#politics (83 links)
- Ken MacLeod – Socialism and transhumanism aeonmagazine.com
- Degrowth - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org
- The Tory nightmare: don't say you weren't warned | Ian Martin | Comment is free | The Guardian guardian.co.uk
"The reason this government's moving so quickly to divide the NHS into privatised contractual fiefdoms for its mates, and to divert education budgets into "free" schools for its mates' children, is because it can. Resistance has been atomised. Working-class rage, once articulated by powerful unions representing people doing proper jobs, has dissipated." Developers: unionise!
- Republicans: we don't need no regulation guardian.co.uk
Taking this tack has allowed the renaissance right to do a very remarkable thing: to pretend to be an enemy of big business, on the grounds that big business is insufficiently capitalist.
"For all its wit, "Hooligan"—written at a time of really horrible racial tension in Britain—had a serious purpose: to urge readers in 1982 to avoid moral panic and a rush to historically-illiterate judgement. Its lessons hold just as true today."
- Colbert vs. Kyl and spread of 'misinformation' - CNN.com edition.cnn.com
Jon Kyl developed his own line of hair care products just so he could test them on bunnies.
- Colbert vs. Kyl and spread of 'misinformation' - CNN.com edition.cnn.com
Jon Kyl developed his own line of hair care products just so he could test them on bunnies.
- Scripting News: WikiLeaks on the run scripting.com
Politicians should be aware that these are the stakes. They either get used operating in the open, where the people they're governing are in on everything they do, or they go totalitarian, around the globe, now.
- WikiLeaks: Unpluggable | The Economist economist.com
In the longer term the odds are stacked against secrecy, particularly in countries that practise openness in other areas. One reason is that though individual jurisdictions often prevent a specific libel, privacy breach or copyright infringement, a story with a global reach will get out somewhere. Short of imposing Chinese-style firewalls and censorship, free countries cannot consistently stop their citizens finding out what their enemies tell them, including tales of the shadowy, sordid or sensational deeds done in their names.
- afeeld » Cultivated Play: Farmville reddyeno5.com
This is brilliant. But argh, Farmville. "The secret to Farmville’s popularity is neither gameplay nor aesthetics. Farmville is popular because in entangles users in a web of social obligations. When users log into Facebook, they are reminded that their neighbors have sent them gifts, posted bonuses on their walls, and helped with each others’ farms. In turn, they are obligated to return the courtesies. As the French sociologist Marcel Mauss tells us, gifts are never free: they bind the giver and receiver in a loop of reciprocity. It is rude to refuse a gift, and ruder still to not return the kindness."
Although these stories are reports about medical research, they are really about computing – in the sense that neither would have been possible without the application of serious computer power to masses of data. In that way they reflect a new – but so far unacknowledged – reality; that in many important fields leading-edge scientific research cannot be done without access to vast computational and data-handling facilities, with sophisticated software for analysing huge data-sets.
- Charlie's Diary: Merciless antipope.org
There is a cancer in the collective American soul — a mercy deficit that has in recent years grown as alarmingly as the budget deficit. Nor is it as simple as a left/right thing: no political party has a monopoly on merciless behaviour. Rather, a creeping draconian absolutism has cast its penumbra across the entire arena of public discourse, tainting every debate, poisoning and hardening attitudes across the board.
- Four crowdsourcing lessons from the Guardian’s (spectacular) expenses-scandal experiment » Nieman Journalism Lab niemanlab.org
"Journalism has been crowdsourced before, but it’s the scale of the Guardian’s project — 170,000 documents reviewed in the first 80 hours, thanks to a visitor participation rate of 56 percent — that’s breathtaking." Brilliant.
You are the weakest link. T'ra.
- The Straight Choice | The election leaflet project thestraightchoice.org
Election leaflets are one of the main weapons in the fight for votes in the UK. They are targeted, effective and sometimes very bitter. We need your help to photograph and map them so we can keep an eye on what the parties are up to, and try to keep them honest.
- EU Profiler euprofiler.eu
Discover your position in the political landscape for the 2009 European Parliament Elections
- Wrong Tomorrow - time vs. pundits wrongtomorrow.com
What does this site do? It keeps track of predictions of the future by public figures.
- Charlie Brooker: To politicians, we're little more than meaningless blobs on a monitor | Comment is free | The Guardian guardian.co.uk
Straw and co blocked the release of the minutes, claiming that to actually let us know what was going on would set a dangerous precedent that would harm good government. Ministers wouldn't speak frankly at cabinet meetings if they felt their discussions would be subjected to the sort of scrutiny that, say, our every waking move is.
- With friends like these ... guardian.co.uk
Facebook has 59 million users [but] you won't catch Tom Hodgkinson volunteering his personal information - not now that he knows the politics of the people behind the social networking site
- Introduction to e-petitions petitions.pm.gov.uk
mySociety provide petition tool for PM.
- Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Jonathan Freedland: Al Gore on his mission to save the planet guardian.co.uk
Al Gore was the nearly man of US politics, the wooden Clinton sidekick who never made it to the top job. But now he's back with a mission to save the planet - and this time he's passionate.
- Wired News: What If They Gave a War...? wired.com
"I'll tell you where they are. They're at home, tuning in to root for the next "American idol." They're plugged into their iPods, utterly self-involved and disconnected from what lies just outside their doors. They're spending 25 hours a week playing vide
- Wired News: The Eternal Value of Privacy wired.com
The most common retort against privacy advocates -- by those in favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale surveillance measures -- is this line: "If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"
- The Ecologist theecologist.org
Environmental affairs magazine. "Each month we examine the connection between a wide range of subjects[...] food, war, politics, pharmaceuticals, farming, toxic chemicals, corporate fraud, mass media ."
- Responsible Shopper: What Does Your Shopping Support? responsibleshopper.org
Discover the good, the bad and the ugly behind the products you buy everyday—from clothing to shoes to toothpaste. Investigate hundreds of companies on a range of issues, including: Sweatshops, Pollution, Ethics, Discrimination and more.
- Corporate Watch : Home : HOME corporatewatch.org
- Open Letter venganza.org
" I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster." Genius.
- Rough Guide to a Better World roughguide-betterworld.com
The essential guide to how the world can be a better place for everyone. Poverty in the developing world is well known, but less publicised are the efforts of those who combat hunger, disease and illiteracy. This guide shows how you can get involved.
- Designing the Future - Newsweek Technology - MSNBC.com msnbc.msn.com
NEWSWEEK talks to a leading ecological architect whose goal is nothing less than eliminating waste and pollution.