Stories about LANGUAGES from May, 2014
60% of Electoral Abstention in Colombia
Daniel Bustos blogs [es] on Trayectoria Económica about the abstention figures on the recent Colombian presidential election: Nationwide, the abstention was an important actor on this election; in fact, it was the winner of the first round, with 60,15%, something none of the winning politicians is reflecting on yet, at...
Is Power Too Sweet for Ailing African Leaders to Step Down?
Gershom Ndhlovu looks at the reasons why ailing African leaders wont step down: There have been rumours, innuendoes and even insinuations regarding the health, or the lack of it, of Zambia’s President Michael Chilufya Sata, in office since September 2011. These have been spread by the largely unregulated online media...
Colombia: Post Election Mess
On Mil para Siempres, Camilo Andrés writes [es] about his deception with the results of presidential election in Colombia: I woke up today with that post election mess many of us have today, although we faithfully believed in our convictions and voted as we thought would be best for the...
Venezuela: Answering Dieterich
After reading an interview [es] on Spiegel Online to German sociologist Heinz Dieterich, who purposts “Socialism of the 21st Century“, Adriana Vigilanza commented [es] on the blog Apertura Venezuela what Dieterich said. Below, a couple of them. Adriana's comments are italicized: S O: What has happened that people are ready to...
Colombia: Voting for War or Peace
Journalist Natalia Bonilla writes [es] on Ser Cosmopolita about Colombia presidential election on Sunday, May 25, with a result that has raised a dilemma for Colombians: Oscar Zuluaga and Juan Manuel Santos, won yesterday the first round with 29% and 26% of the votes, respectively. However, the victory for one...
What is Eco-Friendly?
Rut de Esturirafi writes [es] about what does being eco-friendly means: To me, being eco-friendy is being sustainable, i.e., to try to keep a balance between environment, social and economic issues. And this is not an easy to get balance. For instance, a local ecologic farming item, with a fair...
What's the Beef? Strike Call at Japanese Fast Food Chain Sukiya
Are workers at Sukiya, the Japanese fast food chain famous for its $3 gyūdon beef rice bowl, really going on strike?
Challenges of Education in the 21st Century
Mikel Agirregabiria gets inspiration from the movie Dead Poets Society to point out [es] the current needs of education: The 21st century educations demands posing again some issues that were not evident in the past, as where do you want to live or work, with what languages or with what...
BookCrossing in Latin America
Silvana Aquino writes [es] on Infotecarios about BookCrossing, BC, the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise. BC has become a an increasingly popular phenomenon, as right now there are two millions of registered users, known...
Cuesta de Miranda, Argentina
Laura Schneider shares [es] on Viajes y Relatos her visit to Cuesta de Miranda [Miranda Slope; es] in La Rioja, province of Argentina. The word “slope” already makes me think of cliffs and corniches, so without a doubt I tried the road. The worst case scenario was me coming back....
Learning How to Sing
Do you think it's impossible to sing if you don't have a good voice from birth? Carlos Campaña on Vox Technologies thinks [es] the opposite: It's possible to learn how to sing without having a good voice, as the concept of “having a good voice” lacks sense when we understand...
Are Colombian Librarians Updated, Technologically Speaking?
Jaider Ochoa-Gutiérrez wonders [es] on Infotecarios if ordinary librarians are updated on technological issues that influence their profession, such as content curation, big data, labs among others, and answers from his own experience: I must confess that, to me (and after speaking with some colleagues), the issue is still vague;...
Spain: If European Election Would Have Been Legislative…
On the blog Recuerdos de Pandora, Milhaud carries out [es] a maths exercise and takes the results of European election in Spain to a legislative election, and the analyses that data with some interesting results: Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, or PSOE, loses seats, but the People's Party, or PP, ends...
Shooting the Messenger: Jamaica's Brendan Bain Controversy Continues
The controversy over Jamaican Professor Brendan Bain's court testimony in the Caleb Orozco case in Belize continues. Everyone's talking, but is anyone listening? A few bloggers peel away the layers.
China Puts Squeeze on WeChat and Other Messaging Apps
China cracks down on instant messaging platforms including the WeChat messaging application ahead of the 25th anniversary of pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen.
Twitter Effects in Thinking
Carles López Cerezuela believes Twitter produces some kind of “collateral damage” in human thinking, and on his blog KRLS he relates [es] some of those effects considering the good and bad parts of each one. Besides the already widely pointed out by several analysts, these are some of the mentioned...
Comments on the Results of European Election
Martín Guevara writes [es] on his self named blog about the results in Spain of the European Parliament election that ended on Sunday, May 25. Martín is surprised with the new victory of People's Party: Well, well, People's Party wins again ,even after Arias Cañete defined women as an inferior...
Disempowerment for Collective Growth
On Mi pensadero there is a review of the Seminar about Participation, Self Management and Disempowerment #ikaskide1314. About disempowerment, the website comments [es]: Disempowerment is leaving power that incites a collective construction. From simple to complex and from complex to simple. It's not a show, it's not a place where...
The Legalisation of Political Repression in Ethiopia
Beza Tesfaye describes how the Ethiopian government legalises political repression in the country: It has been one month since the latest round of repression against government critics in Ethiopia began. Last weekend, the Zone9 bloggers and three journalists who were arrested in late April appeared in court. To date, very...
When Maya Angelou Lived in Egypt and Ghana
Sean Jacobs writes about American author and poet Maya Angelou, who died at age 86 yesterday May 28, 2014: In 1961, Maya Angelou, already a civil rights worker, and her then partner Vusumzi Make, an exiled activist from South Africa (he was a leading Pan Africanist Congress member), moved to...
We Have to be Prepared for Children's Questions
On Mamacitas, there are reflections [es] about the experience mothers have when it comes to sex questions from their children: Comprehensive sex education can't start at 15 years old, it's too late by then. It's a contradiction that we want to protect our children from every danger and that we...