Maya Angelou on Identity and the Meaning of Life; The kindnesses . I never forget them. And so they keep one from becoming bitter. They encourage you to be as strong, as volatile as necessary to make a well world

June 3, 2014 Leave a comment

Maya Angelou on Identity and the Meaning of Life The light of the world has grown a little dimmer with the loss of the phenomenal Maya Angelou, but her legacy endures as a luminous beacon of strength, courage, and spiritual beauty. Angelou’s timeless wisdom shines with unparalleled light in a 1977 interview by journalist Judith Rich, found in Conversations with Maya Angelou (public library) – the same magnificent tome that gave us the beloved author’s conversation with Bill Moyers on freedom – in which Angelou explores issues of identity and the meaning of life. Read more of this post

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Thailand’s Junta Turns Its Attention to State Enterprises; Company Heads Told to Submit Reviews, Business Plans and Get Option to Resign

June 3, 2014 Leave a comment

Thailand’s Junta Turns Its Attention to State Enterprises

Company Heads Told to Submit Reviews, Business Plans and Get Option to Resign

JAKE MAXWELL WATTS And NOPPARAT CHAICHALEARMMONGKOL

May 31, 2014 11:06 a.m. ET

Thailand’s ruling military on Saturday gave the heads of the country’s largest state enterprises, many of them affiliated with the ousted civilian government, a two-day deadline to submit a review of their operations and invited them to resign if they wished.

Just over a week since the army ousted Thailand’s caretaker government and suspended the constitution, military chief Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha has been under pressure to lay out plans for reviving a spluttering economy in which state enterprises play a significant role in sectors ranging from banking to transport and energy. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

Apple’s emphasis on the human angle of Beats provides an intriguing peek into how Apple sees itself – and how executives wants customers to think of Apple

June 3, 2014 Leave a comment

What the Beats Deal Says About Apple: It Loves Tastemakers

By FARHAD MANJOO

MAY 30, 2014 1:47 PM 7 Comments

There’s one thing executives at Apple would like you to know about their decision to buy Beats Music: Apple really loves humans. It loves us in the general sense — the company believes we’re better than computers are at deciding what kinds of music we like — and it loves the specific humans who run Beats, especially the firm’s founders, the music impresarios Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine. Read more of this post

Filed under TMT Trends

For Web startups with big ambitions, regulation increasingly on the radar

June 3, 2014 Leave a comment

For Web startups with big ambitions, regulation increasingly on the radar

Fri, May 30 2014

By Alexei Oreskovic

RANCHO PALOS VERDES Calif. (Reuters) – Internet startups are starting to see what could come between them and their ambitions: regulators.

Recent lawsuits and government investigations into high-flying “sharing economy” services have put the issue front and center. Now, Web companies developing services in everything from healthcare to transportation are crafting strategies for working with government agencies. Read more of this post

Filed under TMT Trends

Online banking thefts hit Japan firms prompting compensation rethink

June 3, 2014 Leave a comment

Online banking thefts hit Japan firms prompting compensation rethink

Fri, May 30 2014

By Taiga Uranaka and Taro Fuse

TOKYO (Reuters) – Hackers stole nearly $2 million from the online bank accounts of Japanese businesses in April, a surge in theft that has prompted some banks to curtail online services and rethink compensation policies, executives and regulators say.

In April there were 50 cases of theft from online accounts held by Japanese businesses with nearly 200 million yen stolen, according to a person with knowledge of the industry-wide tally, which has not been made public. That was more than the entire previous year. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

The Tiananmen Square massacre, 25 years on

June 3, 2014 Leave a comment

May 30, 2014 6:32 pm

The Tiananmen Square massacre, 25 years on

By Jonathan Fenby

The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited, by Louisa Lim, OUP USA, RRP£16.99/$24.95, 240 pages

Tiananmen Exiles: Voices of the Struggle for Democracy in China, by Rowena Xiaoqing He, Palgrave Macmillan, RRP£18/$29, 240 pages

Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China, by Evan Osnos, Bodley Head, £20/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, RRP$27, 416 pages Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

The economics of book festivals; Book festivals, from Hay to Edinburgh, are booming but just who’s making the money?

June 3, 2014 Leave a comment

May 30, 2014 6:24 pm

The economics of book festivals

By Carl Wilkinson

There is a particular sound that for many, along with the cry of the cuckoo, the thwack of willow on leather and the hum of a distant lawnmower, now signifies the approach of summer. It is, of course, the amplified tones of an author trying to be heard as rain drums on the roof of a marquee.

With its mushrooming tents, ranks of deckchairs and orderly queues of readers waiting to have their books signed, the literary festival is now an established feature of British cultural life. Yet just over 30 years ago, in 1983, when the Edinburgh International Book Festival was launched, it was one of only three. Today, according to literaryfestivals.co.uk, a website that tries to keep up with them all, there are more than 350 in Britain alone and a further 100 in Australia and New Zealand. Not to mention others in Gibraltar, Colombia, India, Spain, Kenya . . . Read more of this post

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