Monday, May 31, 2010

Teaching Work Values to Children of Wealth

“Seriously middle-class families have said for a long time that the investment I’ve made in you is giving you a good education and then you’re on your own,” Ms. Godfrey said. “But now these families are realizing they have a great education, but yikes, it’s tough for them to be on their own. Now it’s not how much money you have, but how big is your network and how can you connect them.”

SHOOT: I think parents can learn a lot from this.
clipped from www.nytimes.com


GOOD HELP So what is the right way to help a child struggling to find a job or a career? Ms. Godfrey said it could be difficult to get children started, or what she calls “launched.”


“A year ago, when we started to do fairly serious work on the launch process, I thought we were dealing with families who had slackers,” she said. “The more we got into it, the more we realized that these were kids who are educated but are having a tough time getting into a purposeful path that will help them maintain their lifestyle.”


She urges families to set two goals: get children living without subsidies and put them on a career track. “Those families that treat their kids’ launch like any other endeavor are having the most success,” she said.


This means parents and children need to discuss expectations. If financial help is involved, it cannot be infinite and that must be explained. But most of all, parents have to realize there is more to be done than just educating their children.

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Saturday, May 22, 2010

Use #WC2010 when you tweet about the World Cup

Bangs predicts there will be more mashups and parodies during the World Cup as well as videos examining the political implications of an African nation hosting the tournament for the first time.

SHOOT: CNN reckons South Africa's World Cup will drive record social media traffic levels. Sounds about right.
clipped from edition.cnn.com
[The World Cup] will eclipse everything we have seen so far including the U.S. elections and the Super Bowl
--Robin Sloan, Twitter

"Our notion is that [the World Cup] will eclipse everything we have seen so far [on Twitter] including the U.S. election, the Oscars or the Super Bowl, simply because it is so international," Robin Sloan, a Twitter employee that works on media partnerships, told CNN.

And during the last few days of the tournament, he expects World Cup discussion to "absolutely take over Twitter." So far, many fans have been using the Twitter hash tag#WC2010 when they tweet about the World Cup.

In 2006, after French player Zinedine Zidane head-butted Marco Materazzi of Italy, hundreds of videos parodying the play were posted on YouTube. Some videos placed Zidane in a video game while others showed him in well-known movie scenes.

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Tuesday, May 18, 2010

14.5°C - April 2010 was the hottest ever recorded

SHOOT: The hottest ever? I wonder if that has anything to do with that thing people talk about, what is it? That funny theory that was going around until a while back. Global warming or something? I wonder if the hottest ever April has anything to do with us, you know, driving around every day. *Shrugs shoulders and turns on the TV, nothing to do with me. What else is news?*
clipped from www.news24.com

Geneva - April 2010 was the hottest ever recorded, with an average temperature of 14.5°C, the UN weather agency said on Tuesday.

Citing data from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the World Meteorological Organisation said that the average temperature on both land and ocean this April reached 0.76°C above that of the 20th century average of 13.7°C.

A statement from the US agency noted that warmer-than-normal conditions "dominated the globe, with the most prominent warmth in Canada, Alaska, the eastern United States, Australia, South Asia, northern Africa and northern Russia".

Weather records go as far back as 1880.

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Monday, May 17, 2010

Should football fans fear for their lives at the World Cup?

"While crime might be going down, it is [often] extremely violent, armed robberies, hijackings. It is very in your face, it is very gruesome. The robbers will come in and not only attack a couple, [but] rape the wife, and severely assault the husband.

"People are worried about what the government is trying to feed them. The violence associated with crime is increasing."

SHOOT: I'm a South African, this was my take on the same question > http://www.nickvanderleek.com/2009/03/just-how-dangerous-is-south-africa.html
clipped from news.bbc.co.uk
South Africa policeman
With a multitude of tourists heading to South Africa for the World Cup, a question hangs on many lips: how dangerous is the country?

South Africa is a place where a lot of violent crime happens.

That much is hard to dispute.

Each day an average of nearly 50 people are murdered.

In addition to these 18,000 murders each year, there are another 18,000 attempted murders.

Graph comparing murder rates in UK and South Africa

Kwa Mashu, a township outside Durban in KwaZulu-Natal, has the unfortunate honour of being dubbed South Africa's murder capital by the media, with 300 last year. It took the unwanted honour from Nyanga, a township outside Cape Town.

"There are extremely high rates of unemployment in some areas. All of this leads to a large element of frustration. Often this is the thing that sparks violence.

Police in a stadium

Of the 18,438 house robberies in South Africa last year, 8,122 were in the province of Gauteng, which includes Johannesburg. The likelihood of being a victim is twice the national average there.

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Saturday, May 15, 2010

New York Times editor in chief: How I plan to charge for online content

SHOOT: Intwisting. Well I'm sure all the bloggers out there welcome the news that media companies plan to charge for access to their exceptional journalism. But here's an idea. When these companies are charging for online content, what it stopping bloggers from going out, buying the newspapers, and summarising these stories on their own sites, for free, in their own words?
clipped from venturebeat.com

The New York Times’ slow-cooked plan to charge some readers for some of its online content will be put into place in January of next year, editor in chief Bill Keller told other journos at a dinner in New York on Thursday night.

The Times’ previous attempt to charge for content, TimesSelect, was canceled later that year because too few subscribers had signed up for what was basically a premium content package. Most TimesSelect content was what newspaper editors categorize as commentary or opinion, rather than news reporting. People were uninterested in paying an extra $50 per year to read the Times’ columnists.

Chances are Keller and company are still trying to calculate exactly how much to give away, and how much to charge for greater access. Without those numbers, the only safe prediction is that they won’t start with a high bar to access. Better to start with a lenient setting that blocks few readers, then ratchet it up to see what the market will bear.

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Wednesday, May 5, 2010

KULULA SPECIAL OFFERS - starts and ends 6 May 2010

SHOOT: Have a look at what it involves below, prices and destinations. If you want to take part in this visit:

https://www.kulula.com/default.aspx?utm_source=kulula-com&utm_medium=email&utm_content=branded-header&utm_campaign=take-off-sale-6-may
clipped from mail.google.com
Jo'burg (OR Tambo) <- -> Durbs
Jo'burg (Lanseria) <- -> Durbs
Cape Town <- -> PE
Durbs <- -> PE
from

R299

one way incl. taxes



Jo'burg (OR Tambo) <- -> Cape Town
Jo'burg (Lanseria) <- -> Cape Town
Durbs <- -> Cape Town
from

R399

one way incl. taxes

Should you want
to travel during the

"sporting event that
can't be mentioned"

in June and July, don't
despair; we've got some
great deals on

off-peak flights for you
to choose from.


Remember, book online before midnight on the 6th of May 2010.
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