Worth a Look: Kevin Kelly on Cool Tools

5 Star, Information Society, Information Technology, Intelligence (Public), IO Tools
Amazon Page
Amazon Page

Cool Tools is a highly curated selection of the best tools available for individuals and small groups. Tools include hand tools, maps, how-to books, vehicles, software, specialized devices, gizmos, websites — and anything useful. Tools are selected and presented in the book if they are the best of kind, the cheapest, or the only thing available that will do the job. This is an oversized book which reviews over 1,500 different tools, explaining why each one is great, and what its benefits are. Indirectly the book illuminates the possibilities contained in such tools and the whole catalog serves an education outside the classroom. The content in this book was derived from ten years of user reviews published at the Cool Tools website, cool-tools.org.

See Also:

Kevin Kelly @ Phi Beta Iota

Review: Beyond Conflict – 20 Years of Putting Experience to Work for Peace

5 Star, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class

cover beyond conflict5.0 out of 5 stars Valuable, Substantive, Inspiring and a Bargain, February 24, 2014

I love this book. I received it as a gift and it is NOT “just a coffee table book.” This is a serious book, of very high quality in terms of both content and quality of construction. The photographs are superb, the white space is perfect, the use of enlarged quotes to make important points very powerful.

Created by the Project on Justice in Times of Transition [now renamed Beyond Conflict] the book reflects some extraordinary networks of influence that the Project has developed. The dedication, for example, is signed by Vaclav Havel (Czech Republic), David Ervine (Ireland), and Leonel Gomez (El Salvador).

The books focus is on successful conclusions to war, snap-shots of specific situations where peace was finally achieved. There are eight alternative measures that have been mixed and matched, with a case study for each.

Continue reading “Review: Beyond Conflict – 20 Years of Putting Experience to Work for Peace”

Review: How America Was Lost – From 9/11 to the Police/Warfare State

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Democracy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason
Amazon Page
Amazon Page

Paul Craig Roberts

5.0 out of 5 stars Most Credible Consistent Truth-Teller I Read…., February 21, 2014

I have been following Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of Treasury in the Reagan Administration, for years. Originally he specialized in economic commentary, and I was much taken with his hard-hitting critical commentary and particularly his illumination of the false statistics being released by the Bush and Obama Administrations with respect to unemployment and other major measuring rods of our Nation's health. He was the commentator that introduced me to shadowstats.com, which documents 22.4% unemployment at a time when the Obama Administration claims 7.5% more or less — never mind lies that are 300% removed from reality.

Paul Craig Roberts is non-partisan in his critical commentary. I consider him a patriot with a brain, a capable author, and a voice much needed within all political circles, and most particularly within the Republican Party which is now at war with itself as the real common-sense conservatives recognize that the GOP has been hijacked by Zionists, Evangelicals, and other nut-cases who are all about personal privilege (including pedophilia) and personal profit and both personal and institutional power while disregarding the Constitution and betraying the Republic.

Continue reading “Review: How America Was Lost – From 9/11 to the Police/Warfare State”

Jean Lievens: The Purpose Economy

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Culture, Research, Economics, Intelligence (Public), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Worth A Look
Jean Lievens
Jean Lievens

The Purpose Economy 100 was created by Imperative in partnership with CSRWire to celebrate the pioneers who are driving the evolution of our economy from one based on information to one based on people and their quest for purpose. The list was compiled based on hundreds of nominations across the country. At the early stages of this economic shift, we felt the best way to capture it was through the stories of its pioneers, celebrating them and inspiring new leaders of the emerging Purpose Economy. View the list as an infographic or interactive profiles below. Later this year we will be releasing international editions of the list.

Forthcoming 2 April 2014 Available for Pre-Order Now

Amazon Page
Amazon Page

 

Worth a Look: Reinventing Organizations

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Worth A Look
Amazon Page
Amazon Page

The way we manage organizations seems increasingly out of date. Survey after survey shows that a majority of employees feel disengaged from their companies. The epidemic of organizational disillusionment goes way beyond Corporate America-teachers, doctors, and nurses are leaving their professions in record numbers because the way we run schools and hospitals kills their vocation. Government agencies and nonprofits have a noble purpose, but working for these entities often feels soulless and lifeless just the same. All these organizations suffer from power games played at the top and powerlessness at lower levels, from infighting and bureaucracy, from endless meetings and a seemingly never-ending succession of change and cost-cutting programs.

Deep inside, we long for soulful workplaces, for authenticity, community, passion, and purpose. The solution, according to many progressive scholars, lies with more enlightened management. But reality shows that this is not enough. In most cases, the system beats the individual-when managers or leaders go through an inner transformation, they end up leaving their organizations because they no longer feel like putting up with a place that is inhospitable to the deeper longings of their soul.

