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Gideon Burton

NationBuilder - the Community Organizing System - 1 views

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    An excellent integrated tool for advocacy, campaigns, and creating change. This organizes supporters and integrates the live web and social media, events, fundraising, etc.
anonymous

The Herald - 0 views

    • anonymous
       
      View on capitalism as the cause of economic down turn. Brief talk on history of communism and socialism and why it failed. Seems to support socialism
  • Third, it wasn’t because communist countries rejected markets that they failed. It was because they backed off of Marxist-Leninist principles, and conciliated with capitalism, that they collapsed.
  • Second, communism had not a moment’s rest from attempts by the capitalist countries to destroy it.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • communism arose under inauspicious circumstances.
  • apitalism being too weak to block the rise of revolution meant that the revolution would have to take hold in a country where the working class was small and the industrial base — necessary to progress toward a communist society of plenty — was rudimentary at best
  • gainst the far right’s explanation that immigration is the cause of joblessness, the left could point out that insecurity is caused by the failure — indeed refusal — of capitalism to offer secure employment to all; that the solution is to transcend the capitalist system; and that where it has been transcended in the past, secure employment has been made available to all, along with guaranteed healthcare, security in old age, subsidised housing, free education, and a raft of other mass-oriented reforms
  • There is no freeloading in a socialist society. Work is an obligation
  • capitalism is the cause of your problems
  • Sweden, often celebrated as a social democratic paragon and held out as an attractive alternative to Marxist-Leninist-style socialism, has proved no less vulnerable to outbreaks of recession-induced xenophobia than bastions of neo-liberalism have
  • Attributing the demise of really-existing socialism to internal failings, and ignoring seven decades of efforts to exterminate the communist challenge — a practice of both the right and left — is a peculiar form of blindness.
Madeline Rupard

The best art is born from democracy - 0 views

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    An interesting article. I believe this is true. Think of the wide range of art in the world today. This also has a great deal to due with technology and the ability to share images, of course. Democracy itself has allowed art to blossom and allowed the visual expression to become quite a personal thing.
Brian Earley

InnoCentive: Crowdsourcing bored brains - 0 views

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    Crowdsourcing science problems through a challenge system.
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    InnoCentive showcases tough problems in industry that have stumped the pros.  Register as a solve, and get paid to figure it out.
Erin Hamson

Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert - Collaborative Translation Project - Map of the s... - 1 views

    • Erin Hamson
       
      This chart should look more like a web, showing the connections between the various areas. It is similar to getting an education, you can not get a complete education in one area, without dabbling in other areas. For example, the connections between theology, and religious history.
    • Rhett Ferrin
       
      Sometimes before you can understand something you have to quantify it. These early natural philosophers were just organizing what they had learned so they could better understand it. How different is it from us today, trying to map the human genome?
Erin Hamson

Communist Manifesto (Chapter 2) - 0 views

  • The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      We are for you. You should join us. We will help you become equals, but not into a better position.
  • 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      working to unite the proletariat, which according to chapter one should equalise them with the others.
  • formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.
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  • The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      We don't recognise one world leader, or founder. Unlike capitalism (Smith) or democracy (Locke).
  • but the abolition of bourgeois property.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      mean to abolish their symbol of status, but not divide it to the masses. Say that it is commonly held together.
  • Abolition of private property
  • We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.
  • , that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      tells the labourer they ought to be getting more for their hard work in support of the system.
  • allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the state requires it. A state in which you have no say, but they really do care about you.
  • By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free selling and buying.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      What other sort of freedom is there?
  • It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      Isn't this what happened? Isn't this why they failed? They couldn't get man to work and produce enough products to support the country on virtue?
  • bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness;
    • Erin Hamson
       
      They have to work to keep all the property they supposedly have.
  • Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty
    • Erin Hamson
       
      How are the children currently exploited?
  • But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social. And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, &c.?
    • Erin Hamson
       
