davidsteven.com
¦connections¦
Great
Conversation
Damming
Development
Whose
Responsibility
Furnace
or Bonfire
A
Human Voice
Charles
Secrett
Shahida
Jamil
Jane
Goodall
Naomi
Klein
Michael
Dorsey
Matt
Thomas
Tladi
John Nlovu
Lloyd
Anderson
The
Great Problem
Aids
& Economics
Everything
Communicates
Jamaica
Something
to be Done
Peril
to Promise
Business,
Aids & Africa
All
Change
Moment
in Time
Care
in the Community
Don't
Patronise the Public
Future
Development
You
Made Africa Boring
Breaking
Out
the
science bit
¦writing¦
GREAT CONVERSATION - "Borges tells us that the end of the fourth century saw the birth of a new mental process – one where people communed in silence with the written word. Augustine was spooked to see Ambrose read without saying the words aloud. "When he [Ambrose] was reading, his eyes ran over the page and his heart perceived the sense, but his voice and tongue were silent," he writes. "Very often when we were there, we saw him silently reading and never otherwise. After sitting for a long time in silence (for who would dare to burden him in such intent concentration?) we used to go away." Since then we have created – and silently immersed ourselves – in what is now effectively an endless library." [more]
FURNACE OR BONFIRE - "Daniel Pipes has argued that terrorism is fuelled by rising standards of living not poverty. He may be half right. The poor are, unfortunately, usually too busy staying alive to cause trouble. But baby boomers will light fires one way or another. So a stark choice remains: enlist them in stoking society's furnace or stand well back while they pitch society onto the nearest bonfire." [more]
THE GREAT PROBLEM - "Uncertainty is intrinsic to any study of the environment, where complex systems are exceptionally difficult to model and understand. But it is this uncertainty that makes many environmental problems so compelling and so controversial. Action may itself involve unquantifiable risks, creating the need for judgment between a risky status quo and various risky reactions." [more]
YOU MADE AFRICA BORING - "We get a confused narrative (“disaster is not the issue…look, a disaster!”) based on an outmoded political world view (“capitalism = bad, equality = good”), using emotional blackmail (“look at this poor starving wretch and it’s your fault, you rich fat wretch”), absurdly impossible statistics (“in the developing world one child dies every 2.4 seconds – or is it 2.4 children dying every one second?”), complete with painfully patronising pseudo-attitudinal questionnaires (“it can cost Oxfam as little as £2 a month, over a year, to help villagers build wells to provide a clean, safe water supply for 12 people. Do you think this is expensive/about what you’d expect/good value for money?”) and a free pen (we’d never have found one ourselves). And it comes on cheap and nasty media (“one hundred per cent recycled with an old-fashioned typewriter font”, “sender: Prunella Scales, supporter, in her own handwriting”), at a high volume (four to six a month) and goes on. At great length. Worst of all, for some reason we can’t fathom, every other line is underlined for emphasis or put in bold like the writings of a mad obsessive." [more]
SOMETHING TO BE DONE - "Although prevention remains the first line of defense against HIV/AIDS, caring for millions of people now living with AIDS is an essential element of our reaction to the epidemic. AIDS is increasingly a disease of the poor, and currently, as Ugandan AIDS doctor Peter Mugyenyi has noted, "The medicines are where the problem is not, and the problem is where the medicines are not." [more]
HUMAN VOICE - "How long 'til a Chief Executive of a major multi-national has a blog? Which government minister will boldly blog where no minister has blogged before? When will blogging become a way of communicating for senior civil servants? And when are we going to hear from the organisational infantry – slogging away in the trenches, but fighting interesting battles and helping win the occasional war?" [more]
EVERYTHING COMMUNICATES - "Today, people are assaulted by information at every turn - getting your message heard above the din has never been more difficult. Speaking clearly and consistently is a good start - but today, only communicators with clout get heard. Clout is about being bold. It means taking some of the money you've saved on keeping it simple and blowing it on something that really stands out." [more]
PERIL TO PROMISE - "The educated have always been the first to value the importance of education. As we send more of the world’s young people to school, growing numbers knock at the doors of their country’s universities and colleges. Two years ago, a World Bank-Unesco Task Force on Higher Education examined the crisis that this global thirst for learning was causing in most of the developing world’s higher education systems. Standards, it argued, were often shockingly low - a product of outmoded curricula, poorly rewarded and motivated faculty, inadequate infrastructure, and a failure to ensure quality control. Students were being short-changed and societies were losing out on the development dividend that advanced education offers." [more]