youth herald

Weapon Of Mass Instruction - Video

2015-11-15T23:35:00.002+05:30

A tank rolling around a city might generally be cause for concern—but not this tank. This is the Book Tank, a roving, free library packed with 900 books that elicits waves, laughter, thanks, and smiles as it goes by.

Designed and built by Buenos Aires artist Raul Lemesoff, the Book Tank is a 1979 Ford Falcon that has been converted into a “weapon of mass instruction” bringing books to the Argentine people. Lemesoff drives the tank giving a free book to anyone who promises to read it.

Commissioned by 7up in honor of World Book Day, the Book Tank is an exercise in spreading knowledge and joy. As Lemesoff says, “I don’t do it for money, I don’t do it for fame, I just do it because I have fun doing it.”

Longplayer, The 1000 Year Long Musical Composition

2015-06-27T20:07:00.001+05:30

Longplayer is a one thousand year long musical composition. It began playing at midnight on the 31st of December 1999, and will continue to play without repetition until the last moment of 2999, at which point it will complete its cycle and begin again.

Conceived and composed by Jem Finer, it was originally produced as an Artangel commission, and is now in the care of the Longplayer Trust.

The composition of Longplayer results from the application of simple and precise rules to six short pieces of music. Six sections from these pieces – one from each – are playing simultaneously at all times. Longplayer chooses and combines these sections in such a way that no combination is repeated until exactly one thousand years has passed.

The preoccupations that led to its conception were not of a musical nature; they concerned time, as it is experienced and as it is understood from the perspectives of philosophy, physics and cosmology.

Click on this Link to listen :LONGPLAYER

Moulding Growing Trees Into Furniture

2015-04-23T22:25:00.003+05:30

Wooden furniture might not strike you as particularly unsustainable for the environment. But consider all the energy wasted by growing a tree for 60 years, chopping it down, and shipping it to a factory, where it will get further pulverized only to be re-shaped into a usable piece of furniture.

Gavin Munro, a furniture designer based in Derbyshire, England, has found a way to cut out all the steps after the growing. His company, Full Grown(http://fullgrown.co.uk/), uses specially designed plastic frames and strategic grafting to mold young willow, oak, ash, and sycamore trees into a chair, table, mirror, or lamp.

The end result is a sturdy piece of furniture made of a single, continuous piece of wood without joints or the need for any assembly.

On a 2.5 acre farm in Wirksworth Munro, 39, tends and sculpts a furniture forest of 400 trees, divided by wood type and intended object.

Hologram Protest In Spain

2015-04-23T21:08:00.001+05:30

On the night of April 10, the streets of Madrid swarmed with protestors. They were demonstrating en masse against a series of highly-controversial Spanish laws which, once in effect, will severely limit the ability to protest in that country. But, while the rally was both well attended and vociferous in its opposition to the new legislation, it was perhaps most noteworthy for the fact that nearly everyone in attendance—reportedly 18,000 total—were not really “there” at all. They were, instead, holograms, projected in front of Spain’s Cortes Generales parliamentary building for the first holographic protest of its kind.
The event was organized as part of Holograms por la Liberdad, a movement designed to demonstrate widespread opposition—reportedly as high as 82 percent—against a trio of dramatically restrictive laws set to go into effect on July 1. The laws would impose steep fines on anyone caught engaging in a number of activities, including photographing the police, protesting outside government buildings, and even wearing a hoodie while engaged in public demonstrations. The laws come at a time when freedom of expression throughout Spain is seen by many as being under attack on multiple fronts.

Falling Fruit: Foraging for Free Food App

2015-03-02T19:52:00.001+05:30

Two programmers Caleb Philips and Ethan Weltys have created an interactive global foraging map that shows that allows you to find fruits, vegetables, nuts, berries and lots of other healthy edible plants in public parks, urban farming projects, lining city streets, and even hanging over fences (and, therefor, onto the public domain of sidewalks).

The project, dubbed "Falling Fruit" identifies more than a half-million locations across the globe where fruits and veggies are FREE for the taking.

