Michel Bauwens: Top Ten P2P Trends of 2014
#OSE Open Source Everything, Cultural Intelligence
1. Reaching of the tipping point for (distributed) renewable energy
2. The rise of open cooperatives and ethical enterpreneurial coalitions
3. The emergence of cryptoledger applications and a crypto-currency for the commons
4. Cities and Countries of the Commons
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Yoda: Russia Declares NATO The Main Enemy
Government, IO Deeds of War, Peace Intelligence
New Russian Military Doctrine Labels NATO as Main Threat
Moscow, Russia: The Kremlin on Friday branded the expansion of NATO as a fundamental threat to Russia in a revised military doctrine that dramatically reflects deteriorating relations with the West.
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Bill Gates: “I Had No Clue — Boy Was I Naive” — $1 Billion Down the Drain — Along with Money from Bloomberg, Rubenstein, Stayer, and Zuckerman….
IO Impotency
Gates' ‘Grand Challenges' result in few payoffs
Bill Gates used the word “naive” — four times — to describe himself and his charitable foundation. It was a surprising admission coming from the world’s richest man. But the Microsoft co-founder seemed humbled that, despite an investment of $1 billion, none of the projects funded under the Gates Foundation’s “Grand Challenges” banner has yet made a significant contribution to saving lives and improving health in the developing world. “I was pretty naive about how long that process would take,” Gates told a gathering of nearly 1,000 people in Seattle. Read more.
Phi Beta Iota: Using kids to distribute money without doing your homework, to include holistic analytics and design, true cost economics, and — heavens — open source everything engineering — is not how you make impact investments.
John Steiner: Responses to Mark Bittman in NYT (“Is It Bad Enough Yet?”)
Cultural Intelligence
Letters
Fixing What’s Wrong With America
To the Editor:
Re “Is It Bad Enough Yet?,” by Mark Bittman (column, Dec. 14):
EXTRACTS:
01 The question is whether any change can occur with such a bought-and-paid-for, dysfunctional Congress and president.
02 But where are our leaders? Truthfully, too busy chasing their next campaign contribution or positioning themselves for their next political campaign.
03 Continuing protests are needed, but protests fall on deaf ears among those politicians who have created safe districts for themselves by drawing gerrymandered borders.
04
SchwartzReport: US Fossil Fuel Industry: $721M to Bribe Congress; $4.8B in Subsidies (ROI), $271B in Profit
05 Energy, Commerce, Corruption, Government
This is how you buy the government of the United States. You say, “$721 million is a lot of money.” I respond it is a cost of business item. Fossil fuel companies operating in the U.S. and Canada made $271 billion dollars in profit in 2012, while continuing to receive billions in subsidies. As of April 14, 2014 , according to Mother Jones, “Taxpayers currently subsidize the oil industry by as much as $4.8 billion a year, with about half of that going to the big five oil companies—ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, BP, and ConocoPhillips.” So let me see. They spent $721 million to buy the government; they got $4.8 billion in subsidies. And the conclusion is: You and I paid the fossil fuel companies through subsidies, money which they metaphorically in turn used to buy the government so that it operates responsive to their interests, rather than the interests of the citizens who paid the taxes. What a deal.
The Fossil Fuel Industry Spent More Than $721 Million During 2014’s Midterm Elections
Yoda: Peer Review Stifles Innovation
IO ImpotencyMulti-part problem.
Does the peer review process stifle scientific innovation?
A new study suggests the current model may succeed in keeping out the scientific riff-raff, but its maintenance of the status quo comes with a drawback, the study's authors argue — the regular rejection of cutting-edge work.
