TED Shlomo Benartzi: Saving for tomorrow, tomorrow

• everytime you earn more, save more. 
• monthly saving is difficult, present bias (immediate gratification) makes you think of how you have to give up something now
• we think about saving in the present, but spend in the long run. We diet today, eat tomorrow
• speaks of checking the box during an organ donor situation in licence aquisition. Germany shortage - you have to check the box to say yes. Austria you have to check the box to say No... they have organs for Africa. In terms of saving... create a situation where people have to opt out. Opting out takes effort.
• if you say, Yes, I want to save, that's half of the effort. Next automate the process.
• if you defer saving to when you get a raise, then it's a small percentage of that extra
• making the decisions around saving are complex, too many points to consider
• 1 in 10 Americans save enough
• Singaporeans spend average $4000 per year on lotto. Americans $1000.

TED: Seth Godin on standing out

• product knowledge diffusion... it must be remarkable, on the social networking
• sell to people who are listening, and hope that they care enough to tell their friends
• being good is boring, be remarkable

TED Seth Godin: This is broken

• why do you make a gate that can close on child and crush the child
• then there's a sticker maker who has to make a sticker to say, This could crush your child, and he makes the sticker because he doesn't have the authority to go down the corridor and say Fix this gate - this breeds "not my job" thinking
• sometimes you have to break it for other people to see that it wasn't broken

TED Sasha Dichter: The Generosity Experiment

• say yes to everyone who wants something from you
• he wanted to have to stop saying no
• he started to feel that he was generous, he started to see the change he wanted in the world

Lead from behind

http://dovbaron.podomatic.com/

AMY SHOWALTER
• yaktivist vs activist
• ego vs getting something done
• action shock vs action achievement
• street cred
• play by the rules
• they could have taken the easy way, but didn't
• underdog
• unconventional in how you do it, but still moral
• eyes up in a top dog world
• pious and self aggradising
• passionista - good in two circumstances - one: show passion of the top dog's interests and two: make top dog feel like a hero - calm face to face discussion first and don't start to look like a radical - make sure your passion is networkable - not just you
• making a presentation: start with what's in it for them
• time and personal contact with people you are persuading it
• how you put your personal brand across, your reputation
• changing minds through proximity
• building your pack
• takes the pack to make it happen
• team - cohesive team leader, convert communicator, connected pack members
need advocates who are connected
• engage humor, think friendly and funny
• universal law - be nice, be meek, be kind

DANIEL PINK
• show vulnerability
• make rules as a team
• let them do it their way

GURUS
Jonathan Jay - Sack Your Boss
Daniel Lavanga - The Law of Sevens
Mark McKergow
Peter Thompson
Richard Koch
David Thomas
Nicky Pattinson
Paul McGee - Shut Up, Move On
Pete Godfrey
Mike Dooley - Notes From The Universe
Stuart Goldsmith

TED Sheena Iyengar: How to make choosing easier

cut - less units to choose from
concretise - make it real
categories - more categories, fewer choices
condition - let me practice complexity

The philosophy of ambiguity, the idiosyncrasies of English

• The main reason that Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.
• I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, 'where's the self- help section?' she said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.
• What if there were no hypothetical questions?
• If a deaf person signs swear words, does his mother wash his hands with soap?
• If someone with multiple personalities threatens to kill himself, is it considered a hostage situation?
• Is there another word for synonym?
• Where do forest rangers go to 'get away from it all?'
• What do you do when you see an endangered animal eating an endangered plant?
• If a parsley farmer is sued, can they garnish his wages?
• Why do they lock gas station bathrooms are they afraid someone will clean them?
• If a turtle doesn't have a shell, is he homeless or naked?
• Can vegetarians eat animal crackers?
• If the police arrest a mime, do they tell him he has the right to remain silent?
• Why do they put Braille on the drive-through bank machines?
• How do they get deer to cross the road only at those yellow road signs?
• What was the best thing before sliced bread?
• One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people.
• Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?
• How is it possible to have a civil war?
• If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?
• Whose cruel idea was it for the word 'lisp' to have 's' in it?
• Why are haemorrhoids called 'haemorrhoids' instead of 'assteroids'?
• Why is it called tourist season if we can't shoot at them?
• Why is there an expiration date on sour cream?
• If you spin an oriental person in a circle three times, do they become disoriented?
• Can an atheist get insurance against acts of god?

