Facebook and Google / Secret Revealed

This is a really big problem. Because even though we think we are trying to keep up with everything that's going on and Google, Facebook and others are instead hiding and keeping us less and less informed.


Update:
From : http://www.tedxcuracao.com/site/videos.html
Eli Pariser: Beware Online "Filter Bubbles"
As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there's a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a "filter bubble" and don't get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview. Eli Pariser argues powerfully that this will ultimately prove to be bad for us and bad for democracy.



Eli Pariser is on the Board President of MoveOn.org, Cofounder of Cloud Tiger Media, and Author of The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You   http://www.thefilterbubble.com/

Man-In-the-Middle Remote Attack On Diebold Voting Machines - Slashdot

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/09/28/0241201/Man-In-the-Middle-Remote-Attack-On-Diebold-Voting-Machines

Solar Flares Could Unleash Nuclear Chaos On Planet Earth « Space Weather Monitor

http://spaceweathermonitor.com/2011/09/19/solar-flares-could-unleash-nuclear-chaos-on-planet-earth/
If you research this it's true. If for some reason we failed to supply power to the pumps the reactors will blow up and spew radiation.   One solar flare and every plant I have the world will be in panic mode.  No grid power for weeks maybe months.  No Internet.  No TV.  No radio.  No gas at the pumps, and no fuel for the reactor pumps.
This could be the mother of self inflicted disasters.

Peter Schiff FULL Testimony Before Congress on Obama Jobs Bill 9/13/11

David Rose - Entrepreneurship

David Rose, Track Chair for Finance and Entrepreneurship at Singularity University, and Chairman of the New York Angels investment association, discusses the essence of entrepreneurship. Filmed at the Graduate Studies Program 2011, NASA Ames, California.

Why we crave creativity but reject creative ideas

Why we crave creativity but reject creative ideas

Most people view creativity as an asset —until they come across a creative idea. That’s because creativity not only reveals new perspectives; it promotes a sense of uncertainty.

The next time your great idea at work elicits silence or eye rolls, you might just pity those co-workers. Fresh research indicates they don’t even know what a creative idea looks like and that creativity, hailed as a positive change agent, actually makes people squirm.

“How is it that people say they want creativity but in reality often reject it?” said Jack Goncalo, ILR School assistant professor of organizational behavior and co-author of research to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science. The paper reports on two 2010 experiments at the University of Pennsylvania involving more than 200 people.

The studies’ findings include:

Creative ideas are by definition novel, and novelty can trigger feelings of uncertainty that make most people uncomfortable. People dismiss creative ideas in favor of ideas that are purely practical —tried and true. Objective evidence shoring up the validity of a creative proposal does not motivate people to accept it. Anti-creativity bias is so subtle that people are unaware of it, which can interfere with their ability to recognize a creative idea.

Disturbing Conversation Between Chatbots

Disturbing Conversation Between Chatbots

Information converted to energy

I have always argued the Universe is made of Information.

Information -> Energy -> Matter

We know energy compressed becomes matter  with E=MC^2
Well E=IC  where C is some constant also.


http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/44385  Information converted to energy

Among the many responses to this conundrum was that of Leó Szilárd in 1929, who argued that the demon must consume energy in the act of measuring the particle speeds and that this consumption will lead to a net increase in the system's entropy. In fact, Szilárd formulated an equivalence between energy and information, calculating that kTln2 (or about 0.69 kT) is both the minimum amount of work needed to store one bit of binary information and the maximum that is liberated when this bit is erased, where k is Boltzmann's constant and T is the temperature of the storage medium.

Fwd: Lost, Abused And Neglected For A Profit

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Robert Greenwald" <info@bravenew01.org>
Date: Sep 14, 2011 8:34 AM
Subject: Lost, Abused And Neglected For A Profit
To: <john.sokol@gmail.com>

