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German A. de la Espriella L.'s Friends
| February 1, 2018 | 7:02 AM |
| February 1, 2018 | 6:02 AM |
| January 30, 2018 | 8:01 AM |
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O. G. S. Crawford
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ldquo;In the 1920s O G S Crawford invented aerial archaeology, one of many services this eccentric Marxist misanthrope performed for the study of antiquity.rdquo;
- Jonathan Meades: Link
Bloody Old Britain: O G S Crawford and the Archaeology of Modern Life
By Kitty Hauser
Granta Books, 286pp
Amazon: Link
ldquo;Future archaeologists will perhaps excavate the ruined factories of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when the radiation effects of Atom bombs have died away.rdquo;
- O. G. S. Crawford, from Archaeology in the Field (1953)
O. G. S. Crawford @ Wikipedia: Link.
~ Karl Jones
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| November 29, 2009 | 7:11 AM |
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Y si volcáramos el mundo?
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 Hay un proverbio judío que reza así: "Si todos tirásemos en la misma dirección, el mundo volcaría." Me hizo pensar: Claro que sí ! ¿No han notado que gran parte de nuestras energías las ahogamos luchando contra lo que otras personas creen, dicen o piensan? En lugar de unirnos, trabajar juntos persiguiendo un mismo fin, sinergizando, valorando las diferencias.
Ahorita estoy en vacaciones, pero cuando entre a clases mi grito de guerra será: "¡Volquemos el mundo!"
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Por qué diablos dejé de postear?
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Hola ! después de tanto tiempo regresó a mi ciber-escritorio para expresar, crear, preguntar y compartir. Pero primero voy a aclarar un poco mis motivos del porqué abandoné la blogosfera.
Para los que se preguntaban: Por qué diablos Reiner dejó de postear? Acá les va la aclaración:
Para nadie es un secreto que soy cristiano. Lo que hago, todo lo que hago (incluyendo blogear) se ve afectado por la forma en la que yo me expongo al consejo de Dios. Vamos de nuevo: Lo que yo hago influye en otros. Dios influye en mí. Si me alejo de Dios corro peligro de influir en otros de manera negativa.
No me tomo a la ligera malaconsejar a otros. Disculpas de todos modos !
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Six Archetypes of Youth Change Makers
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Since the founding of TakingITGlobal in 1999, I have been incredibly inspired by my interactions with thousands of young change makers from all around the world. Through my Masters Research on youth-led action in an international context along with exposure to other studies and international conferences examining the role of today's generation of youth as change agents, I have gained an important observation. My observation is that I have seen the emergence of Six Archetypes of Youth Change Makers, which provide a glance at the roles young people are taking on in the process of creating change.
The Dreamer
The Dreamer is the driver behind new ideas. Dreamers are often the first to articulate a long-term vision for the future and think big. It is the sense of aspiration, optimism and imagination of dreamers that drive progress, innovation and change.
The Megaphone
The Megaphone is a vocal advocate for change. Megaphones are very focused on delivering the message and will campaign tirelessly and work hard to lobby for a message to be heard. They inspire action through their words and help to shift priorities on the agenda.
The Spark Plug
The Spark Plug is a catalyst and has a gift for networking and connecting people. The Spark Plug is able to foster collaborations and bring many different organizations and individuals together in dialogue, convincing diverse interest groups to come together for a common goal.
The Task Master
The Task Master is often behind the scenes making things happen and is sometimes the under-rated player within a group or organization. Often, it is the Task Master who literally keeps things together by turning ideas into manageable tasks with actionable timelines. Task Masters are practical, objective-oriented individuals.
The Sherpa
The Sherpa serves as a guide who provides mentorship, insight and training through peer education. Sherpas are natural educators with a strong interest in learning and sharing knowledge. Sherpas value hands on experiences and are able to draw upon the expertise and resources of those they encounter.
The Storyteller
The Storyteller is often the documenter of an organization and its projects, preparing short stories, interviews, blogs, webcasts newsletters and more. Storytellers become a vehicle for spreading inspiration and sharing of best practices through identifying patterns and strengthening movements through recognizing exceptional individuals.
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Kenya on Monday confirmed the first case of Swine Flu
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 NAIROBI, Kenya, Jun 29 - Kenya on Monday confirmed the first case of Swine Flu involving 20-year-old British student who is on a field trip in Kisumu. Public Health Minister Beth Mugo broke the news on Monday, saying that the patient may have had contact with the initial suspected case that turned negative on Saturday in Nairobi.
“The patient has been quarantined at a hotel in Kisumu,” she told a press conference at her Afya House office.
On Saturday a suspected case of Swine Flu in Kenya tested negative after momentarily spreading panic across Nairobi.
