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State of the Art in Digital Disease Detection

Larry Brilliant's TED Talk back in 2006 played an important role in catalyzing my own personal interest in humanitarian technology. Larry spoke about the use of natural language processing and computational linguistics for the early detection and early response to epidemics. So it was with tremendous honor and deep gratitude that I delivered the first keynote presentation at Harvard University's Digital Disease Detection (DDD) conference earlier this year.

The field of digital disease detection has remained way ahead of the curve since 2006 in terms of leveraging natural language processing, computational linguistics and now crowdsourcing for the purposes of early detection of critical events. I thus highly, highly recommend watching the videos of the DDD Ignite Talks and panel presentations, which are all available here. Topics include “Participatory Surveillance,” “Monitoring Rumors,” “Twitter and Disease Detection,” “Search Query Surveillance,” “Open Source Surveillance,” “Mobile Disease Detection,” etc. The presentation on BioCaster is also well worth watching. I blogged about BioCaster here over three years ago and the platform is as impressive as ever.

These public health experts are really operating at the cutting-edge and their insights are proving important to the broader humanitarian technology community. To be sure, the potential added value of cross-fertilization between fields is tremendous. Just take this example of a public health data mining platform (HealthMap) being used by Syrian activists to detect evidence of killings and human rights violations.

2012/05/24

Koko: Canadian Tar Sands Up Close and Personal

03 Economy, 03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government

Koko sad.

The Canadian Oil Sand Mines Refused Us Access, So We Rented This Plane To See What They Were Up To

Robert Johnson

Business Insider, 18 May 2012

When reaching out to Alberta oil sands companies before a trip to Canada last month, I thought all of them mined oil the same way — they don't.The open mining most people think of when they picture the oil sands is just one way of extracting crude from the ground, but it is without a doubt the most dramatic. And we had to see it.

Check out the pictures >

After being refused a mine tour and any type of access to a mining site or equipment, Business Insider rented a plane that I used to see everything I could of the mines on my own.

Restricted to flying no lower than 1,000 feet above the ground, I spent nearly two hours leaning out the window of a small Cessna 172 with a long lens, snapping pictures and trying to keep warm.

The oil sands hold up to two trillion barrels of oil spread over more than 54,000 square miles, making it the second largest oil deposit in the world after Saudi Arabia.

The amount of energy spent recovering that oil and the pollution created in refining it is immense and the impact on the environment profound.

Check out the pictures >

Read full article and see high-resolution photographs.

2012/05/242012/05/24

Event: 13-14 July NYC Robert Steele Live at Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE)

Advanced Cyber/IO, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Hacking, Knowledge

Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) Number 9

HOPE Number Nine will be taking place on July 13, 14, and 15, 2012 at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City. H.O.P.E. stands for Hackers On Planet Earth, one of the most creative and diverse hacker events in the world that's been happening since 1994.

Learn more, Register

Robert David STEELE Vivas

Live at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City

The opening speaker for HOPE in 1994, he has been invited back to every HOPE since then, offering both a serious briefing, and SPY IMPROV, his “open anything” Q&A.

AnyMan for President

30 Minutes: Robert Steele: How I Tested the Boundaries of the Two-Party Tyranny – Last Call for Occupy/*

Not to be outdone by Jello Biafra, Robert Steele ran for President in 2012. Accepted by the Reform Party as a candidate, he tested the boundaries for six weeks, created a world-class presidential platform, a coalition cabinet, and the foundation for a national strike to demand electoral reform. He also connected with every single other candidate less Romney, and reports his impressions….not pretty at all. His campaign put forward AnyMan for President, and is the only campaign to focus on a concept instead of a personality. We the People Reform Coalition

Amazon Page

30 Minutes: 2012 The Open Source Everything Manifesto: Transparency, Truth, & Trust (Evolver Editions, June 2012)

If you thought Steele was motivated before, promoting Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), you ain't seen nothin' yet. Now he's going for the whole enchilada. In a 215 page pocketbook (use the link above to see the 33 slides and buy it in advance from any number of sources) he lays out how We the People can reconnect with our integrity, harvest the integrity inherent in Nature, and stomp into oblivion the fraud, waste, and abuse characteristic of all of our organizations — academic, civil society, commerce, government, media, military, and non-government/non-profit. Steele is for intelligence (decision-support) what Stallman is for software. The citizens' intelligence militia is self-organizing, from zip code to global. Panarchy rules!

2 hours: SPY IMPROV: Everything you ever wanted to ask about anything…

Steele, a recovering spy, honorary hacker across multiple continents, and the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction, reading in 98 categories (see the list here) will answer any question on any topic. Having already set the world record at The Next HOPE (8, 2010) with an eight-hour Q&A, this year the time is being strictly limited to 2 hours.

See Also:

THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth & Trust

2012/05/22

JUST OUT: The New Designing A World That Works for All by Medard Gabel & Global Laboratory Participants

Earth Intelligence, Knowledge

purchase a paperback copy

download color version pdf (32MB)
download black-and-white version pdf (16MB)

Goals of the Lab

See the movie

Medard Gabel, co-creator with Buckminster Fuller of the analog World Game, is the designer of EarthGame(TM) and the foremost comprehensive architect for a massive multiplayer game that connects all humans with all information in all languages all the time. A founding member of the guiding council of Earth Intelligence Network, he remains the single most focused personality at the intersection of design, open source, serious games, and informed participatory budgeting and policy making.

