Skip to main content

Home/ Politically Minded/ Group items matching "technologies" in title, tags, annotations or url

Group items matching
in title, tags, annotations or url

Sort By: Relevance | Date Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Eric G. Young

Let Infographics Convey Information More Clearly Than Words Alone - 0 views

  •  
    As this article from Webdesigner Depot aptly puts it, "Infographics can be a great way to quickly reference information." Infographics take advantage of the adage, "A picture is worth a thousand words," and the can give broader appeal to a message by tapping into the appetites of visually-oriented consumers.\n\nI find infographics particularly useful to help explain difficult or complex topics, and frequently make use of graphics applications like "mindmaps" in my own work. In fact, I wish my primary field would embrace more creative ways of conveying information to consumers and students. The legal world might be surprised to discover how much more interesting and informative the information would be.\n\nThis article contains infographics aimed primarily at web designers and those with a fairly advanced knowledge of technology. However, there are a number of infographics, such as no. 14, which I think do an excellent job of explaining how different social media outlets can be used by a business to attain different marketing goals. It takes no particular technical skill to understand the information displayed in no. 14, which is what makes it a good infographic for anyone.\n\nIf you are interested in this topic professionally, or you just want to look at some interesting graphics that convey information, check out the article. It's worth a look.
thinkahol *

BREAKING: Republicans derail the COMPETES act | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine - 0 views

  •  
    In a 261-148 vote that went almost exactly along party lines, the America COMPETES act was defeated. Over $40 billion dollars was designated in that bill to go toward science and technology innovation, and to provide a lot of jobs to meet our nation's needs for the future.
thinkahol *

A Philosophical Orientation Toward Solving Our Collective Problems As a Species | Thinkahol's Blog - 0 views

  •  
    To know what the most important virtue of our age is we need to have at least a basic understanding of our age. Our era is becoming increasingly characterized by uncertainty. Fortunately or unfortunately, more than a cursory elucidation of our situation is beyond the scope of this essay. There are geopolitical, economic, technological and environmental trends worth mentioning. When the more philosophical portion of this  discourse arrives I will argue that the virtue of wisdom underlies the meaningfulness and efficacy of all other virtues, and this in broad strokes is primarily due to (1) the aforementioned instability in our surroundings ; (2) the relationship between the deontological and virtue; and (3) the nature of agency itself.  Whether uncertainty itself can provide an ethical foundation for us to elaborate on will be a separate question, and finally I speculate on where wisdom leads us in the context of a philosophy that is politically active and not doomed to irrelevance to and by the larger population.
thinkahol *

By Michel Chossudovsky - Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa and TFF associate, author of The Globalization of Poverty, second edition, Common Courage Press - 0 views

  •  
    The important debate on global warming under UN auspices provides but a partial picture of climate change; in addition to the devastating impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the ozone layer, the World's climate can now be modified as part of a new generation of sophisticated "non-lethal weapons." Both the Americans and the Russians have developed capabilities to manipulate the World's climate. In the US, the technology is being perfected under the High-frequency Active Aural Research Program (HAARP) as part of the ("Star Wars") Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI). Recent scientific evidence suggests that HAARP is fully operational and has the ability of potentially triggering floods, droughts, hurricanes and earthquakes.
thinkahol *

Fast Track to Inequality - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  •  
    The clearest explanation yet of the forces that converged over the past three decades or so to undermine the economic well-being of ordinary Americans is contained in the new book, "Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer - and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class." The authors, political scientists Jacob Hacker of Yale and Paul Pierson of the University of California, Berkeley, argue persuasively that the economic struggles of the middle and working classes in the U.S. since the late-1970s were not primarily the result of globalization and technological changes but rather a long series of policy changes in government that overwhelmingly favored the very rich. Those changes were the result of increasingly sophisticated, well-financed and well-organized efforts by the corporate and financial sectors to tilt government policies in their favor, and thus in favor of the very wealthy. From tax laws to deregulation to corporate governance to safety net issues, government action was deliberately shaped to allow those who were already very wealthy to amass an ever increasing share of the nation's economic benefits. "Over the last generation," the authors write, "more and more of the rewards of growth have gone to the rich and superrich. The rest of America, from the poor through the upper middle class, has fallen further and further behind."
thinkahol *

