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The chapters in a book have a physical beginning and a physical end. But their contents flow backwards into the story before, flow forwards into the remaining story and will continue to weave into the story contents beyond the book itself. Book in photo above courtesy of Bahati Mabala, A Trail of My Shadows .

1. Is it possible to create an international political party? If so, where does this leave the role of "international" ideologies (such as democracy, capitalism, etc.) and institutions (the UN, the World Bank, etc.)? 2. Is all the information circulated within Government public domain? Thanks Nabil, Inayat, Muntazir, Ayham and Hamza for the (as always) good company.

I found these Google interview questions and suggested responses from a WSJ article. Examples of some questions: You're in a car with a helium balloon on a string that is tied to the floor. The windows are closed. When you step on the gas pedal, what happens to the balloon—does it move forward, move backward, or stay put? A book has N pages, numbered the usual way, from 1 to N. The total number of digits in the page numbers is 1,095. How many pages does the book have? A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened? [My favorite] Responses here (thanks, WSJ!).

Risk, it appears, is not mitigated even if one is able to disconnect oneself from the result of invested effort. It seems risk can only be mitigated if all constituents of any effort or event are relieved from the potential of harm. The responsibility of everyone dealing with this risk, therefore, lies on one who initiates the risky event, however disconnected they are from the result.

Green is the true color of the coffee bean. The bean is harvested in Central and South America, Eastern Africa and Southern Asia. Green is the only natural color of the coffee bean, since What comes next is human-inflicted. Gold is the coffee bean's color after a little bit of heat. It is poured into closed heating tubs, and after about 5 minutes, the coffee bean is roasting at around 150 degrees celcius. Here, the it is transforming into something it is not familiar with. Brown. This is the color of the coffee bean after about half an hour of roasting, in the same heating tubs, now churning at over 200 degrees celcius. Brown is when the coffee bean has no green left in it. What comes next is variable and unknown to the bean. All it knows is that it is getting hotter and it is being churned around and around and if it doesn't keep up it'll probably end up in a scraps pile away from the other beans it looks similar to. Darkened brown. How brown will depend on how much longer...

Risk generally concerns exposure to danger or harm. Here, danger or harm is assumed to be undesired by an individual or group. But if there is a way to disconnect a self - either the individual's self or a group's self-identity - from the potential resulting event, does this mean the risk is mitigated?

If we can change time, we can also change how we do/act. If we change how we act, how representative are we of everyone else? If we are very representative, we can change time collectively. If we are not representative, how will we change anything?

Everything we do happens in time; When we do nothing, time is dead; Therefore, when we change what we do, we change time.

I found this image on Boston Big Picture . This woman's name is Meena Rahmani. At age 26 she is the owner of Afghanistan's first bowling center. I admire ventures like these because while they seem like far-fetched bets, they make a statement that quality time spent with loved ones has a meaning that cannot be always accounted for in "development" interventions. I wish Meena all the best and hope I can stop by someday to bowl a few.

I'm watching it live, and so far there have been some interesting speakers! Many thanks to all the social media enthusiasts for making sure us folk who are away from home also get involved. This year's theme is: Who Killed Zinjanthropus ? Stream it live here . Other useful links: TEDxDar homepage TEDxDar on Facebook TEDxDar on Twitter Mikocheni Report updates The WayWard Press updates Vijana FM on Twitter

It seems easier to attack than to defend. This applies to physical actions, spoken words as well as intangible sentiment. Does this have to do with preconcieved knowledge? That is, are you more able to "attack" after having a reason to? At the same time, when you defend do you always have knowledge of why you are defending?

This is a follow-up from this post ( Goodbye Mubarak ) and this post ( Better, worse or no change? ).

I was recently part of a team that produced a movie for Campus Movie Fest . Thanks to Yulia, Emmy, Christopher, Alain and Sorcha for being a great team to learn so much from!

"Wikipedia has just 78 full-time staff (due to reach 117 in 2012) and 370 servers, against some 60,000 for Facebook and over 1m for Google. Unlike other internet giants, its content comes from unpaid editors. It spends 44% of its income on technology (including programmers); other administration costs make up just under a quarter. Fund-raising takes up 8% of the budget. It accepts no advertising." Read the full article here . What does all of this mean for Web 2.0 information systems? Specifically, what kinds of revenue models should be explored, considering that knowledge is public domain? One possible alternative to advertising would be to work with educational institutions (schools, universities, think tanks, etc.) that (1) have endowments that are meant for research and (2) need reliable, every-day data. But is this realistic?

