Review: God and Science–Coming Full Circle

6 Star Top 10%, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Cosmos & Destiny, Culture, Research, Information Society, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Philosophy, Religion & Politics of Religion, Science & Politics of Science, Survival & Sustainment, True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution
Amazon Page

James F. Molben

5.0 out of 5 stars 6 Stars Plus for SImplicity, Coherence, & Importance
April 7, 2011

I tend to read in threes, and read this book together with Questions of Truth: Fifty-one Responses to Questions About God, Science, and Belief and The Beginning of All Things: Science and Religion. The three books complement each other very nicely, and if you can afford the time and money, all three are recommended. Of the three, this is the six plus, with the other two being solid fives, but with the added comment that Questions of Truth is easily the second recommended book, and for the more general audience, while Beginning of All Things is more of a graduate review. It must be said that John Polkinghorne and Hans Kung are Nobel-level pioneers on this topic, and hence I must emphasize that while their intellects and total published contributions in the aggregate are six plus in every way, in this instance, this particular book by James Molben won by a solid head and neck.

The discussion of science and religion as NOT being in conflict, and as both being complementary and both sharing a focus on finding the truth, has been given recent impetus by Pope Benedict XVI, who has appointed a Protestant to head the Science Academy of the Catholic Church; sponsored an inter-faith summit at Assisi in October 2011 that we hope will focus on the reality that secular corruption and indemnification from the truth are what create war and poverty; and made direct statements to the effect that there is no conflict religion and science, and both strive toward the same end, the truth. As I like to say, the truth at any cost lowers all other costs, it is high time We the People demanded the truth, and nothing but the truth, from what I call the eight tribes of intelligence (academic, civil society including labor and religion), commerce, government, law enforcement, media, military, and non-government/non-profit).

Continue reading “Review: God and Science–Coming Full Circle”

Review: The Extreme Searcher’s Internet Handbook–Guide for the Serious Searcher

6 Star Top 10%, Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Public)
Amazon Page

Ran Hock

5.0 out of 5 stars 6 Stars–The ONE Essential Reference

March 13, 2011

I've known Ran Hock for close to twenty years, and now that Mary Ellen Bates (MEB) and Reva Basch are retired (see their last books below), Ran is more or less the last man standing in the independent information brokerage domain, at least that I know. Arno Reuser, the genius librarian and top Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) pioneer in Europe still tells me that just listening to Ran Hock once a year (he was always the pre-conference to my conference) made him appear to be the most intellegent searcher in his organization for another year…Arno was being modest, he is his own pioneer, but the point is important. Ran Hock remains the one person I would consider essential for training a cadre to make proper use of the Internet.

Continue reading “Review: The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook–Guide for the Serious Searcher”

Reference: The Pentagon Labyrinth

6 Star Top 10%, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Budget Process & Politics, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, DoD, Economics, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Force Structure (Military), Historic Contributions, Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Public), Justice (Failure, Reform), Media, Military, Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Monographs, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Public Administration, Science & Politics of Science, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Security (Including Immigration), Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle

The Pentagon Labyrinth

It is my pleasure to announce the publication of The Pentagon Labyrinth: 10 Short Essays to Help You Through It. This is a short pamphlet of less than 150 pages and is available at no cost in E-Book PDF format, as well as in hard copy from links on this page as well as here and here.  Included in the menu below are download links for a wide variety of supplemental/supporting information (much previously unavailable on the web) describing how notions of combat effectiveness relate to the basic building blocks of people, ideas, and hardware/technology; the nature of strategy; and the dysfunctional character of the Pentagon’s decision making procedures and the supporting role of its  accounting shambles.

Chuck Spinney
The Blaster

This pamphlet aims to help both newcomers and seasoned observers learn how to grapple with the problems of national defense.  Intended for readers who are frustrated with the superficial nature of the debate on national security, this handbook takes advantage of the insights of ten unique professionals, each with decades of experience in the armed services, the Pentagon bureaucracy, Congress, the intelligence community, military history, journalism and other disciplines.  The short but provocative essays will help you to:

  • identify the decay – moral, mental and physical – in America’s defenses,
  • understand the various “tribes” that run bureaucratic life in the Pentagon,
  • appreciate what too many defense journalists are not doing, but should,
  • conduct first rate national security oversight instead of second rate theater,
  • separate careerists from ethical professionals in senior military and civilian ranks,
  • learn to critique strategies, distinguishing the useful from the agenda-driven,
  • recognize the pervasive influence of money in defense decision-making,
  • unravel the budget games the Pentagon and Congress love to play,
  • understand how to sort good weapons from bad – and avoid high cost failures, and
  • reform the failed defense procurement system without changing a single law.