2012/05/202012/05/20

Robert Steele: 2012 as a Mind-Shift Year

Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Extraterrestial Intelligence

Corruption, crime, false testimony, lies, are sand in the gears of society. All of our institutions — academia, civil society, commerce, government, law enforcement, media, military, and non-government/non-profit — have lost their integrity and embraced a culture of cheating, corruption, and living lies at every moment. If we are to survive as homo sapiens, we must restore integrity to every aspect of our existence. At multiple levels, the majority of us–including myself–are simply not ready to rise to the opportunities before us, including the salvation of the US political system in 2012, rather than “four more years” of corruption so pervasive it shames us, taints us, for eternity.

Tip of the hat to Berto Jongman, one of Europe's finest researchers, for pointing me to the work of Mike Bara. Below are short presentations of his two key books, and my notes on his 2010 presentation (following the embedded video), as well as some additional suggested viewing and reading.

Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA, Enlarged and Revised Edition

The New York Times bestseller about the strange history of NASA and its cover-ups regarding its origins and extraterrestrial architecture found on the moon and Mars is even more interesting in its new edition.

Authors Richard C. Hoagland and Mike Bara include a new chapter about the discoveries made by ex-Nazi scientist and NASA stalwart Wernher von Braun regarding what he termed “alternate gravitational solutions,” or the rewriting of Newtonian physics into hyperdimensional spheres.

The Choice: Using Conscious Thought and Physics of the Mind to Reshape the World

There is a great shift coming in the near future. We can all feel it. But what does it truly herald for the planet we inhabit?

Is there reason for concern about the apocalyptic prophecies of the Mayan calendar, and is there an underlying physics driving these changes?

How do planetary alignments and astronomical events such as the ones predicted for 2012 affect your consciousness?

And most importantly, what can each of us do to influence this coming shift in both consciousness and physical reality?

Below the line: VIDEO from 2010 (1:28:24), and My Notes, More on Mike Bara

Continue reading “Robert Steele: 2012 as a Mind-Shift Year”

2012/05/192012/05/19

Mini-Me: Cosmic Channeler Anticipates Major Natural Disaster Near Term on West Coast

Earth Intelligence

Huh?

Posted on May 19, 2012

Cosmic Paradigm Alert

Greeting, my name is Bren-Ton. Those of us aboard Athabantian wish to convey the following.

We believe that a major geological event for your planet may occur within the next few days. It will be centered off the Northwestern coast of the United States. It is an event similar to that which you, Mark, described in your book “Decimal.” It will affect the coast and somewhat further inland. We can not predict the full affects of this undersea movement.

Conditions appear to be such that a major disruption could occur along the edge of the Juan de Fuga Plate where it intersects the Pacific Plate, many miles off the coast. There are stresses building there that may cause an earthquake of some magnitude and a resulting tsunami — if they are released in a violent manner. There is the possibility that they may be released more gradually and little will be disrupted. It is not clear to us how things will proceed from this point forward.

It is a natural phenomenon that is part of Earth’s adjustment of her physical form. It involves no nuclear reactor such as was the case off Japan, and because it is a natural, we are not allowed to interfere.

We know, Mark, that you are very reluctant to publish this communication. However we do not wish to delay this warning for those who might be affected.

Blessings for all from those of us aboard Athabantian.

Phi Beta Iota: Our general view is that Epoch A is ending and Epoch B is beginning in 2012, and that 2012 is a pivot year for humanity and for the Earth, generally toward a better world, one that works for all. There will be many challenges across the core domains (political/military, socio-economic, ideo-cultural, techno-demographic, and natural-geographic. From resilience, panarchy.

By way of context, below is from the FAQ section of the website:

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Cosmic Channeler Anticipates Major Natural Disaster Near Term on West Coast”

2012/05/182012/05/18

Dolphin: Ecological Chains Worldwide Being Damaged

Academia, Earth Intelligence

Ecological Chains Worldwide Being Damaged

Nathan

Planet Save, 18 May 2012

Subtle ecological chains worldwide are being damaged by human influence, leading to significant losses of population in different ecosystems.

One of the longest ecological chains ever found has just been discovered in the remote Palmyra Atoll, in the Pacific Ocean. This area is useful to science because there are relatively untouched ecosystems that are in close proximity to human-influenced ones.

Researchers there have now documented how something as simple as replacing native trees with non-native palms can lead to a collapse of seabird, plankton, and manta ray populations around an island.

The findings were almost accidental, as the researchers involved were there for a different study involving manta rays and their predator-prey interactions.

As they were doing the study though, they noticed that the manta rays kept returning to the coastlines of certain islands.

At the same time, a different researcher was in the area doing a study on the effects that non-native palm trees had on seabird communities and native habitats.

While interacting with each other, the overlap of the research began to become apparent.

Continue reading “Dolphin: Ecological Chains Worldwide Being Damaged”

Category: Earth Intelligence

Patrick Meier: State of the Art in Digital Disease Detection & Mapping