INTERNET RISING is a labor of love comprising a rapid fire mashup stream of live webcam interviews all conducted within the web sphere. The film's participants include many profound personalities and key internet influencers ranging from professors, corporate academics, futurists, researchers, writers, bloggers, media creators, activists, gamers, educators, scientists, artists, innovators - real humans, all of whom provide amazing insights into how our state of the world is changing and transforming via various forces of economic, social, geographic, political, philosophical development... all centered around technology's transformative and generative power.
The Democratic Party is now the dominant foreign-policy party.
The conventions these past two weeks—and particularly the final speeches Thursday night—have cemented the fact that the Democratic party is now the party of national-security policy; not just a wise or thoughtful foreign and military policy, but any kind of thinking whatsoever about matters beyond the water’s edge.
For anyone who’s followed American politics the past 40 years, since the election between George McGovern and Richard Nixon, this is a staggering shift.
It was the Democrats who talked Thursday night of their president’s “backbone” and “courage,” of the clear message he sent—as Vice President Joe Biden put it when talking about the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound—that “if you attack innocent Americans, we will follow you to the ends of the world.” By contrast, Biden recalled, Republican challenger Mitt Romney once said that it wasn’t worth “moving heaven and earth, and spending billions of dollars, just to catch one person.”
More extraordinary still, it was the Democrats who saluted, mourned, and celebrated the “fallen angels” and “wounded warriors” of the U.S. military. Romney observed no such ritual, leaving Sen. John Kerry to note, in his speech Thursday night, never before had a wartime nominee for president, of either party, “failed to pay tribute to our troops overseas in his acceptance speech.”
Not even the Republican convention’s foreign-policy surrogate, Condoleezza Rice, said much about the veterans—or anything at all about the Iraq or Afghanistan war, even though she had been George W. Bush’s most trusted foreign policy adviser for all eight years of his presidency and had thus played a big role in starting those wars.
The clearest sign of the change in party dynamics was this: The Democrats feel so assured in their new role as guardians of national defense that they also talked openly about seeking peace, negotiating arms-reduction treaties with the Russians (which Romney opposes on the flimsiest of grounds), withdrawing troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, and shifting money that was once spent on fighting wars to revitalizing our own cities—as Obama put it, “to do some nation-building right here at home.”
The Democratic Party is now the dominant foreign-policy party.
The American-Western European Values Gap
As has long been the case, American values differ from those of Western Europeans in many important ways. Most notably, Americans are more individualistic and are less supportive of a strong safety net than are the publics of Britain, France, Germany and Spain. Americans are also considerably more religious than Western Europeans, and are more socially conservative with respect to homosexuality.
Americans are somewhat more inclined than Western Europeans to say that it is sometimes necessary to use military force to maintain order in the world. Moreover, Americans more often than their Western European allies believe that obtaining UN approval before their country uses military force would make it too difficult to deal with an international threat. And Americans are less inclined than the Western Europeans, with the exception of the French, to help other nations.
These differences between Americans and Western Europeans echo findings from previous surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center. However, the current polling shows the American public is coming closer to Europeans in not seeing their culture as superior to that of other nations. Today, only about half of Americans believe their culture is superior to others, compared with six-in-ten in 2002. And the polling finds younger Americans less apt than their elders to hold American exceptionalist attitudes.
These are among the findings from a survey by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project, conducted in the U.S., Britain, France, Germany and Spain from March 21 to April 14 as part of the broader 23-nation poll in spring 2011.
The American-Western European Values Gap
Melissa Harris-Perry Blows Up On Guest- ‘What is Riskier than being Poor In America’
Melissa Harris-Perry had what was probably her most passionate and intense television outburst ever when she delivered a fiery monologue about being poor in America on her Saturday show. The moment occurred during a long segment on what Harris-Perry felt was the demonization of welfare recipients as "undeserving" of aid. She clashed repeatedly with guest Monica Mehta, labeled by the show as a business and finance expert. Harris-Perry's frustration with Mehta rose perceptibly when Mehta said that welfare payments should not be "limitless." "Limitless?!" Harris-Perry shot back. "The limits currently ... established under a Democratic president are appalling." A few minutes later, Harris-Perry, referring to the debate about welfare recipients "deserving" aid, said, "I just feel like, from the bottom, you have to be able to say, 'I deserve the ability for class mobility.'" "Which is funded by public education, by low-cost health care," guest Nancy Giles said. "Which is enabled by taking risks," Mehta cut in. Slamming her hands down on her desk, Harris-Perry exploded: "What is riskier than living poor in America? Seriously, what in the world is riskier than being a poor person in America? I live in a neighborhood where people are shot on my street corner. I live in a neighborhood where people have to figure out how to get their kid into school because maybe it'll be a good school and maybe it won't. I am sick of the idea that being wealthy is risky. No! There is a huge safety net that whenever you fail will catch you and catch you and catch you. Being poor is what is risky. We have to create a safety net for poor people. And when we won't, because they happen to look different from us, it is the pervasive ugliness! We cannot do that!"
America’s Great Passport Divide
There are Red States and Blue States, rich states and poor states, and Bible and Rust-belt states. But now we must add Globe-trotting and Stay-at-home states to that list too – that is, according to new data on the percentage of Americans who have a passport. The map below – which has been getting a lot of attention on-line (via Grey’s Blog) – charts the trend for the fifty states.
