David Cameron should challenge the deteriorating human rights record of the United Arab Emirates during a state visit by the country’s president to Britain next week, a coalition of seven international human rights organisations said http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=20749
It’s possible that all our predictive models make us no better than the mythological character Cassandra, gifted with an ability to see the future, and cursed to live among people who never took her predictions seriously.
Consumer debt in the Netherlands has hit 250% of available income, one of the highest levels in the world. In Spain, by comparison, it has never gone above 125%.
The Netherlands has turned into one of the most heavily indebted countries in the world. It has slumped into recession and shows very little sign of coming out of it. The euro crisis has been dragging on for three years now but so far has only infected the peripheral nations within the single currency. But the Netherlands is a core member of both the euro and the European Union. If it can’t survive in the euro zone, then the game really will be up.
Consumer debt in the Netherlands has hit 250% of available income, one of the highest levels in the world.
House prices are falling as fast as they did in Florida when the American housing boom turned sour. Prices are now 16.6% lower than they were at the peak of the bubble in 2008. The National Association of Estate Agents predicts another 7% drop this year.
The Dutch banks have 650 billion euros outstanding on real estate that is rapidly falling in value.
The psychological reward or ‘kick’ apparently created when receiving attention from peers as a result of posting something personal, is key to our use of Facebook;
We are always looking for ‘new contacts’;
We ‘like’ the fact that we can expand our network via ‘weak’ contacts and kick the people we don’t like off our network while in stealth mode;
We want to know everything and we don’t want to miss out on anything;
Everybody is doing it, we cannot handle the social pressure of being left out. Of ‘not belonging’ to a group…to ‘the’ group;
Our level of well-being depends on the extent to which we can compare ourselves to others;
We are longing for a continuous online connection, any place, any time, anywhere via WhatsApp, Skype, Facebook and Twitter;
We are longing for social recognition. Receiving ‘Likes’ equals that recognition;
Facebook is like a diary, you can use it to get rid of any frustrations. Even though Facebook only allows for moderate amounts of negativity. It’s only meant to be a fun and positive experience…;
We know why we like Facebook. We know why we will continue to use it. We just don’t know how it is going to affect our (family) lives…
2012 has been an exciting year for digital as consumers become more platform agnostic in the way they consume content – shifting between computers, tablets, smartphones as well as gaming platforms and emerging devices. Key media events in Europe such as the 2012 Olympics, have further illustrated the speed at which the online media landscape is fragmenting. We have entered the dawn of a ‘Brave New Digital World’ where multi-platform media consumption is becoming the norm.
To help businesses navigate this changing digital landscape, comScore has created this report, that provides an analysis of the latest trends from 2012 what they will mean for the year ahead. The report also includes individual scorecards, which shows the top 20 sites + the leading local news/information, retail and banking sites for all 18 European countries measured by comScore.
New business models do not seem to offer the definitive solution. Who should be helping out the content industries? Those transporting the bits and bytes, or those putting advertisements next to (copies of) those bits and bytes? Or both?
Having survived more than 40 years at the coalface of British journalism (longer than a term of service in the ancient Roman army), I have been feeling a bit depressed lately by the insistent predictions of media pundits that the internet is killing off quality newspapers. There are very few people in the trade who are prepared to bet that all our daily papers will still be publishing newsprint copies in five years’ time.
According to conventional wisdom, print is doomed. Circulations are collapsing because readers can get everything they want on the internet. Not only do those readers dislike the idea of paying to read online, but the existence, among other sites, of the rival licence-fee-payer-funded BBC website guarantees that they will never actually need to pay for a supply of reliable day-to-day news. Paywalls will never really work in a UK context for that reason.
Yet when the day comes that the newspapers are forced to stop printing altogether, it will be a disaster for democracy. The lean pickings from web advertising on a free newspaper site will only pay for a fraction of the high-quality investigative journalism that commercial newspapers generate. We’ll just get the timid BBC on the one hand, and superficial junk on the other.
In this glum frame of mind, I read the latest National Readership Survey figures. To my surprise, what leaped out from them was that there is now in existence a perfectly easy way to rescue newspapers, ensure media plurality, and monetise the web.
In an foreboding web video entitled “Welcome to 2035…the Age of Surprise,” produced by the U.S. Air Force’s Center for Strategy and Technology, the pace of human advancement races forward ever faster until the distinction between man and machine all but disappears and the dangers to those cyborgs are omnipresent. Social media, apparently, is a major step on the road to this dystopia.