The Big Picture: Why Can't a Woman ... Be a Man?

With all of its bustling and agenda setting, the new Democratic majority ought to think about passing an Affirmative Action Resolution for Women in Movies. Madame Speaker, women are more than half the population of this great country, yet onscreen they're an endangered species--the ivory-billed woodpeckers of cinema.


Visit your multiplex, and try, just try, to find a movie where women are as plentiful and powerful as men. 300, the Spartan workout video, has one important female role, of King Leonidas' wife (Lena Headey); that leaves 299 for the guys. In Shooter, the hero-on-the-run gets brief assistance from a young widow (Kate Mara) before returning to his mission of evaporating a million bad guys. Girlish Jon Heder, one of the two skaters in the Will Ferrell hit Blades of Glory, does have a love interest (Jenna Fischer), but Ferrell doesn't--unless it's Heder. Indeed, the one big new movie fully populated with strong women is the "double feature" Grindhouse, from those epicures of raw meat, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez.

Only the AARP set may recall that movie women used to be on an equal footing with men. Female characters were at the center of some of the top-grossing films in history, from Gone With the Wind to The Sound of Music and Titanic (sort of). Now they mostly ornament the margins. If they're lucky.
One reason for the vanishing movie female is that the genres in which women used to be equal or dominant--the romantic melodrama and comedy--fell out of favor when the core audience changed from families to teen boys. The guy-kids prefer starker fare: action movies (one man against the system), science fantasy (techies save the solar system) and horror films (where young women are the naked and the dead, usually in that order). What didn't change was Hollywood's view of the sexes: that men are defined by their exploits, women by their emotions. In a movie era that found sentimentality risible, thus unprofitable, the ladies were excluded.

Even in comedy, where women were mandatory for smart repartee and the fade-out kiss, guys have elbowed them out of the equation. Forget Tracy and Hepburn. Today the standard pairing is some combination of Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Ferrell and one or more Wilsons. Wedding Crashers, Talladega Nights and Blades of Glory are basically male love stories: boy bonds with boy, boy breaks up with boy, boy and boy make up. The female interest is strictly nominal.

Old Hollywood had men-only genres too, especially the western. Cowboy films allowed for a token lady part, to give the hero someone to fight over; but she would never do the fighting, instead cowering, paralyzed with dread, during the final showdown. It wasn't until the exploitation movies of the '60s and '70s--the ones paid lavish tribute in Grindhouse--that the gals in guy-genre films finally had something to do: take charge, kick ass and kill people. The films weren't exactly feminist, since the actresses usually had to take off their blouses before they could flex their muscles. But they gave women a snarly, ballsy attitude, and the chance to be as quick on the draw as John Wayne.
In Planet Terror, Rodriguez's half of Grindhouse, a go-go dancer (Rose McGowan) loses a leg when zombies chew it off--wait, it gets weirder--and instead of a prosthetic limb has her stump fitted with a machine gun, which she uses to mow down acres of the undead. Death Proof, Tarantino's contribution, presents two trios of high-adrenaline chicks menaced by a psycho stunt driver. The women in both entries love guns and cars and don't mind using them for righteous vengeance and reckless thrills.

For these directors, female empowerment means armament; they liberate their movie women by turning them into men. They will show their actresses killing villains but never making love. (When two lovers start a sex scene in Planet Terror, the screen flames out and a sign, MISSING REEL, appears.) So the young males in the audience get not a window into the complex and mysterious nature of women but a mirror of their own urges: to talk tough and blow stuff up.

