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The Expensive, Diminishing Threat of Somali Piracy - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...minishing-threat-somali-piracy
shared by anonymous on 08 Nov 12 - Cached
  • Many factors have contributed to the decrease in pirate hijackings in 2012.
  • One factor is that shipping companies have begun equipping their ships with more countermeasures, namely armed guards.
  • For several years, commercial ships sailing in the Indian Ocean have used other countermeasures, such as fences, water cannons and adjusted tactics like disabling the ship.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  •  But the widespread deployment of armed guards beginning in 2011 (guards had been used sparingly as far back as 2008) has a very close correlation to the recent decrease in hijackings.
  • government officials also attribute the drop-off in attacks and hijackings to better coordination between foreign naval patrols, which have made the waters off the Somali coast a less permissive environment for pirate operations.
  • With several years of practice, sailors from international missions such as the U.S.-backed Combined Task Force 151 and the EU-backed Atalanta mission as well as from the unilateral missions of China, Russia, Iran and others have had time to study pirate activity and become more efficient at stopping attacks.
  • Effectively patrolling such a large area requires intelligence and the development of a counterpiracy doctrine that includes going after the larger pirate vessels, called mother ships, that extend pirates' range and allow them to operate in rougher seas during the monsoon.
  • Three years ago pirates were largely uncontested, but now they face a more coordinated defense.
  • The armed guards and naval patrols have not eliminated piracy, but they have increased the costs of attacking and seizing a commercial ship. Because pirates are motivated more by profit than by any ideology, a decrease in profitability will deter them from engaging in the practice.
  • The new Somali federal government still lacks the capability to control pirate towns such as Hobyo and Haradheere, and its officials do not appear to want a strong Puntland doing it for them. 
  • In essence, the commercial shippers and naval forces have adopted a siege strategy -- they hope to starve the pirates of resources, forcing them to give up. Somali pirates held about 20 ships at any given time in 2010; they currently hold 11. As the pirates hijack fewer ships, and as armed guards make piracy more dangerous, the entire enterprise is looking less lucrative and appealing.
  • The problem with the siege strategy is that as soon as shipping companies or foreign naval forces let up on the pirates, they will go back to hijacking ships.
  • That means that about 13,000-23,000 ships are paying for armed guards to accompany them through the vulnerable areas, a roughly 10-day trip, at a cost of approximately $60,000 each time. Based on those figures, the total annual cost for shipping companies merely to deploy armed guards on their ships through the Gulf of Aden is between about $800 million and $1.4 billion. The total cost of piracy to the world in 2011, according to the One Earth Future Foundation's estimates, was between $6.6 billion and $6.9 billion. This estimate included $160 million for ransom payments; other preventative measures, such as rerouting ships or using more fuel to maintain higher speeds, made up the rest of the costs. In other words, the cost of preventing piracy off the coast of Somalia is substantially higher than the costs piracy inflicts.
  • The key component of the siege strategy is that it weakens the pirates' control over their land-based sanctuaries. Their power is connected to their revenue, so the decrease in revenue will decrease their power. The shipping companies and foreign navies hope that some other, less disruptive enterprises will eventually take root along Somalia's pirate-heavy coast.
  • The only force that has significantly challenged the pirates on land is the Puntland Maritime Police Force. Located in northeast Somalia, Puntland is much more stable than the south and is virtually independent. The Puntland Maritime Police Force had success in capturing pirates, destroying their staging bases along the beach, cutting off their supply routes and even, supposedly, attempting to seize hijacked vessels from the pirates.
  • Although Mogadishu is unable to control much of its territory, the new government doesn't want regional governments accumulating too much strength. In the end, a strong Puntland may be more of a risk to Mogadishu than pirates. 
  • anonymous on 08 Nov 12
     
