Women, tech and the glass ceiling
I narrowly missed donglegate which must have been a trending topic on twitter at some point, but thanks to the vergecast, I still managed to pick it up in time. Interestingly, Sheryl Sandberg’s story was just dying down; both relate to women, tech and the workplace and ended with a rough outcome for one and sweet for the other as the former lost her job while the latter’s book got a lot of publicity to become a bestseller. Tech companies are overwhelmingly male and once regarded as “no woman’s land” where those who venture in can rise to the top but no more than the glass ceiling allows them, there’s even a joke that you can practically smell the testosterone when you walk into one.
The promised land
Cyprus was trending on twitter for a while last week and the back and forth on how to save it has now been finalized. Although far away and unaffected from my vantage point, I can see this wee nation tethering on the edge with the possibility of pulling others down along with it. The country is not alone in this as we have seen in the past, other similarly troubled nations lent a helping hand by good friends from afar. In this case also, help has been offered by concerned stakeholders albeit a difficult one, a bitter pill people living in Cyprus will have to swallow. Talk about being between
Love, marriage and tech culture
I find it quite fascinating that more and more people are getting married over the internet, it is a good example of technology culture in regard to marriage. Proxy marriages as they are called have been around for a while, medieval kings engaged in proxy marriages a lot so it’s not just a modern day phenomenon. They are understandably common in the military but elsewhere, the motive of such marriage may be questionable and it is funny that they are even recognised at all in some places. Skype is the primary facilitator of this kind of marriage and out of curiosity I searched for and found a whole load of discussion on topics revolving around skype such as “skype relationship etiquette” and even “skype sex”.
The way the cookie crumbles
It’s not as bad as it sounds but it doesn’t get worse than this for a country, Zimbabwe’s finance minister pronounced the country broke not long ago with the announcement that the government had just $217 left in its public account. He got himself into trouble for that announcement and had to provide an acceptable explanation to calm anxious minds. The country has declined steadily over the years in a purposeful manner resulting in a surprisingly safe country howbeit an economic and political basket case. It ranked 8th out of 141 countries in the Brooking Index of State Weakness of developing countries, having its highest score in security. The ranking is based on the relative performance on social welfare, security, political and economic assessments.
A Fear For The Future
While highlighting the insignificance of the age of the earth in regard to the economy late last year, a US senator stirred up a long standing debate on the age of the earth which is some billion or thousands of years old depending on which side of the debate you’re on. We are still a long ways off before the sun runs out of hydrogen, expands, swallows up Mercury and Venus and turns Earth into a molten rock, but how about a debate on the continued existence of the earth and human civilisation? It’s pretty safe on earth right now but it will be naive to assume there are no clear and future dangers facing the planet or human civilisation.
Gaucho, rodeos and cultural tradition
While flipping through my flipboard one night, a tile with a picture of two cowboys caught my attention. It was the cover for the upcoming “Fiesta de la Patria Gaucha“; the world’s largest celebration of gaucho tradition and culture held in the first week of March in Uruguay. The aptly named festival of the Gaucho Motherland is attended by participants from Uruguay, Argentina and Southern Brazil, regions that share a common past of livestock and plain fields. Former FIFA world player of the year Ronaldinho who comes from that part of Brazil once had Gaúcho attached to his name to differentiate him from a player with the same first name.
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