In practice, the Falling Fruit maps look like a typical Google map with foraging locations represented by dots. Zoom in and click on one, and up pops a box with a description of what tree or bush you can find there. The description often includes information on the best season to pluck the produce, the quality and yield of the plant,

Link to the Website: Falling Fruit

The Documentary "Food Cartographers,” directed by Jamie Schutz, follows Ethan Welty and Caleb Phillips in their venture.

The Suspended Coffees Movement

2014-12-25T21:26:00.001+05:30

There's an old tradition in Naples, Italy called 'Caffè Sospeso' where someone who is pretty well off would buy a coffee and an extra cup which was suspended for someone less fortunate.

The cafe kept a log of the number of "suspended coffees" that had been bought and gave them out to people who couldn't afford them; a simple but lovely idea.

That great tradition was the inspiration for Cork man John Sweeney's Suspended Coffees Movement, which is now in operation in over 1,800 coffee shops in 20 countries in the world.

But it really is about so much more than the coffee. It can provide physical comfort, conversation, a smile or even a laugh, and a sense of belonging. A suspended coffee can change lives, sometimes even save them.

Link to website: suspendedcoffees

China's Rat Tribe

2014-12-11T21:16:00.000+05:30

“Rat Tribe” explores the lives of low-waged migrant workers who live underground in Beijing and make up one-third of the city’s estimated 20 million people. These waiters, karaoke hostesses, hairdressers, chefs, security guards, domestic workers and kitchen helpers are the backbone of Beijing’s service industry. But they have been unkindly dubbed the “rat tribe” for making a home in Beijing’s 6,000 basements and air raid shelters — about one-third of the city’s underground space.

Photographer Sim Chi Yin spent two years shooting members of the capitol’s so-called “rats.” “

Monthly rent for a single that sleeps two and three people can range between an affordable 300 and 700 renminbi (about $50 and $100). But kitchens and bathrooms are communal. Hallways are dank, dark, and airless.

The spending of the rich and famous, meanwhile, is insatiable. Consultancy McKinsey & Company forecasts that China will dominate more than one-third of worldwide luxury spending by 2015, a stark comparison to an urban underbelly populated by people referred to as rats.

China's Rat Tribe, by Sim Chi Yin from Invisible Photographer Asia on Vimeo.

The Hour of Code - WORLDWIDE

2014-12-07T20:48:00.001+05:30

The Hour of Code is a global movement reaching tens of millions of students in 180+ countries. It is a one-hour introduction to computer science, designed to demystify code and show that anybody can learn the basics. Anyone, anywhere can organize an Hour of Code event. One-hour tutorials are available in over 30 languages. No experience needed. Ages 4 to 104. Last year 15 million students worldwide learned an Hour of Code.

The Hour of Code is organized by Code.org, a public 501c3 non-profit dedicated to expanding participation in computer science by making it available in more schools, and increasing participation by women and underrepresented students of color. An unprecedented coalition of partners have come together to support the Hour of Code, too — including Microsoft, Apple, Amazon,Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Linkedin etc.

JOIN THE LARGEST LEARNING EVENT IN HISTORY, DEC 8-14, 2014. SIGN UP to host an Hour of Code event here- http://hourofcode.org/ and start planning. You can organize an Hour of Code event at your school or in your community like in an extracurricular club, non-profit or at work. Or, just try it yourself when Dec. 8 arrives.

Fresh Prescription

2014-11-20T21:20:00.001+05:30

Instead of pills, doctors prescribe fruits and vegetables through program that unites health care with local food systems

The typical idea of treating diseases in this country consists of seeing a doctor, who then prescribes medication, says Dr. Richard Bryce, a senior staff physician in the Department of Family Medicine at Henry Ford Hospital who works full time at CHASS.

With Health Rx, he has the option of telling patients, “Here are meds. These are good meds but there’s a lot of side effects that go along with them, and if we can fix this problem with just nutrition and exercise you’ll feel better and you’ll be helping your health in general overall.”

