Wed - April 20, 2005
Starting a new blog, on szpace
I'm starting a new
blog on my own server, on szpace, the software behind coachingplatform's
collaboration system. I'll also use that to document how I'm integrating blogs,
using the Blojsom
engine, with szpace. This includes giving szpace users each a public blog, as
well as the ability to have a private blog for each of their topics. Weblogs
should help add more flow
to szpace.
Posted at 05:38 PM
Wed - April 6, 2005
Stocks, Flows, and LifeCycles
The jarche.com blog pointed
me to last year's three-part CommonCraft series on Stocks and Flows in
Online Communities.
In brief:
People engage in a flow, like a conversation.
People access a stock, they don’t engage in it. Stocks are generally static and presented when requested, like search results.
Flows come to you, and are timely. This speaks directly to what makes a community or collaboration site successful: people come back to what engages them, which is connection with a flow (weblogs, email, web forums with email notification). However, you want to sediment the flows into stocks, so that stuff may be easily found when needed (web pages, libraries, searchable archives). Both aspects are needed: in fact, most weblog entries (quintessentially flow oriented) include links to web pages (stock), and themselves have persistent URLs (permalinks, purple numbers) so they can be stocked and referred to.
Communities and collaborations have life cycles: they live in the flow, but then need to wrap up and pass their stuff on to their descendants. RSS is perhaps the major flow-enabler of the web nowadays. Complementing that is the need for ongoing automated archiving, with tagging (including folksonomies) being a major player. Having suggested tags come back at you (based on your previous tagging and on that of related communities) for your tweaking might make archiving itself more interactive and symbiotic, part of your lifeflows.
In brief:
People engage in a flow, like a conversation.
People access a stock, they don’t engage in it. Stocks are generally static and presented when requested, like search results.
Flows come to you, and are timely. This speaks directly to what makes a community or collaboration site successful: people come back to what engages them, which is connection with a flow (weblogs, email, web forums with email notification). However, you want to sediment the flows into stocks, so that stuff may be easily found when needed (web pages, libraries, searchable archives). Both aspects are needed: in fact, most weblog entries (quintessentially flow oriented) include links to web pages (stock), and themselves have persistent URLs (permalinks, purple numbers) so they can be stocked and referred to.
Communities and collaborations have life cycles: they live in the flow, but then need to wrap up and pass their stuff on to their descendants. RSS is perhaps the major flow-enabler of the web nowadays. Complementing that is the need for ongoing automated archiving, with tagging (including folksonomies) being a major player. Having suggested tags come back at you (based on your previous tagging and on that of related communities) for your tweaking might make archiving itself more interactive and symbiotic, part of your lifeflows.
Posted at 02:57 PM
Wed - March 2, 2005
Peter Benenson, Amnesty International
Benenson harnessed the power of sheer attention
by multiple small social networks to release prisoners worldwide, and to move
the focus of attention away from opinions (either imprisoning or imprisoned) to
the rights of individuals to express them.
The passing of Peter Benenson, founder of Amnesty
International, is marked by powerful articles , one on the Amnesty
site by Richard Reoch, and one in the Globe
and Mail (March 2, 2005, p R5). Two things stand out. One is that the
key strategy Benenson identified and pushed was that of letter-writing by
individuals to lobby for the release of specific prisoners. This is a strategy
that mobilizes the power of
attention.
Ie, there is a three-fold pattern here:
1 There are certain points where sheer attention can make a difference.
2 Identify such a point
3 Extend continuity of attention
This is what Buckminster Fuller called metaphysical initiative.
The second is the power of putting individuals together both locally and remotely, with remoteness being both physical distances and outlooks. This became a long-term demonstration of the effectiveness of social networks (decades before that term started buzzing). From the Gobe and Mail article:
Those working in the same office, teaching in the same school, or worshipping at the same church, were encouraged to organize themselves into "threes groups." Each group was allocated three prisoners, respectively from the Western Hemisphere, the then-Iron Curtain countries, and what have since come to be called the developing countries... Thus, every member might be working for at least one prisoner whose views he or she did not share. What was at issue was not the opinions they had expressed, but their right to express them.
This pattern could be applied to the level of cities: sister cities, of comparable sizes, in touch around the globe, with both physical, internet-enabled, and social relationships.
