further complicated by the fact that each company also distributes traditional newspapers that people pay to read. Creating a good free newspaper can obviously not be allowed at the moment to put the circulation revenue of their other (paid) newspapers in jeopardy.

But as the Independent article explains the idea of getting people into the habit of reading is not bad including the other (paid) newspapers :

Jim Bilton says: “Free newspapers are the only way of getting to the younger, non-newspaper readers and introducing them to the reading habit.”

The list of free newspapers in London will increase next month and as you can see at Free Daily Newspapers (below) there is also a 2 page A4 teaser from the Financial Times along with free newspapers in Manchester, Newcastle and Brighton in the UK.

Article refs.
- Roll up for a good, old-fashioned fight for the future (Guardian)
- Why should newspapers cost less money than a coffee? (Independent)
- Free Daily Newspapers

Making Maths look Cool

Published on Wednesday, August 16, 2006 in Education, Society, Thoughts and Trend. 0 Comments

The reason I changed from ‘not liking maths’ to appreciating how useful it can be, was due to a more appropriate teaching method.

What I should first confess is that I don’t like the way maths is taught in France. I spent most of my later schooling years in France. I left England when I was 12 and came to live in France where maths is considered ‘the’ criteria of intelligence.
Maths is not really taught to students in France it is used to filter people in to groups of intelligent and less intelligent people. It goes so far that very few engineers, Directors/CEOs and even politicians will go places unless they are good at maths. A job in France without the appropriate educational credentials means it is hard to get noticed. Creativity, on the other hand is considered the B-path or C-path as well as all ‘art’ type studies.

So should one be surprised that maths, set on a pedestal in France, is taught to kids in the most uncreative way imaginable.

Although I don’t have a direct comparison, I left France with a Baccalauréat and studied maths in the UK at University. Now, the way maths was taught in the UK, actually became interesting and suddenly made sense. Why ? Well because of the teaching methods and the real-life examples used.

In France for probabilities and statistics it was numbers and letters and say Tim and Sally were added by the pure creative maths teacher.
Is it a surprise that the real life examples used in the UK helped to see the utility of maths? I was told that Jo had a Garage and he had just purchased a structure next to the garage in order to create a parking lot. Jo had a choice of three different types of lights to use in the parking lot and they each had different probability of breaking after a certain amount of hours and each cost a different amount.
We were asked to calculate which lights would be the cheapest for Jo if he opened the parking a) from Monday to Friday 09h00 till 18h00 b) from Monday to Saturday 06h00 to 20h00 c) etc.

It wasn’t just about the fact that I was in a Business School or that I had recently helped a friend calculate import costs for his clothes shop. I was faced with a real life solution where maths illustrated how useful it was to obtaining the best solution, sorry probably the best solution. My other experience told me that in real life you also need to take into account various other aspects about the company providing the goods; through their track record, reputation etc.

I’m not really sure how maths is taught in other countries but when I was reading an article today about how the Nobel prize winning president of Caltech thanked the Numb3rs TV series actor ‘David Krumholtz’ for making “maths look cool”, it got me thinking about this. The character in Numb3rs played by David Krumholtz uses everyday examples that people can relate with to explain the concepts in maths. The explanation aims at including people, showing how the method works with real-life examples. Sounds familiar to me…

An education program has been started by CBS and Texas Instruments to provide teachers with educational exercises that precede each show. The concept seems pretty interesting and has spawned blogs like the blog from the Northeastern University Department of mathematics.

So will maths teachers (especially in France) take note of this series success ? Could they imagine teaching in a down to earth way that demonstrates the value of maths or will they continue to think that the mad scientist, detached from reality image is better ?

Marketing lessons from Saks

Published on Saturday, August 12, 2006 in Advertising, Society and Trend. 0 Comments

In a New York Times article Saks recent campaigns are discussed. The article explains why Saks has chosen to go with a broad campaign this time as opposed to the previously cashmere specific campaign. As you can see the typography used for the “Want It” campaign uses a ransom note style with the hand poised to steal the “i”…

Saks Want It

I’m not sure how well the people that can afford the garments and objects presented in the campaign, will take to the idea that they need educating about what to wear :

Mr. Schaefer said the trends showcased throughout “Want It!” “set Saks up as the sage, telling consumers what they need.” He continued: “It is educating the consumer. This is what you want in your closet for fall.”

How safer are we ?

Published on Saturday, August 12, 2006 in Politics and Society. 0 Comments

I came across several interesting articles and comments on articles in French, US and UK newspaper sites today about the foiled terrorist plot in the UK.

In Dickey’s article called “Foiled Plot doesn’t make us safer” there are several comparisons to the period leading up to 9/11 :

Panicked CIA analysts flew to Texas to brief Bush personally in 2001, “to intrude on his vacation with face-to-face alerts.” Bush sized them up, as is his wont, looking to judge the content of what they told him by the confidence with which the message was delivered. Bush wasn’t convinced. “All right,” said the president, “You’ve covered your ass now.”

and further down :

Presidents cover their backsides, too. If this attack had succeeded, or another one still does, the people to blame wouldn’t be Bush or his advisors, the culprits would be those who limit his “tools.” Massive wiretaps? Secret prisons? The list is long.