Connecticut-based nonprofit Wholesome Wave, founded by a James Beard award-winning chef in 2007, created the Fruit and Vegetable Prescription Program that reached more than 5,000 low-income families between 2010 and 2014.

Health Rx, a partnership between the Ecology Center and CHASS, aims to increase consumption of fruits and vegetables as a way to manage chronic diseases. CHASS, which piloted the program last year, had 45 participants in 2013. This year, they have the capacity to reach 140 people who receive a total of $40, distributed through debit cards, to be used in $10 increments at the farmers market held every Thursday at CHASS.

Read the entire original article in Hour Detroit by DOROTHY HERNANDEZ in the link below..
Fresh Prescription - Hour Detroit

BIONEERS: Restoring the Earth and its People

2014-10-19T23:43:00.001+05:30

Bioneers is a fertile hub of social and scientific innovators with practical and visionary solutions for the world's most pressing environmental and social challenges.

It arose from three principal streams of work: Biological and cultural diversity, Biomimicry, Natural medicine

Founder Kenny Ausubel coined the term Bioneers in 1990 to describe an emerging culture. Bioneers are social and scientific innovators from all walks of life and disciplines who have peered deep into the heart of living systems to understand how nature operates, and to mimic "nature's operating instructions" to serve human ends without harming the web of life. Nature's principles—kinship, cooperation, diversity, symbiosis and cycles of continuous creation absent of waste—can also serve as metaphoric guideposts for organizing an equitable, compassionate and democratic society.

Since 1990, Kenny Ausubel and Nina Simons have been assembling Bioneers for an annual conference, a gathering of scientific and social innovators who have demonstrated visionary and practical models for restoring the Earth and communities.

Bioneers' Founding Perspectives
Natural Medicine. Nature has a profound and profoundly mysterious ability for self-repair. The primary source of healing lies in nature. In environmental restoration as in medicine, the role of the practitioner is to support nature to heal itself. This principle became foundational to Bioneers.
Nature’s Solutions. Nature has solved all the ecological challenges we’re trying to address. Practitioners such as John Todd, Amory Lovins, Wes Jackson and Donald Hammer, as well as traditional indigenous practices, were a primary inspiration. In 1997, naturalist and author Janine Benyus gave this emerging science a name in her landmark book Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, the same year she first spoke at Bioneers. Biomimicry has been a core focus since Bioneers’ inception.
Biocultural Diversity. In nature, diversity is the very fabric of life. Because change is the only constant in nature, diversity is the source of resilience to adapt to change in both natural and human systems. Successful adaptation requires keeping open the greatest range of biologically and culturally diverse options.

From the Mission Statement of Bioneers:

"Founded in 1990 in Santa Fe, New Mexico by social entrepreneurs Kenny Ausubel and Nina Simons, Bioneers has acted as a fertile hub of social and scientific innovators with practical and visionary solutions for the world’s most pressing environmental and social challenges. A celebration of the genius of nature and human ingenuity, Bioneers connects people with breakthrough solutions and each other. Our acclaimed annual national and local conferences are complemented by extensive media outreach including an award-winning radio series, book series, and role in media projects such as Leonardo DiCaprio’s film The 11th Hour. Our programs further focus on Women’s Leadership, Indigenous Wisdom, Community Resilience Networks, and Leadership Development and Youth.

Our work has evolved into six programs:

Changing the Mindscape. A Public Education program that features the Bioneers conference(s) and extensive media production and outreach, including an award-winning radio series, book series, satellite and TV broadcasts and a consulting role for third-party films, press and media. Watch for the new Media component on our web site this year.

Education for Action. A Formal Education program that acts as a hub for educators and students, and brings Bioneers Education for Sustainability (EfS) materials to schools and colleges. We work with specific groups and institutions to leverage educational systems for social transformation.

Resilience from the Ground Up. A Localization program that works through the award-winning Dreaming New Mexico project to bring a practical toolkit and methodology for effective systemic change at the municipal and state level, and that other communities can customize.