Ministry of Public Health officials said tests conducted at the Kenya Medical Research Institute – based Centre for Disease Control produced no traces of the H1N1 influenza virus.
Samples were taken from a 20-year old Kenyan female student who had arrived from London and reported that she may have come into contact with someone exhibiting symptoms of the flu.
She was rushed to the AAR Health Clinic at Sarit Centre, Westlands where doctors immediately alerted KEMRI officials who took over the case.
AAR Public Relations Officer Juliet Ratemo said: “We closed the AAR Health Centre and took all measures to ensure that our staff and other patients present did not come into further unprotected contact with the patient.” News about the patient had spread across Nairobi via SMS overnight on Friday, spreading panic as people sought to know the authenticity of the text messages.
In mid this month, the World Health Organisation (WHO) raised the Pandemic alert status from phase 5 to phase 6, which meant that the disease had reached the emergency level.
“It’s not killing more people, it’s not more aggressive than before so don’t think because we have elevated the phase to 6 the disease has become more severe, no! It is about geographical spread. We have been expecting the worst, we are lucky it’s not that bad,” Dr David Okello, WHO Kenya Director had said.
After the alert was raised, Public Health Minister Beth Mugo said the government had stepped up surveillance of the influenza H1N1 and over 50,000 doses of the drug Tamiflu was in the stock pile for use in case of an outbreak in the country.
She had also said there was a ready isolation facility at the Kenyatta National Hospital in case of an outbreak.
The first case of influenza H1N1 virus was reported in late April in Mexico.
According to the WHO website, by Friday, there were 59,814 confirmed cases of the swine flu around the world. 263 people have died of the disease.
The H1N1 strain is a new type of virus that has not circulated previously in humans. The virus is contagious, spreading easily from one person to another and from one country to another.
Young people under the age of 25 years are the main casualties in all the countries. A similar outbreak occurred in 1918 but was more severe than the current epidemic but the WHO warned that this may change hence the need for more vigilance.
Kenyans can get more information on the disease through the following contacts: 0722- 331 548,020-204 0542, 271 8292.
HOW IT SPREADS AND SYMPTOMS
The virus typically spreads from coughs and sneezes or by touching contaminated surfaces and then touching the nose or mouth. Symptoms are similar to those of the seasonal flu, and may include fever, sneezes, coughs, headache, muscles or joint pain, sore throat, chills, fatigue and runny nose. The CDC notes that most hospitalizations have been people with underlying conditions such as asthma, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, or a weakened immune systems. In an attempt to slow the spread of the illness, a number of countries, especially in Asia, have enforced strict quarantines on travellers showing any symptoms, along with travellers seated nearby any infected persons.
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2 lost icons: For Generation X, a really bad day
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 A record-shattering vinyl album and its moonwalking maestro. A paper poster of a golden-haired beauty in a one-piece swimsuit that was gossamer and clingy in all the right places. It all seems so quaint now, the fragmented dream memories of a fleeting micro-era that began with words like "bicentennial" and "pet rock" and ended with MTV, Atari and absurdly thin cans of super-hold mousse. The man-child named Michael Jackson and the luminous girl known as Farrah Fawcett-Majors jumped into our consciousness at a plastic moment in American culture — a time when the celebrity juggernaut we know today was still in diapers. When they departed Thursday, just a few hours and a few miles apart, they left an entire generation — a very strange generation indeed — without two of its defining figures. "These people were on our lunchboxes," said Gary Giovannetti, 38, a manager at HBO who grew up on Long Island awash in Farrah and MJ iconography. "This," he said, "is the moment when Generation X realizes they're grown up." It was a long time coming. Cynical, disaffected, rife with ADD, lost between Boomers and millennials and sandwiched between Vietnam and the war on terror, Gen X has always been an oddity. It was the product of a transitional age when we were still putting people on celebrity pedestals but only starting to make an industry out of dragging them down. Its memorable moments were diffuse and confusing — the Ronald Reagan assassination attempt, the dawn of AIDS, the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger. It had no protest movement, no opponent to unite it, none of the things that typically shape the ill-defined beast we call an American generation. These were the people who sent to the top of the charts a song called "We Don't Need Another Hero," then figured out how to churn them out wholesale, launching the celebrity obsession that is now an accepted part of American cultural fabric. And that was personified nowhere better than in the two people who died Thursday. She was, perhaps, the last in a line that began with Betty Grable in World War II — the bathing beauty who seemed kissed by the sun and exuded a potent combination of innocence and sexuality. But her "Charlie's Angels" jiggle-show image presaged another world entirely. It was the one that would come to be dominated first by Brooke and her Calvins and ultimately, as the hunger grew tawdrier, by American Apparel ads and the celebrity sex videos of Pamela Anderson and Paris Hilton. She struggled