It’s an Interesting World: 3 November 12, 2009

It’s an Interesting World:  3

Video of the week: Fox News was greatly offended by Sesame Street’s depiction of fictitious news organization “Pox News”, somehow implying that Fox, it well, I don’t know, is an infectious disease? Sensitive much since the Obama Administration shut-out? On Romenesko, Sesame Street responds: “The whole segment was a parody of CNN (called GNN) or the ‘Grouch News Network.’ Children who watch Sesame Street know that Oscar the Grouch is a contrarian. He lives in a trash can and loves everything ‘yucky,’ and ‘disgustin.’ For a Grouch, ‘Trashy’ is high praise! Not only would child-viewers be unlikely to connect ‘Pox News’ to Fox News, in the context of this scene, they would understand the characters to be saying that ‘Pox News’ is better than ‘GNN.’”

Personally, I’m a HUGE fan of GNN!!

Speaking of contrarians and grouchy grouches:

VOTE: Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman try South African accents October 30, 2009

Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman, how do they fare?

We’ve seen some really bad attempts at South African accents over the last few years. My worst memory was Val Kilmer, pretending to be a South African artist in The Saint. Turning to his lady love in a flouncy shirt, he looks at her with great intensity and says, quite quietly: “Jussus.” That’s like Daniel Craig as James Bond turning to a hot actress and going: “O.M.G.” – it’s out of context in the worst way possible. (I might get killed for comparing Craig to Kilmer, but it’s late at night, okay?!

I am pleasantly surprised by the attempts at South African accents in the new film ‘Invictus’, which tells the story of the 1995 Rugby World Cup, hosted by South Africa as it simultaneously struggled to emerge from the deep and very dark shadows of apartheid. Many South Africans considered it to be a uniting event – helped by our win of course. Mat Damon plays blond-haired affable rugby captain Francois Pienaar. Morgan Freedman plays – you guessed it – Mandela. Damon’s accent sounds spot on to my ears, and I want to hug him for it. It makes me so happy! AND it’s directed by Clint Eastwood. I have high hopes for this flick.

Vote and feel free to comment and share your worst experience of a South African accent on the big screen!

It’s an Interesting World: 2 October 28, 2009

It’s an Interesting World: 2

My dahling friend James in Oz sent me this pic of  Greenpoint Stadium in Cape Town, to which I replied: “I have no words,” to which he replied: “You have no idea how often I get that from chicks.”

A lovely picture of Greenpoint Stadium in Cape Town, submitted to Australia's ABC News by Ann Young

Another thing that left me at a loss for words recently was a moment at St. John the Divine, a massive unfinished gothic cathedral on the Upper West Side. I love going there when I can, the gardens are beautiful (especially on stunning Fall days when the sun is shining and the air is crisp) and the cathedral is volumous and awe-inspiring. I was sitting in one of the pews thinking about my view on blessings and misfortune (which I think I have gotten reasonably close to formulating), and I looked up to see … none other than Vanessa Redgrave’s face broadcast on several large screens, which I had previously not seen in the darkness of the cathedral. Redgrave, an outstanding actress and matriach of a great acting family, was on a small wooden stage a few metres away, quietly rehearsing a scene from a Joan Didion play that would be performed in the coming week.

Yes, the cathedral is big enough for someone to rehease a play – and be a mega-celebrity in – without you noticing. It was completely random and as a result, absolutely wonderful!

Quote of the week:

“I do believe that you can achieve more if you’re willing to take risks,” Lars said in a recent phone interview. “There’s almost a total correlation between the amount of risk you’re willing to take and then the amount of stuff you then potentially can get done.”

- Lars Rasmussen, one of the brothers responsible for Google Maps and upcoming Google Wave (being hyped as a revolution in online communication) in an interview with CNN.

Video of the week: Barbed Wireless

An animation commissioned by Global Partners & Associates looking at how new technologies are affecting the way Human Rights and Freedom activists must approach rights and freedoms in the digital age.

Let the ethical debates begin: Womb transplants

“Ethicists, medics and feminists have long argued as to whether infertility is a disease or a cultural phenomenon born of a society where women feel they have no value if they cannot reproduce. But illness or otherwise, it is not a fatal disease, and the suggestion that women could undergo major transplant surgery to fulfil their desire for a child may prompt unease.”

