Thursday, June 3, 2010

July 03 2010 Update


I've not always been the one with information, I too was only searching for truth.
What I found was not pretty, as disgusting as this oil spill.


I have took a good look at what has been happening this last year and put it in this blog. Some of you have commented on my postings in various ways and I applaud you all for your participation.

Although I am not neccicarily happy with these tags that have accumulated here, it is what has been published on the internet and much of it is just news from official sources. I want to catalogue this information and explore its subject matter more deeply, to ascertain the truth of their matters.
.


.
.
.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Mexico condemns US border death after stun gun use

Mexico has demanded a full investigation into the death of one of its citizens after he was beaten and shot with electric stun guns by US border patrol agents.

The incident happened as Anastasio Hernandez was about to be deported from the US state of California.

A spokeswoman for the US Border Patrol said its officers had acted in self defence after he became violent.

Mr Hernandez had lived and worked in California for more than 20 years.

In a statement, the Mexican foreign ministry expressed its "indignation" and condemned the events that led to his death.

Mr Hernandez died in a hospital near San Diego on Monday, three days after he was beaten and shot with Taser stun guns as agents tried to deport him.

The US justice department and local police are investigating the incident.

The Border Patrol said Mr Hernandez had tried to escape when his handcuffs were removed as he was about to be deported at the San Ysidro border crossing, and agents had used appropriate force to subdue him.

But Mexican human rights groups said agents had been seen beating him even after he stopped moving.

Mr Hernandez had worked in the San Diego area for more than 20 years without the proper documents, and had five children.

Mexicans make up three-quarters of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the US, and the issue has long been a source of tension between the two neighbours.

Hundreds of thousands of Mexicans are deported or voluntarily repatriated from the US each year.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10211188.stm
Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

An Enemy Of The People by Henrik Ibsen


An Enemy of the People
by
Henrik Ibsen

Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Choosing Life Over Death; The Process Of Letting Go

:: Authentic Happiness :: Using the new Positive Psychology

Authentic Happiness has almost 700000 registered users around the world. ... as well as psychological interventions that increase individual happiness. ...
www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/


tree of life by ~Milli85.deviantart.com

" a new branch of psychology which focuses on the empirical study of such things as positive emotions, strengths-based character, and healthy institutions "

We are trying to build a better world while
the old world snaps as wolves at our heels.

http://growinglocaleconomies.com/
Supporting Local Entrepreneurs

Every community wants to grow its local economy and achieve greater prosperity. Every community desires to be a location where people want to live, engage in meaningful work, and pursue their passions. In short, every community wants to be a vibrant, safe, and livable place.

A growing body of research has revealed that the traditional economic development emphasis on recruiting or attracting businesses is no longer sufficient to grow economies in most localities. A new model has emerged in theory and practice: supporting local entrepreneurs as an economic development strategy.

Programs such as Economic Gardening, pioneered by the City of Littleton, Colorado; Energizing Entrepreneurship institutes; business retention and expansion programs; and Hometown Competitiveness all focus on helping local entrepreneurs become more successful and bring more wealth into the local economy.

Our definition of an entrepreneur is “someone who perceives an opportunity and creates and grows an organization to pursue it.” In our view entrepreneurship encompasses not only high-tech enterprises seeking venture capital, but small business owners pursuing their passion to create a manufacturing, retail, or service business, or to start a nonprofit endeavor.

Our mission at Growing Local Economies is to help local communities become more prosperous by leveraging their assets to support local entrepreneurs. We can help you find the best solutions for your community by working with you to identify the local assets, potential partners, and technical resources needed to create and sustain an entrepreneurial support initiative.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Russian Army Members trample and burn United States flag


http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=62c_1275407379

Why can't we all just get along?

Flag desecration is a term applied to various acts that intentionally destroy, damage or deface a flag, most often a national flag. Often, such action is intended to make a political point against a country or its policies.

One vitally important issue in the debate over burning and desecrating the American flag tends to be ignored: what exactly does the American flag mean and why? The American flag is a symbol, which is to say that it represents America itself. Therefore, the question of what the American flag means is necessarily a question about what America means and what it stands for.

This isn’t a peripheral matter but instead brings together just about every other aspect of political, legal, and social debate. When self-proclaimed “defenders” of the flag talk about their attempts to prohibit the physical desecration of the American flag, they typically make reference to the idea that the flag is a symbol of national unity, freedom, or patriotism, and therefore that the government has an obligation to protect it.

