Timbuktu Chronicles, a “view of Africa and Africans with a focus on entrepreneurship, innovation, technology, practical remedies and other self sustaining activities” by Emeka Okafor, takes note of Community Seed Banks with links to fuller reports..
Nothing here to see, move along.
Mars promotes homophobia
I won’t link to their website, because that’s actually good for them, but the Snickers website has 1) a homophobic ad they aired during the Super Bowl; 2) three more even worse ads that they’re inviting people to vote on for airing during the Daytona 500; and 3) bigoted reactions from pro football players.
So, no more: M&M’S, MARS, MILKY WAY, SNICKERS and TWIX; Skittles, Combos, Starburst, or Dove; Whiskas, Pedigree, or Sheba; Uncle Ben’s.
UPDATE: Andy Towle (Towleroad) reports that Mars has pulled the website, the ads, and the footballers’ reactions.
Goodbye Googlebombing!
Nice take-down of Google in the Guardians’ story, “Read me first”
‘Miserable failure’ Bush rehabilitated as Google steps in to defuse the Googlebombs
The company is allowing concerns about its public image to influence the search results it dishes up. . .
The perception of Google as an honest broker, disinterested in the information it presents, remains a popular one. We like to believe that “we the people” control what comes out of Google’s mouth.
But while that may have been true once, and while it was in fact one of the company’s founding ideals, it’s not so true any more.
Snap
Sure, it’s a snap–it’s a snap to turn off those annoying previews, that is.
Wow
Wow. Just wow. Andrew Sullivan has a YouTube video of a humvee driving in Bagdad. Wow: Andrew Sullivan | The Daily Dish: A Glimpse of Baghdad
Scary global warming animation
The Mystery of Consciousness
Great article in Time about “The Mystery of Consciousness “:
Some mavericks, like the mathematician Roger Penrose, suggest the answer might someday be found in quantum mechanics. But to my ear, this amounts to the feeling that quantum mechanics sure is weird, and consciousness sure is weird, so maybe quantum mechanics can explain consciousness.
Reality hits reality TV
BBC 4’s Big Brother program has recently created a furor over very ugly behavior. In her exit interview, ejected contestant Jade Goody has a revelation:
“I look like a complete and utter nasty small person — the sort of person I don’t like myself,” but continued: “I am not a racist and I sincerely, with my hand on my heart, apologise to anyone I have offended out there.”
A Quaker and a King
In his diary entry for Monday 11 January 1663/64, Samuel Pepys records a Quaker woman at the the court of King Charles II:
This morning I stood by the King arguing with a pretty Quaker woman, that delivered to him a desire of hers in writing. The King showed her Sir J. Minnes, as a man the fittest for her quaking religion, saying that his beard was the stiffest thing about him, and again merrily said, looking upon the length of her paper, that if all she desired was of that length she might lose her desires; she modestly saying nothing till he begun seriously to discourse with her, arguing the truth of his spirit against hers; she replying still with these words, “O King!†and thou’d him all along.
None of the commenters has yet identified the woman, and I haven’t looked it up yet. But I’d like to know!