big on love, tolerance, and the human potential
My sense of the holy, insofar as I have one, is bound up with the hope that someday, any millennium now, my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which love is pretty much the only law.
In such a society, communication would be domination-free, class and caste would be unknown, hierarchy would be a matter of temporary pragmatic convenience, and power would be entirely at the disposal of the free agreement of a literate and well-educated electorate. – Richard Rorty
The exile of a poet, is today a simple function of a relatively recent discovery; that whoever wields power is also able to control language, and not only with the prohibition of censorship, but also by changing the meaning of words. – Czeslaw Milosz, Nobel Lecture [nod to wood s lot]
The Institute for Applied Autonomy held workshops in which participants create interactive maps of their city’s surveillance infrastructure.
Initially this meant focusing on the mechanics of surveillance, pointing out that in practice CCTV surveillance has had very little impact on actual crime and that it is subject to the biases of system designers and operators, which means it often gets used to ogle women and single out youth and minorities for scrutiny.
This activity asks a very different set of questions than simply “Does CCTV make you uncomfortable?”
Instead, it points to the lack of any kind of baseline data about surveillance.
Before we can have an intelligent conversation about CCTV surveillance, for example, it would be nice to know how many cameras are in operation, where they are, who owns them, etc. For the most part, this information simply doesn’t exist.
In most countries, cameras are put up by individual building owners and their data is increasingly managed by third-party private companies.
In effect, we have an emergent infrastructure of video surveillance that is growing on an ad-hoc basis, without any public discussion or oversight. Interview at WorldChanging
On the other hand, officers are trawling through hours of CCTV footage with unconfirmed reports suggesting they have a crystal clear image of the suspects who planted bombs in London.
Jamais Cascio is asking if we’re taking into account the possibility of failure.
If global warming isn’t a sufficiently compelling threat for you, substitute the existential problem of your choice: asteroid strike; zoonotic pandemic; biowarfare; molecular manufacturing-based warfare; unfriendly AI.
What does it mean to prepare for recovery?
Will we wake up in a post-disaster society run by farmers and librarians?
A Canadian online newspaper has reviewed Michael Moore’s Sicko.
“Sicko points out this curious moment in American history. Namely, where’s the anger?
“Why aren’t people enraged by what has happened to their country? Where’s that good old American revolutionary spirit?
“Perhaps people who are sick, afraid, demoralized and in debt are far easier to govern than a healthy, perky, sassy populace.”
Corn farmers will produce a record crop this year.
A quarter of the US corn crop will be used for ethanol. Corn prices are at a 10 year high – $750 an acre compared with $420 for soybeans. Planting more than 90 million acres, the US agricultural landscape is transformed as soybeans, cotton and wheat are displaced.
Animal feed prices are rising while ingredient supplies are under pressure. To use ethanol plant waste called distillers grain, feedlots are being relocated. To raise cash, feedlots are building power plants to capture cattle urine and manure. By-product markets are changing as oil crops, wood waste, grasses, sugar-cane stalks and citrus waste are moving toward fuel production. [Financial Times]
Corn Belt not required
Irrigation and fertilizer use is way up. Monsanto, Dupont and Syngenta report that engineered seed sales bring high margins and record sales. For the next rotation, planting marginal land is likely with the use of patent seeds – potentially a one-third increase in total acreage. [Financial Times]
The United States surpassed Brazil last year as the world’s largest ethanol producer with around five billion gallons compared to some 4.3 billion gallons produced in Brazil. But the United States needs around 14 billion gallons just to provide enough for a 10 percent blend in this country’s gasoline supply. [Miami Herald]
Adjustments are global. Traditional US grain-belt exports are down. Feed and food shortages are expected to spike prices. Clearing new acreage, Brazil hopes to increase exports of food. Indonesia and India are under heavy pressure. China stopped licensing projects that use food grains for ethanol, causing sweet potato and sorghum demand to skyrocket as the next choice for fuel production.
We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on. – Richard Feynman
Juries in criminal cases are getting it wrong – at least one case in eight.
“As a society can we be satisfied if 10 percent of convictions are incorrect?
Can we be satisfied knowing that innocent people go to jail for many years for wrongful convictions?”
