Interesting, ey wot?

Some good news for job seekers? Zybatsu Ebiz Weblog, Nielsen//NetRatings
today reports that the U.S. job recovery helped fuel 30 percent
year-over-year growth for career sites with nearly 27.2 million
surfers, or more than 18 percent of the total online population
visiting job search sites in June. Naturally, the big guys,
Monster.com, CareerBuilder and Yahoo! HotJobs, grabbed the top slots.

Campaign for Free Expression

http://www.article19.org/

Along with other global campaigns to affect social and political transformation (such as Amnesty International), Article 19 is an organization designed "to combat censorship by promoting freedom of expression and access to official information." With offices in London and South Africa, the organization has partners in over 30 countries, and monitors, researches, publishes, and litigates on behalf of freedom of expression around the world. Certainly one of the first stops on the site should be the Virtual Handbook of Expression, which contains a number of briefs of freedom of expression cases from the UN Human Rights Committee, the Inter-American Commission and Court on Human Rights, the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights and the European Commission and Court of Human Rights. In addition, the Virtual Handbook contains a number of key documents, organized around themes that include such timely topics as defamation, national security, print regulation, and privacy. Of course, visitors will also find a great deal of additional material here, including information on Article 19's work in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and a publication archive as
well.[via the Scout Report]

World Economic Forum

weforum.org The Global Competitiveness Programme is perhaps best known for its flagship publication, The Global Competitiveness Report. These series of reports are perhaps the most authoritative assessments of national economies throughout the world. The Reports themselves were first published in 1979, and continue to be made available in a variety of formats. And while the entire contents are not available here, visitors may read executive summaries and peruse other data. [via the Scout Report]

Democracy in the Balance

downes.ca: "Not quite my usual fare, but I wanted to share this article that identifies many of my concerns, concerns I feel not just when I look south of the border but also when I look at the environment here at home. 'Money has democracy in a stranglehold and is suffocating it.... That's why so many people are turned off by politics. It's why we can't put things right. And it's wrong. Hear the great Justice Learned Hand on this: 'If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: "Thou shalt not ration justice.''' It should be noted that when people opt out of politics, they opt out of rule of law also. As it becomes clearer that the law serves special interests, the moral imperative to follow a law vanishes. We tread on dangerous ground when we cede the mechanisms of society to a certain sector, one that harsher and harsher laws won't make right. By Bill Moyers, Sojourners, August, 2004 "

International Fraud

exportbureau.com How to protect yourself when buying out of country on the internet .....(free) [via shellcity.net]

RFID implanted tracking

RFID tags have been implanted under the skin of Mexico's top federal prosecutors and investigators to give them quick access to restricted areas inside a new federal anti-crime information center. The chips also could provide more certainty about who accessed sensitive data at any given time. (In the past, the biggest security problem for Mexican law enforcement has been corruption by officials themselves.) The microchip tags lie dormant under the skin until read by an electromagnetic scanner, which uses a technology known as radio frequency identification (RFID) that's now commonly used for inventory control. (San Jose Mercury News 14 Jul 2004)
 
Could you see this coming: School authorities in the Japanese city of Osaka have decided the benefits outweigh the disadvantages and will now be chipping children in one primary school. The tags will be read by readers installed in school gates and other key locations to track the kids' movements.

"A thing long expected takes the form of the unexpected
when at last it comes." Mark Twain

In your Forearm? VeriChip Registry: "VeriChip is a miniaturized, implantable radio frequency identification device (RFID) that has the potential to be used in a variety of personal identification, security, financial, and potential healthcare applications. About the size of a grain of rice, each VeriChip product contains a unique verification number and will be available in several formats. The verification number is captured by briefly passing a proprietary scanner over the VeriChip. A small amount of radio frequency energy passes from the scanner energizing the dormant VeriChip, which then emits a radio frequency signal transmitting the verification number. Once implanted just under the skin, via a quick, simple and painless outpatient procedure (much like getting a shot), the VeriChip can be scanned when necessary with a proprietary VeriChip scanner. A small amount of radio frequency energy passes from the scanner energizing the dormant VeriChip, which then emits a radio frequency signal transmitting the individual’s unique personal verification (VeriChip ID) number. The VeriChip Subscriber Number then provides instant access to the Global VeriChip Subscriber (GVS) Registry – through secure, password-protected web access to subscriber-supplied information. "

Drug Cocktails

A wired.com article "Get ready for high-speed pharmbots that mix and match drugs and doses by the millions -- CombinatoRx - mixing and matching drugs in search of a cure, by robot:

Why hasn't anyone tried this before? It's only recently that the technologies have been available to do such data-intensive screening. Of course, all major pharmaceutical firms already use robotics for high-speed scouting of potential drug treatments. It's a relatively straightforward process to analyze the interactions of a single chemical and a single protein. By contrast, searching out unexpected interactions among 2,000 disparate compounds yields nearly 2 million possibilities for any one disease. Three- and four-part combinations, which Borisy hopes to try, will produce between 1 billion and 600 billion possible combinations. [via medPundit]

Let's listen up...

[via SiliconValleyNews] He blinded me with "science": Inaccurate, unreliable and biased aren't words you normally associate with "the scientific method". Unless, apparently, you're a member of the Bush administration, in which case they're your guiding principles. That's the contention of The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), which last week accused the administration of distorting and suppressing science to suit its political goals. "The actions by the Bush administration threaten to undermine the morale and compromise the integrity of scientists working for and advising America’s world-class governmental research institutions and agencies," UCS said in an open letter signed by 4,000 scientists, among them 48 Nobel Prize winners and 127 members of the National Academy of Sciences.

As C.S. Lewis put it: I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to the rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments.

Wireless Sensors

wireless.weblogsinc.com: "The recent Sensors Expo & Conference that took place in Detroit showcased a number of new applications brought forth by the use of wireless sensors that, from the looks of things, may have “found a home” in your residence.

Imagine your house sensing when you arrive home and flipping room lights on or off as you move from the hallway to the kitchen. Or how about the living room thermostat turning up the heat in the bedroom because it senses the room has grown colder than the others.

» Wireless sensors create a buzz Chicago Tribune (free registration required)
» Motes, Smart Dust Sensors, Wireless Sensor Networks
» Bluetooth luggage tag

Netflix for books

booksfree.com is a paperback book borrowing service with over 40,000 titles in 74 categories offering unlimited access to their library, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for as little as $8 per month.

VERY Small Getting VERY Big

theharrowgroup.com: "We haven't even begun to scratch the surface of nanotech's potential."