Confessions of a late night comic

State 2.0: a new front end?

Just as old media has learned to use the fluid networks of Web 2.0, so old politics can fuse incrementally with the State 2.0

Secret Service Probes Facebook Poll That Asked About Obama Assassination

I got a feelin'

That Crazy ol Man Sanders

Technology fun

Google has two new things coming out that I will probably use, a lot.

Google Voice



I'm going to ditch my cell-phone, get an ipod touch and use it as a phone (through wi-fi). So easy, even a child can do it! Oh my goodness, indeed.



and Google Wave

The market has spoken

Diebold Exits US Voting-Machine Busines

Diebold Inc. (DBD) has sold its money-losing U.S. election-systems business, just seven years after acquiring it amid hopes of rising demand for voting technology upgrades in the wake of the 2000 presidential election fiasco.

Diebold, whose main business is making automated teller machines, said Thursday it sold the voting-machine unit to privately held Election Systems & Software Inc. for $5 million, about one-fifth of what it paid in 2002.

title bar

found by entering cache:www.allthingsglobal.blogspot.com in google.

Brainwashing our kids

Somethign I'll be watching

Communication and Human Development: The Freedom Connection?

Amartya Sen, Michael Spence, Yochai Benkler, Clotilde Fonseca

Wednesday, September 23, 7:00 pm
Ames Courtroom, Austin Hall, Harvard Law School (map)
Free and open to the public; live video and audio-only streams will also be available.
Optional RSVP via Facebook or Upcoming

Maybe those located in Boston should be there...

the way-back clock

Enivornmentalism

The real Barack

Deep down I have thought that this was there plan all along -- I just hope it was. Anyway, if I can think of it, they certainly can too, so ergo they are doing it or they think it was a bad idea. We'll see.

Scraping by

In the first of a series by the filmmaker Stewart Thorndike on life during the economic crisis, a tent city in Redmond, Wash., is filling up with the newly homeless who are forming a makeshift community.

Only a mile from Microsoft HQ

Siftables

a break from the healthcare madness....

Siftables

the coolest thing i've seen in years.

BHO spells it out

finally, bho spells it out in plain language. unfortunately, 99.99% of americans wont read this, but hopefully the points will trickle down to the cable network in easy to read and understand points.

i saw a commercial as well put-out by some interest group spelling out the need for healthcare reform. i was glad to finally see some countering to the rabid barking of the town hall protestors (i'm still trying to figure out exactly what their upset out, other than generalities about how the country is changing).

Grassroots!

He's got a bone to pick

Lawrence O'Donnell actually uses the L word.

Tuning up buildings

Save the environment and money

A different logic

This is a bit painful. That said, she remains very composed and does very well for a non-practiced speaker.

Iran

Iran security forces retreat as huge numbers of mourners gather at cemetery

Solving problems

Really I should be nicer and not post this...

More tough questions

Asking the tough questions

Sarah Palin, Inc.

always about the money

Classics

This is why I won't buy a reader like the Kindle until it is really open - open platform - lets me load on what i want, different file types, and no company should have control over what gets deleted...

This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.

Palin to resign as governor

I wonder what the heck this is all about?

Her statement says she doesn't want to be a lame duck because she isn't running for a second term.



and if you made it through all that, here is part II:

60

Wow, didn't think it would happen. Now, just it will only be the Dems fault when they don't stand up to the monopolistic health insurance industry to institute health reform with a public option...

Coup

in Honduras

In the first military coup in Central America since the end of the cold war, soldiers stormed the presidential palace in the capital, Tegucigalpa, early in the morning, disarming the presidential guard, waking Mr. Zelaya and putting him on a plane to Costa Rica.

The Four Iran Scenarios and "Basiji Hunting"

what might happen in Iran?

Traditional Marriage

ninja in chief

Iran protests: live

Here

Catch the wave

pretty cool stuff.

I like the live concurrent editing:

Fish Spa

(not my feet)

The other day I tried this.

The fish are called Garra rufa... The experience was actually quite nice. I graduated up to the biggest fish they had, probably 4 inches or so long.

Just for kicks

1993

Creating the open city

Cities 2.0

Tweeting Body Counts

Apparently the military has started doing that in Afghanistan...

Young Conservative Rap

Can a machine change your mind?

The mind is not the brain. Confusing the two, as much neuro-social-science does, leads to a dehumanised world and a controlling politics

Love me some Cheney

Precision hacking

the wisdom of crowds

story of stuff

story of stuff

more here

Omama speech at the WH Correspondence

Hurtling space junk

Sounds like we need to move towards a sustainable astronautics

MONTREAL - Man-made space particles as small as a cornflake could take out a spacecraft in the skies or anybody on the ground who strays into its path, cosmic experts from around the globe warned on Thursday.

