01 Play: the capacity to experiment with one's surroundings as a form of problem-solving. Having a strong sense of play can be helpful when you pick up a new piece of technology that you've never used before, when you're trying to write an essay and your outline isn't functioning as you'd hoped, and when you're designing anything at all, from a dress to a web page to a concert's program.
02 Performance: the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery. Being able to move fluidly and effectively between roles can help you when you're exploring online communities, when you're trying to decide what actions are ethical, and when you're shuffling between home, work and school.
03 Simulation: the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes. Being able to interpret, manipulate and create simulations can help you understand innumerable complex systems, like ecologies and computer networks – and make you better at playing video games!
At the time of the July edition of Mazz-INT Blog, the government was tied in a knot over coming to grips with how to get long term spending under control so there would be the political conditions to raise the debt ceiling on August 2nd; NATO forces were engaged in a seeming stalemate in Libya to remove Gadhafi from power; there was rising concern about corruption in the Karzai “government” in Afghanistan; near open confrontation between Islamabad and the Washington over continuing US unilateral drone attacks against Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership inside of Pakistan; and the US Intelligence Community (IC) was finishing a quiet but well deserved victory lap for taking out Osama bin Laden. As August begins I am happy to report that Bin Laden remains dead —– with increasingly negative impacts for Al Qaeda, but little else as changed.
So what to discuss with you that is worth your time? As Eddie Layton, Nimitz’s N2 throughout WWII, was famous for saying “the biggest alligator is the one closest to you” which means to me the debt crisis and its impact on the on the IC. As I write this on 31 July, the Executive and Legislative branches are struggling to figure out how to raise the debt ceiling so the US government will not be in default on August 3rd when you are likely to be seeing these ramblings. So let’s focus on how debt crisis will likely impact the IC.
The government is certain we are stupid. This deal cuts $1.5 trillion over ten years while continuing the practice of borrowing $1 trillion a year. The net increase in debt is roughly $8.5 trillion.
Phi Beta Iota: The interactive edition is well worth going through. Below are highlights from our own review.
Six Risks Stand Out: Fiscal crisis, Geopolitical Conflict, Climate Change, Extreme Energy Price Volatility, Economic Disparity, Global Governance Failure.
Risk Interconnectivity Map: Central to the map are Economic Disparity and Global Governance Failures. Three clusters add depth to the potential sustained crisis: Fiscal-Energy Volatility; Crime, Corruption, and Failed States; and Water-Food Security.
Overall this is one of the most extraordinary points of reference in existence.
The Global Risks Report 2011 from the World Economic Forum highlights two primary megatrends with the potential to inject significant disruption into global systems. From the report:
Two risks are especially significant given their high degrees of impact and interconnectedness. Economic disparity and global governance failures both influence the evolution of many other global risks and inhibit our capacity to respond effectively to them.
In this way, the global risk context in 2011 is defined by a 21st century paradox: as the world grows together, it is also growing apart.
It is worth noting how inter-related these two megatrends are as wealth consolidation into an elite class enables them to further deconstruct global governance mechanisms. This has been a feedback loop for at least the past 40 years, if not longer, as western growth fueled the rise of non-state economic bodies & super-empowered individuals who then lobbied against regulatory measures that would aim to keep their rise in check and mitigate the risk of disparity. Elites consolidate more money & power, further driving disparity and eroding governance. What results is an interstitial vacuum where corporate intervention fails to see any profit motive and where state intervention lacks the funds or will to govern effectively.
In effect, the combination of super-empowered non-state actors, failures of state governance, and widespread economic disparity undermines the Rule of Law by releasing elites from accountability and driving the underclass deeper into criminality.
Newt Gringrich’s campaign denies the allegations, claiming they never used “agencies” to inflate the presidential candidate’s Twitter follower numbers.
GlobalPost, 2 August 2011
A social media analytics site says that 92 percent of Newt Gingrich’s 1.3 million Twitter followers are fake. The New York-based company, PeekYou, used an algorithm to evaluate whether Gringrich’s followers were real individuals, ABC News reports. It found most of Gringrich’s followers were business accounts, private accounts, anonymous accounts with no other web presence or spambots.<
. . . . . . .
PeekYou has also analyzed the Twitter accounts of the other Republican presidential hopefuls, according to Gawker, and has found that Gingrich is not the only GOP politician with a large spambot following. PeekYou claims that only 20 percent of Sarah Palin’s followers, 26 percent of Mitt Romney’s followers, 28 percent of Michele Bachmann’s followers and 32 percent of Tim Pawlenty’s followers are real humans.
Phi Beta Iota: Useful metrics emerge from this–extrapolating and by extention, everything about Gingrich can be presumed to be 92% fake unless proven otherwise, and everything about the other Republicans as 70% fake unless proven otherwise. Cyberspace is very unkind to those who lie for a living.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The U.S. government suspended an Arctic biologist over how he awarded a polar bear research project to the University of Alberta and its management, not for his earlier scientific work detailing drowned polar bears, a watchdog group said Monday.
The reality check:
Documents provided by the watchdog group showed questioning by investigators earlier this year focused on the polar bear observations that Monnett and researcher Jeffrey Gleason made in 2004.
American intelligence agencies are hoping to turn propaganda videos, images captured from enemy data caches, and other pics snapped with or without the subjects’ knowledge into readymade geolocation tags via a system that can identify exactly where any photo was taken anywhere in the world. If successful, such a tool could turn images captured from enemy hard drives–like those snatched from Osama bin Laden’s Pakistan compound back in May–into the makings for a point-by-point Google map of terrorist travels.
