We are more normal than you think

In a recent article of Ha'aretz' Mrs. Lili Galili presented the soon to appear "Book of Arab Society in Israel" (Sefer Hahevra Ha'aravit Biyisrael) edited by sociologist Dr.Aziz Haider¹ and published by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute (מכון ון ליר בירושלים).

"It is commonly assumed that the best way to tell the story of a group of people is to relay on individual, human story. Data and numbers are considered dry and fail to rouse interest", Mrs. Galili tells us and adds, that she thinks, that this new book "dispels such assumptions".

Now that might work only for the more rational and oldfashioned kind of reader, but still, according to Mrs. Galili, the book seems to contain lots of interesting and lesser known facts. That sounds exciting enough for me. Here are 3 of them (1 implicit):

Science reveals lesser known findings

Since the '60s, the average fertility rate among Arab women decreased from 9 to 4.3 children. The average fertility rate of women in the Negev is particularly high - 8.7 percent, as opposed to 2.6 percent among Christian Arab women.

Another surprising statistic presented in the book, which contradicts traditional stereotypes of Arab society, is the large percentage of single women. Single women represent 17.4 percent of Arab-Israeli women aged 30-34, as opposed to 13.2 percent of Jewish women in the same age group. "In this instance, there is no difference between Christians, Muslims, and Druze women," Haider clarifies.

This should be a factbox and opinionbox respectively

Now it should be added that this Dr. Haider here is neither an Austrian cynical player on old antisemite values nor a Panarabian terrorist playing in newstyle antiisraeli Hintergründigkeiten but a sociologist not only at the above mentioned and linked Jerusalem Van Leer Institute but also at the Truman Institute of the Hebrew University.

It should also be mentioned that we here at tinytalk love scientific antiparanoia literature. It just makes us feel better and more confident in a world where way too many people don't know otherwise than playing the game on the base of disseminating their own fears and thereby provoking stengthening other peoples fears nearly all of the time. I would not have thought about writing this the last few years but here it comes: Thank you, Dr. Haider. Thank you also, Mrs. Galil. Sincerely yours. (reading inspired by a link on motzes' weblog.

¹Please note that other than the English edition of haaretz.com the Van Leer Institute gives the transcription of his name as "Haidar", which is more common and gives the english title of the upcoming book as "Arab Society in Israel: Population, Society and Education".

ANTSCD: The ultimate sophistication in PC marketing.

This demonstrational example is from a PC marketing history at kellyad.com (reading inspired by a link on tobi's weblog.















plink, nix,    praise or blame!
 

Wired For PowerPoint

The White House's Roosevelt Room is wired for PowerPoint presentations, and most officials also bring handouts when they brief George W. Bush and his inner circle. Read more about this in Time Magazine's Online Edition. Luckily it's not behind the bars.

Nearly 2 and 1/2 years ago Edward Tufte had this flaming stuff to say in - funny of funnies - Wired. Our little band here introduced an aka for this application of transistors, software and diverse display thechnologies some time ago: "BauernBoint". Sadly it is understandable only for German speakers.

The FFFM (Formerly Famous First Mover) in this branch of CACET (Computer Aided Communication Empowering Tools) was Harvard Graphics Inc. (first released 1986) Competition came soon, in the shape of Forethought, a small company in Silicon Valley, which released PowerPoint 1.0 for the Mac in 1987. A year later MSFT bought Forethought and ported PP to Dos and Win2.0. Everybody else came to the game late and until now also stayed behind.

Etwas ganz anderes: Mich und noch mindesten einen, wahrscheinlich aber noch ein paar andere, hat der Hamas - Wahlsieg eher beruhigt.

Very large scale integration

Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not have possibly met.

Fran Lebowitz, go find her!

It all works out to integrating the building blocks. The target debate makes no sense, only the method debate is valid.

Waffen sind unheilbringende Gegenstände

In der Vergangenheit sagte man: "Waffen sind unheilbringende Gegenstände" Der Weg des Himmels hasst sie. Sie zu gebrauchen, wenn es keinen Ausweg mehr gibt - das ist der Weg des Himmels."³

Dies sagt aus, dass Bogen und Pfeile, das Schwert und die Lanze Waffen sind und gleichzeitig verhängnisvolle Gegenstände. Während der Weg des Himmels nach dem Erhalt des Lebens strebt, wählen Waffen den Tod. Der Weg des Himmels hasst sie also, weil sie sich gegen ihn wenden.⁴

Aufgabe: Entdecke 3 Fehler in diesem Auszug aus Yagyu Munenoris "Weg des Samurai".

Als erlaubte Hilfe kann alles benutzt werden, empfohlen mal: "Die dunkle Seite des Tao" oder "Zen and the Art of Divebombing".

Leseempfehlung: Peter Norvig: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years . (via lngr) Researchers (Hayes, Bloom) have shown it takes about ten years to develop expertise in any of a wide variety of areas, including chess playing, music composition, painting, piano playing, swimming, tennis, and research in neuropsychology and topology. There appear to be no real shortcuts: even Mozart, who was a musical prodigy at age 4, took 13 more years before he began to produce world-class music. und Richard Gabriel's Worse is better which can aptly be applied to Ajax, as Brian explains.

Valuable Erroneous Quotatations

There is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all who profit by the old order. Machiavelli 1513

The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. Karl Marx, mid 19^th cent.

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries. Winston Churchill, mid 20^th cent.

The collision of alphabetic and electronic culture borders typical for the 20th century grants the printed word a decisive role for the inhibition of our return to the Africa within ourselves. Marshall McLuhan, 1962

The evolution of the PC proceeded similar to the development of the printed book, but it took only fourty years instead of sixhundred. Alan Kay, 1977

among the many lazily collected from www.vordenker.de www.worldofquotes.com www.quotationspage.com