Every Woman's Leadership Initiatives. A whole systems approach to diverse Women’s Leadership that provides experiential education and media to strengthen women’s capacity to be bold, congruent and effective leaders on behalf of a healthy, just and peaceful future. The program encourages all people toward “full-spectrum leadership,” with flexible access to all of our feminine and masculine qualities.

Becoming Native to Place. An Indigeneity program that educates people about the essential practices of indigenous and traditional knowledge. We invite people to learn with leadership from First Peoples how to re-indigenize our societies as citizens of planet Earth and our local address.

Bioneers Global. An international program to connect social and scientific innovators for the purposes of network cultivation, cross-pollination and the transfer of effective practices, models, technologies and key ideas."

Link to Bioneers: http://www.bioneers.org/

The House of One in Berlin: A Mosque, Synagogue, and Church—All Under the Same Roof

2014-10-19T22:38:00.001+05:30

In Berlin something unique is created, the House of One: the world´s first common house of prayer and learning built for Jews, Christians and Muslims - synagogue, church and mosque under one roof. A house in which a shared central space gives room for encounter and discussion. A house of dialogue, understanding and peace.

Pastor Gregor Hohberg first put forward the idea of multi-faith building, and Rabbi Tovia Ben-Chorin and Imam Kadir Sanci have now joined him in the project. Each religion will have its own practice space, all equally sized but with different designs. There will also be a central room connecting the prayer rooms and providing an area where Christians, Muslims, and Jews can all meet, along with those of other faiths.

In 2012, local architect Wilfried Kuehn won a competition to design the building. Construction will begin next year and the doors will open in 2018. To raise money for construction a crowdfunding campaign is under way, with a target of $58.6 million.

Become a part of this hope-giving idea and help building The House of One. Here is the link
http://house-of-one.org/en

Introducing slow Jo: The Slow Watch That Help Us Reimagine Our Relationship With Time

2014-10-12T10:01:00.001+05:30

In a time when our phones are fast becoming our clocks and watches, and displaying the exact time, down to the minute, is just a click away, we're more aware than ever before that time is ticking away.

But do we really need to always know the exact time, or does it just stress us out and keep us from living in the moment? According to Slow, because of our busy lifestyles, "we often forget that we actually have a choice of how to live," and their reinvention of the watch helps us put our own time in perspective.

A different kind of wristwatch, the Slow Watch, aims to help us reimagine our relationship with time, by putting it into context and allowing us to visualize our entire day. First launched last year, and sold only online, the first of the Slow Watches (the Slow Jo) displays the entire 24 hour time cycle on the face of the device, and uses just a single hand to indicate the time, letting us focus on the moment, not the never-ending march of seconds.

"The slow watch is a subtle reminder that time is the most precious thing we have so we should enjoy everything we do and stop chasing every minute.   In order to be a true symbol of this idea, the slow watch has only one hand that rotates once every 24 hours. It actually moves at half the speed of a normal watch, but allows you to see the progress of your entire day at a glance." - Slow

LINK: https://www.slow-watches.com/the-product

Forest Man: Documentary Preview

2014-07-29T11:10:00.001+05:30

Since the 1970's Majuli islander Jadav Payeng has been planting trees in order to save his island. To date he has single handedly planted a forest larger than Central Park NYC. His forest has transformed what was once a barren wasteland, into a lush oasis. Humble yet passionate and philosophical about his work. Payeng takes us on a journey into his incredible forest.

Filmmaker William Douglas McMaster directed and wrote this documentary “Forest Man.” It won Best Documentary at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.

Official Sites: Official Facebook | Official Twitter

Capital in the 21st Century: Revolutionary analysis questions basic distribution of wealth

2014-04-17T23:10:00.001+05:30

Few economists inspire popular movements, but Thomas Piketty has. “We are the 99 per cent”, the slogan of the Occupy Movement, was based on his in-depth analysis with Emmanuel Saez of income distribution and inequality in the US in 2003.

The Frenchman’s new book Capital in the 21st Century is already causing a stir. Some reviewers have called it the economic book of the year, others of the decade.

