Youth and Regression in an Infantile Society--John Zerzan

"Among the young there are quite a few examples of a tendency to regress or turn back. Whether or not these phenomena are characteristic of something called 'Generation X' we must leave for media to determine; after all, it's their job to define and make intelligible social reality. That aside, I think there are aspects of regression that are noteworthy/possibly significant, and which need to be put in context."

That was the week that was...Week ending October 30, 2009 - RecruitingBlogs.com

"Last week Karen Mattonen posted Everybody LOVES me, and I have No enemies. I lost track of the number of comments on the post before it was taken down because the personal exchanges had become so acrimonious that it was clear no communal purpose was being served.

There is no shortage of aftershock on Maren Hogan's subsequent post explaining the reasons why the post was removed and suggesting how we might conduct ourselves moving forward. Read How it works here, why not?

Bearing all that in mind...

Mother used to say: 'If you're always putting out fires get rid of the arsonist.'

Just sayin'....love you Mummy.

Barbara Ling has a valuable lesson for us all. Her post Everyone HATES me... but I'm OKAY with that is insightful but the less obvious lesson is this: there's a time to comment and a time to blog. Not all posts are created equal you know."

Social Search from Google and Bing: My 8 Big Concerns - PC World

"The search engine wars took a dramatic turn yesterday, with Google and Microsoft both announcing real-time search deals with Twitter. Additionally, Microsoft struck a deal with Facebook to index status updates on its Bing search engine, and Google introduced Social Search, which integrates your friends' social networking information directly into search results.

All of this means that the '10 Blue Links' to which we've grown accustomed could be changing in a big way, and the ways we use social networking could change, too. I'm left with some questions on how this will affect consumers, but I'll try to piece together what I can from what we've learned:

How will all this stuff work?"

YouTube - Chomsky: US Supported Indian, Pakistani Nuclear Programs

"Noam Chomsky divulges the issues of nuclear proliferation which are overlooked or ignored in the mainstream media. Covering the nuclear weapons programs of Iran, India, Israel, and Pakistan, Chomsky says 'it can't be that the news bureaus don't know it; there's more that isn't discussed.'"

UMass Researcher Finds Link Between Lying And Popularity

"The most popular students in school sometimes are the best liars, according to a study conducted by University of Massachusetts psychologist Robert S. Feldman and published in the most recent Journal of Nonverbal Behavior."

Utopia Vs. Dystopia | PunkLuckBlog

Utopia Vs. Dystopia | PunkLuckBlog: "From a Christian point of view, Ephesians 2:3 says that we are all “by nature children of wrath.” God did not create the man as sinful; but man fell into sin and became sinful due to the original sins made by Adam. If one believes that man, himself, is imperfect, how can man build a Utopia?

Dystopia is defined as, “a society characterized by human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding.” Dystopias are characterized by an overzealous governing body who strives on the inhumanity that it creates. While dystopic societies seem easy to build, Utopian thought always rise from the hearts of individuals living in them. From squalor arises a champion, a champion of the masses. Dystopia actually helps society grow into a more civil peaceful version of itself. It is much a self correcting state of being, as human nature defies a state of misery looking towards new horizons to achieve balance."

Internet Evolution - Kim Solez, MD - The Web Could Someday Read Your Thoughts

"What constitutes a 'private space' in the Internet Age is becoming more and more unclear. We live in a world where email is mined for marketing and Facebook passwords are revealed in legal investigations. Choosing to put something online is tantamount to choosing to give up the privacy of that thing, at least in the worst-case scenario.

Now it turns out that even our thoughts may someday be online, via thought-identification technology, which has the potential to make our subjective thoughts available to the outside world.

Until recently, the content of subjective experience was thought to be "in principle" resistant to scientific understanding, irreducible to formula, fundamentally opposed to abstraction. Recent neuroscientific breakthroughs, however, indicate otherwise -- blowing concerns regarding privacy and technology wide open in ways that could alter the course of human-technological evolution."

That was the week that was...Week ending October 23, 2009 - RecruitingBlogs.com

"In the coming weeks I am going to be changing the format of this column a bit. After close to three years That was the week that was... may be in need of a re-think."

Management by Matrices: Life Settlements - The next sub-prime crisis

"Undeterred by the mess that it created with securitization of mortgages (the Subprime crisis), Wall Street is now working on a new kind of securitization, that of life insurance policies.

The bankers plan to buy “life settlements,” life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash — $400,000 for a $1 million policy, say, depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. Then they plan to “securitize” these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds or thousands together into bonds. They will then resell those bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die.

