54061931
submission
Paul Fernhout writes:
The NYTimes reports: "Willis H. Ware, an electrical engineer who in the late 1940s helped build a machine that would become a blueprint for computer design in the 20th century, and who later played an important role in defining the importance of personal privacy in the information age, died on Nov. 22 at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 93."
47163539
submission
Paul Fernhout writes:
Michael Smith at MedPage Today writes: "A new surveillance tool might help immunize communities against vaccine scares, researchers reported. An international pilot project has demonstrated that it's possible to trawl through the Internet and quickly identify places where public fear about vaccines is on the rise, according to Heidi Larson, PhD, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in England, and colleagues. ... The researchers cautioned that the system has not been running long enough to demonstrate "long-term predictive value," but added it will let observers characterize, in real time, vaccine opinions by "topic, negative or positive content, location, time, and risk level.""
The work is funded in part by the Gates Foundation. It is discussed in positive terms at the Daily Telegraph as "Monitoring system to globally track false social media claims on dangers of vaccines" and in negative terms at at Natural News as "Internet monitoring system to stalk social media users who question safety of vaccines".
47056249
submission
Paul Fernhout writes:
Mike Adams at Natural News writes: "A new law proposed by the European Commission would make it illegal to "grow, reproduce or trade" any vegetable seeds that have not been "tested, approved and accepted" by a new EU bureaucracy named the "EU Plant Variety Agency." It's called the Plant Reproductive Material Law, and it attempts to put the government in charge of virtually all plants and seeds. Home gardeners who grow their own plants from non-regulated seeds would be considered criminals under this law."
18679868
submission
Paul Fernhout writes:
From Pure Energy Systems News: "Italian inventor, Andrea Rossi, claims to have an industrial product ready to manufacture that produces large amounts of energy reliably, safely, and much cheaper than coal or natural gas power. It utilizes the fusion of hydrogen and the common element nickel at relatively low temperatures." I sent a copy of Frederik Pohl's Midas World to Pons and Fleishman on their 1989 announcement out of concern about the social issues. I hope this newer design finally works out and that we can also eventually move beyond the irony of using technologies of abundance from a scarcity mindset to create artificial scarcity. The release of key information about this process is being delayed by proprietary profit-making issues even with work done at a university, but why be so concerned about profit-making when we would have cheap energy that together with cheap computing, cheap robotics, and cheap communications could make everything else cheap or free?
17169236
submission
Paul Fernhout writes:
I put together a knol about the issue of structural unemployment caused by technological change, and what we can do about it, here:
Beyond a Jobless Recovery: A heterodox perspective on 21st century economics To summarize, a combination of robotics and other automation, better design, and voluntary social networks (like those who blog or comment on blogs :-) are decreasing the value of most paid human labor (through the law of supply and demand as excess labor drives down wages). At the same time, demand for stuff is limited for a variety of reasons (some classical, like the credit crunch or a concentration of wealth, and some novel like people finally getting too much stuff or developing an environmental consciousness). As a consequence, real hourly wages in the USA have been flat for thirty years for most people even as productivity has grown enormously — since most humans have less and less bargaining power. In order to move past this, our society needs to emphasize a gift economy (like Wikipedia or Debian GNU/Linux), a basic income (social security for all regardless of age), democratic resource-based planning (with taxes, subsidies, investments, and regulation to reflect social values), and/or stronger local economies that can produce more of their own stuff (with organic gardens, solar panels, green homes, and 3D printers). There are some bad makework alternatives too that are best avoided, like endless war, endless schooling, endless bureaucracy, endless sickness, and endless prisons. Raising salaries (even by union action) is just going to accelerate the trend to replacing human labor with automation, better design, and voluntary social networks. We are seeing the death spiral of mainstream economics, and that whirlpool will continue to suck people into poverty until we transcend the current scarcity-based competitive socioeconomic paradigm.
17105112
submission
Paul Fernhout writes:
Steven Hill writes in an post critical of Paul Krugman: "Japan has been getting a raw deal from the so-called economic experts. Consider this: in the midst of the great recession, the United States is suffering through nearly 10% unemployment, rising inequality and poverty, 47 million people without health insurance, declining retirement prospects for the middle class and a general increase in economic insecurity. Various European nations also are having their difficulties, and no one knows if China is the next bubble due to explode. How, then, should we regard a country that has 5% unemployment, the lowest income inequality, healthcare for all its people and is one of the world's leading exporters? This country also scores high on life expectancy, low on infant mortality, is at the top in numeracy and literacy, and is low on crime, incarceration, homicides, mental illness and drug abuse. It also has a low rate of carbon emissions, doing its part to reduce global warming. In all these categories, this particular country beats both the US and China by a country mile. Doesn't that sound like a country from which Americans and others might learn a thing or two about how to get out of the hole in which we're stuck? Not if that place is Japan. ... The era of US-style trickle-down economies is over for wealthy countries because trickle-down is neither economically sound nor ecologically sustainable. The developed nations must lead the way towards a different path of development. This is not an easy challenge, yet it is the course that Japan and Germany have chosen. Americans would be wise to learn from them. If the US didn't have such a trickle-down economy that has produced so much inequality — if it was, in fact, better at sharing its wealth — perhaps it wouldn't need so much fiscal stimulus and growth." See also a knol I put together related to this general issue of structural unemployment and a jobless recovery.
9757150
submission
Paul Fernhout writes:
Embedded software developer Joseph Stack allegedly intentionally flew a small plane into government offices in Austin, TX, in an act that has been labeled as domestic terrorism. He cited, among other things, IRS regulations about independent contractor status as well as other issues related to government corruption.
Could his behavior have been partially due to vitamin D deficiency syndrome from indoor work? Could vitamin D deficiency also have contributed to the violent behavior alleged of Hans Reiser or Amy Bishop? And is part of the problem also that Joe Stack was not talking to anyone about any of this to think through real solutions and find positive things to do that, as Mr. Rogers sang, would not hurt himself or anyone else?
Here are some useful resources for preventing more copycat violence to show how there are plenty of alternatives to violence despite Joe Stack's claim otherwise in his manifesto:
Treating Disease With Vitamin D
Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy
Dark Nights of the Soul: A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life's Ordeals
Albert Einstein on: Religion and Science
A wombat talks about a global mindshift
TED | Peter Eigen on moving beyond corruption
The Optimism of Uncertainty
Social Movements and Strategic Nonviolence
As another software developer who has done embedded work, here are some non-programming things I've worked on related to helping people see positive alternatives to violence:
Possible cures for a jobless recovery
Post-Scarcity Princeton, or, Reading between the lines of PAW for prospective Princeton students, or, the Health Risks of Heart Disease
Rebutting Communiqué from an Absent Future
The amazing thing to me is not that stuff like this happens. What is amazing is that it does not happen more often, which is a tribute to most of humanity's basic social nature. In a way, even Joe Stack chose a relatively limited approach; an embedded software developer such as he was could have done far more damage if trying to create general mayhem (he could have tampered with nuclear power plants or medical devices or airplane software). There is also irony here that a person took a very advanced piece of technology — a private airplane, and all that it represents as a technological marvel — and used it to destroy a past instead of to create a future.
What do people think and feel about all this?
