The new, improved, disposable father: Britain and Canada are well ahead in the race to make fatherhood completely redundant. [Mercator]
A cut in the wages of sin: But after a long boom, the industry faces a rare slowdown and belts are tightening across Sin City. [Economist]
Scientists find ‘law of war’ that predicts attacks: Scientists believe they may have glimpsed a “law of war” that can be used to predict the likelihood of attacks in modern conflicts, from conventional battles to global terrorism. [Telegraph]
A turning tide?: Many of the past decade’s migrants to Europe and America are beginning to go home again. [Economist]
June 27th, 2008 at 10:31 am
This article is filed under Blog, Society.
Thou shalt not hug: British society no longer trusts grown-ups to interact with children. In a controversial new report, Frank Furedi and Jennie Bristow argue that the culture of “vetting” adults is damaging relationships between the generations. [New Statesman]
The White Stuff: They like running marathons and eating sushi, venerating Jon Stewart and bragging about not owning a TV. They talk endlessly about HBO’s The Wire and dance self-consciously to ’80s music. They’re into “irony” and have a tendency to threaten to move to Canada. “They” are white people, and they’re the subject of “Stuff White People Like,” a flavor-of-the-moment blog that, since appearing in January of 2008, boasts nearly 30 million hits. [American Prospect]
Newspaper ad departments are already outsourcing to India. Is editorial next?: If it happens, it won’t be without an uproar in the journalism world. Last year, the local news Web site Pasadena Now, in California, was roundly mocked when it announced a plan to have Indian reporters cover local government meetings via webcast. More recently, The Miami Herald announced in December that it would outsource some copy editing and design work to the Indian company Mindworks… [CJR]
Waves of Would-Be Immigrants Target EU Shores: As the weather warms up and the waves calm down, thousands of would-be immigrants are setting sail for Europe from African shores. Many get picked up by EU authorities — or die before they get that far. [Spiegel]
June 26th, 2008 at 10:45 am
This article is filed under Blog, Society.
The Big Sort: Americans are increasingly choosing to live among like-minded neighbours. This makes the culture war more bitter and politics harder. [Economist]
Chinese South Africans classified as black: Chinese were reclassified as “black” in a landmark South African ruling allowing them access to economic benefits. [Telegraph]
Spelling bees, long a domain of kids, now attract seniors: The AARP national championship this weekend will feature dozens of contestants who have spent the past year studying words in the car, on the treadmill, and in the dentist’s chair. [CSM]
Elderly Japanese suicide in record numbers: The number of elderly Japanese killing themselves surged nine per cent to a record high last year, fuelled by mounting health and economic worries. [Telegraph]
June 20th, 2008 at 11:16 am
This article is filed under Blog, Society.
American Murder Mystery: Why is crime rising in so many American cities? The answer implicates one of the most celebrated antipoverty programs of recent decades. [Atlantic]
French smokers abandon bars, clubs and restaurants for private parties: Smokers in France are uniting to beat a ban on lighting up in public by organising open-house parties where they can puff on their Gauloises until the early hours. [Times]
Blacker-than-black Market: Here, just inside Paraguay, close to where that country ends and Argentina and Brazil begin, is Ciudad del Este—most famous for its markets, both illicit and legal, which I’m shopping my way through with startling ease. Machines guns aren’t the only thing for sale here, of course. [Good Magazine]
June 18th, 2008 at 11:40 am
This article is filed under Blog, Society.
India’s dirty laundry: The murder tearing Indian society apart: The murder of a teenage girl in Delhi, unjustly blamed on a domestic servant, has heightened hatred and suspicion at the heart of Asia’s most class-riven society. [Independent]
Tide turns against California’s surfboard makers: For California’s world-famous surfboard manufacturers, time looks to be finally running out on the endless summer that started in the Sixties and saw them bring their sport, together with its laid-back beach culture, to a global audience. Artisan firms, which until recently still dominated the multimillion-dollar industry, are facing a crippling financial crisis. [Independent]
Bolivia’s racial onslaught: Bolivian socialist politician César Navarro - ambushed by a mob in his country’s constitutional capital - explains how the right is using racist rhetoric to build an atmosphere of violence. [New Statesman]
‘After all the money you got. Ungrateful bastards’: From the minute it became clear that the Irish people had said ‘No’ to the Lisbon Treaty, Irish politicians and commentators lined up to spew bile at the electorate. [Spiked]
June 16th, 2008 at 11:04 am
This article is filed under Blog, Society.