... And investors are not interested in healthy people’s policies because they would have to pay those premiums for too long, reducing profits on the investment..."

The War is Lost - Jeffrey Tucker - Mises Economics Blog

"A wonderful piece of reporting in the New York Times today, one which pretty well establishes what everybody -- except the average American -- seems to know: the war is over and the U.S. has lost; moreover, the enemy that the U.S. supposedly vanquished is alive and growing..."

LogSavvy White Paper: A new approach to analytics for online communities

A solution for analyzing data from community interaction, social media, Web 2.0, and user generated content which is faster and more cost effective for handling today’s volume of data and disparate data sources

The Promise of “Self-segmentation”

"Before making large investments in advertising and other marketing, companies seek to identify and segment potential customers. Such knowledge is vital in evaluating market opportunities and differentiating messages, product offerings, media strategies, and even pricing. Today, a community-based approach to segmentation — which is both less expensive and more effective than the traditional methodologies based on customer relationship management (CRM) systems — is becoming possible as consumers flock to the Web.

Ever since the rise of the mainframe, companies have relied on CRM systems for segmentation. These systems slice and dice market and customer data, placing customers and prospects into different “buckets” based on demographic, behavioral, attitudinal, and other insights. Such segmentation enables companies to tailor product development and marketing."

The FASTForward Blog » Emergence Part 1 – So what is really going on?: Enterprise 2.0 Blog: News, Coverage, and Commentary

"Beyond disrupting organizations and value as we know it, what is going to be the deep result of the use of Social Media? Many of us see it as at least making organizations more effective – faster, more informed etc. But I wonder. My growing feeling is that the widespread use of Social Media might soon enable us to gain the benefit of “Emergence”.

What you might ask is “Emergence”. Here is an example of how each of us as humans acquire the scale free use of language..."

The powerful and mysterious brain circuitry that makes us love Google, Twitter, and texting. - By Emily Yoffe - Slate Magazine

"Seeking. You can't stop doing it. Sometimes it feels as if the basic drives for food, sex, and sleep have been overridden by a new need for endless nuggets of electronic information. We are so insatiably curious that we gather data even if it gets us in trouble. Google searches are becoming a cause of mistrials as jurors, after hearing testimony, ignore judges' instructions and go look up facts for themselves. We search for information we don't even care about. Nina Shen Rastogi confessed in Double X, 'My boyfriend has threatened to break up with me if I keep whipping out my iPhone to look up random facts about celebrities when we're out to dinner.' We reach the point that we wonder about our sanity. Virginia Heffernan in the New York Times said she became so obsessed with Twitter posts about the Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrest that she spent days 'refreshing my search like a drugged monkey.'"

The Encultured Brain: Why Neuroanthropology? Why Now? « Neuroanthropology

"Neuroanthropology places the brain and nervous system at the center of discussions about human nature, recognizing that much of what makes us distinctive inheres in the size, specialization, and dynamic openness of the human nervous system. By starting with neural physiology and its variability, neuroanthropology situates itself from the beginning in the interaction of nature and culture, the inextricable interweaving of developmental unfolding and evolutionary endowment.

Our brain and nervous system are our cultural organs. While virtually all parts of the human body—skeleton, muscles, joints, guts—bear the stamp of our behavioral variety, our nervous system is especially immature at birth, our brain disproportionately small in relation to its adult size and disproportionately susceptible to cultural sculpting. Compared to other mammals, our first year of life finds our brain developing as if in utero, immersed in language, social interaction, and the material world when other species are still shielded by their mother’s body from this outside world. This immersion means that our ideas about ourselves and how we want to raise our children affect the environmental niche in which our nervous system unfolds, influencing gene expression and developmental processes to the cellular level.

Increasingly, neuroscientists are finding evidence of functional differences in brain activity and architecture between cultural groups, occupations, and individuals with different skill sets. The implication for neuroanthropology is obvious: forms of enculturation, social norms, training regimens, ritual, and patterns of experience shape how our brains work and are structured. But the predominant reason that culture becomes embodied, even though many anthropologists overlook it, is that neuroanatomy inherently makes experience material. Without material change in the brain, learning, memory, maturation, and even trauma could not happen. Neural systems adapt through long-term refinement and remodeling, which leads to deep enculturation. Through systematic change in the nervous system, the human body learns to orchestrate itself as well as it eventually does. Cultural concepts and meanings become anatomy."