      Secular learning might be taught in schools, but values, beliefs, toleration are all taught in the home. The only way to have successful society without these being taught in the home is to teach them in the schools. Which they currently are not.
  • Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      They claim that this is universally true, but they forget the virtue of some people.
  • to freedom of commerce, to the world market,
    • Erin Hamson
       
      capitalism has begun a reduction of national barriers.
  • The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality.
  • In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another will also be put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      Appealing to the 3rd world countries of the globe. trying to make communism a good thing.
  • The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical and, generally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      We don't have anything to refute these claims, so we'll say they aren't important. Further we don't believe in religion because it causes differences, we can't refute something we believe in or think should exist.
  • The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      censoship
  • traditional property relations
    • Erin Hamson
       
      People as defined by their property, in a physical sense. Defied by the reputation economy.
  • traditional ideas
  • to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State
    • Erin Hamson
       
      manipulate the people to steal from other people, and then all will be stolen from all people.
  • Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      Capitalism with the State having a monopoly in every area within the country.
  • State
  • exclusive monopol
  • State.
  • State;
  • public
Madeline Rupard

Helium--An interesting idea. - 0 views

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    I stumbled upon this website the other day. Its an article site with a bunch of hired authors. "Wait--hired authors!!" You say, in righteous defense of the open "wiki" model. But the cool thing about hired authors is that they are all viewing and rating each other's articles. Hence, "helium," the best articles rise to the top. I mean who decided that it was the best system to have bored 40 year olds living with their parents as the main source of information. (Let's be honest, those wikipedia articles didn't write themselves.) The good thing about a paid workforce is that there is a sense of pressure under writing the articles. Their business model is in and of itself an "invisible hand." Anyways, i thought it was a cool idea. Voila.
Katherine Chipman

Joseph-Marie Jacquard Biography (1752-1834) - 0 views

  • the Jacquard loom used a system of hooks and needles to lift the appropriate warp threads. The pattern was stored on a collection of thick paper cards perforated with rectangular holes. As the fabric was woven, the hooks were held stationary by the surface of the card. However, whenever a hole was encountered, a hook would be allowed to pass through to lift its thread. By stringing together a large number of cards, an intricate pattern could be created.
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    How Jacquard's loom worked
Braquel Burnett

Analysis of Family as and in Social Institutions - 0 views

    • Braquel Burnett
       
      I feel like one of the reasons for this is because there is so much required of individuals.Whether it is our jobs or our education, we have to work constantly in order to survive. There is little or no leisure time until you have earned it. Would it be possible to live in a type of economic system that would allow each individual the ability to choose based on their own judgement of when to do work for others and when to do work for himself? That would be awesome!
    • Braquel Burnett
       
      But hey, the internet is helping to reverse that, right? More people are able to socialize because of the internet. It just isn't bowling...
  • According to sociologist William F. Ogburn, the family – under the pressures of urbanization and industrialization – was stripped of many of its traditional functions until its only remaining functions were psychological: "to socialize children and to provide emotional sustenance and support for family members."
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    Interesting article that adds to the conversation about the evolving family type
Madeline Rupard

An Elevated Search Engine - 0 views

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    I'm not sure that this is how most people use tumblr, but it occured to me that searching for images through a blogging service where people are handpicking these images may be a better system. How many of us have looked something up through google images with sheer frustration at the lack of variety of images? Maybe I'm the only one. All I'm saying is that you should try opening up tumblr, plugging in a word like "mountains" or something and see what rolls out. Keep in mind that an extract of the blogger's text entry is displayed with the image, so it is not a legitimate "image search." But I really feel that this way of people deciding what images should be showing up is a great one. That is all. Also--Don't get too distracted by the huge sign up form in the middle of the page.
Trevor Cox

Industrial Revolution in Information Systems - 1 views

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    Are we on the verge of an industrial revolution in the IT industry? Databases are getting more complex and huge innovations may be on the horizen
Morgan Wills