First of all, what a terrible human to liken the Holocaust to abortion. I have said this to pro-lifers time and time again and they have no rebuttal: fetuses are not aborted because of their race or religion, they are not tortured, starved, raped and beaten, forced to watch their families, friends and fellow victims die brutal and unthinkable deaths. They were not living beings, walking around with a personality, established life, friends or family, they are not independent humans who live their own life and make their own choices. How in anyway, is the discontinuation of a pregnancy, the abortion of a fetus, like something as tragic and heartbreaking as the Holocaust?
Second of all, to relate those two things, wow the poor survivors of the actual Holocaust, or those with family and friends who witnessed it and lived it? Way to take away what an impact the Holocaust was, what a horrific time in history it was. How can anyone feel good about themselves saying they are a survivor of the abortion Holocaust when they have never lived through any of the horrors that Holocaust survivors did, or the conditions in Europe people had to live through at the time?
I find it sickening to know that there are people out there with the audacity to claim abortion is just as bad as genocide.
After comparing abortion to the Holocaust, and some people to Hitler (WOW), he bombards people with Bible verses and again, manipulating those who believe in the right those chose into saying they are immoral, he, very condescendingly, aks them if they believe abortion is a right (whatever happened to the separation of church and state is beyond me, conservatives seem to be very happy with knowing and exercising all their rights but this one).
Of course if you have very little knowledge, very little opinion and have just been emotionally manipulated, guilted and accused of being immoral and told fetuses are indeed babies and abortion is in fact murder, what are you going to say? You’re going to say abortion is wrong.
I’m a pro-lifer. I oppose abortion, at least in most circumstances. But this movie is completely missing the point of the debate. In a variety of ways, he says that abortions are the same as the Holocaust. The heart of the actual debate is skirted around a couple of times: whether a fetus is a human life. Note that I use the word fetus, because one of the common pro-life tactics is to refer to a fetus as a baby, which leads you to the association by way of the linguistic choice that babies have life and therefore you shouldn’t end that life. In the movie he repeatedly uses baby, not fetus. Again, I believe that abortion is wrong at least in most circumstances, because I believe that a fetus is life, but it is a sneaky tactic that I’m not a fan of. By avoiding that question that defines the debate, he gets away with equating the Holocaust with abortion. If you accept that a fetus is a human life, then I can see the comparison, although there are big differences, too, like the motivation behind it (racism as opposed to not thinking you can handle the challenge of motherhood). If you don’t accept that, as pro-choicers don’t, then his argument is entirely useless.
Then after a very awkward segue, the movie progresses to talk about Heaven and Hell, and it is time for some good old fashioned turn or burn preaching. This is a common tactic. First, start by establishing that the other person is a dirty wretched sinner. I find this almost amusing sometimes, because honestly I think most people acknowledge that they aren’t perfect. They just don’t think it is that big of a deal. But he goes to great ends to establish that each person he is talking to is a liar, a thief, an adulterer (lust, which he doesn’t define), a murderer (anger, also not defined), etc. He even outright tells somebody that the only reason they don’t believe in God is because he is a giant list of sins to which the guy seems to have given up and says basically “yeah, sure, that makes sense”. And if you’re a sinner at all, then God is bound by the laws of the universe (that he set up) to send you to eternal torment in Hell. Therefore you are going to Hell. He spends no time explaining why this is so, and the people in the video never bother to challenge him.
So to wrap that up, I do have a problem with the turn or burn preaching, or maybe two problems to be more accurate. One, it doesn’t work anyway and I think it is far more often counter-productive than productive. It may convince people to say the prayer that you present as the magic get out of Hell free card out of sheer fear, but they’ll have forgotten about it the next day. Then they’ll go back to their normal lives but with more antagonism to Christianity since they now are more convinced that we are just about scaring people into agreeing with them. They’ll also catch on to most if not all of the logical inconsistencies. Two, it corrupts or at least waters down the actual Gospel, which is Good News indeed, no matter whether you focus on the remission of sins, the conquering of evil, the coming of the kingdom of God, or the end of religion. They now define the core of Christianity as avoiding the scary God bound by the rules of retributive justice to send them to Hell. They don’t think of Christianity representing a loving God, a gracious God, or a forgiving God, and they don’t think of Christians as any of those things either. So while maybe they gave in and said the Sinner’s Prayer to get you to go away or because you scared them too much, they’re left farther away from the real God instead of closer.
