18 Dec 2009
by Sayalee Karkare
in Europe, Global History, Travelogues
Winter School 2009 took place last weekend in the national park of the Karkonosze Mountains, Poland. The First Years and anybody else who chose to attend, were put up in two huts, Samotnia and Strzecha, located 500 metres from each other, with the nearest city of Karpacz situated a good 1.5 hour walk through the snow-covered mountains. Given the circumstance, making a quick and painless get-away from the place is near impossible. The logic then for the remote choice of location, as explained by Poldi, is somewhat tautological: Making a quick and painless get away from the Winter School is [...]
Continue reading
15 Dec 2009
by lash
in Environment
Great Garbage Patch
I caught the segment above on an Australian current affairs program called Hungry Beast about a month ago, and it’s stuck with me since. It features the work of photographer Chris Jordan, photographs he took at the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The patch, a swirling mass of debris in the Pacific, is the size of Queensland (but to internationalise things it has also been said to be double the size of Texas). The pictures are the undisturbed remains of baby albatrosses, their stomachs bursting with bright plastic junk from the patch. Everyday we’re confronted with stories and facts about our impacts on the environment, [...]
Continue reading
15 Dec 2009
by fm
in Climate Change
Forgive the Bob the Builder Quote. But I find this picturization of the Copenhagen negotiations by the DiploFoundation, a non-profit that pretty cool. Click here for a better viewing.
This is a work in progress and they are open to suggestions to improve this illustration, so do write in!
Continue reading
Climate Change
13 Dec 2009
by fm
in Afghan War, Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Pakistan, USA
Check out this video of Gurkha soldiers in Afghanistan bonding with the locals over Hindi/Urdu and Bollywood.
The situation in Aghanistan and Pakistan is often perceived in terms of the US involvement there- the “Just War’, “Obama’s War” or, more ominously, as another Vietnam. Such tired terminology ignores the fact that the Afghanistan war is more of a regional problem, in which the South Asian nation states of India and Pakistan have great stakes. The Obama administration certainly recognizes this, but has so far failed to get India and Pakistan, the two states with most to lose from a deteriorating Afghan [...]
Continue reading
AfPak
02 Dec 2009
by fm
in Uncategorized
Globalistan has been a little dormant the past few days since we were reworking blog design and adding some new features. More shall be told about the latter when the time is ripe, but we are still working on things so expect some changes.
Hats off to Teresa for the awesome header. And to Ben, who reworked the design for us.
Let us know what you think of the design. Is there anything in the reworking that you see missing or different? Opinions shall greatly help us as we work on the design. The soul of a blog, after all, is in [...]
Continue reading
01 Dec 2009
by fm
in India, Migration
Blogging and general online activity has been slow since I am in Brussles nowadays looking for work, but I naturally paused and clicked when this headline from the NYT popped up on my RSS-feed.
This article talked mostly about how Indian expat-professionals found themselves disillusioned and disappointed by working culture back home . It provides interesting and entertaining caricatures of Indian bureaucracy and cultural values:
There are no shortcuts to spending lots of time working in the country, returnees say. “There are so many things that are tricky about doing business in India that it takes years to figure it out,” [...]
Continue reading
culture, immigration, India