Freud, "Civilization and its Discontents," 1930 (excerpt) - 0 views

  • If private property were abolished, all wealth held in common, and everyone allowed to share in the enjoyment of it, ill-will and hostility would disappear among men.
  • But I am able to recognize that the psychological premises on which the systems based are an untenable illusion.
    • Megan Stern
       
      Freud says something worthwhile.
  • It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness
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  • horrors of the recent World War
    • Erin Hamson
       
      Something people would like to forget, but which shapes their world views. 
    • Morgan Wills
       
      definitely. Looking at much of Europe's reticence to join the US in armed conflict is a case in point.
  • s the factor which disturbs our relations with our neighbor and which forces civilization into such a high expenditure [of energy]
  • civilized society is perpetually threatened with disintegration
    • Erin Hamson
       
      Tyranny to Anarchy to Tyranny
  • instinctual passions are stronger than reasonable interests.
  • commandment to love one's neighbor as oneself -- a commandment which is really justified by the fact that nothing else runs so strongly counter to the original nature of man
  • liverance from our evil
  • The communists believe they have found  the path to de
  • Since everyone's needs would be satisfied, no one would have any reason to regard another as his enemy; all would willingly undertake the work that was necessary.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      The problem is that people have more than needs. 
  • but we have in no way altered the differences in power and influence which are misused by aggressiveness, nor have we altered anything in its nature. Aggressiveness was not created by property
  • If we were to remove this factor, too, by allowing complete freedom of sexual life and thus abolishing the family, the germ-cell of civilization, we cannot, it is true, easily foresee what new paths the development of civilization could take; but one thing we can expect, and that is that this indestructible feature of human nature will follow at there.
  • We can now see that it is a convenient and relatively harmless satisfaction of the inclination to aggression, by means of which cohesion between the members of the community is made easier
  • n this respect the Jewish people, scattered everywhere, have rendered most useful services to the civilizations of the countries that have been their hosts;
  • find its psychological support in the persecution of the bourgeois
  • s Civilization imposes such great sacrifices not only on man's sexuality but on his aggressivity, we can understand better why it is hard for him to be happy in that civilization.
  • primitive man was better off in knowing no restrictions of instinct.  To counterbalance this, his prospects of enjoying this happiness for any length of time were very slender.
  • Civilized man has exchanged a portion of his possibilities of happiness for a portion of security.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      John Locke
  • But I shall avoid the temptation of entering upon a critique of American civilization; I do not wish to give an impression of wanting myself to employ American methods.
Braquel Burnett

Technology Used by Church From Early Years - LDS Newsroom - 0 views

  • Grant’s wife Augusta noted at the time, “I am glad that I live in this age when every day — almost every hour — brings us some new inventions.”
  • Sputnik, the first Earth-orbiting satellite launched by Russia in 1957, inspired the development of satellite networks positioned well above the earth. The first United States broadcast over Telstar 1 in 1962 featured clips from a baseball game in Chicago, a news conference by President John F. Kennedy and a concert from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. 
  • “We are not breathlessly smitten by the Internet, nor are we in any way underestimating its possibilities,” said Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, Church leader, in a 1997 speech. “We are just moving steadily, and we think wisely, to use it along with every other way we know to communicate with each other.” 
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  • 1867 installation of a 500-mile telegraph line
  • Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876
  • 1896 development of the wireless telegraph
  • first broadcast in Pittsburgh in 1920
  • Heber J. Grant launched radio station KZN in 1922
  • radio station in 1925, changing the call letters to KSL.
  • July 1929, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
  • Closed circuit television broadcasts of conference began in 1948
  • first general broadcast occurred in October 1949
  • Bonneville Communications, an advertising arm of the Church, developed, in the early 1970s
  • By 2006, President Gordon B. Hinckley noted that Church-owned satellite dishes numbered 6,066 in 83 countries
  • 1954, general-purpose computers and a punch-card system were implemented in Church business functions.
  • LDS.org, which debuted in 1996
  • 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, another site, Mormon.org
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    Church history and technology
Shuan Pai

