The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Read this story and then the next one, and think about what they are both saying. This is how badly out of whack our economy has become serving the purposes of the uber-rich.
NYT Profile of Employed & Homeless New Yorkers Is a Warning for America
DAVID HARRIS-GERSHON – Tikkun Daily
And here is a second waypoint on the course of our decline. It is all the more tragic being entirely self-inflicted.
Abandoned Homes Are the Future: Imaginative Ideas Turn Blight Into Beauty
HENRY GRABAR – Salon
Developing MicroFilters for Digital Humanitarian Response
Filtering—or the lack thereof—presented the single biggest challenge when we tested MicroMappers last week in response to the Pakistan Earthquake. As my colleague Clay Shirky notes, the challenge with “Big Data” is not information overload but rather filter failure. We need to make damned sure that we don’t experience filter failure again in future deployments. To ensure this, I’ve decided to launch a stand-alone and fully interoperable platform called MicroFilters. My colleague Andrew Ilyas will lead the technical development of the platform with support from Ji Lucas. Our plan is to launch the first version of MicroFilters before the CrisisMappers conference (ICCM 2013) in November.
A web-based solution, MicroFilters will allow users to upload their own Twitter data for automatic filtering purposes. Users will have the option of uploading this data using three different formats: text, CSV and JSON. Once uploaded, users can elect to perform one or more automatic filtering tasks from this menu of options:
Continue reading “Patrick Meier: MicroFilters for Digital Humanitarian Response”
Games run September 11-21 worldwide—anyone can play
“We behave ourselves into new ways of thinking,as distinct from thinking ourselves into new ways of behaving.” —from the Hoʻoponopono practice of forgiveness
SEATTLE, September 9, 2013—Announcing the Compassion Games: Survival of the Kindest, a worldwide “co-opetition” running September 11 through 21, 2013. To date, 18 communities in four countries have signed on, and the number of teams and local activities is growing daily.
Opening ceremonies and local festivities will kick off the Games September 11 in communities around the world. Over the following 10 days, neighborhoods, organizations, businesses, and individuals will organize and participate in games of their choice. Scores will be tallied and displayed online, so the progress of teams and individuals can be tracked across the globe. Closing ceremonies will take place worldwide on September 21, coinciding with the International Day of Peace, established by the United Nations in 1981.
Organized by the nonprofit Compassion Games International (CGI), the Compassion Games are designed to help and inspire individuals to make their communities safer, kinder, more just, and better places to live. The Games provide a network through which individuals, organizations, and businesses can actively participate in and lead societal change—being empowered and caring citizens, while putting kindness at the center of fun, good-natured, competitive play. CGI offers tools and an active online community to help organizers form teams and participate.
Continue reading “Jon Ramer: Compassion Games to 21 September 2013”
Phi Beta Iota: But we still do not have 1:50,000 combat charts for everywhere (Somalia, for example) and we still cannot put a geospatial display with all-source data fusion at machine speed on ANY analyst's desk.
Phi Beta Iota: War profits the few, peace the many — the single fastest way to create a prosperous world at peace is to distribute free cell phones and free Internet access (i.e. free education one cell call at a time via call centers for the first couple of years) to the five billion poor. Earth Intelligence Network figured that out in 2006. Still no takers.
New! Humanitarian Computing Library
The field of “Humanitarian Computing” applies Human Computing and Machine Computing to address major information-based challengers in the humanitarian space. Human Computing refers to crowdsourcing and microtasking, which is also referred to as crowd computing. In contrast, Machine Computing draws on natural language processing and machine learning, amongst other disciplines. The Next Generation Humanitarian Technologies we are prototyping at QCRI are powered by Humanitarian Computing research and development (R&D).
My QCRI colleagues and I just launched the first ever Humanitarian Computing Library which is publicly available here. The purpose of this library, or wiki, is to consolidate existing and future research that relate to Humanitarian Computing in order to support the development of next generation humanitarian tech. The repository currently holds over 500 publications that span topics such as Crisis Management, Trust and Security, Software and Tools, Geographical Analysis and Crowdsourcing. These publications are largely drawn from (but not limited to) peer-reviewed papers submitted at leading conferences around the world. We invite you to add your own research on humanitarian computing to this growing collection of resources.
Many thanks to my colleague ChaTo (project lead) and QCRI interns Rahma and Nada from Qatar University for spearheading this important project. And a special mention to student Rachid who also helped.
A new generation of cash-strapped ‘millennials' have very different expectations about jobs, credit and money. As Michelle Fleury reports, they are using the internet for a new ‘sharing economy'.
The cash-strapped millennials using ‘sharing economy'
The ‘millennials' are the generation that came of age after the 2008 financial crisis.
Cash-strapped and internet-savvy, they have very different expectations about jobs, credit and money.
Part of the new ‘sharing economy', they have taken to the idea of sharing rather than buying with a vengeance.
Michelle Fleury reports from New York.
About OHM2013
OHM2013 – Observe. Hack. Make. is a 5-day international outdoor technology and security conference. OHM2013 is currently requesting proposals for content.
A motley bunch of around 3000 hackers, free-thinkers, philosophers, activists, geeks, scientists, artists, creative minds and others will convene from all over the world for this informal meeting of minds to contemplate, reflect, share, criticize, look ahead, code, build, and more.
An otherwise unassuming stretch of land, just 30km (20mi) North of Amsterdam, will be transformed into a colourful oasis of light providing a backdrop for this unique event. It is an immersive experience, with an emphasis on interaction.
The four-yearly Dutch hacker camps provide a very open, friendly and relaxed atmosphere, with a high level of knowledge. The campsite is buzzing with energy, ideas and projects, not least because people from various backgrounds are interacting. It is a non-commercial community event where every visitor is also a volunteer.
Event Home Page and Call for Participation
Maps: OHM GIS – OpenStreetMap – Google Maps
Please Circulate Freely (txt version) (PDF version):
ROBERT STEELE: This is legitimate hacking's third wind (ham radio was the first, cyber and social engineering the second). This takes hacking to a new level, with an emphasis on “Do It Yourself” and thus fullfils the guidance from Buckminster Fuller: do not seek to repair a pathologically damaged system, instead create a new system to replace it, and route around the old system. I have proposed a lecture and a workshop (originally commissioned for the Wales Intelligence Conference in 2013), and am seeking donations to cover travel — estimated $1,500. I particularly solicit donations for pre-conference and post-conference sessions, in person or via Skype, anywhere in Europe including the UK that will help cover travel including side trips, and perhaps a bit more to support the work of our 501c3. I am on stand-by for Afghanistan and believe they won't move on replacing the KIA/WIA until September for a 1 October start date.
See Also:
