This portable biosensor is capable of detecting viruses, bacteria, proteins, toxins, and other specific modules, and takes just a few minutes to process, which could greatly speed up in-the-field assessments of issues as diverse as groundwater contamination, medical diagnostics, mapping the spread of pathogens, or tracking contaminants in the food system.
A new site called Danger Maps is harnessing the power of crowd-sourcing to identify polluted locations, such as waste treatment facilities, garbage dumps and oil refineries. The site was started by Liu Chunlei after he discovered that his Shanghai apartment is near a landfill, something that was not disclosed when he made his purchase.
Bloomberg reports that the internet is becoming an important tool for activists in China:
“More Internet users are starting to understand how important information and data can be for sustainable social activism,” said Isaac Mao, director of the Social Brain Foundation, a social incubator for Chinese grassroots culture. “Visual sites are very helpful for the public to understand the big picture.”
On 22 November 2013, the Oswald Innocence Campaign will be hosting the premiere event to commemorate the 50th observance of the JFK assassination. Presenting cutting-edge research on the death of our 35th President that holds the keys to understanding what took place, it will feature some of the best authors on some the most important evidence that clarifies and illuminates that tragic event in Dallas, 50 years ago.
The research presented will advance extensive, detailed evidence establishing that the assassination of JFK was a “national security event”, which involved crucial elements of the most powerful institutions in the American government, including the CIA, the Joint Chiefs, the FBI and the Secret Service, who conspired with the Mafia, anti-Castro Cubans and Texas oil men to remove JFK from office and replace his policies with those of Lyndon Baines Johnson.
As Ralph Cinque has observed, this November 22nd, the government and the media are going to be going all out with the official lie about JFK–and with extreme prejudice. They are going to pull all the stops to promote the indefensible and long-disproven lie–one more stomach-churning time. What can we do to stand up to this evil pomposity? We can literally stand together–in Santa Barbara. We can come together and evoke the call for JFK truth. A coup d-etat took place in 1963, and we have been living with the results of it for half a century–with millions of dead across the globe. With the death of John Kennedy, the US became a perpetual warfare state, and we live every day of our lives with the consequenes of that monstrous fact. So, join us on this very special day to find strength in numbers, to make a blip on the national radar and take personal responsibility for disseminating the truth about JFK.
What you weren’t supposed to ever know
The evidence that substantiates the scenario of the assassination as a national security event is extensive and compelling. It has generate enormous resistance even within the JFK community, where several of those who will present their findings have been banned in a massive effort to suppress the truth and preserve the illusion that it was an event of a different kind, where the view that “the Mafia did it” or “the Cubans did it” or “the KGB did it” are frequently advanced, but where none of them could have effected the cover-up that was indispensable to convey the false impressions this conference will correct:
* Lee Harvey Oswald was working for the government when he was framed for the death of JFK
* Photos and films allegedly taken during the assassination were altered to conceal the truth
* Autopsy photos and X-rays were altered and faked to support a false account of the murder
* LBJ was a pivotal player–perhaps the pivotal player–who brought about the assassination
* George H.W. Bush was not only in Dealey Plaza but took an active role in carrying out the plot
* There were multiple shooters who tied the conspirators together to insure their mutual silence
* They included a Deputy Sheriff, an Air Force expert, an anti-Casto Cuban, a Police Officer and a Mafia shooter
* LBJ’s personal hit-man, who killed a dozen people for Lyndon, also appears to have been directly involved
* The Mafia could not have extended its reach into Bethesda Naval Hospital to alter X-rays and photographs
* Anti-Castro Cubans would have been unable to substitute someone else’s brain for that of JFK
* While the KBG had the capability to alter films, it could not have gained access to the Zapruder film
The experts assembled for this unique conference–which will explain how it was done, who was responsible and why, and how it was covered up–have invested decades upon decades of their lives to research on crucial aspects of the case, including the medical, the ballistic, and the film and photographic evidence. They include the leading authorities on the role of Lyndon Baines Johnson, on the involvement of George H.W. Bush, on the management of the cover-up, on the death of key witnesses intimately related to JFK and by others who personally knew the man accused of killing him. If you are there, you will understand what went down.
