I start this post with the below link which I must warn you has horrific footage of the sickening reality of human trafficking.
I also urge you if you are not willing to live in a world where every year, millions of people are trafficked into the modern-day equivalent of slavery to download THE FREEDOM APP.
It is a problem in virtually every region of the globe and will probably always be a problem in our world consumer Societies.
There is no need for me to point out that the Planet has plenty of problems but this is a human crime so monstrous we can no longer say we had no idea that millions of already desperately poor men, women, and children are being subjected to the further indignity of being sold against their will for labor and sex.
Ask yourself what good is all our technology our intellectual power or political power, our Criminal Justice Systems when they are only two countries where there is no Slavery, Greenland and Iceland.
There are now double the amount of slaves that came out of Africa -27 million. 22% are in forced Prostitution, 10% in imposed state labor, 68% in forces exploitation creating the goods and delivering the services we all rely on every day.
At this moment, men, women and children are being trafficked and exploited all over the world.
Human trafficking is the third most profitable crime, after drug and arms dealing. Due to the nature of the industry, it makes it impossible to know the exact value generated, but estimates of worldwide forced labor and sex trafficking profits are as high as $200 billion annually.
It is an Industry that is engaging in behavior that goes against our morals, values, or fundamental beliefs about what is right and wrong, and what is a sin or a necessary evil.
It is an Industry that created the wealth behind a many a family fortune during 1865 and there after by abolishment compensation payments. For example Gladstone the Prime Minister of England.
In the United States is has been 148 years (and 43 days) since former President Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation, about 145 since Congress made it official with the 13th amendment, and we still have slavery rampant throughout its dream of Freedom.
Exploitation can take many forms including sex trafficking, forced labor, domestic servitude, and trafficking of children pornography and commercial sex.
It has moved online and towards the safety of fake names and accounts and rerouted IP addresses. Online prostitution is ruining lives.
Human trafficking is a harsh reality for millions of women, men, and children throughout the world every year. It oppresses and exploits without mercy, often using violence and power to exert dominance and demand submission of the victims.
The precise number of people being trafficked is difficult to estimate, but the Global Slavery Index (GSI) suggests 36 million victims worldwide are involved in forced labor and sexual exploitation.
This is particularly relevant to any and all conversations that take place concerning future relations between the United States and Asia, especially as it relates to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), because, according to the GSI, of those 36 million trafficking victims, nearly two-thirds are from Asian countries.
Human exploitation in Asia is one of the most severe human rights problems of our time. The GSI places India, China, Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Thailand in the top 10 countries with the highest number of trafficking victims in the world. The most egregious countries are India, which tops the list with 14 million victims of trafficking, followed by China at 3.2 million, and Pakistan with 2.1 million trafficking victims.
Trafficking, however, is not something that we can consider an isolated or restricted crime. Everyone must address human exploitation because trafficked individuals travel from 127 countries and are exploited in 137 countries, on every continent and in every type of economy.
So the next time you go shopping think about where and what cost before you putting it in your shopping basket.
Perhaps the system of Capitalism we see that privatizes profits and nationalizes losses is impossible to justify, but the selling of humans for free labor is beyond the pale. Some how Capitalism for the want of a better word, must be rescued from the Bankers.
If any one reading this post recognizes the bastards in the above U Tube video you know what to do.
We see one or the other every day. We love, hate, kill, and sell them, in all colors, shapes and sizes but we have little understand of them.
But what does it mean to-day when we say “mankind.” Is it referring to both male and female.
For centuries, the differences between men and women were socially defined and distorted through a lens of sexism in which men assumed superiority over women and maintained it through domination.
Sexual attraction is controlled mainly by factors hardwired into the brain, due to evolutionary forces.
The vision of equality between the sexes has narrowed the possibilities for discovery of what truly exists within a man and within a woman. As the goal of equality between men and women now grows closer we are also losing our awareness of important differences.
” Men know life too early. Woman knows life too late”. That is the difference between men and woman” Oscar Wild.
The word ‘men’, meaning “to think” or “to have a cognitive mind”, was also gender neutral and connected to “man”, which meant “the thinker”.
It is my position that men and women are equal but different. When I say equal, I mean that men and women have a right to equal opportunity and protection under the law. None of us would argue the fact that men and women are physically different.
Modern society hasn’t made relationships between men and women any easier.
The challenge facing men and women is to become aware of their identities, to accept their differences, and to live their lives fully and as skillfully as possible.
It’s not that men and women live in completely different realities. It’s not that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. To understand the difference we must first understand in what ways we are different.
The world will be less interesting when everything is same.The stereotype that men are more “thick-headed” than women is not far-fetched. Let me clearly state that I do not believe that men (or women) are locked into these negative stereotypes.Typically, men’s brains are 11-12% bigger than women’s brains. Sadly, this difference in size has absolutely nothing to do with intelligence, but does explain the difference in size between men and women. Men need a bigger brain to control their bigger bodies and muscles.
Women on the other hand have four times as many brain cells (neurons) connecting the right and left side of their brain.
So where does that get us in any understanding?
Women are apparently extremely complex and mysterious creatures while men are a simple-minded species.
The most obvious difference is probably the emotions.
Men rely easily and more heavily on their left brain to solve one problem one step at a time. Women have more efficient access to both sides of their brain and therefore greater use of their right brain.
Most men are less concerned and do not feel the same as women when solving a problem. Men approach problems in a very different manner than women. Men have a tendency to dominate and to assume authority in a problem solving process.
Women consider and process information differently.
Women tend to be intuitive thinkers. Women have a larger deep limbic system than men, it allows them to be more in touch with their feelings and better able to express themselves, which promotes bonding with others.
It must be emphasized that they can and do solve problems in a similar manner.
Men have a hard time understanding emotions that are not spoken, while women tend to intuit emotions and emotional cues. In stress situation men have a response reaction that resembles “fight or flight” while women react with a “tend and befriend” strategy. Men are more turned on by visual stimuli.
Recent evidence suggests that humanity is not only still evolving but that human evolution is actually accelerating. Neanderthals did not die out, but instead were absorbed into modern humanity.
