Hang Son Doong Cavern in Vietnam — Selections
Filed under landscape wondrous, photography, unusual people
Black July 83: Two Statements in The NATION
I: Editorial: “Black July 83 never again,” 21 July 2013
Remember Black July ’83’ is a print-ad campaign designed by the advertising agency JWT for the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), a controversial NGO that has come in for a lot of flak from multiple quarters on grounds of financial dishonesty and aiding and abetting separatism. ‘Never to repeat’ is the payoff line. The campaign is to be launched shortly, The Nation learns. ‘Black July’ is remembered and remembered differently and for varying purposes by those who remember. Whatever these differences may be there is commonality in agreement on one thing: it should never happen again.
A Scene in Borella–Pic from Victor Ivan
There’s nothing to say that ‘Black July’ will not recur. There’s nothing to say that it must. On the other hand, if it is not to happen again, it is important to remember what happened. It is important to acknowledge that it inflicted a deep wound on the nation, the people who make it, their collective and individual memory; a wound that has bled into many other lacerations. This has been a common view expressed by many across the political spectrum. Continue reading
Black Memories: July 1983
GROUNDVIEWS, 18 July 2013
In August this year, Groundviews will launch a compelling collection of content to commemorate 30 years since Black July. The content will feature original podcasts, photography and writing on a dedicated website. Building from the critically acclaimed Moving Images two years ago, Groundviews brought together leading documentary filmmakers, photographers, activists, theorists and designers, in Sri Lanka and abroad, to focus on just how deeply the anti-Tamil pogrom in 1983 has shaped our imagination, lives, society and polity.
Photo by Natalie Soysa, for Groundviews
The resulting content, featuring voices never captured before, marrying rich photography, video, audio and visual design with constitutional theory, story-telling and memorialising, has no historical precedent. Curated by Groundviews, the project is an attempt to use digital media and compelling design to remember the inconvenient, and in no small way, acts of daring, courage and resistance during and after Black July. Continue reading
A Classical Appreciation for a Classical Cricketing Man
Andrew Fernando, courtesy of ESPNcricinfo
Cricketers are sometimes labeled ‘great students of the game’. Often these students are men who distinguish themselves from the peloton of cricket’s sporty jocks by a yearning to learn more about the history and the nuances of the pursuit that consumes their lives.
When he first began playing for Lancashire, Muttiah Muralitharan was said to have had a more thorough knowledge of the team’s previous season than many of the cricketers who had played in those matches. Part of why Michael Hussey’s ‘Mr. Cricket’ moniker endured was because he would speak for hours on end about the game, in what seemed like laborious detail to his teammates. In his years as Australia captain, Ricky Ponting was found perusing grade cricket scorecards from around the country. All men, whose livelihoods had happily aligned with their life’s most ardent passion. Continue reading
Filed under life stories, performance, sri lankan society, unusual people
Emily Howie’s update on irregular migrants and government reactions
Emily Howie
Hi all
Here is an update on the boat migration issues between Australia and Sri Lanka. Unfortunately, this will be my final update of this kind as I have completed my fellowship and have returned to work with the Human Rights Law Centre in Melbourne, Australia. However I will continue to work on these and other issues with the Human Rights Law Centre and will provide updates through the Centre’s website on the international developments page (http://www.hrlc.org.au/category/primary/hr-development/hr-development-international) and also through the Centre’s monthly bulletin (subscribe on the top right of this page: http://www.hrlc.org.au/). I highly recommend subscribing to the Bulletin. Continue reading
Q and A with Professor Chandre Dharma-wardana
Daniel Bacon sounds out Dharma-wardana for World Scientific, 14 June 2013
- Discuss the differences between teaching physics at the University of Montreal and conducting research at the National Research Council of Canada?
The National Research Council of Canada (NRC) is the premier arm of government research in Canada. The NRC has always worked closely with the cutting-edge technological giants in Canada, in fields like nanotechnology, communications, materials, energy, biotechnology, aerospace etc. It also works with universities in accepting post-graduate students and researcher associates. In my career at the NRC I have had the privilege of working in almost every area of physics, and overlapping into chemistry and engineering, touching on the most fundamental and basic questions in quantum physics, and at another extreme, working directly on very practical applications like light-emitting diodes, semi-conductor field-effect transistors, photonics or plasma physics. Continue reading
Social Scientists’ Association launches bookshop site with credit card facilities
Vijitha Yapa: Journalist, Editor, Bookseller, Publisher
Ishara Jayawardane, courtesy of The Daily News, 22 January 2013
From the most humble of beginnings ending up as one of the most influential people in Sri Lanka, Vijitha Yapa’s is a success story. He has been a leading journalist and editor and is now a publisher. Vijitha Yapa is a well known name in Sri Lanka being the Founder, Chairman, and Managing Director of the largest English bookstore chain in the country. Reminiscences of Gold spoke to Vijitha Yapa about his life experiences and achievements. “I was born in a small village called ‘Waralla’ which is in the Southern Province; a little village between Kotapala and Morawaka on the Akursssa-Deniyaya road. My father was a tea planter and he was also Chairman of the Village Council. One of the things that he insisted was that we all go to school in the village and that is an experience I treasure very much. He had 10 children and all of us went to this school and the early part of our childhood was spent there. The whole school had only one building and all the classes were held there. We had long desks and benches and next to me was a boy whose father was the peon in my father’s office. It gave us a tremendous introduction to life and an ability to understand people. My father said that we should never forget our roots in the village. Continue reading
Thugs who roam the internet
Quotation of the month from Padraig Colman within a subsection entitled ‘Moderation in All Things”
However, most reputable websites have a moderation policy which forbids author abuse, obscene or offensive language and off-topic discussions. Only extreme libertarians would object to a website policing itself to eliminate hate speech that stirs up racial animosities. Whether a comment falls into any of those categories is determined by editorial judgement. Where do you draw the line between moderating and censorship?
The price paid for freedom of speech is that gangs of thugs, whose malevolence towards their fellow human beings is pathological, pseudonymously prowl the precincts of the internet. The people who moderate do not always know the difference and are, allegedly, sometimes part of the gangs. Someone has privately suggested to me that many of the pseudonymous trolls are actually fakes manufactured by the editors to drum up interest. An analysis of the UK Guardian’s on-line community by digital consultant Martin Belam suggests that debate is dominated by a tiny minority. (He estimated that a fifth of comments were left by just 0.0037% of the paper’s declared monthly audience.) Continue reading
