THOUGHTBOX

Africa for Norway is a fake PSA campaign launched by the Norwegian Students' and Academics' International Assistance Fund (SAIH) with the expressed intent to raise global awareness of typical, one sided Western stereotypes and clichés that often prevail in ads and campaigns for relief and humanitarian funds in African countries. It's a clever video that highlights how often non-African nations, especially developed western countries, often perceive nations in need of aid exclusively through the filter of their most prevalent and mediated issues. For Africa, that's HIV, poverty and the corruption of African leaders. But just like the Kony campaign or the  Romanian Gypsy  documentary I mentioned some time ago on my blog, the issue is often simplified, one-sided and lacking in context. Let Radi-Aid be a lesson to us, then!

It seems that with Obama's re-election, NASA have found some reassurance that their plans (which were secret so far in case Romney gets elected) will continue to get a presidential thumbs up. The "secret" plans in question involve going back to the moon, building a permanent base on the far side, parking cool spacecraft in the L2 point and testing out a new heavy duty rocket, with more exciting stuff yet to be announced. Well... this is fucking cool! John Logsdon, chief space policy expert: “NASA has been evolving its thinking, and its latest charts have inserted a new element of cislunar/lunar gateway/Earth-moon L2 sort of stuff into the plan ” The L2 lagrangian point is a an orbital location around the moon where the Earth's and Moon's gravitational pulls cancel each other out, so spacecraft and space stations can sort of chill there almost indefinitely without having to actively maintain an orbit. The plan is to eventually set up a manned, ...

Let's start this day off with some crazy crazy news from Pakistan. A 15 year old girls was gruesomely murdered by her parents for allegedly sullying the family's honor by looking at a boy, according to BBC. The story varies from news source to news source, but the gist of it is identical. The poor girl was killed by her own family by pouring acid on her. I can't stress that enough - for looking at a boy .  According to her own father, who recounted his version of the story on October the 29th, he'd caught her looking at a young lad who drove by a on motorcycle. If that seems harsh, let me tell you what her mother said: "She said `I didn't do it on purpose. I won't look again.' By then I had already thrown the acid. It was her destiny to die this way," the mother told the BBC reporter. I'll let that sink in for a moment. This is just one story out of the many so called "honor killings" happening in Pakistan, where the...