A friend on Facebook just shared this article on Tanzanian internet prices and I wanted to re-share it here (Thanks, Pernille !). The pre-text is the SEACOM project which has linked the Eastern Coast of Africa to a global fibre optic network. According to the article, the first problem is that "ISPs operating outside of Dar es Salaam still have a transmission problem", while some ISPs and mobile servicer operators in Dar-es-Salaam have been able to drop prices for their customers and increase speeds. The second problem is that one of the oldest main telephone service operators, TTCL, has top rights over the fibe optic backbone: "The government has given one company [TTCL] a monopoly power, which that company is using to monopolize the bandwidth transmission market, keeping Tanzanian citizens from enjoying the African bandwidth bonanza ." Read the full article here on ICT Works .

There has been a lot of theory since the 1940s about development. Considering the theory, and the emergence of media and communication technologies, I think teachers - especially those teaching early childhood - are in positions of incredible change-making power. More on this later.

Photo credit: Dunia ni Duara

According to the theory of false consciousness , deception is at work in almost every aspect of our daily lives. My question is what came first: The falsehood, or the consciousness to recognize falsehood?

Dar-es-Salaam and Stone Town, Summer 2011.

The New York Times Redefining the Meaning of No. 1 By DAVID J. ROTHKOPF Published: October 8, 2011 David J. Rothkopf is the author of the forthcoming “Power, Inc.: The Epic Rivalry Between Big Business and Government — and the Reckoning that Lies Ahead.” HERE in America, we seem to be more interested in finishing first than we are in figuring out what race we ought to be in. The refrain is insistent, from President Obama on down. He, like others in both parties, urges us on — to build or educate or invest or cut the deficit — so that “America can be No. 1 again.” We want to be No. 1 — but why, and at what? The size of our economy is one measure of success, but it’s not the only measure. Isn’t the important question not how we remain No. 1 but rather, what we want to be best at — and even, whether we want to lead at all? But we are Americans and we seem to think the rest of the world looks best when framed in our rear-view mirror. We outstrip the world by many measures but lag, sometime...

I found this article on the WSJ yesterday. The reason I found it interesting was because it juxtaposed the incumbent president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf who is Africa's first female president and former World Bank economist, with George Weah , a former national football star still very popular among the youth. Roosevelt Tule, a political science professor from Liberia's capital mentioned:"The Nobel Peace Prize is not quite known in Liberia, except among academia... What Liberians expect is basically food on the table." In the last election, Weah was scrutinized because of his lack of higher education. Since then, Weah went back to school and returns as a candidate for Vice President. Do our systems of " open governance " account for open opportunity? Or do they claim to mimick systems of open opportunity but only provide opportunity to those with the loudest voice?

Posted on Vijana FM | 30th September 2011 Amil Shivji is currently a 21-year-old Filmmaking student at York University in Canada. As a native of Tanzania, Amil has plans to work with film in East Africa, particularly with films that contain conscious messages. We caught up with him to ask him about his ideas and recommendations... 1. Compared to newspapers and radio, what is about films that interests you? Motion. The movement of images invokes a billion different emotions and allows varied perceptions. And at the same time a frame carries the power of a newspaper and the sound of a radio station. Juxtaposition of shots or certain image sequences tell an entire story and the best part is that it’s very personal. When I watch a film, I feel like I am having a conversation with the filmmaker. The shots are fragments of his/her visualization of the story and I am offered an insight into the filmmaker’s imagination. As opposed to newspaper and radio where I would be reading words or heari...

Yesterday I came across this blog post at the World Bank Institute by Rakesh Rajani. Rakesh raises some important questions, namely: Who are the experts who work with development? What systems do they follow to do their work? Do those systems yield the broad outcomes we expect? He also recommends understanding citizen knowdo : "So,what if instead of thinking of bringing in experts to fill in gaps in a community’s or a country’s capability, we identified how people are already analyzing problems and getting things done ? This approach need not romanticize what ordinary people can do or actually do, but rather make their everyday, pragmatic knowhow—and knowdo —a starting point for development. The purpose of development then would not be to create and apply expert solutions, but rather to help enrich the conditions in which people can do more of what they already do well –by making it easier to get, compare, and share information; learn from each other and from outsiders ...

