The top ten search queries for ነሓሰ 2010

1	go
2	love
3	peace
4	up
5	mother
6	up
7	there
8	hip
9	buddy
10	miss

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August 31, 2010 Tags: top ten Posted in: top ten search queries No Comments

Ice Cream tease…

Poor guy just wanted some ice cream, but got an entertaining show instead.

*PS – I’m having some technical difficulties so please bear with me…

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August 11, 2010 Tags: Turkish ice cream Posted in: poetry No Comments

Sharing is caring…

Lame title; but it’s true!

I added a new AddThis button to all blog posts (see it down below?) and dictionary terms. So, now all you, tech savvy, readers can share any ole post/word by email, facebook or whatever.

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August 3, 2010 Tags: addthis Posted in: website update No Comments

The top ten search queries for ሓምለ 2010

1	through
2	carrot
3	wish
4	child
5	news
6	effect
7	lie
8	next
9	hope
10	wait

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July 31, 2010 Tags: top ten Posted in: top ten search queries No Comments

Sketch

A quick pen sketch of a little girl.

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July 28, 2010 Tags: Eritrea, pen, sketch Posted in: Eritrea, sketch No Comments

Blog template change!

I thought that I should mix things up around here so I switched templates. To those who use a 800×600 screen resolution; ~~you might not like this new format…~~ you’re cool now…

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July 27, 2010 Tags: change Posted in: website update No Comments

Linguistic diversity; good thing… or the cause of African poverty!!

Heh silly/hyperbolic blog titles aside, this is the rough question that was posed then brutally slapped away by Greg Downey of Neuroanthropology. Check it out. It’s a good, solid and thorough post on the subject of linguistic diversity; one which I don’t think I could paraphrase without missing a couple of huge chunks. However here are a few questions that Greg raised and answered:

Linguistic diversity? Liberal conspiracy

Does linguistic difference create conflict?

Should we care about language extinction?

Do people want their local languages to go away?

Can we help stop language extinction?

I will also use this opportunity to link to two posts about 1. language instruction in Eritrea; and 2. a UNESCO report (June 2010) on why and how Africa should invest in African languages and multilingual education.

Oh; and it is of my firm opinion that native language preservation does NOT cause poverty.

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July 26, 2010 Tags: Greg Downey, neuroanthropology Posted in: Africa, Eritrea, Linguistics, language One Comment

Eri-Canadians talk about bilingualism

Meseret.ca has an interesting discussion about the importance of young Eritreans (who grew up in the diaspora) to learn the native language of their parents (they talk mostly of Tigrigna). The issues they talk about are pretty interesting…

Watch live streaming video from mesradio at livestream.com

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July 13, 2010 Tags: meseret Posted in: Eritrea, Tigrigna No Comments

More on global population

WILL 9 BILLION PEOPLE MAX OUT THE EARTH’S NATURAL RESOURCES? OR IS OVERCONSUMPTION THE REAL PLANETARY THREAT?

The number of people on Earth is expected to grow from 6.5 billion to about 9 billion by 2050. That much is relatively uncontroversial. But recently, we’ve seen disparate views emerge as to how this population growth will affect the planet.

They have a couple of people writing about this issue, but my opinion closly resembles that of Fred Peace:

Fred Pearce looks at the same demographic trends and sees very good news. “The population bomb is being defused at a quite remarkable rate,” he writes. “Women around the world have confounded the doomsters and are choosing to have dramatically fewer babies.” He then goes on to cite declining fertility rates in countries across Europe, Asia, and Latin America. And in Africa, where high fertility remains the norm, Pearce is optimistic that those extra people can provide a way out of the continent’s poverty trap. Bad agriculture, not population growth, he contends, is the continent’s main predicament—and in this essay, he describes how more people, employed on ecologically friendly, small-scale farms will be key to African sustainable development. Chris Reij, a Dutch geographer whom Pearce interviews for the article, concurs. “The idea that population pressure inevitably leads to increased land-degradation is a myth,” he says. “It does not. Innovation is common in regions where there is high population pressure.”

Consumption, not population, Pearce concludes, is the main problem confronting human society today. After all, he writes, “virtually all of the extra 2 billion or so people expected on this planet in the coming 40 years will be in the poor half of the world.” Assuming per capita emissions remain roughly where they are today, those 2 billion poor people will only boost the developing world’s share of greenhouse gas emissions from 7 to 11 percent. In other words, achieving zero population growth—even if it were possible—would barely touch the climate problem. The real culprits, according to Pearce, are not “generations of poor not yet born” people, but the stable population in the developed world with its gigantic ecological footprint.

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July 10, 2010 Tags: population, seed Posted in: world events No Comments

Hans Rosling on global population growth

Here is a TED talk by Hans Rosling on the character of population growth in today’s world. I suggest that you check out his other TED videos (“Asia’s rise,” “insights on poverty” and “developing world stats“); he is a very informative and interesting speaker.