Piketty’s ground-breaking work on the historical evolution of income distribution is impressive, but he covers many other areas, including the erosion of meritocracy by inherited wealth, public debt, education, health and taxation. He also proposes challenging ideas for funding the social state in the 21st century.

Piketty’s central point is that when the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of economic growth, the economy automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities which undermine the meritocratic values on which democracy is based.

Unless capital owners consume all of the return on their capital, more will remain for them and they get richer, effortlessly.

Cloak App Helps You Avoid Social Contacts

2014-04-04T19:54:00.003+05:30

Cloak App Helps You Avoid Social Contacts (via InformationWeek)

Meet Cloak, the antisocial media app that uses your friends' Instagram and Foursquare location feeds so you can avoid running into them. There's no shortage of social apps that help you connect with friends both in real life and over the web -- take…

Lessons from the World's Most Tech-Savvy Government

2014-02-02T14:06:00.003+05:30

Estonia may not show up on Americans’ radar too often. It is a tiny country in northeastern Europe, just next to Finland. It has the territory of the Netherlands, but 13 times less people—its 1.3 million inhabitants is comparable to Hawaii’s population. As a friend from India recently quipped, “What is there to govern?”

What makes this tiny country interesting in terms of governance is not just that the people can elect their parliament online or get tax overpayments back within two days of filing their returns. It is also that this level of service for citizens is not the result of the government building a few websites. Instead, Estonians started by redesigning their entire information infrastructure from the ground up with openness, privacy, security, and ‘future-proofing’ in mind.

The first building block of e-government is telling citizens apart. This sounds blatantly obvious, but alternating between referring to a person by his social security number, taxpayer number, and other identifiers doesn’t cut it. Estonia uses a simple, unique ID methodology across all systems, from paper passports to bank records to government offices and hospitals. A citizen with the personal ID code 37501011234 is a male born in the 20th century (3) in year ’75 on January 1 as the 123rd baby of that day. The number ends with a computational checksum to easily detect typos.

For these identified citizens to transact with each other, Estonia passed the Digital Signatures Act in 2000. The state standardized a national Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), which binds citizen identities to their cryptographic keys, and now doesn’t care if any Tiit and Toivo (to use common Estonian names) sign a contract in electronic form with certificates or plain ink on paper. A signature is a signature in the eyes of the law.

As a quirky side effect, this foundational law also forced all decentralized government systems to become digital “by market demand.” No part of the Estonian government can turn down a citizen’s digitally signed document and demand a paper copy instead. As citizens opt for convenience, bureaucrats see a higher inflow of digital forms and are self-motivated to invest in systems that will help them manage the process. Yet a social worker in a small village can still provide the same service with no big investment by handling the small number of digitally signed email attachments the office receives.

Read More at the entire article in the link below..
http://www.eesti.ca/lessons-from-the-worlds-most-tech-savvy-government/article41332

What Was Edward Snowden Doing in India?

2014-01-20T18:41:00.003+05:30

(Source:Shane Harris, Foreign Policy)

Nearly three years before he revealed himself as the source of leaked documents about NSA surveillance, Edward Snowden traveled to New Delhi, India. There, he spent six days taking courses in computer hacking and programming at a local professional school, according to school officials and people familiar with Snowden's trip.

Working with a private instructor, Snowden, who was then a contractor for the spy agency, took a course in "ethical hacking," where he learned advanced techniques for breaking into computer systems and exploiting flaws in software. The class's ostensible purpose is to train students to protect computers and their contents from thieves and spies. But in order to do that, they learn how to break into computers and steal information. Snowden also inquired about...

