As Tom Waits once crooned, “I never knew I needed you until I was caught up in a bind,” so perhaps it’s not as ironic as it first appears that Pico Iyer, an essayist best known for his peripatetic lifestyle and travel writing, has plenty to say about stillness. It’s often only when we feel a lack of something that we learn to value it, and in the current world of 24-hour electronic stimulation and constant information bombardment, we start to feel the need for a little solitude and peace.
It’s a problem that many remote workers can identify with and one Iyer (who works in Japan with colleagues half a world away) recently spoke to Knowledge@Wharton about in depth. In the lengthy interview he identifies the lack of stillness in the lives of many plugged-in professionals, saying:
Almost everybody I know has this sense of overdosing on information and getting dizzy living at post-human speeds. Nearly everybody I know does something to try to remove herself to clear her head and to have enough time and space to think. Some of my friends go for runs every day. Some do yoga. Some cook. Some meditate. All of us instinctively feel that something inside us is crying out for more spaciousness and stillness to offset the exhilarations of this movement and the fun and diversion of the modern world. Continue reading →
Mr. Ralph Ramkarran is in the news again. He was silent after the selection of Donald Ramotar as the PPP’s Presidential entry for the 2011 General Elections. Now he has re-appeared with frequency in the Chronicle- the very Chronicle that the Parliament needs as a matter of urgency to reorganize so that others apart from PPP personnel like Ramkarran can be read in the state-owned paper.
Interesting to note is that many of Ramkarran’s pieces in his party’s newspaper, the Mirror, turn up in the Chronicle. It was Ramkarran’s party, when in Opposition, that quarreled about the practice of paramountcy of the party under former President Forbes Burnham. Once Mr. Ramkarran returned to public discourse, the national anticipation was that he would explain how and why the PPP chose acclamation over voting in its Executive Committee to select Mr. Ramotar. It would have meant at the last minute, right at the very meeting, Mr. Ramkarran declined to compete.
There were two interesting points that Mr. Ramkarran made last week. When you contextualize them and place them alongside two given facts (Ramkarran is a member of the leading organ of the PPP, the Executive Committee and he is writing openly in support of the new hierarchy in the PPP since the election) then one can see where the PPP is heading. Continue reading →
Head of the National Industrial and Commercial Investment Limited (NICIL), Winston Brassington, has justified his stead at the helm of the Privatization Unit.
Brassington chose to respond to queries about his integral role in having established Queens Atlantic Investment Inc (QAII).
Brassington in his missive to the Guyana Times and to the State Media (Guyana Chronicle) said “I have done my job with honesty and integrity and can stand up to whatever scrutiny is brought to bear.”
In 2008 when the illegality of the QAII deal was exposed, his colleague in government transactions, Geoff Da Silva, who headed the Guyana Office for Investment (GO-Invest) in speaking on the deal involving Brassington was forced to admit, “We made a mistake…We thought it was covered in law.”
The forum at which Da Silva made the revelation was “Guyana’s Privatisation and Taxation Policies and Practices” organised by the administration, in retaliation to comments made by local businessman, Dr. Yesu Persaud.
Persaud had said that concessions similar to those granted to QAII should be given to other local companies. This attracted a sharp response from none other than the then Head of State, Bharrat Jagdeo. [more}
This has got to be the coolest thing EVER!!! A skyscraper that spins! Prefab sections joined together creating the first rotating building in the world, where each floor spins on its own axis.
Dubai is building amazing structures using the latest building techniques. This is just one example.
The Da Vinci Tower (also known as Dynamic Architecture Building) is a proposed 313 m (1,027 ft), 68-floor tower in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The tower is expected to be architecturally innovative for several reasons. Uniquely, each floor will be able to rotate independently. This will result in a constantly changing shape of the tower. Each floor will rotate a maximum of one full rotation in 90 minutes. The entire tower will be powered from turbines and solar panels, and five other buildings in the vicinity will also be provided with electricity. The turbines will be located between each of the rotating floors. They will generate 1,200,000 kilowatt-hours of energy from the movement of the floors, and the solar panels will be located on the roof. Wiki…. See video below:
The value of stillness
The value of stillness
By Jessica Stillman Mar. 7, 2012, – GIGAOM
As Tom Waits once crooned, “I never knew I needed you until I was caught up in a bind,” so perhaps it’s not as ironic as it first appears that Pico Iyer, an essayist best known for his peripatetic lifestyle and travel writing, has plenty to say about stillness. It’s often only when we feel a lack of something that we learn to value it, and in the current world of 24-hour electronic stimulation and constant information bombardment, we start to feel the need for a little solitude and peace.
It’s a problem that many remote workers can identify with and one Iyer (who works in Japan with colleagues half a world away) recently spoke to Knowledge@Wharton about in depth. In the lengthy interview he identifies the lack of stillness in the lives of many plugged-in professionals, saying:
Almost everybody I know has this sense of overdosing on information and getting dizzy living at post-human speeds. Nearly everybody I know does something to try to remove herself to clear her head and to have enough time and space to think. Some of my friends go for runs every day. Some do yoga. Some cook. Some meditate. All of us instinctively feel that something inside us is crying out for more spaciousness and stillness to offset the exhilarations of this movement and the fun and diversion of the modern world. Continue reading →
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