A movie comparing abortion to the Holocaust was handed out to students at Wagoner High School. Now parents demand answers. The movie titled “180″ opens with images of Hitler and the Holocaust where 6 million Jewish people were killed in concentration camps in Nazi Germany. After a brief discussion between the host and the interviewees, the conversation then turns to abortion and compares the two. It’s a movie with a clear pro-life message, and it found its way into classrooms and hallways of the school.
“She said that she had seen a DVD in school that basically said that if you have an abortion then you are no better than the Nazis and you will go to hell,” says concerned parent, Marty Angus. Angus was furious after his stepdaughter came home and told him she had seen it in class.
“She said well, we went to our lockers on break and there was a note that said come pick up your free DVD,” says Angus. We did some checking with the district, officials tell FOX23 a local family asked the principal at the school if they could give the DVD to students. The answer was yes, but only if the students got parental consent first. Superintendent Marte Thompson told FOX23 a student aide accidentally handed out the movies before the school got the needed consent. Once they realized the graphic nature of the movie, they confiscated all the DVDs and returned them. “When I contacted the principal about it he said he was very apologetic and very sorry that it came out like this, and this was not the way it was supposed to have been handled,” says Angus.
But for Marty, an apology is not enough. ”I thought it was graphic and a clear violation between church and state and it was just awful to be shown to a high school student,” says Angus. In the future the district says it will be much more careful as to what types of material is allowed to be distributed to its students. The DVD was shown in two classrooms. Wagoner Schools takes full responsibility for what happened. http://www.fox23.com/news/local/story/Movie-comparing-abortion-to-the-Holocaust-shown/QXe8XbPZ3EmGI_ETKKtGsA.cspx
I’d like to take a moment to intercede the back-and-forth. I actually have seen the documentary 180, and I’ve judged it to be entirely irrelevant to the pro-choice vs. pro-life debate. I have my personal opinions on the matter (that change quite often as I do more and more research), but the truth of the matter is that 180 does an awful job at its intended goal. I have decently minded, secular pro-life friends who wouldn’t touch this documentary with a ten-foot-pole in an attempt to explain the pro-life point of view. I will try to summarize some of the reasons for this: 1. Ray Comfort’s Terrible Sources, 2. Ray claims that Hitler didn’t see Jewish people at people. Just like we don’t see fetuses as babies!, 3. Appeal to Emotion, Not Reason, 4. Comparison of Abortion to the Holocaust
“The security of IT systems can only be properly tested by subjecting them to cyber attacks within an actual, working internet environment. Such an attack should obviously be conducted by an expert; within the hacker community one can find a lot of those geniuses. By organizing a joint effort, enabling these hackers to execute targeted attacks, within an overall setup facilitated by the government, IT security can be put to the test in the best possible way.”
Some see South Korea as a window into the future: Perhaps other nations, including the United States, will see a wave of gaming and Internet addiction when our technological infrastructure catches up. Others say it’s too soon to know if gaming addiction is really its own disorder.
In the United States, Internet and gaming addiction are not listed in the official Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. In the next revision of that list, however, the American Psychiatric Association has proposed that “Internet Use Disorder” be listed as warranting further study.
Some groups, however, have moved forward with treating Internet and gaming addiction.
As part of CNN’s feature on “Gaming Reality,” Han gave us his list of the top five warning signs that a person should seek professional help for Internet or gaming addiction. Take a look at the tips and let us know what you think of them, and of the science of gaming addiction, in the comments.
Here are Han’s top 5 warning signs of gaming or Internet addiction:
1. Disrupted regular life pattern. If a person plays games all night long and sleeps in the daytime, that can be a warning he or she should seek professional help.
2. If the potential gaming or Internet addict loses his or her job, or stops going to school in order to be online or to play a digital game.
3. Need for a bigger fix. Does the gamer have to play for longer and longer periods in order to get the same level of enjoyment from the game?
4. Withdrawal. Some Internet and gaming addicts become irritable or anxious when they disconnect, or when they are forced to do so.
5. Cravings. Some Internet and gaming addicts experience cravings, or the need to play the game or be online when they are away from the digital world.
Here’s Internet2’s value proposition, as explained by Rob Vietzke, vice president of network services for Internet2:
Internet2 Innovation Platform will “profoundly advance education, transform university business models, and accelerate global big data collaborative research outcomes. These opportunities can fuel as-yet-unimagined discoveries and new cycles of global economic development.