The ironic truth is that the very act of burning the American flag is itself a statement about what the flag means and what America stands for. Although protesters who burn the flag certainly undermine traditional concepts of national unity or patriotism, is that what they are really attacking? Not necessarily.

Typically, flag burners believe very fervently in freedom and liberty, and in fact are charging the nation with “betraying its ideals” as the burners understand them. To the protesters, the flag has come to represent what the nation has done wrong and how it has become hypocritical. By burning it, they may be attempting to burn away the nation’s sins and call attention to changes which they think must be made, or they may simply be trying to highlight all the negative things which have collected on the flag and on America.

Whatever their intent, their actions are inextricably tied to what they perceive the flag to mean and what their perceive America as standing for — for good and for ill. The act of burning or desecrating an American flag simply cannot separated from the message being communicated, and that, in turn, cannot be separated from how people perceive the symbolism of the American flag.

Those in authority reject the idea that the flag carries negative meanings, however, and insist that their meanings are what must take precedence. By attempting to prohibit flag burning, they are in essence using the law to enforce their interpretations of the flag and require everyone else to abide by them. In a way, they are attempting to create a copyright on the symbol and/or institution.

Most Americans invest a lot of very personal meaning in their flag, and when someone attacks it, they tend to get emotional about it. It’s fair that the government would encourage people to invest particular meanings in the flag, but that’s quite different from trying to enforce particular meanings.

When those in power try to create a single accepted meaning and use the law to copyright the symbol itself, they are essentially forcing everyone else to become political and social outsiders. Bans on flag burning and desecration are a way to avoid discussing what the flag as a symbol means and what America itself should stand for. They are saying to everyone: “This is our country. This is our flag. If you don’t adopt our meanings, you don’t belong.”

Of course, it is precisely such attitudes which dissidents tend to protest. If someone burns or desecrates an American flag in order to protest the government or express opposition to something about America, there’s a good chance that they are expressing opposition to attitudes like the ones described above. As a consequence, the act of imposing bans on burning or desecrating the American flag will probably have the opposite effect of what supporters intend: rather than encouraging people to see America and the flag in their preferred way, people will come to invest them with even more negative interpretations. This is why bans on flag burning only serve to encourage flag burning.

Symbols have meanings and we can’t debate how we treat symbols while ignoring the underlying disagreements about what those meanings are and what they should be. Those inclined to support bans on flag burning and desecration should engage the debate fairly by dealing with the substantive issues rather than undercutting it by denying people the right to express what their understandings of the flag and America are. If a person can express positive meanings of the flag by waving it, others can express negative meanings by burning it.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Young Barack "Barry Soetoro" Obama

Young Barack Obama

Dmitry on 06 09 09


Barack Obama, 1980. Photos by Lisa Jack / M+B Gallery.













Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Gaza Flotilla Raid

Israeli Knesset Member: Israel Wanted High Number Of Fatalities
Navy Commander: "Next time we'll use more force"

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Tuesday, Jun 1st, 2010

A member of the Israeli Knesset, the legislative branch of the Israeli government, who was on board the Marmara ship when it was ambushed by IDF troops, has told reporters that the intention of the raid was to kill as many on board as they could in order to ward off others from attempting to reach Gaza by sea.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/israeli-knesset-member-israel-wanted-high-number-of-fatalities.html

Did Activists Attack Israeli Soldiers In Self-Defense?
Newly released footage raises fresh questions about tragic seizure of aid flotilla
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Newly released video footage of the Israeli raid on a humanitarian aid ship heading to Gaza shows passengers attacking IDF soldiers before they landed on board, but activists claim this was a legitimate response to the fact that commandoes had already fired upon and killed at least one passenger before they attempted to seize the ship.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Anthropomimetic Machines