The handbook ends with lists of contacts, readings and Web sites carefully selected to facilitate further understanding of the above, and more.

Continue reading “Reference: The Pentagon Labyrinth”

Review: Long Strange Journey–An Intelligence Memoir

6 Star Top 10%, America (Founders, Current Situation), Atrocities & Genocide, Censorship & Denial of Access, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Country/Regional, Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Disease & Health, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), History, Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Justice (Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Public Administration, Science & Politics of Science, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Security (Including Immigration), Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)
Amazon Page

Patrick G. Eddington (Author)

5.0 out of 5 stars6+ Deep Moral Practical Look at Loss of Integrity Across US National Security

February 28, 2011

FINAL REVIEW

It is difficult for any intelligence book to make it to my 6+ category, or top ten percent. What brings this book to the very top of the heap is the skillful weaving of a constant appraisal of the moral in tandem with the practical. Sight unseen I knew this book would be a five, but it jumped to six when I read it from the back to the front and saw:

Page 354: The Agency has become inbred, ossified, parasitic…a prescription for the abuse of individual rights and fatally flawed analyses of the world-at-large that have plagued CIA over the past 30 years…

In the same concluding chapter he slams Congress for not demanding full access to classified information and the Congressional intelligence committees for serving as controllers of Congressional access rather than oversight bodies, with a particular disdain and disinterest in whistle-blowers; the Pentagon for infecting its own troops with alleged medicine that cause neurological problems, and for consistently covering up and lying to one and all about the causes of Gulf War syndrome; and the US Government generally for isolating “military medicine” from civilian medicine to the point that the troops are guinea pigs for bad science, and then victims of cover-ups that would not be countenanced outside the Pentagon.

Continue reading “Review: Long Strange Journey–An Intelligence Memoir”

Review (DVD): Inside Job

6 Star Top 10%, America (Founders, Current Situation), Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Congress (Failure, Reform), Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Economics, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Justice (Failure, Reform), Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Reviews (DVD Only), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)
Amazon Page

Matt Damon (Narrator)

5.0 out of 5 stars 6+ Truth Not Reaching Most Americans

February 28, 2011

AFTERTHOUGHT: What Wall Street greed did to the economy with the aid of its corrupt US Government enablers, the US Government did to US society and to global stability, spending trillions a year on the wrong things for the wrong reasons. See my chapter on “Paradigms of Failure” in the book (both here at Amazon and free online) ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig.

The other reviews are very good and I strongly recommend that whether or not you buy or rent the DVD (or watch it in a hotel as I have just done), that you read all the reviews, especially those that provide summary detail.

For myself, this movie is most extraordinary for the manner in which it pieces together the story to include very compelling interviews with many of the culprits including professors of economics who themselves were corrupted. Those who declined to be interviewed, including Laura Tyson, Paulson, Geithner, Greenspan, Summers, and a few others, are the worst of the culprits.

Compellingly–and consistent with all my reading on the two-party tyranny and the corruption of the US Government–the film is especially strong in showing with absolute clarity that the Obama Administration has been, if anything, more of a Wall Street front than any prior administration. “Nobody's gone to jail.” Worse, there have been no serious investigations. The US Government is NOT representing the public interest.

My focus with this review is to point to ten books that I have reviewed in summary form:

Continue reading “Review (DVD): Inside Job”

Review: Reality Is Broken–Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World

6 Star Top 10%, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Best Practices in Management, Budget Process & Politics, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Culture, Research, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Democracy, Diplomacy, Economics, Education (General), Education (Universities), Environment (Solutions), Future, Games, Models, & Simulations, Information Operations, Information Society, Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Politics, Priorities, Public Administration, Stabilization & Reconstruction, Survival & Sustainment, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity
Amazon Page