The road to democracy is paved with cell phones: Disasters in Myanmar and China may ultimately promote governments more friendly to human dignity. [Mercator]
Am I bovvered? Why the workshy British are losing out to migrants: Low-skilled British workers are losing to foreign migrants in the jobs market because they are unemployable and lack the motivation to work, according to a government report published yesterday. [Times]
Unlike Others, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend in Speech: “In much of the developed world, one uses racial epithets at one’s legal peril, one displays Nazi regalia and the other trappings of ethnic hatred at significant legal risk, and one urges discrimination against religious minorities under threat of fine or imprisonment,” Frederick Schauer, a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, wrote in a recent essay called “The Exceptional First Amendment.” “But in the United States,” Professor Schauer continued, “all such speech remains constitutionally protected.” [NYT]
The Friendship Offensive: Peace activists on Capitol Hill hope to stave off war with Iran through cross-cultural contact between ordinary citizens. Leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus show their support. [American Prospect]
Never mind the Chinese—here come the Belgians: COULD anything symbolise America’s loss of economic supremacy more clearly than for its favourite beer to fall into foreign hands? Hitherto, Budweiser has been at the forefront of the Americanisation of the world, often to the dismay of foreign drinkers of traditional beers who regard a Bud as a glass of water spoiled. [Economist]
Gaza ‘genius’ helps beseiged city survive a year of Israel’s blockade: Since then, Gaza has seen continuing conflict, ever-deepening poverty, shortages, unemployment and despair. Against that background, the white Peugeot has become a symbol of Gaza’s suppressed potential. “People who have seen it are even happier than we are,” says Mr Annan. [Independent]
In Rio Slum, Armed Militia Replaces Drug Gang’s Criminality With Its Own: And what they lived through has become a public scandal that has focused attention on the growing danger posed by these militias, which have supplanted drug gangs as the violent overlords who run many of Rio’s slums and their illicit enterprises, often with links to corrupt police officers and politicians. [NYT]
June 13th, 2008 at 9:59 am
This article is filed under Blog, Society.
Inquiry Into Alleged Anti-Asian Bias Expands: The complaint, filed in 2006, has been viewed as significant by critics of affirmative action who argue — as does the rejected applicant — that highly competitive colleges’ commitment to diversity results in differential standards for members of different groups, with Asian American applicants held to tougher standards. [Inside Higher Ed]
Macabre drug cartel messages in Mexico: Some of the communications intended for rivals, officials and the public have accompanied severed heads and been written on bodies. [LA Times]
For hospices, an infusion of youth: At Charlestown-based Beacon Hospice, the largest hospice organization in New England, the number of volunteers in their teens or 20s has increased by nearly 80 percent in the past year. [Boston Globe]
June 11th, 2008 at 9:54 am
This article is filed under Blog, Society.
Shadows on the land: Fourteen years ago the new South Africa was born in an outpouring of euphoria. But works by the country’s own photographers and artists reveal a darker side of the rainbow nation. [Independent]
‘Baghdad-style’ checkpoints in US capital: Police in Washington DC have set up vehicle checkpoints in the American capital in a controversial measure aimed at tackling a wave of gun violence. [Telegraph]
Pakistani men sitting pretty: A growing number flock to salons to get facials, manicures and pedicures and even to have their backs waxed. ‘I like to look good and feel good,’ says one. [LA Times]
Police tell more than 1,000 people that someone wants to kill them: Senior officers across the country issued so-called Osman warnings to businessmen, drug dealers and gang members after receiving specific intelligence that they were at serious risk of being killed by individuals with the resources to arrange their death. [Times]
Inside Gate, India’s Good Life; Outside, the Slums: These enclaves have emerged on the outskirts of prospering, overburdened cities, from this frontier town next to the capital to the edges of seam-splitting Bangalore. They allow their residents to buy their way out of the hardships that afflict vast multitudes in this country of more than one billion. [NYT]
June 9th, 2008 at 10:27 am
This article is filed under Blog, Society.
Iran Makes the Sciences A Part of Its Revolution: As Burton Richter, an American Nobel laureate in physics, entered the main auditorium of Tehran’s prestigious Sharif University, hundreds of students rose to give him a loud and lengthy ovation. But Richter, wearing a white suit and leaning on a cane, said he was the one who should be awed. “The students here are very impressive,” Richter said, lauding the high level of education at Sharif. “I expect to hear a lot more from you all in the future.” [Washington Post]
The empty European village: Do countries with sub-replacement fertility need more government support, or less? [Mercator]
A CULTURE OF LAWLESSNESS Russia’s Raiders: Companies are paying public officials to raid the offices of business rivals and subject them to criminal investigations. [Spiegel]
Facebook Suicide: You’ll never find me on Facebook. You may scoff at my refusal – I used to do the same, rolling my eyes whenever my elders claimed resistance to the latest internet phenomenon – but Facebook is a scary, commercial dead-zone that’s killing our real-world relationships. [Adbusters]
June 6th, 2008 at 9:51 am
This article is filed under Blog, Society.
Jillaroos bring feminine touch to Outback farms: A record number of young Australian women are signing up to become jillaroos, mustering sheep and cattle on vast Outback ranches. Girls in their late teens and early twenties are forsaking the comforts of city life to get their hands dirty alongside their male counterparts, known as jackaroos. [Telegraph]
Extremist Violence the Norm in Parts of the Country: Arson attacks and racist assaults by right-wing extremists are part of everyday life in parts of Germany. Authorities are concerned that the country’s neo-Nazi scene is becoming increasingly violent. [Spiegel]
Londoners and New Yorkers gawk at each other through a transatlantic lens: No, it’s the Telectroscope, the wacky, wonderful invention of British artist Paul St. George. The story: Mr. St. George happened upon a stack of dusty papers in his grandmother’s attic, which revealed that his great-grandfather – an eccentric Victorian engineer – had planned to bore a 3,471-mile tunnel from London to New York, allowing us Brits to gawk at you Yanks through the world’s longest telescope. Now, St. George has made his great-gramp’s dream a reality. [CSM]
June 4th, 2008 at 10:55 am
This article is filed under Blog, Society.
