My regular Sunday piece of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the week. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. Those stimulating links you wanted to share, but just didn’t fit in anywhere (no linkwhoring). This week: inequality, language on social media, and feminism.
Who is the richest person ever? If you go by Adam Smith’s measure of income versus average citizens it’s not Rockefeller or the Roman Crassus but Mexican Carlos Slim – who earns 116,000 times his fellow citizens. A new book Plutocrats by Chrystia Freeland is reviewed by the Guardian, looking at the men (and it’s predominately white men…) whose wealth distorts and is destroying our system.
Also if you’re looking for a book to read Equality by Danny Dorling is an excellent follow-up to the Spirit Level. That page includes Dorling talking to Occupy London. Also talking to Occupy Protestors is Andy Haldane, a possible future Governor of the Bank of England. Backed by economic research by the IMF and others, he says: “At the heart of the global financial crisis, were and are problems of deep and rising inequality [..] We have seen, first, inequality-induced crisis and, latterly, crisis-induced inequality.”
Rebecca Solnit has an excellent long piece on the Guardian on the importance of words in political activism – quoting Confucius:
if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion.
Calling lies “lies” and greed “greed”:
You can blame it all on greed: the refusal to do anything about climate change, the attempts by the .01% to destroy our democracy, the constant robbing of the poor, the resultant starving children, the war against most of what is beautiful on this Earth.
Also on language, the BBC looks at research on how new words spread via twitter, and Sarah Oakes looks at the art of comment moderation.
As the race for the White House comes down to the final days (and Obama looking presidential) the New Yorker says that Obama has taken the early lead in the Hurricane Sandy World Series. On the other hand they look at the extreme focus on Sandy and the missing issue of Climate Change.
Also on Climate Change, Daryl Hannah looks at the evil of Big Oil fighting against society.
Finally feminism and tech. Can Marissa Mayer of Yahoo really have it all? And the BBC gives a view on why we need more women in tech.
(sorry for missing last week, still stuck in the US – which has some benefits for a political junkie…)
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