I am not a "global warming denialist" - War Room - Salon.com - 0 views

  •  
    In his thoughtful criticism of my essay on the future of fossil fuels and the poor prospects for renewable energy, Andrew Leonard characterizes my message as one that "we have nothing to worry about." This may be partly the fault of my presentation, because in the course of being provocative I did not make it sufficiently clear that I was engaged in analysis, not advocacy. I made the prediction that, even in the presence of global warming, the countries of the world are unlikely to allow the vast stores of fossil fuels in the earth's crust to lie there undisturbed, when technology is making many of them ever more accessible and cheaper than the renewable energy alternatives. For the record, I personally wish that greenhouse gas emissions would stop immediately, and I personally would prefer a world of harmonious international cooperation for all time. Neither of my personal preferences is going to be fulfilled and neither affects the accuracy of my analysis.
thinkahol *

The Blog : How Rich is Too Rich? : Sam Harris - 0 views

  •  
    I've written before about the crisis of inequality in the United States and about the quasi-religious abhorrence of "wealth redistribution" that causes many Americans to oppose tax increases, even on the ultra rich. The conviction that taxation is intrinsically evil has achieved a sadomasochistic fervor in conservative circles-producing the Tea Party, their Republican zombies, and increasingly terrifying failures of governance. Happily, not all billionaires are content to hoard their money in silence. Earlier this week, Warren Buffett published an op-ed in the New York Times in which he criticized our current approach to raising revenue. As he has lamented many times before, he is taxed at a lower rate than his secretary is. Many conservatives pretend not to find this embarrassing. Conservatives view taxation as a species of theft-and to raise taxes, on anyone for any reason, is simply to steal more. Conservatives also believe that people become rich by creating value for others. Once rich, they cannot help but create more value by investing their wealth and spawning new jobs in the process. We should not punish our best and brightest for their success, and stealing their money is a form of punishment. Of course, this is just an economic cartoon. We don't have perfectly efficient markets, and many wealthy people don't create much in the way of value for others. In fact, as our recent financial crisis has shown, it is possible for a few people to become extraordinarily rich by wrecking the global economy. Nevertheless, the basic argument often holds: Many people have amassed fortunes because they (or their parent's, parent's, parents) created value. Steve Jobs resurrected Apple Computer and has since produced one gorgeous product after another. It isn't an accident that millions of us are happy to give him our money. But even in the ideal case, where obvious value has been created, how much wealth can one person be allowed to keep? A trillion doll
thinkahol *

Cell Phone Censorship in San Francisco? » Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union - 0 views

  •  
    Pop quiz: where did a government agency shut down cell service yesterday to disrupt a political protest? Syria? London? Nope. San Francisco. The answer may seem surprising, but that's exactly what happened yesterday evening. The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) asked wireless providers to halt service in four stations in San Francisco to prevent protestors from communicating with each other. The action came after BART notified riders that there might be demonstrations in the city. All over the world people are using mobile devices to organize protests against repressive regimes, and we rightly criticize governments that respond by shutting down cell service, calling their actions anti-democratic and a violation of the rights to free expression and assembly. Are we really willing to tolerate the same silencing of protest here in the United States? BART's actions were glaringly small-minded as technology and the ability to be connected have many uses. Imagine if someone had a heart attack on the train when the phones were blocked and no one could call 911. And where do we draw the line? These protestors were using public transportation to get to the demonstration - should the government be able to shut that down too? Shutting down access to mobile phones is the wrong response to political protests, whether it's halfway around the world or right here at home. The First Amendment protects everybody's right to free expression, and when the government responds to people protesting against it by silencing them, it's dangerous to democracy.
thinkahol *

A prime aim of the growing Surveillance State - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com - 0 views

  •  
    As economic anxiety and social unrest increase, control over Internet technology and communication becomes vital
S D

Text Messaging for Political Candidates - 4 views

  •  
    With the rise of cell phone usage, candidates across the country are starting to use mobile texting as an effective campaign tool. As mobile computing blurs the line between online and offline campaigning, we are going to see more use of crossover technologies by political campaigns.
thinkahol *

China stutters on purpose, world freaks out - Chinese Economy, Yuan Revaluation, Chinese Currency - Salon.com - 0 views

  •  
    The danger of depending too much on a Chinese rescue for the global economy: Even planned slowdowns cause panic
thinkahol *

Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union » A Disturbing Vision for the Future of the Internet - 0 views

  •  
    The era that Net Neutrality supporters have long  feared is here - major companies have begun divvying up the internet. Last  month, Google and Verizon  announced a "policy framework" of how the rules for the internet  could work in  the future. The framework is a disturbing vision for the future. Wireless  internet - such as services delivered over smart phones - would be completely  unregulated; companies would be free to prioritize their own services - for  everything from music to video to chat - over those of competitors.
thinkahol *

Free Press | Media reform through education, organizing and advocacy - 0 views

  •  
    Free Press is a national, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization working to reform the media. Through education, organizing and advocacy, we promote diverse and independent media ownership, strong public media, quality journalism, and universal access to communications.
Levy Rivers

Tom Watson MP » Blog Archive » Power of Information: New taskforce and speech - 0 views

  • We commissioned Ed Mayo and Tom Steinberg to write the Power of Information report because we knew that information, presented in the right way, was a potent driver for improving public services and government.
  • Today I am going to offer two arguments that I think compliment the Prime Minister’s recent announcement on public service reform
  • Firstly, that freeing up data will allow us to unlock the talent British entrepreneurs. And secondly, engaging people - using the simple tools that bring them together - will allow the talents of all our people to be applied to the provision of public services.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • The difference of course is that today we contend with what Richard Saul Wurman describes as a ‘tsunami of data’
  • My job is to make sure that government can benefit from this new thinking too. When we were first elected in 1997 people had a recipient relationship with data, they got what they were given when they were given it. It was static.
  • In scale, the spread of social media is comparable to the spread of telephones in the 1930’s to the 1950’s. Yet it’s happened in two years not 20.
  • As Clay Shirky would say, we’ve reached a point where technology is simple and boring enough to be socially useful and interesting.
  • Over 7 million electronic signatures have been sent, electronically, to the Downing Street petition website. 1 in 10 citizens have emailed the Prime Minister about an issue. The next stage is to enable e-petitioners to connect with each other around particular issues and to link up with policy debates both on and off Government webspace.
  • Only last week, the Prime Minister became the first head of Government in Europe to launch his own channel on Twitter, which I can tell you from experience, is extremely useful to his ministers at least
  • Richard is here tonight and I hope that after the formal proceedings you might like to share some of your own ideas with him. Richard is also joined by a number of other taskforce members. They’re all people with remarkable track records in this field. We’re lucky. The UK has some of the world’s leading talent.
  • And today the PM announced an initiative that would allow you to find your community Bobbies using your postcode.
  • The taskforce will bring its expertise to bare on existing initiatives to see if we can what we already do better
  • I want the taskforce to ensure that the COI and Cabinet Office produce a set of guidelines that adheres to the letter of the law when it comes to the civil service code but also lives within the spirit of the age. I’ll be putting some very draft proposals to the taskforce to consider later this week.
  • By bringing people onto the taskforce with the skills and experiences of people like Sally Russell we can move further and faster in this area.
  • Two weeks ago the Prime Minister signalled that we were moving public services to the next stage of reform. He said that we were not only going to, further enhance choice but also empower both the users of services and all the professionals who deliver them - to drive up standards for all.
  • Transformational government is about wrapping services around the citizen, not citizens around the services.
  • Last month DirectGov had over 7 million visitors. Peter is seeing the aggregate desires of millions of UK public service using citizens. I had half an hour with him a fortnight ago and came away with a dozen ideas as to how we can improve our public services.
  • I’m the Member of Parliament for West Bromwich East and I didn’t know about an important recycling initiative going on in my own patch. This information now means that a bag load of clothing for a small child and a habitat sofa are about given a second chance to give pleasure.
  • And much of that information has the potential to be reused in data mashups. Some of it already is, like Hansard on theyworkforyou, or Google Maps using Ordnance Survey data.
  • The Power of Information Report recognised that, and made recommendations to the Treasury. The Treasury, with the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, published an independent economic study in the Budget and announced its intention to look at these issues during this spending review cycle.
  • It was this early open source approach that arguably fostered 500 years of Islamic scholarship in important fields like medicine, astronomy, lexicography, literature and science. In contrast, European data was stored in monasteries and did not foster easy knowledge transfer. As Gibbon wrote in the ‘Decline and fall of the Roman empire’ the ‘age of Arabian learning continued about five hundred years’ and was coeval with the darkest and most slothful period of European annals?
  • I believe in the power of mass collaboration. I believe that as James Surowiecki says the many are smarter than the few. I believe that the old hierarchies in which government policy is made are going to change for ever. I said that I don’t believe the post-bureaucratic age argument. It’s just old thinking, laissez faire ideas with a new badge. The future of government is to provide tools for empowerment, not to sit back and hope that laissez-faire adhocracy will suffice.
  • The irony that laying claim to the ownership of a policy on open source was lost to the poor researcher who had spent a day dissecting the speech. He’d been able to do so easily because it was freely available on my blog, a simple tool used for communicating information quickly and at nearly zero cost without the requirement to charge for access. The point is, who cares? It doesn’t matter who has the ideas. It’s what you do with them and how you improve on them that counts.
Skeptical Debunker