Trickle-down Economics and Ronald Reagan - 0 views

  • no significant barrier to the accumulation of wealth by individuals
  • If the rich do well, benefits will "trickle down" to the rest.
  • To qualify as TDE a country must have either a low or flat rate tax on income or only a mildly progressive one (to insure that the rich can continue to get richer, or to trick the poor and middle income people into thinking they can get more and keep it).
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  • John Maynard Keynes published his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money in 1936 and its main thesis was that the federal budget need not always be balanced. Indeed Keynes proposed that the federal government should run a deficit, especially during a recession/depression.
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    describes the trickle-down economic system
James Wilcox

Einsteins Theory of Relativity - 0 views

  • the principle of relativity
  • We advance a step farther in our generalisation when we express the tenet thus: If, relative to K, K1 is a uniformly moving co-ordinate system devoid of rotation, then natural phenomena run their course with respect to K1 according to exactly the same general laws as with respect to K. This statement is called
  • (in the restricted sense).
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  • two general facts which at the outset speak very much in favour of the validity of the principle of relativity
  • The principle of relativity must therefore apply with great accuracy in the domain of mechanics
    • James Wilcox
       
      Basically I get out of this the fact that Einstein is a genius and can quite literally think outside of the box.  In fact he can think at the box from any angle in multiple dimensions and then describe it.  Although I am sure I am not getting this 100%, I do see that the light is working on his end.
Andrew DeWitt

History of Computers and Computing, Internet, Dreamers, Murray Leinster - 2 views

  • Leinster made one of the first descriptions of a personal computer (called a "logic") in science fiction
  • Leinster envisioned logics in every home, linked through a distributed system of servers (called "tanks"), to provide communications, entertainment, data access, and even commerce
  • Information runs rampant as every logic worldwide crunches away at problems too vast in scope for human minds to have attempted. Societal chaos quickly ensues, the situation became critical.
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    Sweet story!
Brandon McCloskey

BBC News - Why companies watch your every Facebook, YouTube, Twitter move - 0 views

  • These days one witty Tweet, one clever blog post, one devastating video - forwarded to hundreds of friends at the click of a mouse - can snowball and kill a product or damage a company's share price.
  • It's a dramatic shift in consumer power. But what if companies could harness this power and turn it to their advantage?
  • At the most basic, these tools measure the volume of social media chatter. Researchers at Hewlett Packard showed that they can accurately predict a Hollywood movie's box office takings by counting how often it is mentioned on Twitter before it opens.
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  • One European clothing company, popular with inner city youth in the United States, admits privately that its social media team is baffled by its customers' ever changing slang, and even the online Urban Dictionary provides little help.
  • Social media is quickly becoming a customer relationship management system, as companies have "for the first time access to people's minds in real-time," says Jorn Lyseggen. The tools on offer provide companies with dashboards that show trends, hot topics, the reach of brands, customer mood and how competitors are doing.
  • Social media may be all the buzz, but in reality "only a few firms get it [and use it], it's of peripheral interest for most", says Tom Austin at technology consultancy Gartner. Few realise that using social media has become much more than customer service and reputation management.
  • many social media tools are poorly integrated into the corporate workflow
  • But there are dangers. Financial Times columnist Lucy Kellaway warns that the obsession with social networking can make management lose focus.
  • To survive the world of social media, companies have to throw away their old marketing playbook.
  • "don't push... and don't pretend you are hip"
  • "Once companies have worked out that they should do something with social media, they usually don't know how to do it,"
  • "If you want to influence the people who influence your customers, that's a very powerful game, but it's also very dangerous if you get it wrong."
  • it's not about how many friends or followers somebody has, but whether they make an impact.
  • When Virgin America recently launched new routes from California to Toronto, it used Klout to identify a small group of social media "influencers" and gave them free flights. This generated thousands of tweets, triggered press coverage and delivered more immediate impact than traditional advertising.
  • "Consumers are spending their attention on social media," he says, but firms don't know how to repay them properly. "There's no manual for that yet."
  • Social media are dynamic, and today's Twitter may be tomorrow's forgotten website. "Don't assume that what works today will work tomorrow," says Tom Austin at Gartner. "Your model has to be continually adapted."
Andrew DeWitt