ECCEROBOT - Embodied Cognition in a Compliantly Engineered Robot





Nokia Workshop on Machine Consciousness 2008
34
An anthropomimetic robot with imagination: one step closer to
machine consciousness?
Hugo Gravato Marques, Rob Knight, Richard Newcombe and Owen Holland
Department of Computer Science
University of Essex
Colchester, CO4 3SQ, UK
hgmarq@essex.ac.uk rrknight@gmail.com
r.a.newcombe@gmail.com owen@essex.ac.uk
Abstract
The possible role of the self-model in consciousness has received much attention recently, particularly in
connection with the theories of Metzinger [11] and Damasio [4]. However, a self-model can also play a
variety of useful functional roles within a system; indeed, it may well be that the evolutionary history of the
self-model at the core of consciousness may have begun in the context of one of these functional roles. This
paper explores the use of a self-model in the plausible candidate context of providing better action selection
through the imagination and evaluation of possible self-world interactions; we call this ’functional
imagination’.
Functional imagination can roughly be described as the purposeful manipulation of information that is
not directly available to the senses - references to imagination always point to something that in reality is not
there. One important subjective aspect of imagination is the phenomenon of imagery. This refers to the
pseudo-sensory experience we have when we recall a scene from memory, when we imagine something we
have never experienced, or when we imagine a future action. This raises a key question: since during
imagination the world is not providing us with these sensations, what sort of mechanism is doing it for us? A
good candidate for answering the question is the observation that, when imagining or recalling something,
humans (and some animals) appear to use the same sensorimotor machinery that they use for real perceptions
and actions; the similarity between the real and imagined sensations is therefore quite understandable.
However, in order to be useful, imagination also needs to provide us with information about the likely
consequences of actions, and so a mechanism is needed for translating imagined motor actions into sensorybased
representations of their consequences. In [6], Hesslow proposes that some associative mechanism
performs this function, which he calls anticipation; more generally, the imagined motor actions must serve as
the input into a suitable forward model, the output of which is the appropriate activation of the sensory areas.
The idea that the brain uses models for prediction is not new [3], but it seems to have been reinvigorated by
the recent rise of embodiment-inspired theories of cognition (see [4], [1], [5]).
One of the goals of our research is to develop an understanding of functional imagination through the
design and implementation of a variety of different architectures (see [8], [9]). In this talk we describe a
successful implementation of a typical architecture on CRONOS, a robot that is probably one of the most
extreme attempts to imitate the human skeleto-muscular system [2] [7]. As well as being structurally
complex, with 42 degrees of freedom, CRONOS uses elastically driven actuators with similar properties to
muscles, and therefore has extremely complex dynamics, making it very difficult to control. The challenge of
developing a forward model of CRONOS and its environment that accurately simulated the consequences of
a given motor activation, and represented those consequences in sensory-based terms, was dealt with by
using physics based techniques to build SIMNOS [10], a detailed model of CRONOS which captures both its
geometry and its dynamics. SIMNOS operates within a physics based model of the environment, ensuring
the predictive value of any interactions. By visually rendering both SIMNOS and the environment, the
outcomes of interactions are made available in sensory-based terms. In the experiments, CRONOS is
required to knock down an object placed on a table. Instead of finding the appropriate action through overt
trial and error, CRONOS uses the internal model (SIMNOS) for simulating possible actions, and uses its
sensory system to evaluate their outcomes. Once a suitable action is found in simulation it is executed
overtly.
We can now claim to have successfully implemented a model of functional imagination on a robot with
a degree of structural complexity approaching that of a human. It may now be possible to use this platform to
Nokia Workshop on Machine Consciousness 2008
35
study the further development of the robot’s self-model in directions relevant to the emerging discipline of
machine consciousness.
References
[1] Lawrence Barsalou. Perceptual symbol systems. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22:577–660, 1999.
[2] Francesco Berton, Lorenzo Jamone, Giulio Sandini, and Giorgio Metta. Accurate control of a human-like tendondriven
neck. In C. Grimes, E. Dickey, and M. Pishko, editors, The Encyclopedia of Sensors, volume X, pages 1–
16. American Scientific Publishers, 2005.
[3] Kenneth Craik. The Nature of Explanation. Cambridge University Press., Cambridge, England, 1943.
[4] Antonio Damasio. The Feeling of What Happens. Vintage, New York, 1999.
[5] Rick Grush. The emulation theory of representation - motor control, imagery, and perception. Behavioral and Brain
Sciences, 27:377–442, 2004.
[6] Germund Hesslow. Conscious thought as simulation of behaviour and perception. Trends in Cognitive Science, 6(6),
2002.
[7] Owen Holland and Rob Knight. The anthropomimetic principle. In Jeremy Burn and Myra Wilson, editors,
Proceedings of the AISB06 Symposium on Biologically Inspired Robotics, 2006.
[8] Hugo Marques and Owen Holland. Architectures for embodied imagination. Neurocomputing, 2008. In press.
[9] Hugo Marques, Owen Holland, and Richard Newcombe. A modelling framework for functional imagination. In
Proceedings of the AISB08 Symposium on Computing and Philosophy, 2008.
[10] Hugo Marques, Richard Newcombe, and Owen Holland. Controlling and anthropomimetic robot: A preliminary
investigation. In Proceedings of ECAL2007., Lisbon, 2007. Springer Verlag.
[11] T. Metzinger. Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity. MIT-Bradford, 2003.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Volcano in Guatemala, Sinkhole Gets Bigger




Thousands of people flee the Pacaya volcano in Guatemala and the Tungurahua volcano in Ecuador following eruptions. (BBC) (CBC)

Guatemala City, Guatemala (CNN) -- The death toll from the eruption of a volcano in Guatemala has risen to at least three people, an official said Friday.

