The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Internet Rising – documentary film
Released on 11.29.11, http://internetRISING.net is a digi-documentary investigating the evolving relationships between the Internet and collective consciousness of humanity. It provokes many questions about ancient and modern paradoxes of life, its pleasures and pains… and the gray area contrasts in between – but most of all it is meant to be an inspiring conversation starter
See Also:
Andrew Blum, Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet (Ecco 2012)
Internet Technology and the Transformation of the Human
Posted on September 7, 2012 in Common Hour Events
This event will not be recorded.
415 Harrisburg Ave Lancaster, PA 17603 [2 hours 30 minutes from Washington DC]
Jaron Lanier is a computer scientist best known for his pioneering work in the field of virtual reality. He left gaming company Atari in 1985 to co-found VPL Research Inc., the first company to market virtual reality products. Sun Microsystems acquired VPL in 1999.
Lanier was chief scientist of Advanced Network and Services, a nonprofit that funds the advancement of education through technology, from 1997 to 2001 and a visiting scholar at Silicon Graphics from 2001 to 2004. He was scholar at large at Microsoft Research, working on the Kinect device for Xbox 360 from 2006 to 2009. Currently he holds the position of partner architect at Microsoft Research.
Lanier is the author of the international bestseller You Are Not a Gadget (2010), a critique of Web 2.0, a second generation of the World Wide Web responding to people’s desires to collaborate and share information online. In 2010 Time Magazine named Lanier to its annual list of the world’s 100 most influential people. Lanier also composes classical music and collects rare instruments.
This event is open to the public. Free; no tickets required.
Sea Otters To Combat Climate Change?
Does a large population of sea otters reverse one of the principal causes of climate change? New research from the UC Santa Cruz is suggesting that a population boom of sea otters would go a long way to reduce sea urchin numbers, and therefore allow kelp forests to become very large.
“The spreading kelp can absorb as much as 12 times the amount of CO2 from the atmosphere than if it were subject to ravenous sea urchins, the study finds.” Of course, altering a food chain so significantly could have unintended consequences.
The theory was just outlined in a paper published September 7 in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.
“It is significant because it shows that animals can have a big influence on the carbon cycle,” said Wilmers, assistant professor of environmental studies.
“Wilmers, Estes, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and their co-authors, combined 40 years of data on otters and kelp bloom from Vancouver Island to the western edge of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. They found that otters “undoubtedly have a strong influence on the cycle of CO2 storage.”
Paul Craig Roberts: The real unemployment rates – a study in information credibility
Official Unemployment: U.3 8.1%
Mid-Term Real Unemployment: U-6 14.7%
Actual Unemployment (All): 22.4% and rising
Includes analysis of the new jobs (not enough to provide for those new to the employment market such as immigrants and graduates). Bottom line: bar tenders and home health service–the bottom of the barrel.
Phi Beta Iota: For those of you applying for government jobs, be warned. Apart from needing an active TS/SCI to be considered (but it helps to have an OPM SSBI completed in past six months), you have to get through what is now an out of control automated system that dumps you if you do not have enough keywords. Beyond that you have a line of low-level clerks without a clue about substance [in fairness to USAJobs, the problems appear to be at the receiving agency level, not with USAJobs). So here are two guidlines:
1. Read the position description carefully, and tailor your USAJobs resuem for that specific job. You are dealing with a really really stupid system.
2. If you have the connections, or care to send in a copy directly to the hiring official as an alert, do so. Our contacts are telling us that they are getting crummy selections from the system, and when they go back and ask to see ALL applications, they get another 15-20 among whom are 5 world-class stars the system was too stupid to recognize. This is particularly true of DIA. Our advice to hiring managers: insist on ALL applications without exception being delivered to you.
Good luck.
The Message From Both Parties Is That Americans Are Disposable
Institute for Political Economy, 7 September 2012
If political conventions are ranked on a one to ten scale for intelligence, I give the Republican Convention zero and the Democrats one.
How can the United States be a superpower when both political parties are unaware of everything that is happening at home and abroad?
. . . . . . . .
Have any peoples in human history ever been less represented by their government and political parties than Americans?
The US government represents Israel and the one to ten percent. Everyone else is disposable.
Continue reading “Paul Craig Roberts: Both Parties See Citizens as Disposable”
Huh?
In Japan during the 2011 earthquake and tsunami? Radiation exposure estimates now available
The Pentagon says that none of the nearly 70,000 members of the DoD-affiliated population (service members, DoD civilian employees and contractors, and family members of service members and civilian employees) who were on or near the mainland of Japan between March 12 and May 11, 2011, are known to have been exposed to radiation at levels associated with adverse medical conditions.
East Coast earthquake created a ‘new normal'
The quake was centered 3 to 4 miles beneath Mineral, a town of fewer than 500 people about 50 miles northwest of Richmond. Yet it was believed to have been felt by more people than any other in U.S. history.
Last Year’s Quake Shook Up Virginia Nukes
It was the first time ever in this country that a nuclear power station had gone through an emergency shutdown because of an earthquake. In this case it was a rare 5.8 magnitude seismic event with an epicenter a few miles away that ruined Louisa County school buildings, cracked the Washington Monument and shook the North Anna beyond what it was designed to deal with.
Why quake forecast maps often fail
Three of the largest and deadliest earthquakes in recent history occurred where earthquake hazard maps didn’t predict massive quakes, scientists say. A combination of bad assumptions, bad data, bad physics, and bad luck is why hazard maps have failed to predict three of the largest and deadliest earthquakes in recent history.
Earthquake Damage: Are Bad Maps to Blame?
A new study argues that earthquake-hazard maps didn't give engineers and seismologists a full picture of several recent quakes' dangers.
Study links fracking and earthquakes
In hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, millions of gallons of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, are injected into rock thousands of feet underground to extract natural gas. Frohlich said the most likely explanation for the quakes is that once injected, the fluids apply pressure to faults in the area and unstick them.
Fukushima Hangs by the Devil’s Thread
The molten cores at Units 1, 2 & 3 have threatened all life on Earth. The flood of liquid radiation has poisoned the Pacific. Fukushima’s cesium and other airborne emissions have already dwarfed Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and all nuclear explosions including Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But at Unit 4, more than 1500 rods remain suspended in air. Called “a bathtub on the roof” by CNN anchor Jon King, the damaged pool teeters atop a building decimated by seismic shocks and at least one hydrogen explosion. The question is not if, but when it will come crashing down.
See Also:
Continue reading “Mini-Me: Earthquakes, East Coast, Fukushima Redux + Meta-RECAP”