Read full article in the link below..
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/01/12/what_was_edward_snowden_doing_in_india

World’s First Vertical Forest Gets Introduced in Italy

2013-12-30T20:40:00.002+05:30

World’s First Vertical Forest Gets Introduced in Italy (via greenliving4live.com)

See on Scoop.it – Green Living The Bosco Verticale is a system that optimizes, recuperates, and produces energy. Covered in plant life, the building aids in balancing the microclimate and in filtering the dust particles contained in the urban environment…

Ariel Sharon Park, A Revolution In Waste Management & Urban Planning

2013-12-30T19:41:00.002+05:30

Ariel Sharon Park, A Revolution In Waste Management & Urban Planning (via Planetsave)

What do you do if you have a lot of trash, limited landfill space, problematic floodplains, and a growing population? It’s a common problem across the world, as the trends of population growth, wasteful consumption and an increasingly plastic, throwaway…

Cicada 3301: The internet mystery that has the world baffled

2013-11-27T19:44:00.001+05:30

One evening in January last year, Joel Eriksson, a 34-year-old computer analyst from Uppsala, Sweden, was trawling the web, looking for distraction, when he came across a message on an Internet forum.

The message was in stark white type, against a black background.

“Hello,” it said. “We are looking for highly intelligent individuals. To find them, we have devised a test. There is a message hidden in this image. Find it, and it will lead you on the road to finding us. We look forward to meeting the few that will make it all the way through. Good luck.”

The message was signed: “3301.”

A self-confessed IT security “freak” and a skilled cryptographer, Eriksson was interested immediately.

This was, he knew, an example of digital steganography: the concealment of secret information within a digital file, most often seen in conjunction with image files.

A recipient who can work out the code — for example, to alter the colour of every 100th pixel — can retrieve an entirely different image from the randomized background “noise.”

It’s a technique more commonly associated with nefarious ends, such as concealing child pornography. In 2002 it was suggested that al-Qaida operatives had planned the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks via the auction site eBay, by encrypting messages inside digital photographs.

Read more in the original article at the link below..
The internet mystery that has the world baffled

Why Socialist Kshama Sawant's Campaign Matters To Seattle

2013-11-08T11:12:00.001+05:30

Kshama Sawant didn’t have to identify as a socialist.

Seattle City Council races are nonpartisan, after all, and her views aren’t particularly revolutionary, as far as Seattle goes: She supports a $15 minimum wage (as do both mayoral candidates), unions for low-wage workers and rent control.

But branding herself as a socialist – still a dirty word in many corners of American politics – may have helped her rake in 35 percent of the primary vote with little money. (She had raised about $110,000 as of Monday night.)

Councilmember Nick Licata, who has been on the council for 16 years, said Sawant’s message resonates because a section of voters are tired of risk-averse Democrats and Republicans. Sawant, he said, has managed to make socialist ideas appeal to voters.

“We don’t have a mature socialist political movement in the country, and probably the last time we did was literally 80 years ago,” Licata said. “To Sawant’s credit, she has been able to craft a message that is understandable, simple and eschews most of the rhetoric.”

Sawant ran against Richard Conlin, 64, a darling of the Democratic party with left-leaning views. Conlin appeared to be winning on Tuesday night with 54 percent of the vote when King County released its first results. Sawant received about 46 percent of the vote.

Sawant stayed on message throughout her campaign, using dry, academic language to discuss the issues she wants addressed. The roots of homelessness are within the roots of our capitalist society itself, she said at the October debate.

Later, on the social media site Reddit, she addressed rent control:

What rent control would do is provide housing security for tenants, who are at present continually forced to move due to rent increases demanded by price-gouging real estate companies. It would also address the serious income and race segregation in Seattle housing and enable low-income people, people of color, and immigrant communities to not be red-lined out of the city.

It appears that Sawant, 41, won support on the strength of her message alone. She is a Mumbai-educated economics professor who rarely strays from her platform and who avoids discussing her private life – although she has grudgingly admitted that she is separated from her husband. She doesn’t wear pantsuits or coiffe her hair, and she rarely points to her past experiences or to endorsements.

Sawant’s political campaign director, Philip Locker, an organizer for the Socialist Alternative party, said that by running for office, Sawant pushed neglected issues into the spotlight.

“We’ve gotten an enormous response – we’ve even forced both Mayor Mike McGinn and Sen. Ed Murray to discuss the $15 minimum wage,” Locker said of the mayoral candidates. “That’s powerful.”

When Sawant speaks, her supporters cheer. The Stranger has endorsed her enthusiastically, and The Nation magazine, based in Washington, D.C., wrote about her this week in equally glowing terms.