"It's all part of the de-ideologising of mainstream discourse. You know who's ahead three points in the polls, but you have no idea why you should care." Read more from Ted Rall's opinion piece on Al Jazeera here .

The idea of being a citizen is beautifully simple. You are defined exactly like other citizens: Native registered or naturalized members of a state, nation or other political community (Collins English Dictionary, 1994). Recently, from conversations with activist friends, thinker friends, teacher friends, corporate friends, versatile friends and friends in general, I have begun to rethink class differentiations in Tanzania. And each time I have thought about it, I end up confused about the assumed roles each of the classes play. Of course, their roles can be specified by the modes of production they interact with, but in Tanzania the gap between the person who benefits most from modes of production and the person who benefits least is extremely large (and larger in other countries). So I end up more frustrated at the gap and the status quo than keen to wake up tomorrow and get to work. Not that bring frustrated at the status quo and being keen to work are necessarily mutually exclusiv...

Are signs mere coincidences? Or are coincidences signs? In the former question, signs in nature and other interactions are explained away because they are seen through the lenses of scientific method. Specifically, they are seen to have a cause, and that cause is seen to have an effect. In the latter question, the very explanation of a cause and an effect is generous in giving room to some additional cause and some additional effect. Even here, however, we are left only with the terms "cause" and "effect" as opposed to the something else. Both questions are a point of departure for the consideration that somethings happen for no obvious reason, yet they happen. And their happening is an urgent call to think. Thank you NW and AE for the contemplation.

Source: The Center for Global Development (Thanks once again, Rakesh!) Abstract: There is a burgeoning academic literature on happiness polls that has used a range of different measures and approaches across countries rich and poor alike to answer the question, “what makes people say they are happy?” The excitement surrounding this work is well justified. These polls suggest an idea of happiness that would be broadly understood by philosophers from Aristotle to Mill to Rawls or Parfit. Happiness studies also suggest some potential reasons why we appear to act irrationally according to the dictates of revealed-preference-utility-maximization. Subjective-well-being (SWB) polls also help to illustrate some of the absurdities of taking income per capita as our measure of the ultimate good. At the same time, a lot of things we surely care about are not reflected in SWB poll answers. Cross-country studies involving economies and societies at distinctly different levels of development sugges...

"Maya Wegerif, also known as Maya the Poet was born in South Africa, lived in Tanzania and is now studying in a college in America. She is an outspoken young African voice who speaks unapologetically and with style. Her love for her continent and words blend together to fabricate this witty, outspoken and Strong-willed person." [source: Flare Magazine via Maya's website ] She'll be performing on June 16 @ the Soma Book Cafe, located at 53 Mlingotini, Regent Estate, Kinondoni, Dar-es-Salaam.

Will hyperlink paths be constant however long computers are "on" and connected? If they will change, what does that mean for all the writing on webpages now, which contain links ( like this ) to the building blocks of their argument?

(Thanks, Ma.)

OpenMicroData : "OpenMicroData (OMD) offers an opportunity for those in the possession of micro data to share them with the world. Sharing can be done anonymously. In this way OpenMicroData limits the ability of statistics agencies and governments to be selective in who is permitted to use data. " mDirectory : "The most comprehensive database of information on mobile tech for social change on the Web." Thanks, Rakesh!

I found this PDF file listing prices for advertising with the Daily News company in Tanzania. I was suprised to see a full-page color advertisement costing almost TSH 3 million! I was recently told it takes about TSH 1.7 million to produce a music video in the market... just to compare. At what cost are advertisements created? Do they transfer the same value to the onlooker that the company being advertised seeks to transfer?

I found this Al Jazeera article from April 12 , which is a solid overview of socio-political disputes across the Sub-Saharan region of Africa. I thought it was a useful move by Al Jazeera to expose these disputes, considering that many of them would not make international media waves (see previous post ).