Ie, there is a three-fold pattern here:
1 There are certain points where sheer attention can make a difference.
2 Identify such a point
3 Extend continuity of attention
This is what Buckminster Fuller called metaphysical initiative.
The second is the power of putting individuals together both locally and remotely, with remoteness being both physical distances and outlooks. This became a long-term demonstration of the effectiveness of social networks (decades before that term started buzzing). From the Gobe and Mail article:
Those working in the same office, teaching in the same school, or worshipping at the same church, were encouraged to organize themselves into "threes groups." Each group was allocated three prisoners, respectively from the Western Hemisphere, the then-Iron Curtain countries, and what have since come to be called the developing countries... Thus, every member might be working for at least one prisoner whose views he or she did not share. What was at issue was not the opinions they had expressed, but their right to express them.
This pattern could be applied to the level of cities: sister cities, of comparable sizes, in touch around the globe, with both physical, internet-enabled, and social relationships.
Posted at 10:02 AM
Tue - December 14, 2004
Thank U
Thank
U, by Alanis Morissette, my first purchase on the Canadian iTunes
Music Store.
Well, I made my first purchase on the Canadian
iTunes Music Store: Thank
U, by Alanis Morissette (the acoustic guitar solo iTunes
Originals version). Very Canadian of me, but the lyrics
could also be about the U:
thank you terror
thank you disillusionment
thank you frailty
thank you consequence
thank you thank you silence
and
thank you providence
thank you disillusionment
thank you nothingness
thank you clarity
thank you thank you silence
Her vocals on "disillusionment" and "silence" are the kind of expression which echos deep listening, opening up the limitless ayatanas of sound (ayatanas (sanskrit, buddhist) - sense faculties and objects codependently originating sensing).
One puzzle about the iTunes Music Store - there seems to be no way to give someone a song (ie, buy it as a gift for them). It might be a good business model to have a first purchase be 99 cents, with additional purchases of gifts of the same song something like 49 cents each.
thank you terror
thank you disillusionment
thank you frailty
thank you consequence
thank you thank you silence
and
thank you providence
thank you disillusionment
thank you nothingness
thank you clarity
thank you thank you silence
Her vocals on "disillusionment" and "silence" are the kind of expression which echos deep listening, opening up the limitless ayatanas of sound (ayatanas (sanskrit, buddhist) - sense faculties and objects codependently originating sensing).
One puzzle about the iTunes Music Store - there seems to be no way to give someone a song (ie, buy it as a gift for them). It might be a good business model to have a first purchase be 99 cents, with additional purchases of gifts of the same song something like 49 cents each.
Posted at 10:04 PM
Fri - December 10, 2004
Presencing and U2
The Presence book, Theory U, the future Buddha,
and U2
Also on the flights back and forth from Halifax
to Berlin for Educa
2004 I read the Presence
book, subtitled Human Purpose and the
Field of the Future. (Cf also presence.net and the Introduction
(PDF). ) The authors (Peter Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski,
and Betty Sue Flowers) address the change process for organizations and society
in the emerging light of global scenarios they are enacting in terms of
Theory
U. The
U is a
symbol, starting at top left with
Sensing
(downloading, observing) through
Presencing
at the bottom (suspending, allowing inner knowing), on to
Realizing
at top right (acting, becoming a force of nature). This process applies to
individual creativity as well as to group
intention.
I think this book took a lot of courage - the authors go out on a limb, from some points of view, exposing themselves - but to a need they vividly experience as coming from the field of the earth, leaving them no choice.
One comment I have is that suspending the normal flow of reaction (ie, everything you know as you), realizing presence, and letting come the field of the future, needs a major, perhaps life altering, experience, at least initially. For Scharmer this was his family home burning down in front of his eyes, along with the up-till-then fabric of his existence - which allowed a field of potential to open up. Jaworski embarked on a controlled, week-long vision quest. I suspect that such shattering of ego into a more open view should be a required stepping stone to leadership and to, in fact, any action that may have large effects on others. Following that, of course, practice - incarnating this in everyday life and action - is necessary.
The authors join an emerging shift to seeing spirituality and a spiritual practice as necessary to not only individuals but also groups. The Tibetan Buddhist and Shambhala teacher Chogyam Trungpa gave a talk in London in 1968 at which he said that Maitreya Buddha, the buddha of the future, would be not an individual but society.