Facebook may soon need to add “Just got served divorce papers” to its list of relationship statuses.
A Manhattan judge ruled in the case of Ellanora Baidoo, 26, who wanted to divorce her husband, Sena Blood-Dzraku, but had no mailing address for him and therefore no place to which she could send the paperwork. The judge is allowing Baidoo to serve her estranged husband with a divorce summons through Facebook.
Maybe the word ‘man’ should be replaced with dude.
I would like to think you’re here not necessarily because your agree or disagree with what I write, but that you think it is worth hearing and want to learn, interact and debate with me. If you like pressing the like button this is not the place to find the like button. Lets hear your views.
Social Media a vast and complex subject far to large to cover all aspects.
In this post I am going to try to address some of the more obscure effects it is having on all of us or could have in not the so distant future.
How much do we understand this new dictatorship we’re in?
IF YOU ASKED ME I WOULD SAY: WE DON’T HAVE A CLUE.
Technology has revolutionized the way people go about their daily activities..
Google received over 2 million search queries per minute. The Number of people who use Twitter 302 million monthly active users 28/04/2015. Apple in the last three months turned over 60 billion a 40% profit of 11billion.
Facebook its monthly active users cleared 1.35 billion — roughly equal the population of China, and 9 percent larger than that of India. By these numbers, nearly 20 percent of the world’s population logs into Facebook once a month. And if we just look at the worlds Internet users, roughly half of them — every other person with Internet on the planet — use the site actively. 936 million daily 22/04/2015.
Half of all Internet-users live in “Facebookistan”
In the time it takes you to read this sentence more than 684,478 pieces of content will be shared on Facebook, 100,000 people will tweet, hundreds of thousands more will “like” an Instagram photo…and that’s if you read very quickly.
Access to technology has become an integral part of education, socialisation and industry related requirements, and accordingly Internet usage is evolving and growing rapidly. It is changing the way we shop to the way we drop. It does not care about time or distance. Everyone can be online every time and communicate with everyone everywhere.
The internet is home to millions of sites, representing both commerce and the people who share their thoughts and experiences with anyone who visits. The internet users worldwide now represents 3.17 billion, or in other words half of the current world population.
The question is whether the effortless, ever-changing world of online social life is in fact one that ultimately undermines the ability to explore narrative, and place people, ideas and events in wider contexts.
There is no argument that it is effecting the way we all live but if we don‟t act to enhance inter generational communication, we risk generating a culture structured by a digital/communication divide between young people, their parents and older members of the community.
Cyber citizenship, if it is to retain relevance and deliver benefits to the community, therefore, is a concept that would more usefully be applied to the community as a whole, rather than as a set of policies that target young people as requiring protecting – or protection from – in a digital landscape.
Our understanding of cyber citizenship must be more holistic, to fully encompass and resonate across all of the settings in which we live our lives – be that home, school, work, our local communities or our communities of interest.
So what effect is Social Media actually having on the world communicates and our life styles.
For example:
The internet is the place to interact with new people and a way to expose yourself to strangers. The partial anonymity available online can be used as a mask for sexual offenders and psychos;
Social media is being used as a tool by movie studios well ahead of a film’s release to help shape the marketing campaign.
Billions of Amateur videos, posted on social media websites.
Americans across the country took to social media to celebrate the Supreme Court’s decision making same-sex marriage a right.
Its replacing communication by letter or phone.
Twitter and Facebook are only two of the online connections people use today to stay in contact with friends and family.
The entire purpose of setting up social media networks around the world is to allow and promote the world to communicate and connect with one another. However, the trend that seems to be following this widespread connection and communication is the exact opposite.
It all appears to boil down to you having no way of really knowing what is the truth and what is the lie.
Someone’s life and personality neatly tucked away in the cyber-universe.
Do the dangers of online networking far outweigh the benefits?
Who knows.
One of the great dangers as far as I am concerned is the establishment of an economic order that would apply to all, everywhere.
No social animal is ever guided by the interest of the entire species to which it belongs.
Social Media allows cooperation with complete strangers who are imagined to be your friends. This could lead to the entire human race becoming a single unit governed by a single set of laws. These days we think of the planet as a single unit but for most of its history it was in fact an entire galaxy of isolated human worlds.
The ever tightening social media links will in the long run destroy individuality. We are now living in an age of technology where the information contained on these sites is now being used against us.
So the benefits of SNS use are dependent on good internet and media literacy: having the skills to critically understand, analyse and create media content while avoiding addiction.
Young people are consuming, producing, sharing and remixing media.
This has led to the claim that today‟s young people are produsers‟ they actively produce and consume media. The importance of SNS in young people‟s everyday lives is indisputable: 90% of 12 to 17 year olds, and 97% of 16 to 17 year olds, use SNS
Social media has begun to create an unsociable disconnected generation of young adults… they lack awareness of the public nature of the internet. This include the management of personal information and privacy, the risk of predation and cyber bullying. Can it be minimised?
It is compromising the development and maintenance of supportive friendships and involvement in institutions traditionally understood as the embodiment of “communities‟, namely school, sports clubs, families etc.
Social networking sites have become an important additional arena for politics. It increasingly important for the expression of identity.
What can be done if anything.
Education MUST increased internet and media literacy – ensuring all young people develop the skills to critically understand, analyse and create media content.
With the lack of parental supervision between the ages of fourteen to seventeen, which makes one of largest demographics using social networking sites, these teens ARE subjected to mature elements..
Teenagers are finding their identity in the world, they are the “my space generation” (Livingstone, 2008) the internet has allowed them to connect with people from all over the world but do they choose to do that…
It is presenting mankind with the biggest opportunity to change the course of history. It is exposing the Inequalities and making the world aware of our common vulnerabilities.
Then there is growing power of Petitions not to mention the job market or trial by Social Media and the greed of the business world which is beginning to be recognized for what it is by targeting Advertising.
As I said don’t press the like button be an individual and leave a comment.
