How does public transportation affect education? What impact does population density have on public health? Is there a connection between CO2 levels and obesity?
Officials in the City of Portland, Ore., have collaborated with IBM to find answers to those and other questions, developing an interactive model that connects the relationships between the city’s core systems that handle the economy, housing, education, public safety, transportation and health care.
SINGULARITY SUMMIT 2011 IN NEW YORK CITY 15-16 OCTOBER 2011
The Singularity Summit 2011 will be a TED-style two-day event at the historic 92nd Street Y in New York City. The confirmed speakers include futurist Ray Kurzweil, neuroscientist Christof Koch, PayPal founder Peter Thiel, MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark, AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky, MIT polymath Alexander Wissner-Gross, DARPA challenge winner Riley Crane, Skype founder Jaan Tallinn, Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings, economist Tyler Cowen, television personalities Jason Silva and Casey Pieretti, and robotics professors James McLurnkin and Robin Murphy.
To stay informed about the coming Summit, you can subscribe to the Singularity newsletter on their website.
This search probably refers to the new “air IED” believed to be used to bring down the old slow chopper in AF. It appears to have originated in Iraq, but we have no doubt that Iran for the Shi'ites and Pakistan for the Sunni are both thinking of how to create asymmetries in technology that can cripple the US military machine. Below item with the photograph was a link within the original 8 August 2011 Did a New Taliban Weapon Kill a Chopper Full of Navy SEALs?. We are skeptical about this spin–it was an old slow helicopter flying a known route and most likely flying low and on a straight path. Three or more normal RPGs could have assured its destruction.
Shi’ite extremists in Iraq have added a frightening new weapon their arsenal: a jury-rigged rocket launching system which some are describing as a “flying improvised explosive device.”
Improvisation by the Taliban, combined with decades of strategic, intellectual, and integrity shortfalls in DoD, equal death traps in the air. Note that the Taliban laid a trap to optimize body count AFTER the action was “over” and the helicopter was “going home.”
The passengers and crew of the twin-rotor CH-47 Chinook helicopter probably never saw the rocket hurtling towards them. The explosion and fiery crash in Wardak province in eastern Afghanistan early on Saturday morning killed all 38 people aboard the lumbering chopper.
Click on Image to Enlarge
For U.S. forces, it was the bloodiest single incident of the 10-year-old Afghanistan war — and possibly a sign of the insurgency’s continued ability to introduce new weaponry. The attack is also a chilling reminder of the vulnerability of the United States-lead coalition’s indispensable helicopters. “Shock and disbelief,” is how one official characterized the reaction inside the military.
Phi Beta Iota: We sense a Tet Offensive coming soon. DoD is simply not up to a multi-front war, and the home front attack that has just begun, where Wall Street is throwing DoD under the bus, is beyond DoD's ability to comprehend, much less counter.
The fleet of 158 F-22 planes — costing $412 million each — has never entered combat and has been grounded since May 3 because of a government safety investigation. The probe follows more than a dozen incidents in which oxygen was cut off to pilots, a problem suspected of contributing to at least one fatal accident.
Phi Beta Iota: The Los Angeles Times was among several mainstream newspapers that refused $100,000 full page ads against the Iraq War. Like CNN and Fareed Zakaria, they do not stray from the approved party line. This is a very clear sign (to us, at least) that Wall Street is throwing DoD under the bus. Leon Panetta probably has no idea what is about to hit him–hyping Al Qaeda will not match a deliberate Wall Street shut down of all support for the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Comples (MICC). A Civil War is in progress in the USA, on multiple fronts.
“Israel has two principal targets in Iran’s cyberspace,” said a defense source with close knowledge of the cyber war preparations. “The first is its military nuclear program and its military establishment. The second is Iran’s civil infrastructure. Attacking both, we hope, will cripple the entire country’s cyberspace.”
Phi Beta Iota: What Israel is saying, particularly with regard to its second target spread, is that it is waging undeclared unjust war against Iran and the people of Iran. To blithely announce that the civil infrastructure of another country is “fair game” should call into question the sanity and legitimacy of the perpetrators.
