Monday, August 30, 2010

Mathematicians Create Objective Quality of Life Index

The US comes second in a new quality of life index designed to be mathematically objective

Phi Beta Iota: The explanation of this is wrong. There is nothing “objective” about it, and nothing “subjective” about the other indexes. What is useful here is “elastic mapping”. A linear model makes things seem clear, but it introduces distortions. A non-linear modeling technique, while confusing in one sense because you don't know exactly how it works, it still sensible if you use an image, as they do here, of relaxing springs among all the nodes. And the result is less distortion, less to criticize, and more opportunity to consider the meaning, as they do here. GDP gets you something, but health gets you something else, and it would be nice to have a mathematical rule that doesn't make it completely arbitrary how you balance the two, or the many contrastive factors that you choose.

2010/08/27

Journal: Pentagon Flails in Defending Cyberspace

03 Economy, 04 Education, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, IO Multinational, IO Secrets, Military, Officers Call

Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius Recommends

Beyond belief, but here it is: the “official” explanation of why we are going to waste 12 billion dollars a year on contractors without a clue (vapor-ware). There is zero return on investment here for the taxpayer, only for the contractors and Congress, neither of which will be held accountable for fraud, waste, and abuse.

September/October 2010

ESSAY

Defending a New Domain

The Pentagon's Cyberstrategy

William J. Lynn III
WILLIAM J. LYNN III is U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense.

In 2008, the U.S. Department of Defense suffered a significant compromise of its classified military computer networks. It began when an infected flash drive was inserted into a U.S. military laptop at a base in the Middle East. The flash drive's malicious computer code, placed there by a foreign intelligence agency, uploaded itself onto a network run by the U.S. Central Command. That code spread undetected on both classified and unclassified systems, establishing what amounted to a digital beachhead, from which data could be transferred to servers under foreign control. It was a network administrator's worst fear: a rogue program operating silently, poised to deliver operational plans into the hands of an unknown adversary.

Read Entire Article Below the Line.

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2010/08/252010/12/25

Journal: Brains Beat Algorithms….Again

04 Education, Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Citizen-Centered, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), IO Sense-Making, Methods & Process, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Tools

Today's issue of Nature contains a paper with a rather unusual author list. Read past the standard collection of academics, and the final author credited is… an online gaming community.

Scientists have turned to games for a variety of reasons, having studied virtual epidemics and tracked online communities and behavior, or simply used games to drum up excitement for the science. But this may be the first time that the gamers played an active role in producing the results, having solved problems in protein structure through the Foldit game. (Also related, TED talk on how gaming can make a better world).

See Also:

Graphic: Jim Bamford on the Human Brain

2010: Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Trilogy Updated

2010/08/222010/08/22

Bangladesh Farmers + ICT, Increasing Awareness to Increase Income, Model for Other Countries

01 Agriculture, 01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 03 Environmental Degradation, 04 Education, 08 Wild Cards, Civil Society, Commerce, Technologies

eKrishok

Farmers wise up online

by Nahid Akhter (Aug 20, 2010)

(clipped from full article) Bangladeshi farmers have to go through numerous hardships. Natural calamities cannot be avoided. However, if the farmer knew when to expect one and thereby take appropriate preventive measures, maybe some of his crops could be saved. Besides natural calamities, he is always running the risk of crop infestations and rainfall that is either too low or too high, thereby producing poor yields. Due to poor education, many farmers may be following the practices of his fore-fathers blindly, without looking for better agricultural methods or practices.

Without proper information, a farmer whose crops have been infested by pests, for example, would think that this is the end and that his crops are only destined to die. This would mean a bad income that year, and no food for his family.

So what if this farmer was armed with easy access to the correct information at the correct time? This could lighten his load by ridding him of numerous uncertainties during his agricultural process and thereby raise his family's living standards. A better living standard for the farmers would mean a more developed Bangladesh.

BIID , with support from UNDP, has teamed up with Grameenphone by setting up Community Information Centres all over the country. In the pilot phase, 10 Centres had been opened in various locations, but the aim is to scale this up to more than 1000 locations in the country.

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2010/08/152010/08/17

Institutions of Higher Education Ineligible for Federal Funds (because they disallow military recruiters)

04 Education, Government, Military

+ Vermont Law School
+ South Royalton, Vermont
+ William Mitchell College of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota.

12 August 2010

From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr12au10-41]                         

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

Office of the Secretary
 
List of Institutions of Higher Education Ineligible for Federal 
Funds

AGENCY: Department of Defense (DoD).

ACTION: Notice.

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2010/08/14

Journal: Bill Gates Has Blinding Flash of Insight

04 Education

Berto Jongman Recommends...

Bill Gates: In Five Years The Best Education Will Come From The Web

August 9, 2010

Source: TechCrunch — Aug 6, 2010

“Five years from now on the web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world,” says Bill Gates. “It will be better than any single university.”

He believes the $50,000 a year university education could be done via the web for as little as $2,000.

Phi Beta Iota: Duh. It comes down to political integrity–creating measures of learning rather than selling credentials. This will be a race to the bottom among universities, and a race from the bottom among restless poor people savvy enough to hack the Internet and use it as a lever to redirect both democracy and capitalism back toward the common good. This is of course what both Amazon (World Brain Brief) and Google (Googlization of Intelligence Brief versus Do MORE Evil) should have been doing all along, but on an Open Everything standard.

2010/08/052010/08/05

Event: 3-5 Nov 2010, Barcelona Spain, Drumbeat Festival 2010: Learning, freedom and the web

04 Education, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Open Government, Technologies

The web is changing how we learn. It surrounds us with a massive and remixable tapestry of perspectives, facts and data. It gives us the freedom to learn whatever we want at our own speed and in our own way. It lets us become our own teachers. Fundamentally: the free and open nature of the internet is revolutionizing learning.

Who among us has not fallen into a long journey across the web on a surprising topic? Or learned a new skill by making, building or creating something online? Or, for that matter, found a new mentor or apprentice in a forum or on a social network? More and more, this is how we learn.

The open technology and culture of the internet are at the heart of this revolution. They give us raw material to take control of our own learning. Teachers and learners around the world are experimenting, inventing, creating, exploring and building in wonderful ways with this raw material. Mozilla's 2010 Drumbeat Festival is a gathering of these people.

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Category: 04 Education

Journal: Mathematicians Get it Wrong…Again