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Refusing to have a political conversation about climate change now is akin to the insistence that the aftermath of a mass shooting is somehow an improper moment to talk about America’s gun laws.
— Amy Davidson on the political response to Hurricane Sandy: http://nyr.kr/Sk1WOM (via newyorker)
(Source: newyorker.com, via newyorker)
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Steve Bell on Michael Gove’s plans for the royal yacht – cartoon
Michael Gove’s plans for taxpayers to pay for a new royal yacht are holed below the waterline (via The Guardian)
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Must a woman lower the tone of her voice to be successful?
Researchers at a Canadian university have found that voters prefer lower-pitched voices, rating their speakers higher for attractiveness, leadership potential, honesty, intelligence and dominance. It’s the issue of dominance that is key to our voting decisions apparently.
Here’s lead researcher Cara Tigue, of McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada: “Throughout our evolutionary history, it would have been important for our ancestors to pay attention to cues to good leadership because group leaders affected a person’s ability to survive and reproduce within a group … We’re looking at it in a present-day, 21st-century context.”
So she and her team asked 125 people to listen to nine US presidents, going back to Harry Truman, to judge higher and lower pitched versions of their voices. In all cases, they voted for the deeper tones.
She refused to draw a link between this preference and the fact that there still hasn’t been a female US president – sorry, Hillary – but did add: “I really just think that it just suggests that men with lower-pitched voices may have some sort of advantage.” (via The Guardian)
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Over 2,000 march in Hong Kong' gay pride parade
“More than 2,000 people marched in Hong Kong’s gay pride parade Saturday, as campaigners called for the enactment of laws to ban discrimination against homosexuals.
The crowd, mainly from the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community (LGBT), as well as their supporters and sex workers, paraded through the city centre in a carnival-like atmosphere during the hour-long procession.”
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Meet the EDL
This footage was shot in collaboration with brighttyger.com at the September 3rd EDL demonstration on the edge of Tower Hamlets.
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Picture Gallery: Israelis take to the streets in housing protest
A tent village has been set up in an affluent part of Tel Aviv in a protest against rising rents and house prices. Similar protests are spreading to other Israeli cities and towns
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Video: Chavs author Owen Jones returns to Stockport
Owen Jones, author of Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class, goes back to his native Stockport to talk to Stuart Jeffries, and some local people, about the word ‘chav’ and what it means to them (via The Guardian)
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Thailand’s rich stay greedy – the battle for Yingluck’s minimum wage
Thailand’s PM-elect, Yingluck Shinawatra, is presently engaged in a tough battle to introduce a higher minimum wage for the country’s poorest workers (via Asian Correspondent)
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Steve Bell: Rupert Murdoch insists he was kept in dark
(via The Guardian)
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Steve Bell: The death of Met officers’ careers
(via Guardian.co.uk)
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A political history of Africa since 1900 - interactive
On Saturday 9 July 2011 South Sudan celebrated its independence day. How did the current nation states emerge from colonisation?
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China’s future: Rising power, anxious state
Since the nationwide student-led protests of 1989, the educated urban elite has mostly been politically quiescent. But the party fears them far more than it does unruly farmers or migrants. (via The Economist)
