January 2011 – Page 25 – Public Intelligence Blog

11 January 2011

‘Gay demon’ exorcist claims mass animal deaths due to ‘don’t ask’ repeal

Thousands of fish washed up dead in Chicago in latest bizarre mass animal deaths

Google Map Reveals Weird Weather Caused Half of Mass Animal Death Incidents

Overeating and indigestion blamed for 1,000 turtle doves falling dead in Italy with strange blue stain on their beaks

Blue stain believed to be sign of poisoning or hypoxia – lack of oxygen that is precursor to altitude sickness
Cold weather and overbreeding blamed for deaths of two 2million fish in Chesapeake Bay
Disease behind deaths of 100,000 fish in Arkansas River
At least nine incidents of mass animal deaths across the globe
Hundreds of confused birds plummeted to their deaths in multiple locations in the U.S.
Rapid movement of Magnetic North Pole towards Russia may have caused bird deaths

Continue reading “Indications & Warning — Dead Birds, Fish, Crabs–Across Multiple Countries–Worldwide & Unexplained”

2011/01/11

High Speed Rail in America: Identifying Mega-Regions

03 Economy, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Commerce, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Policy, Waste (materials, food, etc)

A new study released today by America 2050 identifies the high-speed rail corridors with the greatest potential to attract ridership in each of the nation's megaregions. Corridors connecting populous regions with large job centers, rail transit networks, and existing air markets scored best. The study also recommends that the federal government adopt a quantitative approach to evaluating future investment in high-speed rail.

Download the press release.

The 56-page study, entitled, “High-Speed Rail in America,” cites ridership potential as the number one factor in determining if a corridor is suitable for investment, identifies the specific conditions that generate ridership demand, and scores each corridor according to strength in those areas. The top performing corridors in each region determined to have the greatest potential demand for high-speed rail ridership include corridors such as: New York-Washington, DC; Chicago-Milwaukee; Los Angeles-San Diego; Tampa (via Orlando) to Miami; Dallas-Houston; Atlanta-Birmingham; Portland-Seattle; and Denver-Pueblo.

2011/01/11

Foresight Engine & Breakthroughs to Cures

07 Health, Academia, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Government, Videos/Movies/Documentaries

video intro

Watch the intro video on the idea of imagining that you, as president, have instigated an initiative in 2020 to collect ideas and participation from throughout the world to help cure an incurable disease 100 million Americans are infected with http://foresight.breakthroughstocures.org

Also see: http://blog.breakthroughstocures.org

2011/01/112011/01/11

Evolution & Social Change II

Cultural Intelligence

Prior Conversations Leading Up to This One:

Journal: Get America Working–A Conversation Part II

Journal: Get America Working–A Conversation Part III

Journal: Get America Working-A Conversation Part IV Enter usfruct (husbandry of the planet) and Spiritual Ecology

Evolution and Social Change I

Evolutionary psychology is a good thread upon which to base our social evolution. You can use it to clarify old thinking that doesn't work, suggest that new thinking can become organic as adaptation to reality, and can even associate religion. However, the trope about Pleistocene psychology being something that is stubbornly with us is rather flimsy. I've just been reading David Buller, Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature, and he pretty well dispenses with that idea. I can't reproduce the whole argument, but it seems that we are being driven by cultural evolution, and that has produced plenty of modifications to stone age cognition. That has given us opportunity and danger, and it happens quickly. He cites a study of 18 generations of guppies that produced some big changes. Humans have had 400 generations since Pleistocene, and much has changed, even physically.

2011/01/112011/01/11

TRUTH: Another Way of Looking at the Shooting

Cultural Intelligence

VIEWPOINT #1: Gabby Giffords, a tragic prophet
Washington Post, By E.J. Dionne Jr. Monday, January 10, 2011

There is one commentator whose words should enlighten us on the meaning of Saturday's shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the savage murders that took the lives of, among others, a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl. The person is Giffords herself.

Read balance of Viewpoint #1…

VIEWPOINT #2: The charlatans' response to the Tucson tragedy
Washington Post, By George F. Will, Tuesday, January 11, 2011

It would be merciful if, when tragedies such as Tucson's occur, there were a moratorium on sociology. But respites from half-baked explanations, often serving political opportunism, are impossible because of a timeless human craving and a characteristic of many modern minds.

Read balance of Viewpoint #2…

Phi Beta Iota: Most may be missing an important point regarding on the Arizona shooting. We completely agree that the individual shooter in question was probably set off by the cross-hairs rhetoric, but what we think has been absent in the range of responses to the tragedy in Tucson is the divorce of the two-party system from reality and from the majority of the people. The bailing out of Wall Street with its ten million dollar bonuses, the tens of millions foreclosed and evicted, the 6-12 million long-term unemployed, the 22% current unemployment rate, NONE OF this, from our vantage, is being dealt with responsibly by the government.

