The Happiest And Most Grateful

More than ever.

Extremely Quiet And Incredibly Close

A Day in The Life Of Street Children

Where there is darkness, there is also light. Where there is despair, there is also hope. Where there is injustice, there is also innocence.

Whose responsibility are they?

No man is an island,

Entire of itself,

Every man is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less.

As well as if a promontory were.

As well as if a manor of thy friend's

Or of thine own were:

Any man's death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in mankind,

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; 

It tolls for thee. 

John Donne

She Wants To Be A Dancer, Not A Soldier

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. 

Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. 

And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. 

What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. 

That's all I do all day. 

I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. 

I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.”

― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

Wildly Convinced That You Are Uncommonly Beautiful

"When did we see each other face-to-face? 

Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. 

Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other, 

like looking at your window shade but never seeing inside. 

But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in.

 The light can get out."

— John Green, Paper Towns



This TEDtalk takes a metaphor and turns it into something spectacular. A woman who is convinced that there is beauty, there is absolute and unadulterated beauty in all persons chases the essence of humanity and catches it's corner; what connects us, moves us, what makes us not only human, but humankind.

Dronestream

 NYU Masters student breaks down every known US drone strike since 2002:

There has got to be a better way to confront the issue terrorism. 

Guys And Dolls: A Four Year Old Girl's Protest Against Gender-Stereotyped Toys

Why Do All The Girls Have To Buy Princesses?

Christmas 2011. A four year old little girl Riley has made a staggering observation about toys. Riley is fed up with toy stores trying to market pink stuff to girls and "different color" stuff to boys. Listen to this tiny genius: “Some girls like superheroes, some girls like princesses. Some boys like superheroes, some boys like princesses. So why do all the girls have to buy pink stuff and all the boys have to buy different color stuff?”

Preach it sista. 

Clouds love to talk about the shapes cities remind them of; Inside North Korea

Gravity, love, freedom, all the greatest forces are invisible. 

And only those who have been deprived of freedom have the slightest inkling of what it is.

Inside North Korea, a documentary aired in April 2013. A reporter goes undercover into a place clothed in mystery and unanswered questions: North Korea. The dark spot on a map, the ultimate Orwellian state, the never-ending hunger crisis, the brainwash machine...Only guesses, each grimmer than the previous. What's the truth? Taking us just a few steps closer to really understanding the minds of North Korean leaders and most importantly, the minds of the people, BBC Panorama Documentary.

Another thrilling story to illustrate just how difficult it is to escape the authoritarian state, the story of Hyeonseo Lee "My Escape From North Korea", a TEDtalk: 

"Fantasy. Lunacy. All revolutions are until they happen, then they are historical inevitabilities."
-David Mitchell

Painted Souls, A Thousand Splendid Paper Plates

    Photo by: Unicef UK

    From the national campaign of Unicef UK 6.6.2013:

"Hundreds of schoolchildren are heading to Downing Street this morning to put hunger on the agenda ahead of      the Nutrition for Growth event.

They'll be handing in paper plates created by schools countrywide (these are just some of them in our office!) with messages asking the PM to act. Good luck team!"

    

It's A Funny Word, Callous.

..

Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, Wives, This Is For You

Fuck being a lady.

Be a boss instead.

Be fearless.


Fuck being nice.

Fuck being sweet.




Make no mistake. I love my men. In fact, I love everything about them.

But I love my girls just as much. 

Tha Conservative Male Freakout Over Working Women

The sexist male panel on FOX has gone viral in the past few days and sparked some well needed conversation on right wing gender ideology in the US. While initially I was rather offended and shocked, but willing to shrug it off as the typical kind of absurdity only the GOP extremists would articulate I decided to look deeper into the issue gender equality.

First, watch this all-male FOX panel have what I can only describe as the new Greatest Freakout Ever over the "deeply disturbing" statistics by PEW research centre on female breadwinners. The medieval universe these misogynists live is one where the male hunts and female nurtures, aka one which has not existed for some 60 000 years but that is, of course, irrelevant. The deeply disconcerting fact is that there are educated American female voters out there who agree with this bitchfest of a panel.

Nevertheless, for a moment let's take these Foxy men seriously, if only for the sake of argument. Let's say the income of women increases to the same level as that of men, or very close. I wonder what that would lead to?  Lucky for Fox, America doesn't have to face this terrifying future without any previous empirical data. It just so happens other states have already tested out the scenario and I will illustrate the results as an extended case study to uncover the chaos resulting from women leaving the kitchenette and joining the national workforce.

Ever been to Northern Europe? After spending 19 years there and some in the United States and Great Britain I cannot quite sufficiently emphasize the immense effect incorporating women into the labour force has on a country's economy and standard of living. It is no coincidence that Scandinavian and other Northern European countries such as Finland dominate the charts on smallest income gap, least corrupted, highest student performance in sciences, universally free education from kindergarten to PhD, highest rankings on the Human Development Index and rated most democratic. Growing up I often heard teachers and parents remarking how lucky I had been. How being born in Finland was like winning the lottery. As children we would all laugh and presume teachers across the world would have a similar narrative about their state. Only after spending a considerable amount of time in the States and later in Great Britain I came to see just how accurate my teachers had been in their analysis. I never felt being a woman disadvantaged me growing up and attending school in Finland, quite the opposite. My success in education was celebrated, it was so extraordinarily obvious that men and women both would join the workforce, pursue their dream profession and provide for a family together, should they choose to have one. I felt my gender made no difference whatsoever. Gender is quite literally, a non-issue in this particular part of the world. However until I left the country I was naively unaware that outside Northern Europe, I was in fact a second class citizen and ambition in a woman was something to be looked down upon. This was an entirely new experience for me and at times I still find it shocking that states so similar to my home, developed and democratic countries would actively pursue the oppression of women. It seems almost preposterous and certainly illogical. As articulated by Bill Clinton; No country will ever achieve its greatest potential by disregarding 50% of its human capital. However, the issue of working mothers can't be fully understood through partisan politics as most often or not, the vast majority of Americans are guilty of supporting traditional gender dynamics to a much greater extent than they care to admit.

