National and world news, books, movies, opinion : The New Yorker

Rebellious Economics Students Have a Point : The New Yorker (v New Economy Coalition)
▻http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2014/05/rebellious-economics-students-have-a-point.html

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/economics-rebellion.jpg

Don’t you hate it when the slave labourer who made your Saks 5th Avenue bag inserts a “please help !” note in it ?
▻http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2014/06/an-sos-in-a-saks-bag.html #China

http://www.desordre.net/photographe_inconnu.jpg

Ceci n’est pas un blind test , disons plutôt un deaf test , je ne me souviens plus du tout du nom du photographe américain qui a pris cette photographie que je trouve extraordinaire, dont j’ai sauvegardé le fichier, bêtement en lui donnant un nom de fichier du genre 001.jpg et dont je n’ai absolument pas pris la peine de noter le nom du photographe.

Seul indice j’ai le très vague souvenir de l’avoir mis de côté depuis le site de Libération mi avril.

#message_in_the_bottle

Disneylandisation des horreurs de la guerre - Visionscarto

►http://visionscarto.net/disneylandisation-guerre

La publication du jour sur notre tout nouveau site Visions cartographiques, c’est Patrick Naef qui nous l’offre avec une réflexion sur lieux de mémoire et tourisme (exploitation de la souffrance, instrumentalisation par les Etats). Ici, le Vietnam, la Lituanie et la Pologne, mais nous pourrons poursuivre le débat plus tard en Corée avec la DMZ ou en Afrique du Sud...

Violence et tourisme ne font à priori pas très bon ménage. Lorsqu’une région touristique sombre dans la guerre, connaît des émeutes ou subit des actes de terrorisme, elle est désertée et s’effondre économiquement.

http://visionscarto.net/local/adapt-img/1300/10x/local/cache-vignettes/L4288xH2848/13968033670_1c94-d873e.jpg?1399827077

Des pays comme l’Égypte, en profonde mutation après la « révolution » de 2011 et encore très instable politiquement, luttent pour réhabiliter un secteur touristique essentiel pour l’économie. Mais si les événements ont contribué à vider les lieux traditionnellement touristiques (ils y reviendront une fois que la situation sera plus calme), ce sont parfois les lieux-même de la violence qui deviennent des centres d’intérêts et peuvent se trouver transformés en attractions touristiques.

#tourisme #lieux_de_mémoire #guerre #conflits

Sherpas, Death, and Anger on #Everest : The New Yorker
▻http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/04/everest-sherpas-death-and-anger.html?mobify=0

Adding to Brice’s concern, some of his most experienced #Sherpas, ordinarily exceedingly stoical men, approached him to say that the conditions on the mountain made them fear for their lives. One of them actually broke down in tears as he confessed this. So on May 7, 2012, Brice made an announcement that shocked most of the thousand people camped at the base of Everest: he was pulling all his guides, members, and Sherpas off the mountain, packing up their tents and equipment, and heading home. He was widely criticized for this decision in 2012, and not just by clients who were forced to abandon their dreams of climbing the world’s highest mountain without receiving a refund for the forty-three thousand euros they had paid him in advance. Many of the other expedition leaders also thought Brice was wildly overreacting. The reputation of Himex took a major hit.

After what happened last Friday, though, it’s hard to argue with Brice’s call.

The Failure of Desegregation
▻http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/04/the-failure-of-desegregation.html
#éducation #racisme #etats_unis #melancolie_post_coloniale

How to Become Virtually Immortal : The New Yorker
►http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/04/how-to-become-virtually-immortal.html

It’s not enough that Internet companies have entered every corner of human existence—now, some are starting to cater to non-existence. In recent years, Google and Facebook have created systems to deal with death, such as suspending inactive accounts and allowing people to bequeath their data to a surviving friend or relative. The newest entry in the e-death industry is a small start-up called Eterni.me, which is taking end-of-life services to Asimovian extremes. “We all pass away sooner or later, leaving only a few memories behind for family, friends and humanity—and eventually we are all forgotten,” the Web site reads. “But what if you could be remembered forever?”

#e-death #e-funeral #eterni

#Syrie
In #Damascus, Everyone Comes to the Zeriab #Café
▻http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/damascus-cafe-580.jpeg

On a brisk, late-winter evening at Zeriab Café, a popular coffee shop in the Old City of Damascus, a trio of young musicians picked up a guitar, a ney, and an oud and began to play. It was Thursday, the start of the Syrian weekend, and the café was packed with stylish young customers, who broke from their conversations as the music started. Zeriab is small—just five wooden tables pressed close together, a bar counter, and a red sofa.
...
My mission as a coffee shop is to create a place with nice music and a nice atmosphere, and to take people out of their thoughts of war.
...

