7
Dec
Posts Tagged ‘freedom’
It’s 7 a.m., and the fascist birds in his cuckoo clock are going to make sure this poor sap gets up and into the bath! Little Napoleons and Kaisers get a Metropolis-type but fantastically whimsical assembly line going and pretty soon everybody’s in! The catchy Vaudeville-inspired tune will have you tapping your toes all day. Atomfilms.com
http://www.figlimigliproductions.com/index.php
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- Image by Getty Images via Daylife
These are my links for December 6th from 00:18 to 00:18:
- The Harper Index – A Stephen Harper Timeline – A chronological look at Harper’s career reveals a willingness to dump old friends for new ones.
Related articles by Zemanta
- PM and Tories hang on
- Hard-right Tory ideology has put the PM in a bind
- Canada PM sees opposition revolt
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Tags: Breadcrumbs, Canada, freedom, politics
Image via Wikipedia
Stafford Beer 1926 – 2002
If, as will become the dominant theme of this blog, the Purpose of a System is What it Does ( POSIWID) what does it mean to mankind that so many of our systems appear broken to even unseasoned observers?
Stafford Beer of course had a lot to say on this subject in his many works but one example that often haunts me comes from his work of prose Chronicles of Wizard Prang.
Tags: cybernetics, design, freedom, POSIWID, software, systems
These are my links for November 15th from 14:47 to 14:47:
- Lee Smolin on science and democracy | Video on TED.com – Physicist Lee Smolin talks about how the scientific community works: as he puts it, “we fight and argue as hard as we can,” but everyone accepts that the next generation of scientists will decide who’s right. And, he says, that’s how democracy works, too.
Designing Freedom by Stafford Beer
My review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
I finally got my own copy of this book (which I’ve been looking for it since about 1990)…
I’d forgotten just how great it is.
I’ve been angered lately about the number of absolute falsehoods spread by ALL sides in both current election campaigns (USA and Canada) – sometimes on purpose, often because they simply “don’t get it.” This book covers some of the reason this is endemic in our societies and at least gives me some hope that someday the leaders of our systems of governance will discover the route to stabilizing our systems. But for now I shake my head in fear and anguish.
Tags: CBC, cybernetics, design, freedom, Massey Lectures, Stafford Beer
22
Sep
Lessons Forgot
40+ years ago the cyberneticist Stafford Beer forecast that computerization would be a disaster if this “new” prescription of Shirky’s was not followed [Clay Shirky (shirky.com) It's Not Information Overload. It's Filter Failure delivered at the Web 2.0 Expo last week].
In a later radio broadcast summarizing some of his concepts (CBC Radio 1973; later published as “Designing Freedom” Anansi) Beer summarized the need this way:
Tags: CBC, Clay Shirky, cybernetics, design, filters, freedom, ignorance, Stafford Beer, systems
20
Sep
The End of America
from the cover: “…. Naomi Wolf compels us to face the way our free America is under assault. She warns us — with the straight-to-fellow-citizens urgency of one of Thomas Paine’s revolutionary pamphlets — that we have little time to lose if our children are to live in real freedom.Wolf shows that there are ten classic steps dictators or would-be dictators always take when they wish to close down an open society. Each of those ten steps is now underway in the United States Today.”
Tags: freedom
19
Sep
Whose Freedom?
From the cover: “Since September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has relentlessly invoked the word “freedom.” Al-Qaeda attacted us because “they hate our freedoms.” The United States can strike preemptively because “freedom is on the march.” Social Security should be privatized in order to protect individual freedoms.In Whose Freedom?, Lakoff surveys the political landscape and offers an essential map of the Republican battle that seeks to capture the hearts and minds of Americans — and shows how progressives can fight to reinvigorate this most beloved of American political ideas.”
Series
NASA image of the day
Heads of Agency International Space Station
The heads of the International Space Station (ISS) agencies from Canada, Europe, Japan, Russia and the United States met in Tokyo, Japan, on March 11, 2010, to review ISS cooperation. From the left are Dr. Keiji Tachikawa, President of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, Charles Bolden, NASA Administrator; Jean-Jacques Dordain, Director General of the European Space Agency; Anatoly N. Permirov, Head of the Russian Space Agency; and, Dr. Steve MacLean, President of the Canadian Space Agency. With the assembly of the ISS nearing completion and the capability to support a full-time crew of six established, they noted the outstanding opportunities now offered by the ISS for on-orbit research and for discovery including the operation and management of the world's largest international space complex. The heads of agency reaffirmed the importance of full exploitation of the station's scientific, engineering, utilization, and education potential. They noted that there are no identified technical constraints to continuing ISS operations beyond the current planning horizon, and that the partnership is currently working to certify on-orbit elements through 2028. They emphasized their common intent to undertake the necessary procedures within their respective governments to reach consensus later this year on the continuation of the ISS to the next decade. Image Credit: JAXA
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