In the last few days we all watched a few hundred people if that clapping themselves on the back all over a photo or photos of a planet 6 billion mile away that we never set foot upon. A technological achievement indeed.
Knowledge is invaluable. Furthering our understanding of how the universe came into being, and ultimately how we came into being, cannot be measured as useful solely in terms of cost.
The question is looking at the present state of our planet do we really need to be taking photos of planets that we will never step on.
America was the first nation to land on the moon, but what tangible benefits to mankind have occurred as a result?
The Hubble Telescope has sent back fascinating pictures of our universe. But again, how has this benefited anyone other than providing marvelous sights which awe us?
The only life found on Mars, from the incredibly expensive probes, is some dead amoeba.
All of it hasn’t led to any medical cures or any answers to the origins of the universe.
There are many things in our world that have not discovered yet; do cures to AIDS and cancer ring a bell? And what about over coming poverty?
The point is, space exploration is extremely expensive.
I don’t feel that the solution’s to our problems can be solved by a space expedition. Perhaps it time to find a solution to what we don’t know in our world before exploring a different one. We simply don’t have the money or resources.
Besides, if it’s unemployment you’re worried about, more people to devote their lives to over-coming the problems we know about, and not digging up more for us to “solve”.
We all know that there are major crisis going on at your home planet.
Global warming and the world wild economic crisis, which will cause the collapse of Capitalism not to mention a return to Barbarity – ISIS.
Why rush off to space when we’ve can see our own planet yet?
Why bother spending all this money on exploring space when we could be helping our own planet that us humans live on.? It’s a strong argument.
Why Not?
Out in space there is virtually unlimited resources. It is all just a matter of collecting it and bringing it back, which granted will not be an easy task.
Many discoveries and products have been developed from the knowledge gained from space exploration.
For example, NASA created Velcro which is now used in many clothing items, bags and so forth. Non-stick pans and surfaces were also created as a result of space exploration.
Space travel has also given us a lot of other new things for example the micro chip, the CAT scan and so on. Plastic was invented by material engineers working on the space program. The Internet was a joint military and NASA project.
Satellites were some of the first venturers into space and are now a critical part of our society. Very important for hurricanes and dangerous storm systems.
GPS allows Google to track you ever movement.
If we compared space exploration to other areas of government spending (e.g. military), the cost of space exploration simply isn’t ridiculously high.
It’s about $10,000 to put a pound of anything into a near-earth orbit. To put a pound of anything on the moon costs about 10 times as much.
It use to costs $500 to $700 million every time the shuttle flies combined with overall cost yielding a per-flight cost of nearly $1.7 billion. The average cost to launch a Space Shuttle is about $450 million per mission.
Billionaire space tourists have flown to the space station at a reputed price of $20 million per head.
The space station costs upward of $100 billion.
The bottom line:
So was the shuttle program worth the 40 years (10 years of development and 30 years of flight) of the $209 billion that NASA and the nation poured into it? That probably depends on your priorities and your point of view.
In 1966, NASA’s budget was $5.9 billion (4.4 percent of the federal budget). By 1972, Nixon had cut it to $3.4 billion (1.6 percent of the budget). To Day its less than one half of one penny out of each dollar the national government spends goes to NASA.
It’s still a lot of money—about 17.7 billion dollars.
And in the four decades since, NASA’s budget has continued to decrease as a proportion of national spending. The agency got $18.45 billion in fiscal year 2011, less than 0.5 percent of the federal budget.
Space exploration isn’t cheap. Let’s put those trillions of dollars to good use here on Earth, where it could change the lives of millions. Send probes to space, but spend the money here on Earth.
For me the real value lies in we are starting to see how small and fragile we are out there floating in space, maybe, just maybe we will not be so prone to abusing our one true home.
To put it in perspective think about this: Apple earns $325,000 every minute.
The next and last step of human evolution is overcoming the mind and learning the truth of life.
≈ Comments Off on The Beady eye looks at the Quantum Leap.
We are only at the beginning of this journey and if you are like me the very word Quantum Mechanics /Physics not to mention Quantum Computing, sends me in a dizzy.
I have little or no concept of quantum other than entanglement occurs when two particles become related such that they can coordinate their properties instantly even across a galaxy.
Think of wormholes in space or Star Trek transporters that beam atoms to distant locations.
Quantum mechanics posits other spooky things too: Particles with a mysterious property called superposition, which allows them to have a value of one and zero at the same time; and particles’ ability to tunnel through barriers as if they were walking through a wall.
All of this seems crazy, but it is how things operate at the atomic level: the laws of physics are different.
So or what it’s worth. Here is what I have learnt.
Quantum computing will lead to breakthroughs in science, engineering, modeling and simulation, financial analysis, optimization, logistics and national defense applications.
It is likely that building a quantum computer will lead to unforeseen technologies and transform our understanding of the possibilities and limits of computation.
Despite the incredible power of today’s supercomputers, there are many complex computing problems that can’t be addressed by conventional systems. The huge growth of data (“Big Data”) and our need to better understand everything from the universe to our own DNA leads us to seek new tools that can help provide answers.
If we really could build a magic computer capable of solving an NP-complete problem, a decision problemin a snap, the world would be a very different place: An NP problem contains problems for which a computer can quickly check a proposed solution.
Imagine a computer that can teach your mobile phone to recognize any object it sees, or that can trawl through millions of social media posts to identify a potential terrorist.
The spy world, in particular, is looked to quantum computing for its use in encryption and code breaking – a mainstay of the intelligence business.
The technology sounds like a science-fiction caricature. It is based on a novel type of superconducting processor that uses quantum mechanics to massively accelerate computation. A quantum computer taps directly into the fundamental fabric of reality so how about conducting virtual experiments.
The question is has it being done.
To my mind a computer without any limitations would get boring pretty quickly.
We could ask our magic computer to look for whatever patterns might exist in stock-market data or in recordings of the weather or brain activity. Unlike with today’s computers, finding these patterns would be completely routine and require no detailed understanding of the subject of the problem.