    "Piracy off the coast of Somalia has dropped off dramatically in 2012. Successful ship hijackings have decreased from 31 in 2011 (and 49 in 2010) to only four so far in 2012. Attacks against ships have also decreased, falling from 199 reported attacks in the first nine months of 2011 to 70 attacks over the same span in 2012 -- a 65 percent drop. However, diminished activity does not necessarily mean a decrease in the cost of sailing around the Horn of Africa. Somali pirates occupy a unique position, which is right along highly strategic global shipping lanes yet outside the reach of any national power. For international actors, it is politically and militarily easier to try to contain the Somali piracy threat than to eliminate it. But containment comes at a high cost."
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The Obama Realignment - NYTimes.com - 1 views

campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/...douthat-the-obama-realignment
shared by anonymous on 07 Nov 12 - Cached
Erik Hanson liked it
  • But the lesson of the election is that the Obama coalition was truly vulnerable only to a Republican Party that took Obama seriously as an opponent – that understood how his majority had been built, why voters had joined it and why the conservative majority of the Reagan and Bush eras had unraveled.
  • In part, that failure can be blamed on their standard-bearer, Mitt Romney, who mostly ran as a kind of vanilla Republican instead of showing the imagination necessary to reinvent his party for a new era.
  • A weak nominee in many ways, he was ultimately defeated less by his own limitations as a leader, and more by the fact that his party didn’t particularly want to be reinvented, preferring to believe that the rhetoric and positioning of 1980 and 1984 could win again in the America of 2012.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • But even less starry-eyed conservatives — like, well, myself — were willing to embrace models of the electorate that overstated the Republican base of support and downplayed the Democrats’ mounting demographic advantage.
  • In this sense, just as Reagan Republicanism dominated the 1980s even though the Democrats controlled the House, our own era now clearly belongs to the Obama Democrats even though John Boehner is still speaker of the House.
  • That era will not last forever; it may not even last more than another four years. The current Democratic majority has its share of internal contradictions, and as it expands demographically it will become vulnerable to attack on many fronts. Parties are more adaptable than they seem in their moments of defeat, and there will come a day when a Republican presidential candidate will succeed where Mitt Romney just failed. But getting there requires that conservatives face reality: The age of Reagan is officially over, and the Obama majority is the only majority we have.
  • anonymous on 07 Nov 12
     
    "2008 was also a unique political moment, when George W. Bush's immense unpopularity was compounded by a financial collapse, and when the possibility of electing the country's first black president fired the imagination of the nation (and the nation's press corps). So it was still possible to regard the Obama majority of '08 as more flukish than transformative - or at the very least, to see it as a fragile thing, easily shattered by poor choices and adverse developments."
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How Conservative Media Lost to the MSM and Failed the Rank and File - Conor Friedersdor... - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...264855
shared by anonymous on 08 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Barack Obama just trounced a Republican opponent for the second time. But unlike four years ago, when most conservatives saw it coming, Tuesday's result was, for them, an unpleasant surprise. So many on the right had predicted a Mitt Romney victory, or even a blowout -- Dick Morris, George Will, and Michael Barone all predicted the GOP would break 300 electoral votes.
  • Those audiences were misinformed.
  • Outside the conservative media, the narrative was completely different. Its driving force was Nate Silver, whose performance forecasting Election '08 gave him credibility as he daily explained why his model showed that President Obama enjoyed a very good chance of being reelected.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • The conclusions of experts are not sacrosanct. But Silver's expertise was always a better bet than relying on ideological hacks like Morris or the anecdotal impressions of Noonan. 
  • Sure, Silver could've wound up wrong. But people who rejected the possibility of his being right? They were operating at a self-imposed information disadvantage.
  • Conservatives should be familiar with its contours. For years, they've been arguing that liberal control of media and academia confers one advantage: Folks on the right can't help but be familiar with the thinking of liberals, whereas leftists can operate entirely within a liberal cocoon. This analysis was offered to explain why liberal ideas were growing weaker and would be defeated.
  • It is easy to close oneself off inside a conservative echo chamber. And right-leaning outlets like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh's show are far more intellectually closed than CNN or public radio. If you're a rank-and-file conservative, you're probably ready to acknowledge that ideologically friendly media didn't accurately inform you about Election 2012. Some pundits engaged in wishful thing; others feigned confidence in hopes that it would be a self-fulfilling prophecy; still others decided it was smart to keep telling right-leaning audiences what they wanted to hear.
  • Conservatives were at a disadvantage because Romney supporters like Jennifer Rubin and Hugh Hewitt saw it as their duty to spin constantly for their favored candidate rather than being frank about his strengths and weaknesses. What conservative Washington Post readers got, when they traded in Dave Weigel for Rubin, was a lot more hackery and a lot less informed about the presidential election.  
  • Conservatives were at an information disadvantage because so many right-leaning outlets wasted time on stories the rest of America dismissed as nonsense. WorldNetDaily brought you birtherism. Forbes brought you Kenyan anti-colonialism. National Review obsessed about an imaginary rejection of American exceptionalism, misrepresenting an Obama quote in the process, and Andy McCarthy was interviewed widely about his theory that Obama, aka the Drone Warrior in Chief, allied himself with our Islamist enemies in a "Grand Jihad" against America. Seriously? 
  • Conservatives were at a disadvantage because their information elites pandered in the most cynical, self-defeating ways, treating would-be candidates like Sarah Palin and Herman Cain as if they were plausible presidents rather than national jokes who'd lose worse than George McGovern.How many months were wasted on them?
  • How many hours of Glenn Beck conspiracy theories did Fox News broadcast to its viewers? How many hours of transparently mindless Sean Hannity content is still broadcast daily? Why don't Americans trust Republicans on foreign policy as they once did? In part because conservatism hasn't grappled with the foreign-policy failures of George W. Bush. A conspiracy of silence surrounds the subject. Romney could neither run on the man's record nor repudiate it. The most damaging Romney gaffe of the campaign, where he talked about how the 47 percent of Americans who pay no income taxes are a lost cause for Republicans? Either he was unaware that many of those people are Republican voters, or was pandering to GOP donors who are misinformed. Either way, bad information within the conservative movement was to blame.
  • In conservative fantasy-land, Richard Nixon was a champion of ideological conservatism, tax cuts are the only way to raise revenue, adding neoconservatives to a foreign-policy team reassures American voters, Benghazi was a winning campaign issue, Clint Eastwood's convention speech was a brilliant triumph, and Obama's America is a place where black kids can beat up white kids with impunity. Most conservative pundits know better than this nonsense -- not that they speak up against it. They see criticizing their own side as a sign of disloyalty. I see a coalition that has lost all perspective, partly because there's no cost to broadcasting or publishing inane bullshit. In fact, it's often very profitable. A lot of cynical people have gotten rich broadcasting and publishing red meat for movement conservative consumption.
  • On the biggest political story of the year, the conservative media just got its ass handed to it by the mainstream media. And movement conservatives, who believe the MSM is more biased and less rigorous than their alternatives, have no way to explain how their trusted outlets got it wrong, while the New York Times got it right. Hint: The Times hired the most rigorous forecaster it could find.  
  • anonymous on 08 Nov 12
     