So here's a contribution to this: seeing the U in others with others is U2 (with a smile to Bono, who I'm sure is already there and understands). U2 is calling us: U first.
From yesterday's blog entry :
This is why the Good has come into your midst.
It acts together with the elements of your nature
so as to reunite it with its roots.
I think this book took a lot of courage - the authors go out on a limb, from some points of view, exposing themselves - but to a need they vividly experience as coming from the field of the earth, leaving them no choice.
One comment I have is that suspending the normal flow of reaction (ie, everything you know as you), realizing presence, and letting come the field of the future, needs a major, perhaps life altering, experience, at least initially. For Scharmer this was his family home burning down in front of his eyes, along with the up-till-then fabric of his existence - which allowed a field of potential to open up. Jaworski embarked on a controlled, week-long vision quest. I suspect that such shattering of ego into a more open view should be a required stepping stone to leadership and to, in fact, any action that may have large effects on others. Following that, of course, practice - incarnating this in everyday life and action - is necessary.
The authors join an emerging shift to seeing spirituality and a spiritual practice as necessary to not only individuals but also groups. The Tibetan Buddhist and Shambhala teacher Chogyam Trungpa gave a talk in London in 1968 at which he said that Maitreya Buddha, the buddha of the future, would be not an individual but society.
So here's a contribution to this: seeing the U in others with others is U2 (with a smile to Bono, who I'm sure is already there and understands). U2 is calling us: U first.
From yesterday's blog entry :
This is why the Good has come into your midst.
It acts together with the elements of your nature
so as to reunite it with its roots.
Posted at 11:52 AM
Wed - December 8, 2004
The Mary Magdalen Gospel Manuscript
Discovering the Mary Magdalen Gospel - from page
7 of the few remaining pages: "This is
why the Good has come into your midst. It acts together with the elements of
your nature so as to reunite it with its roots."
My friend Hal Richman, at Online Educa 2004 in Berlin
last week, suggested seeing the papyrus manuscript of the Mary Magdalen gospel
at the Egyptian
Museum. Turned out they had it but don't show it. Later, at the WiFi
equipped Café Maibach, I was completely knocked out when I read the text
(just 161 lines remain). Hal loaned me his copy of Jean-Yves Leloup's The
Gospel of Mary Magdalen, which has the following translation of page 7
of the root text:
[...] "What is matter?
Will it last forever?"
The Teacher answered:
"All that is born, all that is created,
all the elements of nature
are interwoven and united with each other.
All that is composed shall be decomposed;
everything returns to its roots;
matter returns to the origins of matter.
Those who have ears, let them hear."
Peter said to him: "Since you have become the interpreter
of the elements and the events of the world, tell us:
What is the sin of the world?"
The Teacher answered:
"There is no sin.
It is you who make sin exist,
when you act according to the habits
of your corrupted nature;
this is where sin lies.
This is why the Good has come into your midst.
It acts together with the elements of your nature
so as to reunite it with its roots."
Then he continued:
"This is why you become sick,
and why you die:
it is the result of your actions;
what you do takes you further away.
Those who have ears, let them hear."
[...] "What is matter?
Will it last forever?"
The Teacher answered:
"All that is born, all that is created,
all the elements of nature
are interwoven and united with each other.
All that is composed shall be decomposed;
everything returns to its roots;
matter returns to the origins of matter.
Those who have ears, let them hear."
Peter said to him: "Since you have become the interpreter
of the elements and the events of the world, tell us:
What is the sin of the world?"
The Teacher answered:
"There is no sin.
It is you who make sin exist,
when you act according to the habits
of your corrupted nature;
this is where sin lies.
This is why the Good has come into your midst.
It acts together with the elements of your nature
so as to reunite it with its roots."
Then he continued:
"This is why you become sick,
and why you die:
it is the result of your actions;
what you do takes you further away.
Those who have ears, let them hear."
Posted at 09:57 PM
Mon - June 28, 2004
Eyes wide open, naked as we came
Dying, straight up.
