Duvet-Dayz.com: use this bar code to access our RSS feeds and posts on your mobile phone
Archive for the 'Society' Tag
51 post(s) are associated with this Tag
Guerrilla Advertising: Obey in Toronto
A series of strange ads have been popping up in Toronto, Canada during the last days advertising for a product called “Obey” and linked to a group calling itself “WhyBecauseISaidSo”
The punch line on one of the ads reads as following:
My son had ideas of his own.
Obay put a stop to that.
The idea behind it - while this is definitely a teaser campaign - is thrilling and scary at the same time. How many people are actually already using drugs to sedate their children and to make them more compliant? And this at times when governments in western countries are passing laws to create a new form of political correctness or citizenship…
continue reading…
Time: Cold War Calculators
Those who still remember slide rules from the time before pocket calculators or learned flying a plane before GPS devices became so common will love this site. Others who remember the atrocities of the cold war might have a different approach to these relics from a time we all hoped that it would have long passed…
But whatever approach or understanding for that time you might have the web site “Cold War Calculators” - a site dedicate to radiac calculators slides - might show you some new “instruments” seemingly necessary during this dark period…
We didn’t know there were that many kinds of different calculators for these strange purposes - radiation dosage calculators, bomb damage effect computers, nuclear effects estimators, causality slide rules, weapons effects rules and calculators, fallout predictors, burst calculators…
Anyway - bang you’re gone…
continue reading…
Quote of the day: Quotes with horses
We were surprise how many quotes or proverbs with horses exist. Below our quick list of the most interesting ones:
“I can make a General in five minutes but a good horse is hard to replace.” Abraham Lincoln - 16th US President (1861-65)
“Speak the truth but ride a fast horse.” West Texas saying
“The one who [...]
Video: Cha-Cha-Changes…
When you follow the interviews, debates and news on the US presidential election campaigns one word became the most popular latest after Iowa - Changes
How often it’s used and by whom - well we did not realize it until we watch the short clip below…
continue reading…
Data visualization: Leading surveillance societies around the world
Since 1997 two NGOs - the US-based Electronic Privacy Information Center and the UK-based Privacy International - have surveyed and assessed the state of surveillance and privacy protection in 47 countries. The annual Privacy & Human Rights Report compiled from their findings has by now become one of the most comprehensive surveys of global privacy and citizen rights.
Their “most recent report” published a few days ago has been created with the help of more than 200 experts from around the world and has grown to 1,100 pages. It shows trends of
“…an overall worsening of privacy protection across the world, reflecting an increase in surveillance and a declining performance of privacy safeguards…“, and
“…an increasing trend amongst governments to archive data on the geographic, communications and financial records of all their citizens and residents. This trend leads to the conclusion that all citizens, regardless of legal status, are under suspicion…
continue reading…
Video: Did you know 2.0
This is the official update to the original “Shift Happens” video from Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod with new and updated statistics….
continue reading…
UK: What went wrong with the Civil Service
From a letter to the Daily Telegraph responding to the article “Why is the Civil Service a laughing stock?” by Philip Johnston
Sir - After a career of nearly 43 years in Westminster, I can tell Philip Johnston what has gone wrong with the Civil Service.
When I joined, it was a monolithic organisation, staffed by people who cared more for public service than for money, recruited with decent qualifications from an education system that worked, promoted in part by competitive examination, untainted by political bias and undiluted by endless useless management consultants.
Since then, the politicians have destroyed its public-service ethos by transferring so many to profit-making bodies, undermined its career structure by the wholesale importation of “here today, gone tomorrow” interlopers, forced party-political considerations to replace national ones and outsourced vital functions to private companies whose costs are exceeded only by their incompetence…
continue reading…
Data visualization: Supercities of the 21st century
Have a look at the 19.20.21 (19 cities in the world with 20 million people in the 21st century) web site.
It introduces a study on key aspects of the phenomenon of supercities. The project is managed by Richard Wurman who is also the author of one of the most stylish fact-books called “Understanding USA“. Already included are a few pages on the development of the world’s largest cities from 1000 to 2005…
continue reading…
Employment: ATT starts off-the-shelf “spy-casting” service
What for long seem to have been a domain for larger organizations (when did you last time read the small print in your employment contract written in”Enron Beelzebub”) - to extent the CCTV camera surveillance from public spaces into the corporate world - now, thanks to ATT, will become available as an off-the-shelf service to any corner-shop in town.
As the “NY Times” today reports ATT is planning to sell a standardized service to enable owners of SMEs to monitor their staff…
continue reading…
Quote of the day: Moderation
The moderation of happy people comes from the tranquility that good fortune gives to their disposition.
Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 17, Reflections on Aphorisms and Moral Maxims
