Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

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Yoda: Uruguay in the Lead – Jose Mujica, the World’s Most Radically Well-Intentioned President?

Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government
Got Crowd? BE the Force!
Got Crowd? BE the Force!

José Mujica: is this the world’s most radical president?

Uruguay’s José Mujica lives in a tiny house rather than the presidential palace, and gives away 90% of his salary. He’s legalised marijuana and gay marriage. But his greatest legacy is governing without giving up his revolutionary ideals

EXTRACT

A bust of Che Guevara peers down from a bookshelf in Mujica’s farmhouse. “He was unforgettable, a mould-breaker,” the president said. “He marked our entire youth.” Yet the man who, inspired by Guevara, once blew up factories owned by foreigners now offers them tax breaks. “I need capitalism to work, because I have to levy taxes to attend to the serious problems we have. Trying to overcome it all too abruptly condemns the people you are fighting for to suffering, so that instead of more bread, you have less bread,” he said. Not all Tupamaros have accompanied Mujica on his journey to soft, pragmatic socialism. “They left their ideals in their prison cells,” the former hostage Jorge Zabalza proclaimed recently. “Some old compañeros won’t understand,” Mujica said. “They don’t see our battle against people’s everyday problems, that life is not a utopia.”

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Worth a Look: Sarapis Non-Profit, Free/Libre/Open Source (FLO) Solutions to Local Challenges — A NYC Change Agent

#OSE Open Source Everything, Worth A Look

Sarapis | What

  FLO projects make their source materials freely accessible to the public at no cost & with few, if any, restrictions.

What’s the Problem?

Technological advancements lead to increases in productivity that are supposed to lead to increases in wealth. But for the vast majority of Americans, real wealth has actually been decreasing over the last 30 years. So where is all the new wealth going?

Continue reading “Worth a Look: Sarapis Non-Profit, Free/Libre/Open Source (FLO) Solutions to Local Challenges — A NYC Change Agent”

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Jean Lievens: Michigan Outlaws Personal Gardens — Is Michigan Stupid? Or Just Corrupt? Localities Need to NULLIFY!

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 06 Family, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Government
Jean Lievens
Jean Lievens

Personal Gardening and Farming Are Becoming Illegal

There once was a time when vegetable gardening and backyard farming were not endangered; these activities were a way of life. However, with booming big agriculture business comes the need for monetary and job security, which means that threatening the productivity of big agriculture will not be tolerated. With Michigan’s recent ban on backyard farming, along with many states regulating the amount of garden space individuals may have in their yard, the ability for Americans to grow their own food and feed themselves is becoming a thing of the past. The future of personal gardening and farming is in danger and may become illegal altogether.

Michigan recently announced that it has made changes to its Right to Farm Act, which allowed home owners to keep a small amount of livestock on their property without being considered a nuisance, as long as the rules of the Act were followed. Chickens, beehives and goats will officially no longer be tolerated on the properties of urban and suburban farmers, due to the protection of the Right to Farm Act being lifted from small home farmers. Some Michigan farmers believe this new ruling is in place because large producers do not want individuals to provide for themselves or their families; the believed goal is to ensure all are dependent on grocers and mass producers.

Continue reading “Jean Lievens: Michigan Outlaws Personal Gardens — Is Michigan Stupid? Or Just Corrupt? Localities Need to NULLIFY!”

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Yoda: Open Access Journals — Answer? Scam?

Academia, Ethics, Ineptitude, IO Impotency
Got Crowd? BE the Force!
Got Crowd? BE the Force!

Deciding who should pay to publish peer-reviewed scientific research

How open-access journals are changing the field of peer-reviewed science

John Abraham

The Guardian, 18 September 2014

There is an important discussion to be had about the future of scientific publications.

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A publisher cannot simply give papers away for free – they would rapidly go out of business. On the other hand, an author can opt to make their papers available without a pay wall, but the author has to pay for this option. My colleagues and I recently wrote a major ocean heating paper and paid multiple thousands of dollars to make it freely available. This money came from our research budgets – budgets that are already tight.