Tipped off by WebMink
to a video by Iron
and Wine, on the iTunes music store; some of the
lyrics:
one of us willl die
inside these arms
eyes wide open
naked as we came
one will spread our ashes
round the yard
- from Naked As We Came
one of us willl die
inside these arms
eyes wide open
naked as we came
one will spread our ashes
round the yard
- from Naked As We Came
Posted at 11:18 AM
Sun - May 23, 2004
Berners-Lee on how to do the web
Tim Berners-Lee :
"the difference is that just —
it's a very small difference — just doing it in a Web-like way, just doing
it in a way so that you're always virally, and the small tweaks that change the
architecture [...] so that it's not centralized any
more".
More of the quote, from Café Con Leché (here's an approximate permalink, along with TBL's keynote slides, and more on that talk at xml.com) via Elliotte Rusty-Harold's blogging of WWW2004 (the language is a bit elliptical):
[quote]Let
me tell you the semantic Web is not AI. It's just databases. And when people
give the same talks, it looks as though they're giving the same talks as they
did many, many years ago. I would also remind you that when Web started, the
first Web conferences, a lot of the Web, some of the conferences were "Hey, you
know, we've been doing hypertext for 10 years. Nobody's doing anything so
different here" but the difference is that just — it's a very small
difference — just doing it in a Web-like way, just doing it in a way so
that you're always virally, and the small tweaks that change the architecture to
make it virally make a lot of talks look the same on the outside but the
architecture inside has been made so that it's not centralized any more and so
that is the difference between semantic web and
databases.[/quote]That's it! It's a way of life which enables self-describing inf-formation and encourages emergence. You have nodes (URIs) which make assertions about themselves, in a milieu which responds to those assertions. Nodes as perceived are first-class objects in the ontologies enacted in their milieus. So the web is "not AI, just databases" - not imposed meanings, just nodal content. But the web as semantic is also not just nodes marshalled into a rows-and-columns view: it is multiple views, viewed, and viewers, emerging from self-description and reflection, the autopoiesis of decentralized but mutually responding nodes. Here virality is more than infection and spread of a vector - it is codependent origination, through RESTful structural coupling, and propagation of shared memes.
Posted at 08:30 PM
Wed - May 12, 2004
memes and words do break my bones
Language as enactive of perceptions we then
respond to: the Iraq is behind
9/11 meme emerges at Abu Ghraib.
George W Bush (9/12/2001 and onward):
Saddam Hussein is behind
9/11.
American people (3% in 2001, 70% in 2002-3, 40% in 2004): Saddam and Iraqis responsible for 9/11.
American troops and contractors at Abu Ghraib (2003-2004):
[quote Guardian article ]
The British former officer said the dissemination of R2I techniques inside Iraq was all the more dangerous because of the general mood among American troops. "The feeling among US soldiers I've spoken to in the last week is also that 'the gloves are off'. Many of them still think they are dealing with people responsible for 9/11."
[/quote]
American people (3% in 2001, 70% in 2002-3, 40% in 2004): Saddam and Iraqis responsible for 9/11.
American troops and contractors at Abu Ghraib (2003-2004):
[quote Guardian article ]
The British former officer said the dissemination of R2I techniques inside Iraq was all the more dangerous because of the general mood among American troops. "The feeling among US soldiers I've spoken to in the last week is also that 'the gloves are off'. Many of them still think they are dealing with people responsible for 9/11."
[/quote]
Posted at 11:11 AM
Mon - May 10, 2004
Torture - Aberration, or Standard Operating Procedure We'd Rather Ignore?
The bad
apples take on American torturers in Iraq is
widespread, but is this yet another form of demonizing, diverting attention from
the fact that these guys and gals weren't improvising, but following a program
enabled by our own active ignoring?
The bad
apples take on the American torturers in Iraq
is expressed by many, including most of the senators at the Rumsfeld hearings on
Friday, and bloggers such as Tim Bray, who writes
that in any group of people, a small
proportion are going to be sadistic psychopaths.
He rightfully dismisses the apologia by the New
York Times article about those
poor soldiers on the scene at Abu Ghraib, understaffed, undertrained,
overworked. Excuse me? They’re
torturers!
They’re sick out-of-control sadistic animals.
Don Park's
blog counters with you are a
battleground of good and evil and
everyone is capable of committing
inhumane acts under the
right conditions.
I tend to agree with Park - in calling others animals we more easily become them - and as Hannah Arendt's exploration of the banality of evil has shown, demonizing others makes it easier to not look, to ignore, to not question, and to allow ever more amplified evil. Eichmann himself wasn't monstrous - he was totally superficial and cliche-ridden - but what he did was monstrous, enabled by that very surfaceness.
