This is something of a notes to friends from my generation. We can’t seem to accept how slow things can be. How slow it is to finally be good at something enough for you to enjoy it immensely. How slow it is to get to the point where you have a sliver of feeling that you are in control of your life.
I bring all of this up to say that if you’re someone who wants to make radio stories (or do any kind of creative work), you’re probably going to have a period when things might not come too easily. For some people, that’s just a year. For others, like me, it’s eight years. You might feel completely alone and lost during this period — God knows I did — and I hope it’s reassuring in some small way to hear that what you’re going through is completely normal. Most people go through it. And there are things you can do during this period of mediocrity that will get you to the next step, that will drive you toward skill and competence.
via Transom » Ira Glass.
you define corruption as the appropriation of taxpayers’ money for personal gain, then this is corruption pure and simple. One sanctioned not just by long-held practice and tradition but by law.
All of which only shows how deeply rooted and tangled corruption is, and how beyond presidential resolve you need other things to push it back. Chief of them public opinion, public pressure, public opprobrium.
Someone like Enrile decides to play Santa Claus with your money, you can’t fight it legally, short of fighting to amend, or scrap, the law itself. But you can fight it morally, by public opinion, by heaping scorn on those who practice it—not quite incidentally by making sure that their children do not get voted into public office and that the values of their fathers are visited upon them.
You can fight it by telling the senators, whether they got P1.6 million or P250,000, whether the division of spoils is “hating kapatid” or hating gabi: You should be ashamed of yourselves you have the gall to accept things like this while the street children sleep in the streets, while the traffic cop grows tubercular from inhaling the traffic smoke. You have a heart, you have a conscience, why don’t you donate all that money to the cause of the NHA employees so their retirement pay, which is nowhere near what you get in a month, will remain intact?
I’m glad the commentators have been riled by this, but the question is, when will the public follow suit? When will we all get furious at this? When will we all go beyond making text jokes out of this? When will we start mounting a campaign against the kapal in the way we have done against the epal? This is appalling too, this is disgusting too:
This is corruption, too.
via Corruption, too | Inquirer Opinion.
We’re a great people.
People work hard, they sacrifice, they do without so that they could give to their children all that they can you know.
Even in the midst of calamity, Yolanda we we’re walking around there in a hovel, really tarpaulin cover, You know, voltz and I we we’re walking around inspecting tryng to figure out how to clear the streets Etc.
People will smile at you and offer you a hot cup of coffee, because there is steaming coffee by the fire they are doing no,
We’re a generous people and our people deserve so much more than what their getting and that’s what this journey is all about.
It’s giving them what is their due.
A due that many of us here enjoy perhaps even take for granted, but for them is still quite unreachable.
All the way north from ambulog, all the way south to tawi-tawi people work hard fishermen, they do what they can to earn a living and they are quite innovative.
In how they save their money and manage their resources meager as it is to try to make it through the day , to set something aside for the future.
And their hopes and dreams when they talk to(pause) me is not very different from your (points towards business men) hopes and dreams, maybe just differentiated by the number of zeros (draws zeros in the air).
Really, I mean di ba(shrugs). And I think that we you part of the governing elite, the businessmen the educated, those who have made it we owe them we owe our people what we can,
Not because it’s a handout, not because it’s paawa but simple in recognition of what they do, the hard work that they do,
Unfortunately their hardwork is not compensated properly,because of , just the system that is in place and those are some of the blockages that we have to remove so that we can unleash their own potentials and receive the just wage/compensation/income that they so richly deserve.
We’re a great nation and we can do so much better.
