All posts tagged books

2 Posts
January 3, 2011 · Featured, thoughts

Social Media to Prevent Hate Media

George Orwell wrote “History is written by the winners” and while this has been the case in many places, it has certainly not held true for Israel. After the war of independence established the state of Israel, it has continued to fight for legitimacy as a state.

Media has been central to framing this discussion. They have rightly outed human rights abuses as they’ve occurred, but often given heavy-handed and biased coverage that not only sours the debate, but encourages the promulgation of hate speech as the discussion norm. Most recently, this has been exemplified by an upcoming film by Benny Brunner, The Great Book Robbery.

January 12, 2010 · thoughts

Top Books of 2009

While I don’t get much time to read, I did manage to find a great book: my iPhone. I have to concur that it’s been a huge help to me whenever I’m trying to read during travel and don’t want to drag along a big book. My arsenal consists mainly of free literature, either classics books that have entered the public domain or those that were published under creative commons (ie. Lessig, Doctorow, etc). I even get a bunch in Russian. Shout-out to Stanza, the self-described “revolution in reading” for being a stellar iPhone e-reader app. Byline does a great job of syncing my RSS feeds via Google Reader where NetNewsWire failed (though I still love the desktop client).

Other hits? I’ll make quick shout outs to:

  • THE PHOTOGRAPHER, by Emmanuel Guibert, Didier Lefèvre and Frédéric Lemercier – experiences in Zaragandara, the Afghan town where Doctors Without Borders set up a makeshift hospital.
  • Dead Aid, by Dambisa Moyol. She posits that aid is the root of Africa’s problems. While a good devil’s advocate perspective, Paul Collier has the best review of the book, stating that “Dambisa Moyo is to aid what Ayaan Hirsi Ali is to Islam.”