Category World

Μια Προσωρινή Πολιτική Τρικλοποδιά ή Μόνιμη Απαξίωση της Ευρώπης;

Διαβάζω το άρθρο στο BBC για τα παιχνίδια με Προσωρινές Άδειες Παραμονής σε Τυνήσιους μετανάστες στην Ιταλία, το Σένγκεν και τα τρένα. Η γειτονική μας χώρα, χρόνια ‘σκληρή’ απέναντι στους μετανάστες που κατέφθαναν στα λιμάνια της από την Αφρική, αλλά και την Αλβανία, αντιμέτωπη με αυξημένη, ενδεχομένως υπερβολική, εισρροή μεταναστών από την βόρεια Αφρική μετά […]

Unrated.

Today, Greece and Portugal saw their credit ratings downgraded, once again. Greece’s socio-economic mess notwithstanding, reading the linked BBC article made the absurdity of the dependence on the ‘markets’ (and the ‘unrated’ rating agencies that drive them) clearer than ever: in 2010 Greece woke up to the realisation — or at least some in that […]

Inside Job (2010)

The Inside Job is a documentary like few of its contemporaries: mainstream and accessible enough to win an Academy Award, yet sharp, piercing and well-researched enough to actually convince even the most sceptical among the viewers. This is a film narrated by an A-list hollywood star, Matt Damon, that dares to shred the current global […]

Divergent Thinking

With the occasion of the University of Cambridge planning to raise the tuition fees to home/EU students to £9K/year, and the increasingly flawed, purely economics-based view of education, here's another one of the RSAnimate sketches, based on a lecture by (Sir) Ken Robinson.

Τέλος Εποχής για το VoIP στην HOL.

Λίγο πριν τους Ολυμπιακούς της Αθήνας, με το ADSL να γράφει μόνον έναν χρόνο ζωής στην χώρα μας, η Hellas On Line έκανε το αδιανόητο: πρόσφερε, μέσω του προγράμματος evoice, την δυνατότητα απόκτησης αριθμού αθηνών (213xxxxxxx) χωρίς πάγιο τέλος, βασισμένο σε SIP και με ιδιαίτερα ανταγωνιστικές χρεώσεις για αστικούς και υπεραστικούς προορισμούς. Γνώρισα την υπηρεσία […]

Why a student should pay a graduate tax on top?

The linked mini-article at 'A Fistful of Euros' goes to show how wrong the British Government got it with regards to the tuition fees at British universities. It's one thing to argue that higher-quality education can only be the product of additional private funding of universities, as opposed to public funding which --- as in many other parts of Europe --- is being reduced, and another to argue that profit should be made out of the loans students take to fund their studies. Both make little sense to me, but the latter makes no sense at all, besides being totally unfair for those borrowing money to study.

Eternal Spring

Climate change is obvious to anyone over twenty five years of age; things have certainly changed since I was a kid. It’s December and the temperature this evening in Athens is 20°C (mornings and afternoons are way worse. Under normal circumstances 15°C would have been considered a very mild evening). At the same time, northern […]

Περί Παράνομων Πινακίδων

Εδώ και αρκετούς μήνες έχει ξεκινήσει η προσπάθεια που γίνεται από την κυβέρνηση για την απομάκρυνση των παράνομων υπαίθριων διαφημιστικών πινακίδων. Από τον ιστότοπο του εγχειρήματος διαβάζω για 893 επιβεβαιωμένες καταγγελίες και 175 αποξηλωμένες πινακίδες. Παρατηρώ πως, δυστυχώς, στο blog της προσπάθειας, αλλά και το twitter επήλθε μια σιωπηρή περίοδος γύρω στα μέσα του περασμένου […]

WikiLeaks U.S. Embassy cables.

Shocking? Not really; anyone between the most ardent conspiracy theorist and a rational, well-informed observer of international diplomacy might have anticipated even the most spicy of the U.S. cables, as they've been reported by the international press. So is this leak interesting? Definitely; speculating about U.S. policy is a totally different game to actually reading it. I'm curious to seeing the few, largely marginal, pieces mentioning/involving Hellas, after getting through the more 'universal' topics. It's also fascinating to see >3 posts/tweets/facebook statuses per second involving the subject while the Wikileaks web site remains inaccessible.

Dismantling the EU

The past sixty years have been a time of unprecedented peace and prosperity in Europe. A continent devastated by two World Wars, empires undone in the span of a few decades, the formal subjugation of Europe under the United States in return for their assistance in winning World War II, in light of their superior […]