for credibility after the poster and the Angels. She got it in 1984 with a dramatic turn as an abused wife in "The Burning Bed." But her last stand — a documentary about the cancer that killed her — was tainted by her run-ins with insatiable paparazzi and tabloids. He was another thing entirely — perhaps the most recognizable face in the world, even more so than the pope or Barack Obama. His musical genius and energy seemed boundless for a time. They were rivaled only by his quirks, which consumed him. He had a bumpy, extraordinarily public childhood. Then he spent an off-the-wall lifetime trying to get it back, erecting a ranch named after the fantasy land of Peter Pan and inviting children to share his life and his bed — with results that some said drifted into the criminal. He caught fire in a Pepsi commercial. He shrouded his children in full-body coverings and dangled one over a balcony to show his fans below. His fabled multiple plastic surgeries turned him into someone almost unrecognizable. Nose sunk into face, cheekbones became caricature, ebony drifted into ivory. Yet through it all, even when the years of his quirks outstripped the years of his glory, he remained one of the planet's most popular figures, selling out shows wherever he went. "Icon," the Rev. Al Sharpton said, was "only a fraction of what he was." But icon was, of course, what he always acted as if he wanted to be. Today, celebrities aren't merely created for our consumption. Audiences are passive no longer. We demand a part in creating our icons: Jon and Kate Gosselin and their ilk might as well be publicly held companies, and we all insist upon buying a few shares. Farrah and Michael Jackson were other — above us, maybe, or apart from us. Now, when we crown new icons, we want them to BE us. "We want everything right now, and there's a blurring of reality. When does the celebrity world stop and our world begin?" said Penni Pier, an associate professor of communications at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa. When Farrah gazed at us in her swimsuit and, a single moment in history later, MJ dared us to moonwalk, they commanded giant audiences. The world had not yet become fragmented into the microcommunities that exist today. We liked them or we hated them, but we shared the experience just as Walter Cronkite told us each night that "that's the way it is." Today, when Lindsay Lohan Twitters pictures of herself to her legions of followers, the notion that a paper poster bought in a shopping-mall Spencer Gifts could change the celebrity game seems rustic. And the vinyl version of "Thriller," redolent of raw materials and production lines, is a ghost in the virtual world of iTunes — a world that the generation after X negotiates with the fluidity of natives. In the 1990s, members of Generation X would often laugh in bars about how the time of the Boomers was passing — about how the quaintness and naivete that made up the 1960s was, finally, a grave being danced on by Kurt Cobain. Today, members of that same generation sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings of pop. A sexy poster upon a boy's wall in which a young woman grins wholesomely. A record album called "Thriller" and its attendant music videos, built upon the notion that sexiness came in the frisson of hints and suggestions rather than in cutting directly to the big reveal. In the end, finally, they stand as the relics of a generation — one that struggled to find its place and now, suddenly, while still young, one that must wonder if it is as passe as the paper and vinyl that its icons' most memorable moments were etched upon. We don't need another hero? After this week, are we sure?
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Michael Jackson, the King of Pop is dead at 50
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For his legions of fans, he was the Peter Pan of pop music: the little boy who refused to grow up. But on the verge of another attempted comeback, he is suddenly gone, this time for good.
Michael Jackson, whose quintessentially American tale of celebrity and excess took him from musical boy wonder to global pop superstar to sad figure haunted by lawsuits, paparazzi and failed plastic surgery, was pronounced dead on Thursday afternoon at U.C.L.A. Medical Center after arriving in a coma, a city official said. Mr. Jackson was 50, having spent 40 of those years in the public eye he loved.
The singer was rushed to the hospital, a six-minute drive from the rented Bel-Air home in which he was living, shortly after noon by paramedics for the Los Angeles Fire Department. A hospital spokesman would not confirm reports of cardiac arrest. He was pronounced dead at 2:26 pm.
As with Elvis Presley or the Beatles, it is impossible to calculate the full effect Mr. Jackson had on the world of music. At the height of his career, he was indisputably the biggest star in the world; he has sold more than 750 million albums. Radio stations across the country reacted to his death with marathon sessions of his songs. MTV, which grew successful in part as a result of Mr. Jackson’s groundbreaking videos, reprised its early days as a music channel by showing his biggest hits.
From his days as the youngest brother in the Jackson 5 to his solo career in the 1980s and early 1990s, Mr. Jackson was responsible for a string of hits like “I Want You Back,” “I’ll Be There” “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” “Billie Jean” and “Black and White” that exploited his high voice, infectious energy and ear for irresistible hooks.
As a solo performer, Mr. Jackson ushered in the age of pop as a global product — not to mention an age of spectacle and pop culture celebrity. He became more character than singer: his sequined glove, his whitened face, his moonwalk dance move became embedded in the cultural firmament.
