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thinkahol *

When Change Is Not Enough: The Seven Steps To Revolution | OurFuture.org - 0 views

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    "Those who make peaceful evolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable."- John F. KennedyThere's one thing for sure: 2008 isn't anything like politics as usual.The corporate media (with their unerring eye for the obvious point) is fixated on the narrative that, for the first time ever, Americans will likely end this year with either a woman or a black man headed for the White House. Bloggers are telling stories from the front lines of primaries and caucuses that look like something from the early 60s - people lining up before dawn to vote in Manoa, Hawaii yesterday; a thousand black college students in Prairie View, Texas marching 10 miles to cast their early votes in the face of a county that tried to disenfranchise them. In recent months, we've also been gobstopped by the sheer passion of the insurgent campaigns of both Barack Obama and Ron Paul, both of whom brought millions of new voters into the conversation - and with them, a sharp critique of the status quo and a new energy that's agitating toward deep structural change.There's something implacable, earnest, and righteously angry in the air. And it raises all kinds of questions for burned-out Boomers and jaded Gen Xers who've been ground down to the stump by the mostly losing battles of the past 30 years. Can it be - at long last - that Americans have, simply, had enough? Are we, finally, stepping out to take back our government - and with it, control of our own future? Is this simply a shifting political season - the kind we get every 20 to 30 years - or is there something deeper going on here? Do we dare to raise our hopes that this time, we're going to finally win a few? Just how ready is this country for big, serious, forward-looking change?Recently, I came across a pocket of sociological research that suggested a tantalizing answer to these questions - and also that America may be far more ready for far more change than anyone really believes is possible at this moment. In fac
india art n design

A fairy tale house in the woods! - 0 views

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    Ever wonder what it's like to live out a fantasy? Jean Verville architecte creates a fairytale-like home for a family in the woods, check out it out and leave us your views…
thinkahol *

To Occupy and Rise - 0 views

shared by thinkahol * on 30 Sep 11 - No Cached
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    The Occupy Wall Street movement is well into its second week of operation, and is now getting more attention from media as well as from people planning similar actions across the country. This is a promising populist mobilization with a clear message against domination by political and economic elites. Against visions of a bleak and stagnant future, the occupiers assert the optimism that a better world can be made in the streets. They have not resigned themselves to an order where the young are presented with a foreseeable future of some combination of debt, economic dependency, and being paid little to endure constant disrespect, an order that tells the old to accept broken promises and be glad to just keep putting in hours until they can't work anymore. The occupiers have not accepted that living in modern society means shutting up about how it functions. In general, the occupiers see themselves as having more to gain than to lose in creating a new political situation - something that few who run the current system will help deliver. They are not eager for violence, and have shown admirable restraint in the face of attack by police. There may be no single clear agenda, but there is a clear message: that people will have a say in their political and economic lives, regardless of what those in charge want. Occupy Wall Street is a kind of protest that Americans are not accustomed to seeing. There was no permit to protest, and it has been able to keep going on through unofficial understandings between protestors and police. It is not run by professional politicians, astroturfers, or front groups with barely-hidden agendas. Though some organizations and political figures have promoted it, Occupy Wall Street is not driven by any political party or protest organization. It is a kind of protest that shows people have power when they are determined to use it. Occupy Wall Street could be characterized as an example of a new type of mass politics, which has been seen in
thinkahol *

Parsing the Data and Ideology of the We Are 99% Tumblr | Rortybomb - 0 views

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    One of the most fascinating things to come out of the current We Are 99%/Occupy Wall Street protests is the We Are 99% Tumblr.  At the site, people hold up signs that explain their current circumstances, and it tells the story of a whole range of Americans struggling in the Lesser Depression.  It is highly recommended. DATA The site features pictures of individuals holding their signs, and occasionally the tumblr reproduces the text of the signs themselves underneath the image as html text.  Sometimes the text under the image is blank, sometimes it is a different message, but often it is the sign itself. In order to get a slightly better empirical handle on this important tumblr, I created a script designed to read all of the pages and parse out the html text on the site.  It doesn't read the images (can anyone in the audience automate calls to an OCR?), just the html text.  After collecting all the text on all the pages, the code then goes through it to try to find interesting points. It's a fun exercise, pointing out things I wouldn't have seen otherwise.  For instance, I found this adorable little rascal, pictured below, mucking up the algorithm, as the first version of the code assumed all the ages would have two digits.  I found that he, and the sign his mom made for him as a confessional to her son, hit me a ton harder than any of the more direct signs of despair in this economy:
india art n design

Geometry and colour define this interior! - 0 views

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    Patil Design Studio uses personalization that is the key to residential interiors as the design tool to carve out an elegant apartment in suburban Mumbai. Check out the simple approach that makes haven out of everyday musings…
india art n design

This office literally inserts 'fun' in the workplace! - 0 views

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    People's Architecture Office breaks the monotony of banal offices by designing an out-of-box space with an absolutely extraordinary ambience that will get the employees' creative juices flowing… Check it out!
Amira .

