Kony 2012
KONY 2012 is a film and campaign by Invisible Children that aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice.
Published articles related to The World:
The State of Education
The following infographics summarizes state of education in the United States by listing facts, comparison, and figures in an interesting graphical manner. It’s easy to understand and yet pretty much mind-blowing for those who haven’t been following balanced news or having knowledge on this issue. Well at least you can quickly understand the situation just by extracting information from the sketch below.
Click the image to see it on the original website.
Sunscreen?
How much sunscreen do I need to apply? How long will I be protected with SPF30 sunscreen? When should I reapply it? And there’s plenty questions about getting the right sunscreen and doing it right to protect ourselves against the nasty cancer.
The following infographics designed by McCandless and the team is an excellent way to describe all you need to know about sunscreen and skin health. Read on below:
Food Variety
It’s so clear and striking: extinction is real and it’s not only the kinds of animals we can see that matters, the variety of food we can harvest and consume matters too. This infographics smartly illustrate the shrinking number of variety of food we eat in the past century.
Life lessons in 8 years of travelling
Benny Lewis spent eight years after his college travelling the world, likely seeing places and speaking languages more than we’ve ever done; and most importantly experienced and learnt valuable life lessons than we can ever do in years to come. Some of them are:
- Everyone everywhere basically wants the same thing. Everyone just wants validation, love, security, enjoyment and hopes for a better future.
- Deferring your happiness to the future is a terrible idea. Too many people presume that when they have that one thing they can work towards for years then “everything will be alright”. It’s not. So it’s not how fast you reach your big goal, but it’s how you enjoy the journey.
- Seek out people with different beliefs and views of the world to yours and get to know their side of the story. Don’t take responsibility for convincing the world you are right. It’s important to acknowledge that maybe you are actually the wrong one. Spending time exclusively with people who agree with you on everything would never challenge you and allow you to learn so much more.
- Living a good life is the best way possible to convince people. Enough words and enough arguing. Just live by example and soon you’ll have people on your side when they see your results and how passionate you are.
- More money will NEVER solve your problems. Beyond the basic necessity, having more wouldn’t make you any happier. Spend enough time with people who are actually living on next to nothing, but having a full life, to truly understand this. Everything that is wonderful about life doesn’t cost a penny, and the rest is way cheaper than you think it is.
- TV is the greatest black hole of time available to mankind. People get biased news through it, watch terrible TV shows through it that teach them nothing, and it sucks so many hours of their lives away that they delude themselves into thinking that they don’t have time to pursue real passions in life. TVs encourage people to be antisocial.
- The Internet is the greatest tool ever available to us, but daily use must be capped. Use it to enrich your life, but put a cap on how much you use it so you can get out and live that life. The real social network is out there in the real world.
- Get outside and do something with other people. The world that is worth experiencing is not in books or on TV or computer screens. It’s with other human beings.
There’s a lot more on his blog post so drop by and read what he has learnt.
War on terror(ism)
Images and video clips we see on mainstream media are not necessarily accurate representations of terrorism and global war on terror as the majority would know it as.
Read more
Earth Hour 2011
Last year almost all the national monuments and landmark icons, including the Merlion, the Singapore Flyer, Esplanade Theatres, the Fullerton Hotel, One Fullerton, Clifford Pier and the Asian Civilizations Museum took part in the Earth Hour 2010 by switching off decorative lights that primarily define their façade at night. Around the central business district, the Singapore River flew in darkness when buildings in downtown area power down their non-essential lighting for the requisite hour between 8.30 to 9.30pm. These include the HSBC Building, Maybank Tower, Raffles City Shopping Mall, One Raffles Quay, Suntec City and Swissotel the Stamford. Read more about Earth Hour 2010 at CNNGo.
It seems that more people and organizations are more aware of the cause and get involved in this year’s Earth Hour. Let’s see how the skyline is gonna be during Earth Hour 2011 later this month!
Some people misunderstood the whole idea behind this cause and thought the one hour of switching off the lights and electronic appliances is meant to save some electricity for the planet. Well, yeah they’re right the energy saved during that one hour doesn’t impact much on our planet even if millions of people are doing it during Earth Hour. But what they missed, and what prevails… is the hope and sense of unity which instill us and everyone else out there, declaring that millions of people around the world care about our one and only earth regardless of the continent we’re in, the language we speak, or the religion/belief we believe in.
