Category: Knowledge

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Steve Wheeler: Learning with e’s Series

04 Education, Advanced Cyber/IO, Knowledge, Science
Steve WheelerClick for BIo Page
Steve Wheeler
Click for BIo Page


At the end of each year many of us tend to focus on the future, wondering what it will bring. We wish each other a happy New Year, and hope that life will treat us kindly. We try to shape our own futures by making New Year resolutions, many of which fall by the wayside after a week or two. Much of our future is not ours to shape. But still we persist in trying to predict the future.  Many of our predictions about the future are based on speculation or wishful thinking.


When discussing the future, especially the future of technology, there are some writers who almost always seem to be quoted. Near the top of the list is the futurologist Ray Kurzweil, who has much to say about our technological future, and also about the growth in human intelligence. His views are quite optimistic, especially around computers and the nature of knowledge.


In my previous blog post I examined the debate about whether we are becoming more intelligent or less intelligent as a result of our prolonged and habituated uses of technology.


What will be the future of school classrooms? It is unlikely that we will see the demise of the classroom in the next decade. Those who study the future of education often suggest that the demise of traditional classrooms is not only inevitable, but imminent.

Parts 04-09 Below the Line.

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Owl: Aaron Swartz — Prosecutors as Persecutors — Call to End All Donations to MIT — Burn MIT to the Ground, Metaphorically Speaking

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Academia, Commerce, Corruption, Crowd-Sourcing, Culture, Governance, Government, Knowledge, Law Enforcement, Media
Who? Who?
Who? Who?

Following up on the excellent post, Mongoose: Moti Nissani on Who Killed Aaron Swartz? it is now clear MIT refuses to cut any kind of deal, and the prosecutor went nuclear on what should have been a matchbook case.  Now it emerges that the prosecutor going after Swartz went after another young man involved with computers who also died, allegedly from suicide, as supposedly did Swartz. “Prosecutor Stephen Heymann has been blamed for contributing to Swartz's suicide. Back in 2008, young hacker Jonathan James killed himself in the midst of a federal investigation led by the same prosecutor.  James, the first juvenile put into confinement for a federal cybercrime case, was found dead two weeks after the Secret Service raided his house as part of its investigation of the TJX hacker case led by Heymann — the largest personal identity hack in history. He was thought to be “JJ,” the unindicted co-conspirator named in the criminal complaints filed with the US District Court in Massachusetts. In his suicide note, James wrote that he was killing himself in response to the federal investigation and their attempts to tie him to a crime which he did not commit.”

So one scenario is, as mentioned by Nissani, that the government directly killed – by hanging – Swartz. But in light of this newly emergent pattern, perhaps it indicates another scenario equally sinister but more simple: that Heymann mercilessly and severely harasses his victims to death by suicide. No need to send in wet boys (a DOJ slang term for on-the-payroll DOJ  killers specifically) to murder someone, just drive them insane or to self-destruction. The outcome is the same as someone putting a bullet in one's head.  It's about prosecuting by persecuting. A capsule definition of what comprises much of what is called the US legal system.  See this link for more:

Internet Activist's Prosecutor Linked To Another Hacker's Death

It seems like outrage at the official US government persecution-leading-to death of Aaron Swartz is picking up steam. Check out this excellent list of recent links from the Naked Capitalism site:

Berners-Lee Calls Prosecution of Aaron Swartz ‘Travesty’ Bloomberg. Notice how slanted the story is. Calls what he did “hacking” when was not, see here.
How the Legal System Failed Aaron Swartz—And Us New Yorker
TOWARDS LEARNING FROM LOSING AARON SWARTZ Center for Internet and Society
‘Aaron was killed by the government’ – Robert Swartz on his son’s death RT
On humanity, a big failure in Aaron Swartz case Boston Globe. Makes it clear MIT refused to cut a deal. I hope tech donors never give a dime to MIT again.

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Free Training Handbooks

Knowledge

This is what we have found to date. Please let us know if you find another handbook that helps further the concept of public intelligence in the public interest.  The historic contributions are the “best in class” offerings of over 750 speakers at the annual international conference on “National Security & National Competitiveness: Open Source Solutions,” (1992-2006).

See Also:

Donors receive email from Robert Steele and an opportunity to ask questions and receive answers.