The magic computer could also automate mathematical creativity which would be a transformation in the ways computers are thought about.
So what might be the benefits.
Quantum computers could solve multiple problems at the same time.
We would have really accurate weather forecasting: Quantum computing could analyse all that data at once and give us a better idea of when and where bad weather will strike. We’d have advanced notice of major storms like hurricanes and the extra prep time could help save lives.
More efficient drugdiscovery:
A quantum computer would be able to map out trillions of molecular combinations and quickly identify the ones that would most likely work, significantly cutting down the cost and the time of drug development.
No more traffic nightmares:
Beefing up military and defence:
Satellites are constantly collecting tons of images and video. A quantum computer would sort through that mountain of data and direct your car.
Secure, encrypted communication:
If a third-party intercepts the key then, thanks to the weird magic of quantum mechanics, it becomes useless and no one can read the message.
Accelerating space exploration:
Astronomers have discovered nearly 2,000 confirmed planets outside our solar system using the Kepler space telescope. A quantum computer could tackle more data in any given telescope view, spot more exoplanets, and help quickly identify which ones have the most potential to harbour life.
It could even uncover exoplanets that Kepler missed during its first run through older images.
Quantum computing could streamline both air traffic and ground-based traffic control because they’re so good at quickly calculating the optimal route.
Machine learning and automation:
It sounds super creepy, but like humans, quantum computers can learn from experience. They can self correct. For example, a quantum computer could actually modify the code of a program that keeps messing up.
The security of every Internet transaction would be broken if a quantum computer were to be built.
Not much more is known about what could be done with a practical quantum computer.
Except: A classical computer would have to run for thousands of years to compute the quantum equations of motion for just 100 atoms. A quantum simulator could do it in less than a second. Problems that would take a state-of-the-art classical computer the age of our universe to solve, can, in theory, be solved by a universal quantum computer in hours.
The quest to harness the computational might of quantum weirdness continues to occupy hundreds of researchers around the world.
Physicist Richard Feynman once famously said: “If you think you understand quantum physics, you don’t understand quantum physics.”
As technology shrinks to nanoscale levels, quantum effects need to be dealt with whether we want them or not. It would be a revolution not unlike the early days of computing. A game changer for humanity.
If quantum computers promised such godlike mathematical powers, maybe we should expect them on store shelves at about the same time as warp-drive generators and anti gravity shields.
There is a long ways to go before any of the above are available.
Not so; In 2013 Google, NASA and USRA created the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab and installed a D-Wave Two™ quantum computer at the NASA Ames Research Center.
It is the most advanced quantum computer in the world but is not an universal quantum computer.
There you have it.
If you are any the wiser let me know as we need to be preparing for the spooky technology future we are rapidly heading into.
As Horizon fly’s pass Pluto poor old Hubble is left in the dark.
Launched aboard the shuttle Discovery 25 years ago on the April 24, it had its vision restored in December 1993.
Orbiting the Earth for over two decades, Hubble has helped to answer some of the most compelling astronomical questions of our time – and uncovered mysteries we never knew existed. Investigating everything from black holes to planets around other stars, Hubble has changed the face of astronomy, ushering in a new chapter of humanity’s exploration of the universe.
So in honor of Hubble – The beady eye of Space- here is what it has achieved
Over 100 Terabytes of observations all captured in digital files.
Astronomers have used all those observations to generate over 12,800 scientific papers, making the Hubble one of the most productive scientific instruments ever designed and built.
There are no rockets or thrusters on board the Hubble. To change directions, it spins reaction wheels that, thanks to Newton’s Third Law of Motion, make the telescope spin in the opposite direction. The wheels spin at about the speed of a clock’s minute hand, turning 90 degrees in 15 minutes.
Hubble operates on only 2,800 W, a little more than an electric range’s largest burner on high.
The telescope gets all its electricity from a pair of solar panels that measure approximately 23 х 9 ft (each).
Engineers gave Hubble a pointing accuracy of 0.007 arc seconds, which is analogous to aiming a laser and hitting a dime 200 miles away.
The most distant objects Hubble has seen are 13.4 billion light years.
The Hubble takes only black-and-white images. The spectacular color images you see from the Hubble are made by combining two or more black-and-white exposures through colored filters. Then, when the image is further processed, colors matching the filters are added.
Hubble helped construct the largest scale 3-D maps scientists have of where dark matter is distributed in the universe.
Also, by helping to find out the mass of Eris, which is 27 percent more massive than Pluto, the realization that similar bodies might lurk in the Kuiper Belt and beyond it helped demote Pluto and similar objects to dwarf planet status.
By gazing at star-forming regions such as the Orion Nebula, Hubble was able to show that protoplanetary disks of gas and dust are ubiquitous around many young stars.
Gamma ray bursts. Hubble helped discover these bursts typically occur in galaxies that were actively forming stars and were low in metallicity.
The comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collided spectacularly with Jupiter in 1994, an impact Hubble captured in all its startling glory.
Hubble may have helped solve the mystery of how old the universe is, but it unexpectedly turned up an even more profound one — the fact that the rate of the universe’s expansion is not slowing down or even constant, but is inexplicably accelerating.
Hubble discovered that super-massive black holes probably lurk in every galaxy that has a bulge of stars at its center.
Hubble has made some important advances in our research into alien worlds, such as determining the composition of the atmosphere of an exoplanet for the first time and actually imaging the visible light of Fomalhaut b.
Hubble helped refine estimates of the universe’s age down to roughly 13.75 billion years, a result that not only plays a role in modeling how our universe has evolved over time, but also in our understanding other seemingly unrelated cosmic parameters, such as the mass of neutrinos.
It’s re-written a lot of what we know. Re-engineer humans for a better planet.
Climate change is the ultimate global collective action problem, requiring cooperation from every government in the world.
It’s over twenty years since the first treaty, signed at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, when countries agreed to limit their emissions of greenhouse gases.
Here is the reality:
We are the first generation to understand the consequences of a high carbon economy on the planet, on future prosperity and, in particular, on the most vulnerable around the world. Let us be the generation that stands up and takes the responsibility conveyed by that knowledge.” Christiana Figueres, executive secretary, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, May 2014.
