September 2013

Anna Karenina

The book doesn’t drag, except when it kind of needs to in order to accentuate the monotony and meaninglessness of Anna’s life. They say that you should write what you know. Plenty of books include references to their authors’ real life experiences. This is certainly the case for Anna Karenina. The book actually follows two characters whose lives are loosely connected. The titular character, Anna Karenina, is married to a statesman, Alexei Karenin, and they have a young son, Seryozha. She has everything she could possibly want – or so she thinks until she meets the young, dashing Count Vronsky. The second storyline follows Konstantin Levin, whom Tolstoy based largely on himself. Levin wants nothing more than a simple country living and a family to share it with, but the girl he loves, Kitty, has refused him because Vronsky has been flirting with her. Anna-s brother, Stepan, is married to Kitty-s older sister, Darya. The book begins with a crisis in Stepan-s marriage: he’s been unfaithful to Darya. Ironically, Anna is the one who convinced Darya to forgive Stepan. Shortly thereafter, she meets Vronsky and carries out a flirtation with him that ends in adultery. At first, Anna’s affair is about her infatuation with Vronsky and his near-worship of her. But after Karenin discovers their affair, she chooses to run away with Vronsky, and a destructive chain of events is set in motion. In the meantime, Levin withdraws to his country estate to lick his wounds after Kitty rejects him. During his time there, he comes to truly appreciate the peace of pastoral living. Tolstoy said that Anna Karenina was about family, and the contrast between the Karenins and the Levins shows two vastly different family lives: the idyllic, pastoral happiness of the Levins and the languid, corrosive misery of […]

The Science of Love: How Positivity Resonance Shapes the Way We Connect

by Maria Popova The neurobiology of how the warmest emotion blurs the boundaries by you and not-you. A timeless as their words might be, the poets and the philosophers have a way of escaping into the comfortable detachment of the abstract and the metaphysical, leaving open the ‘question’of what love really is on an unglamorously physical, bodily, neurobiological level – and how that might shape our experience of those lofty abstractions. That’s precisely what psychologist Barbara Fredrickson, who has been studying positive emotions for decades, explores in the unfortunately titled but otherwise excellent Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become (UK;public library). Using both ‘data’from her own lab and ample citations of other studies, Fredrickson dissects the mechanisms of love to reveal both its mythologies and its practical mechanics. She begins with a definition that parallels Dorion Sagan’s scientific meditation on sex:First and foremost, love is an emotion, a momentary state that arises to infuse your mind and body alike. Love, like all emotions, surfaces like a distinct and fast-moving weather pattern, a subtle and ever-shifting force. As for all positive emotions, the inner feeling love brings you is inherently and exquisitely pleasant – it feels extraordinarily good, the way a long, cool drink of water feels when you’re parched on a hot day. Yet far beyond feeling good, a micro-moment of love, like other positive emotions, literally changes your mind. It expands your awareness of your surroundings, even your sense of self. The boundaries between you and not-you – what lies beyond your skin – relax and become more permeable. While infused with love you see fewer distinctions between you and others. Indeed, your ability to see others- really’see’ them, wholeheartedly springs open. Love can even give you a palpable sense of […]

Funding entrepreneurship in developing countries a winner

NEW ZEALAND: A Victoria University student has collected the top award in a global business competition for a scheme to support entrepreneurs in villages in developing countries. Jake McInteer, a student from Victoria Business School, accepted the 2013 Global Enterprise Experience ANZ Champion Team Award at a function at Parliament on behalf of his international team. The seven members communicated across multiple time zones for three weeks to produce a business concept proposal on a profitable product or service that addresses a millennium goal of the United Nations Development Programme. Mr McInteer’s team, which included members from Nepal, Scotland, Colombia, Bangladesh and Nigeria, came up with the idea of creating a Student-Entrepreneur Finance Network, a microfinance institution offering loans of $50 to $150 to entrepreneurs in villages in developing countries. One of Mr McInteer’s team mates, Sumit Agrawal from Nepal, noted in his reflective journal that he was going to try his best to implement the team’s idea in his country. Mr McInteer says despite his team not meeting any of the deadlines they set and the difficulties of communicating from a distance, the end result was something they were all proud of. “As team leader, the whole process has taught me about cultural understanding and intercultural communication and given me a glimpse of what it means to be a global leader, today and in the future.” Five UNESCO Commitment Awards were given to participants who went to extraordinary lengths to overcome hardship to contribute to their global team. One recipient was Victoria University student Brady Austen who was hospitalised and had surgery for a motocross accident during the contest, but used his cellphone to continue to contribute to the global team he was leading. The Supreme Commitment Award went to Baha’i student Aziz’u’llah Samandari from Iran who has been […]

Eco village in England made out of natural materials.

