Here’s the scene: you’re traveling, and you walk into a little restaurant and the menu is entirely in a language you don’t understand, without pictures. You’ve got a couple of choices. You can leave, and try to find a place with English translations. You can try to hack your way through a conversation with the waiter, who also doesn’t speak your language. Or, you can point randomly at the menu and live with the consequences.
Well, in the future there will be another, better, answer. Live, realtime translation built into your glasses. Enter: Project Glass. British hacker and DIYer Will Powell has built a pair of glasses that can (albeit roughly) project a translation of your conversation onto your glasses. Here’s what it looks like:
I can not judge this source … I do not know anything about the publication — the article is fascinating. In 2008, I visited Temple Mount and saw the Israeli archaeology project, which literally abuts the al Aqsa Mosque. Totally sealed off and makes it inconvenient for Palestinians to visit mosque. If they decide to rebuild temple, they will have to destroy mosque — I need not tell what that means.
Surely, Israelis understand that means going to the mattresses with the entire Arab world (including Christian Arabs because they depend on religious tolerance which is more prevalent among moslems than jew in that part of world). In fact, rebuilding the temple could unite Shi'ites and Sunnis. Netanyahu, for all his rhetoric, is more cautious about starting wars — look at his track record — he is a master of bluffing. Olmert and perhaps Barak are more dangerous.
The problem of course, is controlling the right wing crazies in Israel, and IDF is definitely getting more religious. The really tragic irony in all this is the most Israelis come from or are descended from eastern Europeans (Netanyahu is of Lithuanian descent), and in all probability, the vast bulk of E. European Jewry is descended from Kazars who converted from paganism to Judiaism 400-800 years AFTER the temple was destroyed. The true descendants of the Jews who suffered the Roman persecution are probably the Palestinians who converted to Islam. A distinguished Israeli historian at U. of Tel Aviv, Schlomo Sand, has written a stunning history of the Jewish “diaspora” that concluded most was the result of conversion not migration. The name of the book is The Invention of Jewish People. I really recommend it.
Michel Bauwens examines how collaborative, commons-based production is emerging to challenge capitalism. Below, Hilary Wainwright responds
Capitalism in its present form is facing limits, especially resource limits, and in spite of the rapid growth of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) economies, is undergoing a process of decomposition. The question is whether the new proto-mode can generate the institutional capacity and the alliances able to break the political power of the old order.
In The Chronicle, Williman Pannapacker writes about the importance of receiving digital humanities training.
In The Chronicle, Williman Pannapacker writes about the importance of receiving digital humanities training, which he summarizes in a tweet: no dh, no interview. At the end of this piece he backs away from this provocation, writing “even though I've been excited about the digital humanities since my first visit to the summer institute, I want to urge job candidates: Don't become a DH'er out of fear that you won't get a position if you don't.” And I would certainly agree with that, though it always comes back to this matter of defintion. Even in the narrowest of defintions of DH, the field is beginning to spin out a range of sub-specializations. Pannapacker compares the current interest in DH to the focus on “theory” in the nineties, but mostly as a cautionary tale. Indeed DH has had an ambivalent (at best) relationship with theory, which makes sense in a way as two competing methods, which might become complementary (and may be complementary in some scholars' work) but are largely seen as incongruous at this point. Of course the primary difference between DH and other humanities methods is the infrastructure required to support the endeavor. As Pannapacker points out:
It's now possible to print functional weapons at home. This is going to progress rapidly now.
Think: global file sharing of designs for servicable weapons, from pistols on up to ?, that can be printed at home. What you can print — from the materials to the size/quality of the object to the completeness (snap together construction) — is already moving forward quickly. The weapons effort will just be along for the ride.
Click on Image to Enlarge
“HaveBlue” has tested the first “printed” firearm and it works. Here's his site, but it's VERY slow. It didn't blow up in his face.
Granted, he used an older professional grade Stratys 3D printer to do it. Printeres are much better now and handle many new materials.
Haveblue has been testing the “market” for distributing CAD/CAM weapons designs. His post of an earlier design to Thingverse (a site for 3D printing design patterns) led to a change in their policy (although it hasn't been enforced).
Phi Beta Iota: Violence should be a last resort — publics today are far from fully exploiting the use of public intelligence in the public interest. However, it bears mention that both Gandhi and Martin Luther King were quite clear: non-violence is preferable to violence, but violence is preferable to continued oppression. Most governments, including the European governments still favoring banks over people and refusing to honor the Iceland model, no longer represent their publics and have lost all legitimacy in the eyes of many. We pray they will awaken to the reality that those governments that do not empower, protect, and respect the public, will ultimately be abolished. In the meantime, they are merely ignored.
I am delighted to have an opportunity to welcome this book as a contribution to the growing body of work focused on the convergence of new technologies, new human possibilities, and new organizational forms and processes.
Recently a few people have blamed Obama for his lack of leadership and ability of breaking short lived promises. Critics mostly point financial and health care issues as a result of his political failure. Truth is the Bailout of 08, was a mixture of wild capitalism, corporate decision makers, and no government regulations. Thanks to the pressure of some Lobbyist, the Glass Stiegel Act bill, signed by Bush allowed, an early century law during the 30’s depression, to come alive and allow markets to regulate themselves. But the idea comes back to the Reagan era. It could be argued that both republicans and democrats are in fault of the financial problems the U.S. is currently experiencing.
The question is: Does it really matter whether Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, Ron Paul, are elected and would it really change anything?