The Nation noted that Eugene V. Debs, the socialist candidate for president in 1912, received more than 10 percent of the vote in the Western states, including Washington.

Sawant’s campaign in Seattle speaks to a similar sense of disgruntlement with the two-party system, The Nation wrote, saying that a “bold rejection of austerity has significant popular appeal.”

But even a century ago, when Debs won more than one million votes nationwide, no socialist was this close to winning a city council position in Seattle, Scott Cline, the city’s archivist said.

City council elections have been nonpartisan since 1910, Cline said, but “I have never seen any records that indicate a city council member has self-identified as a socialist or belonged to a socialist party.”

Cline said that before 1910, a number of socialist candidates ran, but none seem to have made it out of the primary elections.

“It is certainly possible that after 1910 there might have been a serious socialist challenge,” Cline said in an email to KUOW. “However, no name from general elections stands out as a strong socialist candidate; certainly not on par with Kshama Sawant.”

Cline searched through the available voters’ pamphlets dating back to 1983 and found there has been just one other socialist candidate for Seattle City Council who did well – Yolanda Alaniz. Alaniz came in second among four candidates in 1991. She lost to Sue Donaldson, 131,872 to 27,991.

“Nevertheless, nearly 28,000 votes is quite amazing for a socialist candidate,” Cline said.
Licata said he believes that Sawant won’t be an anomaly and that more fringe candidates — on the left and the right — will run for office in coming years.

“My hope is that she doesn’t disappear after the election if she loses,” Licata said on Monday, before Tuesday night's results. “She represents the poor, the immigrants, the refugees – the folks who are not in our City Council offices lobbying us.”

On Tuesday night, Sawant told her supporters that she's not going anywhere. She hinted that she might run against Conlin again if she loses. And she said that she views the passing of the $15 minimum wage in SeaTac as evidence of the left rising up.

Isolde Raftery @ kuow.org
Original article: http://kuow.org/post/why-socialist-kshama-sawants-campaign-matters-win-or-lose

Meal Sharing: A new social-networking site that connects you with a home-cooked meal wherever you are

2013-11-07T16:33:00.002+05:30

While home cooked meals may not have been easy to come, they are now. Meal Sharing is a new social-networking site founded by Chicagoan Jay Savsani that aims to hook travelers up with hosts for home-cooked meals.

Their mission is to allow travelers to experience further. Meal Sharing wants to “make it possible for people, who otherwise would probably never meet, to get together and have a good time over food…to make that experience safe and enriching for everyone involved.”

It’s relatively easy. Here’s how it works:
You log onto the site, select your current location, and request a meal prepared by a particular host on a particular date. After a nearby host family has accepted your request, the two parties can message back and forth to detail the particulars (possible dietary restrictions, allergies, etc), and just like that, the meal is set. “To build trust and safety for the site” users log back onto the site following the meal, and write a review of their experience.

Here is the link to their site: www.mealsharing.com

Venezuela Opens Deputy Ministry For The Supreme Social Happiness To Keep Track Of Social Programs

2013-10-27T09:26:00.001+05:30

President Nicolás Maduro announced on Friday the creation of the Viceministerio para la Suprema Felicidad Social – a deputy ministry for the supreme social happiness. The institution will take care of complaints and applications to the services, and will monitor who is receiving what program and how it is being carried out.

The new institution will supervise the social programs the country has initiated since 2003, called Misiones. Such programs give free health care to the poorest citizens, help to the elderly and disabled, and access to education. When they launched, the Misiones gave Chávez’s presidency a much needed boost. Read the entire article here...
Venezuela Opens Deputy Ministry For The Supreme Social Happiness To Keep Track Of Social Programs

The Story Of Marinaleda, Spain's Thriving Model Communist Village

2013-10-20T22:06:00.001+05:30

Despite the “big” failures of 20th century Communism, the 21st century boasts plenty of smaller, enduring victories against the neoliberal order. Marinaleda is one of those victories. Few of us have heard of Marinaleda, a small town of 2700 people, tucked away in Spain’s Andalusia region, around 100km east of Seville. The town’s official coat of arms states “Marinaleda – Una Utopia Hacia La Paz” (a Utopia towards Peace).

