Great project underway at Global Voices Online:
In your country, how does the media’s Iraq coverage rate? Fair and balanced? Biased? Which way? How about bloggers’ reporting and discussion of the issue? Have blogs helped clarify things or added to the confusion? We want to bring the opinions of the world’s bloggers on this issue directly into the debate.
There’s a good article on overpackaging in Britain in the magazine of the Guardian: The Observer | Magazine | One family, one month, 50kg of packaging. Why?.
‘Morrisons coconuts are shrink-wrapped to ensure that they reach the customer in the very best condition. The packaging helps to keep the product fresh, limit damage from breakages, stop coconut hairs getting into other foodstuffs during transport and allows an information label to be attached.’ While coconut hair has never been one of my top 10 worries, this is probably enough for the supermarket to justify its shrink-wrap decision on the grounds that the consumer demands it. Crediting dodgy packaging to the consumer’s wants and needs is difficult to refute and explains why, despite an EU law which forbids overpackaging, experts can only cite three examples of prosecutions in the UK in the past decade.
There’s a very entertaining article about Sudoku at American Scientist Online — Unwed Numbers. (Really! Even in American Scientist!) I enjoy Sudoku enough that I even bought one of the small collections of puzzles. It’s very satisfying to be able to pick one up now and then.
The Guardian has an amazing Arts special reports page with many Bach stories and resources in response to BBC-3’s upcoming broadcast of all of Bach’s works.
IKEA opened in the Boston area and I decided I had to try it out this evening. What a trip! It is enormous, larger even than the new IKEA store in Philadelphia. It was packed. There were security people directing traffic from two blocks away. And this at 7 on a Saturday night.
I took notes for a couple of needs in my new apartment, but I wasn’t able to find shades for the ceiling-fan lights with bare bulbs. I did pick up two boxes of those wonderful oat crisps with a chocolate layer, some crispbread, black currant preserves, and a tin of ansjovis for making janssons frestelse.
At the National Weather Service Hurricane Center: Tropical Storm KENNETH is in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Who knew I was on the list!
Here’s what the Guardian has to say about the upcoming UN summit: World summit on UN’s future heads for chaos.
The British government is mounting a huge diplomatic effort this weekend to prevent the biggest-ever summit of world leaders, designed to tackle poverty and overhaul the United Nations, ending in chaos. . . .
Ricardo Alarcon, speaker of the Cuban parliament, whose hopes of attending the summit along with President Fidel Castro were dashed when he was denied a visa by the US, said in Havana the summit “has been totally devalued, its original purpose kidnapped”. . . .
Mr Bolton has so far made only one significant concession, dropping his demand for the term “millennium development goals” to be deleted.
But Mr Bolton said the US will not renew a promise to pay 0.7% of gross domestic product towards aid, regarded as necessary for meeting the millennium development goals.
Controls on arms is likely to be dropped. But agreement is almost certain on creation of the human rights council. A deal could be reached on the peace-building commission, in spite of disagreements over who should run it.
There is a divide over the definition of terrorism, with pro-Palestinian states objecting that the proposed terminology be amended to exclude Palestinian fighters.
The most significant reform, expansion of the 15-member security council to about 25 members, has been shelved until at least December.
What really got me was the part about the US denying a visa to the speaker of the Cuban parliament. This summer at least two Cuban Friends were denied visas to attend Quaker gatherings. What a foolish and shortsighted situation.
From Wired 13.08: The Big Gulp.
People head to Reno for all sorts of reasons. Some want to gamble. Others are looking for a hasty wedding or quickie divorce. I’ve come to the Biggest Little City in the World to drink my own pee.
It’s a story about water purification and its applications in space and on Earth. Not only is the lede great, the story is interesting as well.
This from Ha’aretz:
In a step seen as a watershed moment in his disengagement plan, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Wednesday morning ordered the Gaza Strip closed to Israeli visitors, declaring it a closed military area in order to blunt plans by anti-pullout activists to flood the Strip with protesters.
The article also samples the expected quotes accusing Sharon of destroying Israel.
More bombing coverage in the Guardian: Marie Fatayi-Williams’s plea to know what has happened to her son Anthony. Her speech is the second half of the article. Here are a couple of pieces:
Which cause has been served? Certainly not the cause of God, not the cause of Allah because God Almighty only gives life and is full of mercy. Anyone who has been misled, or is being misled to believe that by killing innocent people he or she is serving God should think again because it’s not true.Terrorism is not the way, terrorism is not the way. It doesn’t beget peace. We can’t deliver peace by terrorism, never can we deliver peace by killing people. Throughout history, those people who have changed the world have done so without violence, they have [won] people to their cause through peaceful protest. Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, their discipline, their self-sacrifice, their conviction made people turn towards them, to follow them. What inspiration can senseless slaughter provide? Death and destruction of young people in their prime as well as old and helpless can never be the foundations for building society.
My son Anthony is my first son, my only son, the head of my family. In African society, we hold on to sons. He has dreams and hopes and I, his mother, must fight to protect them. This is now the fifth day, five days on, and we are waiting to know what happened to him and I, his mother, I need to know what happened to Anthony. His young sisters need to know what happened, his uncles and aunties need to know what happened to Anthony, his father needs to know what happened to Anthony. Millions of my friends back home in Nigeria need to know what happened to Anthony. His friends surrounding me here, who have put this together, need to know what has happened to Anthony. I need to know, I want to protect him. I’m his mother, I will fight till I die to protect him. To protect his values and to protect his memory.
Innocent blood will always cry to God Almighty for reparation. How much blood must be spilled? How many tears shall we cry? How many mothers’ hearts must be maimed? My heart is maimed. I pray I will see my son, Anthony. Why? I need to know, Anthony needs to know, Anthony needs to know, so do many others unaccounted for innocent victims, they need to know.
Amen.