Complexity Rising: From Human Beings to Human Civilization, a Complexity Profile by Yan... - 0 views

  • This article analyzes the human social environment using the "complexity profile," a mathematical tool for characterizing the collective behavior of a system. The analysis is used to justify the qualitative observation that complexity of existence has increased and is increasing. The increase in complexity is directly related to sweeping changes in the structure and dynamics of human civilizationthe increasing interdependence of the global economic and social system and the instabilities of dictatorships, communism and corporate hierarchies. Our complex social environment is consistent with identifying global human civilization as an organism capable of complex behavior that protects its components (us) and which should be capable of responding effectively to complex environmental demands.
  • What is generally not recognized is that the relationship between collective global behavior and the internal structure of human civilization can be characterized through mathematical concepts that apply to all complex systems. An analysis based upon these mathematical concepts suggests that human civilization itself is an organism capable of behaviors that are of greater complexity than those of an individual human being. In order to understand the significance of this statement, one must recognize that collective behaviors are typically simpler than the behavior of components. Only when the components are connected in networks of specialized function can complex collective behaviors arise.
  • The goal of this article is to extend the systematic understanding of collective or cooperative behavior so as to characterize such behavior in physical, biological and social systems.
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  • Random, coherent and correlated behaviors illustrate the relationship between the behavior of parts and the collective behavior of a system. In both random and coherent behavior the collective behavior of the system is simple. Correlated behavior gives rise to complex collective behavior. Examples illustrating these types of behavior can be found in physical, biological and social systems.
  • The complexity profile is a mathematical tool that is designed to capture important aspects of the relationship between the behavior of parts of a system and the behavior of the entire system. Behaviors of the system are assigned a scale which is related to the ability of an observer to see that behavior. Typically, larger scale behaviors involve coordination between more parts and/or larger amounts of energy. The complexity profile counts the number of behaviors that are observable at a particular scale, which includes all behaviors assigned to that scale or larger scales. When a system is formed out of independent parts, the behaviors are on a small scale. When a system is formed out of parts that all move in the same direction, the behavior is on the largest scale. When a system is formed out of parts whose behaviors are partially correlated and partially independent then as we look at the system on finer and finer scales we see more and more details. This is characteristic of complex systems formed out of specialized and correlated parts. Such systems have a complexity profile that declines gradually with scale.
  • Hierarchical organizations are designed to impose correlations in human behavior primarily through the influence of the hierarchical control structure. In an ideal hierarchy all influences/communications between two "workers" must travel through a common manager. As the complexity of collective behavior increases, the number of independent influences increases, and a manager becomes unable to process/communicate all of them. Increasing the number of managers and decreasing the branching ratio (the number of individuals supervised by one manager) helps. However, this strategy is defeated when the complexity of collective behavior increases beyond the complexity of an individual. Networks allowing more direct lateral interactions do not suffer from this limitation.
  • From this argument it is possible to begin to understand processes of historical change in human organizational structures. Human organizations exist within an environment that places demands upon them. If the complexity of these demands exceeds the complexity of an organization, the organization will be likely to fail. Thus, those organizations that survive must have a complexity sufficiently large to respond to the complexity of environmental demands at the scale of these demands. As a result, a form of evolutionary change occurs due to competition. Competition is relevant because for human organizations, the environment itself is formed in part out of organizations of human beings. According to this argument, one can expect a self-consistent process of complexity increase where competition between organizations causes the behavior of one organization to serve as part of the environment in which others must survive.
  • he history of human civilization reflects a progressive increase in the complexity of large scale behaviors. Early civilizations introduced a few relatively simple large scale behaviors by use of many individuals (slaves or soldiers) performing the same repetitive task. Progressive specialization with coordination increased the complexity of large scale behaviors. The industrial revolution accelerated this process which continues till today. When the complexity of collective behaviors increases beyond that of an individual human being then hierarchical controls become ineffective. Hierarchically controled systems must yield to networked systems. Note that a system which has fixed energy and material can change its complexity profile only by transfering activities from one scale to another. Increasing complexity at one scale must be compensated by decreasing complexity at another scale. However, an increasing human population, and the addition of sources of energy during the industrial revolution (coal, oil and gas), violated these conditions, enabling the complexity to increase on all scales. As indicated on the horizontal axis, the scale of human civilization also increased.
  • The most dramatic increases in the complexity of organizational behavior followed the industrial revolution. The use of new energy sources and automation enabled larger scale behavior in and of itself. This, in turn, enabled higher complexity behaviors of human systems because the amplification of the behavior to a larger scale can be accomplished by the use of energy rather than by task repetition.
  • A schematic history of human civilization reflects a growing complexity of the collective behavior of human organizations. The internal structure of organizations changed from the large branching ratio hierarchies of ancient civilizations, through decreasing branching ratios of massive hierarchical bureaucracies, to hybrid systems where lateral connections appear to be more important than the hierarchy. As the importance of lateral interactions increases, the boundaries between subsystems become porous. The increasing collective complexity also is manifest in the increaseing specialization and diversity of professions. Among the possible future organizational structures are fully networked systems where hierarchical structures are unimportant.
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    Since time immemorial humans have complained that life is becoming more complex, but it is only now that we have a hope to analyze formally and verify this lament. This article analyzes the human social environment using the "complexity profile," a mathematical tool for characterizing the collective behavior of a system. The analysis is used to justify the qualitative observation that complexity of existence has increased and is increasing. The increase in complexity is directly related to sweeping changes in the structure and dynamics of human civilizationthe increasing interdependence of the global economic and social system and the instabilities of dictatorships, communism and corporate hierarchies. Our complex social environment is consistent with identifying global human civilization as an organism capable of complex behavior that protects its components (us) and which should be capable of responding effectively to complex environmental demands.
india art n design

