Safferz

Nomads
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    3,188

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Safferz

  1. Posted

    Wow, huge list there thefuturenow :P

     

    Allyourbase;991524 wrote:
    Tell me more about the Creative Habit, why would you say it altered your thinking? I ask this because I myself have a bad procrastination habit that I need to kick.

     

    If you like history then stop everything you're doing now and go check a podcast called Hardcore History, its by Dan Carling, he describe himself as a hobbyist but he consistently churns out some of the best commentary and analysis of history that I have seen. Check out the WWII episodes in particular, and the Mongol ones too, fantastic stuff.

    I'll check the podcast out, but admittedly I'm not the biggest fan of amateur historians, very few pull it off well.

     

    Oddly enough the Creative Habit is written by a famous ballet choreographer, who draws from her own experience and that of other artists to talk about the idea that creative work requires discipline and routine above all else, and how you can't simply wait for inspiration but have to actively create the conditions and daily habits to do your work. I'm fascinated by the daily routines of successful people (writers in particular, since that's closest to my work), so I found the book quite insightful and inspiring. I made a thread on procrastination that you be interested in checking out :)

  3. Posted

    Allyourbase;991300 wrote:
    I would say the books that have really altered my thinking or have made a strong impression on me I read when I was younger so expect some cheese in my list:

     

    The Alchemist

    alchemist.jpg

     

    100 Years of Solitude

    gabriel-garcia-marquez-one-hundred-years

     

    Flowers for Algernon

    algernon.jpg

     

    The Art Spirit

    The-Art-Spirit-B0010NY9JO-L.jpg

     

    The Little Prince

     

    Littleprince.JPG

     

    Outliers

     

    outliers_gladwell.jpg

    Not cheesy at all! All the books I listed I first read around ages 17-19 (except The Creative Habit, which I read earlier this year and helped me work through my grown up procrastination habits :P), and I'm sure most people similarly encountered the books on their lists at a young age for it to have an impact on their formation.

     

    Forgot to add one more, to this day one of the best history books I've ever read and one of the reasons I wanted to become a historian:

     

    black_jacobins_jpg-CONVERT-resize400.jpg

  5. Posted

    Thanks Tallaabo :)

     

    Today I went out and bought a crapload of art supplies -- oil pastels, watercolour paint, pencil crayons, markers, etc. I used to be really into it in high school but pretty much quit anything creative I used to do when I started university. So now that I have some time off, why not get back into it?

     

    Did you know they make people in psych wards colour? It relieves stress :P

  6. Posted

    Tallaabo;991465 wrote:
    Boston University is very good too and many student wish to go there, so I can't understand why you are not happy with it:confused:

    You're right Tallaabo, BU is a great school but sometimes the teasing between the Boston area schools can get quite intense. Those brats over at Harvard and MIT think they're better than everyone :mad:

  7. Posted

    Khayr;991457 wrote:
    What an absolute waste of

    time. Go run 3 miles and drink carrot juices. I can't fathom

    watching back to back episodes of anything.

    That's you. My semester is now OVER after a stressful four months, I've read more books in that time than most people have read in years, and I've earned my damn right to watch whatever the hell I want. It's my way to decompress, so on the agenda this week are hours of films and television I've missed out on, treating myself to a manicure/pedicure, going to the Beyonce concert on Friday, then flying home to Toronto to visit my parents on the weekend :)

     

    So 29 episodes of Scandal season 2 (not 22 as I had thought, even better), let's go! I might not even get out of bed today.

  9. Posted

    So on my first day post-finals, I binged watched the entire first season of Scandal and was up until 6am, gripped to my seat. I can't believe I've never watched this show before now :eek: I plan to watch all of season two today, I am not even leaving my apartment so I can put all my time and energy into watching all 22 episodes in one sitting lol.

     

    o-SCANDAL-SEASON-3-POSTER-570.jpg?6

     

    I'M SO EXCITED

  12. Posted

    Apophis;991433 wrote:
    It's what separates the sheep (those who cannot generate any ideas originally) and the idea/s generators (who write it in book format for the sheep).

    Those who generate ideas are avid readers engaged in the world of ideas and the life of the mind, and after reading and thinking, become writers themselves.