Two villagers from El Bejucal and a reporter from CNN affiliate Noti 7 were killed as a result of Thursday's eruption of the Pacaya volcano, said David de Leon, a spokesman for the national disaster commission.

The three victims were crushed by rocks strewn by the volcano.

Pacaya, located about 18 miles (30 kilometers) south of Guatemala City, began spewing ash and soot Thursday evening.

Ecuador eruption closes airport

Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom declared a state of calamity for 15 days and called for calm as the eruption spread ash over the capital, prompting evacuations and shutting down the city's international airport.

Four people were missing as evacuations continued, the president said.

At least 1,800 people have been placed in shelters after four villages near the volcano were evacuated, de Leon said.

The runway at La Aurora International Airport -- the third busiest airport in Central America in terms of passenger traffic -- was covered with ash and was closed Friday, Colom said.

About 25 percent of the airport's daily flights had to be diverted to alternative airports after La Aurora was closed Thursday evening, said Monica Monje with Civil Aeronautics.

The states of Guatemala, Escuintla and Sacatepequez were hardest hit. Classes were canceled Friday in Escuintla and Guatemala states, Colom said.

A slight rain that fell over the area mixed with the ash, hindering visibility.

Alejandro Estrada Garcia, a 21-year-old student in Guatemala City, filed a CNN iReport detailing his difficulties.

"I was returning from the university," he said. "It was really hard to drive because the ash was coming down with a bit of rain, so it was kind of muddy and really hard to get off the windshield. I drove with my window open so I could see."

Said iReporter Josue Rendon: "The scene was chilling. All night, it was raining sand!"

The volcanic ash led to some traffic mishaps, Rendon said.

"The houses in Guatemala City were not damaged, but all the streets are filled with sand," he wrote in English. "Have been reported several traffic accidents due to skidding of cars."

Another iReporter expressed his concern. Luis Morales, 27, said he lives in a Guatemala City neighborhood called Villa Hermosa, about 10 miles from the volcano.

"I'm worried for all the families that remain at the volcano area," he said.

iReporters are CNN viewers who share their images and stories.

Pacaya had been dormant for a century until 1965, when it erupted again. It has been active since.

Its summit has an elevation of 8,373 feet (2,552 meters).

Pacaya was the first of two volcanoes to erupt in Latin American since Thursday.

Ecuador's Tungurahua volcano, which has erupted periodically since 1999, came to life again Friday. Residents of two nearby villages were evacuated, but there were no reports of deaths or injuries.

CNN's Gustavo Valdes and journalists Bertha Ramos-Rodriguez and Alexia Rios Hayashi contributed to this report.



At least three people die, at least four others are missing, a 15-day state of calamity is declared and the international airport is shut down due to the eruption of the Pacaya volcano in Guatemala. (CNN)

GUATEMALA SINKHOLE



The water eroded the soil to such an extent that the sinkhole in Guatemala formed almost instantly. For now, it appears that no one saw it coming, although the soil had to have been unstable before Tropical Storm Agatha hit. Hurricanes and earthquakes have exposed the instability of buildings, roads and levees, yet it appears natural disasters can still cause some surprises. The nation can repair the damage by the storm, but repairing the sinkhole in Guatemala in 2010 seems like too tall of a task. Officials already have to worry about the missing, the dying, and the thousands that were evacuated and are living in shelters. At the moment, people and buildings are the major concern, as the country hopes that the rest of the ground is stable enough to hold them. Sources CNN- “Tropical storm leaves at least 115 dead in Central America” Gizmodo- “The Gates Of Hell Just Opened In Guatemala”
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

Wake Up Forum Topics

http://wakeup2010.blogspot.com/2010/07/wakeup2010-is-back.html

http://canadalovesglobalism.blogspot.com/

http://oilwaterworld.blogspot.com/

http://wakeup2010.blogspot.com/2010/07/theres-no-fate-but-what-we-make.html