Noam Chomsky explains the Cold War in 5 minutes
From a 1985 discussion. H/T brain pickings
Author Archives: Olumide Abimbola
How a bee sees the world
From New Scientist: When a bee flies into your garden, it doesn’t see what you and I see. Flowers leap out from much darker-looking leafy backgrounds, and they have ultraviolet-reflecting landing strips that show the way to the nectar. Some spiders might even have evolved to exploit these displays, spinning UV patterns into their webs… Read More »
Gadhafi’s tentacles in Africa
From The Globe and Mail.
Profiteering from the famine in Somalia? (video)
Grim story of asylum application denied, self-sacrifice, and possible denial of citizenship
The boy was 13 when a dawn immigration raid abruptly ended his father’s four-year quest for political asylum in Britain. By nightfall of that day in 2005, father and son were hundreds of miles from home, locked in the privately run Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Center here, scheduled for deportation to their native Angola in… Read More »
Friday links
1. Angry Birds maker Rovio worth $1.2 Billion 2. Is Africa leaving Europe behind? 3. What do the sale figures of the $80 android smartphone in Kenya tell us about the future of the smartphone market? 4. Does marijuana make you stupid? 5. Who doesn’t want one of these?
On The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – a bimetallism allegory
The American Civil War provided the opportunity for introducing a national monopoly currency. In 1879, having won the war and built up its gold reserves, the federal government finally felt able to back its dollars with gold. Immediately voices arose seeking to make money plural again. The People’s Party (better known as the Populists) found… Read More »
CFP – Borders and Borderlands: Contested Spaces
15th Berlin Roundtables on Transnationality, March 28 – 31, 2012 With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a new era seemed to have opened up: a world without borders and thus – potentially – a world with less conflict and more freedom. Today, more than 20 years later, we can observe that some… Read More »
CFP: Special Issue of African Identities on Contemporary Youth Cultures in Africa
Call for papers for a special issue of African Identities to be published in the summer of 2012 (African Identities: Journal of Economics, Culture and Society) More than a decade and half ago, Donal Cruise-O’Brien (1996) had declared that the African youth were ‘a lost generation.’ This fatalistic summation of the fate of the African… Read More »
Nouriel Roubini: Karl Marx Was Right about Capitalism Self-destructing
I know it is Dr Doom, but it’s got to be newsworthy when an NYU economist tells a WSJ columnist that Marx was right about capitalism. Thanks to Ola for the link.