    "Before rank-and-file conservatives ask, "What went wrong?", they should ask themselves a question every bit as important: "Why were we the last to realize that things were going wrong for us?""
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The Elections, Gridlock and Foreign Policy - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...ns-gridlock-and-foreign-policy
shared by anonymous on 07 Nov 12 - Cached
  • The national political dynamic has resulted in an extended immobilization of the government. With the House -- a body where party discipline is the norm -- under Republican control, passing legislation will be difficult and require compromise. Since the Senate is in Democratic hands, the probability of it overriding any unilateral administrative actions is small. Nevertheless, Obama does not have enough congressional support for dramatic new initiatives, and getting appointments through the Senate that Republicans oppose will be difficult.
  • I am not sure that the current political climate is what was meant by the people disciplining themselves, but it is clear that the people have imposed profound limits on this government. Its ability to continue what is already being done has not been curbed, but its ability to do much that is new has been blocked.
  • The gridlock sets the stage for a shift in foreign policy that has been under way since the U.S.-led intervention in Libya in 2011. I have argued that presidents do not make strategies but that those strategies are imposed on them by reality. Nevertheless, it is always helpful that the subjective wishes of a president and necessity coincide, even if the intent is not the same.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • I have made the case that the United States emerged as the only global power in 1991, when the Soviet Union fell. It emerged unprepared for its role and uncertain about how to execute it.
  • The first phase consisted of a happy but illusory period in which it was believed that there were no serious threats to the United States.
  • This was replaced on 9/11 with a phase of urgent reaction, followed by the belief that the only interest the United States had was prosecuting a war against radical Islamists.
  • Both phases were part of a process of fantasy.
  • During the last half of the past decade, the inability to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, coupled with economic problems, convinced reasonable people that the United States had entered an age of permanent decline. The sort of power the United States has does not dissipate that fast.
  • The defeated challenger in the U.S. election, Mitt Romney, had a memorable and important turn of phrase when he said that you can't kill your way out of the problems of the Middle East. The point that neither Romney nor Obama articulated is what you do instead in the Middle East -- and elsewhere.
  • The American strategy of the past years of inserting insufficient force to defeat an enemy that could be managed by other means, and whose ability to harm the United States was limited, would not have been the policy of the British Empire. Nor is it a sustainable policy for the United States. When war comes, it must be conducted with overwhelming force that can defeat the enemy conclusively. And war therefore must be rare because overwhelming force is hard to come by and enemies are not always easy to beat. The constant warfare that has characterized the beginning of this century is strategically unsustainable.
  • The U.S. treatment of Syria is very different.
  • Having provided what limited aid was required to destabilize the Syrian government, the United States was content to let the local balance of power take its course.
  • It is not clear whether Obama saw the doctrine I am discussing -- he certainly didn't see it in Libya, and his Syrian policy might simply have been a reaction to his miscalculations in Libya. But the subjective intentions of a leader are not as important as the realities he is responding to, however thoughtfully or thoughtlessly. It was clear that the United States could not continue to intervene with insufficient forces to achieve unclear goals in countries it could not subdue.
  • Nor could the United States withdraw from the world. It produces almost one-quarter of the world's GDP; how could it?
  • One of the hardest things for a young empire to master is the principle that, for the most part, there is nothing to be done. That is the phase in which the United States finds itself at the moment.
  • It is coming to terms not so much with the limits of power as the nature of power. Great power derives from the understanding of the difference between those things that matter and those that don't, and a ruthless indifference to those that don't. It is a hard thing to learn, but history is teaching it to the United States.
  • The gridlock which this election has given the U.S. government is a suitable frame for this lesson. While Obama might want to launch major initiatives in domestic policy, he can't. At the same time, he seems not to have the appetite for foreign adventures. It is not clear whether this is simply a response to miscalculation or a genuine strategic understanding, but in either case, adopting a more cautious foreign policy will come naturally to him.
  • This will create a framework that begins to institutionalize two lessons: First, it is rarely necessary to go to war, and second, when you do go to war, go with everything you have. Obama will follow the first lesson, and there is time for the second to be learned by others. He will practice the studied indifference that most foreign problems pose to the United States.
  • Obama will disappoint, but it is not Obama. Just as the elections will paralyze him domestically, reality will limit his foreign policy. Immobilism is something the founders would have been comfortable with, both in domestic politics and in foreign policy. The voters have given the republic a government that will give them both.
  • anonymous on 07 Nov 12
     