So let us not actively ignore, but look deeper. The International Red Cross has said that these abuses were (are?) widespread and systematic. Here's the smoking gun article in The Guardian: UK Forces Taught Torture Methods. What the guards were doing at Abu Ghraib was not an aberration, but Standard Operating Procedure, labelled, explicitly codified and numbered, trained in by both British and American forces. When George Bush made the determination that suspected terrorists and enemy combatants were not to be treated as prisoners of war, their treatment not legally bound by the Geneva Convention, and their detention located in the no-man's lands of Guantanamo, Bagram, and Abu Ghraib, what were we thinking, or, more accurately, what were we avoiding thinking? The intention and effect were clearly to "take the gloves off", and allow interrogation by any means necessary. This is carried out with well-defined torture techniques: prolong the shock of capture, use sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation (remember the photos of prisoners being transported to Guantanamo?), hooding, nakedness, humiliation, and simulated and real rape.
This is hard to acknowledge. As Samantha Power ('A Problem from Hell': America and the Age of Genocide) has pointed out, there's a tendency in the USA to think of itself as an elect nation, to say we don't do war crimes. Senator Joe Lieberman said almost exactly that on national television: we're different (so this is normal for non-Americans?).
I shouted out who killed the Kennedys, when after all, it was you and me .
I tend to agree with Park - in calling others animals we more easily become them - and as Hannah Arendt's exploration of the banality of evil has shown, demonizing others makes it easier to not look, to ignore, to not question, and to allow ever more amplified evil. Eichmann himself wasn't monstrous - he was totally superficial and cliche-ridden - but what he did was monstrous, enabled by that very surfaceness.
So let us not actively ignore, but look deeper. The International Red Cross has said that these abuses were (are?) widespread and systematic. Here's the smoking gun article in The Guardian: UK Forces Taught Torture Methods. What the guards were doing at Abu Ghraib was not an aberration, but Standard Operating Procedure, labelled, explicitly codified and numbered, trained in by both British and American forces. When George Bush made the determination that suspected terrorists and enemy combatants were not to be treated as prisoners of war, their treatment not legally bound by the Geneva Convention, and their detention located in the no-man's lands of Guantanamo, Bagram, and Abu Ghraib, what were we thinking, or, more accurately, what were we avoiding thinking? The intention and effect were clearly to "take the gloves off", and allow interrogation by any means necessary. This is carried out with well-defined torture techniques: prolong the shock of capture, use sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation (remember the photos of prisoners being transported to Guantanamo?), hooding, nakedness, humiliation, and simulated and real rape.
This is hard to acknowledge. As Samantha Power ('A Problem from Hell': America and the Age of Genocide) has pointed out, there's a tendency in the USA to think of itself as an elect nation, to say we don't do war crimes. Senator Joe Lieberman said almost exactly that on national television: we're different (so this is normal for non-Americans?).
I shouted out who killed the Kennedys, when after all, it was you and me .
Posted at 09:59 PM
Sun - May 9, 2004
Leadership as Care and Commitment - the essence of Motherhood
Bliss
Browne quoted Sara
Ruddick at a talk a few days ago to Envision Halifax ,
co-sponsored by the United
Way and the Shambhala Institute:
Motherhood is a sustained response to
the promise embedded in new life.
This was a remarkable talk. Trained in theology
and in finance, a banker and a priest, Bliss Browne is most noted for founding
Imagine Chicago , which
has inspired similar efforts around the
world around three questions related to youth, schools,
neighborhoods, and citizens:
What do you imagine and hope for your city?
Who can work with you to bring your vision to life?
What will you work to create?
Several things stood out. Foremost was how she embodied and expressed leadership as coming from commitment and care, from the feminine principle: motherhood as a sustained response to the promise embedded in new life. This is a take on leadership I had not yet experienced so tangibly in the leaders I have met and heard, but it seems to be at the core of what this 21st century world needs.
She recounted the story of how she asked her husband, "what if we had a child, a child of imagination: how would your raise her?" And he answered, that's easy, just listen to her.
Somehow that was very moving, and brings up a second highlight: imagination as creative and enactive. It generates images, which shape perceptions. As she said, language is a moral issue, because it not only describes, it creates.