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Yoda: Learning, We Are….

Knowledge
Got Crowd? BE the Force!
Got Crowd? BE the Force!

Beyond ‘absolute zero' temperatures get hotter

Posted by Flora Malein

It sounds like a contradiction in terms but scientists have reached temperatures that go beyond absolute zero in a lab, and get hotter as they do so.

Whereas we’re all aware of what happens when temperatures hit negative temperatures on the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales (hint: it gets really cold), the Kelvin scale is an absolute temperature scale in physics where it is not possible to go beyond 0 degrees Kelvin. Therefore, the lowest point that any temperature can reach is 0 K or −460 °F (−273.15 °C); at least that’s what scientists thought until till now.

When they cooled an atomic gas to extreme lows, known as ‘ultracooling’, physicists at the Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Germany created a gas that went beyond absolute zero.

They found that the atoms in the ultracooled gas attract each other and give rise to a negative pressure. Instead of standing still when they go beyond 0 K, the gas becomes hotter.

“The gas is not colder than zero kelvin, but hotter,” says physicist Ulrich Schneider, lead author on the paper that is published in the journal Science.

“It is even hotter than at any positive temperature.”

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SchwartzReport: Fractose = Overeating = Obesity = Government Lacking in Intelligence and Integrity

Corruption, Government, Knowledge

schwartz reportBrain image study: Fructose may spur overeating

By MARILYNN MARCHIONE and MIKE STOBBE
AP Medical Writers

This is your brain on sugar – for real. Scientists have used imaging tests to show for the first time that fructose, a sugar that saturates the American diet, can trigger brain changes that may lead to overeating.

After drinking a fructose beverage, the brain doesn't register the feeling of being full as it does when simple glucose is consumed, researchers found.

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SchwartzReport: Genetic Modication – Case Study in Fraud, Waste, & Abuse Starting with Corruption of Information and Falsification of Intelligence

Commerce, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, Knowledge

schwartz reportGenetic Engineering and the GMO Industry: Corporate Hijacking of Food and Agriculture

“I recognized my two selves: a crusading idealist and a cold, granitic believer in the law of the jungle” – Edgar Monsanto Queeny, Monsanto chairman, 1943-63, “The Spirit of Enterprise”, 1934.

When rich companies with politically-connected lobbyists and seats on government-appointed bodies bend policies for their own ends, we are in serious trouble. It is then that our democratic institutions become hijacked and our choices, freedoms and rights are destroyed. Corporate interests have too often used their dubious ‘science’, lobbyists, political connections and presence within the heart of governments, in conjunction with their public relations machines, to subvert democratic machinery for their own benefit. Once their power has been established, anyone who questions them or who stands in their way can expect a very bumpy ride.

The power and influence of the GMO sector

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Tony Zinni: Background & Confirmation of the 4% “At Best” Quote on Secret versus Open Sources

Knowledge
General Anthony Zinni
General Anthony Zinni

ROBERT STEELE: I am doing fact-checking as I create the first textbook on intelligence that is useful to all eight tribes of intelligence and breaks away from the mis-directed focus on expensive useless secrets for policy alone.  Below from Colonel GI Wilson, USMC (Ret)

Yes, sir. This is how I recall it and Zinni confirms it.

Zinni asked his J-2 at CENTCOM how much of their usable intell was open source. His J-2 said 80%. Zinni asked his J-2 how much of the 20% classified could be found or expanded in OSINT after was it was initially indicated by classified sources. It was determined to be 80% of that.

in my personal experience working with Zinni, it was very evident Zinni recognized the role of OSINT plays in the intelligence community concordant with classified intel. Zinni like Gen Al Gray never had a predilection or penchant for an over-reliance on classified intel just because it was classified.

—–Original Message—–

GI, writing a new book, INTELLIGENCE WITH INTEGRITY: Decision Support in the Public Interest.  I'd like to identify you as the source if I may, of this statement from Zinni:

[1] As related to me by Col G. I. Wilson, USMC (Ret.), one of a tiny handful of asymmetric warfare pioneers in the US Marine Corps, as he heard it from General Zinni. This was first published, without attribution, in Robert Steele, “Open Source Intelligence,” in Johnson (2006), Chapter 6, pp. 95-122. Subsequently I created Graphic: Tony Zinni on 4% “At Best”.

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