New Jersey boasts the highest percentage of passport holders (68%); Delaware (67%), Alaska (65%), Massachusetts (63%), New York (62%), and California (60%) are close behind.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, less than one in five residents of Mississippi are passport holders, and just one in four residents of West Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama and Arkansas.
It’s a fun map. With the exception of Sarah Palin’s home state, it reinforces the “differences” we expect to find between the states where more worldly, well-travelled people live versus those where the folks Palin likes to call “real Americans” preponderate. Mostly to entertain myself, I decided to look at how this passport metric correlates with a variety of other political, cultural, economic, and demographic measures. What surprised me is how closely it lines up with the other great cleavages in America today. The statistical correlations generated by my colleague Charlotta Mellander are genuinely striking, among the strongest I have seen for virtually any measure. While my usual caveats stand—our analysis deals with associations only, correlation and causation are not the same thing—the results are intriguing and perhaps provide another window into America’s divide.
America’s Great Passport Divide
Water Droplet Computer Could Someday Diagnose Disease?
It might be the most basic computer -- ever concepted. Powered by -- water droplets.
It’s called superhydrophobic droplet logic.
Take a look: Scientists at Finland’s Aalto University have devised a way to convert tiny drops of water -- carrying encoded digital information -- across a water repellant surface.
Researchers tracked the trails of water and found some surprising -- and remarkably predictable properties.
Science Daily notes...
“Using the tracks, the researchers demonstrated that water droplets could be turned into technology … For example, a memory device was built where water droplets act as bits of digital information … These simple devices are building blocks for computing.”
Yep. Scientists calibrated the rig, guiding the drops to a specific destinations on the board which then registered each position. Gizmodo UK was impressed, though not at first.
“Aside from a clump of dirt, water might seem like one of the least technological things to ever exist ever.”
Ah, but not true.
There’s lots of science behind this study.
TG Daily notes, the team used a copper surface coated with silver and chemically modified with a fluorinated compound -- that’s super-duper water repellant stuff to you and me. But that’s just the beginning.
“... when the water droplets are loaded with reactive chemical cargo …. droplet collisions could control the onset of a chemical reaction. Combining this with droplet logic operations could potentially enable programmable chemical reactions where single droplets serve simultaneously as miniature reactors and bits for computing.”
Now Live Science notes, this isn’t going to replace your laptop anytime soon. But, it opens up a world of computing which doesn’t have a power-cord.
“Water computers join other wild ideas for futuristic computing that have arisen in recent years, such as test tubes filled with DNA or the genetic code of living cells.”
And Geekosystem notes, the possibilities include...
“... use in simple chemical analysis systems that could sniff out pollution or diagnose disease.”
Water Droplet Computer Could Someday Diagnose Disease?
Paradise or Oblivion
This video presentation advocates a new socio-economic system, which is updated to present-day knowledge, featuring the life-long work of Social Engineer, Futurist, Inventor and Industrial Designer Jacque Fresco, which he calls a Resource-Based Economy. This documentary details the root causes of the systemic value disorders and detrimental symptoms caused by our current established system. The film details the need to outgrow the dated and inefficient methods of politics, law, business, or any other "establishment" notions of human affairs, and use the methods of science, combined with high technology, to provide for the needs of all the world's people. It is not based on the opinions of the political and financial elite or on illusionary so-called democracies, but on maintaining a dynamic equilibrium with the planet that could ultimately provide abundance for all people. Paradise or Oblivion, by The Venus Project, introduces the viewer to a more appropriate value system that would be required to enable this caring and holistic approach to benefit human civilization. This alternative surpasses the need for a monetary-based, controlled, and scarcity-oriented environment, which we find ourselves in today. This is NOT the "major motion picture" that The Venus Project is working towards but rather is a short documentary to introduce the aims and proposals to new people. This is a free online documentary created by The Venus Project. Original music by Carly Paradis (http://www.carlyparadis.com/) from her album "They Have Been Watching". MEGA THANKS TO THE LINGUISTIC TEAM INTERNATIONAL (LTI) FOR THE GREAT JOB ON THE SUBTITLES! If you would like to help with the creation of a translation for this and/or other TVP videos, please write to LinguisticTeam@thevenusproject.com
Kim Dotcom promises to rehire all 220 Megaupload employees
Kim Dotcom has learned his lesson and is lawyering up to ensure that when his next-generation Megaupload website launches, it won’t be vulnerable to any legal challenges. Posting on his Twitter account on Monday, Dotcom said that he is working “24/7 with lawyers, developers, designers, investors & partners” to create the “ultimate” version of Megaupload that would be free of the legal controversies that had dogged the previous version of the site. When asked by a follower if he was worried that the new Megaupload could face the same fate as its predecessor, Dotcom replied “that will be IMPOSSIBLE. Trust me!”
While bragging about his progress in building the new Megaupload, Dotcom also promised to rehire all 220 Megaupload employees who lost their jobs in the wake of the website shutdown and further vowed to give them a pay raise once they were back working for the company. Finally, Dotcom told former Megaupload premium members would “have their premium status transferred to the new Mega, with a bonus on top.”
FUTURE PRIMATE 