this paper covers a lot of the ground we've been discussing here [at Google Group Next Net] about what kind of intentions a ‘next net' would facilitate. worth a read.
Phi Beta Iota: The current approaches to “identity” are vestiges of the industrial-era commoditization of humans and the fragmentation of the commons. In the 1990's the Hackers Conference (Silicon Valley) discussed trust and identity authentication in combination with anonymnity (or better, invisibility).
SAN FRANCISCO — Inside a darkened theater a viewer floats in a redwood forest displayed with Imax-like clarity on a cavernous overhead screen.
The hovering sensation gives way to vertigo as the camera dives deeper into the forest, approaches a branch of a giant redwood tree, and then plunges first into a single leaf and then into an individual cell. Inside the cell the scene is evocative of the 1966 science fiction movie “Fantastic Voyage,” in which Lilliputian humans in a minuscule capsule take a medical journey through a human body.
There is an important difference — “Life: A Cosmic Journey,” a multimedia presentation now showing at the new Morrison Planetarium here at the California Academy of Sciences, relies not just on computer animation techniques, but on a wealth of digitized scientific data as well.
NEW YORK – Ignorance is the root of all evil, according to Plato, who also famously gave us a still-current definition of its opposite: knowledge. For Plato, knowledge is “justified true belief.” That definition is worthy of consideration as we reflect on the perils of ignorance in the twenty-first century.
Plato thought that three conditions must be met in order for us to “know” something: the notion in question must actually be true; we must believe it (because if we do not believe something that is true, we can hardly claim that we know it); and, most subtly, it must be justifiable – there must be reasons why we believe the notion to be true.
Consider something that we all think we know: the earth is (approximately) round. This is as true as astronomical facts get, particularly because we have sent artificial satellites into orbit and seen that our planet is indeed roundish. Most of us (except for a lunatic fringe of flat-earthers) also believe this to be the case.
What about the justification of that belief? How would you answer if someone asked you why you believe that the earth is round?
Last night the Taliban brazenly tunneled into a major prison in Kandahar and broke out 504 prisoners, including 106 Taliban fighters, according to Al Arabiya.
The 1,050-meter tunnel went from a nearby house into the political wing of the prison.
The Taliban told Al Arabiya it had buses waiting at the end of the tunnel to transport prisoners to Taliban safehouses.
This is the second biggest jailbreak in Afghanistan, after militants blew up the front gates to free around 1,000 prisoners in 2008.
The economic statistics that you are about to read are incredibly shocking, but they are also very, very real. Tonight there are going to be millions of men and women all across America that cannot sleep because they are consumed with anxiety about their financial problems.
NEW YORK (AP) — Former chief U.N. nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei suggests in a new memoir that Bush administration officials should face international criminal investigation for the “shame of a needless war” in Iraq.
Freer to speak now than he was as an international civil servant, the Nobel-winning Egyptian accuses U.S. leaders of “grotesque distortion” in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, when then-President George W. Bush and his lieutenants claimed Iraq possessed doomsday weapons despite contrary evidence collected by ElBaradei's and other arms inspectors inside the country.
The Iraq war taught him that “deliberate deception was not limited to small countries ruled by ruthless dictators,” ElBaradei writes in “The Age of Deception,” being published Tuesday by Henry Holt and Company.
The 68-year-old legal scholar, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 1997 to 2009 and recently a rallying figure in Egypt's revolution, concludes his 321-page account of two decades of “tedious, wrenching” nuclear diplomacy with a plea for more of it, particularly in the efforts to rein in North Korean and Iranian nuclear ambitions.
Phi Beta Iota: We endorse the truth & reconciliation process and believe that if the USA is to restore its promise as a contributor to the international community of nations, it must first disclose the truth. In our view, the investigation should begin three months prior to 9-11, when Dick Cheney first mandated a nation-wide counter-terrorism exercise that assured his complete control over the entire US Government on 9-11….an assurance he and his planners needed to not just let it happen, but to execute all the trimmings and then carry on with the Weapons of Mass Deception that committed America to an elective multi-trillion dollar war against multiple countries. Dick Cheney hijacked the Presidency. We all need the truth on the table.
Bob Seelert, Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide (New York):When things are not going well, until you get the truth out on the table, no matter how ugly, you are not in a position to deal with it.
