When I get a kindle....

I want to read:

Bursts: The Hidden Patterns Behind Everything We Do, from Your E-mail to Bloody Crusades
-  Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life
- Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

Thinking, Fast and Slow
- Daniel Kahneman

The Bearer of Crazed and Venomous Fangs
- Vincent DiMarco

Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance
- Pamela, O. Long, 2014 MacArthur Fellow

The Master and Margarita
-  Mikhail Bulgakov

Meaning in Life and Why It Matters
- Susan Wolf

The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays
- Harry G. Frankfurt
I have written about my favourite Princeton professor before. This volume is a collection of thirteen seminal essays on ethics, free will, and the philosophy of mind.

Insights from World Water Day in the Hague

On March 22nd, the official World Water Day event was hosted by UNESCO and the Dutch Government in The Hague. The theme this year was water cooperation, and as a student of water conflict at UNESCO-IHE I had a chance to go.

For a slightly different take you can also read my blog post on Water Canada. 

Both of the Princes present at the event gave compassionate speeches. Speaking for the West Asian region, HRH of Jordan stated, "we are looked at as statistics or figures if we are looked at, at all". His Royal Highness was referring to the perception of the Middle East region and the need for investing in human dignity as opposed to the arms industry. I had not known what to expect but like many others was impressed with his charisma and message.  

A breakout session on peace was especially striking as it was the forum in which real-life cooperation could be observed. The facilitators, professors and UNESCO professionals, started off with a hula-hoop game which illustrated the challenges to cooperation. Participants learned to recognize interdependence by focusing on the other(s) with whom they shared an objective. The game was also a great way to break the social-hierarchies in the room.

Later in that session, a Rabbi embraced an Imam after announcing their agreement to draw on examples of water sanitation from their respective texts and to disseminate it to their religious networks. The initiative is brilliant given that religious institutions have well structured networks for sharing information.

Final statement: Cooperation requires that we recognize the perspectives and value of those with whom we are engaged. It is fostered by highlighting our commonalities and the strengths in our differences. 

Frans de Waal: Why kind monkeys mean cooperative societies

Frans de Waal is a  is a Dutch primatologist and ethologist who studies the morality of the animal kingdom. His research with primates (and other mammals) reveals the strong innate understanding of empathy and reciprocity among apes. By revealing the biological predisposition to conflict resolution, cooperation, and inequity aversion in non-human species our own tendencies are laid bare. If chimps can feel compassion and understand what is fairness then our vices require more justification than the expletive offering of "it's human nature".  

But as the saying goes, sometimes you have to see it to believe it so.....

Below is a Ted Talk where De Waal shows inequity aversion among Capuchin monkeys. The talk is remarkable and the video's cuteness factor is sure to satisfy your online downtime. 

You can also read an excerpt from his book, The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society. 

Matt Damon's Toilet Strike

A while back I wrote a post mentioning the challenges of creating a campaign around access to basic sanitation. I remember when the Kony Campaign exploded on my Facebook feed. I was shocked, people who typically weren't activists, or even slacktivists, were up in arms. Yet at the same time the Millenium Development Goal regarding toilets and wastewater infrastructure faced challenges framing a public message.   A cause affecting millions daily sadly lacked the visuals, the catchyness, and simply the sexyness to grasp attention.

That is until now.

Matt Damon is a creative genius for his Strike With Me campaign. You may know him as co-founder of Water.org (pat on the back) or more commonly Hollywood blockbusters like Oceans Eleven or The Bourne Identity. He has found a funny and cute way to make people aware of sanitation issues and hopefully concerned enough to donate.

Just check out this video: