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Skeptical Debunker

Unintended Acceleration Not Limited To Toyotas : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...story.php

automobiles unintended acceleration models history

shared by Skeptical Debunker on 05 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Skeptical Debunker on 05 Mar 10
     
    The dangerous problem of cars accelerating without a driver's input has put Toyota in the headlines - and brought the giant carmaker's executives to congressional hearings. But unintended acceleration has been a problem across the auto industry, according to an NPR analysis of consumer complaints to federal regulators. The NPR News investigation finds that other automakers have had high rates of complaints in some model years, including Volkswagen, Volvo and Honda - in some cases resolving the apparent problems through evolving technology and recalls. The analysis covers about 15,000 complaints filed over the past decade, covering cars back to the 1990 model year. The complaints were filed with the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, which regulates auto safety.
Skeptical Debunker

For better trade, give peace a chance - 0 views

www.physorg.com/news186327634.html

peace trade study

shared by Skeptical Debunker on 25 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Trade's effect on military conflict is one of the most important issues in international relations. The last decade has seen research and debate into the role of trade intensify; Liberals argue that trade brings peace, neo-realists and neo-Marxists reason that trade brings conflict, and classical realists contend that trade has no impact. This debate is not just academic: some key U.S. policymakers (Senator McCain and former President Clinton for instance) believe that trade brings peace, a view that contributes to their support for free trade. Economists developed bilateral trade models in isolation from models of interstate conflict, which were the work of political scientists. These two types of models handle distance between nations differently. Bilateral trade takes its cue from Isaac Newton's formula for the gravitational attraction between two objects: the larger the objects' masses and the shorter the distance between them, the larger the attraction. So the larger the trade partners' economies and the closer they are to one another, the greater their trade. However, conflict models instead incorporate shared borders by land or close distance over water (contiguity) - stressing the role of border disputes in sparking interstate conflict. Distance is included in conflict equations based on the idea that an army gets weaker the farther it strays from its base, but what point in a nation to pick for the trade and conflict equation is unclear. Often theorists use the distance between capital cities, which is problematic: wars generally happen around borders where armies are often based, and capitals have historically changed without this altering the likelihood of war between the nation and its neighbours. The authors suggest that the trade data set plugged into trade and conflict equations is critical. This type of data often contains gaps - there are a number of reasons why data from a particular nation might be unavailable, inevitably leaving researchers to make assumptions. The majority of trade and conflict studies define conflict to include all types of militarised interstate disputes (MIDs). But Keshk, Reuveny, and Pollins question the results generated when different conflict definitions are chosen. For instance, a conflict such as a threat to use nuclear weapons would not cause fatalities, but may still have some impact on trade and vice versa. In fact, by altering the data treatment and assumptions in the equation, the authors generated a variety of results, which supported several different theoretical viewpoints. The authors suggest that future research should investigate questions of missing bilateral trade data, and attempt a more subtle use of the meaning of "military conflict". Researchers might also develop distance and contiguity measures at a more sophisticated level. "Any signal that trade brings peace remains weak and inconsistent, regardless of the way proximity is modelled in the conflict equation. The signal that conflict reduces trade, in contrast, is strong and consistent," say the authors. "Any study of the effect of trade on conflict that ignores the reverse fact is practically guaranteed to produce estimates that contain simultaneity bias." Studies of the relationship between international trade and military conflict can be traced back many centuries, particularly in the works of luminaries such as de Montesquieu, Immanuel Kant, John Hobson, Vladimir Lenin, Henry Morgenthau, Kenneth Waltz, Frederic List, and Albert Hirschman. This latest study emphasises that international politics are affecting trade between nation pairs, while it is far less obvious whether trade systematically affects politics. "To our colleagues from the liberal camp we would like to say that we still believe there are limited circumstances in which more trade may help lead countries to more peaceful resolutions of their differences, particularly if they are already at peace," the authors state. "However, it is past time for academics and policymakers to look beyond the naive claim that the cultivation of trade ties will always and everywhere produce a more peaceful world."
  • Skeptical Debunker on 25 Feb 10
     
    Liberal theorists and politicians have long argued that trade leads to peaceful relations between nations - a view that informs the push for free trade. However, many international relations experts dispute this claim. New US research out today, in the journal Conflict Management and Peace Science published by SAGE, finds that rather than trade being the driver, peace is actually the vital ingredient that allows trade to flourish.
thinkahol *

FOCUS: What American Workers Don't Need - 0 views

readersupportednews.org/...hat-american-workers-dont-need

FOCUS: What American Workers Don't Need

shared by thinkahol * on 05 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 05 Oct 11
     
    President Obama submitted three free trade agreements to Congress based on the flawed North-American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) model that has been devastating to our economy, American workers and to labor and environmental standards. Hundreds of thousands of American jobs have been displaced and outsourced as a result of our pursuit of trade policies which are adverse to the economic interests of the American people. My home State of Ohio is one of the top-ten states posting the biggest job losses since the passage of NAFTA. Unfortunately, the proposed free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama do nothing to address the significant flaws in the free trade model that prioritize the rights of multinational companies over the rights of workers and the American economy. The Korea-US and US-Colombia Free Trade Agreements are expected to increase our trade deficit by over $16 billion and result in the displacement or loss of over 200,000 jobs. This is on top of the over 2 million American jobs that have been displaced or eliminated over the past 10 years as a result of our increased trade deficit with China. The last thing American workers and our economy needs is more NAFTA-style free trade agreements.
thinkahol *

Model citizens: Building SimEarth - tech - 04 November 2010 - New Scientist - 0 views

www.newscientist.com/...itizens-building-simearth.html

Model citizens: Building SimEarth - tech 04 November 2010 New Scientist

shared by thinkahol * on 07 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 07 Nov 10
     
    People don't behave the way economics says they should. Massive simulations of human interactions will warn us of coming crises - from finance to flu
Skeptical Debunker

Pliocene Hurricaines - 0 views

www.enn.com/...41064

Pliocene hurricanes CO2 feeback

shared by Skeptical Debunker on 05 Mar 10 - Cached
  • By combining a hurricane model and coupled ocean-atmosphere general circulation model to investigate the early Pliocene, Emanuel, Brierley and co-author Alexey Fedorov observed how vertical ocean mixing by hurricanes near the equator caused shallow parcels of water to heat up and later resurface in the eastern equatorial Pacific as part of the ocean wind-driven circulation. The researchers conclude from this pattern that frequent hurricanes in the central Pacific likely strengthened the warm pool in the eastern equatorial Pacific, which in turn increased hurricane frequency — an interaction described by Emanuel as a “two-way feedback process.”�The researchers believe that in addition to creating more hurricanes, the intense hurricane activity likely created a permanent El Nino like state in which very warm water in the eastern Pacific near the equator extended to higher latitudes. The El Nino weather pattern, which is caused when warm water replaces cold water in the Pacific, can impact the global climate by intermittently altering atmospheric circulation, temperature and precipitation patterns.The research suggests that Earth’s climate system may have at least two states — the one we currently live in that has relatively few tropical cyclones and relatively cold water, including in the eastern part of the Pacific, and the one during the Pliocene that featured warm sea surface temperatures, permanent El Nino conditions and high tropical cyclone activity.Although the paper does not suggest a direct link with current climate models, Fedorov said it is possible that future global warming could cause Earth to transition into a different equilibrium state that has more hurricanes and permanent El Nino conditions. “So far, there is no evidence in our simulations that this transition is going to occur at least in the next century. However, it’s still possible that the condition can occur in the future.”�Whether our future world is characterized by a mean state that is more El Nino-like remains one of the most important unanswered questions in climate dynamics, according to Matt Huber, a professor in Purdue University’s Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. The Pliocene was a warmer time than now with high carbon dioxide levels. The present study found that hurricanes influenced by weakened atmospheric circulation — possibly related to high levels of carbon dioxide — contributed to very warm temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, which in turn led to more frequent and intense hurricanes. The research indicates that Earth’s climate may have multiple states based on this feedback cycle, meaning that the climate could change qualitatively in response to the effects of global warming.
  • Skeptical Debunker on 05 Mar 10
     
    The Pliocene epoch is the period in the geologic timescale that extends from 5 million to 3 million years before present. Although scientists know that the early Pliocene had carbon dioxide concentrations similar to those of today, it has remained a mystery what caused the high levels of greenhouse gas and how the Pliocene's warm conditions, including an extensive warm pool in the Pacific Ocean and temperatures that were roughly 4 degrees C higher than today's, were maintained. In a paper published February 25 in Nature, Kerry Emanuel and two colleagues from Yale University's Department of Geology and Geophysics suggest that a positive feedback between tropical cyclones - commonly called hurricanes and typhoons - and the circulation in the Pacific could have been the mechanism that enabled the Pliocene's warm climate.
Skeptical Debunker

Ravitch Offers Passionate Defense of America's Public School System - March 2, 2010 - T... - 0 views

www.nysun.com/...86906

The Death and Life of the Great American School System book review

shared by Skeptical Debunker on 02 Mar 10 - Cached
  • No silver bullets. This is the simple premise of Diane Ravitch’s new book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” which is being brought out this week by Basic Books. Written by one of our nation’s most respected scholars, it has been eagerly awaited. But it has also been, at least in some quarters, anticipated with a certain foreboding, because it was likely to debunk much of the conventional — and some not so conventional — wisdom surrounding education reform. Click Image to Enlarge
  • What of the once-great comprehensive high schools, institutions with history and in some cases a track record of success going back generations? As time moves on, it is fast becoming clear that the new small schools, many with inane themes (how about the School of Peace and Diversity?), can never substitute for a good neighborhood high school, which can become a center of communal life and pride. Ms. Ravitch’s report underscores the fact that the trick is to fix the neighborhood schools beset with problems, not destroy them.
  • It is not only the foundations that Ms. Ravitch blames for the current crisis: government has also failed in the attempt to reform the schools from above, lacking a clear perspective of how schools work on a day-to-day basis. Thus, the major federal initiative, No Child Left Behind, well intentioned as it may have been, ended up damaging the quality of education, not improving it. While the federal government declares schools as “failing” and prescribes sanctions for schools not meeting its goal of “annual yearly progress,” it is the states that are allowed to write and administer the tests. This has led to a culture of ever easier tests and more test preparation rather than real instruction. More ominously, it led to such scandals as the New York State Education Department lowering the “cut scores” that define the line between passing and failing. Ms. Ravitch suggests that the proper roles of the states and federal government have been reversed under NCLB. Maybe the standards for achievement should be set in Washington, which, after all, administers the National Assessment of Educational Progress , and the solutions found at the local level, using the accurate data provided by Washington. Instead of moving in a different direction from the failed NCLB model of the Bush Administration, the Obama administration has adopted and expanded on them.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Teacher-bashing, so in vogue among the “reformers” dominating the national discussion, is rejected by Mrs. Ravitch. How could the unions be responsible for so much failure when, she asks, traditionally, the highest scores in the nation are posted by strong union states such as Massachusetts (best results in the nation) and the lowest scores in the south, where unions are weak or non-existent? The mania for closing “failing” schools also comes under the Ravitch microscope. To her mind, closing schools should be reserved for the “most extreme cases.” Virtually alone among those discussing educational policy, Mrs. Ravitch appreciates the value of schools as neighborhood institutions. To her mind, closing schools “accelerates a sense of transiency and impermanence, while dismissing the values of continuity and tradition, which children, families and communities need as anchors in their lives.”
  • Skeptical Debunker on 02 Mar 10
     
    It turns out that "The Death and Life of the Great American School System" is a passionate defense of our nation's public schools, a national treasure that Ms. Ravitch believes is "intimately connected to our concepts of citizenship and democracy and to the promise of American life." She issues a warning against handing over educational policy decisions to private interests, and criticizes misguided government policies that have done more harm than good. Ideas such as choice, utilizing a "business model" structure, accountability based on standardized tests and others, some favored by the left, others by the right are deemed as less, often much less, than advertised. Ms. Ravitch doesn't oppose charters, but rather feels that the structure itself doesn't mandate success. As in conventional schools, there will be good ones and bad ones. But charters must not be allowed to cream off the best students, or avoid taking the most troubled, as has been alleged here in New York City. Here main point, however, is broader. "It is worth reflecting on the wisdom of allowing educational policy to be directed, or one might say, captured by private foundations," Ms. Ravitch notes. She suggests that there is "something fundamentally antidemocratic about relinquishing control of the public educational policy to private foundations run by society's wealthiest people." However well intended the effort, the results, in her telling, have not been impressive, in some cases doing more harm than good.
  • Skeptical Debunker on 02 Mar 10
     
    According to this CONSERVATIVE and BUSH Assistant Secretary of Education, "No Child Left Behind" is destroying one of the great social "glues" of America - its public school system. Of course, not only Bush and the Republicans are to blame, Democrats went along with NCLB on the "promise" of extra federal funding for implementing it AND supporting American public schools. That was funding that never materialized due to our other great national priority - making corporate cronies rich via the war in Iraq (and hoping to make the oil companies richer there as well, but apparently failing miserably to do so ... so far). NCLB could have been suspended when that happened, but strangely (NOT!) Bush and the Republican controlled Congress conveniently forgot their promise (perhaps because NCLB unfunded was more like no teachers union left un-destroyed!?). More from http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/28/entertainment/la-ca-diane-ravitch28-2010feb28 on this book - Diane Ravitch, probably this nation's most respected historian of education and long one of our most thoughtful educational conservatives, has changed her mind -- and changed it big time. Ravitch's critical guns are still firing, but now they're aimed at the forces of testing, accountability and educational markets, forces for which she was once a leading proponent and strategist. As President Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, embrace charter schools and testing, picking up just where, in her opinion, the George W. Bush administration left off, "The Death and Life of the Great American School System" may yet inspire a lot of high-level rethinking. The book, titled to echo Jane Jacobs' 1961 demolition of grandiose urban planning schemes, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," has similarly dark warnings and equally grand ambitions. Ravitch -- the author of "Left Back" and other critiques of liberal school reforms, an assistant secretary of education in the first Bush administration and a
Peter Dearman

Mainstream Populist Democrats: Taiwan may provide a health care model for the U.S. - 0 views

populistdemocrats.blogspot.com/...provide-health-care-model.html

Taiwan medical medicine health health care insurance hospital

shared by Peter Dearman on 12 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Peter Dearman on 12 Apr 09
     
    A National Public Radio profile from last year points out that Taiwan has one of the world's best health care systems and it is cost efficient too. All Things Considered, April 15, 2008 · At the end of the 20th century, Taiwan became a rich country, almost overnight. But it still had a poor country's health care - about half the population had no coverage at all. So Taiwan set out to design a national health care system from scratch. What makes Taiwan unique is the way the country figured out how to cover everyone.
  • Peter Dearman on 12 Apr 09
     
    My first post here. Just joined. Live in Taiwan and can attest to the brilliance of the healthcare system here. It's a much better model than Canda. (And I'm a Canadian.)
thinkahol *

Why Big Media Is Going Nuclear Against The DMCA | TechCrunch - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...big-media-nuclear-dmca

Why Big Media Is Going Nuclear Against The DMCA | TechCrunch

shared by thinkahol * on 09 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 09 Nov 11
     
    When Congress updated copyright laws and passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in 1998, it ushered an era of investment, innovation and job creation.  In the decade since, companies like Google, YouTube and Twitter have emerged thanks to the Act, but in the process, they have disrupted the business models and revenue streams of traditional media companies (TMCs).  Today, the TMCs are trying to fast-track a couple of bills in the House and Congress to reverse all of that. Through their lobbyists in Washington, D.C., media companies are trying to rewrite the DMCA through two new bills.  The content industry's lobbyists have forged ahead without any input from the technology industry, the one in the Senate is called Protect IP and the one in the House is called E-Parasites.  The E-Parasite law would kill the safe harbors of the DMCA and allow traditional media companies to attack emerging technology companies by cutting off their ability to transact and collect revenue, sort of what happened to Wikileaks, if you will.  This would scare VCs from investing in such tech firms, which in turn would destroy job creation. The technology industry is understandably alarmed by its implications, which include automatic blacklists for any site issued a takedown notice by copyright holders that would extend to payment providers and even search engines.   What is going on and how exactly did we get here?
thinkahol *

Video - Douglas Rushkoff on Why Jobs Are Obsolete - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...96-4A1B-970D-486CBDF1FE5C.html

Video - Douglas Rushkoff on Why Jobs Are Obsolete WSJ.com

shared by thinkahol * on 13 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 13 Nov 11
     
    All the fixation on creating jobs in America is outdated and misguided, argues media theorist and author Douglas Rushkoff. He explains to WSJ's Dennis Berman his theory on new models that could actually increase productivity and make Americans more satisfied.
Arabica Robusta

Building a civil economy | openDemocracy - 6 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...building-civil-economy-0

economic theory gift society game

shared by Arabica Robusta on 07 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • my argument is that humans are more relational, ‘gift-exchanging animals’ who are naturally disposed to cooperate for mutual benefit. In the following I will attempt to show how such an alternative anthropology can translate into a ‘civil economy’ and transformative policy ideas: rebuilding our economy and embedding welfare in communities.
  • In the wake of Marcel Mauss’ work on the gift, this model emerged as a legitimate way of rethinking economics: humans are naturally social animals with dispositions to cooperate in the quest for the common good in which all can partake.
  • Building on Polanyi and G. D. H. Cole’s guild socialism, one can suggest that an embedded model means that elected governments have the duty to create the civic space in which workers, businesses and communities can regulate economic activity and direct the ‘free flow’ of globally mobile capital to productive activities that benefit the many, not the few.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • At national and supranational levels, caps on interest rates would help curb the predations of creditors upon debtors. Linked to such limits on financial domination are new incentives and rewards for channelling capital in productive, human and social activities.
  • f the declared aim is to preserve the dignity of natural and human life, then all participants in the public realm have a duty to promote human relationships and associations that nurture the social bonds of trust and reciprocal help upon which both democracy and the economy rely.
  • Thus, the link between different actors and levels is a series of abstract, formal rights and entitlements or monetised, market relations (or again both at once). As such, welfare beneficiaries are reduced to merely passive recipients of a ‘one-size-fits-all’, top-down service. State paternalism and private contract delivery cost more to deliver less, and they lock people either into demoralising dependency on the central state or financially unaffordable dependency on outsourced, private contractors.
thinkahol *

What Makes Right-Wing Mobs Tick? | Psychology Today - 0 views

www.psychologytoday.com/...hat-makes-right-wing-mobs-tick

What Makes Right-Wing Mobs Tick? | Psychology Today

shared by thinkahol * on 31 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 31 Oct 10
     
    A lot of heavyweight thinkers have offered explanations of the irrationality of modern political behavior--you know, behavior like Medicare recipients at town halls screaming about the evils of government-run health care or otherwise reasonable people likening Obama's plan to Nazi eugenics. George Lakoff theorizes that conservatives interpret reality through metaphors and meta-narratives modeled after authoritarian family structures. Drew Westen argues that they interpret facts according to emotionally based investments in conclusions they already hold, bypassing cortical centers of reason altogether. These and other analyses are powerful and helpful. But they aren't satisfying to me because they aren't specific enough to account for the passionate urgency and self-destructiveness of the right-wing rejection of a program that will obviously benefit them.
thinkahol *

Chapter 1. Government As a Platform - 0 views

opengovernment.labs.oreilly.com/ch01.html

Chapter 1. Government As a Platform

shared by thinkahol * on 09 Nov 10 - Cached
  • thinkahol * on 09 Nov 10
     
    During the past 15 years, the World Wide Web has created remarkable new methods for harnessing the creativity of people in groups, and in the process has created powerful business models that are reshaping our economy. As the Web has undermined old media and software companies, it has demonstrated the enormous power of a new approach, often referred to as Web 2.0. In a nutshell: the secret to the success of bellwethers like Google, Amazon, eBay, Craigslist, Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter is that each of these sites, in its own way, has learned to harness the power of its users to add value to-no, more than that, to co-create-its offerings.
Skeptical Debunker

Tally of Antarctic Sealife Sheds Light on Changing Climate - 0 views

www.matternetwork.com/...arctic-sealife-sheds-light.cfm

Artic life ocean climate change effects

shared by Skeptical Debunker on 05 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Skeptical Debunker on 05 Mar 10
     
    More than 6,000 different species living on the sea-floor have been identified so far and more than half of these are unique to the icy continent. A combination of long-term monitoring studies, newly gathered information on the marine life distribution and global ocean warming models, enable the scientists to identify Antarctica's marine "biodiversity hotspots". Researcher Griffiths describes how krill populations (the shrimp-like invertebrates eaten by penguins, whales and seals) are reducing as a result of a decrease in sea-ice cover. A much smaller crustacean (copepods) is dominating the area once occupied by them. This shifts the balance of the food web to favour predators, like jellyfish, that are not eaten by penguins and other Southern Ocean higher predators. Sea-ice reduction is also affecting penguins that breed on the ice.
Yee Sian Ng

The Much-Delayed Response To Goldblog - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan - 0 views

andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/...ayed-response-to-goldblog.html

Arab-Israel Geopolitics

shared by Yee Sian Ng on 09 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Yee Sian Ng on 09 Mar 10
     
    "I regard the establishment of the Jewish state as one of the West's high-points in the 20th Century. Like America's founding, it was not immaculate, and its survival has been a brutal struggle in which Israel has not been as innocent as some want to believe, but whose enemies' anti-Semitism and hatred is tangible and omnipresent and despicable. But the Palestinians' legitimate grievances are very real and utterly human and perfectly understandable. Israel, for its part, remains, in its own proper borders, a model state for that part of the world; its openness and democracy vastly exceed any neighboring regime's; it has made more of a tiny strip of land than most of its neighbors have of their vastly greater territory and resources put together. If I were Jewish, I'd be proud. But I'm not, and I can still admire a great deal. There is a huge amount to admire."
Skeptical Debunker

Big Content condemns foreign governments that endorse FOSS - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...ernments-that-endorse-foss.ars

open source Special 301 USTR IIPA absurd recommendations self-serving

shared by Skeptical Debunker on 25 Feb 10 - Cached
  • University of Edinburgh law lecturer Andres Guadamuz wrote a blog entry this week highlighting some particularly troubling aspects of the IIPA's 301 recommendations. The organization has condemned Indonesia and several other countries for encouraging government adoption of open source software. According to the IIPA, official government endorsements of open source software create "trade barriers" and restrict "equitable market access" for software companies. The profound absurdity of this accusation is exacerbated by the fact that Indonesia's move towards open source software was almost entirely motivated by a desire to eliminate the use of pirated software within the government IT infrastructure. It's important to understand that Indonesia has not mandated the adoption of open source software or barred government agencies from purchasing proprietary commercial software. The Indonesian government issued a statement in 2009 informing municipal governments that they had to stop using pirated software. The statement said that government agencies must either purchase legally licensed commercial software or switch to free and open source alternatives in order to comply with copyright law. This attempt by Indonesia to promote legal software procurement processes by endorsing the viability of open source software has apparently angered the IIPA. In its 301 recommendations for Indonesia, the IIPA demands that the government rescind its 2009 statement. According to the IIPA, Indonesia's policy "weakens the software industry and undermines its long-term competitiveness" because open source software "encourages a mindset that does not give due consideration to the value to intellectual creations [and] fails to build respect for intellectual property rights." The number of ways in which the IIPA's statements regarding open source software are egregiously misleading and dishonest are too numerous to count. The IIPA seems to have completely missed the fact that there is a very robust ecosystem of commercial software vendors in the open source software market and that open source software is at the heart of some of the most popular consumer electronics products that are sold in the United States. It has clearly become an important part of the US software economy and increasingly serves as an enabler of innovation and technological progress. In light of the profitability of Red Hat and other open source leaders, it seems absurd to contend that open source software adoption will weaken the software industry or reduce its competitiveness. In fact, the emergence of open source software has contributed to creating a more competitive landscape in the software industry by offering alternative business models that enable smaller companies to gain traction against the dominant incumbent players. The IIPA's position is profoundly hypocritical, because many parts of the US government, including the Department of Defense, have issued their own memos endorsing open source software adoption. The IIPA's disingenuous move to equate open source software with piracy reeks of desperation. The BSA and other IIPA members are likely losing sleep over open source software because that development model and approach to licensing will empower developing countries to build their own domestic IT industries, eliminating the need for them to tithe to American software giants. It's another failing of the 301 review, which Big Content wants used to coerce other countries into adopting ever-more-stringent copyright laws.
  • Skeptical Debunker on 25 Feb 10
     
    In accordance with US trade law, the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) is required to conduct an annual review of the status of foreign intellectual property laws. This review, which is referred to as Special 301, is typically used to denounce countries that have less restrictive copyright policies than the United States. The review process is increasingly dominated by content industry lobbyists who want to subvert US trade policy and make it more favorable to their own interests. We have already noted the targeting of Canada for its supposedly lax copyright laws, but that is not the only nation drawing the ire of Big Content. One of the organizations that plays a key role in influencing the Special 301 review is the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), a powerful coalition that includes the RIAA, the MPAA, and the Business Software Alliance (BSA). The IIPA, which recently published its official recommendations to the USTR for the 2010 edition of the 301 review, has managed to achieve a whole new level of absurdity.
Omnipotent Poobah

A Fox Guarding a Hen House Being Guarded by a Fox Already in the Hen House - 1 views

omnipotentpoobah.com/...a-fox-already-in-the-hen-house

ethics covalence economics economy politics

shared by Omnipotent Poobah on 29 Jan 10 - Cached
  • Omnipotent Poobah on 29 Jan 10
     
    Most people don't go to the corporate world to find model for ethical behavior - not unless they're marketing a new product made of lead and margarine called, "I Can't Believe It's Not Ethical". Still, a company has to really suck to stand out amongst their fellow gougers, cheats, and soulless greedheads.
thinkahol *

GMF - The Copenhagen Consensus: Reading Adam Smith in Denmark - 0 views

www.gmfus.org/...article.cfm

economic policy america government denmark

shared by thinkahol * on 27 May 10 - Cached
  • thinkahol * on 27 May 10
     
    Adam Smith observed in 1776 that economies work best when governments keep their clumsy thumbs off the free market's "invisible hand." Two generations later, in 1817, the British economist David Ricardo extended Smith's insights to global trade. Just as market forces lead to the right price and quantity of products domestically, Ricardo argued, free foreign trade optimizes economic outcomes internationally. Reading Adam Smith in Copenhagen -- the center of the small, open, and highly successful Danish economy -- is a kind of out-of-body experience. On the one hand, the Danes are passionate free traders. They score well in the ratings constructed by pro-market organizations. The World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Index ranks Denmark third, just behind the United States and Switzerland. Denmark's financial markets are clean and transparent, its barriers to imports minimal, its labor markets the most flexible in Europe, its multinational corporations dynamic and largely unmolested by industrial policies, and its unemployment rate of 2.8 percent the second lowest in the OECD (the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). On the other hand, Denmark spends about 50 percent of its GDP on public outlays and has the world's second-highest tax rate, after Sweden; strong trade unions; and one of the world's most equal income distributions. For the half of GDP that they pay in taxes, the Danes get not just universal health insurance but also generous child-care and family-leave arrangements, unemployment compensation that typically covers around 95 percent of lost wages, free higher education, secure pensions in old age, and the world's most creative system of worker retraining. Does Denmark have some secret formula that combines the best of Adam Smith with the best of the welfare state? Is there something culturally unique about the open-minded Danes? Can a model like the Danish one survive as a social democratic island in a turbulent sea of globali
thinkahol *

ThinkProgress » Fulfilling Father's Campaign To Segregate Public Schools, Koc... - 0 views

thinkprogress.org/...koch-segregation

ThinkProgress » Fulfilling Father's Campaign To Segregate Public Schools Koch Groups End Successful Integration Program In NC

shared by thinkahol * on 15 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 15 Jan 11
     
    Today in the Washington Post, reporter Stephanie McCrummen detailed how a right-wing campaign in the Wake County area of North Carolina has taken over the school board with a pledge to end a very successful socio-economic integration plan. The integration plan, which created thriving schools in poor African-American parts of the school district along with achieving diversity in schools located in wealthy white enclaves, was a model for the nation. However, Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the Tea Party group founded and funded by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, worked with local right-wing financier (and AFP board member) Art Pope to fundamentally change Wake County's school board:
thinkahol *

Walker's Budget Plan is a Three-Part Roadmap for Conservative State Governanc... - 0 views

rortybomb.wordpress.com/...-conservative-state-governance

Walker's Budget Plan is a Three-Part Roadmap for Conservative State Governance « Rortybomb

shared by thinkahol * on 25 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 25 Feb 11
     
    Tim Fernholz wrote an excellent article in the National Journal about the "bait and switch" of Governor Walker's Wisconsin plan. Fernholz points out that the short-term deficit problem can be covered by debt restructuring, and that the big pieces of the bill that relate to dismantling public sector unions, control over Medicaid and creating a no-bid energy asset sale process are not directly budget related. There's a three-prong approach in Governor Walker's plan that highlights a blueprint for conservative governorship after the 2010 election. The first is breaking public sector unions and public sector workers generally. The second is streamlining benefits away from legislative authority, especially for health care and in fighting the Health Care Reform Act. The third is the selling of public assets to private interests under firesale and crony capitalist situations. This wasn't clear to me at first. I thought this was about a narrow disagreement over teacher's unions. Depending on what you read, you may have only seen a few of these parts, and you may have not seen them put together as a coherent whole. This will be the framework that other conservative governors, and even a few Democratic ones, will use in their state, so it is good to get a working model in place. In order to frame where it stands now, I'm going to chart this and give a set of descriptions and must-read links:
thinkahol *

Global poverty doubled since 1970s: UN | The Raw Story - 0 views

www.rawstory.com/...global-poverty-doubled-1970s

Global poverty doubled since 1970s: UN | The Raw Story

shared by thinkahol * on 09 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 09 Mar 11
     
    GENEVA - The number of very poor countries has doubled in the last 30 to 40 years, while the number of people living in extreme poverty has also grown two-fold, a UN think-tank warned Thursday. In its annual report on the 49 least developed countries (LDCs) in the world, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said that the model of development that has prevailed to date for these countries has failed and should be re-assessed.
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