Speaker Pelosi, is this the legacy you want to leave your grandchildren?

By: Richard Corliss

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1607257,00.html#ixzz1ifJAYADC

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1607257,00.html

Racial slurs or racial markers

Racism and Comedians: I agree with Silverman, there's never a reason to use a slur; and saying a word like 'woman', kinda cuts you off from men, e.g. The women took issue with the men's lascivious ass-slapping. What if it's a question, e.g. Hey, you're a woman, do you wanna make a case against those men for lascivious ass-slapping? Can racial and gender references be interchanged... I dare not give an example. *terrified* :) Great article.

"The license to borrow terms other people have taken back can worry even edgy comics. A few months ago, I interviewed (Sarah) Silverman, who argued that her material was not racist but about racism (and I agree). But she added something that surprised me, coming from her: "I'm not saying 'I can say nigger because I'm liberal.' There is a certain aspect of that that I'm starting to get grossed out by. 'Oh, we're not racist. We can say it.'"

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1609807-1,00.html

Township seminar at UP

Click here to listen to the podcast

Half of the speaking team.

Mark Gevisser;

Sakhela Buhlungu;

Angus Gibson;

Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom;

Anton Harber;

Tsepo wa Marnatu;

Chris van Wyk.

Gevisser:

Place to talk across boundaries. In and outside of university. Across that boundary.

All male panel. Ironically women are vulnerable (corrective rape) in township. Apologizes that women will remain vulnerable.

Will each speak for 10 mins on their work and how it changes how we think of township. Then the resident scholar will comment on what they said and ask questions that bring it together.

Harber:

Jokes about the diff between Wits and UP.

Doesn't describe Diepsloot as a township. Reasons why he'd wanted to write about Diepsloot. 1994 arose. Product of transitional period. Townships are enforced segregation. Calls it a settlement. Core area is called the reception area (received for allocation). People are stuck there. Diepsloot is JHBs reception area.

Legal and technical sense. Diepsloot had a delay because PTA and JHB argued about who should provide the services. So Diepsloot is an aspirant township. Only one section is informal so it's not an informal settlement. It's structure and organized. The state has to assert it's authority.

'Service delivery' is so passive. They are not active participants. 'consultation 'participative development'. Local business people got the tenders - 'corruption'? RDP one size fits all. Complex reality, pride of origin and a desire to leave - residents are ambivalent.

Mamatu:

What did 'township' never mean? The positive and romantic, ubuntu. The township is a place people go back to for funerals and for the vibe. It's a ship that never went to town. The place remains the same.

Not Soweto. It's changing. So forget Soweto. It's good to be born in the township, but don't die there. It's not fit for humans. People there lack agency, no advancement, victims, valueless, no future. Art shows those things. Contrasted to suburbia. Why would you want to show that there are good things about a township. It's unconscionable.

You'd dress up to come to town. You have to raise yourself to go to the city - a better place. The city keeps marginalizing you. You work hard to be a part of it, but the city doesn't want you.

'As long as' is a Bantu expression, make do for the time being, at leastness. At least you have a school. The least of being. Toilet is outside. Public, exposed. Spectacle.

We have at leastness leaders. Some leaders had less. The leader has a higher bar he has to attain. He's not good enough for the big world. We see the leader from this bifocal way.

Townships are an insult to people's humanity. Why are they still there. The formula is flawed.

Grootboom:

Tries to look for redeeming aspects of township. Wanted to show gritty, but came up redeeming. Beautiful confusion. The beautiful mess.

He hated the township. Grew up in Soweto. Lived near the hostels. Faction fights between parties. Spent little time in schools because of disruptions. Necklacing. Stayaways. Felt there was no hope. School was a way to get out. As a writer he was more objective and nostalgia takes over. Grandparents missed townships. Long after apartheid they are still there. Still growing. Homelands are hated. Townships should be hated.

