Bell Tolling

Tom Murphy, Author at Humanosphere

Wed, 22 May 2013 08:44:58 -0400

Afghan Parliament Halts Debate On Women's Rights Bill

Sat, 18 May 2013 23:55:03 -0400

Afghan Parliament Halts Debate On Women's Rights Bill:

“In particular, they demanded a change to the law so that men cannot be prosecuted for rape within marriage, our correspondent said.”

Hannah Fry (UCL) discussion the quantitative analysis of riots...

Sat, 18 May 2013 10:16:00 -0400

Hannah Fry (UCL) discussion the quantitative analysis of riots in a very articulate and simple manner.

An explanation of the paper can be found here.

What are the (positive and negative) implications of being able to predict and contain a riot?

Academia.edu releases embedded data-sets and code

Sat, 18 May 2013 10:05:23 -0400

Academia.edu releases embedded data-sets and code:

Improved research sharing practices will undoubtedly help to boost the visibility of research. Richard Price, CEO of Academia.edu, explains how their social media platform is looking to incentivise data sharing by providing an outlet for researchers to share their data and code in a way that also enhances their reputations.

humanrightswatch: Film Festival: Bringing Human Rights Issues...

Wed, 15 May 2013 18:19:23 -0400

humanrightswatch:

Film Festival: Bringing Human Rights Issues to Life

The Human Rights Watch Film Festival returns to New York screens from June 13 to 23, 2013, with a program of 20 challenging and provocative films from across the globe that call for justice and social change. Now in its 24^th edition, the festival will once again be presented at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and this year adds downtown screenings at the IFC Center.

The festival will launch on June 13 with a fundraising Benefit Night for Human Rights Watch featuring the HBO documentary Which Way Is the Front Line From Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington. The film is Sebastian Junger’s moving tribute to his lost friend and Restrepo co-director, the photojournalist and filmmaker Tim Hetherington, who was killed while covering the Libyan civil war in 2011. The main program will kick off on June 14 with the Opening Night presentation of Oscar-winning filmmaker Freida Mock’s ANITA, in which Anita Hill looks back at the powerful testimony she gave against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas and its impact on the broader discussion of gender inequality in America. The Closing Night screening on June 23 will be Jeremy Teicher’s award-winning drama Tall As the Baobab Tree, the touching story of a teenage girl who tries to rescue her younger sister from an arranged marriage in rural Senegal.

Traditional Values and Human Rights: Women’s Rights
Traditional values are often cited as an excuse to undermine human rights. In addition to Tall As the Baobab Tree, five documentaries in this year’s festival consider the impact on women. Veteran documentarian Kim Longinotto’s Salma is the remarkable story of a South Indian Muslim woman who endured a 25-year confinement and forced marriage by her own family before achieving national renown as the most famous female poet in the Tamil language. Jehane Noujaim and Mona Eldaief’s Rafea: Solar Mama profiles an illiterate Bedouin woman from Jordan who gets the chance to be educated in solar engineering but has to overcome her husband’s resistance.In Karima Zoubir’s intimately observed Camera/Woman, a Moroccan divorcée supports her family by documenting wedding parties while navigating her own series of heartaches. It will be shown with Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami’s Going Up the Stairs, a charming portrait of a traditional Iranian grandmother who discovers her love of painting late in life and is invited to exhibit her work in Paris. Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin’s candid HBO documentary Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer centers on the women of the radical-feminist punk group, two of whom are currently serving time in a Russian prison for their acts of defiance against the government.

Traditional Values and Human Rights: LGBT Rights
Three films in the program remind viewers that, despite recent strides toward equality, LGBT communities around the world still struggle for acceptance. Shaun Kadlec and Deb Tullmann’s Born This Way is an intimate look at the lives of four young gay men and lesbians in Cameroon,where there are more arrests for homosexuality than in any other country in the world.Yoruba Richen’s The New Black uncovers the complicated and often combative intersection of the African-American and LGBT civil rights movements, with a particular focus on homophobia in the black church. In Srdjan Dragojevic’s drama The Parade, a fight by activists to stage a Gay Pride parade in Belgrade leads to an unlikely alliance in a black-humored look at contemporary Serbia.

Traditional Values and Human Rights: Disability Rights
Harry Freeland’s In the Shadow of the Sun is an unforgettable study in courage,telling the story of two albino men who attempt to follow their dreams in the face of prejudice and fear in Tanzania.

Crises and Migration
Three documentaries highlight the issues of humanitarian aid, conflict, and migration. In the Festival Centerpiece, Fatal Assistance, the acclaimed director Raoul Peck, Haiti’s former culture minister, takes us on a two-year journey following the 2010 earthquake and looks at the damage done by international aid agencies whose well-meaning but ignorant assumptions turned a nightmare into an unsolvable tragedy.Danish journalist Nagieb Khaja’s My Afghanistan – Life in the Forbidden Zone shows ordinary Afghans in war-torn Helmand who were provided with hi-res camera phones to record their daily lives, giving a voice to those frequently ignored by the Western media.Marco Williams’The Undocumented isan unvarnished account of the thousands of Mexican migrants who have died in recent years while trying to cross Arizona’s unforgiving Sonora Desert in search of a better life in the United States.

Focus on Asia
The festival will screen two important documentaries from Asia.In Joshua Oppenheimer’s chilling and inventive The Act of Killing, the unrepentant former members of Indonesian death squads are challenged to reenact some of their many murders in the style of the American movies they love.

