Sympathy For The Devil

Are madness and greatness two sides of the same coin?

“That's an incredibly depressing thought," I said "that if you're in a room and at one end lies madness and at the other end lies sanity it is human nature to veer towards the madness end.” 
― Jon Ronson, The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry

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

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:

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