Dickey is often insightful in his articles and this article really covers and discusses some of the key issues that are leading to all these attacks, the fact that many a Muslim most probably feels ‘under attack’ with constant images of blood and carnage in the news concerning the Muslim world.

An article on the Guardian points out that :

Downing Street admitted Tony Blair would not have left the country on Monday for his Caribbean holiday if he had known the police would need to swoop so quickly to disrupt a terrorist plot.

Further down in the article, we find out that Blair and Bush had a “conversation on a secure line” about this. Well it’s good to know that they have changed their habits.

It seems from an article on the WashingtonPost that the whole counter terrorist operation began after July 7 attacks in London, following a tip. Although all arrested are British citizens who are nearly all tied in some way to Pakistan.

These problems are being used however to silence people that don’t agree with the government or policies as an amazing article by Henry Porter illustrates. Policies that aim to stop people that encourage and participate in violence and killing is in my opinion justifiable. Policies aiming people that “have traditionally brought their grievances to those in power” and laws, in order to silence them is very “Nineteen Eighty Four” or “V for Vendetta” (for reference to a modern take on 1984). Such policies are unacceptable. It seems that like Bush in the US, Blair and his government have been busy creating policies that allow them to silence domestic grievances in the name of counter-terrorism.

Update (16 Aug): In a Guardian blog there is a rant from H. Evans about the danger of extremists as opposed to the loss of civil rights. This is following the letter from muslim leaders about UK foreign policy. There are even those who would like to believe it is a hoax.

Single 1 – Married 0

Published on Monday, August 7, 2006 in Film, Personal, Society, Thoughts and Trend. 0 Comments

A fascinating article at the New York Times covers the trend that being single is gaining on being married. The article called “Facing Middle Age With No Degree, and No Wife” that spans four pages discusses the factors that have changed the demographics in the US; it used to be that men in their mid 40s were nearly all married.
The article tries to point to education as a key factor that leads men to be loosing their ‘must have’ allure for women. Women no longer need to rely upon men like they did in previous generations. This extract clarifies that idea however :

“It is a mistake to think of this as just happening to the underclass at the bottom,” said Christopher Jencks, a professor of sociology at Harvard. “It is also happening to people with high school diplomas or even some college. That is the group that has been most affected by the decline in real wages in the last 30 years.”

The new freedom that past generations of women have fought for, is often destabilising for both women and men. Education and upbringing is not always in sync with this equality and can lead to the rejection of the other. Women are far less inclined to sit, smile and be docile like was expected of them in previous generations. Men however faced with this new feminine touch sometimes prefer a single life, without the hassle of fighting for a place in the couple. Coping and adapting to their new freedom can be hard for both men and women. As the New York Times article explains women are often interested in a man that can offer better financial prospects :

“Men don’t marry because women like myself don’t need to rely on them,” said Shenia Rudolph, 42, a divorced mother from the Bronx.

This isn’t about disgruntled divorcees from previous generations that have given up on the idea of finding someone else, it’s a whole new ball game with each player trying to find a place for themselves. Finding a place for yourself in society is also a factor that leads to both men and women putting their careers first and the search for the significant other comes after.
In the comedy “The Devil wears Prada” Glen Close is portrayed as the Thatcher type woman that is as hard as nails, while sneak peaks at her family life try to strip the iron lady image to show a more fragile reality (a bit too simplistic though). On the other hand her assistant rises gloriously to ‘her’ challenge only to find that she has lost her soul in the process (again the film is ‘nice’ but the script here was also far too easy).
“Imagine Me and You” ia an English film with Piper Perabo that I really enjoyed. It compares to a Richard Curtis film (4 Weddings…) but I felt it was more ‘real’ and sensitive while trying to touch on the difficulties couples face today…

Back in real life though, where everything isn’t always perfect, it’s nice to be around normal people. I’m talking about normal people here, as opposed to men or women that can’t communicate properly and blow their tops as soon as life isn’t going exactly the way they want. Where everyone around them gets the wrong end of the stick when they’re feeling down, or they’ve had a bad day, or they just woke up, or you don’t agree with them, or… hey, you get the picture; every other day basically ! My advice when faced with this type, cut them loose and enjoy your life !

Men that don’t change and adapt to this ‘new deal’ are likely to drive women away, just like women that take the equality game too far will drive the men away. It’s completely hypocritical to, on the one hand, sing the benefits of gallantry, expect a man to do all the DIY chores, while also expecting him to do the washing up and cooking in the name of the equality of sexes. It works both ways, women should start looking at doing more DIY in the house if they are really honest about the equality between men and women. In a recent relationship I was told that it was normal for me to do cooking, washing-up and cleaning but that putting a picture up on the wall was a man’s job, it was DIY !

“Changing women’s expectations about what married life should be like has put more tension into these relationships,” Mr. Jencks said. “Men who have graduated from college have been more responsive and ready to accommodate those changes than those who haven’t.”

A good friend of mine’s wife recently explained to me that she couldn’t understand why couples put so much pressure on each another. The “high expectations they put on each other just weighs the couple down and makes them resentful of one another when they are unfulfilled. The couple and the relationship need to breathe and too much pressure is suffocating.”