Providing abundance is humanity’s grandest challenge—this is a book about how we rise to meet it. We will soon be able to meet and exceed the basic needs of every man, woman and child on the planet. Abundance for all is within our grasp. This bold, contrarian view, backed up by exhaustive research, introduces our near-term future, where exponentially growing technologies and three other powerful forces are conspiring to better the lives of billions. An antidote to pessimism by tech entrepreneur turned philanthropist, Peter H. Diamandis and award-winning science writer Steven Kotler.Since the dawn of humanity, a privileged few have lived in stark contrast to the hardscrabble majority. Conventional wisdom says this gap cannot be closed. But it is closing—fast. The authors document how four forces—exponential technologies, the DIY innovator, the Technophilanthropist, and the Rising Billion—are conspiring to solve our biggest problems. Abundance establishes hard targets for change and lays out a strategic roadmap for governments, industry and entrepreneurs, giving us plenty of reason for optimism.
Examining human need by category—water, food, energy, healthcare, education, freedom—Diamandis and Kotler introduce dozens of innovators making great strides in each area: Larry Page, Steven Hawking, Dean Kamen, Daniel Kahneman, Elon Musk, Bill Joy, Stewart Brand, Jeff Skoll, Ray Kurzweil, Ratan Tata, Craig Venter, among many, many others.
Phi Beta Iota: This may be a much superior book to the first one, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. It certainly merits direct consideration. However, we view with great skepticism all of the hype from personalities who know little about the nuances of whole systems. For this book to be named one of the twelve best in 2012, before the first month of that year is over, suggests a general lack of integrity surrounding the book and its marketing. We will evaluate it directly when it becomes available.
Armed with a Bachelor's in math and 4 years of GI Bill, dillettantism post-that and primarily in natural sciences, I finally got around to really trying to figure out what ‘the human condition' forever bugging me was really all about.
Along that line then, “the happenstantial appearance of Godel's Proof precipitated ‘possible applicability to language in general' as an analytical tool for a more properly ‘scientific' analysis of language itself and the evolution of words and language in general” -the deconstruction and re-evolution of ‘the human condition', so to speak.
Most discussions of possible United States military operations in the Persian Gulf, should Iran try to prevent maritime traffic from going through the Strait of Hormuz, generally say that while it would not be a cakewalk, it would not be an enormously difficult task either.
But that conventional wisdom is wrong, according to a recent report issued by an independent, non-profit public policy research institute in Washington DC. The report found that the traditional post-Cold War US military ability to project power overseas with few serious challenges to its freedom of action may be rapidly drawing to a close.
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It stressed that “a Strait of Hormuz closure could trigger a much larger price spike, including by limiting offsetting supplies from other producers in the region”.
Phi Beta Iota: Two themes are emerging in the open source world. First, the depth and breadth of Israel's clandestine agreements with its Arab neighbors is not clearly understood–a National Intelligence Estimate is required, but the collection, processing, and analysis capabilities are simply not there, and the management will to do this as a multinational task is not there either. Second, as the US loses its ability to actually project force, the finance of war is being replaced by the theater of war, such that oil prices can still be manipulated, but at a fraction of the blood, sweat, and tears previously mobilized – financial fraud on the cheap, as it were.
1. You are creative.
2. Creative thinking is work.
3. You must go through the motions of being creative.
4. Your brain is not a computer.
5. There is no one right answer.
6. Never stop with your first good idea.
7. Expect the experts to be negative.
8. Trust your instincts.
9. There is no such thing as failure.
10. You do not see things as they are; you see them as you are.
11. Always approach a problem on its own terms.
12. Learn to think unconventionally.
1. Everything is connected.
2. Understanding true costs as a concept is fundamental.
3. Cultural lenses matter.
4. Understanding history is a strong foundation for shaping the future.
5. The best thinkers are not necessarily the best teachers or doers.
6. Trust is the fuel for all of the above – transparency & truth build trust.
No program better illustrates the pathologies of the weapons acquisition process as it is currently practiced by the Military – Industrial – Congressional Complex (MICC) than the entirely predictable, and in this case, predicted, problems dragging the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter into a dead man’s spiral.
The F-35 in on track to be the most expensive program in the history of the Defense Department, and it has repeated just about every mistake we invented since Robert McNamara concocted the multimission, multi-service TFX — a program conceived with the same kind of fanciful one-shoe fits all imaginings as the F-35.
