“In this hour-long documentary for the BBC’s award-winning This World strand, Simon gets under the skin of a colourful and vibrant country famous for its hospitality and humour and asks if this new economic openness could lead to political liberalisation in a totalitarian country with a poor human rights record. Will Cuba be able to maintain the positive aspects of its long isolation under socialism – low crime, top-notch education and one of the best health systems in the world – while embracing what certainly looks like capitalism? Is this the last chance to see Cuba before it becomes just like any other country?”
Tag Archives: Culture
How ancient Rome influenced European law
“The Roman Empire collapsed in AD 476. Isn’t it astonishing that its influence is still so great almost 2,000 years later? [..] When the empire fell, remnants of Roman law remained, coexisting with the common law of the barbarians. But it continued to thrive in the east of the Roman Empire. In the first half of the 6th century, Justinian gathered and compiled every legal judgement from the previous centuries. In the West, this compilation was rediscovered in Bologna, Italy, at the end of the 11th century. From that emerged the creation of Europe’s first university and first law faculty. From there, Roman law spread across all of Catholic Europe.”
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss_news/How_ancient_Rome_influenced_European_law.html?cid=36688830
The sweat of the sun, the breath of god: Gold through the centuries
“The Aztecs called gold ‘the sweat of the sun.’ And the Egyptians: ‘the breath of god.’ To display his imperial glory, Napoleon gilded Paris in gold. Hitler sought to control all of Europe’s gold as support for his ‘1000-year Reich.’ Now, at the outset of the 21st Century, with gold miners on their knees as even the great gold bulls are filled with doubt, this may be an appropriate moment to look at the precious metal with a touch of historical context. Here are some of the statistics gold has racked up over the centuries, courtesy of our friends at the World Gold Council.”
http://www.mining.com/the-sweat-of-the-sun-the-breath-of-god-gold-through-the-centuries-73916/
How Gamers Could Save the (Real) World
“Three years ago, game designer and author Jane McGonigal argued that saving the human race is going to require a major time investment—in playing video games. ‘If we want to solve problems like hunger, poverty, climate change, global conflict, obesity, I believe that we need to aspire to play games online for at least 21 billion hours a week [up from 3 billion today], by the end of the next decade,’ she said in a TED talk. Her message was not ignored—and it has indirectly contributed to the formation of something called the Internet Response League (IRL). The small group has a big goal: to harness gamers’ time and use it to save lives after disasters, natural or otherwise.”
https://slashdot.org/topic/bi/how-gamers-could-save-the-real-world/
The Long Tail, Revisited
“In 1988, a British mountain climber named Joe Simpson wrote a book called Touching the Void, a harrowing account of near death in the Peruvian Andes. It got good reviews but, only a modest success, it was soon forgotten. Then, a decade later, Touching the Void started to sell again. Random House rushed out a new edition to keep up with demand. Booksellers began to promote it next to their Into Thin Air displays. A revised paperback edition, which came out in January [2004], spent 14 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. IFC Films released a docudrama of the story to critical acclaim. What happened? In short, Amazon.com recommendations.”
Gold & silver sales jump during Ramadan and Eid in India
“Mohammed Kazi said the past week had seen a big rush of customers. ‘Though we serve a large number of people regularly at this time of the year, a silver tinge has been added on to the gift giving this year,’ said Kazi. Silver bars and notes with a print of 786, the holy number, with photos of the religious Mecca and Medina, and silver artifacts of Mecca and Medina, silver sandals and silver armbands are doing the rounds as gifting articles across households, said Kazi. Gold and silver sales tend to surge during Ramadan and Eid due to the purchase of gifts. For the devout, mass prayers end with greeting their brethren and handing over small gifts.”
http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/content/en/mineweb-whats-new?oid=201042&sn=Detail
‘Mini Lisa’: Georgia Tech researchers create world’s tiniest da Vinci reproduction
“Using a tiny heated probe, a team of scientists have ‘painted’ a grayscale replica of the Mona Lisa that is more than 25,000 times smaller than the original. The ‘Mini Lisa,’ as it is known, is just 30 millionths of a meter wide. That’s roughly 0.001 inches, or one third of the width of a human hair. The team created it using a powerful microscope and a process known as ThermoChemical NanoLithography, or TCNL. Each ‘pixel’ was 125 billionths of a meter wide – smaller than the smallest known bacteria – and Carroll and the rest of the research team went pixel-by-pixel to create the reproduction.”
SWAT-Team Nation: The Militarization of the U.S. Police
“Inside, gallerygoers were looking at art and dancing to a d.j.; outside, on the patio, several young women were goofily belting out the lyrics to ‘Hakuna Matata,’ from ‘The Lion King’. Only then did masked figures with guns storm the crowd, shouting, ‘Get on the fucking ground! Get down, get down!’ Some forty Detroit police officers dressed in commando gear ordered the gallery attendees to line up on their knees, then took their car keys and confiscated their vehicles, largely on the grounds that the gallery lacked the proper permits for dancing and drinking. More than forty cars were seized, and owners paid around a thousand dollars each to get them back.”
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/08/swat-team-nation.html
Amazon launches online art gallery
“The 19-year online retail juggernaut, which began as a bookseller but now does everything from groceries to patio furniture, launched ‘Amazon Art’ to market works from galleries in Miami, San Francisco, New York and other US cities. The site showcases more than 40,000 works from over 150 galleries and dealers that run the gamut as far as subject, genre and period are concerned. Works range from modest canvasses like a $44 cat portrait to Norman Rockwell’s ‘Willie Gillis: Package from Home,’ which retails for $4.85 million. ‘From gallery walls to your walls,’ boasts the site, which enables users to quickly click through works by period and genre.”
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/06/amazon-launches-online-art-gallery/