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Patrick Meier: First Spam Filter for Disaster Response — Multiple Humans, Automated Cross-Checking

Crowd-Sourcing, Geospatial
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Patrick Meier
Patrick Meier

The First Ever Spam Filter for Disaster Response

While spam filters provide additional layers of security to websites, they can also be used to process all kinds of information. Perhaps most famously, for example, the reCAPTCHA spam filter was used to transcribe the New York Times’ entire paper-based archives. See my previous blog post to learn how this was done and how spam filters can also be used to process information for disaster response. Given the positive response I received from humanitarian colleagues who read the blog post, I teamed up with my colleagues at QCRI to create the first ever spam filter for disaster response.

. . . . . . .

The desired outcome? Each potential disaster picture is displayed to 3 different email account users. Only if each of the 3 users tag the same picture as capturing disaster damage does that picture get automatically forwarded to members of the Digital Humanitarian Network. To tag more pictures after logging in, users are invited to do so via MicroMappers, which launches this September in partnership with OCHA. MicroMappers enables members of the public to participate in digital disaster response efforts with a simple click of the mouse.

Read full post with more graphics.

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SmartPlanet: Open Source Tree of Life

SmartPlanet
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smartplanet logoQ&A: Tiffani Williams, computer scientist, on creating an open source tree of life

By | July 29, 2013

Tiffani Williams
Tiffani Williams

The Open Tree of Life project culls years’ worth of segmented scientific research in an effort to create a current, open source version of our knowledge on thousands of plant and animal species. Tiffani Williams, a computer scientist at Texas A&M University who is working on the project, said the Open Tree of Life will eventually be a Wikipedia-like living document for scientists and the community to edit and use for research.

I spoke recently with Williams about the segmented nature of the tree of life, the challenges of the project and how an open tree of life could impact science in schools. Below are excerpts from our interview.

What is the tree of life and why should people care about it?

One way I explain the tree of life is to think about it from the human perspective. A lot of us are interested in understanding our family tree. We want to know about our grandparents and great-great grandparents and down the line. Part of that is this whole notion of where we fit in the world. Who are we? That’s certainly one aspect of a family tree. But there’s another aspect too. For example, when you go to the doctor, they’ll ask you about your family history. High blood pressure and heart disease [in your family] can be signs that you might be impacted, as well. We as human beings have this notion of appreciating our family history. All the tree of life does is take that to another level. Instead of thinking of a family in terms of your human ancestors, the tree of life is the world’s ancestry, which includes all of the world’s organisms. It’s still thought of as a family tree, but the context is a lot more broad.

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Chuck Spinney: Sick People at the Aspin Summit III — What Do the Men of Empire Have in Common with Captain Ahab?

Cultural Intelligence
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Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney

Below is Professor Michael Brenner's take on this question.

AMERICA’s MOBY DICK
Michael Brenner
University of Pittsburg, 28 July 2013

Captain Ahab’s obsessive hunt for Moby Dick was driven by the thirst for revenge. The great white whale had maimed Ahab – in soul as well as body. Ahab was consumed by the passion to restore his sense of self, and make himself whole again, by killing his nemesis – a compulsion that his wooden leg never let weaken.

America’s “war-on-terror” has become our national mission for restoration. The psychic wound is what grieves us; it inflames our collective passion for vengeance. The physical wound is already healed. By now, it must be memorialized in order for the scar to be seen. It never did impair our functioning. In that sense, little more than a broken toe. In the aftermath of 9/11, there was genuine fear of a repeat attack – something that we now know never was in the cards. Our enemy has been emasculated; the great Satan was shot dead in Abbottabad. Only pinpricks at long intervals from within our midst draw blood.

Catharsis has eluded us, though. We still seethe with emotions. We suffer from the free-floating anxiety that is dread, from vague feelings of vulnerability, from a seeming lost prowess and control. A society that talks casually about ‘closure’ on almost all occasions cannot find closure on 9/11. Instead, it has a powerful need to ritualize the fear, to pursue the implacable quest for ultimate security, to perform violent acts of vengeance that neither cure nor satiate.