CUE - the restaurant with an intensely urban vibe! - 0 views

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    What makes a restaurant space modern, metropolitan and cohesive? Find out how Studio US Design culls out the Culinary Urban Experience (CUE) for the ultimate urbanite…
dwaynejohnson28

Fitness Tips For Life - 0 views

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#fitnessnews fitnesstipsforlife fitness newsusa usanews

started by dwaynejohnson28 on 01 Oct 22 no follow-up yet
india art n design

'Left Out' or 'Trapped Inside'?! - 0 views

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    Many a time art becomes the via media to evoke responsiveness in the numbed disposition called mankind! Check out artist Maxwell Rushton's installation that put the thoughts back into you cap!!
india art n design

Tress-styling - the man way! - 0 views

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    Bracing the 'out with the old and in with the bold' approach, check out the looks & locks of the 21st century man and leave us your views…
india art n design

Of spatial surprises and light art! - 0 views

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    A minimalistic architectural approach in boutique-style Sanlitun's Chao Hotel has created an opportunity for its lighting designers, GD Lighting Design to carve out spatial surprises with changes between light and shadow, artistic trends and cultural aspects. Find out more here...
india art n design

Bridging borders of timelessness! - 0 views

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    Ar. Abhijit Purohit of Archgrp international, India carves out a scenic resort in Lonavla, Maharashtra, incorporating traditional nuances of Southeast Asian architecture. Check it out and leave us your comments
india art n design

Applying art to education - 0 views

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    Do you think well-thought-out classrooms could mould and shape the early foundations of learning? Check out this careful design from Cégep Marie-Victorin showcasing a judicious choice of colours doing just this
india art n design

Permutable Spaces - 0 views

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    Ruetemple architects, Alexander Kudimov and Daria Butahina design a compact world for a brother-sister duo, with transformable and dynamic recreational areas, while the work areas remain anchored. Check out how simplicity in design thought can transform a space... Check out this room for siblings
india art n design

London Design Festival - Reaching Out or Searching Within? - 0 views

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    As the buzz of the London Design Festival that has just concluded last night, continues in hushed wow's, Team IAnD chews on the thought of the colossal participation, burgeoning by the years... check out our insight here...
india art n design

All-season House - 0 views

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    Standing out for its striking façade, this award-winning 'twin sloped roof' bungalow is primarily designed to adapt the home to Bahrain's harsh climate… Check out the 'all-glass' home here…
india art n design

Sensibility Enriched - "Mama Smile" - 0 views

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    Emmanuelle Moureaux explores the effect of colour on cognitive thinking in children with her new fit-out at a mall in Japan. Check it out here and leave us your views...
india art n design

Of intrigue and depth! - 0 views

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    Design tenets of camouflage, manipulation of depth and repetition cull out a trendy modern hospitable space in the 55-year old Smart Araneta Coliseum in Philippines. Check it out and leave us your views…
india art n design

Upbeat Theme-based Dine-outs - 0 views

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    What is preferred for a theme-based design experience? A contextual reinterpretation or a replicative exercise? Check out these two new European themed restaurants in Mumbai and leave us your views...
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