Indonesians and Suharto

(1)
Al Jazeera news

27 Jan 2008
Former Indonesian ruler Suharto dies

(4 min)

(2)
Al Jazeera news
What Indonesians think about Suharto?

12 Jan 2008

(4 min)

14 Jan 2008

(3 min)

Authors@Google: Paul Krugman

Dec 2007


(1 hr 12 min)

Paul Krugman, the economist and NY Times columnist, presented his new book The Conscience of a Liberal. (NY Times book review: Marching After Goldwater in the Opposite Direction, 8 Nov 2007)

Authors@Google: Paul Hawken

May 2007


(60 min)

Paul Hawken, an environmentalist and journalist, discussed his new book Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It. And a conversation with Larry Brilliant.

蚊帳, 中藥, 瘧疾

(1)
這星期WHO的研究員report, 蚊帳和新藥令瘧疾在非洲的死亡率大幅降低. "We saw a very drastic impact," WHO的瘧疾專員Dr. Arata Kochi, "If this is done everywhere, we can reduce the disease burden 80 to 85 percent in most African countries within five years."

這份report算是是多年來最大的希望.

Global Fund委託WHO做這次研究. 對象是在4個國家的一些programs, 發放蚊帳和新藥, 包括artemisinin, 與每間公共診所. Artemisinin是一種由苦艾(wormwood)製出來的中藥. samples比較小, 而這次是第一次國家比較的report.

1. In Ethiopia, deaths of children from malaria dropped more than 50 percent. Ethiopia, much larger, took almost two years to hand out 20 million nets
2. Rwanda, a small country that handed out three million nets in two months in 2006, had 66 percent fewer child malaria deaths in 2007 than in 2005
3. Zambia, Dr. Kochi said, had only about a 33 percent drop in overall deaths because nets ran short and many districts ran out of medicine. But those areas without such problems had 50 to 60 percent reductions, he said.
4. Ghana was a bit of a mystery, according to the report. It got little money from the Global Fund, Dr. Kochi said, and so bought few nets and had to charge patients for drugs. Malaria deaths nonetheless fell 34 percent, but deaths among children for other reasons dropped 42 percent.
   

(2)
Report是在12月完成的. 收集data長期是一大難題, 尤其是非洲, 每個人一發燒就會假設是瘧疾. 學校的保健記錄也少有送去首都. 這份report只包括留院的兒童, 診斷也是肯定的.

一年一百萬兒童死亡, 這最常引用的data, 也不過是educated guess.

(3)
Where is the research taking?


檢視較大的地圖

First People, Last Chance

26 Dec 2007


(11 min)

Al Jazeera "reports from the heart of Australia on a dilemma facing the country's indigenous people".

How to protect your open source project from poisonous people

Oct 2007


(55 min)

Speaker: Ben Collins-Sussman and Brian Fitzpatrick

Suharto: A legacy of a dictator

17 Jan 2008
Al Jazeera news

Part 1

(15 min)

Part 2

(8 min)

Supreme Justice for Suharto

28 Jan 2008
Al Jazeera news

Part 1

(13 min)

Part 2

(11 min)

達富, 奧運

今日Darfur's sorrow : a history of destruction and genocide的作者M.W. Daly寫了一封信與NY Times:

To the Editor:

In "China's Genocide Olympics" (column, Jan. 24), Nicholas D. Kristof writes of a "growing recognition that perhaps the best way of averting hundreds of thousands more deaths in Sudan is to use the leverage of the Olympics to shame China into more responsible behavior."

Is this really the "best" the world can do, more than three years after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell testified about the genocide in Darfur? The suspicion is inescapable that Western governments' evasion of responsibility will only be abetted by efforts to channel public outrage into such ultimately futile gestures as placard-waving and armband-wearing at next summer's Beijing Games.

Worse, in the event that China's government did bring pressure to bear to stop the violence in Darfur before the Olympics, who can doubt that the killing would resume as soon as the athletes left Beijing and the world’s attention had turned elsewhere?

Popular campaigns to "shame" China give comfort to the United States, NATO and other governments that have done little or nothing to back up with action their oft-professed concern for the people of Darfur.

Until the American public demands an end to the games in ashington, it will be hypocritical and counterproductive to target the Beijing Olympics.

Martin Daly

Waterville, Me., Jan. 24, 2008

Free the Children

(1)
Dec 2007


(55 min)

Craig Kielburger and Marc Kielburger, the founders of Free the Children (an NGO helping children) and the authors of Me to We, shared their experience.