They are led by their charismatic mayor, Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo, who has held the position since 1979 – re-elected time after time with an overwhelming majority. In 2012, he became a household name in Spain after heading raids on local supermarkets to feed the Andalusian unemployed. Mr Sánchez Gordillo’s CUT-BAI party belongs to the Izquierda Unida (“United Left”),the Communist-led coalition.

The fascinating story of this town in Southern Spain furnishes us with evidence of an embryonic, functioning, democratic socialism, which has managed to effectively struggle against the poverty and immiseration experienced in the surrounding areas of Andalusia. In Marinaleda, the residents have won and guaranteed greater rights for themselves – to pay, to housing and to facilities.

The core of Marinaleda’s communist ethic is a 1,200 hectare co-operative farm that was won through a decade of occupations and hunger strikes from the Duke of Infantado. The Duke’s property was just one of many instances in Spain of vast estates with arable land fenced off from the area’s surrounding, usually starving, population. The farm, known as El Humoso, sells its products internationally. Fair-trade and “socially aware” brands often get a bad rap by critical theorists. But El Humoso makes a compelling counterpoint to the likes of Starbucks and Tom’s Shoes. “Know that when you consume any product from our co-operative, you are helping to create employment and social justice,” says Gordillo.

The eight agricultural co-operatives on the farm concentrate on labour intensive crop production such as artichokes, peppers, beans and also wheat and olive groves. Every worker gets paid the same wage – €47 for a six and a half hour working day. It may not sound like a lot, but it's more than double the Spanish minimum wage. Marinaleda, now has an unemployment rate of 5%. Spain, by constrast, has an unemployment rate of 27%.

Marinaleda, surprisingly, has no police. They didn’t abolish the police force, or violently expel its officers. Marinaleda had one police officer. When that officer retired, they never hired a replacement. Now, Gordillo has been known to chase down delinquent youths on his own and speak to their families. Surprisingly, it seems to work out.

A few times every year Marinaleda organize something called red and green Sundays. On these days everyone participates in making the town and the cooperative better for the whole. ‘Red Sunday’ means that everyone does something to improve the town – paint houses, fix pipes, improve pavements and similar jobs. ‘Green Sunday’ means that everyone works extra in the fields, harvesting, packing and so on. This free work benefits everyone who lives in Marinaleda.

Everyone in Marinaleda is employed and nearly everyone has a proper house. The housing policy is that once you have lived in Marinaleda for two years, you get materials to build your own house. The houses are built on municipal land, with materials provided by local and regional government. Local people pay just €15 a month while contributing an agreed number of working hours per month to the construction of the houses. This house cannot be sold, but given away to your children or to someone you choose. Just in recent years three hundred houses have been build.

As an example of Marinaleda’s socialist ideology and believing that power has to be put into the hands of local people, the local Council has created General Assemblies where around 400 to 600 local people meet 25 to 30 times a year to voice their concerns and vote on issues. A further example of the Council’s form of local democracy is the use of “participatory budgets” whereby each year the Council’s proposed investments and expenditures are taken to local areas for discussion.

Marinaleda certainly is a breath of fresh air in a dark Spanish crisis, and might motivate others to live differently.

Companies Could Start Using Brainwaves To Figure Out How Much To Charge You

2013-10-11T22:42:00.000+05:30

Companies could start using brainwaves to find out how much customers are willing to pay. Bloomberg Businessweek profiled Kai-Markus Muller, a German scientist who is developing technology to "measure brainwaves and hit upon feel-good prices." According to Mueller, his studies showed that Germans would pay $3.25 for a small cup of Starbucks coffee-way more than the current price of $2.44.

Read More at the link here.. http://www.businessinsider.in/Companies-Could-Start-Using-Brainwaves-To-Figure-Out-How-Much-To-Charge-You/articleshow/23989479.cms