     

    Khayr;991396 wrote:
    Have any of you really finished any of the books that you have listed?

    Why wouldn't they have? I've read some of them multiple times.

  13. Posted

    In celebration of our resident troll's 27th birthday, I've made a list:

     

    27 Reasons Why I Love Alpha Blondy

     

    1. He has the amazing ability to effortlessly balance brilliance and absurdity in his posts (see: Golisia proposal)

    2. He is equally brilliant and absurd in person

    3. Yet he's somehow shy too, which is quite endearing sometimes

    4. He has a great sense of humour

    5. He lives in Hargeisa, my mom's hometown (its denizens are superior individuals in every respect)

    6. He has a really nice British accent

    7. He was a gracious host during my time in Somaliland

    8. His real name is awesome and not Abdi or Mohamed (not that those names aren't awesome, they are my brother and dad respectively, but you know what I mean)

    9. His SN is based on a great

    , though he has shown questionable musical taste in the past

    10. He helped me construct elaborate lies to escape my meddling relatives and hang out with him

    11. His phone is so old and pathetic it sounds like he's talking through a tunnel when he calls, and that's IF the call goes through

    12. He's an introvert who finds his outlet in the form of an SOL troll

    13. He really does kinda look like Omar Epps

    14. He knew the way to my heart was to buy me tibs at an Ethiopian restaurant

    15. He used to text me things in Amharic, which impressed me until I found out it was his doorman texting me on his behalf

    16. It's almost cute that he gets jealous of any male attention I receive. Almost.

    17. He doesn't find me threatening to his manhood, or whatever

    18. He reads books

    19. He's passionate about the library/centre he's creating

    20. He's an expert on The Wire

    21. When he's not insulting me, he can actually be quite kind

    22. I get to insult him too, except I'm not kind and he doesn't mind

    23. His desperate need for internet attention knows no bounds or limits

    24. His infatuation with me is adorable

    25. He's only able to say certain things in text/chat, like how he thought I looked pretty on Skype, because he has no balls

    26. He's counting down the days until I'm in Hargeisa again this summer

    27. We are kindred spirits and the best of friends :P

     

    34jdid5.jpg

     

    Fin.

  14. Posted

    DoctorKenney;991370 wrote:
    Safferz, random question but:

     

    Where do you get your books? Do you buy it from a store, download it off Amazon, or do you use torrents to download a PDF copy of the book?

     

    Because if you're an avid reader, buying books from the store constantly is gonna slowly bankrupt you lol

    I order books from Amazon a lot (getting an Amazon Prime membership was the best decision ever), but I also frequently order from Abebooks, which is great for used books. But be sure to price compare with Amazon, sometimes Amazon can be cheaper than Abebooks for certain books or you save overall due to Amazon free shipping. I prefer having physical copies of books so I'm not a fan of ebooks, though I'll download one from time to time when it comes to older books that are out of print/difficult to find or too expensive to purchase (I mentioned a few websites I use here).

     

    That said, I am broke :( Broke but proud of my personal library lol

  15. Posted

    Take the way the village of Awra Amba is being discussed by foreigners interested in portraying it as some sort of secular utopia (people living there do practice religion, it's just that the hierarchical forms practiced in Habesha society - institutions historically tied up with Ethiopia's feudal system - are seen as antithetical to progress) with a huge grain of salt. But it's an interesting case study for development in the region, and offers some important lessons.

     

    " frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>

     

    "Ethiopian Zumra Nuru founded Awra Amba on an alternative cultural model, built on the principles of gender and social equality, the absence of organized religion, and the importance of hard work.

     

    The model has paid off: Some 40 years after its founding in 1972, literacy levels, life expectancy, gender equality and economic growth in the village far exceed Ethiopia’s national averages.

     

    [...] But while rethinking norms has brought the village both accolades and success, it has also attracted a fair share of trouble.

     

    Ethiopia is a highly traditional country, where many communities follow strict religious and cultural mores. Since day one, the Awra Amba project, which lies a nine-hour drive northwest of Addis Ababa, has met with hostility and violent attack from the conservative Christian and Muslim communities that surround it.

