The Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science (Public Lab) is a community which develops and applies open-source tools to environmental exploration and investigation. By democratizing inexpensive and accessible “Do-It-Yourself” techniques, Public Laboratory creates a collaborative network of practitioners who actively re-imagine the human relationship with the environment.
The core Public Lab program is focused on “civic science” in which we research open source hardware and software tools and methods to generate knowledge and share data about community environmental health. Our goal is to increase the ability of underserved communities to identify, redress, remediate, and create awareness and accountability around environmental concerns. Public Lab achieves this by providing online and offline training, education and support, and by focusing on locally-relevant outcomes that emphasize human capacity and understanding.
Front Material
0.1 Preface
0.2 Foreword Roméo Dallaire
0.3 Introduction Walter Dorn
Part I: The UN’s First “Air Force”: Congo 1960-64
1.0 Introduction
1.1 Dropping Bombs and Firing Missiles: The United Nations Mission in the Congo Walter Dorn and Robert Pauk
1.2 Organizing the Air Effort in the Congo, 1960 William K. Carr
1.3 A Fine Line: Use of Force, the Cold War, and Canada's Air Contribution to ONUC Kevin Spooner
Part II: Airlift: Lifeline for UN Missions
2.0 Introduction
2.1 Humanitarian Relief in Haiti 2010: Honing the Partnership Between the US Air Force and the United Nations Robert Owen
2.2 Procurement of Aviation Support and UAVs Kevin Shelton-Smith, Chief Aviation Projects, UN Headquarters
2.3 UNHAS: The UN Humanitarian Air Service Walter Dorn and Ryan Cross
2.4 Aviation’s Role in Global Aid and Social Development Andy Cole
Part III: Surveillance: Eyes in the Sky
3.0 Introduction
3.1 Aerial surveillance: Eyes in the Sky Walter Dorn
3.2 UNOGIL Walter Dorn
3.3 UN Military Observation on the Roof-top of the World: Canadian Air Operations in Kashmir Matthew Trudgen
3.4 UAVs Supporting UN Operations: The MDA Service Model Dave Neil
Part IV: Combat: Enforcing the Peace
4.0 Introduction
4.1 Air Operations in Somalia William Dean III
4.2 UN Attack Helicopters in the Heart of Africa, 2004 onward Walter Dorn
Part V: No-Fly Zones
5.0 Introduction
5.1 UN Iraq-Kuwait Observer Mission and the Southern No-Fly Zone, 1992-2003 James McKay
5.2 Touched by Air Power: Unarmed Military Observers in Sarajevo, 1993-94 F. Roy Thomas
5.3 Operation Deliberate Force in Bosnia 1995: Humanitarian Constraints in Aerospace Warfare Robert Owen
5.4 Air Operations in Operations Unified Protector (Libya) Canadian Forces Aerospace Warfare Centre study [TBC]
5.5 Libya and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) Paul Mitchell [TBC]
Part VI: Conclusions
6.0 Introduction
6.1 Peace from Above: Envisioning the Future of UN Airpower Robert D. Steele
6.2 Conclusion Walter Dorn et al.
In this era of globalization's ruthless deracination, place attachments have become increasingly salient in collective mobilizations across the spectrum of politics. Like place-based activists in other resource-rich yet impoverished regions across the globe, Appalachians are contesting economic injustice, environmental degradation, and the anti-democratic power of elites. This collection of seventeen original essays by scholars and activists from a variety of backgrounds explores this wide range of oppositional politics, querying its successes, limitations, and impacts. The editors' critical introduction and conclusion integrate theories of place and space with analyses of organizations and events discussed by contributors. Transforming Places illuminates widely relevant lessons about building coalitions and movements with sufficient strength to challenge corporate-driven globalization.
Review
“I cannot recall a book that has excited me more than Transforming Places. This work is a major step forward in the study of social change, our understanding of ‘free spaces,' and local resistance – how people get power and how they can use it to get more.” Richard A. Couto, editor of Political and Civic Leadership: A Reference Handbook “Transforming Places addresses timely issues and tracks changes in political movements in Appalachia, assessing the devastating economic, social, and environmental costs amid hints of optimism for a more sustainable future. This work is significant for Appalachian studies and its overlapping disciplines but also will be useful outside of academia for agencies and organizations focused on sustainable development, strengthening community, and building alliances.” Patricia D. Beaver, co-editor of Tales from Sacred Wind: Coming of Age in Appalachia “The range of topics covered in this volume provides an exciting view of the new directions grassroots activism is taking in Appalachia: immigrants' rights, the history and dissolution of an organizing training program, collaborations between faith-based institutions and labor, coalitions that address farming and hunger, and a variety of analyses of recent activism against mountaintop removal. This is undoubtedly a major contribution to Appalachian studies.” Mary K. Anglin, University of Kentucky
About the Author
Steve Fisher taught for 35 years at Emory & Henry College where he helped create an Appalachian Studies minor, the Appalachian Center for Community Service, and an interdisciplinary service-learning major. He was the 1999 Carnegie Foundation Outstanding Baccalaureate College Professor of the Year and has won a number of other teaching-related awards. He is the editor of Fighting Back in Appalachia: Traditions of Resistance and Change and co-editor of Transforming Places: Lessons from Appalachia, and has written extensively on a variety of Appalachian issues, including identity, resistance, and political economy, and on teaching and community-based education. He has been active in a number of Appalachian resistance efforts including the land study, Appalachian Alliance, and the Pittston strike and has worked to build links between the academic community and activists in the region. He was co-founder and columnist for The Plow, an alternative regional newspaper in the late 1970s. He recently served on the board of the Highlander Center, is an active member of the Appalachian Peace Education Center and the Virginia Organizing Project, and served on his county's Planning Commission from 2000-2012. He was the program chair of the first Appalachian Studies Conference, has served as President of the Appalachian Studies Association (ASA), and has received the ASA's Cratis Williams/James Brown Service Award. He currently hosts a weekly radio show (“Rise Up Singing”) on WEHC 90.7 FM.