Taking part in Earth Hour this year? Feel like going out on Saturday evening on 26Mar? Check this out:
EARTH HOUR SINGAPORE 2011 – OFFICIAL CELEBRATION PARTY
Venue: The Promontory @ Marina Bay
MRT: Raffles Place exit J
Date: Saturday, 26 March 2011
Time: 5.30 – 10.00 pm
WWF’s Earth Hour event is sustainably fueled by Alpha Biodiesel recycled from IKEA Restaurants’ waste cooking oil.
5.30 – 8.30pm : Free Live Concert and Carnival
This year, WWF, in partnership with the Singapore Kite Association, will be inviting you to make your own kite and personalise it with your message or wish for the Planet. Remember also to bring your picnic basket and your beewax candles. Sit back, relax and enjoy the performances and some educational fun at the carnival.
8.30 – 9.30pm : Earth Hour Night Walk
As the lights go out, get on your feet and show your support to the protection of our Planet. So get ready to walk in the dark for the first ever Earth Hour Night Walk! Lace up and join your fellow Singaporeans and our celebrity supporters in showing your commitment to our planet.
8.30 – 10pm : Movie screening — The Age of Stupid
If you choose not to take part in the walk, stay at the Promontory to watch this award winning documentary.
Now spread the words and let people know you care.
World AIDS Day
1 December 1988: First “World AIDS Day”, declared by WHO on the same year.
Support the cause by choosing (RED) product, turn your facebook red, or check out this page to learn more about AIDS and what we can do. You’ll be amazed how easy you can contribute to the cause simply by choosing red color when you purchase tee, gadget, or other stuff from your favorite store.
Electric cars and charge challenge
Japanese giant manufacturer Mitsubishi motor sell its first mass-market electric car in showrooms today. This electric-powered vehicle technology is one of the key answers to international calls for emission reduction in the automobile industry. And the great thing in 2010 is the affordability of this technology to reach the mass.
The electric car can travel 160 km in a single charge which takes about 14 hours using household electrical outlet or a quick 30 minutes charge using designated charging station at public places. Presently, there are about sixty public charging stations in Japan and the government is planning to increase the number in the coming years as more electrical cars hit the road and demand for such charging station increases.
Other car manufacturers like Nissan, Toyota, and Ford are preparing their electric cars for sale in the next 1-2 years. Meanwhile, Microsoft and Ford are collaborating to develop smart technology to manage and tackle the charging challenge which is likely to happen when there’s a surge of electric car ownership in a neighborhood.
Certainly, the automobile industry, electrical and utilities board, information-technology player, and our society in general are progressing towards a cleaner transportation mode which put less strain on our planet.
The iPad paradox
A recent (hmm.. not so recent actually) seminar I attended discussed what it means to formulate and sculpt an experience. The answers encompassed broad spectrum of perspective ranging from those closer to psychology, to ethnology, to art, and everything else in between. It is certainly not a concept which comprised of identifiable discrete factors, nor an easily formulated recipe that works for everyone. If it’s that complicated, then what it means to design the experience that people wants nowadays?
Observing design-scape in the recent years, since I delved into visual design that is, one branch of the trends is going deeper into minimalism where plain, basic, simple design is treasured as much as a heavily adorned piece of artwork. Minimalism sprouted in interior design, architecture, product design, visual design, and everywhere else in design-scape. Do people appreciating these plain and bare designs try to escape from hurdles and complexities in their life? Perhaps. Well, at least that’s what works for me.
I ditched the operating system that bog me down with weekly and monthly maintenance.
I pass on a feature-packed organizer which gave me an overly complicated synchronization problems.
I tossed away that overly confusing scientific calculator, packed with arrays of buttons, opting for a less scientific version.
All those overly complicated but feature-packed devices were replaced with something simpler. Less features, less bells and whistles, but works like a charm. Hey that works better for me! Relating this back to the minimalism, designing something with less feature can possibly be a must-have feature!
Recently, I stumbled upon this iPad paradox which echoed my thoughts! Have a look at it if you have five minutes to spare; it’s a nice article.
Customizable friendster profile page, low-level customization of WindowsMobile-based smartphones, and feature-packed MP3 players are some of the things of yesteryear.
Now I’m pretty sure there are plenty of people out there who are hungry for products with less feature, locked-down services, and minimalism in general. Yes, one size doesn’t fit all. Minimalism isn’t the only way to go. But the popularity of twitter, facebook, and Apple’s “i” products certainly show a sound trend towards simplicity.
