Collaboration Zones – Page 1454 – Public Intelligence Blog

Questions over business deals of UN climate change guru Dr Rajendra Pachauri

The head of the UN's climate change panel – Dr Rajendra Pachauri – is accused of making a fortune from his links with ‘carbon trading' companies

Christopher Booker and Richard North

Telegraph 20 December 2009

Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”), as a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics he has no qualifications in climate science at all.

What has also almost entirely escaped attention, however, is how Dr Pachauri has established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations.

Climate summit ends in chaos and ‘toothless' deal

The Copenhagen climate summit ended in chaos and acrimony, forcing leading nations back to the drawing board in the search for a legally binding deal on emissions.

Full Story Online

December 20, 2009

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Clear-Cutting the Truth About Trees

By BERND HEINRICH Burlington, Vt.

Full article with highlights by Chuck Spinney below the fold.

Continue reading “Journal: ClimateGate 21 December 2009 Morning”

2009/12/212010/09/02

Journal: Update on Combatting Global Terrorism

09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Government, Law Enforcement, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence

Kudos should be given to the UN’s Counter Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) for producing what is perhaps the most comprehensive and frank assessments to date of the international community’s implementation of Security Council Resolution 1373 and the measures adopted to combat international terrorism. Their report was presented to the Security Council by CTED Executive Director Mike Smith on December 16th and provides detailed information on what is actually being done, on the vulnerabilities, and on the technical assistance required. It provides a thematic overview of the laws and actions taken in the areas of enforcement, border control, countering the financing of terrorism, and international cooperation as well as a region by region assessment. Human rights considerations are also addressed. The report should be read closely.

2009/12/212009/12/21

Worth a Look: Deep Web Multilingual Federated Search

Analysis, Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, InfoOps (IO), Key Players, Methods & Process, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Technologies, Threats

Deep Web Implements the Multilingual Search that Google Imagines

Donald A. DePalma 17 December 2009
Filed under (Translation & Localization, Translation Technologies)

In an interview with the U.K. newspaper The Daily Telegraph, Google vice president for search products Marissa Mayer challenged the readership to “Imagine what it would be like if there was a tool built into the search engine which translated my search query into every language and then searched the entire world’s websites.” We spoke with Abe Lederman, CEO of Deep Web Technologies, a technology supplier that already offers this multilingual search.

. . . . . . .

The bottom line: Multilingual search is not just a figment of Google’s imagination. It’s already here — you just have to dig a bit deeper to find it.

Deep Web Press Release

SANTA FE, N.M., Sept. 3, 2009 — Deep Web Technologies is proud to announce development of a prototype of a multilingual translation capability for clients using its federated search applications. An early prototype of multilingual searching was demonstrated to the members of the WorldWideScience Alliance in June of 2009. This new feature, when fully developed and implemented, will translate a user’s search query into the native language of the collections being searched, will translate result titles and snippets back to the user’s original language and aggregate and rank these results according to relevance. The translation process will be seamless, making it simple to search collections in multiple languages from a single search box in the native language of the user.

. . . . . .

Deep Web Technologies (http://www.deepwebtech.com) creates custom, sophisticated federated search solutions for clients who demand precise, accurate results. The tool of choice when needing to access the deep web, federated search performs real-time, parallel searches of multiple information sources, merging the results into one page. Serving Fortune 500 companies, the Science.gov Alliance (http://www.science.gov), the U.S. Dept. of Energy, the Dept. of Defense, Scitopia.org (http://www.scitopia.org), Nutrition.gov, WorldWideScience Alliance (http://www.worldwidescience.org) and a variety of other customers and partners, Deep Web Technologies has built a reputation as the “researcher’s choice” for its advanced, agile information discovery tools

Continue reading “Worth a Look: Deep Web Multilingual Federated Search”

2009/12/21

Journal: Fraudulent Security Device Popular in Iraq

09 Terrorism, Commercial Intelligence, Law Enforcement, Military

Original (3 Nov 09) Full Story Online

Iraq Swears by Bomb Detector U.S. Sees as Useless

The small hand-held wand, with a telescopic antenna on a swivel, is being used at hundreds of checkpoints in Iraq. But the device works “on the same principle as a Ouija board” — the power of suggestion — said a retired United States Air Force officer, Lt. Col. Hal Bidlack, who described the wand as nothing more than an explosives divining rod.