Cross-posted on Vijana FM | May 25, 2011 Have we ceased to read between the lines? Do opinion pieces in the media conflict with fact-based pieces? This is a short story to explore potential answers to these two questions. A short time ago in human history, three friends from different corners of the world decided to get involved with the printing press. Rashidi was an avid reader, and had loved to read written works of his friends Nur and Nick throughout their days in school. As well as reading everything else, Rashidi was especially interested in reading his two friends’ works because they seemed to compliment eachother well in their perspectives. Nur was also a big reader, but an even bigger writer. She was known for her acute representation of facts. Brought up by parents who both worked for the national archives, Nur knew her history well. She believed that telling stories with fair treatment to all subjects was essential to writing. She was less enthusiastic about o...

A few days ago, SN wrote this on Vijana FM , defending our outlook into the distant future. And just yesterday, I saw this article from an Al Jazeera political analyst , encouraging President Obama to step things up and have a conversation with the integrated news network. Are we becoming skeptical of the media? Or is the media changing and becoming skeptical of its users?

Since Hosni Mubarak stepped down as Egypt's president about 3 months ago, the country still faces difficulties in formulating a government that the people will approve. Most recently, clashes between Muslims and Christians have been recorded. So, has the peoples' revolution in Egypt revolutionized fully yet? It is difficult to tell.

Considering the modern concept of a "nation state", I can understand the different ways in which a government can become upset at its constituents, and vice versa. But what I continue to find puzzling since public protests began in many MENA states is why any government would bomb its own cities ? It makes no logical (economical, especially) sense to me.

"What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence." - LW, Tractatus (1921) More on this later.

Teaching is not the same as learning. While they each fulfill some part of the definition of "education", they are not education on their own. Learning is probably more akin to the first definition of education, because it does not entail an authority from which the learning takes place. It could be from a person, a non-living object or an event involving both. Teaching seems to be more inclusive of an authority which guides what is taught. Even when we say "this experience taught me", we're saying the experience involved something specific that was worth learning. Is it necessary for the process of education to contain both of these; teaching as well as learning? Image source courtesy of Projects Abroad .

The counterpart can be downloaded here . Tracklist: 1. Stardust & Daftpunk: I feel like one more time (Arno Cost rework) 2. Morgan Page: Fight for you (Sultan & Ned Shepard mix) 3. Andy Duguid feat. Leah: Don't belong (Rasmus Farber club mix) Genre: Progressive vocal house Size: 18.1 MB / 19 minutes 47 Seconds

Finally set up some decks again! To get things warmed up, I put together a quick mix of three progressive house tracks: Deja Vu (Mix 1) . Tracklist: 1. 16 Bit Lolitas: In my room without Paris (Original mix) 2. John Dahlback: Kairo (Original mix) 3. Alex Kenji & Bass Kleph: Melocoton (Original mix) Genre: Progressive house Size: 15.6 MB / 17 minutes 07 Seconds

Other headlines: Al Jazeera: Osama bin Laden killed in Pakistan BBC: Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden dead - Barack Obama Reuters: Osama bin Laden killed in shootout, Obama says

Source : Engadget

Geez ... I can't even tell anymore. People's job descriptions are thicker than ever, and have more difficult words than a high school science textbook. This tells me two things: Either our jobs are becoming more and more complex, or we want to sound complex. If our jobs are becoming more and more complex, we should still find ways to relate it to the bigger world... isn't that what "work" means? That you're contributing something to the world outside of yourself? By finding ways to relate our jobs to the bigger world, we are likely to sound lot simpler, since humans all have basic needs which are common. But if we're just trying to sound complex, well, that doesn't help much. Why give an exaggerated picture to a person who doesn't know?

"Earlier this week, the government attempted to reopen schools but most students and many teachers did not turn up." Source: BBC article - Ivory Coast: Banks reopen after 10-week shutdown

I've been picking up on how the global press frames the culture of hip hop music, especially since Vijana FM launched TZhiphop recently as a sub-project. This morning I saw this article on BBC , and it just made me wonder, is the real hip hop really gone? Not once in this article did I feel the author seriously engaging with what hip hop used to mean: Music.

