skip navigation

Other

RSS iconRSS feed for this category

Continuing the Dialogue Online: Blog Carnivals

Blog carnivals: Furthering community online
Blog carnivals: Furthering community online
With so many disparate voices in the blogosphere, it can seem like dialogue is often relegated to the background. That’s where blog carnivals come in, bringing people together online to discuss specific topics, from sexual violence to the decline of democracy.
Read on »

The Homeless World Cup 2006

The Homeless World Cup
soccer tournament kicked off this Sunday in Cape Town, South Africa. The idea for the games was conceived in 2001 after a conference of the International Network of Street Papers sold by the homeless. The first tournament took place in Graz in 2003. “We really can help change the world, end poverty and homelessness,” said organizer Mel Young in an interview with Associated Press writer Clare Nullis. “All we have to do is take a little round ball and start kicking it around.”
Read on »

Beer, Chips and… Internet TV

The end of TV? Crowds create and rate their own media...
The end of TV? Crowds create and rate their own media...
Did I mention that I studied TV but never actually watched it? Anyway, last night I tried to promote my transcriptions of Bill Joy´s answers from the Table of Free Voices, so I went to problogger for some tips, and learned that I ought to pitch the story to places like reddit, furl or digg - where real people choose which content matters. I was a good digital citizen and uploaded my photo to digg, but then I found myself overwhelmed by the real-time barrage of story suggestions every second. So then I went to see digg Offbeat News. That´s where I found out about “yruhrn – First Book Created by Global Collaboration of Over 1,000 People”. And that´s where my zig-zag tour through our lovely social web started…
Read on »

Virtual Volunteering

 Giving a helping hand virtually (Photocase)
Giving a helping hand virtually (Photocase)
As the social sector grows on the Internet, volunteer opportunities are easier to find online. From craigslist to idealist, potential volunteers can do research on positions in their neighborhood.
Connecting organizations and willing helping hands, VolunteerMatch is a free online service which lists opportunities worldwide. Featured on VM’s site, virtual volunteering is an alternative to a hands-on approach. “Virtual” positions fill in the needs of organizations that aren’t covered by traditional volunteer roles, such as fundraising and mentoring.
Read on »

Watching? Waiting? Dreaming?

Seemingly overnight, a mysterious image has materialized across the streets of Berlin, showing a triptych of heroes of nonviolent resistance, watching, waiting and dreaming… It’s an evocative image — worth wondering on a while — especially in the context of the impending centennial of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of Satyagraha (this September 11th, 2006) or the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s Principles of Nonviolence, or the grace and dignity of the 14th Dalai Lama, who has advocated peaceful solutions throughout his long struggle to liberate Tibet.
Read on »

Hobo Days

The Great Depression forced 4,000,000 Americans away from thier homes and onto the tracks.
The Great Depression forced 4,000,000 Americans away from thier homes and onto the tracks.
Every August, hoboes from all across the United States gather in Britt, Iowa, to celebrate National Hobo Convention. Living reminders of a bygone lifestyle, they travel into the city ‘the hobo way’: by hopping freight trains. This year, the convention took off by celebrating the opening of the new Hobo Museum.
The hobo life of reclusion from society and constant transition in risky trains has its roots in eras of economic hardship in the United States. As the nation expanded westward after the Civil War, many veterans who had been left homeless assumed a transitory lifestyle, finding work on farms or in construction, building dams, gas lines, or the railroad itself, and hopping a train when the work ran out.
Read on »

Creating A New Universe

How to Create a New Universe (diagram by QJ.net)
How to Create a New Universe (diagram by QJ.net)
Fascinating story here, brought to my attention by Futurismic
Led by Professor Nobuyuki Sakai, the Astrophysics Research Group at Japan’s Yamagata University is planning to create a ‘mini-big bang’ and a new ‘baby-universe’ right there in its laboratory! The revolutionary experiment will use a particle accelerator to propel electrically charged particles at high speed at a uniquely dense (i.e. high mass) spherical particle, with an isolated north or south magnetic field, called a ‘magnetic monopole‘. The monopole will then gain enough mass and energy to begin expanding in a process of ‘cosmic inflation‘ similar to that which befell our own universe after the Big Bang.
Read on »