Belief In Climate Change Hinges On Worldview : NPR - 0 views

  • "People tend to conform their factual beliefs to ones that are consistent with their cultural outlook, their world view," Braman says. The Cultural Cognition Project has conducted several experiments to back that up. Participants in these experiments are asked to describe their cultural beliefs. Some embrace new technology, authority and free enterprise. They are labeled the "individualistic" group. Others are suspicious of authority or of commerce and industry. Braman calls them "communitarians." In one experiment, Braman queried these subjects about something unfamiliar to them: nanotechnology — new research into tiny, molecule-sized objects that could lead to novel products. "These two groups start to polarize as soon as you start to describe some of the potential benefits and harms," Braman says. The individualists tended to like nanotechnology. The communitarians generally viewed it as dangerous. Both groups made their decisions based on the same information. "It doesn't matter whether you show them negative or positive information, they reject the information that is contrary to what they would like to believe, and they glom onto the positive information," Braman says.
  • "Basically the reason that people react in a close-minded way to information is that the implications of it threaten their values," says Dan Kahan, a law professor at Yale University and a member of The Cultural Cognition Project. Kahan says people test new information against their preexisting view of how the world should work. "If the implication, the outcome, can affirm your values, you think about it in a much more open-minded way," he says. And if the information doesn't, you tend to reject it. In another experiment, people read a United Nations study about the dangers of global warming. Then the researchers told the participants that the solution to global warming is to regulate industrial pollution. Many in the individualistic group then rejected the climate science. But when more nuclear power was offered as the solution, says Braman, "they said, you know, it turns out global warming is a serious problem."And for the communitarians, climate danger seemed less serious if the only solution was more nuclear power.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Then there's the "messenger" effect. In an experiment dealing with the dangers versus benefits of a vaccine, the scientific information came from several people. They ranged from a rumpled and bearded expert to a crisply business-like one. The participants tended to believe the message that came from the person they considered to be more like them. In relation to the climate change debate, this suggests that some people may not listen to those whom they view as hard-core environmentalists. "If you have people who are skeptical of the data on climate change," Braman says, "you can bet that Al Gore is not going to convince them at this point." So, should climate scientists hire, say, Newt Gingrich as their spokesman? Kahan says no. "The goal can't be to create a kind of psychological house of mirrors so that people end up seeing exactly what you want," he argues. "The goal has to be to create an environment that allows them to be open-minded."And Kahan says you can't do that just by publishing more scientific data.
  •  
    "It's a hoax," said coal company CEO Don Blankenship, "because clearly anyone that says that they know what the temperature of the Earth is going to be in 2020 or 2030 needs to be put in an asylum because they don't." On the other side of the debate was environmentalist Robert Kennedy, Jr. "Ninety-eight percent of the research climatologists in the world say that global warming is real, that its impacts are going to be catastrophic," he argued. "There are 2 percent who disagree with that. I have a choice of believing the 98 percent or the 2 percent." To social scientist and lawyer Don Braman, it's not surprising that two people can disagree so strongly over science. Braman is on the faculty at George Washington University and part of The Cultural Cognition Project, a group of scholars who study how cultural values shape public perceptions and policy
Skeptical Debunker

Radical Anti-tax Groups Growing Threat, Say Law Enforcement - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News - FOXNews.com - 0 views

  • Stack's manifesto offers insight into his personal journey as a tax protester - and into the large and growing movement that attracted him. Passages of Stack's manifesto suggest that he was involved in a notorious home church scheme that was popular in the part of California where he lived before he moved to Texas, MacNab said. Stack wrote that he was part of a group who held tax code readings and "zeroed in on a section relating to the wonderful 'exemptions' that make institutions like the vulgar, corrupt Catholic Church so incredibly wealthy." He said they had "the best high-paid experienced tax lawyers in the business." MacNab said Stack likely was referring to a notorious scheme run by lawyers William Drexler and Jerome Daly. It was based on the idea that citizens could establish themselves as a church and gain the same tax exemptions afforded to religious institutions. The scheme didn't work, and Drexler and Daly were disbarred and imprisoned. If this was the operation Stack was referring to, it may have been a turning point in his life. He wrote: "That little lesson in patriotism cost me $40,000+, 10 years of my life, and set my retirement plans back to 0. It made me realize for the first time that I live in a country with an ideology that is based on a total and complete lie." This inspired him to take action, write to politicians and meet with likeminded anti-tax protesters. He wrote: "I spent countless hours on the L.A. freeways driving to meetings and any and all of the disorganized professional groups who were attempting to mount a campaign against this atrocity." His anti-tax and anti-government beliefs may also have been fueled by Section 1706, an obscure and relatively unknown change in the tax code that focused on his industry and went into effect in 1986. Section 1706 essentially removed technical workers like software engineers from a safe haven classification of "self-employed consultant," making it easier for the IRS to challenge how Information Technology companies classified their employers. An association of IT companies and industry professionals, now called TechServe Alliance, was created to protest the changes in tax law that it says singled out the industry. "It made the whole business riskier for people using independent contractors because it favored the so-called employment business model," Mark Roberts, TechServe CEO, told FoxNews.com. "It created havoc on a number of folks." Roberts was quick to condemned Stack's behavior as "an act of a very, very sick individual." "I don't see a long-term lasting effect, just a troubled wayward person acting in response to a legitimate issue. But I don't think that actually impacts the issue," Roberts said. Noting that Section 1706 was passed years ago, he added: "We still resent the fact that it singles out the industry, but folks have basically learned to adapt. It's kind of been awhile since this was a burning issue in the industry."
  •  
    Joseph Stack, the 53-year-old software engineer who crashed his small plane into a seven-story office building in Austin, Texas, was part of a growing, violent anti-tax and anti-government movement that has become increasingly alarming to law enforcement agencies.\n\nStack, who torched his home Thursday morning before setting out on his suicide flight, was fueled by his hatred of the Internal Revenue Service, which had offices and employed nearly 200 workers in the building.
Skeptical Debunker

Delivering Health, Wealth and Water, Drip by Drip - 0 views

  • Solar-powered drip irrigation enhances food security in the Sudano–Sahel documents a field research project which found that: "solar-powered drip irrigation significantly augments both household income and nutritional intake, particularly during the dry season, and is cost effective compared to alternative technologies" Over the decades, irrigation has been shown to greatly increase agricultural productivity. Drip irrigation is spreading rapidly in Africa, with significant benefits. "Drip irrigation delivers water (and fertilizer) directly to the roots of plants, thereby improving soil moisture conditions; in some studies, this has resulted in yield gains of up to 100%, water savings of up to 40–80%, and associated fertilizer, pesticide, and labor savings over conventional irrigation systems" The solar-powered systems, however, look to offer the potential for even better results. From the study on impacts of PVDI systems it was reported: "The women’s agricultural group members utilizing the PVDI systems became strong net producers in vegetables with extra income earned from sales, significantly increasing their purchases of staples, pulses, and protein during the dry season, and oil during the rainy season. Finally, survey respondents were asked how frequently they were unable to meet their household food needs. Based on the frequency and most recent incident, households were assigned a food insecurity score ranging from zero (no problems during the previous year) to one (perpetually unable to meet food needs). This score changed significantly for project beneficiaries, as they were 17% less likely to feel chronically food-insecure. In short, the PVDI systems had a remarkable effect on both year-round and seasonal food access."
  •  
    Several weeks ago, a group of researchers published an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences documenting how relatively low-powered solar systems offer the potential to increase food supplies in impoverished arid regions while reducing demands for fertilizers and other costly (in fiscal and other terms) additives.
‹ Previous 21 - 40 of 47 Next ›
Showing 20 items per page