If you’re not colliding with thermal updrafts caused by overworked blow dryers, if you’re willing to take on the appearance of intuitive ectomorphs, if you’re tired of snotty galleries and overstuffed museums, then you will enjoy The Secrets of Inner Loserhood while browsing Christopher Locke’s reviews on Amazon.com. Less prolific than I expected, but fun.
By Executive Order of the President, one of the nation’s highest honors is to be named a Presidential Scholar.
During the ceremony this year in the East Room of the Whitehouse, the young recipients handed a signed handwritten letter to the President.
Stating that they have a responsibility to voice their convictions, the letter urged a halt to “violations of the human rights”:
“We do not want America to represent torture.
We urge you to do all in your power to stop violations of the human rights of detainees, to cease illegal renditions, and to apply the Geneva Convention to all detainees, including those designated enemy combatants.”
Deputy press secretary Dana Perino said later that the United States does not torture and that the USA values human rights. Associated Press
What will be done if a user of a central records database is malevolent?
In 1944, the Netherlands’ government-in-exile pressed the British to precision-bomb buildings containing personal records. Attacks were carried out on municipal archives in many locales across the Netherlands. Fire brigades took their time; watching a building as the records went up in flames.
Between 1941 and 1943, the Germans used details in records to isolate, deport and murder more than 150,000 Jews residing in Holland.
Records were also used to identify opposition and to round-up conscripts for forced labor in Germany.
What is a balanced view of identity and privacy and security?
Stephen Lewis is isolating the issues and posting about identity and the infrastructure of records.
Canadian journalists, reporters, editors and camera operators believe that owners’ “values and politics” and “financial bottom lines” affect the news and the editorial agendas of the country’s publications and broadcast stations.
Some results from the largest study ever conducted on the state of journalism in Canada:
Ninety percent believe things have been getting worse over the last decade.
[Story on news quality here]
The complete report of the study [pdf] at Communications, Energy and Paperworkers.
There are media policies that contribute to war.
Slate prints more of telling us about jihadist staging, the angry islamist, but he’s saying more about how pictures inflate:
I have actually seen some of these demonstrations, most recently in Islamabad, and all I would do if I were a news editor is ask my camera team to take several steps back from the shot.
We could then see a few dozen gesticulating men (very few women for some reason), their mustaches writhing as they scatter lighter fluid on a book or a flag or a hastily made effigy.
Around them, a two-deep encirclement of camera crews.
When the lights are turned off, the little gang disperses.
And you may have noticed that the camera is always steady and in close-up on the flames, which it wouldn’t be if there was a big, surging mob involved.
Our attitudes about war are significantly driven by pictures of an enemy. For that matter, we shape opinions about welfare viewing pictures of poor people in housing blocs, about wealth viewing rich people in Malibu, about politicians viewing pictures that are usually carefully staged.
Launching this summer, the Earthmine map system will offer much more precision than Google’s video street maps.
Rafe Needleman stumbled onto the Earthmine camera truck and posted specs at Webware plus a few of Earthmine’s upcoming features:
• survey-quality 3D data
• laser range-finding
• object coordinates
• perspective-corrected hi-res pics
For sale to government and corporations, Earthmine will provide panorama picture maps with accurate locations of light poles, trash cans, storefronts, trees, faces and license plates.
Parading as an outsider, Fred Thompson has been a hustler & lobbyist for decades.
He earned more than $750,000 from a firm that wanted to limit its liability from asbestos lawsuits, and helped to raise some $5 million for the legal fees of Vice-President Dick Cheney’s disgraced aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby. [link]
MAN, noun.
An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he ought to be. – Ambrose Bierce
Tourists are vital to running America’s cities.
The number of overseas visitors to the U.S. has dropped 17% since its peak in 2000 — and 20% in the top 15 cities — costing more than $100 billion in lost visitor spending through 2005. In Los Angeles, tourism is expected to add $13 billion in direct cash to the economy this year, but from 2000 to 2005, the number of overseas travelers declined 27%.
Mayors are worried, nearly 75% saying that entry procedures and treatment by U.S. immigration and customs officials reinforce negative perceptions of the country. [LA Times]
The U.S. is likely to cede to China in the next couple of years its position as the third-most-visited international destination. France and Spain are the top international tourism destinations.
Factoid: American Tours International brings in 1 million tourists each year.
He said the Brits are more careful about dropping bombs on villages than the Americans.