    "The United States held elections last night, and nothing changed. Barack Obama remains president. The Democrats remain in control of the Senate with a non-filibuster-proof majority. The Republicans remain in control of the House of Representatives."
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Pundit Forecasts All Wrong, Silver Perfectly Right. Is Punditry Dead? | TechCrunch - 1 views

techcrunch.com/...rfectly-right-is-punditry-dead
shared by anonymous on 07 Nov 12 - Cached
  • Silver’s analysis, and statistical models generally, factor in more data points than even the most knowledgeable political insider could possibly juggle in their working memory. His model incorporates the size, quality, and recency of all polls, and weights them based on the polling firm’s past predictive success (among other more advanced statistical procedures).
  • Silver’s methods present a dilemma for television networks. First, viewers would have to be a math geek to follow along in the debates. Even if networks replaced their pundits with competitor statisticians, the only way to compare forecasts would be to argue over nuanced statistical techniques. People may say they’re fans of Silver, but just wait until every political network is fighting over their own complex model and see how inaccessible election prediction becomes to most viewers.
  • Second, there’s no more rating-spiking shocking polls. Usually, the most surprising polls, which garner headlines, are the most inaccurate. Instead, in Silver’s universe, we’ll follow polling averages, with steadily (read: boringly) ebb and wane in relatively predictable directions.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • But, perhaps the most devastating impact on traditional punditry: politics and campaigning has a relatively small impact on elections. According to Silver’s model, Obama had a strong likelihood of winning several months before the election. Elections favor incumbents and Romney was an uncharismatic opponent, who wasn’t all that well liked even within his own party. Other influential factors, such as the economy, are completely outside the control of campaigns. The economy picked up before the election. Any conservative challenger had an uphill battle.
  • So, all the bluster about Americans not connecting with Obama or his “radical” social agenda is just hot air. Most of the pundit commentary that fills up airtime in the 24 hour news cycle is, politically speaking, mostly inconsequential.
  • anonymous on 07 Nov 12
     
