How could you have been more productive today?

Sustainability is pretty clearly one of the world's most important goals; but what groups can really make environmental progress in leaps and bounds? Chris McKnett makes the case that it's large institutional investors. He shows how strong financial data isn't enough, and reveals why investors need to look at a company's environmental, social and governance structures, too.

Some Week's End Reading

Critics of CSR ratings, such as Scott Nova, Executive Director of the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), argue that they give audiences a false sense of security regarding actual company progress on CSR in industries in which none of the companies is in compliance with minimum labour standards.
Others, such as Tim Connor, former Labour Rights Advocacy Coordinator of Oxfam Australia believe ratings can play a positive role, "More effective government regulation is critical, but voluntary efforts like ratings systems can still play some role in ratcheting up compliance with labour standards," says Connor.
Can CSR ratings help improve labour practices in global supply chains?, a new paper published by the Maquila Solidarity Network (MSN) and the Project on Organizing, Development, Education and Research (PODER), examines the potential of rating systems to drive improvements in supply chain labour practices. Through interviews with CSR experts, representatives from companies like Levi's, Gap and others that have been rated on supply chain labour issues, labour rights advocacy groups, and rating system developers, the paper highlights some key challenges facing rating systems and how some rating systems have tried to overcome, or at least minimize, those challenges.


The challenge of ratings in global supply chains

Although all rating systems struggle with finding appropriate indicators, weighting their results, making their process reliable and credible, and getting their message to the right people at the right time, ratings of labour practices have the additional challenge of capturing workplace realities in complex, global industries. While consumers and investors may assume that CSR rating systems measure actual corporate practice, including labour practices at the factory level, for the most part existing systems have limited access to reliable, timely and comprehensive data about labour practices in global supply chains.
"We are still a long way from getting systematized on-the-ground factory data," says Conrad MacKerron of As You Sow, which released its first ratings of apparel company supply chain labour practices in November 2010.

Read the full feature here or download the study here.

On the Romanian Postal Services, With a Twist

Over the last couple of months, there have been several occasions when I've been meaning to make a note of the how annoyingly slow and sloppy the Romanian Postal Services are*, and just how much that bothers me, by getting in the way of my pursuing the Postcrossing path.
I only didn't write anything sooner because I was busy with many other items topping my To Do's, and that just didn't seem to be worth it. Plus, there were just so many other things to rant about, really.

.... And then, this very week, as my levels of annoyance were reaching some sort of a record, all of a sudden, my cards start arriving! On time! A couple of them, in 2-4 days! A-mazing, really! Even more so, as no particular explanation is available as of yet. Further investigation to be undertaken.

* Now, what do I mean by slow? I mean cards such as this one, taking almost 40 days to each another European country.
And what do I mean by sloppy? I mean having to re-send almost one quarter to one third of the cards that I had sent initially, because the first batch never made it. That was -and is, for that matter- quite annoying. And it happened in particular in relation to cards I sent to Russia, China or Ukraine.

Find of the Week

Presenting: Derren Brown's Cold Reading [sorry for not having been able to embed the video, it's just not an option; but do bear with it till the end for maximum effects]
and: Derren Brown's use of Hypnotism [incredibly funny, btw]

Thank you, sister! ;)

[a] Cool New Way

This is not a review of Mr. Satriani's tune going by the same title, but the sharing of a funny new find of my own: it's on the intricately delicate film-choosing matter.
So now that the Disclaimer's all set, here's the how: I've now chosen whether or not to see a particular film based on the said film's soundtrack. Possibly a funny way to do it and perhaps not the most reasonable but definitely new and how about cool?!
I've made the decision after Watchmen's impressive [sound] record, and that led me to seeing.. Bronson. And, well, did I like Bronson!

Bronson is based on the life of Charles Bronson—not the (popular) movie star, but the famous English inmate, who took the actor’s moniker as his nom de combat: he’s the most violent prisoner in Britain, who has spent decades behind bars thanks to the years added to his sentences for his bloody outbursts. Bronson, in a manic performance by Tom Hardy that exudes a Jack Napier-level of playful insanity, narrates the film from a dark stage, often in costume, chronicling his childhood and young manhood—marked by robbery and disproportionate violence—through his stays in various jails, psych wards, and disco-era England. [...]
The director posits violence as art, as performance, as a talent, as a calling, as a cause for fame; think of [...] the brutishness placed back into the real world, which asks the audience to confront the cultural fetishization of barbarity. That is, Refn avoids the pitfall of adapting a real life story—getting mired in conforming the complexities of a life into the blueprint of a familiar narrative—by artfully addressing a larger, compelling theme. [...]

Highly recommended, imho. Above review may be fully read on the Cinepinion blog. And this is just this saga's start.

Job Interview Question

Though this was (most likely) not the most important question on my last job interview, it was the most difficult to answer for me. So why should I care? Well, because I'm wondering whether it's a common question and, if so, how should I prepare for it.
So, amongst heaps of other stuff (can't remember 90% of them!), the interviewers (2 of them, insisting) asked:

How do your friends see you?, What do they think of you?