[Admin:] "We're a great people. Our people sacrifice. They do without, so that they can give to their children all that they can. And our people deserve so much more. That's what this journey is all about. It's giving our people their due." – Mar Roxas
Innovative entrepreneurship is exactly what the American economy desperately needs. You might think that the American innovation system is in great shape because large numbers of highly educated young people are flocking to Silicon Valley to create their own smartphone apps. You’d be wrong. The problem, as Thiel argues, is that although we have large numbers of copycat entrepreneurs, we have very few who are willing to take on the biggest, most difficult challenges. If Amazon weren’t a relentless competitor that threatened the very existence of dozens of hidebound retailers, consumers would endure the same high prices and mediocre service, and shareholders in the various not-Amazons of the world would be sitting pretty. Amazon is the living embodiment of what the mostly forgotten economist Joseph Berliner famously called the “invisible foot” of capitalism.
We’ve all heard of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” that guides the free market. The invisible foot is the invisible hand’s brutish older brother. It is the force that sees to it that capital gets reallocated from firms that aren’t doing their jobs to firms that are by putting the former out of business. The invisible foot has seen better days. In sector after sector—banking, broadband, and utilities come to mind—large incumbent firms have found new ways to protect themselves from competition, whether through coziness with regulators of sweetheart subsidy deals with politicians on the make to a pathetic lack of imagination among entrepreneurs who refuse to take on the toughest challenges. The sectors that Amazon takes on are the big exception. Instead of damning Amazon, we need to be asking why we don’t have more companies like it.
via Amazon isn’t the problem with capitalism. It’s the solution to our economic ills..
We first featured the Holstee manifesto over a year ago, and our fondness for their sustainable social enterprise has only grown since then. Whether you’re raising a family or venture funds for your new business, rallying cries for creativity don’t get much stronger than this:
This is your life. Do what you love, and do it often. If you don’t like something, change it. If you don’t like your job, quit. If you don’t have enough time, stop watching TV. If you are looking for the love of your life, stop; they will be waiting for you when you start doing things you love.”
via Five Manifestos for the Creative Life | Brain Pickings.
A revolution is coming to America.. Not Just America but the World, people are waking up and finally realising how the world works and that their rights as free human beings are slowly being taken away from them..
The 99% are rising up!
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As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose
sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies. As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon
corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and
those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the
people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the
Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic
power.
We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest
over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled
here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.
They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage. They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system
through monopolization. They have profited off of the torture, confinement,and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay andsafer working conditions. They have held students hostage with tens
of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’healthcare and pay. They have influenced the courts to achievethe same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance. They have sold our privacy as a commodity.They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit. They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce. They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them. They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil. They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media. They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. To the people of the world, we, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.
To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy,we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.
Join us and make your voices heard!
The statement issued from Zuccotti Park, by the general assembly, at Occupy Wall Street.
Those on the streets around Wall Street are the physical embodiment of hope. They know that hope has a cost, that it is not easy or comfortable, that it requires self-sacrifice and discomfort and finally faith. They sleep on concrete every night. Their clothes are soiled. They have eaten more bagels and peanut butter than they ever thought possible. They have tasted fear, been beaten, gone to jail, been blinded by pepper spray, cried, hugged each other, laughed, sung, talked too long in general assemblies, seen their chants drift upward to the office towers above them, wondered if it is worth it, if anyone cares, if they will win. But as long as they remain steadfast they point the way out of the corporate labyrinth. This is what it means to be alive. They are the best among us.
via Chris Hedges: The Best Among Us – Chris Hedges Columns – Truthdig.
What is the appeal of traveling and what do you receive from traveling? Are they reflected to your work? Please let us know what does traveling means to you (Eduard, Twitter)
I’m a pilgrim writer and that inevitably appears in the way my characters deals with space.
I’m in constant movement and very often I find that my characters need to equally find themselves in a journey.
I believe that we are constantly experiencing transformation and that’s why we need to let life guide us.
Every day is different, every day can have a magic moment, but we don’t see the opportunity, because we think: ‘Oh this is boring I’m just commuting to work.’