So the question now is whether we will have the courage to act before it’s too late. And how we answer will have a profound impact on the world that we leave behind not just to you, but to your children and to your grandchildren.” US President Barack Obama, Georgetown Address, June 2013.
I was very struck by the fact that the impacts of climate change are undermining a whole range of human rights: rights to food, safe water and health and education. But it is also displacing people, which is very likely to cause not just human distress but potentially conflict. So for me it’s a very, very serious issue of human rights.” Mary Robinson, UN special envoy for climate change, 2013
Climate change will amplify existing social, political and resource stresses, shifting the tipping point at which conflict ignites, rather than directly causing it. Climate change is likely to increase the frequency, scale and duration of humanitarian crises. It is also likely to change patterns of migration, making border security an ongoing concern, especially in the developed world.” UK Ministry of Defence, Global strategic trends out to 2040.
We have just 5 months left until the Paris Summit. How likely is it that it will be meaningful and make a difference to climate.
What should be in it?
A world Agreement; ( anything less is worthless.)
The international agreement that has a clear legal basis that works for different national constitutions. (All agreements are broken, so perhaps an agreement tied to World Trade/ and Arms deals might be enforceable.)
This agreement should be supported by a clear, shared accounting system and robust, transparent monitoring and reporting requirements.
It must be seen as fair for all. The agreement must allow for comparisons of national contributions, using appropriate indicators of national responsibilities and capabilities, to encourage ambition and ensure that climate action links with strategies for poverty alleviation and sustainable development.
The Agreement can not be seen as static. It should be for five-year cycle, with a ratchet mechanism over time built into the system and a clear, long-term goal. Why? Because carbon targets will need to be revised in the light of emerging science. It should move towards a goal to phase out pollution from fossil fuels by 2050 and phase in clean energy technologies.
It will need financing to support actions on adaptation and mitigation.
The agreement should include commitments to scaled up public finance, to support adaptation and mitigation action, aligned with other public finance for development; and wider efforts should be made to secure private sector investment in the low-carbon economy.
Any new agreement covering forest protection, land use and agriculture should be properly financed, have clear rules for emissions accounting and involve local communities in decision-making. It should ensure better biodiversity, ecosystem protection and restoration, and include support for sustainable agriculture and increased climate resilience.
Here what at stake:
The uncompromising Math of Global Warming, Pollution will if we fail to act early will guarantee that we are leaving humanity with more dangerous climate change such as more frequent extreme weather, more droughts, heat waves, and floods.
Even in the face of planetary catastrophe, 195 governments in a room can be just incompetent. Amidst the thicket of complex policy talk, we need to define the red lines of the agreement and organise the press and politics around them.
Our top focus – a clear commitment to a world without carbon, powered by 100% clean energy.
That is what will put the fossil fuel industry on notice, and shift private investment massively into renewable energy. New power plants, buildings, city designs, and lifestyles are being formed as we speak. How these are built could lock us into decades of increasing climate pollution as many of these last for several decades at a minimum.
A prime example is in the electricity sector where the emissions of power plants that the International Energy Agency projects could be developed in the next two decades would be larger than the emissions of coal from the beginning of the industrial revolution and eat up a huge chunk of the amount of carbon that can be emitted by all sectors.
The current targets aren’t deep enough to address climate change and most countries only made commitments through 2020. So there is a need to deepen and extend the emissions reduction commitments.
The scale of this crisis demands action that goes beyond consistently “kicking the can down the road”.
Once we have an agreement in hand then we can engage in serious ethical consideration over whether or not to act.
Will any of this happen?
Not a hope in a world that is driven by Capitalism.
The only way is as I have said in previous blogs is for Capitalism to contribute by placing a World Aid Commission of 0.05% on all High Frequency Trading , on all Foreign Exchange Transactions over $20,000, and on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions.
In the next few months and for years to come perhaps you will be reading a lot of bull shit on this subject.
Where is the European Union going or has gone wrong.
Well you don’t have to wait to know why.
It is the deformed structure of globalisation, which favors the owners of capital and concentrates of wealth that is the culprit.
(Add the demographic tipping point across the Pacific Rim and central Europe, and you have a portrait of worldwide “secular stagnation”.)
The current Greece crises in the Euro Zone is shining a light on a technocrat dictatorship which is beyond democratic control if ever attempted.
The euro zone is least able to respond to the Greek crises because it is a dysfunctional construct.
∑ The European Union with 751 Members and 24 official working languages costs , € 1,756 billion (2014) of which 35% is for staff expenses, mainly salaries for the 6000 officials working in the General Secretariat and in the Political Groups. Moreover, this expenditure covers interpretation costs, the costs of external translation and staff mission expenses.
Another words about 27% (of the 2014 budget) is dedicated to MEPs’ expenses, including salaries, costs for travel, offices and the pay of personal assistants.
Expenditure on Parliament’s buildings accounts for 11% (2014)
Information policy and administrative expenditure such as IT and telecommunications account for 21% (2014)
Political Group activities account for a further 6% ( 2014) ∑
What’s wrong then?
More to the point what can be done?
The first is the recognition of sharing a common history, which usually means sharing episodes of violence, pain, suffering, and, yes, achievement.
Next there is no meaningful representative democracy without taxation.
Citizens and voters pay attention when they are taxed.
A European tax that replaces government approved transfers of funds could do wonders for getting Europeans interested in Europe.
(The willingness to transfer significant spending and taxing powers to European institutions is very limited.)
The European project needs anchor figures chosen directly by Europeans.
A presidential figure elected through the rule “one European, one vote”would be a good start. A figure to love and to hate, that could engage Europeans with the legitimacy of the vote and (why not?) have an important say in the dying and the paying issues that can promote a new citizenship and a new polity.
We all know that the founding aspiration of the European Union was born out of War and that is where it is going if it does not represent the people of Europe not the Free market with its proxy behind the doors trade agreements.