HUMINT is the heart of the matter. What CIA, DIA, SOCOM, and DHS are doing in the HUMINT arena is more of the wrong thing. Now that NSA is being revealed as the naked (and rather dumb) emperor of intelligence, IMINT is largely dead (and what the drones should be doing instead of killing 98% wrong targets), MASINT is still not worth the money we spend on it, and OSINT has been corrupted beyond belief, the time is right to revisit the entirety of intelligence (decision-support). Here is my HUMINT scorecard only, 2012 USA Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Scorecard 1.1 and three starting points:
TOKYO—Japan's military, long constrained by the nation's postwar pacifist constitution, moved toward gaining the freedom to strike enemy targets abroad if an attack is anticipated.
Erin Niemela's recent proposal that we amend the Constitution to ban war is provocative and persuasive. Count me in. But I have a related idea that I think should be tried first.
While banning war is just what the world ordered, it has about it something of the whole Bush-Cheney ordeal during which we spent years trying to persuade Congress to ban torture. By no means do I want to be counted among those opposed to banning torture. But it is relevant, I want to suggest, that torture had already been banned. Torture had been banned by treaty and been made a felony, under two different statutes, before George W. Bush was made president. In fact, the pre-existing ban on torture was stronger and more comprehensive than any of the loophole-ridden efforts to re-criminalize it. Had the debate over “banning torture” been entirely replaced with a stronger demand to prosecute torture, we might be better off today.
We are in that same situation with regard to war. War was banned 84 years ago, making talk of banning war problematic.
>We were in that same situation, in fact, even before the U.N. Charter was drafted 68 years ago. By any reasonable interpretation of the U.N. Charter, most — if not all — U.S. wars are forbidden. The United Nations did not authorize the invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq, the overthrow of the Libyan government, or the drone wars in Pakistan or Yemen or Somalia. And by only the wildest stretch of the imagination are these wars defensive from the U.S. side. But the two loopholes created by the U.N. Charter (for defensive and U.N.-authorized wars) are severe weaknesses. There will always be those who claim that a current war is in compliance with the U.N. Charter or that a future war might be. So, when I say that war is illegal, I don't have the U.N. Charter in mind.
Nor am I thinking that every war inevitably violates the so-called laws of war, involving countless atrocities that don't stand up under a defense of “necessity” or “distinction” or “proportionality,” although this is certainly true. Banning improper war, while useful as far as it goes, actually supports the barbaric notion that one can conduct a proper war. The situation in which a war would be a “just war” is as mythical as the much-imagined situation in which torture would be justified.
Nor do I mean that U.S. Constitutional war powers are violated or fraud is perpetrated in making the case for war, although these and other violations of law are frequent companions of U.S. wars.
I also do not want to dispute the advantages of banning war in the highest law, the Constitution. There is a common misconception that holds up lesser, statutory law as more serious than the Constitution or the treaties that it makes “supreme law of the land.” This is a dangerous inversion. Edward Snowden is right to expose violations of the Fourth Amendment. Senator Dianne Feinstein is wrong to insist that those violations have been legalized by statutes. Amending the Constitution to ban war would (if the Constitution were complied with) prevent any lesser law from legalizing war. But a treaty would do that too. And we already have one.
Thanks to you, last week’s report on the collaborative economy was readily received, and has been viewed over 26k times, the media picked up on it, and bloggers alike. As we digest what it means, it’s important to recognize this is the next phase in the internet, and the next phase of social business. An interesting finding is that the second era (social) and the third era (collaborative economy), use the same technologies (social technologies) but instead of sharing media and ideas –people are sharing goods and services. This is all part of a continuum and we need to see our careers progress as the market moves forward with us.
[Social technology enabled the sharing of media and ideas called social business –the same tools enable sharing of goods and services called the collaborative economy]
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Internet Phases: Past, Present, and Future
Attribute
Brand Experience Era
Customer Experience Era
Collaborative Economy Era
Driving technology
CMS and HTML
Social Technologies
Social Technologies
Years
1995: Internet had 14% american adoption
2005: Business blogging disrupted corporations
2013: AirBnb, TaskRabbit, Lyft, gain mainstream attention
Twitter is a powerful infotention tool if you use it that way. Discovering experts and learning from them is key. I use Diigo and Delicious as hunting groungs for expertise, then follow the expert candidates I find in a particular field via Twitter lists. These step-by-step instructions can be useful to those who don't already use Twitter this way.
Sometimes you need to quickly immerse yourself in a new field. You might want to gain expertise or quickly gauge what the current issues are around a particular topic. One way of doing this is by creating a dedicated Twitter account to follow a topic. Below some instructions on how you could do this.
Setting up a Twitter account with the right settings