(2)
The comparsion of per capita spending on ice-cream and pet food with the foreign aid is interesting. Just can't forget the closing "We can't do great thing; but we can do small things with great love," he qouted Mother Terasa

Authors@Google: Tim Harford

Jan 2008


(56 min)

Tim Harford, the auther of The Undercover Economist, presented his new book The Logic of Life.

Authors@Google: Michael Shermer

Jan 2008


(54 min)

Michael Shermer presented his new book Mind of the Market, exploring the new science of evolutionary economics.

Ken Roth on Darfur

Apr 2007


(58 min)

Ken Roth, executive director of Human Right Watch, talked about Darfur.

Google Founders & Thomas Friedman: Climate Change Conversation

Jan 2008

A conversation in Davos:

(37 min)

Q&A:

(47 min)

Darfur Now (Documentary)

Trailer:


Jason Miller, advicer for the Sudan Divestment Task Force, on the film Darfur Now (Nov 2007):


(27 min)

Darfur Now (homeage at Myspace)

Authors@Google: Tom Kuczmarski

Jan 2008


(61 min)

Tom Kuczmarski, an innovation consultant, introduced his book Apples are Square.

Davos專版

(1)
The Economist報導:

Gloomiest media executive: Jeff Zucker, head of NBC, who worried aloud that TV news no longer works as a business. This was a fiercely contested title, as there is now widespread fear that new media will erode the industry’s revenue base in ways that online ads and subscriptions will never replace.

到一到YouTube的Channel The Davos Question 08 和 World Economic Forum, 他的fear不無道理



(2)
Portfolio.com有專版報導Davos的World Economic Forum年會. 看上去有點格格不入.

(3)
The Economist對Davos 2008的總結:

Most wanted solution: Water. The worryingly warm January weather may have melted the snow in Davos, but the growing prospect of catastrophic wars over water shortages was this year’s biggest climate-change related worry. Special mention: Coca-Cola, which is doing its bit for creative capitalism with an extensive programme to protect water supplies in the developing world.

(4)
and IHT & NY Times's blog: Davos Diary

達富, 公義

(1)
今日NY Times有一封讀者來信是這樣說的:

To the Editor:

“Intervention, Hailed as a Concept, Is Shunned in Practice” (Diplomatic Memo, Jan. 20) rightly points out that Darfur is a test of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1674, which commits the nations of the world to intervene to protect civilians facing mass atrocities.

The MacArthur Foundation supports organizations that aim to make the “responsibility to protect” a universally applied norm, not just a noble aspiration. But intervention is only one element of the pursuit of justice.

The sad truth is the crisis in Darfur has persisted for so long and the atrocities have run so deep that accountability is just as important as intervention. Even if the nations of the world successfully intervene now, Darfur will not know lasting peace unless justice is brought to the people who perpetrated the crimes.

Last May, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Ahmad Haroun, a government minister, and Ali Kushayb, a leader of the janjaweed militias. Sudan has not turned the men over and has instead defied the international community by protecting Mr. Kushayb; promoting Mr. Haroun to humanitarian affairs minister; and recently appointing Musa Hilal, another notorious janjaweed leader, to be special adviser to the minister of federal affairs.

The United States, along with China, Russia and other members of the United Nation Security Council, should recommit themselves to the values that inspired the responsibility to protect, pressure Sudan to turn over Mr. Haroun and Mr. Kushayb, and see that justice is served in Darfur.

Jonathan F. Fanton
Chicago, Jan. 25, 2008

The writer is president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

(2)
2006年通過的United Nations Security Council Resolution 1674中有一段是這樣說的:

10. Demands that all States fully implement all relevant decisions of the Security Council, and in this regard cooperate fully with United Nations peacekeeping missions and country teams in the follow-up and implementation of these resolutions;

11. Calls upon all parties concerned to ensure that all peace processes, peace agreements and post-conflict recovery and reconstruction planning have regard for the special needs of women and children and include specific measures for the protection of civilians including

1. (i) the cessation of attacks on civilians,
2. (ii) the facilitation of the provision of humanitarian assistance,
3. (iii) the creation of conditions conducive to the voluntary, safe, dignified and sustainable return of refugees and internally displaced persons,
4. (iv) the facilitation of early access to education and training,
5. (v) the re-establishment of the rule of law, and
6. (vi) the ending of impunity;

12. Recalls the prohibition of the forcible displacement of civilians in situations of armed conflict under circumstances that are in violation of parties' obligations under international humanitarian law;

還有, 很理想的:

Recognizing the important role that education can play in supporting efforts to halt and prevent abuses committed against civilians affected by armed conflict, in particular efforts to prevent sexual exploitation, trafficking in humans, and violations of applicable international law regarding the recruitment and re-recruitment of child soldiers,