I stared blankly.
Then tried putting some pieces together for some sort of answer.
I was still starring blankly.
The fact is, that question caught me entirely off-guard. Of all the questions in the world, it had to be one about how others see me(!). I was baffled. Not because it was an impossibly difficult question per se, but because I had no idea about what I could possibly answer. I wasn't prepared to use my creative skills that early in the interviewing process, and I had no pre-considered answer to give.
I tried asking for details: what sort of friends?, for how long should our friendship have lasted by now?, what should their backgrounds be, in relation to me?, etc, in a desperate try to stall. C'mon brains, c'mon, Think of some answer,...
... Any answer!!...

I did mutter some random adjectives in the end, as a last minute solution, and no, they hadn't been thought out either. [Perhaps this better explains my recent fascination with M.'s post on a certain topic.]

Aaaanyway, here's what I'm wondering: Is this an usual question? Should I get better prepared for its rising its ugly head next time?
If so, what sort of answers are expected from me? Seriously. I have no idea what any of my friends think of me, so I'm not prepared to answer it that way. By this definition, who's a friend anyway? Is it only about real friends, or does it include acquaintances too? Argh, I'm lost. Ideas, anyone?

Punctuation marks: The Metas

Not once would I have suspected that I might be addressing this topic in writing, so this is just as much of a challenge for me to write as it will be for you to read.
Why so? Because it means the main deliverance here will be that of confusion and question marks, rather than precise thoughts or rants and secondly, because it means wording against my prevalent obsession with [almost-] perfectly rounded up ideas, rather than stubs.
It is, on the other hand, an expression of my [other] obsession[s] with hoarding, which needn't address reality-defined items alone, as you're about to witness :)

So here are the 2 finds:
The first is the Wiki entry to the so-called Irony mark, 'also called a snark or zing': this has been very recently brought to the public's attention by my beloved sister. An interesting find, I think, and even more so due to its more-than-limited application:

This mark ؟ was proposed by the French poet Alcanter de Brahm (alias Marcel Bernhardt) at the end of the 19th century. It was in turn taken by Hervé Bazin in his book Plumons l’Oiseau (1966), in which the author proposes several other innovative punctuation marks, such as the doubt point, certitude point, acclamation point, authority point, indignation point, and love point.
Its form is essentially the same as the late medieval Irony mark, a percontation point (punctus percontativus), which was used to mark rhetorical questions.

So why - ask I - has the percontation point seen such a short lived usage? Is it the desire to leave irony to the whim of the reader to be blamed here? Or is it rather the unwillingness of the writer/s to convey meta in general? I'm baffled, and the first reason why is because this is the first time I encounter the percontation point being mentioned at all. Ideas?
Later edit: Or it could be just a matter of timing, if I were to consider the late 20th century/ beginning of the 21st century advent of the Emoticons subculture.. right?

The second is way easier and yet more difficult for this very reason: it's about the conventional use of square brackets, other than their mathematical, computer science or natural sciences ones [read: not-formal sciences].
Here's what puzzled me: Other than the visible common-knowledge uses one can read up in the Wiki entry I've pasted above, I've recently learnt of the meta of square brackets in corporate language - delivered to me in a very friendly email. The comment says: 'square brackets are commonly used in our [company/ work environment] to refer to information which hadn't as yet been confirmed or which might be deleted - but they should never be seen in a final document'.
This was new to me, really new in fact. New enough so that I get to ask: Is it just me that remained blinded in front of this remarkable connotation? How come I had never been told anything on this matter? Or is it a corporate thing?

Let me know if you have answers [general knowledge, or otherwise]: the Metas of punctuation marks have all of a sudden become an overwhelmingly hot topic!

1421: The Year China Discovered the World

How much fantasy can one bid on a historic re-interpretation of scattered facts and still get away with it? This seems to be the balance that Mr. Menzies is trying to strike in this book - might that be for fun, for curiosity, or for the sake of playing mind games and trying to re-write history at the same time.
The fact that the book's controversial is an understatement: its potential is so great that it might actually be able to redefine the notion of 'controversy'. So if you can play along with that, then it won't frustrate you to read it. But if it's hard facts proven by science alone, this might come as a bit of an off-tracker.
Take CSI, House M.D. or Dexter and apply the sort of investigation scenarios done in those scripts to history -- almost 600 years ago. This does sound a bit tricky in itself, doesn't it? And it gets even trickier as the entirety of the evidence it brings to supporting the ideas [plural] behind the writing is circumstantial, at best.

So what's the big mystery behind it? It's a re-conceptualisation of the Discoveries and who had really undertaken them: Mr. Menzies basically says it in the title of his book: he considers that it was the Chinese rather than the Europeans who had first discovered and mapped the world as we know it - and with highly accurate results, for that matter. He then goes on to say that the Europeans managed to get hold of these Chinese maps at the same time that the Chinese decided to plunge into a [new?] age of isolationism.
This would sound as an agreeable theory at first -never mind that you've never heard of it on the telly or otherwise- if it hadn't been for the manner in which it's unraveled: the way to deal with facts is by starting off with the assumption that they will prove the theory/ies, followed by the assumption that they do in fact prove it/them and concluding with the confirmation that it's all been proven. [For more on punctual criticisms look here.]