Marc Wiese’s Camp 14 – Total Control Zone tells the powerful story of Shin Dong-Huyk, who spent the first two decades of his life behind the barbed wire of a North Korean labor camp before his dramatic escape led him into an outside world he had never known. Wiese is the recipient of the festival’s annual Nestor Almendros Award for courage in filmmaking for his film.

Human Rights in the United States
Four American documentaries – including festival opener ANITA – highlight human rights issues in our own back yard. 99% – The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film goes behind the scenes of the 2011 movement, digging into big-picture issues as organizers, participants, and critics reveal what happened and why. Al Reinert’s An Unreal Dream: The Michael Morton Story tells the story of a Texas man who was wrongfully convicted of his wife’s murder and was exonerated by new DNA evidence after nearly 25 years behind bars. Lisa Biagiotti’s deepsouth is an evocative exploration of the rise in HIV in the rural American south, a region where poverty, a broken health system and a culture of denial force those affected to create their own solutions to survive.

In conjunction with this year’s film program, the festival will present the photo exhibit Dowry: Child and Forced Marriage in South Sudan. The exhibit is Getty photographer Brent Stirton’s visual investigation into the devastating impact the tradition of child marriage has on girls in this East African nation. It will be featured in the Frieda and Roy Furman Gallery at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater for the duration of the festival.

Photo: © 2012 Harry Freeland

Watching Syria's War

Wed, 15 May 2013 18:17:41 -0400

Watching Syria's War:

The New York Times is tracking the human toll of the conflict, primarily through online video that has allowed a widening war to be documented like no other.

Obama Opens Government Data So Devs Can Build New Products

Mon, 13 May 2013 17:58:32 -0400

Obama Opens Government Data So Devs Can Build New Products:

President Obama signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to make their public data more easily accessible and usable by private developers.

UN urges world to eat more insects

Mon, 13 May 2013 15:33:38 -0400

UN urges world to eat more insects:

The report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization says that eating insects could help boost nutrition and reduce pollution. Yum.

Peter Mawanga feels that it is high time the world was exposed...

Sat, 11 May 2013 11:42:19 -0400

Peter Mawanga feels that it is high time the world was exposed to the riches of Malawian music.

While many of his countrymen play reggae or other musical styles borrowed from elsewhere, he and his band, the Amaravi Movement, make music inspired by traditional Malawian rhythms and instruments.

Congo-Kinshasa: UN Report Confirms Nearly 200 Women and Girls Raped By Congolese Troops, Rebels

Fri, 10 May 2013 08:56:53 -0400

Congo-Kinshasa: UN Report Confirms Nearly 200 Women and Girls Raped By Congolese Troops, Rebels

Syrian Refugee Camp: Interactive Information

Thu, 09 May 2013 12:17:07 -0400

Syrian Refugee Camp: Interactive Information

State of the World's Mothers : Are Report

Thu, 09 May 2013 11:00:49 -0400

State of the World's Mothers : Are Report

Guinea-Bissau bottom in index of commitment to tackling hunger

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 10:12:53 -0400

Guinea-Bissau bottom in index of commitment to tackling hunger:

Conversely, low gross national income (GNI) per capita does not imply low levels of commitment. Malawi ranks second on Hanci despite a much lower GNI per capita ($870) than Guinea Bissau ($1,240) and Angola ($5,230), ranks third from bottom.

Global Health Could See a 3% Budget Increase

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 09:17:10 -0400

Global Health Could See a 3% Budget Increase:

Of course, this announced budget may have little to do with the actual allocation, but nevertheless increases are ideal.

Learning to avoid bias, critique and accept the uncomfortable,...

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 14:56:00 -0400

Learning to avoid bias, critique and accept the uncomfortable, and integrate science with evidence.

"On one covert video, farm workers illegally burn the ankles of Tennessee walking horses with..."

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 12:45:04 -0400

“On one covert video, farm workers illegally burn the ankles of Tennessee walking horses with chemicals. Another captures workers in Wyoming punching and kicking pigs and flinging piglets into the air. And at one of the country’s largest egg suppliers, a video shows hens caged alongside rotting bird corpses, while workers burn and snap off the beaks of young chicks.”

- New York Times, RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.See videos here

Interactive Infographic: The History of US Drone Attacks -...

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 09:56:17 -0400

Interactive Infographic: The History of US Drone Attacks - Pakistan

the ‘Nudge Unit’ helps collect taxes in the UK

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 11:16:52 -0400

the ‘Nudge Unit’ helps collect taxes in the UK

The Ephemeral Fugitives of Global Health Research

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 20:54:24 -0400

The Ephemeral Fugitives of Global Health Research:

“This week I went to the launch of a brand new journal, Global Health: Science and Practice. Funded by USAID, and supported by Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, George Washington University and Knowledge for Health, it hits all the buzzwords of the global health and development zeitgeist: open access, diplomacy, scaling up, multidisciplinary, local solutions, experiential knowledge, lessons learned, and of course — game changer.

But will GHSP be a game changer? This journal is interesting because it also wants to be a manual. Not that there’s anything too unusual about that — most journals have extensive methods sections that describe exactly how the experiment was done. A good methods section would ideally enable anyone to replicate it. But GHSP seems to want more than this: it wants very detailed methods that don’t just tell its readers how to do an experiment —they tell us how to deliver and scale up a program.”

BREAD Idea Challenge

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 20:35:36 -0400

BREAD Idea Challenge:

The BREAD Ideas Challenge is an opportunity for researchers in the agricultural sciences to bring attention to what they believe are the most pressing issues facing smallholder farmers in the developing world today. Not only will the prizewinning Challenge Ideas be showcased for the international community to draw attention to these important challenges: Prizewinners will also receive up to $10,000 USD each for the best ideas!