Vietzke also says he expects advances similar to those in the university environments that created Google and Facebook to possibly emerge from use of the Innovation Platform.” The Innovation Platform was proposed earlier this year by Internet2, proposed as a new $96.5 million national-scale software-defined network owned by the research and education community.
The national high-performance Internet2 Network connects Americas colleges and universities to research and education collaborators worldwide. The newly upgraded 100G-enabled and 8.8 Terabit per second optical network will allow member institutions to keep pace with the exponential growth in scientific research big data being driven by the nations collaborative researchers in labs and universities.
The network will also enable advanced networking features for more than 200,000 institutions, including libraries, hospitals, K-12 schools, community colleges and public safety organizations as part of its United States Unified Community Anchor Network (U.S. UCAN) project.
OUYA is a new game console for the TV, powered by Android.
We’ve packed this little box full of power. Developers will have access to OUYA’s open design so they can produce their games for the living room, taking advantage of everything the TV has to offer.
Best of all, OUYA’s world-class controller, console, and interface come in one beautiful, inexpensive package. All the games on it will be free, at least to try.
For hackers: root it. Go ahead. Your warranty is safe. Even the hardware is hackable. Want to get inside? You’ll need a standard screwdriver and nothing more. Go to town. We have standard USB ports and Bluetooth, so you’ll even be able to create your own peripherals.
As with every platform, though, we have to balance openness with a quality user experience. So we’ll have a standard user interface. We’ll curate your games in our storefront so they’re easy for everyone to get to. And we’ll require that all games we put in our store include a free experience. If you don’t like our choices, root the device and make it your own.
I sense a disconnect between how we perceive what we provide and what we consume.
Such a disconnect has two pitfalls.
The first is purely practical. As much as I would like to believe that we live in a land of rainbows and unicorns, I am forced to admit that it costs money to get things done. No matter what those things are, large or small, we have to pay to play.
The engine of society runs on monetary transactions. If we are unable or unwilling to place a realistic value on things, we become unable to effectively deal with anything that requires such an ability, which is just about everything.
The second pitfall is much more far-reaching. If we become accustomed to things having a fuzzy monetary cost or value, it can be just a short step to losing focus on the humanitarian component of things as well: where they came from, who provided them, whose lives depend on them.
While dollars may drive the engine of society, people are the ones who determine what that engine looks like and where it is going.
That is where any true value lies.
Losing sight of the value of items is one thing.
Losing sight of the value of the people behind those items is something else entirely.
The UK communications regulator, Ofcom, has today released its revised Initial Obligations Code proposal, which is designed to clampdown on “illegal” internet piracy (copyright infringement) by customers of the largest broadband ISPs. The code is seen as a vital part of the controversial and much delayed Digital Economy Act (DEAct).
The revised code describes how and when internet providers should issue Notifications Letters (warning notices) to their customers. It will only apply to the largest ISPs (i.e. providers with more than 400,000 fixed line broadband connections), which covers 93% of the UK retail broadband market. This includes BT, Orange UK (EE), O2, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk and Virgin Media.
As a result Mobile Broadband operators and providers of WiFi (wireless internet) services (sadly this does NOT include shared home wireless networks) are deemed to be “outside the scope of the Code“, which is because the costs of participation would be disproportionately high compared to the expected low reduction in overall levels of online copyright infringement. But this only applies to commercial operators, with libraries and similar services still potentially being vulnerable to its remit.
The regulator currently envisages the first notifications being sent in early 2014, while a review of which ISPs are included within the scope of the Code will be conducted after it has been in operation for 6 months. Ofcom states that it will report regularly to the Government on the effectiveness of both the code and any broader initiatives from copyright owners.
A consultation for Ofcom’s revised draft code will be open until 26th July 2012 and, once complete, will still be subject to further review by the European Commission (EC). The goal is to have it laid out in Parliament “around the end of 2012“. A related consultation on the sharing of costs between copyright owners and ISPs (75% : 25%) is also open until 18th September 2012.
The world is on now on the brink of a global credit crisis that could be far worse than the tumultuous events of 2008. The ongoing sovereign debt crisis in the southern reaches of the Eurozone indicate that bank runs in the region will continue, and that more bank closure “holidays” will be declared. Under a bank holiday, virtually all deposits could be frozen and irredeemable for days, weeks, or even months. The key question is: Will this crisis spread to the rest of Europe and then even to the United States? I urge SurvivalBlog readers–particularly those in Europe–to be proactive, to stay “ahead of the power curve.” While the Generally Dumb Public (GDP) wakes up some morning to hear news of a bank holiday, you will have long hence prepared yourself.