Lost, Abused And Neglected For A Profit Watch The Video | Take A Stand With Cuéntame Dear Friend, Guillermo Gomez-Sanchez is a 50 year old legal resident with a mental disability. In 2004 Gomez was detained because of a dispute at a grocery store over a bag of tomatoes. Guillermo spent two years at a private CCA (Corrections Corporation of America) detention facility - the corporation neglected to report his medical condition. Watch our video and take a stand with Cuéntame's Immigrant For Sale documentary campaign today. CCA profited close to $90,000 off of Gomez' incarceration, and ensured greater profit by failing to disclose his mental disability effectively leaving Guillermo trapped for 2 years. In 2010 CCA CEO Damon T. Hininger received $3,266,387 in total compensation. It's time to put an end to the private prison racket. How many more are suffering lost in a system that values profit over justice? Join the discussion on Facebook today! Yours, Robert Greenwald, Axel Caballero and Brave New Foundation's Cuéntame team. I invite you to join Cuéntame on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. IN CASE YOU MISSED OUR OTHER IMMIGRANTS FOR SALE VIDEOS: A Family Split Apart Pedro Guzman spent 19 months at CCA's Stewart private detention because he missed an immigration order. Authorities showed no mercy after Guzman explained the court order was sent to an old address. CCA profited approximately $72,000 from Pedro's detention. Guzman's wife Emily and only son Logan endured a painful and debilitating struggle to survive while they fought for Pedro's release. Death For Profit Roberto Martinez-Medina died in CCA's Stewart Detention Center in Georgia in 2009. Medina had been arrested a month earlier for not having a driver's license. CCA profited off of Medina's incarceration, and ensured a greater profit by denying him critical health care. CCA has gone to great lengths to hush Medina's death. Immigrants For Sale Animated Trailer Top 3 things YOU need to know about the private prison money scheme: 1) The victims: Private prisons don't care about who they lock up. At $200 per immigrant a night, this is the "perfect" money scheme. 2) The players: CCA, Geo Group and MTC — combined currently profit more than $5 billion a year. 3)The money: These corporations spend $20 million a year lobbying legislators to get anti-immigrant laws approved and thus more inmates. Watch the video Share   Watch the video Share   Watch the video Share

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Solar Panel Researchers Need Your Computer | Wired Science | Wired.com

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/09/crowd-sourced-solar-cells

What Are Four Barriers to Critical Thinking?

http://www.ehow.com/info_8427849_four-barriers-critical-thinking.html

What Are Four Barriers to Critical Thinking?

By Robert Russell, eHow Contributor

The Socratic method is one of the models of critical thinking.

The late 19th century American philosopher Charles Peirce developed a sophisticated model for critical thinking. Peirce was the founder of the tradition of American philosophy called Pragmatism. According to Pragmatism, all thought is contextual. People's thoughts and beliefs help them to make sense of the world. When the context changes or your beliefs become problematic, you are compelled to "fix your beliefs." This is done through opening the road to inquiry. The barriers to critical thinking, in Peirce's terms, are anything that blocks the road to inquiry.

1. Stubborness

   • One of the barriers to critical thinking is stubbornness. Peirce referred to this as "the method of tenacity." Having a clear set of beliefs and opinions helps to make sense of things,provides comfort and doesn't leave you in a state of indecisiveness. A person is "tenacious" or stubborn, in Peirce's sense, when he clings stubbornly to his beliefs even when evidence and new facts emerge that place his views in question.

   Prejudice

   • Another barrier that hinders critical thinking is prejudice or bias. On a practical level, people know that it is wrong to be prejudiced or biased against others. However, Peirce's view of prejudice and bias is more subtle, and simply refers to the fact that thought doesn't occur in a vacuum. The 20th century philosopher Hans Georg Gadamer argued that prejudice is a condition of thought. Everyone comes from particular traditions and cultures that shape the ways in which they view the world. Your family and the social environment you grow up in affect the way you think about and evaluate things and events. One of the goals of the scientific method is to root out subjective biases and influences. Peirce argued that science should be based on a community of inquirers rather than the individual scientist, as individual thought is one-sided and incomplete.

   Fear

   • Because a person's beliefs and worldviews provide comfort and guidance, anything that places those beliefs in question is threatening. Fear may prevent you from pursuing a line of questioning or from confronting evidence and facts that may force you to reevaluate your position. Fear interferes with critical thinking on an individual level or at an institutional level. Galileo's conflict with the Catholic Church is an example of institutional fear. The Church felt threatened by Galileo's heliocentric view of the universe and stubbornly clung to the geocentric view that places the earth at the center of the universe.

   Laziness

   • Another barrier to critical thinking is laziness. Critical thinking takes effort, patience and a willingness to explore, analyze and consider different points of view. The original model of critical thinking is the Socratic method. The Socratic method is a primary teaching tool in most law schools. The Greek philosopher Socrates (469 to 399 BC) pursued truth by engaging in a dialogue about a particular topic. A genuine dialogue requires that the parties involved are willing to be swayed by the force of the better argument.

Dawkins' Dangerous Idea: Memetics

This video is on the topic of how memetics is a powerful and dangerous idea. Some have pointed out that evolution is Darwin's Dangerous Idea. If so, then memetics is Dawkins' Dangerous Idea.