    "The New York Times election statistician, Nate Silver, perfectly predicted all 50 states last night for President Obama, while every single major pundit was wrong-some comically wrong. Despite being derided by TV talking heads as a liberal hack, Silver definitively proved that geeks with mathematical models were superior to the gut feelings and pseudo-statistics of so-called political experts. The big question is, will the overwhelming success of statistical models make pundit forecasting obsolete, or will producers stubbornly keep them on the air?"
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Breaking: Portland sustainability chief admits 'Portlandia' isn't really a parody - 0 views

grist.org/...ortlandia-isnt-really-a-parody
shared by anonymous on 02 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • anonymous on 02 Nov 12
     
    "Of course, you already knew this, thanks to Portlandia. But show creators Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein should thank sustainability chief Susan Anderson: She's been pushing the city in this direction since the early '90s. Anderson started off at the energy office and was a key figure in its first climate action plan in 1993. She's headed the sustainability department since 2000, and now runs the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, the result of the Bureau of Planning merging with the Office of Sustainability in 2009."
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A Bet is a Tax on Bullshit - 0 views

marginalrevolution.com/...-bet-is-a-tax-on-bullshit.html
shared by anonymous on 02 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • anonymous on 02 Nov 12
     
    "Overall, I am for betting because I am against bullshit. Bullshit is polluting our discourse and drowning the facts. A bet costs the bullshitter more than the non-bullshitter so the willingness to bet signals honest belief. A bet is a tax on bullshit; and it is a just tax, tribute paid by the bullshitters to those with genuine knowledge."
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Welcome to America. Take a Number. - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...-to-america-take-a-number.html
shared by anonymous on 30 Oct 12 - Cached
  • Then there was the little matter of getting our daughters into public school. The pile of forms weighed nearly two pounds.
  • Nothing, however, reminded me more of the worst parts of the German system than the Virginia D.M.V. Its Web site helpfully said that if I had a German driver’s license, as well as authorized proof of residence, I could trade it in for a state license without further tests. What it didn’t say, though, was how long the process would last. In the meantime, my entire file was lost.
  • So why do Americans look only at the bad side of Europe? Done right, with enough money, it is punctual, efficient and organized. One may call it socialist, but it makes life easier.
  • anonymous on 30 Oct 12
     
    "But as a German citizen who has now fought fierce battles with American telephone companies, the Department of Motor Vehicles and the public schools, I find it strange that Americans fear a socialist state. Because Europe's bureaucratic nightmares have nothing on America's. For example, it took an entire day for my wife and me to get our visas processed. We had to answer dozens of detailed questions online: the exact dates of our previous stays in America, the dates of trips to other countries where we had needed visas, the complete birth names of our grandparents. And if we took too long to answer and didn't save our work in the meantime, the Web site automatically shut down and we had to start all over again."
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How to Add and Include Network Location or Mapped Folders in Windows 7 Library - 0 views

www.mydigitallife.info/d-folders-in-windows-7-library
shared by anonymous on 29 Oct 12 - Cached
  • However, a network location, accessible as a mapped folder or UNC path address of, for example, NAS, shared folders, drives connected from other computer, or other remote mass storage media, cannot be included into Library. When you browse to such network folders or mapped drives, there is no Include in Library in the Command Bar, which allows user to assign the particular folder to an existing or new Library.
  • The easiest way to allow a network folder to be included and added to a Library is by making the drive or folder available offline, where it gets automatically indexed by Windows.
  • anonymous on 29 Oct 12
     
    "Windows 7 includes a Libraries feature which allows multiple folders or drives to be grouped together for combined viewing and searching. With Libraries, users can separated different categories of files and folders including those out of user directory such as Desktop into few virtual library folders, or grouped files and folders in different physical locations such as different hard drives, external USB or FireWire mass storage device, or file server and NAS (Network Attached Storage) into a single virtual library folder."
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The creepy, dangerous ideology behind Silicon Valley's Cult of Disruption - 1 views

pandodaily.com/...travis-shrugged
shared by anonymous on 26 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • The pro-Disruption argument goes like this: In a digitally connected age, there’s absolutely no need for public carriage laws (or hotel laws, or food safety laws, or… or…) because the market will quickly move to drive out bad actors. If an Uber driver behaves badly, his low star rating will soon push him out of business.
  • It’s a compelling message but also one with dire potential consequences for public safety, particularly for those who can’t afford to take a $50 cab ride to Whole Foods.
  • “Just because there are people who want to rape, murder, or rob you shouldn’t prevent me from making another million dollars,” he’ll argue.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 26 Oct 12
       