So into this mix enter open-access publishers. Instead of selling papers, they make the articles freely available to the public. On the one hand, this system dramatically alters who can gain access to articles. The papers can be freely downloaded anywhere in the world (hugely important if you are a researcher in the developing world). In addition, open-access journals typically do not print papers in hard copy form, thus saving money on printing and shipping. But how can these journals survive? They do that by charging the author. Fees range anywhere from $100–$1000 or so.

Continue reading “Yoda: Open Access Journals — Answer? Scam?”

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Mini-Me: Ghani Named Winner in Afghanistan — US Overrides Afghan Constitution and Forces Him to Accept Panjshiri Mob As “Partners”

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Transnational Crime
Who? Mini-Me?
Who? Mini-Me?

Ghani named winner of Afghan election, will share power with rival in new government

KABUL — Former finance minister Ashraf Ghani was declared the winner of Afghanistan’s contested presidential election Sunday, setting the stage for President Hamid Karzai’s departure from office and a security agreement allowing American troops to remain in the country after this year.

Ghani, 65, will become Afghanistan’s second president since the fall of the Taliban in 2001 and will face the continued threat of Islamist militancy, a severe budget shortfall that threatens to bankrupt the government, and rampant public corruption.

But before he was declared the winner in Afghanistan’s grueling year-long election process, Ghani agreed Sunday to share power with the second-place finisher, Abdullah Abdullah.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Ghani Named Winner in Afghanistan — US Overrides Afghan Constitution and Forces Him to Accept Panjshiri Mob As “Partners””

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Stephen E. Arnold: Russia (BRICS?) Firewalling the Internet

IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency
Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

Russian Content: Tough to Search If Russia Is Not on the Internet

Forget running queries on Yandex.ru if Russia disconnects from the Internet. Sure, there may be workarounds, but these might invite some additional scrutiny. Why am I suggesting that some Russian content becomes unsearchable. Well, I believed the story “Russia to Be Disconnected from the Internet.” Isn’t Pravda a go to source for accurate, objective information?

The story asserts:

This is not a question of disconnecting Russia from the international network, yet, Russian operators will need to set up their equipment in a way to be able to disconnect the Russian Internet from the global network quickly in case of emergency, the newspaper wrote. As for the state of emergency, it goes about both military actions and large-scale riots in the country. In addition, the government reportedly discusses a possibility to empower the state with the function to administer domains. Currently this is a function of a public organization – the Coordination Center for the National Domain of the Internet. The purpose of the possible measure is not to isolate Russia from the outside world, but to protect the country, should the USA, for example, decide to disconnect Russia from the system of IP-addresses. It will be possible to avoid this threat, if Russia has a local regulator to distribute IP-addresses inside the country, rather than the ICANN, controlled by the United States government. This requires operators to set up “mirrors” that will be able to receive user requests and forward them to specific domain names.

Interesting. Who is being kept in the information closet? I suppose it depends on one’s point of view. Need an update for Sphinx Search? There will be a solution because some folks will plan ahead.

Stephen E Arnold, September 20, 2014

See Also:

BRICS Internet @ Phi Beta Iota

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SchwartzReport: Wind/Solar Surpass Oil as Investment

05 Energy, Earth Intelligence
Stephan A. Schwartz
Stephan A. Schwartz

We have reached the tipping point in the transition out of carbon, and the momentum of this historic change is just beginning to gather speed. This is profoundly good news. Click through to see the charts and tables.

$100B in Wind or Solar Will Now Produce More Energy Than the Same Investment in Oil
Impact Lab/Reader Supported News

Kepler Chevreux, a French investment bank, has produced a fascinating analysis that has dramatic implications for the global oil industry. The investment bank estimates that $100 billion invested in either wind energy or solar energy – and deployed as energy for light and commercial vehicles – will produce significantly more energy than that same $100 billion invested in oil.

The implications, needless to say, are dramatic. It would signal the end of Big Oil, and the demise of an industry that has dominated the global economy and geo-politics, for the last few decades. And the need for it to reshape its business model around renewables, as we discuss here.

Read full article.

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