Psychologists in the United States have revealed it over and over again; success and likability are positively correlated for men and negatively correlated for women. The mentality on successful women ought to be dissected and reconstructed. Obviously the arguments of this FOX panel are outlandish and ill-informed, however, these men are not the only ones to share this view. Many subconsciously agree with certain aspects of the dominant male-ideology. Even females. What most people will only reluctantly admit, powerful women make us deeply uncomfortable. No, not me, you're thinking, "I'm evolved past that". Chances are, you're not. Consider what Sheryl Sandberg sums up from studies on the subject: when men are successful they are more liked by both sexes but when women are successful they are less liked by not only men, but women as well. Women are in many ways holding themselves back. I won’t deny that these results couldn’t be replicated with the same results in Northern Europe, in fact should I ever have the chance to test them out I’d be curious to find out. The reaction to dominant females is perhaps not as visceral as in the United States, but most likely still somewhat present. But fear not! By recognizing this pattern of thinking we will eventually redefine what it means to be a successful female and surround the definition with positive connotations. Women have to redefine their mind set as well.

I'd also like to point to a debate which followed the male-panel freakout, led by none other than Megyn Kelly from FOX news.

I'm not in general one to agree with Kelly on various disputes but I have to hand it to her on this one. I'll admit it, I'm becoming a fan. She's no Rachel Maddow, but she has some serious balls. She's really made an effort to pave way to educated and intelligent Republican women recently and aided in bit by bit steering the GOP into a direction where smart women aren't forced into such cognitive dissonance over their right wing alignment. Overall, the GOP and the US as a whole desperately needs more women like Kelly to rise to the barricades and call out this lunacy, particularly considering how unwavering these WASPS remain in the face of scientific studies and facts. Watch Kelly take on the sexism of the FOX panel and prepare to clap at her professionalism in the face of unscientific absurdity: 

Angry Birds

Because let's face it, ignorance is bliss.

In the age of information ignorance is also a conscious choice.

Join the solution and calculate your carbon footprint here.

Black Doll, White Doll, Which one is the nice doll?

We are all aware of the history of racism in America. However when it comes to present day racism, there is whole a different narrative. The following video is a study about race that will make your jaw drop:

Doll test originally by psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark:

 In the 21st century US, white skin is associated with a myriad of positive characteristics and adjectives. The halo effect of light skin tone is so bright and blatant that children as young as age four have internalized the connections. The halo effect is a kind of cognitive bias, where our overall impression, or what we perceive as the sum up of this impression (attractive / smart / agreeable / unintelligent) of a person influences how we judge their character. If we perceive a person to be attractive, ironically, we also assume them to be intelligent, kind and generally likable. When definitions of physical attractiveness are altered, consequently the definitions of the good, the bad and the ugly change as well. It is naturally impossible to clearly define the point at which the Western society decided that white is beautiful, as the issue is better understood as a long historical process of all encompassing politics of domination and persistent hierarchies. In the modern and past US, power, physical attractiveness and intelligence have always gone hand in hand and continue to do so. One need only possess one or two of the attributes, to be all three. While it may appear obvious that intelligent people can be unattractive and powerful people are not always intelligent, however, our social reality and the definitions of its aspects need not have anything to do with reality yet everything to do with our constructed social realities. 

It is heartbreaking to consider that even children believe this social reality to be unchangeable and take it for granted. What is crucial  here is to be aware of the halo effect and to understand that it comes from our primitive emotional brain. Moreover, beauty, among other positive traits which create a halo, is nothing but what the general public believes it to be. 

“Standing still is never an option so long as inequities remain embedded in the very fabric of the culture.” 
-Tim Wise

Our Century's Greatest Injustice

In the last half century more girls were discriminated to death than all the people killed in all the battle fields in the 20th century.

The issue that rarely makes the front page is gender inequality. The single most essential and linear way to lift up entire communities out of poverty is by educating women, a fact that is over and over again ignored. This TEDtalk held by Sheryl WuDunn, the author of "Half the Sky" raises some painful statistics about women's oppression across the globe and demonstrates the magnificent difference educating women particularly in developing countries makes. Only when women are educated and brought into the formal labor system, will we be using all of our human resources to defeat the intimate social and physical violence that marks female bodies, and to overcome global challenges regarding poverty and politics of oppression.

Sheryl WuDunn: Our century's greatest injustice:

Girl Power?

How movies teach manhood, TEDtalk: 

Women are not making it to the top of any profession, anywhere in the world.

A brilliant and insightful TED talk about why women't don't sit at the table or raise their hand and what are the consequences of these seemingly small differences.

"Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders" by Sheryl Sandberg

To watch more TED talks: http://www.ted.com/talks