     

    Awra Amba’s model is highly egalitarian. Most of the village’s labor force — in the early days, concentrated in agriculture — works communally, so money is plowed back into village projects and the profits split evenly. The village is run through a series of popular committees where majorities agree on all bylaws and village decisions.

     

    [...] Limited land forced the returned people of Awra Amba to diversify the village economy beyond its own small borders. They got into textiles, milling, trade, and tourism. Today in Awra Amba, a clutch of wattle and daub houses sits beside shared buildings such as weaving workshops, a grinding mill, a tourist hostel, and a school. The variety of industries has been key to its development success.

     

    Over the last two decades, the combination of Awra Amba’s progressive values with its new market savvy has made it a model of progress in a nation that is currently ranked at the bottom of the UNDP Human Development Index.

     

    Founder Nuru himself grew up a Muslim in the traditional Amhara region of northern Ethiopia. But the customs never felt right to him: he was sent to work in the fields instead of to school; his mother had to work at home more than his father, yet his father was the boss of the house; and religion came between Christians and Muslims.

     

    By the time he was an adult, he could see that many of these social norms were holding back economic development, too.

     

    “They always work and that helped them a lot to get out of poverty, and now we observe that they are really improving,” said Ashenafi Alemu, a researcher in the sociology department of Ethiopia’s University of Gonder.

     

    Through Awra Amba has many local critics, it’s also attracting a growing number of fans, with more Ethiopians intrigued by the project. New communities inspired by the Awra Amba model have already sprouted up elsewhere in the country. But their growth is spontaneous and erratic, with no input from Nuru or his community.

     

    It is Nuru’s goal to export his idea beyond the village, but Awra Amba doesn’t have the capacity to manage such a scale-up.

     

    “We need to see these villages,” he says, “but I can’t go check them out because we don’t have a car and it is not feasible to travel there by bus.”

     

    The original Awra Amba, meanwhile, is still struggling for acceptance by the conservative villages that surround it.

     

    The various services it now provides are helping. Awra Amba has several grain mills to which local farmers bring their grain to be ground for a small fee. It has constructed a junior high and high school where children from the wider area are educated together.

     

    On top of that, every month, Gonder University’s School of Sociology, in a project aimed at facilitating the transfer of knowledge from Awra Amba to its hostile neighbors, brings together a growing number of people from the village with members of Christian and Muslim communities surrounding it. Around the same table, they talk out their differences.

     

    “Now there is a sort of understanding and improvement regarding the image of the Awra Amba community,” says Alemu, the researcher."

  17. Posted

    Maaddeey;991349 wrote:
    ^
    :)

     

    Aware, never heard of it. what county is it?.

    I'm not sure, but here's the general area on a map, you can see how close it is to Piazza. I stayed at a hotel not too far from there this summer and it's close to the building I will have to go to each day, so it was a good choice. I will get to know Addis quite well this summer :)

  24. Posted

    December 16

     

    1497 - Vasco de Gama rounds the Cape of Good Hope

    dagamamap.gif

     

    1653 - Oliver Cromwell becomes lord protector of England, Scotland and Ireland

    225px-Oliver_Cromwell_by_Samuel_Cooper(1

     

    1707 - Mt Fuji erupts for the last time in Japan

    120511-mt-fuji-7a-600x250.jpg

     

    1773 - The Boston Tea Party takes place at Boston harbor in protest of the Tea Act

    Boston_tea_party.jpg

     

    1944 - The Battle of the Bulge begins in WWII as Germany launches a surprise counterrattack against Allied forces in Belgium

    battlebulge.jpg

     

    1960 - Two planes collide over Staten Island, killing 134

    parkslope-480.jpg

     

    1960 - US president Truman declares a state of emergency in order to fight "Communist imperialism"

    nyt.bmp

     

    1990 - Jean Bertrand Aristide is elected president of Haiti in its first democratic elections

    aristide.jpg

     

    2010 - Larry King leaves his CNN talk show after 25 years

    Larry-King-speaks-during--025.jpg

     

    2012 - a young Indian woman is gang raped and dies of her injuries in Delhi, sparking international outcry

    158669542.jpg