I've been giving more thought to a dormant project that is intended to create more transparency in academia in Tanzania. Originally, the idea was to do one thing well: Share published and unpublished academic works. But the idea grew: Questions arose about the validity of materials that present parts of formal education instead of entire curriculi, and about what resources teachers (not just students and researchers) could use. So, as of now, an efficient tool to make academia more transparent in Tanzania would need the following: An open archive of published and unpublished academic works; An open forum where these works can be discussed; An open platform to post materials for early childhood, primary, secondary, and tertiary education; and An open contribution protocol where - after a specific period over which materials will be collected - curriculi could be written through collaborative means. Still thinking about it. Drop us a line at Vijana FM if you have thoughts on this! (...

The necessary noise is now knocking on your nerves to numb down the deafening denials and distrust of your dominion. In short, TZhiphop is live :) Facebook updates here , Twitter updates here .

Ever thought about why Facebook doesn't have a "dislike" button? I think it may be an effort to curb "negative" actions on the platform. But, shouldn't compliments always be accompanied with criticism, and vice versa? If people were able to "dislike" something on Facebook, would we just be posting "good" things on Facebook? And is that such a bad idea?

If not us, who? If not now, when? (the image is just for decor, courtesy of my 'droid)

So they've decided to attack Gaddafi and his troops . Watching the headlines right now makes me think they're trying to sell this like a football match. War is no football match.

I was telling two of my friends recently that I had a new-found respect for there being a balance to all things. We often categorize things in our heads - people, objects, events - as things that are "good" and things that are "bad". But we seldom think about how every bad thing (eg: a challenge) has a good side (ie: an opportunity). Likewise, every good thing (eg: luxuries) have a bad side (ie: complacency). But it was then that my friends asked: That's how you think of good and bad, what about our views on good and bad? They told me if we were to think in terms of "balances", then there is my view of the balance as an individual, but there is also a second, bigger view of the balance, which is societal. So from this conversation, I learned that the measurement of value in the big sense (costs relative to benefits in the macrocosm) is a lot more complicated than one person saying "let's measure it this way". Bringing together a consensus...

Gotta love good mornings.

Crossposted on Vijana FM | March 4, 2011 Sir Howard Davies, who until recently was the director of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in the UK, has resigned from his post . His reasoning? That he had made judgement errors on two occasions when advising the LSE to accept donations from Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, Muammar Gaddafi’s son. Mr. Davies’ announcement comes just days after students at the LSE protested to the administration to investigate Saif’s previous records of postgraduate enrollment at the LSE from 2003. Saif is being accused of having plagiarized his doctrate , which he recieved in 2008. The accusations have also come with criticism towards LSE in accepting £1.5 million in 2009 from the so-called Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation. When I was growing up, the word “education” had a positive ring to it. It meant that you (or those paying your fees: Parents, grant makers, universities, corporations, e...

BBC: Egypt's Mubarak resigns as leader Al Jazeera: Hosni Mubarak resigns as president

I was wondering what life was like on daily basis at Tahrir Square right now, and I found this album on Yahoo Maktoob . Seems there are some interesting community-based initiatives for food, shelter and livelihood that the Mubarak regime could learn from.

I've been doing some rough searches on audio-stream hosts, and hosting rates seem steep. Not so much in terms of net price, but in terms of the potential number of listeners that could tune in. Rather, if you have a variable number of listeners (ie: it could up to the maximum permissable), you could be paying quite a bit. I've also been thinking about podcasts, and on-demand media in general. It seems that people entering their teens today know that they can read, listen, or watch media somewhere on the Internet. I would assume, then, that people are beginning to prefer getting stuff when they want it, and not try to stick to an external schedule. Which puts an audio stream in a shady position. Will people tune in?

From Number10.gov.uk Saturday 5 February 2011 PM’s speech at Munich Security Conference Prime Minister David Cameron has delivered a speech setting out his view on radicalisation and Islamic extremism. Today I want to focus my remarks on terrorism, but first let me address one point. Some have suggested that by holding a strategic defence and security review, Britain is somehow retreating from an activist role in the world. That is the opposite of the truth. Yes, we are dealing with our budget deficit, but we are also making sure our defences are strong. Britain will continue to meet the NATO 2% target for defence spending. We will still have the fourth largest military defence budget in the world. At the same time, we are putting that money to better use, focusing on conflict prevention and building a much more flexible army. That is not retreat; it is hard headed. Every decision we take has three aims in mind. First, to continue to support the NATO mission in Afghanistan . S...