Jane McGonigal

5.0 out of 5 stars 6 Star for Concept–Ignores Past Pioneers–Energizes Us All

February 28, 2011

I took the time to read all of the reviews to date, and was reminded again of the chasm between those who understand technology and its possibilities, and those who do not. Being among the latter, in part because I am a veteran of 30 years of watching the US Government waste trillions over that period on too much badly designed technology (government specifications, cost plus) for the wrong reasons and generally without a positive outcome [the Internet being an exception], I must respect–as the author respects with her obviously counter-ripostive editorial interview here at Amazon–both the importance of getting a grip on reality, and the importance of being more respectful of past pioneers, such Buckminster Fuller (RIP) and Medard Gabel (co-creator with Fuller of the analog World Game, creator of the architecture for the digital EarthGame(TM), and recent contributing editor to Designing a World That Works for All: How the Youth of the World are Creating Real-World Solutions for the UN Millenium Development Goals and Beyond (Volume 1), and Russell Ackoff [e.g. Redesigning Society (Stanford Business Books) as well as John N. Warfield [e.g Societal Systems: Planning, Policy and Complexity (Wiley Series on Systems Engineering & Analysis). And then there are the 55 authors in Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace, including Ms. Jan Watkins, Doug Englebart, Mark Tovey. In short, the WORST thing one can say about this book is that the author has had an immaculate conception to her great credit, but one that could have been vastly better grounded had she done her homework and a multi-disciplinary literature review, something her PhD committee evidently did not consider necessary.

Having said that, this book is without question a 6+, a ranking achieved by the top 10% of the non-fiction books and DVDs I have reviewed here at Amazon (1692 not counting this one). This is a world-changing book, and while the author has benefited from a fabulous personality and personal presence, and first rate representation and promotion, when read carefully and completely and placed in the context of all that is about us today, the originality, relevance, and imminent potential of this book and the ideas in this book cannot be denied. The author does not do what Medard Gabel has done–provide the architectural underpinings for the digital EarthGame(TM) and global to local holistic “dashboards” that integrate the ten high-level threats to humanity, the twelve core policies, the true costs of every good and service–she is still at the “one of” level rather than the meta level–but if she can reach out to Medard Gabel and others and actually harness not just the cognitive surplus of the crowds, but the contextual pioneering of those who have spent decades before her thinking and doing in this arena, then she will be the righteous public face of what I am starting to call “Open Everything: from Autonomous Internet to Global Panarchy.”

 

Continue reading “Review: Reality Is Broken–Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World”

Review (DVD): manolete [Italian Import]

6 Star Top 10%, Culture, DVD - Light, Reviews (DVD Only)
Amazon Page

penelope cruz (Actor), Adrien Brody (Actor), santiago segura (Actor), menno meyjes (Director)

5.0 out of 5 stars Six Star Instant Classic–Needs to Come in US DVD

January 27, 2011

If you are a Latino or have any grasp of Latino culture, this is a 6. This is as good as Evita and confirms in my own mind Penelope Cruz, who awed in Spanglish, as the Greta Garbo of our time. It took me some time to realize it was her, as her role, both through facial and body language as well as costume and design, was completely opposite that of the role she played in Spanglish. The male star, Adrien Brody, was himself phenomenal, and one has to give enormous credit to every side of this production from script and casting to settings, supporting actors at all levels, and the over-all framing of the story. This could easily become a cult classic to be enjoyed over and over again. I personally found it head and shoulders above just about every film I have watched these past five or six years. Penelope Cruz's face is a work of art in constant motion, and I was absolutely fascinated by the choreography of her eyes and mouth and the entire setting both up close and personal and in the larger cultural landscape that the producer and director captured to perfection.

I certainly hope this becomes available in USA standard (still incredible that there is not one global standard for DVDs, digits are digits) because when it does I will buy and keep this particular DVD for recurring viewing.

Writing this review has exposed me to the enormous body of work of Penelope Cruz, and caused me to explore the work of Adrian Brody. Below are a few DVDs that I have selected from a very large–a surprisingly large–selection, all of which, in combination with the two performances by Penelope Cruz I have actually seen, cause me to feel she is truly one of the most diverse, nuanced, beautiful, and downright plain TALENTED actresses of our time.

Volver
Open Your Eyes
Elegy
and many others

The Pianist
Love the Hard Way
and many others

CORRECTION with thanks to alert reader who pointed out that Paz Vega is not Penelope Cruz.
Carmen
Spanglish
Sex and Lucia (R-Rated Edition) [VHS]