For reflection. When I created the strategic generalizations in the first edition of the Expeditionary Factors study, that was responding to General Gray's guidance that we be relevant to USMC acquisition–that was actually his primary focus, we lost our integrity by the third generation of leadership and went into production for the sake of production, without a genuine understanding of either the craft of intelligence or the mission needs of the USMC. That was enabled by flag officers who have no clue what it means to integrate true cost economics with strategic generalizations to arrive at a force that has a very low logistics foot-print, a very high availability ratio, and a very low cost in relation to all the crap that the big three services sign for without thinking.
When the Cold War ended, a secret fund planned for by President Ronald Reagan had been set aside to rebuild America, pay off the national debt and reward Americans for decades of sacrifice.
This was the real accomplishment of his presidency, one few knew of.
As the funds finally came together, during the first years of the Clinton administration, instead of going to America, the man chosen to secure this legacy for America was put in a Swiss dungeon, then a mental hospital and eventually railroaded into prison on charges now admitted to have been “manufactured.”
Of the funds, only $4.5 trillion remain (plus interest, less taxes), belonging to Ameritrust Corporation, held for the American people. This is some of the story of those funds and continuing attempts by politicians and bankers to continue destroying the United States through economic terrorism.
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What we want to know and “we” is not a harmless bunch of cranks. “We” means many of the people who formerly and currently represent key “capabilities” that protect and defend the United States.
We want to know why, for years, the Federal Reserve illegally “loaned” trillions of dollars to banks that claimed they were insolvent, money in escrow and not under their authority for distribution.
We want to know why, for years, the Secretaries of Treasury authorized these illegal acts which have been reported in the news but never investigated.
We want to know where the trillions of dollars are in profits that were generated by using this currency to collateralize offshore transactions never listed by the banks who received the illegal loans.
Phi Beta Iota: We sought out Mr. Duff and interviewed him for two hours. Among the speculative but at face value compelling opinions he offered are that there are a great many earnest professionals at the top levels of the US secret intelligence community and within the US military that are fed up with the continuing criminal enterprise that has captured the portions of the US Government. Denver as the money-laundering capital of the USA; the failed war on drugs and the open border for the convenience of the Bush family cartel; Romney as a prime suspect (accusation, neither indictable nor proven) of massive money laundering for the other cartels — Bain as a form of BCCI replacement; attack on Libya as a joint US-French spanking of Israel and its biological weapons factories there to include a Level 5 (robotic only) vault; Iran war as a means of covering bad oil futures bets made by specific investors including Goldman Sachs; Obama to stay in place for four more years; Bert Laden CIA patsy play partly to sideline General Patraeus; many non-combat casualties from Bert Laden play drop-kicked in the staged CH-46 crash later. Bottom line: heavy smoke, some cinders, certainly a sufficiency of information to warrant at least 100 supoenas and extended interrogations, but absent a deep honest investigation, the show goes on. At this point, all sources–including Ron Paul and Veterans Today–must be considered suspect as elements of the controlled opposition. Absent the development of a public intelligence network able to develop public intelligence with total integrity, we simply cannot arrive at meaningful conclusions.
On Saturday, Occupy Oakland re-entered the national spotlight during a day-long effort to take over an empty building and transform it into a social center. Oakland police thwarted the efforts, arresting more than 400 people in the process, primarily during a mass nighttime arrest outside a downtown YMCA. That number included at least six journalists, myself included, in direct violation of OPD media relations policy that states “media shall never be targeted for dispersal or enforcement action because of their status.”
After an unsuccessful afternoon effort to occupy a former convention center, the more than 1,000 protesters elected to return to the site of their former encampment outside city hall. On the way, they clashed with officers, advancing down a street with makeshift shields of corrogated metal and throwing objects at a police line. Officers responded with smoke grenades, tear gas, and bean bag projectiles. After protesters regrouped, they marched through downtown as police pursued and eventually contained a few hundred of them in an enclosed space outside a YMCA. Some entered the gym and were arrested inside.
As soon as it became clear that I would be kettled with the protesters, I displayed my press credentials to a line of officers and asked where to stand to avoid arrest. In past protests, the technique always proved successful. But this time, no officer said a word. One pointed back in the direction of the protesters, refusing to let me leave. Another issued a notice that everyone in the area was under arrest.
