OBRA MAESTRA

09/10/2009
NEWS
The Nobel Peace Prize 2009
awarded to:
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA…

“for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”

Photo: Pete Souza, Obama-Biden Transition Project, licensed by Attribution Share Alike 3.0

Barack Obama

USA

44th President of the United States of America

b. 1961

“His diplomacy is founded in the concept that [...]

Money, Power, Wisdom:
September 20, 2009

Before you read any further, let me warn you. This blog post is not typical of what I usually write – and is DEFINITELY NOT for everyone!
If the “existential dilemma” leaves you cold (you lucky dog, you!), or your “search for meaning” rarely surfaces, and (when it does) [...]

Olivier de Kersauson (b. 20 July 1944) is a French sailor and sailing champion.

Kersauson was the seventh child in a family of eight. While he was the only Kersauson not to have been born in Brittany, he was born on 20 July 1944 and brought up near Morlaix in a “provincial Catholic aristocracy with compulsory [...]

Hans Rosling:
Global health expert;
data visionary
© Gapminder Foundation
As a doctor and researcher, Hans Rosling identified a new paralytic disease induced by hunger in rural Africa. Now he looks at the bigger picture of social and economic development with his remarkable trend-revealing software.
Gapminder is a non-profit venture promoting sustainable global development and achievement of the [...]

Jimmy Carter via last.fm

Discrimination and abuse wrongly backed by doctrine are damaging society, argues the former US president.
o Jimmy Carter
o CopyrightThe Observer, Sunday 12 July 2009
[...]

A Tribute to My Friend, Michael Jackson by Dr. Deepak Chopra (En Français plus bas, dedicated to “a loving soul” Grace) Michael Jackson will be remembered, most likely, as a shattered icon, a pop genius who wound up a mutant of fame. That’s not who I will remember, however. His mixture [...]

Excerpts from
The Mind in the Making by
James Harvey Robinson (June 29, 1863–February 16, 1936) was an American historian.
Robinson was born Bloomington, Illinois. He taught history at the University of Pennsylvania (1891–95) and Columbia University (1895–1919), becoming a full professor in 1895.
In 1919, he was one of the founders of the New School for Social [...]

In the decade of Darfur and Iraq, and shortly after the century of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, the claim that violence has been diminishing may seem somewhere between hallucinatory and obscene. Yet recent studies that seek to quantify the historical ebb and flow of violence point to exactly that conclusion.
A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE
by Steven Pinker
Introduction
Once [...]

Get Down to Business
Original date of publication (French) June 3d 2009 7:21 | by
JACQUES ATTALI

Contrary to what they want us to
believe, the crisis deepens: in the United
States, all deficits are rising; banks defaulting are worsening, and even if
Wall Street is up, its value is still 40% lower than that of October 2007.
In addition,everyone [...]

© CNN -December 27, 2007 -(AP)
– The message flickered into Cindy Fleenor’s living room each night: Be faithful in how you live and how you give, the television preachers said, and God will shower you with material riches.
And so the 53-year-old accountant from the Tampa, Florida, area pledged $500 a year to Joyce [...]