Digits Lost in the Ether–Redeemable Mañana?
Most people don’t realize that printed U.S. currency and minted coins amount to less than $800 billion, worldwide. That is just a small portion of the aggregate Money Zero Maturity (MZM) money supply that now exceeds $7 Trillion. So what is in your bank account is just electronic money, and there is absolutely no way that even a fraction of depositors could get physical cash to redeem the digits in their accounts. If there is a bank holiday declared, there will undoubtedly be severe restrictions on cash withdrawals when banks re-open. Given the precedent of the limits on withdrawals of a few institutions during the Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, I predict that withdrawal restrictions could go on for many months.
Here are 20 Reasons why America’s next bank holiday will be a nightmare.
We cannot oppose progress through technology without irony, because we are products of medical science, information technology and the industrial revolution. (In some sense, I think Doctorow seems to be saying that we are already trans-human.)
According to Doctorow, to use technology to preserve the status quo is to deny something about what we are as human beings and this powerful observation is the thread which ties the novella to the other essays in the book and to the rest of Doctorow’s work. It explains his distaste for DRM technologies — the subject of the address in the book — and guides all his fiction — the subject of the interview which closes the book.
What makes Doctorow’s story so unique is that in almost every science fiction story meat-space is privileged over cyber-space. The hero wins when they successfully resist technology and establish their humanity as an opposing force against the tyranny of the machine. Doctorow and other techno-positive thinkers like him argue forcefully that such thinking can only lead to dystopia and suffering.
May 7: Launch of major new Report to the Club of Rome : 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years. by Jorgen Randers
Rotterdam, the Netherlands: 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years, by Jorgen Randers, launched by the Club of Rome on May 7, raises the possibility that humankind might not survive on the planet if it continues on its path of over-consumption and short-termism.
In the Report author Jorgen Randers raises essential questions: How many people will the planet be able to support? Will the belief in endless growth crumble? Will runaway climate change take hold? Where will quality of life improve, and where will it decline? Using painstaking research, and drawing on contributions from more than 30 thinkers in the field, he concludes that:
While the process of adapting humanity to the planet’s limitations has started, the human response could be too slow.
The current dominant global economies, particularly the United States, will stagnate. Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa and ten leading emerging economies (referred to as ‘BRISE’ in the Report) will progress.
But there will still be 3 billion poor in 2052.
China will be a success story, because of its ability to act.
Global population will peak in 2042, because of falling fertility in urban areas
Global GDP will grow much slower than expected, because of slower productivity growth in mature economies.
CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere will continue to grow and cause +2°C in 2052; temperatures will reach +2.8°C in 2080, which may well trigger self-reinforcing climate change.
The Report says the main cause of future problems is the excessively short-term predominant political and economic model. “We need a system of governance that takes a more long-term view”, said Professor Randers, speaking in Rotterdam. “It is unlikely that governments will pass necessary regulation to force the markets to allocate more money into climate friendly solutions, and must not assume that markets will work for the benefit of humankind”.
“We already live in a manner that cannot be continued for generations without major change. Humanity has overshot the earth’s resources, and in some cases we will see local collapse before 2052 – we are emitting twice as much greenhouse gas every year as can be absorbed by the world’s forests and oceans.”
The launch was organised by the Club of Rome, the international think-tank that focuses on stimulating debate on achieving a sustainable future. The Club is continuing its tradition of supporting work that raises fundamental questions and promotes far-sighted solutions. The launch takes place on the eve of an international meeting of WWF, the international environmental organisation.
Published in the run-up to the Rio Summit, this Report to the Club of Rome: 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years(published by US publishers Chelsea Green)looks at issues first raised in TheLimits to Growth, 40 years ago. This earlier Report, also to the Club of Rome, of which Randers was a co-author, created shock waves by questioning the ideal of permanent growth.
Commenting on the findings of 2052, Ian Johnson, Club of Rome Secretary General said: “Professor Randers’ analysis of where the world could be in 40 years has demonstrated that ‘Business as usual’ is not an option if we want our grand-children to live in a sustainable and equitable planet. It took 40 years before the full message of The Limits to Growth was properly understood. We cannot afford any more lost decades.”