The people are not stupid. Putting a banker in charge of Obama's time and what he sees at the White House is to some a last straw and makes clear what Robert Steele wrote in his quick book, ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig, i.e. President Obama and Congress are far, far too dependent on money and lobbyists and many feel a pox on both their houses.

Sadly, many Americans on both sides of the aisle believe that this is no longer a Republic. The government is busy federalizing state and local police and preparing for the worst. What the government does not realize is that the worst is when our children start speaking of emigrating to Canada or Denmark because they have better governments. That breaks our collective heart. Our government, across the board, has lost a great deal of its integrity. Gandhi had it right on truth and non-violence, but we are coming off so many decades of really ignoring the people, especially the common people and those who are poor or now always struggling to make ends meet, that we should fear for the worst.

Continue reading “TRUTH: Another Way of Looking at the Shooting”

2011/01/112011/02/21

Reference: Network Neutrality…Why Not…+ RECAP

Advanced Cyber/IO, Augmented Reality, Autonomous Internet, Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Earth Intelligence, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), International Aid, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Methods & Process, Mobile, Open Government, Policies, Real Time, Reform, Standards, Strategy, Threats

A note about “network neutrality”

by jonl on January 10, 2011

This is something I posted in the “state of the world” conversation with Bruce Sterling on the WELL…

I give talks on the history and future of media, and on the history, evolution, and history of the Internet. I gave the talk this week to a small group gathered for lunch in a coworking space here in Austin, and after hearing the talk a technologist I know, Gray Abbott, suggested that I say more about the coming balkanization of the network as the most likely scenario. The Internet is a network of networks that depends on cooperative peering agreements – I carry your traffic and you carry mine. The high speed Internet is increasingly dependent on the networks of big providers, the telcos or cable companies like AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, Time Warner, and Comcast. They all see the substantial value supported by their networks and want to extract more of it for themselves. They talk about the high cost of bandwidth as a rationale for charging more for services – or metering services – but I think the real issue is value. When you see Google and Facebook and Netflix making bundles of money using your pipes, you want a cut. And if you’ve also tried to get into the business of providing content, it’s bothersome to see your network carrying other competing content services, including guerilla media distribution via BitTorrent.

Continue reading “Reference: Network Neutrality…Why Not…+ RECAP”

2011/01/112011/01/11

US Loses Face & Standing with China & Pakistan

02 China, 02 Diplomacy, 05 Iran, 06 Russia, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Advanced Cyber/IO, Cultural Intelligence, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Methods & Process, Military, Officers Call, Policy, Strategy, Threats

NIGHTWATCH Extract China-US: Special comment. International news services broadcast video and translations of Chinese Minister of Defense Liang insulting and hectoring the US, represented by the Secretary of Defense. The Chinese tasked Secretary Gates to defend and to explain to the Chinese why the US sells weapons to Taiwan and conducts naval training in the Yellow Sea. China demanded they stop. Instead of rejecting the Chinese demands and leaving, Gates tried to defend what needs not defense in Asia – US national policy.

A couple of points are worth noting. The tongue lashing Gates endured at a Singapore conference last year by a Chinese general clearly was no accident. That insult focused on the same issues as the latest. Gates should have walked out of the Singapore meeting last year and should have walked out of today's session. It remains unclear what the US hoped to gain that merited humiliation.

China is not ready to be a cooperative partner in international security affairs as some analysts contend; resents and resists the tutelage or guidance that some analysts think the US must offer; and has no intention of becoming more open in response to US requests if only because the US wants it so badly.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Phi Beta Iota: See our Memorandum on Chinese Irregular Warfare. The US Government has hit bottom in terms of lacking legitimacy at home and credibility abroad. Ideology is not a substitute for intelligence, and civility is not a substitute for cultural understanding.

US bends to Pakistan's wish

By M K Bhadrakumar Asia Times Online

The unscheduled visit by United States Vice President Joe Biden to Islamabad this week underscores Washington's embarrassment and anxiety that it stands excluded from a regional initiative on Afghan peace process that could be about to take off. The rapid sequence of events over the past fortnight has taken Washington by surprise.

Read entire analysis of role played by Turkey, Russia, and Iran…

DefDog Comment: Most insurgencies last past 10 years it almost always requires a political settlement….thus we are seeing what could have been accomplished at the beginning by understanding the Pashtun and sitting down, Jirga style, and asking for UBL, who was granted sanctuary under the Pasthun Honor Code, Pasthunwali…..no cultural understanding has resulted in a 10 year waste…

Phi Beta Iota: The US Government is suffering from multiple disconnects–from its public, from reality, from strategic analytics, from cultural intelligence–from ANY intelligence relevant to all challenges at all levels–and finally, from integrity. Integrity is what allows well-intentioned people to cope with ambiguity. When they give up their integrity, they yield the field to those with political, ideological, and financial ambitions, and the public interest suffers–as does the welfare of our Armed Forces in harm's way.