Cultural Intelligence – Page 768 – Public Intelligence Blog

Evaluating the Impact of SMS on Behavior Change

The purpose of PeaceTXT is to use mobile messaging (SMS) to catalyze behavior change vis-a-vis peace and conflict issues for the purposes of violence prevention. You can read more about our pilot project in Kenya here. We’re hoping to go live next month with some initial trials. In the meantime, we’ve been busy doing research to develop an appropriate monitoring and evaluation strategy. As is often the case in this new innovative initiatives, we have to look to other fields for insights, which is why my colleague Peter van der Windt recently shared this peer-reviewed study entitled: “Mobile Phone Technologies Improve Adherence to Antiretroviral Treatment in a Resource-Limited Setting: A Randomized Con-trolled Trial of Text Message Reminders.”

Full post below the line. Original source.

Continue reading “Patrick Meier: Evaluating the Impact of SMS on Behavior Change”

2012/07/252012/07/25

Patrick Meier: Become a (Social Media) Data Donor and Save a Life

Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Geospatial

Become a (Social Media) Data Donor and Save a Life

I was recently in New York where I met up with my colleague Fernando Diaz from Microsoft Research. We were discussing the uses of social media in humanitarian crises and the various constraints of social media platforms like Twitter vis-a-vis their Terms of Service. And then this occurred to me: we have organ donation initiatives and organ donor cards that many of us carry around in our wallets. So why not become a “Data Donor” as well in the event of an emergency? After all, it has long been recognized that access to information during a crisis is as important as access to food, water, shelter and medical aid.

Read full post.

Phi Beta Iota: This has very provocative and inspiring implications for redefining (or restoring) what it means to be human — the art of sharing information to help the community, the collective, survive and prosper. We are honoring Dr. Meiers original idea by including Data Donor as a permanent search term for the Open Source Everything Highlights.

2012/07/242012/07/24

Chuck Spinney: Syria Lessons Learned and Current SitRep

05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

Attached is a very thoughtful report on what is happening to Syria, written by a long-time observer of the Middle East.

Chuck Spinney
La Spezia, Italia

The Destruction of Syria

by Patrick Seale

Agence Global, 24 Jul 200012

Once one of the most solid states in the Middle East and a key pivot of the regional power structure, Syria is now facing wholesale destruction. The consequences of the unfolding drama are likely to be disastrous for Syria’s territorial integrity, for the well-being of its population, for regional peace, and for the interests of external powers deeply involved in the crisis.

EXTRACT:

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2012/07/242012/07/24

Don Beck: Three Book Rave and Spiral Dynamics in September

Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence

Dear Friends,

Here’s an old question I often put to my students in training: When you find yourself enveloped in twilight, can you be sure it’s just before the dark of night … or, instead, before a bright new day will dawn? Think about that for a while.

Indeed, no one can doubt that at this point the state of the world is of grave concern.
But have you noticed? As our complex global challenges increase by the day, also more and more extraordinary human beings are pointing to a different direction for humankind. Unlike those succumbing to despondency and fear, they bear bright tidings – not of the imminent collapse of all we hold dear but of wise new ways to a whole other manner of doing and being. These intrepid ones are beacons of clarity and light for our world. They sound the clarion call for new systems of seeing, solving, and evolving.

Right now, the best-selling books by three such excellent humans compel our attention. We have written to you about them before, but the sheer importance of their recent publications bears repeating.

Foremost thought-leaders all, these authors are…

Continue reading “Don Beck: Three Book Rave and Spiral Dynamics in September”

2012/07/23

Mini-Me: NCAA fines Penn State $60M, vacates wins from 1998-2011

Academia, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Culture, Ethics, Idiocy

Huh?

NCAA fines Penn State $60M, vacates wins from 1998-2011

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) — The NCAA crippled Penn State football for years to come and practically tore Joe Paterno's name out of the record books Monday, erasing 14 years of victories and imposing an unprecedented $60 million fine and other punishment over the child sexual abuse scandal.

