SOPA and PIPA: Two sisters out for some trouble

Posted by yseult on Jan 18, 2012 in Issues

Mozilla Chairwoman Mitchell Baker on #SOPA and #PIPAand what it all means. #readingorder #lesebefehl blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/01/17/pip…

— yseult (@yseult) January 18, 2012

I twittered this to start of the day of protests that will finally gather some attention from the general public to the unbelievably inefficient ways of the US to try to come to terms with copyright issues throughout the internet.

Mitchell Baker’s piece says it all and you really don’t have to go any further than that, if you’re not interested beyond that. (If you are however and it’s not the 18th Jan, you may read up on SOPA and PIPA and obviously Wikipedia’s awareness page).

I’ll add a small thought to that in general.

The internet is a frontier free zone.

Certainly, our servers are located in certain countries and thus the same civil and criminal laws apply as with any action. However, the internet in itself in inherently independent from country boundaries, civil inequalities and other historically crafted ways to divide people into groups and favouring your own against another.

Any idea, law or technical mechanism that cannot accept this principle and strives to violate it, needs to suffer the suspicion of threatening liberty of speech, liberty of opinion and liberty of act.

Honest PostDoc Ad

Posted by yseult on Jan 16, 2012 in Communication

If you’ve ever had anything to do with Academia, this will make you smile.

Sources:

http://upmic.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/honest-postdoc-ad-2/

Happy New Year with a bookish whirlwind

Posted by yseult on Jan 10, 2012 in Personal, Soulfood

A wonderful and blessed happy new year to all of you out there looking behind the veil and taking the world for un-granted.

I hope everyone had a beautiful Christmas season and got one or two questions that are still bugging them. It’s for those that we sweat best after all.

I have gotten caught up in the early year rush of things and am a bit behind with my writing, but beware, some nice things are in preparation for further down the road (such as an article on the look of love).

In the meantime let me show you this beautiful jewel that came to me through my twitterfeed. Thank you @serscher.

Make you sing: The Power of Love

Posted by yseult on Dec 20, 2011 in Soulfood

Make love your goal.

This song must be one of the earliest that I have a memory off. I probably heard it for the first time when I was still sharing a room with my older sister (I did until the age of 7) who herself was a huge Frankie goes to Hollywood – or FGTH as you’d print it on your school gear – fan at the time and always.

It’s one of those songs that you never really forget and even if you haven’t heard it in ages it will immediately bring you back to a complete album of feelings and impressions. Holly Johnson has had many strokes of genius. I think this one however will stay with us for a long time still. Even after almost 30 years.

(I know that this was a huge hit and as such shouldn’t figure in this series, but it’s Christmas and sharing is the spirit ;-)

Tea and the wonderful effect of a calming moment

Posted by yseult on Dec 18, 2011 in Politics/History

Tea. One of the oldest beverages in the world after water, beer and wine. Some say it was discovered by accident, others that it was divine inspiration. A lot in the history of tea is linked to chance and to ingenious foresight, and if such things interest you, I highly recommend Alan and Iris MacFarlane’s The Empire of Tea, the subtitle “The Remarkable History of the Plant That Took Over the World” says it best.

Not only is tea an old plant (a friend of mine is trying to find ancient plant DNA in what supposedly are tea samples from a couple of thousand years ago) and thus an old drink, but it is a fundamentally political plant and drink and thus of course philosophical. I will leave the politico-historical part to people that know what they’re doing with it and will focus on the aspect of tea where everyone can relate.

That small moment when brewing has stopped, when you set down your cup, mug, glass or goblet. Take a deep breath. Exhale. Be in the moment. Relax.

Granted, you’ll say, but that’s not something you couldn’t have with say… a cup of coffee or any kind of herbal infusion or even with a glass of water.

Yes, dear reader – I am replying – but this is tea.

Tea warms your hands and soul, it tastes of spices and tangy oak, it soothes nerves and mind and makes you slow down, gives you a moment to think before attacking whatever waits outside of your door to be dealt with. Tea is waiting at home, quickly made, quickly there to mentally hold your hand as you start lining up the pro and cons – or if you are less Jesuit than that, problems and solutions.

Of course tea represents also a several million important industry where the fight over fair trade, decent working conditions and wages is an important part of a movement of redefinition that we as consumers in the industrialised world need to start thinking about. And of course, a cup of tea issued from good, ecological planting and produced by unexploited workers will always taste better, but that is not my point here.

Tea, the act of tea drinking and the famous quote “drink tea and wait” reference a different state. They all point to a contemplative moment, a pause. And in our modern world, if there is one thing we do need, it’s more contemplation rather than action. Taking time to reflect rather than affect, or watch time slowly move by is an art that isn’t easily mastered and I fear that it will get lost completely seeing the accelerated multi-tasking social media generation that is in the makings now.

Let’s learn once more that technique at the end of our days to hold our breaths and contemplate. Let’s learn the art of a calming tea moment once more.