His entertainment career hit high-water marks with the release of “Thriller,” from 1982, which has been certified 28 times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America, and with the “Victory” world tour that reunited him with his brothers in 1984.
But soon afterward, his career started a bizarre disintegration. His darkest moment undoubtedly came in 2003, when he was indicted on child molesting charges. A young cancer patient claimed the singer had befriended him and then groped him at his Neverland estate near Santa Barbara, Calif., but Mr. Jackson was acquitted on all charges.
Reaction to his death started trickling in from the entertainment community late Thursday.
“I am absolutely devastated at this tragic and unexpected news,” the music producer Quincy Jones said in a statement. “I’ve lost my little brother today, and part of my soul has gone with him.”
Berry Gordy, the Motown founder who helped develop the Jackson 5, told CNN that Mr. Jackson, as a boy, “always wanted to be the best, and he was willing to work as hard as it took to be that. And we could all see that he was a winner at that age.
Tommy Mottola, a former head of Sony Music, called Mr. Jackson “the cornerstone to the entire music business.”
“He bridged the gap between rhythm and blues and pop music and made it into a global culture,” said Mr. Mottola, who worked with Mr. Jackson until the singer cut his ties with Sony in 2001.
Impromptu vigils broke out around the world, from Portland, Ore., where fans organized a one-gloved bike ride (“glittery costumes strongly encouraged”) to Hong Kong, where fans gathered with candles and sang his songs.
In Los Angeles, hundreds of fans — some chanting Mr. Jackson’s name, some doing the “Thriller” dance — descended on the hospital and on the hillside house where he was staying.
Jeremy Vargas, 38, hoisted his wife, Erica Renaud, 38, on his shoulders and they danced and bopped to “Man in the Mirror” playing from an onlooker’s iPod connected to external speakers — the boom boxes of Mr. Jackson’s heyday long past their day.
“I am in shock and awe,” said Ms. Renaud, who was visiting from Red Hook, Brooklyn, with her family. “He was like a family member to me.”
Dreams of a Comeback
Mr. Jackson was an object of fascination for the news media since the Jackson 5’s first hit, “I Want You Back,” in 1969. His public image wavered between that of the musical naif, who wanted only to recapture his youth by riding on roller-coasters and having sleepovers with his friends, to the calculated mogul who carefully constructed his persona around his often-baffling public behavior.
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New Private Equity Fund to Strengthen Health Care in Africa
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The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the African Development Bank, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the German development finance institution DEG announced that they have created a new private equity fund that will invest in Africa’s health sector. The Health in Africa Fund will invest in small- and medium-sized companies in sub-Saharan Africa, such as health clinics and diagnostic centers, with the goal of helping low-income Africans gain access to affordable, high-quality health services. The fund will help implement key recommendations of IFC’s report, ‘The Business of Health in Africa: Partnering with the Private Sector to Improve People’s Lives,’ which found that the private sector already delivers about half of all health-related goods and services in Africa, and that greater investment in private health companies could have major health and economic benefits for low-income Africans.
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CSO Observers Sought for Climate Investment Funds
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The World Bank’s Environmental Department is seeking civil society representatives to serve as observers on two Climate Investment Fund (CIF) Trust Fund Committees. The Bank has contracted a leading public policy dispute resolution organization, RESOLVE, to manage this self-selection process. The CIFs, which are managed by the World Bank and implemented jointly with the Regional Development Banks, were established through an inclusive and consultative process in support of the Bali Action Plan and approved by the World Bank Board in July 2008. Application forms, criteria, and instructions for the observer seats are available on the RESOLVE website (www.resolv.org/cif). Application instructions and criteria will be posted in Arabic, Bengali, Cambodian/Khmer, French, Nepali, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tajik, and Turkish during the week of June 15. Completed applications are due by Wednesday, July 2. CSO Observers Sought for Climate Investment Funds (CIF)
The Bank’s Environmental Department is seeking civil society representatives to serve as observers on two Climate Investment Fund (CIF) Trust Fund Committees. The Bank has contracted a leading public policy dispute resolution organization, RESOLVE, to manage this self-selection process. The CIFs, which are managed by the World Bank and implemented jointly with the Regional Development Banks, were established through an inclusive and consultative process in support of the Bali Action Plan and approved by the World Bank Board in July 2008. Application forms, criteria, and instructions for the observer seats are available on the RESOLVE website (www.resolv.org/cif). Application instructions and criteria will be posted in Arabic, Bengali, Cambodian/Khmer, French, Nepali, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tajik, and Turkish during the week of June 15. Completed applications are due by Wednesday, July 15.
Visit the website: www.resolv.org/cif for more details
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