Cross-cultural mishap of the week: chalk it down to not watching enough American TV as a child – or maybe the shows I was watching were too dated!

I recently had to write a report that mentioned cellphones a lot, and I got very confused – this may have had something to do with the fact that it was late in the afternoon! First, I used the word mobile phone, because when I was in London that’s all anyone ever used, and in Germany and Switzerland, people used “Mobile” too (or “Handy” which I loved) Then I realized (<– note the z, I’m so confused) that the U.S. uses “cellphone” so I started using that, only to see Microsoft Word annoyingly underline the word every time I used it. I had to turn around to my neighbor, hold up the thing that I talk into wirelessly and ask: “This is a ‘cellphone’ right?” “Yes,” she responded in the kindest way. I explained my dilemma and spelt it out for her. Turns out that in the U.S. they spell it as two words, not one: cell phone. How was I to know?

I think it’s a sign that all those cell [space] phone ads in the U.S. aren’t making their mark on my brain, which is good. In the 14 months I’ve been here I’ve xperienced a myriad of cross-cultural, lingual misunderstandings, much to the surprise of my ego; I had previously thought of myself as quite “worldly”. Sigh, what’s a girl to do?!

Don’t even get me started on when punctuation marks (PERIODS AND COMMAS) go INSIDE quotation marks. I actually have a lengthy Google doc entitled “Grammar” which I’m still trying to get through. I do so wish I’d paid more attention to the more complex titles of grammar at school – God help me if I’m ever asked to differentiate between prepositional phrases, appositive phrases, participial phrases, infinitive phrases, and absolute phrases.

I’m not sure I could do this: The New York Times presents a story on one of the few reporters left to cover executions. What a macabre beat to have! One Reporter’s Lonely Beat, Witnessing Executions

And that’s it for this week’s update. 54 days until I see home again!!

It’s an Interesting World: 1 October 22, 2009

“It’s a Interesting World” is my attempt to provide a coherent update on this blog every week. In the process of looking through various websites for research purposes, reading Twitter streams, following links on Facebook and then following those links to other links (etc, etc in an endless cycle of reading and attempting not to get lost, Bing advertisement style), I come across some odd, interesting and often times, seemingly useless pieces of information that I get a kick out of reading. And you might too!

You might argue over whether everything I post is “interesting” but let’s not argue semantics. Deal with it! Here goes!

It’s an Interesting World: 1

Quote of the week:

“…he ended by warning the students to be ever mindful of those “threats that come from elevating the values of consensus, conformity, and comfort above the value of truth.”

An excerpt from Larry Summer’s 2006 Harvard address, his last as president of the university, in a Oct 12 New Yorker profile piece

If you want to while away a couple of hours chuckling in front of the computer (most of these updates will detail ways to do that), then I would strongly recommend reading the Reuters blog “Oddly Enough“, which is, well, there’s no way to describe it really. Blogger Robert Basler writes satire at its best. Lately Blaser’s target has been the fashion industry, a veritable buffet of things to mock!

We picked the apples, we baked the pie. Yes, it’s true. Justin and I took on the envious task of baking an apple pie this week. The result was pure deliciousness! The recipe was incredibly easy (we used six Fuji apples we picked in New Paltz over the weekend) and I did a half-decent job on the lattice cover. I used a combination of recipes, but took most of my guidance from Pillsbury’s Perfect Apple Pie recipe, which was provided conveniently on the box of dough we bought. No, I did not make the crust from scratch. Not on a work night! I am both proud of myself and slightly disturbed at my domestic bliss.

An update on Maddoff: The Daily Beast’s Cheat Sheet picked up a story on Wednesday from the Huffington Post on what Maddoff is up to in jail. The highlight of this summary? Maddoff enjoys pizza cooked by a child molester and bunks with a drug offender. Finally company worth of the man!

Favourite find of the week: I only recently discovered that the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University has made several of its lectures available on iTunes U for free. They’ve been doing it since 2008, so I’m a bit late to the game, but I think it’s fantastic. Now the subway mornings are made more interesting a “romp through the history of philosophy”. Lectures AND handouts from the John Locke Lecture philosophy series are available for download as well: http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/lectures/john_locke_lectures. I love the Interwebs!

