Links for the Week – Saturday November 25, 2006

This week’s lineup illustrates why the media need to do a better job of making what’s important interesting. Each of these items is, in my opinion, very important, but none of them gets any attention in the legacy media.The Real Meaning of Thanksgiving: This week’s New Yorker Online has four Thanksgiving-theme magazine covers (subscribers, like me, only get one of them in hard copy — excerpt above) and one comic strip by the inimitable Chris Ware. If you want to know why I listed ‘cartoons’ as one of the most effective means of adding meaning to information, go read Chris’ stuff. His work packs an enormous emotional punch, as I’ve reported before.Why Bush and Israel Won’t Tolerate a Nuclear Iran: Also in this week’s New Yorker is the latest salvo from Sy Hersh, describing why a cornered and hurt George Bush is even more dangerous than a ‘popular’ one. Key messages: Israel considers a nuclear Iran a threat to its existence even if that threat is never exercised — it will discourage Jews from living in Israel. And: Bush and his cabal see a nuclear Iran as a threat to its power and an affront to its US-dominated world order. Both will take whatever steps are necessary to prevent it happening, even if it requires rushed, covert, or possibly even illegal action.

Madison Avenue, Making the World Dissatisfied with What’s Real and Possible: On YouTube, an explanation of how the beauty that you see in contemporary ads is entirely illusory, literally larger and better than real life. And an impossible standard for real people to live up to. Thanks to Rob Paterson for the link.

When ‘Poor’ and ‘Sick’ are Synonyms: I’ve reported before on research that suggests that violence — in a country, region or city — is directly proportionate to the wealth disparity between rich and poor in that area. When everyone in poor, there is little violence (no one to be angry at, envious of, or steal from). Now a Canadian study says that this wealth disparity maps closely to a health disparity, even in communities where rich and poor supposedly share the same hospitals. If it’s this bad in Canada, imagine what it’s like incountries like the US with much higher disparity indices.

The Father of Firefox Seeks to Bridge the Digital Divide: Blake Ross, one of the founders of Firefox, is creating a web-based meta-operating system that would allow users to navigate and manage their computer (all its content and applications) from a single ‘web page’. This is along the lines of what I proposed a year ago as the means to allow people who are intimidated or just too busy to learn to use and share stuff on a PC to do so.

1 Response to Links for the Week – Saturday November 25, 2006

Evan says:

November 27, 2006 at 17:55

I’ve seen that Dove evolution a few times now. When I was in my late teens, I went to NYC to model. I couldn’t handle the industry and the way they would make you feel. I was 5’8″ and barely weighed 108 pounds and was told by one agency to loose some weight and come back when I had done so. It was crazy. I went to Elle Magazine and was told by my interviewer that my hair was “so short, that how did I expect to get any work with my unfortunate hair”. She then showed me photos of, I guess, the appropriate hair length. I didn’t last very long, I went back to the university. I really appreciate that video. It should be broadcast during the Superbowl and other prime time shows. Young girls need to know that the models they look up to, don’t look like the images in the magazines. Real beauty comes from being healthy, poised, self-confident and self-nurturing.