The third striking thing was how she, as a practicing Christian, was able to communicate out of that tradition in a way that opened space, bringing out and sharing the heart of what is most human, without credentials. Paradoxically, it seems that it is by deeply rooting in specific culture and practice that one can touch primordial confidence, and be able to open to the winds of the sky and the moist breaths of beings.
If there were a Heideggerian Care is the Being of human existence award, I would have it go to Bliss Browne.
What do you imagine and hope for your city?
Who can work with you to bring your vision to life?
What will you work to create?
Several things stood out. Foremost was how she embodied and expressed leadership as coming from commitment and care, from the feminine principle: motherhood as a sustained response to the promise embedded in new life. This is a take on leadership I had not yet experienced so tangibly in the leaders I have met and heard, but it seems to be at the core of what this 21st century world needs.
She recounted the story of how she asked her husband, "what if we had a child, a child of imagination: how would your raise her?" And he answered, that's easy, just listen to her.
Somehow that was very moving, and brings up a second highlight: imagination as creative and enactive. It generates images, which shape perceptions. As she said, language is a moral issue, because it not only describes, it creates.
The third striking thing was how she, as a practicing Christian, was able to communicate out of that tradition in a way that opened space, bringing out and sharing the heart of what is most human, without credentials. Paradoxically, it seems that it is by deeply rooting in specific culture and practice that one can touch primordial confidence, and be able to open to the winds of the sky and the moist breaths of beings.
If there were a Heideggerian Care is the Being of human existence award, I would have it go to Bliss Browne.
Posted at 10:11 AM
Fri - April 23, 2004
Bubblets, node balloons, impish infs, and ints
Tim Bray implements Bubblets,
which are really his node entry's thought balloons thinking of other nodes
thinking of his node entry.
Anything referable-to on the web is a node:
depending on the level of abstraction, a URI, an AIR (Addressable Information
Resource), an
inf
(information item), or an
int
(intelligent inf). With weblogs we can have conversations between infs. Weblogs
are generators of weblog items, each of which is an inf - and with purple
numbers you can even make each paragraph an inf.
A weblog item's bubblet points to other infs which are pointing to it: it tracks links. Next step is to characterize such links. A celebrity node could have lots of adoring links. But your nodes probably want to choose which inbound links it pays attention to. So you also need to characterize the quality, relative to you, of those in-pointing infs. They take on colors. The celebrity might suddenly feel lonely.
Some nodes generate infs of interest to you - these could be weblogs you'll want to subscribe to. You build up your attention zones, with active, scripted infs following your intentions - these then become ints, intelligent infs. When an int is doing your bidding, it becomes part of your intelligence, helping embody your attention, both subject to it and shaping it. It's part of your reality feeds. It's thus more personable, and preferable from the point of view of providing a UI for symbiotic intelligence, to regard such customizable and adaptable agencies as ints, embodied intentions tuning perceptions and enacting a webby world of discourse.
A weblog item's bubblet points to other infs which are pointing to it: it tracks links. Next step is to characterize such links. A celebrity node could have lots of adoring links. But your nodes probably want to choose which inbound links it pays attention to. So you also need to characterize the quality, relative to you, of those in-pointing infs. They take on colors. The celebrity might suddenly feel lonely.
Some nodes generate infs of interest to you - these could be weblogs you'll want to subscribe to. You build up your attention zones, with active, scripted infs following your intentions - these then become ints, intelligent infs. When an int is doing your bidding, it becomes part of your intelligence, helping embody your attention, both subject to it and shaping it. It's part of your reality feeds. It's thus more personable, and preferable from the point of view of providing a UI for symbiotic intelligence, to regard such customizable and adaptable agencies as ints, embodied intentions tuning perceptions and enacting a webby world of discourse.
Posted at 11:23 AM
Fri - April 2, 2004
Chernobyl the Dead Zone
A tour in photos and
terse text through the Chernobyl Dead Zone, shared by a young woman on
high-speed motorcycle and Roentgen dosimeter - there's nobody on the roads or in
the towns.
This is really powerful, almost on a non-thought
level - just the straight dose. Large photos, brief, idiomatic (Russian English)
words in simple raw mode.