Weirdness that makes me angry: Only Rush Limbaugh would compare environmentalists to suicide bombers. Media Matters explains the whole debacle quite nicely, but here’s a brief breakdown. New York Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin recently wrote a column describing the correlation between population growth and carbon emissions (a pretty basic causal relation). He discussed how carbon dioxide emmissions could be reduced simply by making birth control accesible to millions of woman worldwide. He also more controversially described a “thought experiment” in which families might one day participate in the carbon credit economy – those with less children would recieve carbon credits for offsetting their carbon emmissions.

Rush Limbaugh, known (by some) for his wildly offensive statements and inability to participate in constructive debate and rational and fair public discourse responded to this on his radio show by saying:

“I think these militant environmentalists, these wackos, have so much in common with the jihad guys. Let me explain this. What do the jihad guys do? The jihad guys go to families under their control and they convince these families to strap explosives on who? Not them. On their kids. Grab your 3-year-old, grab your 4-year-old, grab your 6-year-old, and we’re gonna strap explosives on there, and then we’re going to send you on a bus, or we’re going to send you to a shopping center, and we’re gonna tell you when to pull the trigger, and you’re gonna blow up, and you’re gonna blow up everybody around you, and you’re gonna head up to wherever you’re going, 73 virgins are gonna be there. The little 3- or 4-year-old doesn’t have the presence of mind, so what about you? If it’s so great up there, why don’t you go? Why don’t you strap explosives on you — and their parents don’t have the guts to tell the jihad guys, “You do it! Why do you want my kid to go blow himself up?” The jihad guys will just shoot ‘em, ’cause the jihad guys have to maintain control.

“The environmentalist wackos are the same way. This guy from The New York Times, if he really thinks that humanity is destroying the planet, humanity is destroying the climate, that human beings in their natural existence are going to cause the extinction of life on Earth — Andrew Revkin. Mr. Revkin, why don’t you just go kill yourself and help the planet by dying?”

What I find most disturbing about his statement (beyond his suggestion that Revkin commit suicide) is the notion that human beings currently live a “natural existence.” I’d have to disagree. With the amount of energy we consume and waste we produce, it’s hardly natural!

And that’s this week’s post, let me know what you think!
Jax

I’m in love with the Beast October 17, 2009

I’ve always admired the balls (or literal lack thereof) of Tina Brown, former editor of The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and general all-round magazine queen. To the surprise of everyone in the print publishing world, she left news print last year to launch the online news aggregator The Daily Beast. No one thought she could get it right, but of course she did. I’ve heard that she’s a manic task master at The Beast, and the site looks all the better for it. The design is sleek, modern and in your face. The Cheat Sheet is a clever and smart daily must read and she’s started to tackle online advertising woes by working with clients to create innovative advertising ideas.

There has been some controversy over the way in which adverts are embedded as articles – illustrating how thin the line between advertising and editorial can be online- but this is the Internet, and there’s no denying that new ways have to be found to make money. I trust that Brown is a journalist down to the core, and would never do anything to compromise the site’s principles. I hope.

The site’s commenting function is very innovative: readers have the ability to respond to specific comments, and these “threads” within a comments section can be collapsed, making other comments easier to read. I’ve never seen a website deal with off-topic comments and back and forth arguments so efficiently before.

She’s also made some daring decisions, widening the site’s scope with “The Sexy Beast” (entertainment and fashion), “The Book Beast” (print publishing of books less than 50, 000 words by Beast writers) and my favorite, the recently launched “The Giving Beast” in partnership with the Global Philanthropy Group. At first glance – I haven’t looked at it much – the site highlights causes championed by celebrities (a smart move considering that everyone loves a good celebrity just as much as they love a bad one) and has blog posts detailing innovative approaches to the world’s problems.

Beyond her reputation as a driven woman with high expectations for her staff, Brown is also considered a dahling in social circles, and most people love her, which is surprising for such a powerful woman who has smashed her way up the magazine career ladder – in both the U.K and the U.S. Writers respect her, publishers listen to her, investors invest in her online schemes in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression!

