India's News Calligraphers Do It on Deadline

The Musalman is possibly the last handwritten newspaper in the world. Four professional calligraphers spend three hours on each page every single day to put out this daily paper.

Source: Wired
Thanks Valdemar!

Acido Surtido

From Buenos Aires, Argentina, comes a great multi-disciplinary magazine:
Acido Surtido is a publication on art and design distributed for free in the whole country (Argentina). The first issue of Acido Surtido was published in 2001, as an answer to the lack of action and the downhearted feelings that was threatening the national cultural production in those days. Trying to take over collective construction common places, Acido Surtido opens itself to other voices, getting together in order to share. A kind of generosity is underlying: those who offer the place, those who give their work, those who receive it and make its sense. There are some other principles. Avoiding commercialization and production paraphernalia that could make its cooperation spirit strange and move towards massive circulation. Betting on the quality of its contents secretly hoping to achieve fulfillment. In a nut shell: find the difficult balance between a high level publication and a self-produced fanzine.

Our collaborators come from different disciplines, but they are mostly linked to visual arts: designers, photographers, illustrators, fine arts artists. However, throughout our issues there has been a heterogeneous universe which also includes writers and poets together with other collaborators who could have hardly had the opportunity to develop project-like experiences.

Source: Slanted

5 minutes for the planet... today!

Ok, this may be a little off-theme, but...it´s important.
From France, "L’ Alliance pour la Planete" ("Alliance for the Earth"), an association of environmental and social justice groups has a simple message for everyone: sacrifice 5 minutes for the planet. You're asked to join others to switch off all electrical appliances between 19:55 and 20:00 CET on Thursday the 1st of February. (Please do the adjustment for your timezone).
It's not just about saving 5 minutes' worth of electricity, but a symbolic gesture to draw attention to our vast consumption of energy and the urgent need to reduce, reuse and recycle.
Why this date you may ask? Well, because tomorrow the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is due to release what is expected will be the strongest and most grave assessment to date of global warming by the world’s experts.

If the Eiffel Tower can do it...so can we!