Using wikis and digital fabrication tools, TED Fellow Marcin Jakubowski is open-sourcing the blueprints for 50 farm machines, allowing anyone to build their own tractor or harvester from scratch. And that's only the first step in a project to write an instruction set for an entire self-sustaining village (starting cost: $10,000).
Phi Beta Iota: Based on in-country reporting from Cynthia McKinney and others, we are quite certain that it is NATO that is committing the war crimes, and the rebels who are genociding black Libyans. We are equally certain the International Tribunal does not have a clue in terms of validated intelligence (decision-support) and therefore conclude that in this instance the warrants lack legitimacy and credibility and are an act of state–similar to the act of state against Martin Luther King; the act of state that sanctioned Israeli murder of US personnel aboard the USS Liberty; and the act of state that told 935 lies to create an elective three trillion dollar war on Iraq and Afghanistan.
A Florida group is calling on state lawmakers to enact a law “against state-sponsored perversion and oppression” in the wake of an aggressive TSA patdown of a diapered 95-year-old woman at Northwest Florida Regional Airport.
Phi Beta Iota: This is real simple. State by state, nullify the TSA and administer security as a state function. If the federal government does not like that, secede from the Union. TSA is not blocking flights from Europe or anywhere else that are fortunate in not having to put up with what passes for security in the USA.
The amount the U.S. military spends annually on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan: $20.2 billion.
That's more than NASA's budget. It's more than BP has paid so far for damage during the Gulf oil spill. It's what the G-8 has pledged to help foster new democracies in Egypt and Tunisia.
Phi Beta Iota: It is always helpful to remember Medard Gabel's graphic on the cost of peace versus war. For what we have spent on the military-industrial-intelligence complex these past ten years, never mind the legalized fraud of Wall Street, we could have eradicated the ten high-level threats to humanity. The US Government lacks both intelligence and integrity. Good people trapped in a very bad system–we need to set them free. An nation's best defense is an educated citizenry that pursues a foreign policy of peace and commerce with truth and trust as core value and core outcome.
“This book is a product of applying systems thinking to the management and organization of enterprises”. Russel L. Ackoff writes, “therefore, an understanding of the nature of systems and systems thinking is essential for understanding what this book is about. Although most people can identify many different systems, few know precisely what a system is. Without such knowledge, one cannot understand them, and without such an understanding, one cannot be aware of their implications for their management and organization and for treatment of the most important problems that currently face them” (p.5).
Thus, he firstly argues that a system is a whole consisting of two or more parts that satisfies the following five conditions:
(1). The whole has one or more defining properties or functions.
(2). Each part in the set can affect the behavior or properties of the whole.
(3). There is a subset of parts that is sufficient in one or more environments for carrying out the defining function of the whole; each of these parts is necessary but insufficient for carrying out this defining function.
(4). The way that each essential part of a system affects its behavior or properties depends on (the behavior or properties of) at least one other essential part of the system.
(5). The effect of any subset of essential parts on the system as a whole depends on the behavior of at least one other such subset.
In 1970 I taught from this book when it was entitled
“Choice, Communication and Conflict”
What makes this book “magical” is Ackoff (from his
management and behavioral science roots) provides
“operational definitions” for many ill-defined words
and concepts — from defining ‘knowledge' & ‘understanding' to providing definitions of feelings/emotions that — operationally — you know — that if certain events take place in a person's life, that you know the feeling they have.
This is only a glimmer of what this book is about. In terms of Kuhn's idea of “paradigm shifts” — this book
represents a shift that has yet to be appreciated, thirty years later!
Russell Ackoff 5.0 out of 5 stars Taking learning seriously, December 12, 2008 By Scott D. Gray (Marlborough, MA United States) – See all my reviews In modern America, everyone and his brother believes that the educational system is broken. But most people suggest responding with more of the same, rather than rethinking what learning is actually about. When the economy does well, people claim that it must be because of the education system and propose spending more money. When it does poorly, people say that it must be because we don't spend enough on education and propose spending more. Ackoff and Greenberg go back to first principals, and to daily experiences, to consider how people learn, and how education might be restructured. What they propose really does turn the modern vision of school on its head. Why do schools in the US — the land of the free and the home of the brave — condition children to be passive and to wait on authority? There is only one suggestion or conclusion that I question. There is an argument posited by one of the authors (Ackoff, I think) for an elaborate voucher system. However, the history of governments' tendency to want to manage how government money is spent would likely crush the innovation that is needed — pushing and encouraging private schools to recoil further from innovation and the cutting edge, and thereby eliminating the laboratories for reform of education. That said, the appeal for a voucher system is a very secondary aspect of the book, and does not distract from the arguments, message, and information.
Libya, Amnesty questions the Hague‘s findings: Are the rebels making up claims of mass rape?
