Imagine you’re a wealthy shop owner and you hear about this “thing”, this new technology that strongly amplifies every voice raised on it and thus promises to lure paying customers into your business. Wow, you think, I don’t wanna miss this boat, and you ask how much it would cost. “It’s free”, some bearded hippies …
Two things are important in public toilets and similar confinements we find ourselves in for distinctively private affairs and these things are towels and hooks. Why write about them? What can we possibly gain from it? If you’re not interested in towels and hooks, stop reading and enjoy your day. It’s about metaphysics, perhaps. These …
Can we help the poor simply by increasing the probability that a skillful independent helper or her organisation finds them?
William Easterly, the development economist and author of “The White Man’s Burden” makes a famous distinction between “Planners” and “Searchers”. The Planners have led most of the development efforts over the past 40 years …
This is not a recipe blog. There are far more knowledgeable cooks maintaining interesting blogs like this one here.
Why, then, does this blog write about cooking? To be sure, I do love cooking for reasons other than the psychodairy this blog serves at times. The smell of fresh rhabarber, a good garlicky hummus, a …
The premisse is interesting and not so far-fetched as it was at the time of the original movie, given what our laboratories achieve. So I expected an engaging narrative around hyperintelligent apes demonstrating how to outsmart the humans by being incredibly cooperative. I expected a visionary tale of wisdom making us silent in …
Getting organized in northern Morocco
August 12-14. TangerWe have safely arrived in Morocco and found a clean hotel room in a slanted backstreet just a stone’s throw away from the new avenue Mohamed VI. Having been welcomed by the kingdom of Morocco, we now enjoy this hotel’s wifi to start the planning of our Moroccan …
On our way to MoroccoAugust 12. AlgecirasWe have arrived in the seaport of Algeciras, Spain. After a long and wild journey with a lightweight transporter that took us through beautiful places like Lyon, Arles, Alméria and the Sierra Nevada, we will take a ferry to Morocco. That country will be willing to host us for …
There is an old joke about a German, a Frenchman and an Englishman telling each other the word for butterfly in their native tongue. “Butterfly”, the soft-spoken English gentleman whispers and you could almost hear the movement of a perfect specimen in his voice. “Papillon”, murmurs the Frenchman, and his friends are enchanted by the …
West Africa Journey from August 1st.
July 22, 2011. BerlinThis year 2011 we have launched our new platform kindmankind, the web’s largest open resource for independent volunteers and creative changemakers. We have built up our online fb-tw-li-yt “empire” and Yeon is finishing her book on Charity Travel (in Korean). The Schengen-zone now gently forces …
produces heat (and light)If you listen carefully you can hear some politicians murmuring about saving energy, suggesting we should ride our bikes more often, insulate our homes a bit, or unplug unused electronic equipment. Some brave public folks even go as far as invoking ideas that are anathema to consumer society, such as a slightly …
Boat refugees are a common phenomenon: Every few weeks the news of a vessel trying to make it to Italian or Canary shores reaches us northern Europeans. The direction of the refugees is always south to north (with the exception of Australia of course, that is dealing with desperate newcomers from the north).
Of …
Last year, the Korean star economist and acclaimed “intellectual voice of the antiglobalisation movement” Chang Ha-Joon followed up on his best selling “Bad Samaritans” and “Kicking away the Ladder” with a smartly constructed volume named “23 Things they don’t tell you about Capitalism”. Meanwhile, a German translation has been published with the word “Lies” in …
Today, in the supermarket, my conscious was brutally raped.
I had intended to buy a trio of red-yellow-green bell peppers and had laid the colorful things, wrapped in crackling plastic, on the belt.
The evil cashier glanced briefly at it as it was conveyed toward her, then resolutely grabbed it and tossed it …
I found this prepared on my computer today. Could you help me explain what it means?
meditation
You see the elements of your memory tumbling down in front of you, in a great column of swirling hot air. You can recognize people, scenes, ideas that have been important to you.See them all fall down. Seperate yourself from them …
How to start a contempary reflection about money, a reflection that should both instruct and entertain because it is bound to the format of a blog post, because it will live as an entry among millions on an internet website with a narrow time window of readership that extends not much further than two weeks …
Charity Travel goes Kindmankind.
May 2, 2011. BerlinWe the people of charity travel have created a platform where independent volunteers can find and share grassroots initiatives around the world. Thanks to some amazing people, the collection of free and no-fee “volunteering opportunities” is already huge and our kind community of independent changemakers is contributing …
This is not about the intellectual skills needed for being transported in an elevator. If you are reading this at your workplace it is likely that you have successfully concluded an elevator journey this morning. This is about what could have happened during that short vertical journey. It is about reaping the benefits from that …
One of the craftsmen whom we first expect self-reflection from (apart from the philosopher, of course), is the poet. We would like to read a theoretical, tangible account of their motivation to write and why they think poetry matters.
Since my poetic aspirations were not all nipped in the bud by the frown that ends …
In our fast-paced modern world, everybody needs to “get stuff done”, with that “stuff” most seldom referring to physical matter. We mean assignments, schedules, tasks, templates, revisions, writings, programs, sequences and we ensure ourselves that these “stuffs” are real by describing them consistently with tangible metaphors. We grasp them, wrap our heads around them, …
So that did catch your attention? I sincerely hope I can deliver, and that you will not gain nothing of this.
I am aware that with this article I place my humble feet in the footsteps of some giants of the self-help and life-coaching genre. This article will inevitably be conceived as a contribution …
grrr!
Freedom is a very popular concept in philosophy, and the question about the essence of freedom has divided philosophers in many camps while the variety of different answers has been at the heart of different views of science, religion, ethics, and nature itself. The question is still pondered in faculties (and canteens) around the world, …