There are people living there, it's not that they are destitute. There are all sorts of classes. The community functions.

The desire is to represent where you come from. Make the people rounded, make the audience shocked that those people are the same as people from the city.

Gibson:

From Durban. Overlooked the sea. Culture was over the sea. The local view repelled. Radio depressed. The timbre of white radio.  First political memory - mother say Verwoerd has been stabbed to death. Didn't know who Verwoerd was. Family disconnected from South Africa. Goals didn't involve local. Didn't see or register images of townships.

Blacks wore American stuff with their own style. This interested him. The minedump he once climbed showed him Soweto for the first time. The scale of that image that something that big could be hidden for so long was shocking. Afraid to go there.

Those were the streets that hooked and kept him here. Absence of image of township and black life. Designed as spaces that one doesn't linger in. Migrant labour that goes home. White people needed permits to go into township. Footage of townships was shot over police shoulders. Wanted to make verité films and needed a collaborator an insider. A poet and intellectual and his pal, the thug rub shoulders together.

Found archival images that we are familiar with but that couldn't be seen in the 70s. Few images of blacks and they were victims. He made documentaries in a vacuum. People could only speak about their own experience. Absence of the naturalist image. Yizo Yizo wanted the people to be what they really were.

Van Wyk:

White people have a preconceptions of what happens in the township. Horrified at being introduced by a whitey as choosing between gangster and writer. Not true. People knew the gangsters on the township, but not the names of the writers.

His township book - it's skinner. Should he use their real names. Not realising that it would sell 20 000 copies. Worried about it but the editor didn't think it was necessary. He had to move.

The people love that he wrote about their story. That they are interconnected.

Now lives in a sterile white suburb. You don't have to end up in the township. But has visited the township. People think that his accent will change.

Buhlungu:

Will respond to the presentations. Sociology professor focuses on activism. Labour. Politics.

Township is familiar. People have something to say. It symbolizes many things. Resistance, suffering, battles, wars, apartheid, shameful. They have produced leaders and rapists. Two contrasting views - jewels or hellholes. There's a website. South African townships are true jewels of the country. Heritage. Art. Sports. Culture revival.

Skosana carried a cross and did a hunger strike because the hellhole of crime still exists. It's a burden to be black today.

Issues: the good and the bad live side by side, difficult to untangle. Are the townships fir whites, colored and blacks the same? Place where people can practice their culture. Standards are relaxed, the bar is lowered. If a crook offers you goods you buy them. Celebrate and tolerate mediocrity.  Materialism is good that's how you measure people. How you got them doesn't matter. I only steal from white people. State has promoted and encouraged entitlement. Service delivery is the worst thing in post 1994. The grant. What's next. Individuals never have to take over.

What he feels we should talk about. Can you talk about townships without talking about rural areas and white suburbs. Mobility means move away. Townships are diverse. There's apartheid in the townships. What are the differences between the kinds. Hierarchy. Has that been demolished. The protests don't happen in the townships. Townships move. White suburbs become townships because the whites move out when the townships arrive. Apartheid was about space and ascribing that space with power or powerlessness. That hasn't ended. It's going to stay with us. The politicians abandoned the townships first. The majority is represented by people who don't live with them.

Questions

Alumni culture, money should be reinvested into home. Mamatu: We must start over. Get rid if the townships. Raze it  accountability of the rich, are they looting the poor. Gibson: working on a science fiction, envisioning an idealistic view of what can happen. Buhlungu: black diamonds (people who make it in the white suburbs) won't be attacked. Politicians are attacked, it will accelerate.

Townships are racialised by the speakers, but everyone lives in a version of the townships. What about what the role of the township is today. The past of the township is different from the present. Soweto is a farce, it always matters where you come from. Structural elements make it hard to succeed. Oprahvisation of the township. We don't show them as they are. We mutter about potholes, the labs in the township schools are derelict.

Diepsloot's trouble were political, not that they were attacking their neighboring white suburb, Dainfern.