Curated knowlege, trenchant insights & witty bon mots
From the BBC: “Our intelligence services have confirmed to me that he's alive,” Mr Abbas (Mahmoud, the Palestinian president) told reporters in Sweden. (Alan) Johnston, 44, has not been seen since he was seized at gunpoint on his way home in Gaza City on 12 March. On Sunday, an unknown militant group said it had killed [...]
Thu, April 19 2007 » Main Page, Media » Comments Off
I did a backgrounder for the Virginia Tech University shootings: Common threads run through school shooters. The most haunting part of the story is this quote that U of T psychology prof Jordan Peterson read me from Milton's Paradise Lost as a way of explaining the mindset of such people: “'The more I see pleasures [...]
Thu, April 19 2007 » * Big Picture Stuff, Film, Main Page, Media » Comments Off
From Yahoo! News: Popular online hangout MySpace entered the news business — http://news.myspace.com (beta) – Thursday with a feature that lets its users determine what items other members see. MySpace News brings to a much larger audience the user-recommendation capabilities already available through Digg and Time Warner Inc.'s Netscape. It also marks the site's further inroads into [...]
Thu, April 19 2007 » Main Page, Media » Comments Off
From the BBC: Civilians in Afghanistan are increasingly facing suicide attacks, abductions and beheadings, according to a leading human rights group. A report by Amnesty International says that attacks on civilians are widespread and systematic, and are used by Taleban rebels to instil fear. The report says that scores of civilians have been deliberately killed [...]
Thu, April 19 2007 » * Big Picture Stuff, Main Page » Comments Off
Two Egyptian women who worked as newsreaders for state TV want to wear veils on air. Their employer has issues with that. So do some Egyptians. Some excerpts from the BBC story: It all started in 2002 when the two presenters decided to wear the hijab head covering worn by many Muslim women. But their [...]
Thu, April 19 2007 » * Big Picture Stuff, Main Page, Media » Comments Off
From the BBC: Staff at an Afghan television station in the capital, Kabul, have protested against a raid by armed police who allegedly assaulted workers there. Dozens of journalists and Members of Parliament demonstrated outside parliament against the raid. They accused President Hamid Karzai of smothering freedom of speech during Tuesday's raid at Tolo TV. [...]
Thu, April 19 2007 » Main Page, Media » Comments Off
BBC visitors have not lost their fascination with the goat marriage story. See here for context.
Thu, April 19 2007 » Main Page » Comments Off
From FishOntario.com: The dried-up river in question is the Jackpine, which flows into Lake Superior about 24 km east of Nipigon. The story poses this question: Can Ontario's trout survive climate change? The unfortunate answer is, probably not over the longer term. Trout require cold water, and that's becoming an ever-scarcer resource. Another interesting visual [...]
Thu, April 19 2007 » * Big Picture Stuff, Main Page » Comments Off