And we all know that once money enters any equation aspirations go out the window. What follows is the erosion of the common good, democracy and in comes – I am all right Jack.
The regulation of money creation is, essentially, a undemocratic economic policy and there is no better example of this than the current Greek crises.
Indeed the greatest risk for the survival of the Euro zone today is the risk emanating from social and political upheavals in countries that are forced into a deflationary spiral.
The euro zone has let it happen in Greece.
Europe’s authorities have so mismanaged monetary and fiscal strategy that the whole currency bloc has tipped into deflation.
The ideas of Europeanism, federalism, and even “post-material” politics appeal, albeit in different ways, to new possibilities for political, cultural, and
social cohesion will force Europe to think deeper about its first motivation for establishing a common economic market: attaining a long-lasting peace in Europe.
The means to create and pass on a similar European narrative to a wide mass of individuals is now open to question.
We ought to know by now, economic fluctuations hit different jurisdictions differently. If these economic fluctuations are relatively synchronous or resources sufficiently mobile, monetary policy is an appropriate instrument, and the area to which it is applied is a so-called “optimal currency area”.
The problem is that we are still, evidently, in the process of making Europe, but may be well advised to start making Europeans at the same time.
It can be sum up in one word. Diversity.
Often seen not as a liability it is the core fact that allows for change and progress. The “unity in diversity” motto is but a starting point, which urgently needs new incarnations.
http://business.financ€35bn to help the economy” ialpost.com/news/economy/drachma-diplomacy-what-would-life-after-the-eu-look-like-for-greece
The question is:
Is Tsipras really looking for a deal with Europe?
The Greek government now accounts for about 60% of the country’s entire GDP. Leaving the euro zone could cost the Greek economy up to 36% of its GDP over the next few years.
If Greece switches currency, any euros left in Greek bank accounts would depreciate by 50% to 60% in a matter of days.
The recent decision by the ECB to act a lender of last resort is a major regime change for the Euro zone. It is not sufficient, however, to guarantee the survival of the monetary union.
Perhaps Debt pooling would ties the hands of the member countries of the Euro zone and shows that they are serious in their intentions to stick together.
Where did all the Quantitative Easing go ? Not to Greece – 60 billion a month till Sep 2016.
When the one size of the single monetary policy does not fit all, supplementary, possibly coordinated, national fiscal policies should also be activated – where national fiscal policies are tightly constrained and loosely coordinated, especially so in the countries where the QE impact will be smaller.
The result may eventually be dim.
It is the case with any monetary policy instrument in a monetary union, QE in the EZ is fraught with the heterogeneity problem of the recipients of monetary policy. The institutional strictures and pressures under which the ECB operates will make the task harder. Of course, easier monetary conditions will help the EZ economies.
The endogenous dynamics of booms and busts that are endemic in capitalism continued to work at the national level in the Euro zone and that the monetary union in no way disciplined these into a union-wide dynamics.
The monetary union probably exacerbated these national booms and busts.
The existing stabilizers that existed at the national level prior to the start of the union were stripped away from the member-states without being transposed at the monetary union level. This left the member states “naked” and fragile, unable to deal with the coming national disturbances.
Even if Greece signs up to the package of tax and spending reforms demanded the most likely outcome – is that Greece’s debt would still be 118% of GDP in 2030.
IT’S A LONG, hard road to understanding the human brain so I have no intention of explaining yours to you here in detail.
Other than to say your brain has a critical function to sort out what you should remember and not remember. To determine what is true, it must know what is false.
Believing, interpreting, responding to environmental clues, or guessing is literally what a brain does.
Is your brain you.? If not who are you.
If a person is not a brain, and a brain is not the thing that perceives, thinks, interprets, feels, desires, decides, and so on we all have serious implications for the future.
Are the mind and the brain one? or is it the mind that tells the brain what it wants or is the mind a product of mere brain activity.
Another words what you see is not really there; it is what your brain believes is there . . . your brain makes the best interpretation it can . In order to explain (interpret) a visual scene, the brain must represent it first, and then explain it to its self to store in your mind.
We perceive and understand only what our brains represent.
To make sense of the tangle of neurons that makes the human experience human, is as complicated as to why you are here in the first instance.
To understand how the brain works you need one in the first place. It does not however help to explain the electrical pulses that tells a neuron to fire. Never mind how billions firing together. Your brain contains about 100 billion nerve cells, or neurons, each of which can communicate with thousands of other brain cells.
The good news is that humanity is poised to crack open the mysteries of the human brain not the mind.
For the moment the brain remains mysterious, it allows us to convert information into myriad forms to serve infinitely diverse ends.
The fields of your mind extend far beyond your brains they are hidden from view and not capable of being inspected. Whatever in your brain is buried deep within the recesses of your mind.
The quest for immortality has inspired humankind since the dawn of civilization. So will understanding the workings of the brain bring us a step closer.
Neurosciences assume that the brain has a wide variety of capacities: the brain interprets and stores information, recognizes symbols, analyzes, thinks, believes, knows, designs computers, determines what is true, paints pictures, deciphers images, analyzes, prioritizes, learns, understands, remembers, and makes decisions of the mind.
However, if I am my brain, and every atom in my brain (or body) is replaced every seven years or so, then I must become someone else every seven years.
There is no need to suppose that all the laws of nature sprang into being fully formed at the moment of the Big Bang, like a kind of cosmic Napoleonic code, or that they exist in a metaphysical realm beyond time and space.
The brain has been designed to change. Or is memory inherent in nature.
Are we capable of transferring thoughts from one brain to another.
Telepathy is normal not paranormal, natural not supernatural, and is also common between people, especially people who know each other well.
Mental activity are not confined to the insides of our heads. They extend far beyond our brain though intention and attention.
Non biological mine’s.
At our current stage of technological development, we have neither sufficiently powerful hardware nor the requisite software to create conscious minds in computers or robot.
Your Brain gives you the ability to combine and recombine different types of knowledge and information in order to gain new understanding; the ability to apply the solution for one problem to a new and different situation; the ability to create and easily understand symbolic representation of computation and sensory input; and the ability to detach modes of thought from raw sensory and perceptual input.