How many interesting people you are missing, just because our parents told us “don’t talk to strangers”? You must get as much as you can from any journey, because – in the end – the journey is all you have. It doesn’t matter what you accumulate in terms of material wealth, because you are going to die anyway, so why not live? You have to look at life itself is a pilgrimage. Therefore, start moving, start talking to strangers!
via Any journey is a pilgrimage « Paulo Coelho’s Blog.
Sotomayor, writing for the court’s four liberals and Justice Anthony Kennedy, explained that the pressure of a custodial interrogation is “so immense that it ‘can induce a frighteningly high percentage of people to confess to crimes they never committed’ ” and referred to studies showing that youngsters are particularly susceptible to such pressure. Therefore, she explains, “a reasonable child subjected to police questioning will sometimes feel pressured to submit when a reasonable adult would feel free to go” and that—empathy alert!—”such conclusions apply broadly to children as a class. And, they are self-evident to anyone who was a child once himself, including any police officer or judge.”
Sotomayor points out that the law has no trouble setting distinct standards for children and adults based on the idea that events that “would leave a man cold and unimpressed can overawe and overwhelm a lad in his early teens.” And she notes that “these observations restate what ‘any parent knows’—indeed, what any person knows—about children generally.”
Sotomayor doubles down on the need to show special solicitude to the suspect’s age by mocking the absurdity of a judge trying her level best to imagine how “a reasonable adult [might] understand his situation, after being removed from a seventh-grade social studies class by a uniformed school resource officer; being encouraged Sotomayor, writing for the court’s four liberals and Justice Anthony Kennedy, explained that the pressure of a custodial interrogation is “so immense that it ‘can induce a frighteningly high percentage of people to confess to crimes they never committed’ ” and referred to studies showing that youngsters are particularly susceptible to such pressure. Therefore, she explains, “a reasonable child subjected to police questioning will sometimes feel pressured to submit when a reasonable adult would feel free to go” and that—empathy alert!—”such conclusions apply broadly to children as a class. And, they are self-evident to anyone who was a child once himself, including any police officer or judge.”
Sotomayor points out that the law has no trouble setting distinct standards for children and adults based on the idea that events that “would leave a man cold and unimpressed can overawe and overwhelm a lad in his early teens.” And she notes that “these observations restate what ‘any parent knows’—indeed, what any person knows—about children generally.”
Sotomayor doubles down on the need to show special solicitude to the suspect’s age by mocking the absurdity of a judge trying her level best to imagine how “a reasonable adult [might] understand his situation, after being removed from a seventh-grade social studies class by a uniformed school resource officer; being encouraged by his assistant principal to ‘do the right thing’; and being warned by a police investigator of the prospect of juvenile detention and separation from his guardian and primary caretaker.” She concludes that empathy is hardly impossible to muster in these settings: “Just as police officers are competent to account for other objective circumstances that are a matter of degree such as the length of questioning or the number of officers present, so too are they competent to evaluate the effect of relative age. … The same is true of judges, including those whose childhoods have long since passed. … In short, officers and judges need no imaginative powers, knowledge of developmental psychology, training in cognitive science, or expertise in social and cultural anthropology to account for a child’s age. They simply need the common sense to know that a 7-year-old is not a 13-year-old and neither is an adult.”by his assistant principal to ‘do the right thing’; and being warned by a police investigator of the prospect of juvenile detention and separation from his guardian and primary caretaker.” She concludes that empathy is hardly impossible to muster in these settings: “Just as police officers are competent to account for other objective circumstances that are a matter of degree such as the length of questioning or the number of officers present, so too are they competent to evaluate the effect of relative age. … The same is true of judges, including those whose childhoods have long since passed. … In short, officers and judges need no imaginative powers, knowledge of developmental psychology, training in cognitive science, or expertise in social and cultural anthropology to account for a child’s age. They simply need the common sense to know that a 7-year-old is not a 13-year-old and neither is an adult.”
via J.D.B. v. North Carolina: Sonia Sotomayor shows Samuel Alito the value of judicial empathy. – By Dahlia Lithwick – Slate Magazine.