Lena's voice :
The word CHERNOBYL scares holly bijesus out of people here. If I tell
someone that I am heading in "dead zone"... you know, what I hear.. In best
case - "are you nuts?" My dad used to say that people afraid of a things
which they don't know. Dad is nuclear physicist and he also says that of all
dangerous things he can only think about one, which is riding on fifth or
sixth gear on my bike.
and...
How many people died of radiation? No one knows - not even approximately.
Some say 400.000. The official organizations put the figure at 300.000 people since 1986.
...
Some tourists companies have been trying to arrange extrim tours in this town, but people- their customers scared and complaining about silence which is hard to stand in empty town. They charged 1200 hryvnas for 2 hours excursion and town guard says, they all were leaving in some 15 mins, complaining that silense is tremendous as if one got deaf and it ring them in ears and place is bad...
Bringing this kind of direct experience is the best of what the web can do - thank you, Lena (Motorcycle black Madonna two-wheeled Gypsy Queen )!
Lena's voice :
The word CHERNOBYL scares holly bijesus out of people here. If I tell
someone that I am heading in "dead zone"... you know, what I hear.. In best
case - "are you nuts?" My dad used to say that people afraid of a things
which they don't know. Dad is nuclear physicist and he also says that of all
dangerous things he can only think about one, which is riding on fifth or
sixth gear on my bike.
and...
How many people died of radiation? No one knows - not even approximately.
Some say 400.000. The official organizations put the figure at 300.000 people since 1986.
...
Some tourists companies have been trying to arrange extrim tours in this town, but people- their customers scared and complaining about silence which is hard to stand in empty town. They charged 1200 hryvnas for 2 hours excursion and town guard says, they all were leaving in some 15 mins, complaining that silense is tremendous as if one got deaf and it ring them in ears and place is bad...
Bringing this kind of direct experience is the best of what the web can do - thank you, Lena (Motorcycle black Madonna two-wheeled Gypsy Queen )!
Posted at 11:00 AM
Mon - February 23, 2004
Operationalizing Gross National Happiness
Bhutan is hosting an international seminar on
Operationalizing the
Concept of Gross National
Happiness.
The Centre for Bhutan Studies announces
an international seminar on
Operationalizing Gross National
Happiness, held at Thimphu, Bhutan ,
18-20 February, 2004 and following.
About 90 presenters (10 of them Bhutanese) are
addressing issues related to using Gross
National Happiness as a better Genuine Progress Index (GPI)
than is GNP (Gross National Product). Among the delegations is one from Shambhala /Canada, Shambhala being
the enlightened society that is the basis for the Shangri-la
(misspelled) myth and others.
It's nice to see the mythic element interweaving with the daily news and stories, as in Javanese shadow-puppet plays, and as it does anyway through our TV media screens. How do we choose, care for, show what is important for us?
It's nice to see the mythic element interweaving with the daily news and stories, as in Javanese shadow-puppet plays, and as it does anyway through our TV media screens. How do we choose, care for, show what is important for us?
Posted at 11:14 AM
Tue - December 16, 2003
P2P File Sharing in Canada
Re downloading music in Canada from P2P networks
being legal, but uploading not - there
is no
uploading in P2P networks!
CNet
and others are reporting that "Downloading
copyrighted music from peer-to-peer networks is legal in Canada, although
uploading files is not." Umm, this is
client-server language, and I'm not sure it really applies in most peer-to-peer
networks - I download a file from a peer machine somewhere on the net, but I
don't upload the file if I'm making it available to other peers: I just leave it
in a folder on my machine.
Beyond this, the "downloading is legal, but uploading is not" approach has the same crazy asymmetry that Bill C-38 does, which proposed to de-criminalize marijuana possession in Canada. That bill (similar to statutes in a number of American states) would turn possession of small amounts of pot into a civil (but not criminal) offense, but leave, and even increase, criminal penalties for cultivating and distributing it.
Beyond this, the "downloading is legal, but uploading is not" approach has the same crazy asymmetry that Bill C-38 does, which proposed to de-criminalize marijuana possession in Canada. That bill (similar to statutes in a number of American states) would turn possession of small amounts of pot into a civil (but not criminal) offense, but leave, and even increase, criminal penalties for cultivating and distributing it.
Posted at 02:10 PM
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Published On: Apr 20, 2005 05:38 PM
Published On: Apr 20, 2005 05:38 PM