So what happens when it is introduced to Virtual reality or interface technology or drones contextual technology, or open communication.
We are entering the next Age of Biological Engineering evolving cellular engineering and molecular imaging.
What is the most powerful technology on Earth? Biology is Technology:
Hundreds of companies are now attempting to leverage the manufacturing and computational paradigms of biology.
By gaining control over biological systems and their biochemical pathways — and designing new pathways by rewriting the DNA “software” in cells — synthetic biologists are ushering in the “Biological Age,” creating substances with not only superior electrical, optical, and mechanical properties, but with properties that we have never seen before in man-made materials:
If you don’t believe me that Biology is Technology:
Have a look.
In the dark forest of our current ignorance, nothing captures the imagination like the possibility of creating a machine that is conscious and exhibits the same higher mental abilities as humans.
Biological systems have the ability to do things that no human-made machine or chemistry can begin to approach: the ability to replicate, to learn, to scale from one to billions, to adapt, and to evolve.
Computers today are so advanced that some contain as many connections as exist in the human brain — ten trillion of them. They can also operate at much higher speeds than the brain. What was once purely science fiction is now approaching the possibility of science fact.
A double edge sword the second machine age is going to replace our brains.
Can advanced robots or computers be moral persons? The term “moral person” refers to a being that has moral rights, such as the right not to be harmed, the right of free movement, and the right of free expression.
So let me ask you a question is it the end of moors law. (Moore’s Law is a computing term which originated around 1970; the simplified version of this law states that processor speeds, or overall processing power for computers will double every two years.) Once transistors can be created as small as atomic particles, then there will be no more room for growth.
Do we have a responsibility to future generations of humans that might be adversely affected by the creation of menacing robots? Should we stop our research into artificial intelligence right now before we create something that we cannot control?
To answer these questions, it those seems odd to speculate about building a mind from electronic scraps when we have so little clarity about the nature of our own conscious minds.
The human body is divided into many different parts called organs. All of the parts are controlled by an organ call the brain.
The cerebellum the forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain.
No other organ is like the brain and all other organs would be unable to function without the brain which by the way weighs about three pounds.
The brain is known as the “final frontier” of science; It is the nut that is toughest to crack but contains a vast wealth of information, a veritable treasure trove of knowledge that can enrich our understanding of human nature.
The problem with artificial life acquiring consciousness in the form of experience of self is that if gives artificial life autonomy. Consciousness is a loophole out of programming, whether it is genetic (humans) or cybernetic (computers).
When we solve the hard problem of consciousness, then we can create machines with brains any time before that is brainless.
A machine without moral rules that should be embedded into the programming of all superior robots; one of these is that a robot should never harm a human.
We’ll be uploading our entire MINDS to computers by 2045 and our bodies will be replaced by machines within 90 years, Google expert claims. This singularity is also referred to as digital immortality because brains and a person’s intelligence will be digitally stored forever, even after they die.
But even if Einstein’s brain were intact enough to be plumbed with the tools of modern science, we might have to remain agnostic about the source of his brilliance.
Brain games have not yet fulfilled their promises of improved brain fitness.
How should we construe the relation of a person (soul) to his body or of his mind to his brain? To realize that conceptual clarity contributes to understanding what is known, and to clarity in the formulations concerning what is not known. A person is self-conscious and not brain-conscious, and needs no knowledge of the brain to function.
The brain, no doubt, makes it possible for us (not the brain!), to sense, perceive, think, reason, believe, feel, learn, know, understand, remember, and decide, and hopefully, to change our minds about how we think and talk about a person and the brain.
If not we are left with the following out of date Thesis.
Thesis 1: “The brain, as understood by neuroscience, is a piece of matter tingling with electrochemical activity” (Tallis 2009, p. 4).
Thesis 2: “The mind is what the brain does, and the brain is a causal machine . . . The ‘user illusion,’ nevertheless, is that a decision is created independently of neuronal causes, by one’s very own ‘act of will’” (Churchland 2005).
Thesis 3: “When the brain receives new sensory input from the world in the present, it generates a hypothesis based on what it knows from the past to guide recognition and action in the immediate future. This is how people learn” (Barrett and Bar 2009, p. 1325).
Thesis 4: “We can only understand categories of reality [for example, sound, color, taste, motion, action] and their regularities and interrelationships if our brains are capable of representing these categories . . . [W]e perceive and understand only what our brains represent” (Farah and Heberlein 2007, p. 40).
Thesis 5: Information (such as symbols, letters) is analyzed by and stored in the brain (Thompson and Harrub 2004a, p. 2), and the brain prioritizes information, deciphers images, and remembers (Martin 2013).
Thesis 6: “You are your brain” (Greene and Cohen 2004, p. 1779)
PS: Nothing of what I have said about your brain should be construed as in anyway a devaluing of your brain.
We are dualists who have two ways of looking at the world: With or without a Brain. However I would however suggest that you start using yours if you want a sustainable world.
Dream boated that we have won the Lotto. Dreams of Easy Money.
And why not, most people have a strong fascination with easy money.
If you look at history money is a comparatively recent invention. It seems that most people who got rich by creating wealth did it by developing new technology.
Making wealth is not the only way to get rich. Until a few centuries ago, the main sources of wealth were mines, slaves and serfs, land, and cattle, and the only ways to acquire these rapidly were by inheritance, marriage, conquest, or confiscation.
These days people who pursue happiness through material possessions are liked less by their peers than people who pursue happiness through life experiences.
We all know that there are many senses of the word “wealth,” not all of them material. Here I am talking not about what people will give you money for (materialism), but the quick wealth fix, winning a vast amount of cash.
If You Do Win: There is the painful proposition of managing sudden, Unearned Wealth. The argument that people always use when talking about lottery tickets is “What if I win?”
Well, what if you do win?
People you’ve known all your life suddenly start viewing you as their meal ticket. You’re now a target to criminals, a meal ticket and/or a lender to the people who used to form your close inner circle, and the source of angst not only in virtually every relationship you have with others, but often in the relationship between people you care about.
