MediaVidea

No, Dev-D, Candle March Marches, and Rock Fests don't quite cut it. Not even Anna Hazare, who seems more and more, a sad, old man, surrounded by a cabal. In an India of surging middle class and expanding surburbia, always copying and aspiring, you see hints of counterculture on the edges - in naxalism, Irom Sharmila...

Read this great post by Sam Smith titled, 'The Post empire survival guide'. If Indian is going to be like America, we Indians might also would want to know what happened to the great American Dream. Remember the cliche, 'what goes up must come down'. From the article:

Create a counterculture. It worked in the 1960s and it work again. You don't have to be a prisoner of the dominant culture. You can help create an alternative, just as the young did in the 1960s, without money or power. And without a counterculture there will be no significant change. The Occupiers are a great start. Take it from there.

My favorites from an excellent ongoing post at Journalism.co.uk, which is crowdsourcing memorable journalism job questions:

...was once interviewed by an editor who took a piss in his office's en-suite toilet, door ajar, still asking questions.

and this one:

 'what is your management style?' could not resist saying 'Genghis Khan' got the job.

and this one:

Write your own obit, 500 words or less.

There are just so many good ones there.

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In a delightful short post on The Economist's More Intelligent Life website, Tom Standage says that civilization's best invention is writing. And I agree. Writing makes you think better. Writing makes you question things.  Writing...okay, okay, over to Tom:

It is not just one of the foundations of civilisation: it underpins the steady accumulation of intellectual achievement. By capturing ideas in physical form, it allows them to travel across space and time without distortion, and thus slip the bonds of human memory and oral transmission, not to mention the whims of tyrants and the vicissitudes of history.

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Note: If are interested, There is a useful Success Manual Guide, called 'Writing Skills To Pay The Bills'.

The American Psychological Association reports that writing in a public blog can help teens tackle social anxiety better than keeping a private diary. It also says that offering commenting and discussion space on the blog brings in support and diverse (and often positive) statements from readers.

Study found at

Yes, how about a social work curtain? Cue image of a man intently facing the screen at work, and instead of work it is just Facebook that he is gawking at.

Found at

The Church of Kopimism, which is a faith and philosophy based on file-sharing, is now an 'official' religion in Sweden.  Maybe meant as a Scandinavian send-off to all the organized religions of the world, Kopimism has a main document, in which you shall find the 100 tasks you need to do to attain #g_d. From the list:

001. Obtain the Internet.
002. Start using IRC.
003. Group and birth a site.
004. Experiment with research chemicals.
005. Design a three-step program.
006. Take a powerful stance for something positive and essential.
007. Regulate nothing.
008. Say that you have to move in two weeks, but stay for seven months. Come back a year later and do it all over again.
009. ROTFLOL.
010. Relax, you’re already halfway there.
011. Just kidding.
012. Don’t think outside the box. Build a box.
013. Support support.
014. Organize and go to parties and fairs.
015. Start 30–40 blogs about the same things.
016. Drain the private sector of coders, graphic artists and literati.
017. Create a prize that is awarded.
018. Express yourself often in the media, vaguely.
019. Spread all rumors.
020. Seek out and try carding, and travel by expensive trains. Don’t order sushi.
021. Start a radio station.
022. Everything you use, you can copy and give an arbitrary name, whether it’s a news portal, search engine or public service.
023. Buy a bus.
024. Install a MegaHAL.
025. Make sure that you are really good friends with people who can use Photoshop, HTML, databases, and the like.

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