Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

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Stephen E. Arnold: Google Continues to Capture and Pollute World of Knowledge

Commerce, Corruption, IO Technologies
Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

The Growth of Google’s Knowledge Graph

The article titled How a Database of the World’s Knowledge Shapes Google’s Future on MIT Technology Review is an explanation of Google’s Knowledge Graph and the progress made in compiling information to feed into it. The Knowledge Graph began as a database built by Metaweb, which Google acquired in 2010. The article is an interview with Metaweb cofounder and Google employee John Giannandrea, who explains the Knowledge Graph through an analogy with maps.

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The Google Revenue Railroad: Whoo Whoo

I don’t pay much attention to mobile anything. I am nosing near 70, and I find life works just fine without checking a mobile device every few minutes.

I read “New Android OEM Licensing Terms Leak; “Open” Comes with a Lot of Restrictions.” The main point is that open does not mean “open.” Since the artful explanation of the meaning of “is,” most of the words used by folks possess fluid definitions.

“Open” is a good example. Open invokes images of free and open source software. As my columns in Online Searcher document, open is usually closed. For software, open is a way to open the door to consulting services.

Open in the Google context is similar. The monetization angle is different. Google has a huge appetite for revenue. The system Google has constructed over the last 13 or so years is an expensive puppy to operate, upgrade, and maintain.

Read full post.

Phi Beta Iota: Google is the Standard Oil or Monsanto equivalent to the world of knowledge. As admirable as their computational mathematics are, they are evil polluters and manipulators of information. Google — like NSA — is not a public service operating in the public interest. It is a monopoly, a predatory monopoly with zero ethics that will eventaully have to be shut out and routed around by alternatives such as the Autonomous Internet.

See Also:

Google @ Phi Beta Iota

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SchwartzReport: Four Ways Human Health is Destroyed by Unethical Corporations and the Governments they Bribe

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 07 Health, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Government

Democracy by design is a zero sum game. Elections are revolutions without the guns. Part of the problem faced by social progressives is that all too many of us have a gut rejection of reality when it is negative. In my view you can't fight a battle if you are unwilling to accurately assess the truth of the battlefield. Here is some truth.

Climate Disaster: Big Oil Is Winning the War for the Future
MICHAEL T. KLARE, Professor of Peace and World security Studies at Hampshire College – Salon

Yet another story are the corruption of our food system. I have begun to think of much of the food in the U.S. as a toxin to be avoided.

Five Messed-Up Things That Are in Your Food
MARTHA ROSENBERG – Truthout

1. Azodicarbonamide in Bread
2. Plastic Microbeads in Fish and Waterways
3. Brominated Vegetable Oil in Soft Drinks and Beverages
4. High Fructose Corn Syrup and Artificial Sweeteners in Soft Drinks
5. Transglutaminase Also Known as “Meat Glue”

Finally, it is becoming impossible to deny that the industrial chemicals that pollute every aspect of our lives are the source many illnesses. Everything shouts to us that we must make national wellness, from the individual to the planet our first priority. Whether we can hear these cries is not clear, at least to me.

Scientists Name 6 More Toxins Affecting Developing Brains
DELTHIA RICKS – Newsday

Where I live about half the women I know live on Gluten-free diets. Here is the back story. It is another tale of corners cut in the name of increased profit and decreased national wellness. Happily the story not only explains something, it provides a solution.

Could This Baker Solve the Gluten Mystery?
TOM PHILPOTT – Mother Jones

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Berto Jongman: GAO – U.S. intelligence agencies can’t justify why they use so many contractors

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

GAO – U.S. intelligence agencies can’t justify why they use so many contractors

Brian Fung

Washington Post, 14 February 2014

Private contractors play a huge role in the government, particularly in civilian intelligence services like the CIA. Contracting critics say it's an addiction whose overhead costs drive up the federal budget and leads to data breaches like the kind perpetrated by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

In the wake of last year's NSA revelations, many agencies have been reviewing their contracting policies. But few people have a good grasp on just how many contractors the government employs. What's worse, the country's eight civilian intelligence agencies often can't sufficiently explain what they use those contractors for, according to a Government Accountability Office report.

Every year, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is supposed to count how many contractors serve the intelligence community (IC). Due to differences in the way intelligence agencies define and assess their workers, however, the data are inconsistent and in some places incomplete. Out of hundreds of agency records, for example, GAO found that almost a fifth lacked enough paperwork to prove how much a contractor was paid. Another fifth of the records were found to have either over-reported or under-reported the actual cost of the contract work.

But the GAO reserves its harshest judgment for the agencies that couldn't fully explain why they resorted to contractors in the first place.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: GAO – U.S. intelligence agencies can’t justify why they use so many contractors”

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Mini-Me: BENGHAZI – Hillary Lied, CIA Complied?

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude
Who? Mini-Me?
Who? Mini-Me?

Huh?

Did CIA official suppress Benghazi narrative? Accounts raise new questions

FoxNews.com, 14 February 2014

Then-Deputy Director Mike Morell, whose own agency lost two employees at Benghazi, former Navy Seals Ty Woods and Glen Doherty, was heavily involved in editing the administration’s internal narrative on what happened – known as the “talking points” – which served as the basis for then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s controversial claims about a protest on the Sunday talk shows after the attack.

According to the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report on Benghazi, on Sept. 15, four days after the attack and one day before Rice’s appearance, the CIA's most senior operative on the ground in Libya emailed Morell and others at the agency that the attack was “not/not an escalation of protests.”

Continue reading “Mini-Me: BENGHAZI – Hillary Lied, CIA Complied?”

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Berto Jongman: John Bell on Age of Dissent

Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

The age of dissent

Why are people resorting to street politics across the globe?

John Bell

Al Jazeera, 11 February 2014

John Bell is Director of the Middle East Programme at the Toledo International Centre for Peace in Madrid.

In 2012, after the beginnings of the Arab revolutions, Paul Mason, editor at BBC's Newsnight programme, wrote a book called Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere – The New Global Revolutions. Mason pointed out that social neworks, a newfound sense of self-reliance, and a disjuncture between the young and an old political order are ushering in a new age of discontent.

He may well be right. Today, while the Arab world continues with its political somersaults, the street in Thailand, Ukraine, Brazil and Turkey and elsewhere is alive with protest. Foreign Policy magazine has put together a timeline highlighting that demonstrations have indeed significantly increased globally over the past 20 years.

Why are people going out on the street to address their woes? It's an act of courage and determination that can land you in jail, one far more difficult than simply casting a vote in the ballot box. What has changed?

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: John Bell on Age of Dissent”

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Jon Rappoport: Mental Illness is the New Normal

07 Health, Cultural Intelligence
Jon Rappoport
Jon Rappoport

Mental illness is the new normal

The strategy is as old as the hills.

Show people an extreme example of something, and thereby convince them to accept a compromise.

In this case, parade before the public—along with assured pronouncements from “mental health experts”—images of James Holmes, Aaron Alexis, Adam Lanza, etc.—and say:

“Look, these are people who committed unspeakable crimes because they were suffering from mental disorders, and we must do something about it…in fact, at least half of all Americans have some sort of mental disorder…”

It’s a nudge, a coax, a veiled threat, an invocation of fear.

“Gee, maybe I have a mental disorder and I don’t even know it.”

It softens up the population.

Continue reading “Jon Rappoport: Mental Illness is the New Normal”

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