▻http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/04/in-damascus-everyone-comes-to-the-zeriab-cafe.html

How to Become Virtually Immortal | The New Yorker blog
APRIL 4, 2014 POSTED BY LAURA PARKER
►http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/04/how-to-become-virtually-immortal.html

The company plans to store data from Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, photos, video, location information, and even Google Glass and Fitbit devices. While you are living, you can curate and add to this material; you can also choose privacy settings and determine what information you want stored and made public. Eterni.me then allows you to create a list of people who will be contacted and given access to your account in the case of death, giving your descendants quick and easy access to that Instagram pic of your latte or a detailed history of your Facebook pokes.

#mort via @opironet

La New York Public Library publie 20.000 cartes téléchargeables gratuitement | Slate.fr

▻http://www.slate.fr/culture/85389/new-york-public-library-cartes-gratuit

▻http://www.slate.fr/sites/default/files/imagecache/blognews-picture/france_5.jpg

A Slate, on adore les cartes, toutes les cartes : celles qui éclairent l’actualité, celles qui racontent l’Histoire, celles qui expliquent la société. On ne pouvait donc qu’accueillir chaudement l’initiative Open Access Maps de la bibliothèque publique de New York qui vient de rendre accessibles à tous une véritable mine de cartes, plus de 20.000, rapportée par le site Open Culture.

#cartographie

Open Access Maps at NYPL | The New York Public Library
▻http://www.nypl.org/blog/2014/03/28/open-access-maps

http://images.nypl.org/index.php?id=5056960&t=w#.jpg

The Lionel Pincus & Princess Firyal Map Division is very proud to announce the release of more than 20,000 cartographic works as high resolution downloads. We believe these maps have no known US copyright restrictions.* To the extent that some jurisdictions grant NYPL an additional copyright in the digital reproductions of these maps, NYPL is distributing these images under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

#cartographie #domaine_public

Les dangers des listes établies par les données - O’Reilly Radar
▻http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/03/the-dangers-of-data-driven-list-making.html

Pour Forbes, Barry Eggers expliquait qu’on devrait utiliser les Big Data pour construire des listes intéressantes : ▻http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2012/09/25/the-problem-with-lists-and-the-fix-from-big-data Dans un monde de notes et de classements, notre cerveau adore les listes - cf. ▻http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/12/a-list-of-reasons-that-our-brains-love-lists.html - mais, elles sont bien souvent inutiles car trop souvent peu crédibles. Certes, estime Alistair Croll pour O’Reilly, les Big Data vont nous aider à faire des listes, mais sur quels critères ? Certes, nous pourront les personnaliser, mais ne risquons-nous pas de devenir excessivement dépendants d’elles ? Nous confondons trop souvent optimisation et inspiration. Lister les politiciens les plus (...)

#algorithme #biddata

A Short History of ’Hack’ : The New Yorker
BEN YAGODA - 07/03/2014 via @opironet
▻http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/03/a-short-history-of-hack.html

Clearly, “#hack” is the word of the moment; its technological connotations have proliferated in both scope and presence. As used above, and in the halls of Facebook, it derives from a verb that first appeared in English around 1200, meaning to “cut with heavy blows in an irregular or random fashion,” as the Oxford English Dictionary defines it. (Another strain of the word, referring to a person—especially a writer—who does undistinguished work, comes from “hackney,” as in a horse or car for hire.)

It was at M.I.T. that “hack” first came to mean fussing with machines. The minutes of an April, 1955, meeting of the Tech Model Railroad Club state that “Mr. Eccles requests that anyone working or hacking on the electrical system turn the power off to avoid fuse blowing.”

In the Age of Amazon, Where Have All the Workers Gone? : The New Yorker
▻http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2014/02/where-have-all-the-workers-gone.html

#travail #industrie

A mesure que la technologie s’améliore, la société empire - The New Yorker
▻http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/02/as-technology-gets-better-will-society-get-worse.html?mobify=0

Pour Tim Wu, l’évolution technologique a une force motrice bien différente de l’évolution biologique. Notre volonté de confort combinée à nos compétences technologiques créent de nouvelle possibilités. Nous n’allons pas vers une singularité, mais vers une « Sofalarity » (si quelqu’un a une bonne traduction, je suis preneur), un avenir définit non pas par une évolution vers une superintelligence, mais vers une absence d’inconfort. Notre avenir ressemble de plus en plus à celui des humains de Wall-E... Pour contrer cela, il nous faut des mécanismes pour maintenir l’humanité sur la bonne voie. La technologie est toujours la réponse à la technologie... Tags : internetactu2net internetactu fing (...)