Still, the Iraqi government has purchased more than 1,500 of the devices, known as the ADE 651, at costs from $16,500 to $60,000 each. Nearly every police checkpoint, and many Iraqi military checkpoints, have one of the devices, which are now normally used in place of physical inspections of vehicles.

Schneier on Security: A blog covering security and security technology November 6, 2009

The Doghouse: ADE 651: A divining rod to find explosives in Iraq:

ATSC’s promotional material claims that its device can find guns, ammunition, drugs, truffles, human bodies and even contraband ivory at distances up to a kilometer, underground, through walls, underwater or even from airplanes three miles high. The device works on “electrostatic magnetic ion attraction,” ATSC says.

To detect materials, the operator puts an array of plastic-coated cardboard cards with bar codes into a holder connected to the wand by a cable. “It would be laughable,” Colonel Bidlack said, “except someone down the street from you is counting on this to keep bombs off the streets.”

Complete quackery, sold by Cumberland Industries:

Still, the Iraqi government has purchased more than 1,500 of the devices, known as the ADE 651, at costs from $16,500 to $60,000 each. Nearly every police checkpoint, and many Iraqi military checkpoints, have one of the devices, which are now normally used in place of physical inspections of vehicles.

Continue reading “Journal: Fraudulent Security Device Popular in Iraq”

2009/12/202009/12/20

Journal: Liars & Cheats as “Person of the Year”

Cultural Intelligence

Full Story Online

Hilarious but on target, IMO

Tiger Woods, Person of the Year

OP-ED COLUMNIST FRANK RICH

December 20, 2009

AS we say farewell to a dreadful year and decade, this much we can agree upon: The person of the year is not Ben Bernanke, no matter how insistently Time magazine tries to hype him into its pantheon. The Fed chairman was just as big a schnook as every other magical thinker in Washington and on Wall Street who believed that housing prices would go up in perpetuity to support an economy leveraged past the hilt. Unlike most of the others, it was Bernanke’s job to be ahead of the curve. Yet as recently as June of last year he could be found minimizing the possibility of a substantial economic downturn. And now we’re supposed to applaud him for putting his finger in the dike after disaster struck? This is defining American leadership down.

If there’s been a consistent narrative to this year and every other in this decade, it’s that most of us, Bernanke included, have been so easily bamboozled. The men who played us for suckers, whether at Citigroup or Fannie Mae, at the White House or Ted Haggard’s megachurch, are the real movers and shakers of this century’s history so far. That’s why the obvious person of the year is Tiger Woods. His sham beatific image, questioned by almost no one until it collapsed, is nothing if not the farcical reductio ad absurdum of the decade’s flimflams, from the cancerous (the subprime mortgage) to the inane (balloon boy).

2009/12/20

Journal: Automated to Death–An American Obsession

Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence

FEATURE

Automated to Death

As software pilots more of our vehicles, humans can pay the ultimate price. Robert N. Charette investigates the causes and consequences of the automation paradox

EXTRACT:

The Flight 124 crew had fallen prey to what psychologist Lisanne Bainbridge in the early 1980s identified as the ironies and paradoxes of automation. The irony, she said, is that the more advanced the automated system, the more crucial the contribution of the human operator becomes to the successful operation of the system. Bainbridge also discusses the paradoxes of automation, the main one being that the more reliable the automation, the less the human operator may be able to contribute to that success. Consequently, operators are increasingly left out of the loop, at least until something unexpected happens. Then the operators need to get involved quickly and flawlessly, says Raja Parasuraman, professor of psychology at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., who has been studying the issue of increasingly reliable automation and how that affects human performance, and therefore overall system performance.

Continue reading “Journal: Automated to Death–An American Obsession”

2009/12/202009/12/20

Journal: ClimateGate 20 December 2009 Afternoon

Earth Intelligence

Global Warming as Groupthink

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's process institutionalizes groupthink on a global scale.

Follow the money in global warming hoax

On the money game, he has stated, “They give an endless amount of money to the side which agrees with the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). … If you want a grant for a research project in climatology, it is written into the document that there must be a focus on global warming.

All the rest of us, we can never get money… That is really bad, because then you start asking for the answer you want to get.

Jesse Ventura on Global Warming: A Secret Plot to Take Over the World?

Last week Jesse promoted 9/11 truthers and this past week, he decided that global warming is actually a hoax perpetrated by the UN, a powerful global cabal of industrialists and international Jewish bankers, to take over the world….cue scary doomsday music.