A United Nations plan to end world poverty, led by Dr. Jeffrey Sachs.
Apologies to those folks who hope to see Maya news on this site. Maybe in a couple of months when I go south again. In the meantime, my concerns continue to revolve around issues Maya kings had to deal with in their own way - how to inspire, how to lead, how to govern.
No longer possible to claim direct descent from the gods (or is it? - Bush comes close). In today's splintered media markets, penis perforation and bloodletting on the national stage could grab big ratings, as Maya kings undoubtedly knew. But the arcane knowledge needed to justify power has moved from astronomy and calendar-keeping to online marketing, media talk shows, and staying on message.
Here are some clues on how Kerry's team tried (and failed?) in the first of those esoteric pursuits.
Online Political Marketing Secrets Unveiled | Personal Democracy Forum
(Via Joshua Shimkin at EchoDitto)
Deborah Finn offered this page of resource links to the members of the Digital Divide Network list, so I thought I'd post it here for future reference.
Deborah Elizabeth Finn :: A guide to recommended web links
As usual, this weblog only hints at what's going on in my life. A few crumbs dropped behind on a snowy day. But at a time of the year I'd be scheming madly to leave for Chiapas, the Peten, the jungle and the river, I've been trying to catch up with some of the politics and issues I've usually left behind.
The software that the Hackers for Dean, then DeanSpace, now CivicSpace have been steadily working on for the last couple of years is starting to come together. Just in time for me to learn how to use the new internet democracy tools.
We'll be using CivicSpace for a couple of projects, including a political campaign and the redesign of the Girls Club website. Eventually, it could form the basis of the Ave D community network.
I run into folks from this group all the time these days:
And many thanks to Nicco Mele for his advice. His group in DC is doing some of the best work and publishing one of the most thoughtful sites on the web:
And we'll still make it to the jungle this year.
How I'm getting through winter in New York. New Tabasco Chipotle sauce. In every Korean deli. In everything I eat.
Legislation in Nebraska and Ohio, among other places, to ban municipal and community wireless broadband projects.
Daily Wireless - City Cloud Politics
Via Josh Koenig, a new site to mobilize the fight against destruction of social security.
Social Security: There Is No Crisis -
Imagine Manhattan.
Imagine your future.
Imagine an experienced tough fighter on your side.
Imagine Margarita Lopez for Borough President.
Margarita Lopez for Manhattan Borough President in 2005
Ron Canter has released a draft of his Usumacinta River study. This is a project that he has been working on for years, updated with observations he made on our raft trip in the spring of 2004. Another of Ron's studies, and detailed maps, are also on the way.
Download USU Writeup 1-13-05 (Word document)
I wondered what Lucas Gonze was up to lately, coding on a beach in Hawaii. This looks amazing. With young son Will moving into audio mixing, we'll both have to check it out. If only I were 30 years younger...uh, never mind.
Slashdot | Creative Commons Remix Contest
Creative Commons and WIRED recently went public beta with CC Mixter which is a Commons pool for music samples and remixes. The site creates a tree of remix/sources inline with every entry and has Flikr/del.ciou.us style tagging. The launch includes two remix contests and features samples and cuts put in the Commons by Chuck D., Beastie Boys, David Byrne, Danger Mouse and tons more.
I posted about this in October after reading John Robb's prediction.
Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration's battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal. (Among the current administration officials who dealt with Central America back then is John Negroponte, who is today the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Under Reagan, he was ambassador to Honduras.)
Ministers Denounce SBC Internet-Cable TV Push as 'Digital Redlining'
From Ben Hammersley, simple ways to turn any website with media into a podcast-friendly feed.
mfeeds » media feeds for everyone. RSS enclosures and podcasting made easy.
Let's see. Motorola bought MeshNetworks and is doing this.
Now, with Apple, they are coming out with a phone that acts like an iPod. Bluetooth will be on that to start, next WiFi or better. Email and web soon, and in the midrange in price - well below $500.
In 2 years the price comes down on all of that, and we have our mobile community network. It could happen.
Why can't we do it?
ICE World - Aksh bags Rs 400cr broadband project
I'm in the process of redesigning this site and learning more CSS in the process. So for all 12 of my readers, here's a sneak peak at the latest, and a way back to the old. I like the new, but the banner takes longer to load.
I ran across this term today (also written as two words, trim tab) and didn't know what it meant. Here's what I found...
An image first used by Buckminster Fuller (and explored in Harold Willen’s 1984 book The Trimtab Factor) is the trim tab on a rudder. To change the direction of a really large ship or airplane, we need a really large rudder, too large a rudder, in fact. The power of the currents of air or water, combined with the size of the rudder, make it almost impossible to move the rudder without breaking it. The solution is to put a tiny rudder, called a trim tab, on the larger rudder. The trim tab moves easily because it’s small. But as it moves, it causes the currents to shift, which makes it easier for the large rudder to move, which in turn makes the even larger ship (or plane) change course. The physical mass of the trim tab is a tiny fraction of the weight of the ship or plane, yet the trim tab determines the vehicle’s course.
The American Revolution illustrates the trim tab effect. The revolution didn’t happen because the majority wanted it. In the early 1770s, only a handful of radical intellectual were thinking the unthinkable of breaking with the biggest naval power on the planet. Even by 1776, support for independence was by no means unanimous or even the majority. Strong elements within the middle and southern colonies wanted to keep the economic and military protection of Britain. Loyalists to the Crown were everywhere. It’s estimated that only 11 percent of the population were actively involved in making the American Revolution happen.
Via Slashdot, a commentary from the journal Language Learning and Technology on some unusual approaches to learning a foreign language, including the Sims video game.
LLT Vol9Num1: COMMENTARY: YOU'RE NOT STUDYING, YOU'RE JUST...
A two-part series in the New Standard:
Wireless Politics May Determine Future of Digital Democracy
Activists Bring the Digital Frontier to New Communities
In La Jornada, a report on the wide open illegal traffic in goods and people on the Suchiate and Usumacinta rivers.
Los ríos Suchiate y Usumacinta, "ventana abierta a la libertad" para centroamericanos
From Mitch Ratcliffe:
Beware rebels bearing manifestoes and the sleek taboos of trendsetters. Eat the dead, if their bodies aren't too putrid, to learn from the lessons coursing through their veins. Start no religions except those you are willing to mock mercilessly. Trust experience without regard to the grammars available from local professional societies. Live and let live, else you will find yourself roasting on the spit of your own dogma. Create to be free, consume to die to yourself.