Modernism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

  • From the 1870s onward, the ideas that history and civilization were inherently progressive and that progress was always good came under increasing attack.
  • Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection undermined the religious certainty
  • Karl Marx argued there were fundamental contradictions within the capitalist system
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  • The miseries of industrial urbanism and the possibilities created by scientific examination of subjects brought changes that would shake a European civilization which had, until then, regarded itself as having a continuous and progressive line of development from the Renaissance. With the telegraph's harnessing of a new power, offering instant communication at a distance, the experience of time itself was altered.
James Wilcox

Airplane Timeline - Greatest Engineering Achievements of the Twentieth Century - 0 views

    • James Wilcox
       
      I love helicopters!  But I never knew that they had been around for so many years.
  • 1947   Sound barrior broken U.S. Air Force pilot Captain Charles "Chuck" Yeager becomes the fastest man alive when he pilots the Bell X-1 faster than sound for the first time on October 14 over the town of Victorville, California.
  • 1952   Discovery of the area rule of aircraft design Richard Whitcomb, an engineer at Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, discovers and experimentally verifies an aircraft design concept known as the area rule. A revolutionary method of designing aircraft to reduce drag and increase speed without additional power, the area rule is incorporated into the development of almost every American supersonic aircraft. He later invents winglets, which increase the lift-to-drag ratio of transport airplanes and other vehicles.
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  • 1925-1926   Introduction of lightweight, air-cooled radial engines The introduction of a new generation of lightweight, air-cooled radial engines revolutionizes aeronautics, making bigger, faster planes possible.
  •   1917   The Junkers J4, an all-metal airplane, introduced Hugo Junkers, a German professor of mechanics introduces the Junkers J4, an all-metal airplane built largely of a relatively lightweight aluminum alloy called duralumin.
  • 1904   Concept of a fixed "boundary layer" described in paper by Ludwig Prandtl German professor Ludwig Prandtl presents one of the most important papers in the history of aerodynamics, an eight-page document describing the concept of a fixed "boundary layer," the molecular layer of air on the surface of an aircraft wing. Over the next 20 years Prandtl and his graduate students pioneer theoretical aerodynamics.
  • 1933   First modern commercial airliner In February, Boeing introduces the 247, a twin-engine 10-passenger monoplane that is the first modern commercial airliner. With variable-pitch propellers, it has an economical cruising speed and excellent takeoff. Retractable landing gear reduces drag during flight.
  • 935   First practical radar British scientist Sir Robert Watson-Watt patents the first practical radar (for radio detection and ranging) system for meteorological applications. During World War II radar is successfully used in Great Britain to detect incoming aircraft and provide information to intercept bombers.
  • 1937   Jet engines designed Jet engines designed independently by Britain’s Frank Whittle and Germany’s Hans von Ohain make their first test runs. (Seven years earlier, Whittle, a young Royal Air Force officer, filed a patent for a gas turbine engine to power an aircraft, but the Royal Air Ministry was not interested in developing the idea at the time. Meanwhile, German doctoral student Von Ohain was developing his own design.) Two years later, on August 27, the first jet aircraft, the Heinkel HE 178, takes off, powered by von Ohain’s HE S-3 engine.
  •   1939   First practical singlerotor helicopters Russian emigre Igor Sikorsky develops the VS-300 helicopter for the U.S. Army, one of the first practical singlerotor helicopters.
Megan Stern

What We Talk about When We Talk about Bandwidth - Boing Boing - 0 views

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    Compares bandwidth with a modern water distribution system. It's a double whammy!
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