So, we search the seven seas hunting for monsters to slay; not Moby Dick himself, but his accessories, accomplices, enablers, facilitators, emulators, sympathizers. Whales of every species, great and small, fall to our harpoons. The dead and innocent dolphins far outnumber them. Fortunes of war.

Since there is no actual Moby Dick out there to pursue, we have fashioned a virtual game of acting out the hunt, the encounter, the retribution. We thereby have embraced the post-9/11 trauma rather than expunged it. That is the “war-on-terror.” That war is about us – it no longer is about them.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Sick People at the Aspin Summit III — What Do the Men of Empire Have in Common with Captain Ahab?”

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Marcus Aurelius: ‘Frayed’ from war: Spec ops reports alcohol abuse, stress, sleeplessness

07 Other Atrocities, Cultural Intelligence, Military
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Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius

‘Frayed' from war: Spec ops reports alcohol abuse, stress, sleeplessness

After 12 years of war, the military's most elite forces are ‘frayed' and reporting struggles with alcohol, sleeplessness and emotional numbness.

In a survey of active-duty special operations forces, nearly 10 percent of respondents reported potential alcohol abuse or dependence, 8 percent said they were uncharacteristically irritable or angry, and more than one-quarter of those surveyed said they were sleeping five or fewer hours a night.

Many marriages among these frequently deployed troops also are struggling — more than 14 percent of survey respondents said they were less than happy with their marriages, while 17 percent said they wish they had never married.

The goal of the survey was to hear directly from the force, and U.S. Special Operations Command is implementing several initiatives to tackle these issues, including hiring more psychologists and nutritionists, and putting in place a system to give service members more time at home, said Navy Capt. Tom Chaby, a SEAL and director of SOCOM’s Preservation of the Force and Families Task Force.

“We knew the force was frayed, that there were challenges,” Chaby said.

Many of these challenges came to light when Adm. William McRaven, the SOCOM commander, conducted town hall meetings, held 455 focus groups and met with more than 7,000 of his troops shortly after he took command, and they were confirmed in the survey, Chaby said.

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Josh Kilborne: 80% of US Adults Near Poverty, Relying on Welfare, or Are Unemployed?

07 Other Atrocities, Civil Society, Corruption, Government
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Josh Kilbourn
Josh Kilbourn

80% Of US Adults Are Near Poverty, Rely On Welfare, Or Are Unemployed

Despite consumer confidence at a six-year high, the latest AP survey of the real America shows a stunning four out of five U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, are near poverty, or rely on welfare for at least parts of their lives amid signs of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream. Hardship is particularly on the rise among whites, based on several measures. Pessimism among whites about their families' economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987.

“Poverty is no longer an issue of ‘them', it's an issue of ‘us',” as ‘the invisible poor' – lower income whites – are generally dispersed in suburbs (Appalachia, the industrial Midwest, and across America's heartland, from Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma up through the Great Plains) where more than 60% of the poor are white.

More than 19 million whites fall below the poverty line of $23,021 for a family of four – accounting for more than 41% of the nation's destitute – nearly double the number of poor blacks and as one survey respondent noted “I think it's going to get worse.”

Continue reading “Josh Kilborne: 80% of US Adults Near Poverty, Relying on Welfare, or Are Unemployed?”

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Paul Craig Roberts: YouTube (37:50) The Total Destruction of America from Within

Cultural Intelligence
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Paul Craig Roberts discusses the dismantling of the U.S. constitution and the current Great Recession.  With opening review of headlines by Alex Jones.

Phi Beta Iota:  We embrace a diversity of commentators among our collective, in part to provide our hard-working subscribers and visitors with a panorama of cultural intelligence related to public intelligence in the public interest.