Continue reading “Worth a Look: Reinventing Organizations”

Review: American Nations – A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Congress (Failure, Reform), Culture, Research, Democracy, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), History
Amazon Page
Amazon Page

Colin Woodard

5.0 out of 5 stars Nine Nations Was a Snap-Shot — This Is Deep History & Ends Thoughtfully, February 16, 2014

I bought this book prepared to dislike it, having given a rave review to Joel Garreau's The Nine Nations of North America. Let me settle that one immediately. I loved this book. As the author himself points out early on, Garreau's book was a snap-shot, this book is a deep history. I was also quite taken, at the end of the book, with the author's acknowledgements that begin with Garreau and go on to others such as Wilbur Zelinsky's The Cultural Geography of The United States: A Revised Edition and Raymond Gastil's Cultural regions of the United States.

Although I would have liked some illustrations and maps in relation to each section of the book — there is only one map for the entire book — I found the book riveting, and would like to see it become a standard text for multi-disciplinary education across history, political science, sociology, and cultural studies.

Continue reading “Review: American Nations – A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America”

Worth a Look: Book The Big Bamboozle (9/11) and Video Over Murder of Author Pilot Philip Marshall

5 Star, 9-11 Truth Books & DVDs, Worth A Look
cover big bamboozle
Amazon Page

From the perspective of a Boeing 767 captain and former “special activities” contract pilot, Philip Marshall straps the reader into the cockpits of hijacked commercial airliners to tell the story of the most sophisticated terrorist attack in history. Based on a comprehensive ten-year study into the murders of his fellow pilots on 9/11, he explains how hijackers, novice pilots at the controls of massive guided missiles, were able to beat United States Air Force fighters to iconic targets with advanced maneuvering, daring speeds and a kamikaze finish. But, as Marshall explains, the tactical plan was so precise that it rules out car-bombers and shoe-bombers known as al Qaeda, KSM and Osama bin Laden. So then, who was it? That's what you are about learn. Backed by official NTSB, FAA and black box recordings, Marshall finds the most capable and most documented group of conspirators buried deep within a Congressional Inquiry's report and retraces their work in gripping detail. Fasten your seatbelt— the sad truth is that all of the solid evidence points to a dark collaboration between members of the Bush Administration and a covert group of Saudi government officials. This is a game changer that will finally set the record straight on the most horrific crime in US history. This book is a compilation of official reports that disputes the Bush Administration, the Bush Intelligence Community and the American media's account of the 9/11 attack. United States Senator Bob Graham's Congressional Joint Inquiry in 2002 revealed that Saudi Arabian Intelligence agents met the 9/11 hijackers in the Los Angeles in January of 2000, harbored them and led them to 18 months of flight training in Florida and Arizona. Marshall follows reports from FBI field agents that warned George W. Bush's Administration that a “cadre of individuals of investigative interest were engaged in flight training” in the Arizona desert in the spring of 2001. Marshall identifies three top federal investigators who complained that Dick Cheney obstructed justice by refusing access to suspects who supposedly confessed to the greatest crime in U.S. history. None of the federal investigators were ever allowed to verify the confession of Khalid Sheik Mohammed who had been water boarded over 180 times at Guantanamo detention facility. The book disputes the video and media confession of Osama bin Laden and points out that none of the accusations by the Bush Administration could be proved. Marshall asserts that the Saudi government was the true executioners of the 9/11 attack and framed their enemies while CIA special operations set up an elaborate decoy named Osama bin Laden to divert attention away from the Saudi operation. He follows the hijackers to flight training airports and finds that Saudi agents led the hijackers to the Arizona desert where Boeing 757 and Boeing 767 airliners were parked at a secluded CIA operated airport. The operators of the CIA airport were traced to suspicious insider stock trades on two airlines, United Airlines and American Airlines, the only two airlines used in the 9/11 attack. Marshall breaks down the tactical flight plan that was used by the hijackers and chronicles the actions of Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Saudi Arabian Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Dick Cheney and George W. Bsuh to learn that their account of the attack was severely flawed. Three top investigators wrote that Dick Cheney had obstructed the investigation and redacted the involvement of the Saudi government agents who were employed in California by the Saudi Civil Aviation authority. The Congressional Inquiry reported that the Saudi agents had “seemingly unlimited funding from Saudi Arabia” and had traced the hijacker financial support to Prince Bandar through a Riggs Bank account. Finally Marshall chronicles the media trial that allowed Bush and Cheney to derail American Justice by trying the 9/11 case with media propaganda and away from the American federal court system.

UPDATE 26 April 2014: YouTube (1:22:26) Unthinkable: An Airline Captain's Story