Inspire me, now!

ephemera assemblyman: The Silent Film Posters of Peter Kocjančič

These are my links for July 2nd 2009 through July 8th 2009:

• George Washington’s Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior @ Foundations Magazine –
• Woodstock concert’s undercover lovers, Nick and Bobbi Ercoline, 40 years after summer of love – The iconic couple under a blanket at Woodstock are still together, 40 years later.
• To become an extremist, hang around with people you agree with | The Spectator – Cass Sunstein — co-author of the hugely influential Nudge and an adviser to President Obama — unveils his new theory of ‘group polarisation’, and explains why, when like-minded people spend time with each other, their views become not only more confident but more extreme
• Phosphorus Famine: The Threat to Our Food Supply: Scientific American – This underappreciated resource–a key component of fertilizers–is still decades from running out. But we must act now to conserve it, or future agriculture could collapse
• Not Every Child Is Secretly a Genius – ChronicleReview.com – Multiple Intelligences theory turns out to be untrue, or at least, unproved.

If there is one thing I cannot abide, it is assault on women or children. Reading about and watching the horrible scenes from Xinjiang, when I see that mobs have attacked, beaten and in some cases murdered innocent people, any sympathy I have with their cause is extinguished.

Beating women is savagery, as is the mob murder.

Comprehensive Coverage with Images and Videos
Riots in Xinjiang and the price of omission
BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Scores killed in China protests
Graphic images of dead and injured Chinese victims of the riots

• 29/06/2009 http://pi.pe/c5s6sa #

Released to celebrate the release of Patrick Neate’s new book “Jerusalem”:

YouTube – “Jerusalem” by Nobody.

These are my links for June 27th 2009 through July 2nd 2009:

• A Return to Yeomanry – By Phillip Longman | Foreign Policy – Break out your mulching fork: Jeffersonian farmers are back!
• Prime Numbers: Sex Matters – By Malcolm Potts and Martha Campbell | Foreign Policy – Low birthrates aren't the result of economic growth and political stability; they're a prerequisite.
• Think Again: Asia’s Rise – By Minxin Pei | Foreign Policy – Don't believe the hype about the decline of America and the dawn of a new Asian age. It will be many decades before China, India, and the rest of the region take over the world, if they ever do.
• B92 – News – Business & Economy – "Right time for Diaspora to invest" –
• Edge: HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK? By Lera Boroditsky – "For a long time, the idea that language might shape thought was considered at best untestable and more often simply wrong. Research in my labs at Stanford University and at MIT has helped reopen this question. We have collected data around the world: from China, Greece, Chile, Indonesia, Russia, and Aboriginal Australia. What we have learned is that people who speak different languages do indeed think differently and that even flukes of grammar can profoundly affect how we see the world. Language is a uniquely human gift, central to our experience of being human. Appreciating its role in constructing our mental lives brings us one step closer to understanding the very nature of humanity."

These are my links for June 21st 2009 through June 27th 2009:

• Domestic Violence: Women Abusers On The Rise? | MetaFilter – "To date, focus of most research into Domestic Violence has been on instances of violence against women by men based on the arguably sexist premise that it is more prevalent than instances of violence by women against men. However numerous books and studies have contradicted this premise, showing that men and women suffer domestic abuse in similar and sometimes equal rates. Despite this, preconceived ideas of gender roles still lead many to believe it would be virtually impossible for a woman to physically abuse a man, an attitude which Men's Rights advocates say often leads to many battered men hiding in shame, fearful of being ridiculed, or even prosecuted." MORE
• Excess Pounds, but Not Too Many, May Lead to Longer Life – NYTimes.com – Being overweight won’t kill you — it may even help you live longer. That’s the latest from a study that analyzed data on 11,326 Canadian adults, ages 25 and older, who were followed over a 12-year period.
• Rating attractiveness: Study finds consensus among men, not women – Hot or not? Men agree on the answer. Women don't.
• War Book reveals how Britain planned to cope with nuclear attack | UK news | guardian.co.uk –
• Homosexual behaviour widespread in animals according to new study – Telegraph – Homosexual behaviour is a nearly universal phenomenon in the animal kingdom, according to a new study.
• Israel keeps Mossad chief on for Iran shadow war | Reuters – Mossad chief kept on after doing sterling job lately.

In an excellent article in Middle East Quarterly, Esther Ben-David examines “Europe’s Shifting Immigration Dynamic“:

Western Europe has gone through two major stages in its recent immigration history. In the first stage, European leaders misjudged the effects of immigration and, in the second, they miscalculated how hard it would be to stop an immigration dynamic.

Beginning in the mid-twentieth century, European countries have changed from net sources of emigration to attractive destinations for immigration. Today Muslims, many from rural traditional areas, comprise the bulk of non-European immigrants to Europe. Even those who have settled in cities retain a village mentality and are seen as backward by the business and cultural elites in their home countries. Moroccans who settled in the Netherlands and Belgium, for example, are mostly Berbers from the Rif mountains, not the Arab cultural elite from Casablanca, Rabat, or Fez. These immigrants came to Europe in order to build railroads, work in the coal mines, clean streets, and do the jobs that Europeans did not want to do. Both “push” and “pull” factors affect immigration. Push factors are those that lead the immigrant to leave his homeland while pull factors are those which attract him to a different country. Europe and other Western liberal countries exert a strong pull on immigrants. However, stopping immigration is not easy, if at all possible, since the same European liberal laws that attract immigrants also prevent states from acting to stop them from coming or, later, to deport them.

….

It will be far more difficult to stop immigration than it was to initiate the immigration flow. A unified European approach, slashing the time to process requests and achieve final adjudication might help to decrease immigration. Immigration to Europe might have developed differently with tougher, more restrictive immigration policies, but as long as Europe offers opportunities for work, education, and personal safety, and as long as it offers a liberal democracy with the rights and privileges such a lifestyle entails, it will continue to attract mass immigration.

The West has always been proud of its moral standard of protecting human rights and giving refuge to persecuted individuals. Referral to human rights has catalyzed immigration. For example, the right to marry is recognized as a fundamental right that in many European countries brings conveyance of citizenship. However, in a society where arranged marriages are the norm and forced marriages are common, the right to marry can easily place the law on the side of the aggressor who coerces somebody else to marry rather than the victim. Redefining refugee status by creating so many categories that fulfil it renders that status meaningless. Not only does it encourage economic immigration, it actually hurts those who truly need refuge.

Original here: Europe’s Shifting Immigration Dynamic

I heard this at the start of DJ Rade Banyan’s recent “Simply House” mix.

I have been going around humming this track and signing it to K (’cause she turns me on, innit!). Delighted and proud to see it is a South African production.