Transcript: http://on-memetics.blogspot.com/2011/09/dawkins-dangerous-idea.html

Tim Tyler's book on memetics: http://memetics.timtyler.org/

Intel’s new way of creating randomness from digital orderliness

http://hackaday.com/2011/09/02/intels-new-way-of-creating-randomness-from-digital-orderliness/

Random number generation is a frequent topic of discussion in projects that involve encryption and security. Intel has just announced a new feature coming to many of their processors that affect random number generation.

The random number generator, which they call Bull Mountain, marks a departure from Intel's traditional method of generating random number seeds from analog hardware. Bull Mountain relies on all-digital hardware, pitting two inverters against each other and letting thermal noise tip the hand in one direction or the other. The system is monitored at several steps along the way, tuning the hardware to ensure that the random digits are not falling more frequently in one direction or the other. Pairs of 256-bit sequences are then run through a mathematical process to further offset the chance of predictability, before they are then used as a pseudorandom number seed. Why go though all of this? Transitioning to an all-digital process makes it easier and cheaper to reduce the size of microchips.

A new instruction has been added to access this hardware module: RdRand. If it works as promised, this should remove the need for elaborate external hardware as a random number source.

The Demise of the Desktop PC.

Network World:
After 30 years, IBM says PC going way of vacuum tube and typewriter

Mark Cubans Blog
The End of an Era – The Desktop PC… a repost from 2005

From Slashdot:
"One of the original engineers of IBM's first PC says PCs are 'going the way of the vacuum tube, typewriter, vinyl records, CRT and incandescent light bulbs.' With the 30th anniversary of the IBM 5150 (running MS-DOS) coming this week, IBM CTO Mark Dean argues that the post-PC world is very much upon us, perhaps not surprising given that IBM sold its PC business in 2005. Microsoft, of course, weighed in as well, saying the PC era is nowhere near over. But perhaps in the future we will consider a personal computer anything a person does computing on — whether that be laptop, tablet, smartphone, or something that hasn't even been invented yet."

Fwd: They ARE killing people with the scanners

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "S"
Date: Sep 3, 2011 3:28 AM
Subject: They ARE killing people with the scanners
To: "John Sokol" <john.sokol@gmail.com>

John -

A year or two back, I sent articles about those insane scanner vans
that are going around zapping people with deadly doses of radiation,
even though, in many cases, the people don't even know they're being
hit with lethal radiation.  Now, finally, a Freedom of Information
report comes back with the truth - they ARE hitting people with
illegally high doses of radiation from the mobile scan vans:
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/09/01/1958204/EPIC-Uncovers-Mobile-Scanners-Not-Certified-People-Scanners

And while I've always believed the radiation from the airport scanners
was also unregulated and dangerous, the reports have finally started
coming in over the last few months indicating that there's a cluster
of cancer centered around the screeners at Boston Airport - again, the
"safe" scanning machines are actually killing people:
http://healthland.time.com/2011/06/30/did-airport-scanners-give-boston-tsa-agents-cancer/

Just thought you might find it interesting . . .

S

Countermeme designed against offensive meme.

This is a one example of Memetic Engineering.  Once you can find a Meme and name it, label it and let other see they are using it, it often looses it's power.

Once you can name learn to spot and describe a Meme, you can start to control it.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/09/no-nazi-comparisons-sounds-like-something-hitler-would-say.ars

Find a new rhetorical hammer

In 1990, Godwin got fed up with Nazi comparisons on bulletin boards, Usenet newsgroups, and the WELL discussion site. So prevalent had these comparisons become that Godwin began to wonder “how debates had ever occurred without having that handy rhetorical hammer.”

He believed that most of these comparisons simply trivialized the Holocaust and the true horror of the Nazi regime and so consciously decided to build a “countermeme designed to make discussion participants see how they were (and are) acting as vectors to a particularly silly and offensive meme.”

The result was Godwin's Law in its original form:

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

Fwd: Fukushima radiation levels off the scale ....

An even more frighting and Orwellian trend it that we should be allowed to know how dangerous it is.

Fukushima media coverage 'may be harmful' - New Scientist - New Scientist

http://www.newscientist.com/mobile/article/dn20843-fukushima-media-coverage-may-be-harmful.html

"We've got to stop these sorts of reports coming out, because they are really upsetting the Japanese population," says Gerry Thomas at Imperial College London, who is attending the meeting. "The media has a hell of a lot of responsibility here, because the worst post-Chernobyl effects were the psychological consequences and this shouldn't happen again."

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: S.T.
Date: Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 2:03 AM
Subject: Fukushima radiation levels off the scale ....
To: John Sokol


As of August 3, the Fukushima radiation readings have literally gone off the scale, literally beyond the highest level for standard radiation detectors to detect, and yet not a peep from our mass media even though it is raining down on us all here:
http://www.japannuclearreactordisaster.com/