“Football will never again be placed ahead of educating, nurturing and protecting young people,” NCAA President Mark Emmert declared in announcing the penalties.

The governing body of college sports shredded what was left of the Hall of Fame coach's legacy – the sanctions cost Paterno 111 wins and his standing as the most successful coach in the history of big-time college football – while dealing a severe blow to the university's gold-plated gridiron program.

The NCAA ordered Penn State to sit out the postseason for four years, slashed the number of scholarships it can award and placed football on probation, all of which will make it difficult for the Nittany Lions to compete at the sport's highest level.

Raising the specter of an exodus of athletes, the NCAA said current or incoming football players at Penn State are free to immediately transfer and compete at another school.

For a university that always claimed to hold itself to a higher standard – for decades, Paterno preached “success with honor” – Monday's announcement completed a stunning fall from grace.

Read full article with video and photos.

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2012/07/222012/07/22

Tom Atlee: Empowering Public Wisdom – A Practical Vision of Citizen-Led Politics

Cultural Intelligence, Worth A Look

Dear friends,

A year ago Doug Reil, the associate publisher of North Atlantic Books, explored with me the possibility of writing a manifesto to clarify my vision of a wise democracy. The culmination of that conversation is my new book EMPOWERING PUBLIC WISDOM: A PRACTICAL VISION OF CITIZEN-LED POLITICS to be released August 7 as part of NAB's Evolver Series.

My 2003 book THE TAO OF DEMOCRACY outlined the theory of holistic politics and listed numerous resources to realize it. EMPOWERING PUBLIC WISDOM takes the next step, painting a fairly detailed – but of course not final – vision of how we could make it happen. It highlights our need for real wisdom to successfully address our 21st century challenges and explores how we can co-create that wisdom in ways that will transform our sense of what democracy is all about.

I invite you to read a bit more about it and to order it in advance for only $14.95 from online or local bookstores. Your order will encourage more bookstores to stock it, and that will help more people see it and buy it, which in turn will help this vision of a wise democracy come to life in the rich compost of our currently wasting-away democracy. Along those lines, if you'd like to alert your social networks to this, please do.

cover empowering public wisdom — Amazon Page

To give you a better sense of EMPOWERING PUBLIC WISDOM, I've enclosed a description of the book and its table of contents as well as several thoughtful endorsements. At the book's new website – http://empoweringpublicwisdom.us (still under development) – you can also read my brief “Manifesto: A call to establish a legitimate, wise, powerful, collective voice of the people” that declares the intent of the book right upfront. You can also buy the book there.

Finally, the transformational network Reality Sandwich is collaborating with NAB to serialize EMPOWERING PUBLIC WISDOM online – approximately one chapter every 3 weeks. Chapter 1 “Democracy is about power- and the people” is already posted at http://bit.ly/EPW-Ch-1 .

Please join me in spreading the word about this new resource for a co-intelligence society. The state of democracy everywhere suggests it is time for a change.

Coheartedly,
Tom

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

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2012/07/222017/01/02

Mini-Me: Assassination Nation – How Others See the USA….

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military

Assassination Nation

Fifty Years of US Targeted ‘Kill Lists’: From the Phoenix Program to Predator Drones

by DOUG NOBLE

“A broad-gauged program of targeted assassination has now displaced counterinsurgency as the prevailing expression of the American way of war.”

–Andrew Bacevich [1]

Counterpunch, 19 July 2012

EXTRACT:

In fact, US assassination and targeted killing, with presidential approval, has been going on covertly for at least half a century. Ironically, all this drone killing now offers us a new opportunity: to pry open the Pandora’s box hiding long-held secrets of covert US assassination and targeted killing, and to expose them to the light of day. What we would find is that the only things new in the latest, more publicized revelations about kill lists and assassinations are the use of drones, the president’s hands-on approach in vetting targets, and the global scope of the drone killing.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Assassination Nation – How Others See the USA….”