An award-winning author explores how the world works in our age of “continuous now”
Back in the 1970s, futurism was all the rage. But looking forward is becoming a thing of the past. According to Douglas Rushkoff, “presentism” is the new ethos of a society that’s always on, in real time, updating live. Guided by neither history nor long term goals, we navigate a sea of media that blend the past and future into a mash-up of instantaneous experience.
Rushkoff shows how this trend is both disorienting and exhilarating. Without linear narrative we get both the humiliations of reality TV and the associative brilliance of The Simpsons. With no time for long term investing, we invent dangerously compressed derivatives yet also revive sustainable local businesses. In politics, presentism drives both the Tea Party and the Occupy movement.
In many ways, this was the goal of digital technology—outsourcing our memory was supposed to free us up to focus on the present. But we are in danger of squandering this cognitive surplus on trivia. Rushkoff shows how we can instead ground ourselves in the reality of the present tense.
Chapters on Narrative Collapse, Digiphrenia – Breaking Up Is Hard to Do, Overwinding, Fractalnoia – Finding Patterns in the Feedback, Apocalypto.
Douglas Rushkoff
About the Author
Winner of the first Neil Postman award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity, Douglas Rushkoff is an author, teacher, and documentarian who focuses on the ways people, cultures, and institutions create, share, and influence each other's values. He sees “media” as the landscape where this interaction takes place, and “literacy” as the ability to participate consciously in it.His ten best-selling books on new media and popular culture have been translated to over thirty languages. They include Cyberia, Media Virus, Playing the Future, Nothing Sacred: The Truth about Judaism, and Coercion, winner of the Marshall Mcluhan Award for best media book. Rushkoff also wrote the acclaimed novels Ecstasy Club and Exit Strategy and graphic novel, Club Zero-G. He has just finished a book for HarperBusiness, applying renaissance principles to today's complex economic landscape, Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out. He's now writing a monthly comic book for Vertigo called Testament.
Phi Beta Iota: Doug is a genius with a gift for perception combined with a gift for articulation. Book will be released 21 March 2013 — can be pre-ordered at reduced price at Amazon now, click on cover above.
Hacking Politics is a firsthand account of how a ragtag band of activists and technologists overcame a $90 million lobbying machine to defeat the most serious threat to Internet freedom in memory. The book is a revealing look at how Washington works today – and how citizens successfully fought back.
Written by the core Internet figures – video gamers, Tea Partiers, tech titans, lefty activists and ordinary Americans among them – who defeated a pair of special interest bills called SOPA (“Stop Online Piracy Act”) and PIPA (“Protect IP Act”), Hacking Politics provides the first detailed account of the glorious, grand chaos that led to the demise of that legislation and helped foster an Internet-based network of amateur activists.
Included are more than thirty original contributions from across the political spectrum, featuring writing by Internet freedom activist Aaron Swartz; Lawrence Lessig of Harvard Law School; novelist Cory Doctorow; Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA.); Jamie Laurie (of the alt-rock/hip-hop group The Flobots); Ron Paul; Mike Masnick, CEO and founder of Techdirt; Tiffiniy Cheng, co-founder and co-director of Fight for the Future; Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit; Nicole Powers of Suicide Girls; Josh Levy, Internet Campaign Director at Free Press, and many more.
If you're here to order some earth stickers, EarthSeals, “stickers of the
whole earth from space, distributed by donation”, then click < EarthSeals >
to get some.
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If you'd like more info about me, (who is this wild, intense, brilliant guy
with “big plans for this planet” and nine different business cards/income
streams??), then < About Paul > is more about me, my life story, (written
by me or about me), more pictures and contact information.
The Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science (Public Lab) is a community which develops and applies open-source tools to environmental exploration and investigation. By democratizing inexpensive and accessible “Do-It-Yourself” techniques, Public Laboratory creates a collaborative network of practitioners who actively re-imagine the human relationship with the environment.