#prospective

Qui lit encore l’information ? - The New Yorker
▻http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/01/doesnt-anyone-read-the-news.html

Des chercheurs de Microsoft Research ont étudiés 1,2 millions d’internautes américains pour constater que seulement 50 000 (4%) étaient des lecteurs actifs d’information (par lecteur actif, les chercheurs parlent d’une personne qui a lu au moins 10 articles de #presse - mis de côté, ce qui relève du divertissement comme le sport, la météo... - et 2 articles d’opinion dans une période de 3 mois !). Si vous supprimez les tribunes, le nombre de lecteurs régulier passe à 14%. Un résultat très différent des études du Pew (39% des sondés disent avoir lu des news en ligne la veille du sondage), souligne Tim Wu. L’addiction de certains à l’information est-elle une sous-culture ? Tags : internetactu2net fing internetactu (...)

#information #media #usages

Un grand compositeur d’aujourd’hui : Nico Muhly

▻http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/10/nico-muhlys-new-ideas.html

▻http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWfg4bA46PY

▻http://www.franceculture.fr/emission-le-rendez-vous-le-rdv-nico-mulhy-alain-platel-et-la-session-d

The Allure of the Map

For years, I carried the same map wherever I went. When I wasn’t travelling, Scotch Tape held it to the back of my bedroom door: it was visible to me when the door was closed, but invisible to almost everyone else. That map moved from dorm rooms to apartments and houses, from the Eastern Shore of Maryland to New England, from New England to the United Kingdom, and back again.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/assets_c/2014/01/1-Treasure-island-map-1000-thumb-290x432-289006.jpg

▻http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/01/the-allure-of-the-map.html

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2-grossman-the-magician-king-580.jpg http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/3-grossman-the-magicians-580.jpg

#carte #cartographie

Disquiet in a Turkish Fishing Village : The New Yorker
▻http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2014/01/disquiet-in-a-turkish-fishing-village.html

Le 3ème pont à Istanbul vu par des pécheurs de Garipçe, petit village situé au Nord du Bosphore. Très intéressant.

Until a couple of years ago, Garipçe, a tiny village in metropolitan Istanbul, near the Black Sea, was known among Turks for being a retreat, a place that offered fresh fish beside a clean expanse of water but was still accessible by city bus. The village survives on fishing and light tourism; the latter slows in the winter, when cold wind blows off the water, through a narrow cove, and up the single paved street, sweeping Garipçe’s six hundred or so residents indoors. Visitors see romance in the quaint and ramshackle aspects of Garipçe, where many of the buildings lining the road are sunken and abandoned, their frames rotting in plain sight. But, for many year-round residents, life is hard. Fishermen scramble to afford technology that keeps them competitive; children are forced to commute to a neighboring village because the local primary school was demolished; women, in the religiously conservative village, complain about the lack of a community center where they can socialize. Because it is next to a historic fortress, Garipçe is designated a protected area, making renovating or building in the village an expensive, time-consuming process.

But the villagers, the vast majority of whom support Prime Minster Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (A.K.P.), are attached to their home. So when Erdoğan declared that it would be the European landing point for a two-and-a-half-billion-dollar bridge over the Bosporus—the third in Istanbul to connect the Asian and European continents —the announcement was met with hope. Villagers anticipated that property values would rise, tourism would increase, and blight would be repaired, while, in the meantime, they would be doing their part to help their Prime Minister unclog Istanbul’s overburdened roads and bridges. The bridge’s eight car lanes and two rail tracks were like a sword knighting the bedraggled town.

Around the time of those comments [corruption, Gezi], the mood in Garipçe was less than exuberant: residents, too, were starting to wonder whether the project was as positive a development as they had originally believed. Renovation on the fortress and other buildings had yet to start, and the only signs so far of the bridge were two columns coming up from the sea floor just off the coast and a huge bald patch in an otherwise green area of forest. Residents complained about the smell and noise from the construction. Local fishermen were anxious about the impact the construction would have on the fish population, which constitutes their livelihood. Everyone was thinking about what would happen to his or her property; even those most optimistic about a wealthy future also seemed resigned to the fact that the village would never be the same.

#Istanbul
#3ème pont
#environnement
#rente

Egypt’s 97.7 Per Cent: If Everyone Votes Yes, Is It Democracy? : The New Yorker
▻http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/01/if-everyone-votes-yes-is-it-democracy.html

The question, though, is whether people will be pushed to more extreme acts. The most frustrating aspect of the political climate is that even after the game has been won the oppression is relentless; if the authorities had allowed opposition groups to campaign against the new constitution, it still would have passed easily. But the lack of any democratic tradition in Egypt means that anybody in power can’t seem to tolerate dissent. The Brotherhood behaved in similar ways when Morsi was President.