Life in the Universe by Prof. Stephen Hawking | Rational Vedanta

"In this talk, I would like to speculate a little, on the development of life in the universe, and in particular, the development of intelligent life. I shall take this to include the human race, even though much of its behaviour through out history, has been pretty stupid, and not calculated to aid the survival of the species. Two questions I shall discuss are, 'What is the probability of life existing else where in the universe?' and, 'How may life develop in the future?'"

Building the Broadband Economy from the Bottom Up: A Community Informatics Approach to BB and Economic Development - telecentre.org

High speed Internet at relatively affordable prices is rapidly becoming available in large parts of both the developed and developing worlds. This means that the technical restrictions on high volume information access and transaction management, very high speed communications at a distance, and a highly expanded range of Internet and information management capabilities are rapidly disappearing. The challenge remains however, as to how those at the grassroots and particularly in developing countries can take advantage of these developments to improve their level of economic well-being, access to employment and to the realization of additional opportunities for themselves and their children. The risk is that high speed Internet will result in more drain from local economies into more highly developed and capital intensive applications and their centralized and corporate sponsors rather than a move of resources and development in the other direction. The challenge is to examine these broadband initiatives, explore the risks and identify the opportunities associated with these and identify means for realizing opportunities at the grassroots for broadband use through the development of bottom-up community based – community informatics – strategies and applications."

OfNewswise — Body and Mind, and Deep Meditation

"Chinese researchers have unlocked the mechanism of an emerging mind-body technique that produces measurable changes in attention and stress reduction in just five days of practice.

The practice -- integrative body-mind training (IBMT) -- was adapted from traditional Chinese medicine in the 1990s in China, where it is practiced by thousands of people. It is now being taught to undergraduates involved in research on the method at the University of Oregon."

YouTube - Limits of Conversational Structure | Jeff Conklin

Rational Vedanta

"Articles
Keep in touch with contemporary views in Rational and Vedantic thought thru these essays by prominent scholars and philosophers of the day — sometimes controversial but always interesting and thought provoking."

Biographies
These biographies look into the lives and philosophies of some of the greatest thinkers the world has ever known both eastern and western; Vyasa, Sankara, Ramanuja, Madhva, Chaitanya, Saraswati, etc — Pythagoras, Plato, Spinoza, Hegel, Freud, Sagan, etc. Explore what their contributions have been and how they have influenced our concepts of life today. Discover the similarities and differences between the eastern and western minds of the ancient and modern worlds.

Half an Hour: Things You Really Need to Learn

"Guy Kawasaki last week wrote an item describing 'ten things you should learn this school year' in which readers were advised to learn how to write five sentence emails, create powerpoint slides, and survive boring meetings. It was, to my view, advice on how to be a business today. My view is that people are worth more than that, that pleasing your boss should be the least of your concerns, and that genuine learning means something more than how to succeed in a business environment...Here, then, is my list...And to educators, I ask, if you are not teaching these things in your classes, why are you not?"

Can 'Freemiums' Save the News? - Chris Anderson

Flashing on Transparency - RecruitingBlogs.com

"'The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made' Jean Giraudoux (French diplomat and novelist).

Transparency is just another buzzword that means very little and has virtually no bearing on how people actually behave.

Transparency and authenticity are the latest attempt by some very earnest do-gooders to make accountability fashionable. But people who are trying to avoid being accountable don't care much about fashion, unless they can use it to their own advantage.

They may be wearing a see through raincoat, but I guarantee there's boxers, or at least, a thong underneath. And don’t get me started on Spanx."

Global Neighbourhoods: OK, it's 'Lethal Generosity,' but I'm going to need your help

"Let me explain; Lethal Generosity is the business strategy of doing as much good for your customer as possible, thereby screwing your competitor who has to either follow your lead or ignore programs that serve them."

Obama Beats Jesus In Top 10 Heroes Poll | PunkLuckBlog

"The Hinudstan Times reported that Barack Obama beat Jesus Christ to be American’s number one hero. This report was written in response to a new Harris Poll on the top heroes for American’s."

Human Brain Could Be Replicated In 10 Years, Researcher Predicts | ScienceDaily

"A model that replicates the functions of the human brain is feasible in 10 years according to neuroscientist Professor Henry Markram of the Brain Mind Institute in Switzerland. 'I absolutely believe it is technically and biologically possible. The only uncertainty is financial. It is an extremely expensive project and not all is yet secured.'"

That was the week that was...Week ending September 25, 2009 - RecruitingBlogs.com

"I missed RecruitFest...and that was the week that was"