      not a straw man argument, sadly.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The truth is, what Silicon Valley still calls “Disruption” has evolved into something very sinister indeed. Or perhaps “evolved” is the wrong word: The underlying ideology — that all government intervention is bad, that the free market is the only protection the public needs, and that if weaker people get trampled underfoot in the process then, well, fuck ‘em — increasingly recalls one that has been around for decades. Almost seven decades in fact, since Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead” first put her on the radar of every spoiled trust fund brat looking for an excuse to embrace his or her inner asshole. (For a delightful essay on that subject, I recommend Jason Heller’s “I Was A Teenage Randroid.”)
  • Let’s consider how Kalanick treated his Uber taxi drivers in New York. When he was trying to convince them to break the law to boost Uber’s footprint in the city, Kalanick offered yellow cab drivers free iPhones and promised to “take care of” any legal problems they encountered with the TLC. A few short months later, when the service was forced to close, those same drivers received a message to come to Uber HQ. Reports the Verge… Multiple drivers said Uber called them into headquarters, claiming they needed to come by in order to get paid and would get a cash bonus for showing up. When the cabbies came in, Uber surprised them by asking for the device back, informing them that taxi service was no longer available in New York. That’s classic Rand right there. The more replaceable the worker, the more they can be treated like total shit. After all, if they’re so damn special, they can always leave and find another job.
  • “The notion that there some sort of deal or arrangement or whatever was just not the case,” said Kalanick in an interview with the Washington Post. How embarrassing, then, when the Post uncovered documents proving that Uber had indeed tried to make under the table arrangements to operate in DC. Or as the Post’s Mike DeBonist put it: “If you’re going to be dismissive of backroom deals, it behooves you to stay out of backrooms.”
  • And there’s the rub. Given their Randian origins, we kid ourselves if we think most Disruptive businesses are fighting government bureaucracy to bring us a better deal.
  • A Disruptive company might very well succeed in exposing government crooks lining their pockets exploiting outdated laws, but that’s only so the Disruptor can line his own pockets through the absence of those same laws. A Disruptive company may give you free candy in your 50-dollar cab but, again, that’s only because doing so is good business. If poisoning that same candy suddenly becomes better business (like encouraging New York cab drivers to be distracted by their phones, or putting vulnerable people at risk of attack is better business)… well maybe that’s an option worth exploring too. After all, food safety legislation is just another attempt by the government to drive Disruptive businesses off the road.
  • anonymous on 26 Oct 12
     
    The pro-Disruption argument goes like this: In a digitally connected age, there's absolutely no need for public carriage laws (or hotel laws, or food safety laws, or… or…) because the market will quickly move to drive out bad actors. If an Uber driver behaves badly, his low star rating will soon push him out of business.
  • Erik Hanson on 26 Oct 12
     
    I'm going to have to dig into this. I don't see the necessary connection between valuing "disruptive" and being a Randian. I'm sure there are sociopathic enterprises that claim to be disruptive, but that doesn't equate the two.
  • Erik Hanson on 26 Oct 12
     
    Looking at the rest of the (lengthy) piece, I get the sense that the real nested claim here is that most people claiming to be disruptive are of this radical libertarian egotist ilk.
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The Debunking Handbook: now freely available for download - 1 views

www.skepticalscience.com/freely-available-download.html
shared by anonymous on 17 Oct 12 - Cached
  • anonymous on 17 Oct 12
     
    "The Debunking Handbook, a guide to debunking misinformation, is now freely available to download. Although there is a great deal of psychological research on misinformation, there's no summary of the literature that offers practical guidelines on the most effective ways of reducing the influence of myths. The Debunking Handbook boils the research down into a short, simple summary, intended as a guide for communicators in all areas (not just climate) who encounter misinformation."
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Misinformation and Its Correction - 1 views

psi.sagepub.com/...106.full
shared by anonymous on 17 Oct 12 - Cached
  • anonymous on 17 Oct 12
     
