Shuffle My Life is a cute website that encourages you to bring some randomness into your life by giving fun and easy tasks. It’s a play on all those to-do lists people have which tend to be filled with boring activities.
To bring a sense of adventure into your life you should check out the nifty tasks they suggest. You can track what you’ve done on their website too.
Happy Friday……We’ve made it!
Today’s band is Bury the Hatchet. This Toronto ensemble translates tales through warm and wordy, infectiously honest melodies spoken by a wide array of instruments such as cello, guitar, clarinet, flute, and keyboard. Poetic and powerfully driven, Bury the Hatchet is a band deserving of an entire long weekend’s worth of listening.
Enjoy!
Band of the Month by Greg O’Toole
Conflict Kitchen is a take-out restaurant that serves cuisine only from countries with which the USA is in conflict. It’s located in Pittsburg and founded/operated by artists and chefs to humanize the international conflicts that the USA engages in around the world. It functions as a space to get food and a space to expand one’s understanding of the world around them.
“In contrast to the polarizing effect of broadcast media, we’ve sought to create a platform which can support a more subtle exchange of culture and politics,” notes Dawn Weleski, a multidisciplinary artist wiht a performance bent, who co-founded the project with Jon Rubin and John Peña. “With food as a mediator, it becomes easier for customers to consider the everyday life of people — they become responsive in a different way and consider more nuanced perspectives. They start to consider the people and culture behind conflicts [that are conducted] at a government or military level.â€
Read more at Design Observer.
Conflict Kitchen’s website.
Thanks to Trevor!
Wikileaks has been a great source of information that governments and corporations wanted to deny or keep secret. Now Greenpeace has modelled a site, Arctic Truth, for whistleblowers who work in the world of arctic drilling for oil. As climate change turns the frozen north into accessible waters oil companies want to move in and further the reach of their harmful industry. Even people in the industry are realizing how dangerous it is to drill closer to the north pole than ever before and have started to speak up.
The website is intended to shield the identities of whistleblowers as part of an effort to attract those willing to report on problems. Vaguely modeled on Wikileaks, the site is intended to protect whistleblowers but whether that will be tested in the courts remains to be seen.
“We know there have been a lot of problems with Shell and other companies and we wanted to create a way for employees to feel safe and secure,†if they reported problems, Ms. Ferguson said.
Shell canceled its 2013 Arctic drilling program after both its drill ships experienced serious problems last year. Its big circular drillship Kulluk broke away as it was being towed south after the drill season and ran aground on Kodiak Island New Year’s Eve. It has been taken to Asia for repairs.
Universities and colleges do a lot of research and sometimes their findings can make a large difference on the world around us. Unfortunately, it can be hard to get the media to represent what the research actually means and how the media can best work with academics to ensure that the coverage is accurate. At the same time, individuals who perform the research need help explaining quite complex ideas in rather simple ways.
The Worldviews Conference is focused on this very topic and their second conference is happening next month in Toronto. If you’re interested in media and academics than you’re going to want to check this conference out!
How do media cover higher education issues – locally and around the globe? How does coverage shape public perceptions? Does the academy look in media’s mirror to see itself? Can the academy help the press translate complex issues into accessible stories?
Let’s talk about it.
Given the crucial role of higher education and its explosive growth in some parts of the world, the stakes are high for the academy and ultimately the societies we serve.
In both higher education and media, much is in flux and many global trends are at play.Let’s assemble thinkers – academics, editors, students, journalists, communications professionals and others – to chart where we are and forge new paths in a fast-changing landscape.