US forces, he said, had a visible doctrine of using overwhelming force to keep troops out of harm’s way – with the result that, according to the BBC, coalition forces have now killed more civilians in Afghanistan this year than the militants have.
If that’s correct it is a truly terrifying statistic.
NATO is moving swiftly to try and limit the damage – apologizing….
From the Telegraph, with additional insight here.
The only difference between Bush and Hitler is that Hitler was elected.
We have people in this country who are richer than whole countries.
They run everything.
We have no Democratic Party.
It’s financed by the same millionaires and billionaires as the Republicans.
As the world is ending, I’m always glad to be entertained for a few moments.
The best way to do that is with music. You should practice once a night.
“But somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together,” Senator Obama said. “Faith started being used to drive us apart. Faith got hijacked.”
In a secret coalition with the Swedish Mafia, the powerful Tonga CIA is reported to have cracked a sinister plot which has stumped Homeland Security since the Pizza Delivery Conspiracy.
Seized during extensive search campaigns, new and alarming evidence reveals what may be secret offshore plans for mass distribution. Thought to be needed to authorize access to urban or wilderness terrorist training camps, numerous allen-type rods, perhaps weapons activation keys known as ikea or i-keys, have been recovered from a cache of contraband assembly kits.
Bush Administration intelligence teams are laboring to decipher cryptic picture diagrams and related printed materials that may contain hidden instruction codes.
Platoon leaders are complaining of poor GPS equipment while navigating maze-type warehouse facilities that slow progress and confuse highly skilled penetration squads. To help decrease port and border crossings, investigating personnel are installing surveillance equipment hidden in lightweight props that appear to be pricey electronics.
The Executive Branch is being criticized after leaked reports reveal that the Swedish Mafia has been allegedly contracted to train military prison guards in methods of torture that smother evil combatants under huge piles of plastic balls. Inhumane interrogation techniques include threats of bursting while forcibly ingesting tiny meatballs and the use of washable slipcovers in apparatus that restricts breathing. Stating the threat level will remain at orange, the Vice President has refused an Oversight Committee subpoena to disclose additional data.
Nixon’s Revenge?
Flu may hitch a ride on banknotes – New Scientist
The exchange of money has often been used as a model for the way infections spread. Now turn that thinking around because it looks as if the flu virus persists so well on banknotes – days rather than hours – that money could help spread the next pandemic.
The Supreme Court will hear this testimony regarding how we manage prisoners at Guantanamo.
“What were purported to be specific statements of fact lacked even the most fundamental earmarks of objectively credible evidence.”
Forbes
An Army officer who played a key role in the “enemy combatant” hearings at Guantanamo Bay says tribunal members relied on vague and incomplete intelligence while being pressured to rule against detainees, often without any specific evidence.
His affidavit, submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court and released Friday, is the first criticism by a member of the military panels that determine whether detainees will continue to be held.
Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, a 26-year veteran of military intelligence who is an Army reserve officer and a California lawyer, said military prosecutors were provided with only “generic” material that didn’t hold up to the most basic legal challenges.
Despite repeated requests, intelligence agencies arbitrarily refused to provide specific information that could have helped either side in the tribunals, according to Abraham, who said he served as a main liaison between the Combat Status Review Tribunals and the intelligence agencies.
The question we must face is: what do we want? We should want to abandon that which has no future. We should blow right through mere sustainability. We should desire a world of enhancement. That is what should come next. – Ken Novak
In 1998, I had it figured that the dot-com boom would become a dot-green boom. It took a while for others to get it. Some still don’t. They think I’m joking. They are still used to thinking of greenness as being ‘counter’ and ‘alternative — they don’t understand that 21st-Century green is and must be about everything — the works. Sustainability is comprehensive. That which is not sustainable doesn’t go on. Glamorous green.
Hung in the Precambrian basement of our paleomagnetic crater…
Other than standing great, an iron stiff skeleton sinewed upon the height of virtue; other than casting memory, back and beyond the first and only moment; other than penetrating boundary, free envisioning robed in the seduction of better; other than bending blood, our tasks of will encrusting good, then there is only beauty and beauty and only beauty, a melody exposed to the exquisite, well beyond the dilemma of our hopefulness.
Impressive ecstasy. The noble of our mind.