    "Abstract The widespread prevalence and persistence of misinformation in contemporary societies, such as the false belief that there is a link between childhood vaccinations and autism, is a matter of public concern. For example, the myths surrounding vaccinations, which prompted some parents to withhold immunization from their children, have led to a marked increase in vaccine-preventable disease, as well as unnecessary public expenditure on research and public-information campaigns aimed at rectifying the situation. We first examine the mechanisms by which such misinformation is disseminated in society, both inadvertently and purposely. Misinformation can originate from rumors but also from works of fiction, governments and politicians, and vested interests. Moreover, changes in the media landscape, including the arrival of the Internet, have fundamentally influenced the ways in which information is communicated and misinformation is spread. We next move to misinformation at the level of the individual, and review the cognitive factors that often render misinformation resistant to correction. We consider how people assess the truth of statements and what makes people believe certain things but not others. We look at people's memory for misinformation and answer the questions of why retractions of misinformation are so ineffective in memory updating and why efforts to retract misinformation can even backfire and, ironically, increase misbelief. Though ideology and personal worldviews can be major obstacles for debiasing, there nonetheless are a number of effective techniques for reducing the impact of misinformation, and we pay special attention to these factors that aid in debiasing. We conclude by providing specific recommendations for the debunking of misinformation. These recommendations pertain to the ways in which corrections should be designed, structured, and applied in order to maximize their impact. Grounded in cognitive psychological theory, these rec
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Conflict History - 0 views

www.conflicthistory.com
shared by anonymous on 17 Oct 12 - Cached
  • anonymous on 17 Oct 12
     
    Browse the timeline of war and conflict across the globe. A VERY powerful tool.
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Simple Ways to Eat Less Without Noticing - 0 views

lifehacker.com/...s-to-eat-less-without-noticing
shared by anonymous on 16 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • anonymous on 16 Oct 12
     
    "What you eat is important, but even healthy food can stop you from losing weight if you eat too much of it. I never recommend extreme calorie restriction (most people aren't very good at it anyway), but there are some tricks you can use to slightly reduce the amount of food you eat without feeling deprived, or even really noticing."
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Klip.me - Google Reader to Kindle - 6 views

www.klip.me/welcome
shared by anonymous on 13 Oct 12 - No Cached
Erik Hanson liked it
  • anonymous on 13 Oct 12
     
    "It allows you to send subscriptions that in specific folder of Google Reader Periodical format, include article index"
  • ...3 more comments...
  • Erik Hanson on 15 Oct 12
     
    Blowing my mind here. I'll have to check up on this.
  • anonymous on 15 Oct 12
     
    I'm going nuts trying to figure out how to make a Kindle Paperwhite happen. It gets so much right and it's focuse - like a laser - on what I want: reading and writing and notetaking. I spent (wasted) most of this past weekend trying to get my netbook to become somewhat useful in this regard. What junk. I actually have deep regrets about a seven-hour hole of failure yesterday as I tried all these linux builds that are so desperate for the cloud that you cant' make use of them offline. So that leaves me with... Windows: which is the whole thing I left because it was too slow on the netbook. But it's the best option given how much offline stuff I need to do. Now, the KINDLE, on the other hand... the thing is perfect. Sooo many ways to get data onto it now.
  • Erik Hanson on 15 Oct 12
     
    A lot of the stuff you shared won't work for me, since I'm on the Kindle App mostly (and a Kindle 1). The app on iOS is good, but I don't have a point of comparison against more recent Kindles.
  • anonymous on 15 Oct 12
     
    Totally. The app version (I have it on Android) doesn't begin to cut it. Which is funny, to me, because you'd think the straight-up software version of something would be eaiser... but I'm clueless. In the communications department, we have a very strong need to have a "book" that contains all the relevant information about X right at hand. The scientists could benefit from this, as well, since they're printing 20 reams of paper's worth of stuff they barely read, probably weekly (and that's conservative). I just see the thing on the cusp of becoming a ubiquitous tool. I know that tablets are awesome, but I'm coming at this from a single (or few) purpose device. All that happens when we roll out tablets for people is they start playing Angry Birds.
  • Erik Hanson on 15 Oct 12
     
    I vote for online knowledge sites with dynamic interfaces.
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Simple Tip Turns Kindle into Ultimate News Reader - 0 views

www.wired.com/...ndle-into-ultimate-news-reader
shared by anonymous on 13 Oct 12 - Cached
  • anonymous on 13 Oct 12
     
