Stories about Ideas from April, 2010
Barbados: Black, from an Island
Barbados’ Gallimaufry and Repeating Islands refer to a piece by Maxine Williams, which deals with the “black island identity”.
Japan: The enigma of Japanese intellectuals
Ken Mogi shares his thoughts on “The enigma of Japanese intellectuals“: “Although it is sometimes a dirty word, I consider myself as “a kind of” intellectual. “
Saudi Arabia: Poverty and Suicide
Saudi blogger Trad Alasmari (Ar) writes about suicide in Saudi Arabia (Warning: post contains picture of graphic nature). He claims that poverty could be to blame for its higher levels.
Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago: Plan of Action
Barbados’ Allegiance wonders what Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Manning's political plan really is.
Bangladesh: On Ideologues
Jiten Roy at Mukto-Mona comments: “It’s not easy to have a discussion with an ideologue because they believe in the absoluteness of their views, and their minds are closed; there is no room for accommodation.”
Citizen Media at International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy
The 4th edition of the International Journalism Festival will take place in Perugia, Italy on 21-25 April 2010 with several panel discussions focused on citizen journalism and new media from an international perspective.
Cuba: Confiscated
Generation Y recreates possible reasons why copies of her book, Cuba Libre, were confiscated.
Guyana: Kite Season
Guyana-Gyal says that “a kite ain’t just a kite.”
Japan: The meaning of globalization
Chikirin reflects upon the meaning of ‘globalization’ [ja]. She wonders whether it's really possible to call ‘global’ the Japanese companies, only because they export their products abroad, while their personnel remains very ‘local’. In her elaborate post, the blogger also compares the Japanese companies with the European and American ones,...
Haiti: “The Quake”
The Haitian Blogger calls PBS’ recent documentary on the Haitian earthquake “distorted”, saying: “It would have been great if the writers and producers of ‘The Quake’ had offered a documentary that was not only representative of the immediate aftermath of the devastating earthquake, but was also an accurate historical, political,...
Trinidad & Tobago: False Connection?
“Glimpses of status updates sufficed. Comments on pictures were quick and hurried, not considered. The like button became a false symbol of connection”: Judette at Mango Media Caribbean thinks “it's time we took our friendship off Facebook.”
Saudi Arabia: At the Crossroads of Writing
Passionate about writing? From Saudi Arabia, Hariohari shares those thoughts.
Bahrain: Defending the Kingdom
Around 5,000 people from Bahrain have joined a Facebook group entitled: You don't deserve to live in a country you don't protect (Ar).
Japan: Sakura in bloom
The beauty of the cherry blossoms (sakura) in bloom is immortalized by Asiaimages’ pictures.
Lebanon: ArabNet discussed the future of Arabic web in English
Arabnet 2010 is a tech conference that was held in Beirut recently. While many of the participants considered it a success, there was a major criticism that kept people talking and writing about it days after the conference was concluded. The problem was that while the conference supposedly focuses on Arabic web it adopted English as its official language and the website, discussions, and presentations were all in English.
The Big Issue Hits Taiwan
Taiwan is the 9th country that publishes The Big Issue. Li Chi Zhong, the founder of Roodo Blog, introduces this model to Taiwan with a hope to develop a new type of social business. One month before publishing the first issue, bigissue.tw started its Facebook fan page to recruit volunteers. So far it has 27,000 fans.
Taiwan: “Slideophilia”
Professor Chih-Hao Tsai talks about the weird but common phenomena he observed in Taiwan:”Slideophilia“. He concludes that not only the design of a speech rooms, the video-cam that is always focusing on the slides, the audience that are reading printed slides at their hands, but also “many speakers themselves are slideophilia who rather sacrifice...