Anyway just in case your dreams have not come true here are a couple of other ways to get Rich:
Rob A Bank.
Inherit a fortune.
Bet on the right horse, with free money.
Get a hole-in-one for $1 million.
Buy and hold Long-term stock that clicks.
Find treasure.
Get lucky at a car booth sale and buy a Picasso.
Marry rich- with strings attached.
Divorce a Beatle or Rolling Stone- with strings attached.
Be born rich.
Sue.
Unearth gold with a metal detector.
Register a generic domain name.
Have a “non-affair” with a bigwig.
Live on a lake of oil.
Or crack the algorithm that produced the numbers. You will be able to plunder the lottery.
Most of us chase success by working hard, sacrificing our personal lives and even our health in an all-out pursuit of Mammon. But it doesn’t always have to be that way. For a fortunate few, it doesn’t mean a Harvard MBA or years spent perfecting a new drug. It just means doing as little as possible and still making more money than you ever dreamed of.
As much as industrious overachievers hate to admit it, sometimes all you need to get rich is dumb luck.
So what are the odds of winning the Lotto.
A 1 in 80,089,128 chance, or roughly 1 in 80 million.
Matching four of five normal numbers plus the “power ball” is a 1 in 1,668,523 chance.
Matching all five white numbers is a 1 in 1,906,884 chance.
You have a better chance of being struck by lightning than you do of winning either the grand prize or a top secondary prize.
If buying 1,906,884 tickets it could guarantee you that you would win $200,000, which is the prize (in Florida, at least) for matching all five white numbers, you’d still be spending $1,906,884 to win $200,000 – a roughly 90% loss on your investment.
If you were to play the “Power Play” version, you’d spend $3.8 million to win $1 million – a roughly 72% loss on your investment.
The Beady eye does not question your right to buy a ticket or for you to have dreams on whether you sue, marry, divorce, or buy or whatever.
It’s concerned is whether our TVs, our Governments should be promoting wealth.
Are Government Lotteries a regressive tax. They suck billions out of the economy.
Most people buy tickets and win little or nothing.
This is taking more money from the poor, working and lower middle-classes than from those most able to pay taxes. These billions also are diverted away from local businesses.
In other words, why is the government in the lottery business at all?
Government-run lotteries generated more than $70 billion in gross sales in North America during the fiscal year ended June 2010, up $1 billion year on year.
In North America every Canadian province, 43 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands all offer government-operated lotteries.
Elsewhere in the world publicly-operated lotteries exist in at least 100 countries on every inhabited continent. In some cases they are operated by national governments, in other cases by state or provincial governments, and in still others by cities.
Lottery proceeds benefit different programs.
In many cases lottery profits are combined with tax and other revenues in a government’s general fund. In other cases lottery proceeds are dedicated to a wide range of causes, including education, economic development, the environment, programs for senior citizens, health care, sports facilities, capital construction projects, cultural activities, tax relief, and others. Lottery beneficiaries.
Therefore the lottery is not a tax. Webster defines a tax as “a compulsory payment … for the support of government.” No one is coerced to play the lottery. The purchase of a lottery ticket is completely voluntary.
Some say its the poor who are targeted to play. The poor are allowed to vote, get married, and sign contracts. Economic status is not a measure of intelligence.
But make no mistake. Profit is what the state is after.
In other words, governments are raising revenue by tempting the worst off of their citizens to hand over their hard-earned money by playing a game with a ridiculously low return.
So are our Governments teaching our young people who Gambling that it is cool.
Scratch Cards; Online betting: TV Game Shows, all feast on Greed.
If you take Scratch cards.
The tickets are clearly mass-produced, which means there must be some computer program that lays down the numbers. Of course, it would be really nice if the computer could just spit out random digits. But that’s not possible, since the lottery corporation needs to control the number of winning tickets. The game can’t be truly random. Instead, it has to generate the illusion of randomness while actually being carefully determined.”
Money is Not Wealth.
Money is a way of moving wealth.
They are usually interchangeable. People think that what a business does is make money. But money is just the intermediate stage– just a shorthand– for whatever people want.
In fact; ants have wealth.
When you hear someone talking about how x percent of the population have y percent of the wealth. This is a fallacy.
There is not a fixed amount of wealth in the world. You can make more wealth.
A programmer can sit down in front of a computer and create wealth. A good piece of software is, in itself, a valuable thing. A great programmer, on a roll, could create a million dollars worth of wealth in a couple of weeks. A mediocre programmer over the same period will generate zero or even negative wealth.
Wealth can be created without being sold. We are all richer for knowing about penicillin. The same recipe that makes individuals rich makes countries powerful.
So let the Lions DEN nerds keep their lunch money, for you and I rule the world.
(The Lion DEN by the way is a BBC program where five millionaires sit with large bundles of money in front of them. Young and old Hopeful’s present their innovations or business in the hope of securing an offer of cash for a percentage of their invention or business. If an offer is made the millionaires then squabble with each other offering more or less cash for a percentage share in the victims dream’s of making it Rich.)
Ask yourselves: Is this family entertainment or Capitalist rape.
The same goes for;
The Briefcase:Millionaire Misers: Rich As Finns: Still Pretty Rich: Money For Nothing: Job Creators In Action: Undercover Employee:
The Undateables: Exploiting people with disabilities for entertainment
The Hunger Games: New CBS reality show exploits poor families by making them grovel for $101,000.
There are plenty of others.
What leads people astray here in all cases is the abstraction of money.
Both Worldstar videos and these television programs dehumanize the people they show and will continue to do so unless we, as viewers, choose to stop watching.
The stereotype that men are more “thick-headed” than women is not far-fetched. Let me clearly state that I do not believe that men (or women) are locked into these negative stereotypes.
Typically, men’s brains are 11-12% bigger than women’s brains. Sadly, this difference in size has absolutely nothing to do with intelligence, but does explain the difference in size between men and women. Men need a bigger brain to control their bigger bodies and muscles.
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