    "One of the best things about the Gadget Lab is our awesome readership, and this tip comes from Gadget Lab fan Ron Winters. Ron has actually managed to make the Kindle's "experimental" web-browser functional. Better still, it is an always-connected client for reading your own personal news."
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Amazon Kindle Paperwhite: 7 Reasons to Consider This New E-Reader - 0 views

www.idigitaltimes.com/...ite-7-reasons-consider-new.htm
shared by anonymous on 12 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • anonymous on 12 Oct 12
     
    "Amazon has just begun shipping its latest e-reader, the Kindle Paperwhite, but already it has received any number of rave reviews as the ultimate e-reader of choice. In the words of Gizmodo reviewer Kyle Wagner, the Paperwhite, "makes previous generations feel like a pulpy paperback held up next to an ornately illustrated tome. In short: this is the best e-reader you can buy.""
1More

Instapaper On Your Amazon Kindle E-Reader - 1 views

smartlifeblog.com/instapaper-kindle
shared by anonymous on 12 Oct 12 - Cached
  • anonymous on 12 Oct 12
     
    "Instapaper is a great way for you to read your web content on the go using an iDevice of your choosing, but did you know that you can save those articles for offline reading on your Amazon Kindle too? Even though the regular Kindle e-reader doesn't have a traditional app store, it is possible to have your Instapaper saved content pushed directly to that e-ink display."
1More

25+ Amazon Kindle Apps To Improve Your Productivity - 1 views

smartlifeblog.com/kindle-apps-productivity
shared by anonymous on 12 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • anonymous on 12 Oct 12
     
    "Many people use the Amazon Kindle family of devices for reading a wide range of e-books. That's great, but you shouldn't forget about the tons of Kindle apps that are also available to help to improve your productivity. This is particularly true of the Kindle Fire, since it's more like an Android tablet than it's like a traditional e-book reader."
6More

5 things you didn't know you could do on your Kindle - 2 views

blog.journals.cambridge.org/...ow-you-could-do-on-your-kindle hilarious
shared by anonymous on 11 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Read actual books! Because, what if you run out of battery power, will you just have to stop reading? With actual books, you can read for however long you want. And what if something goes wrong with the Kindle, like it breaks or something? With actual books, you can't break a book, you can tear a page but you can just tape it back. Books are meant to be read on paper, not a screen. That's how it always has been until the invention of e-books which are silly. Don't we people get enough screens and buttons in our lives? Why must we read books on screens, that's like the only thing left that people read on paper.
  • Even newspapers are starting to go down because people read the news on their computers. It doesn't count to read a book on a screen and call yourself an avid reader. I think it would be sad to see books totally die out so please, can you help keep books alive by not buying an e-book? Please? Aside from the benefit of its size and weight, the Kindle is a manufactured product, which means that the Kindle not only takes up natural resources to produce the end product, but that the Kindle is made with human hands, Chinese hands to be more specific. Is the Kindle a fair-trade product? Were the hands that produced this luxury for Americans treated justly, humanely and respectfully? Were they given a fair price for the work done, a safe environment to work in, fair labor hours?
  • Are the people who labor over our products treated well? What of the cost of transporting thousands of Kindles from Asia to America? What of the cost of packaging and delivering the same product into the hands of the consumers once in America? While it’s true that most everything we do requires energy consumption, one must take into consideration the things behind the scenes. For example, one can download a book from Amazon in 60 seconds flat. How does that book get from Amazon’s library to your Kindle? By their Whispernet technology, a wireless coverage in all 50 states. Just think of all that energy expended to supply Kindle followers of unlimited entertainment. Or how about the battery installed in each Kindle? Amazon thoughtfully installed a rechargeable battery, but one must use power to recharge that said battery. Where does that electricity come from?
  • anonymous on 11 Oct 12
     
    The first comment (highlighted herein) is one of the funnies anti e-book tirades I've read in a long time. Did you know that the kindle is a "manufactured product?" Quite unlike books, of course.
  • Erik Hanson on 12 Oct 12
     
    Books grow organically on Book Trees at the end of Reading Rainbow.
  • anonymous on 12 Oct 12
     
    HAH. That's more plausible than most of this thing. I realize that linking to this is way petty. I routinely ignore comments, but I was looking specifically for solutions and this thing just slapped me. I get this picture of an earnest, well meaning, high-schooler who's making college plans. He has this single-ply construct of How the World Works. In a certain light, the thing is quite an endearing picture.
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