[Finally, the translation of the Romanian copy I've read doesn't help much either: many times I had to re-translate the book back into English in order to understand the message behind the words. Possibly this has been one of the greatest difficulties in my appreciation of it.]

Bottom line: if you can find humour in new theories, this is the holidays book for you! If you are however easily bored with facts which might not come as straightforward and are rather seeking the ultimate truth, then this book should prove as rather challenging instead.

[Image credits go here.]
P.S. This is the book's website: 1421.tv

Amusing Ourselves to Death: an Intro

Aldous Huxley v. George Orwell - black & white cartoon teaser here: 2 minutes guaranteed to have been well spent!

Consider this

Green parties celebrating their success in last week's European Parliament election are gearing up for a fight over nuclear power.
The coalition of green parties, who are unanimous in their anti-nuclear position, increased their presence in the European Parliament from 5.5% to 7.1% (52 seats). Although not enough to force any changes, science-policy experts anticipate a major battle on the issue in the next legislature.
The European Parliament does not currently have the power to legislate on energy production in the European Union's 27 member states. But if the Lisbon Treaty is ratified later this year by the remaining few member states that have not yet signed up, parliament's power will extend into new areas. "If the Lisbon treaty is approved, it will give the European Union responsibility for energy security," says Ulrike Lunacek, who is president of the European Green Party and a newly elected member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Austria. "We will use this opportunity to make a stand in the European Parliament against nuclear power," she told Nature.

Brought to you by NatureNews, as Green boost in European elections may trigger nuclear fight.

The Coke in... Red Bull

About a year ago, the makers of Red Bull, the famous caffeine-loaded energy drink, decided to come out with a soda, unsurprisingly named Red Bull Cola. The shared name implied the same big kick. But could the cola's boost — supposedly "100% natural" — come from something else? Officials in Germany worry that they've found the answer — cocaine. And now they have prohibited the soda's sale in six states across the country and may recommend a nation-wide ban.
"The [Health Institute in the state of North Rhine Westphalia] examined Red Bull Cola in an elaborate chemical process and found traces of cocaine," Bernhard Kuehnle, head of the food safety department at Germany's federal ministry for consumer protection, told the German press on Sunday. According to this analysis, the 0.13 micrograms of cocaine per can of the drink does not pose a serious health threat — you'd have to drink 12,000 L of Red Bull Cola for negative effects to be felt — but it was enough to cause concern. Kuehnle's agency is due to give its final verdict on Wednesday when experts publish their report. [...]
But the problem is when it comes to coca and cocaine, it's not just a health concern, but a legal one. Since 1961, trade of coca outside the Andean region — where people have chewed or brewed coca in tea to stave off hunger and exhaustion for centuries — has been prohibited unless the cocaine alkaloid is removed. Few companies in the world have authorization to trade in the leaf and most are pharmaceutical companies that perform this decocainizing process. The most prominent is New Jersey-based Stepan Chemical Company which has been reported to supply Coca-Cola with its narcotic-free derivative. [...]

Intrigued? TIME.com shares the rest of the details here.

The reasoning about Uncertainty

Seventy-six years ago, Franklin Delano Roosevelt took to the inaugural dais and reminded a nation that its recent troubles “concern, thank God, only material things.” In the midst of the Depression, he urged Americans to remember that “happiness lies not in the mere possession of money” and to recognize “the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success.”
“The only thing we have to fear,” he claimed, “is fear itself.”
As it turned out, Americans had a great deal more to fear than that, and their innocent belief that money buys happiness was entirely correct. Psychologists and economists now know that although the very rich are no happier than the merely rich, for the other 99 percent of us, happiness is greatly enhanced by a few quaint assets, like shelter, sustenance and security. Those who think the material is immaterial have probably never stood in a breadline.
[...] But light wallets are not the cause of our heavy hearts. [...]

Consider an experiment by researchers at Maastricht University in the Netherlands who gave subjects a series of 20 electric shocks. Some subjects knew they would receive an intense shock on every trial. Others knew they would receive 17 mild shocks and 3 intense shocks, but they didn’t know on which of the 20 trials the intense shocks would come. The results showed that subjects who thought there was a small chance of receiving an intense shock were more afraid — they sweated more profusely, their hearts beat faster — than subjects who knew for sure that they’d receive an intense shock.
That’s because people feel worse when something bad might occur than when something bad will occur. Most of us aren’t losing sleep and sucking down Marlboros because the Dow is going to fall another thousand points, but because we don’t know whether it will fall or not — and human beings find uncertainty more painful than the things they’re uncertain about. [...]

- more of the above in The New York Times.

Poll | Dilemma?

What would arachists do if the movement suddenly started gaining a lot of political momentum, consequently becoming popular?