Recalling the particular impact which armed conflict has on women and children, including as refugees and internally displaced persons, as well as on other civilians who may have specific vulnerabilities, and stressing the protection and assistance needs of all affected civilian populations,

不過, 大前提是:

Reaffirming its commitment to the Purposes of the Charter of the United Nations as set out in Article 1 (1-4) of the Charter, and to the Principles of the Charter as set out in Article 2 (1-7) of the Charter, including its commitment to the principles of the political independence, sovereign equality and territorial integrity of all States, and respect for the sovereignty of all States,

到頭來, 只有這一句是真的:

Expressing its deep regret that civilians account for the vast majority of casualties in situations of armed conflict,

CK12's open source textbook

Jan 2008


(53 min)

Vinod Khosla, CK12's founder, talked about how to make open source textbook. Khosla is well-known as co-founder of Sun. The main goals are to make textbooks:

1. open and free
2. flexible and thus empowering teachers

how about in Hong Kong?

Authors@Google: Phillip Zimbardo

Oct 2007


(78 min)

Phillip Zimbardo, a social psychologist at Stanford, introduced his book The Lucifer Effect, which explains why good people do bad things.

Fool me twice

(1)
A documentary: How Australia lied about East Timor and Bali bombing.

(1 hr 56 min)

(2)
俗語是怎麼說的? Fool me once, shame on you. 他們倒一次也沒有愚弄過我; 我根本一無所知. 究竟東帝汶在哪座島的. Fool me twice, shame on me. 一邊看這documentary, 一邊開了post這個file的人在myspace的homepage, 發現片中的對白跟homepage的background music "The truth is alive" mix在一起出奇的動人. Shame? "那邊"的獨裁者死了一個又有另一個, 誰跟得那麼緊.

"那邊"的人命也不怎麼值錢. 孟加拉風暴死了"幾千人", who care? 又不是金融風暴.

Authors@Google: Muhammad Yunus

10 Jan 2008



(44 min)

Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace prize winner, share his experience of microfinance which is helping to solve poverty and inequality.

除菌飲管

(photo: Vestergaard Frandsen/ NY Times)

NY Times的Blog DOT EARTH報導MIT創意人正開發一種健康用品Lifestraw.

Global Warming (或者Climate Change)

今期William Safire (Change machine) 探討這兩個terms的互換(?):

As a phrase, global warming is slowly, inexorably cooling, and if something is not done quickly and on a worldwide basis — hang the cost — the planet will be in the grip of the collocation climate change.

The 50th anniversary of the coinage of both global warming and global climate change came and went with no commemorative rock concerts or scientific Sanhedrins. My earliest citation of both phrases is a report in The Hammond Times (of Indiana) dated Nov. 6, 1957, about California scientists “studying the possibility that this continued pouring forth of waste gases may upset the rather delicate carbon-dioxide balance in the earth’s general atmosphere and that a large-scale global warming, with radical climate changes, may result.” (There must be earlier citations in print, which I welcome from the exicographic Irregulars and will pass along.)

For a time, the phrase global warming dominated the discussion; of late, there has been a surge in usage of climate change. Why is the phrasal competition getting hotter? Not merely the desire to be less judgmental; rather, I think, due to worldwide ensorcelling by the noun change. A Google count shows the latter percentage of change enchantment creeping up to 33 percent against the 66 percent of global warming. (But we may know more after results are in from other states on Tsunami Tuesday.)

Thomas Friedman: The World is Flat (A Speech in MIT)

(1 hr 15 min)

Addicted to Oil

Discovery Channel's documentary Addicted to Oil, reporting by Thomas Friedman.

Part 1 of 5



(9 min)

Part 2 of 5: Global warming lab, Fiberforge, bio-fuel and hybrid car



(9 min)

Part 3 of 5



(10 min)

Part 4 of 5



(9 min)

Part 5 of 5



(6 min)

The Great Global Warming Swindle

Channel4.com 具爭議性的紀錄片The Great Global Warming Swindle.

America: Freedom to Fascism

Google.org Course (Week 9): Mapping the Major Organizations Engaged in Development

7 Nov 2007



(62 min)

1. Introduction (00:00) by Joshua Cohen
2. Oxfam: what is poverty and what is the alternative? (16:50) by Ray Offenheiser
3. Inequality and the aid business (37:20) by Nancy Birdsall

Google.org Course (Week 7): Population Mobility

24 Oct 2007



(1 hr 12 min)

1. Introduction (00:00) by Joshua Cohen
2. Population, migration and urbanization: Mega-cities – case of Rio de Janeiro 1969-2005 (16:00) by Janice Perlman
3. Urban poverty (46:02) by Ananya Roy