Kids learning computers at work

Communities advance when computers speak their language Citizens in remote rural areas in 11 Asian countries are leaping over language barriers and into the Internet age. They may now access government services online, and submit college applications without making an arduous trek to the city. And their children are learning the computer skills that promise greater economic opportunities in the future. This is just a sampling of the Internet-era benefits available to millions more people across Asia thanks to the work of the PAN Localisation program. This IDRC-supported network of computer experts (known as PANL10n) has been working since 2003 to develop new technologies that allow computers to function in local languages. Asia’s relatively low Internet use does not reflect a lack of public enthusiasm, says project coordinator Sarmad Hussain, a professor at Pakistan’s University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore. Whenonline demonstrations have been set up in rural communities, the use of computers “is a very easy sell. People are excited that this technology can give them access to many things they don’t have access to right now,” Hussain says. Local scripts A major obstacle to Internet use – until now, at least – has been language. With 3,500 local languages in the Asia-Pacific region, and fewer than 10% of people able to communicate in English, Internet use is typically restricted to urban areas. Focusing on the way language hinders online access was a strategic approach that has allowed the PAN Localization initiative to “tackle the digital divide in Asia at its root,” says former IDRC program officer Maria Ng. The network has assembled a pool of highly skilled software engineers, linguists, and sociologists. They work together to overcome the formidable technical obstacles to making local scripts compatible with computers, and to promote their use. “{Each language has its own […]

Five reasons communications around fracking have gone wrong

-Charlotte Webster, CCgroup Fracking is facing a major backlash from the public – so in terms of communications, what’s gone wrong? The public at large can’t make the call that with fracking we’ll be drinking high quality water, experiencing the peaceful countryside we value, seeing lower gas bills and witnessing sustained, green, economic growth, says Charlotte. I’m just back from a week surfing in Portugal. It was glorious, as always. Having grown up by the sea I learned to sail at ten, started racing dinghies at 13, collected multiple bumps and bruises, lived on a boat on the Thames in London and, it’s safe to say, I feel at home in the water. Ok, some of us are real water babies, others less so. A friend of mine simply won’t go near the sea for fear of waves. She’s in her thirties but still terrified by its power. Fair enough. Not ideal when it’s your holiday buddy on a surf trip, but hey. You can see what’s coming here. Quite simply, water plays a vital role in our lives – for surfers and non surfers alike. It’s arguably the world’s most precious resource and something we interact with daily. Mineral water providers have long been extolling the virtues of the ‘purest’ water, in a continual game of one-upmanship. One can even buy the ultimate in purity shipped over from Fuji. I just also happen to find it peaceful to be near and in, most of us do. The human body is 60% water so, fundamentally, when we protect it weÕre protecting over half of our own selves, our physicality. So, as the pressure on our natural resources grows, the content of our food and water systems becomes increasingly questioned, is it any wonder we hold water in such high regard? […]

A Right to Informed Choice

By Filipa Hope The current government has granted permits for much of Hawkes Bay to be mined by overseas Oil & Gas Companies maybe even your property! Without information I don’t think we really have any freedom of choice in this serious threat to our community. Without information we are like puppets played by those most able to manipulate public opinion. I joined Don’t Frack the Bay 2 years ago after watching the movie Gaslands and learning this was planned for Hawkes Bay. I have never been politically active yet now I find myself organising public information meetings Our approach is not to try and convince anyone of anything except that this is one issue everyone wants to learn more about because it affects all of us and also our children. We hope to raise questions in peoples minds and motivate them to seek out their own answers and questions and opinions. We have several speakers at each meeting and I am usually one of them. We speak from experience and/or own investigations. In June 2012 the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Jan Wright, released an interim report on Fracking. Fracking is short for hydraulic fracturing. – An unconventional method of oil and gas extraction which comes with many risks. This activity has been going on for 30 years in Taranaki. This is the first and only New Zealand investigation into some of the risks and as such is a critically important document for information. I present some of the concerns and questions raised in this report at our meetings and do my best to represent only what the report says without adding my own opinions. We are all waiting for the final PCE report which will have the Commissioners formal recommendations to goverment. It was due out before […]

Charity work versus unpaid volunteering

Thousands of people, especially the young, go abroad each year on solidarity initiatives. Their motivation, roles and status vary. There are many ways of taking part in international solidarity, from ‘fair travel’ for tourists to missions lasting several years by highly qualified experts. Many are called ‘volunteering’. This term, common in Anglo-Saxon cultures, is associated with particular aspirations and values: commitment, sharing, a taste for discovery and otherness. It often goes with a belief in a globalised society that encourages curiosity, meetings between cultures and travel, and with a new geopolitical discourse that reflects our multi-polar world and the changing balance between North and South. Volunteering can mean many different things. In France, its definition is narrow: it has a precise legal status, which grants certain social rights and financial allowances for clearly defined missions of finite duration. Volunteering as understood in France is neither charity work, nor paid employment: it is a hybrid that combines the commitment and giving of the former with the efficiency and professionalism of the latter. One can volunteer to take part in international solidarity under a number of different schemes. The most popular is Volontariat de SolidaritŽ Internationale (VSI), part of France’s official development assistance and run by the ministry of foreign affairs. Around 2,500 French citizens a year volunteer under VSI. Their profile is fairly homogenous: they are often female, highly qualified, established professionals, with experience of working abroad. This national scheme may soon be complemented by EU Aid Volunteers (possibly inspired by the US Peace Corps), a body of 10,000 volunteers to be available for deployment to crisis areas from 2014. One of its aims is to increase the visibility of humanitarian aid from Brussels: not many people know that half the monetary aid to poor countries comes from the EU and […]