I also love the fact that she has perfectly coiffed blond short hair, almost always rocks a form-fitting kick-ass leather jacket, can be erudite and call bullshit at the same time, and has a longer marriage with a much older husband that looks like it’s characterized by love, respect and kindness in every single society photo op.

The Financial Times recently wrote an article on Brown on the occasion of the first anniversary of The Daily Beast titled: “The Beast of New Journalism” (another shrewd move on the part of Brown, the sites’s name lends itself to hundreds of great headlines and puns). The article describes some of the challenges Brown and the Beast will face, trying to find sustainable funding after their initial start-up investments run out. I have a feeling that if anyone can figure out how to find a sustainable, classy and ethical way to get money from online advertising, it’s Brown.

Read more of Brown's columns here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/author/tina-brown/

I really admire the woman for all she’s achieved in her career, but I particularly admire her class. She spoke at the Journalism School while I was there and I loved every minute of her frank and honest speech. in which she shared ideas, her inspiration behind the Beast and her commitment to narrative journalism, which she admitted she is still trying to figure out how to do online. I’d love to get away with having balls and still be liked as a successful woman one day!

Have you read the site? What do you guys think?

I’ve started a new blog! September 12, 2009

In a random fit of inspiration this afternoon (perhaps brought on by the terrible weather) I started a new blog. It’s different to this one in that it’s meant to be interactive, and its success depends on the participation and contributions of readers.

The design is very basic and pared down. It’s called “I Wish I Had Known“

The blog invites people to write in about lessons, advice and tips they wish they had known when they were younger. Eventually, I hope the blog becomes a collective pool of shared wisdom, where readers can stumble upon life lessons that they maybe never thought of sharing with their families, friends, children…

I want as many people to come to the blog as possible, so please feel free to share the blog’s URL with as many people as possible! The full link is: http://iwishihadknown.wordpress.com/

The story of Astoria September 11, 2009

‘Are all the girls from Queens as tough as you?’ ‘The girls are.
The women will cut your liver when your head is turned and
polish it off with a nice chianti.’
– 2005 movie, “Love, Ludlow”

I share an apartment with two roommates on the third floor of a three storey "family home" - each floor is a self-contained apartment. We're in the building with the black car parked outside!

My new home, Astoria in Queens, is the most ethnically diverse place I’ve ever lived in! I’ve only been here a week and I’m already fascinated by the diversity of people that live in this area and run businesses – the Chinese woman from the 99c store, the Mexican deli down the road, the numerous Greek restaurants. All I have to do is walk out of the door of the three-storey family home I currently reside in, and I have the option to eat Thai, Phillipino, Chinese, Vietnamese, Mexican, Greek and American food; visit an Irish bar; or browse through the well-stocked international aisle at the Bravo supermarket nearby.

A vent on the (mis) treatment of children September 9, 2009

What bothers me the most in this city – aside from the crazy people and the subway in the height of summer – is the way some parents treat their children. I can’t say it’s unique to New York City, that would be an awful generalization, but I’ve had many a chance to observe it in the  hours I have accumulated gratuitously “people-watching” on the subway, as they call it here (voyeurism by any other name …)

A random day in the life of a Jozi girl in NYC June 19, 2009

This is how terribly exciting my life in New York City is … **

** this post mostly for the fam, who are probably the only people interested in my daily activities!!

First, I wake up and stream the Alex Lester show online (*sings*BBC RA-D-IOOOO TWWWWOOO). Lester’s show is my favorite thing to listen to in the morning, next to NPR’s Morning Edition.

I also have this thing about making my bed, I HAVE to make my bed before I go and shower, I just can’t.EXIST.with an unmade bed. Seriously.

This is the messiest my desk will ever get...!

What the world thinks of South African men June 18, 2009

In between tales of Confederate Cup games and rugby team excursions, World Cup preparations and political escapades, this story has reverberated through media in the U.S and the U.K.:

MRC: Quarter of men in South Africa admit rape

“One in four men in South Africa have admitted to rape and many confess to attacking more than one victim, according to a study that exposes the country’s endemic culture of sexual violence.

Three out of four rapists first attacked while still in their teens, the study found. One in 20 men said they had raped a woman or girl in the last year.”

I find it deeply frustrating that my home – a country I love so much – is becoming renown for its violence against women.

My opinion on this story, and a list of international coverage after the jump …