Hurtling space junk has been deemed a growing extraterrestrial threat to humankind, prompting a group of space gurus to descend on Montreal this week to consider what to do about the potentially dangerous debris.

"They travel at the speed of about eight or nine kilometres per second - that's almost 10 times the speed of a bullet from a gun," said Ram Jakhu, a professor at McGill University, which is hosting the three-day congress on the high-flying hazards.

"So, they are naturally very dangerous."

A public service announcement

Socialism Gone Wild

Going Dutch

The Irony of Satire

Political Ideology and the Motivation to See What You Want to See in The Colbert Report

This study investigated biased message processing of political satire in The Colbert Report and the influence of political ideology on perceptions of Stephen Colbert. Results indicate that political ideology influences biased processing of ambiguous political messages and source in late-night comedy. Using data from an experiment (N = 332), we found that individual-level political ideology significantly predicted perceptions of Colbert's political ideology. Additionally, there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements. Conservatism also significantly predicted perceptions that Colbert disliked liberalism. Finally, a post hoc analysis revealed that perceptions of Colbert's political opinions fully mediated the relationship between political ideology and individual-level opinion.

My explanation is that strong conservatives are incapable of recognizing satire - just too subtle. I'm curious -- have there ever been a famous conservative satirist comedian?

The Database State

and database tyranny

Fear is all they know

If the swine flu doesn't get you

red meat will

Now a new study of more than 500,000 Americans has provided the best evidence yet that our affinity for red meat has exacted a hefty price on our health and limited our longevity.

The study found that, other things being equal, the men and women who consumed the most red and processed meat were likely to die sooner, especially from one of our two leading killers, heart disease and cancer, than people who consumed much smaller amounts of these foods.

Penn. Sen. Arlen Specter to Switch to Democratic Party

Looks like it really has happened...

So why did he do it? Electability, apparently. Now if they can only seat Franken...

Specter statement

... Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans. ...

Feds Declare Health Emergency

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Drugs in Portugal: Did Legalization Work?

Looks like it has so far...

At the recommendation of a national commission charged with addressing Portugal's drug problem, jail time was replaced with the offer of therapy. The argument was that the fear of prison drives addicts underground and that incarceration is more expensive than treatment — so why not give drug addicts health services instead? Under Portugal's new regime, people found guilty of possessing small amounts of drugs are sent to a panel consisting of a psychologist, social worker and legal adviser for appropriate treatment (which may be refused without criminal punishment), instead of jail.

The question is, does the new policy work? At the time, critics in the poor, socially conservative and largely Catholic nation said decriminalizing drug possession would open the country to "drug tourists" and exacerbate Portugal's drug problem; the country had some of the highest levels of hard-drug use in Europe. But the recently released results of a report commissioned by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, suggest otherwise.

The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

"Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success," says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. "It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does."

Swine Flu

Follow news about it here

WHO warns of a possible pandemic.

Looks like it has jumped to New Zealand

torture? eh, whatever...

disappointment to the 1st degree

Chile's Old Testament economics

Sometimes unpopular policy is good policy

Dani Rodrik points us to a fascinating Bloomberg story detailing the saga of Chile's Minister of Finance, Andres Velasco. Last November, Velasco was being burned in effigy by marching protesters. Today, he is the most popular minister in the Chilean government.

What happened? Chile's primary export is copper, and its biggest mining company is state-run. During the extended commodity price boom that sent copper prices booming, Velasco played it safe, squirreling away a huge proportion of the copper windfall, investing the proceeds abroad, and building up Chile's Treasury holdings from $5.9 billion to $48.6 billion -- equivalent to a whopping thirty percent of Chile's GDP -- during his three year tenure. Then: Pop-went-the-global-economy! But Chile was ready.

Another case of paranoia over reason

Supreme Court Debates Strip Search of Student

My thought process,” Justice Souter said, “is I would rather have the kid embarrassed by a strip search, if we can’t find anything short of that, than to have some other kids dead because the stuff is distributed at lunchtime and things go awry.”

This will go wrong way more times than it will be useful.

not even through torture could they squeeze-out a link between al qaida and iraq

knowledge as empowerment

How to Raise Our I.Q.

Another proven intervention is to tell junior-high-school students that I.Q. is expandable, and that their intelligence is something they can help shape. Students exposed to that idea work harder and get better grades. That’s particularly true of girls and math, apparently because some girls assume that they are genetically disadvantaged at numbers; deprived of an excuse for failure, they excel.

Tides are turning...

The Bigots’ Last Hurrah

Some change?

U.S. declares warming gases are health threat

Obama's Bad Bank Plan

Could Destroy His Promising Presidency -- How Do We Push Him in the Right Direction?

...
The economists whom (I) most respect, such as Joseph Stiglitz, Jeff Sachs, Simon Johnson, and Paul Krugman, all have grave doubts about whether the Geithner-Summers plan can work.
...
The administration's approach to the auto rescue suggests the more robust strategy needed for the banks: take a hard look at the company's books; fire incumbent management; make all stakeholders take some sacrifices; and involve government directly in the design of a leaner and more efficient successor firm. But nothing of the sort is being done with the banks.

Morphogenetic fields

and the science of collective consciousness

In 1981 British biologist Rupert Sheldrake published A New Science of Life. The book argued that genes alone were not enough to account for life’s intricate patterns of form and behaviour. There must be, Sheldrake suggested, some sort of form-giving field that holds the memory of each thing’s proper shape – he called it a morphogenetic field. This intriguing idea was widely discussed in the months after the book’s publication. Then the editor of the prestigious scientific journal Nature, Sir John Maddox, wrote an editorial in which violently denounced Sheldrake’s work and called it “the best candidate for burning there has been for many years.” Years later in an interview with the BBC, he defended his denunciation on the grounds that Sheldrake’s view was scientific “heresy.” Maddox’s attack stuck Sheldrake a reputation for flakiness that still lingers. A few years ago Nobel physicist Steven Weinberg was still referring to the theory as “a crackpot fantasy.” But, for Rupert Sheldrake, this zealous policing of the boundaries of science only proved that scientific materialism had hardened into a rigid and inhibiting dogmatism. He carried on with the research programme he had put forward in A New Science of Life. Today on Ideas he shares the story of his journey with Ideas producer David Cayley.

obama on aid

Hearts

Apparently you don't die with the same one you were born with. Here is how they figured it out:

Tests of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, which lasted until 1963, generated a radioactive form of carbon, carbon-14. The carbon-14 in carbon dioxide is breathed in by plants, turned into glucose (see equation) and enters the human diet. In the body, the carbon-14 is incorporated into new DNA, and once a new cell is made, its DNA does not change. The level of carbon-14 in the atmosphere has dropped each year since 1963 (see graph), so the exact amount in a cell marks the year the cell was born. From a cell's birth date, researchers can calculate how quickly different tissues such as the intestine, brain and heart are renewed.

Ghost Net Busters

Exposing world's largest cyberspy ring

More sunlight like this, please...

Bush's Torture Rationale Debunked

Death Star Canteen

How to get dumber

They must be stoned...

From documents to data...

Credit crisis visualised

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

26 other visualizations here

Sixth Sense

Patty Maes unveiling the "Sixth Sense," game-changing wearable tech

DARPA to Explore Geoengineering

Hopefully only as a last resort.

Thomas Frank

Steward v. Cramer

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Interview Outtake Pt. 1

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Interview Outtake Pt. 2

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Interview Outtake Pt. 3

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

To a Greener Home

Five Beginners’ Steps

Capitalism Beyond the Crisis

according to Sen

Mash ups to the max

Thru-you

Belligerent chimp proves animals make plans

According to a report in the journal Current Biology, the 31-year-old alpha male started building his weapons cache in the morning before the zoo opened, collecting rocks and knocking out disks from concrete boulders inside his enclosure. He waited until around midday before he unleashed a "hailstorm" of rocks against visitors, the study said.

Meanwhile, Bush's lack of planning proves some primates don't.

Keeping it real

MoveOn from a greed to a green economy?

Obama addresses congress and focuses on a green economy

Full speech here

Looks like MoveOn wants to help out:

MoveOn members voted overwhelmingly that we should hire more organizers, run ads, and launch a huge volunteer campaign to create a clean-energy economy and create millions of green jobs. Now, we need to know we'll have the resources to pull it off. Can you make a monthly contribution to support our massive campaign? We'll bill your credit card today and on the 3rd of every month going forward. You can stop at any time. You can also make a one-time contribution but your monthly gift will make a big difference.

EPA to Issue Carbon Dioxide Rule, Obama Climate Czar Says

That would start the ball rolling...

"The next step is a notice of proposed rulemaking," for new regulations on CO2 emissions, Ms. Browner said one the sidelines of the National Governors Association meeting, one of her first public appearances since inauguration.

Ms. Browner declined to say exactly when the EPA would issue the finding or rulemaking, but EPA chief Lisa Jackson has indicated it could be on April 2, the anniversary of Mass Vs. EPA.

Officially recognizing that carbon dioxide is a danger to the public sets would trigger regulation of the greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants, refineries, chemical plants, cement firms, vehicles and any other emitting sectors across the economy.

Industry fears it could shut down the economy, not only preventing plants to operate and a drastic retooling of the energy sector but also pushing costs up uncompetitively, while environmentalists say that Administration action is required by law and to pressure lawmakers to act.

But Ms. Browner said the Administration would prefer that Congress would draft legislation rather than co2 to be regulation under the Clean Air Act because lawmakers could develop a bill that could more deftly regulate the greenhouse gas through a cap-and-trade system.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) said Friday he aimed to pass a climate change bill by the end of the summer, and Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.) head of the panel responsible for drafting a co2 bill, said he wanted a bill approved by Memorial Day.

The Weekly O-ddress

What would the poor say?

Recently NYU held a conference entitled "What Would the Poor Say? Debates in Aid Evaluation". You can find many of the ppts of the talks here at William Easterly's new blog "Aid Watch".

I've only looked at a few of them, but I thought I'd highlight two of them who take fairly (although not entirely) contrasting positions. First is Esther Duflo's talk that focuses on the benefits of experimental design for improving aid interventions. The other is William Duggan's short piece arguing against just using statistical evaluation. He suggest two other methodological techniques: historical political economy and qualitative investigation. What I find interesting about both of these is that ultimately they are both asking the same question: what works? but with a very important difference in terms of what the explanation looks like. In other words, they are both looking to test and generate theory, but theory of very different types.

I think Chris Blattman's notion of Evaluation 2.0* nicely captures the means that these two seemingly contrasting approaches can be combined, namely by defining explanation as the identification of the working causal mechanisms. The answer to what works? is the itetification of the active causal mechanism (ideally the intervention), its structure, what its causal tendency is, and how it interacts with particular aspects of the context. In other words, relevant research question is: what works (or not), how, for whom, and in what contexts? From that we can move to the methodological design that provides the best possible answer given the research opportunities the intervention affords. 

* This notion of a causal mechanism has been around a while in the phil. of social science, but Blattman's example is nice and clear.  This type of theory is applicable at both the macro and micro level.

obama buys canadian cookies

video

Apparently he loves Canada

unfortunately i had to work.

"Off the hook"

The GOP looking to go beyond cutting edge.

Dr. Doom and the Black Swan

They argue that the financial system needs restructuring and they still want to know stock tips.

Classic.

how to be evil

Do we need a new internet?

Depends on your level of fear

Ricard could use a bottle of Despondex

Change your Mind Change your Brain: The Inner Conditions...

Mindfulness Stress Reduction And Healing

http://www.mediafly.com/Podcasts/Episodes/BodyScan_Meditation

Foreign Aid and Bad Government

Help entrepreneurs not governments:

During the Cold War, the U.S. instituted a policy of sending money to governments in poor countries to buy their political loyalty. While studies show that sending aid to foreign governments creates allegiance, it does not lead to economic progress. Instead, it makes governments in poor countries dependent on the U.S. rather than their citizens' taxes.

Pakistan has been one of the key recipients of U.S. aid over the last six decades, but there has been no real progress as a result. Pakistan is riddled with problems that are rooted in the disproportionate power of the state. Aid has only boosted that power.

In contrast, Malaysia saw its economy grow at twice the rate of Pakistan's over the same period of time. Fueled by trade rather than aid, Malaysian economic prosperity is decentralized, and its reliability as an ally much greater.

Tragically, the Cold War aid approach actually preserves suffering in poor countries. Aid empowers bureaucracies, promotes statism, and weakens government incentives to boost tax revenues through growth. Economic assets are often kept in the hands of the state, leading to monopolies, stagnation and extortion. All of this hurts entrepreneurs, who have the potential to create wealth and promote governmental accountability.

...

President Obama now has the opportunity to adopt a new aid approach that will actually help citizens. Such an approach would demonstrate our faith in democracy and serve long-term American interests.

What should this plan look like?

First, America must remove trade barriers on exports from the poorest countries, regardless of trade policies in those countries. With global market access, poor countries would automatically attract private investment, despite their institutional weaknesses. These institutions would become stronger over time as businesses flourish. Private investments capitalizing on access to global markets would necessarily employ low-cost labor, thus creating jobs.

Next, small entrepreneurs can be bolstered with seed money in the range of $25,000. Small entrepreneurs create jobs, products and services that form the bedrock of flourishing democracies. With some tangible changes in its operation, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) within the World Bank Group could promote development through entrepreneurs. The World Bank should stop lending to governments and be absorbed into the reformed IFC.

Third, America could give $1 million to match any grass-roots group capable of raising $1 million to establish a health clinic. These clinics -- one thousand could be built with $1 billion -- could provide crucial services to poor citizens and generate goodwill towards America.

Google Ocean

Google Earth goes underwater

Finally!

Ottawa transit strike over, after 51 days

Obama's first interview

Non believers!

Rove issued subpoena

"Change has come to Washington, and I hope Karl Rove is ready for it. After two years of stonewalling, it's time for him to talk," Conyers said.

The Firewall Chats?