Social net offers new perspective

reposted from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6989327.stm

Social net offers new perspective

Social networking has extended friendships around the globe

Columnist Bill Thompson asks whether social networking could underpin a new politics of connection.

When BBC reporter Michael Buerk brought us film of the starving children of Ethiopia in 1984 it motivated the country to action.

In 1985 Bob Geldof and Midge Ure's Live Aid raised millions of pounds, and the attendant publicity put humanitarian aid onto the agenda of the senior politicians of the day, forcing Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe to take seriously an issue which they had not, hitherto, seen as a high priority.

Twenty years later Geldof was at it again, though the cultural and political impact of Live 8 was diminished for many by the sight of too many millionaire rock stars seeking to revive their careers on the back of the world's poor.

But something else had changed. In 2005 we didn't need the Six O'Clock News to bring us pictures from Darfur or Bangladesh, and we didn't need the journalistic talents of Buerk and others to tell the stories in a way that made it impossible not to respond.

The internet, through the web, instant messaging, email and its other applications, had brought the world into our living rooms - and our offices, classrooms, cafes, clubs, bars and railway carriages.

The last decade of the twentieth century saw a transformation in the forms of communication available to the lucky billion with easy access to the network, and the impact on the way we perceived the world was immense.

Greater understanding

Online tools has transformed the way we view major events

Those new technologies kept me glued to my computer in Cambridge on that sun-filled New York morning six years ago when the Twin Towers fell, watching the TV feed, reading the news websites and talking online with friends in London, the USA and elsewhere.

Richard was in Sydney, Australia, but his colleagues from the US office worked in the World Trade Center, and I shared his concern and grief, telling him what I could learn from the BBC and other sources unavailable to him.

Now the power of that technology is even greater, and its impact on the way we understand the world will go far beyond letting us see our holiday destinations on Google Earth or finding the best bar in Brooklyn via Steven Johnson's outside.in.

The world wide web has always been about more than just online publishing and Tim Berners-Lee, its inventor, has often spoken of its importance in promoting greater understanding between people.

Now the growth of online social networks is transforming the web's ability to teach us about one another, not in broad terms but as individuals, with our hopes, aspirations and separate but equally important lives.

I have 332 Facebook friends, which my girlfriend claims makes me a 'facebook tart'. It's true that

a significant number of them are people I have never met and am unlikely ever to bump into, but that doesn't mean that I can't enjoy being part of this disparate social network, or enjoy knowing who is reading what, which events they are attending or what their problems and triumphs are.

The people I see and chat to on Facebook, and on MySpace and Orkut and the other social sites I belong to, are real people.

New friends

The distribution of my friends reflects the distribution of the network Bill Thompson

I share in their daily lives, and learn something of what it is like to be an expatriate Iranian in Canada (hi, Hoder), or a Delhi blogger like Amit or a Nigerian journalist like Edetaen.

The distribution of my friends reflects the distribution of the network and of the advanced technology needed to post on a blog, chat online or maintain a profile on one of the social sites, but it is already changing as the technology spreads further.

Smartphones, perfectly capable of accessing Facebook, are spreading through sub-Saharan Africa as people realise that they are cheaper, easier to operate and more usable than desktop PCs.

Eventually, the people with the phones are going to start using these new sites, and I imagine many more listeners to the BBC's Digital Planet - a radio programme devoted to the way technology touches lives around the world - will come online and join in the conversation. As one of Digital Planet's regular contributors, I hope some of them will add me as a friend on one of the social sites.

Students coming back to UK universities from gap years abroad will find that their friend lists include mates from Somalia, Siam and Syria, and anyone with even a passing interest in global politics will find that their friendship networks cover the globe.

What will happen when these people start dying in famines or wars, or when the climate changes caused by global warming lead to floods and droughts and natural disasters?

What happens when the photos on Facebook and Flickr show devastated crops and starving families - and these people are not just faces on the television but old friends, people whose likes and dislikes and reading habits and favourite films we know and share?

The world is different when it's the people you know, and I do not think we will be able to resist the forces of change when our friends are dying on screen, in front of us, and we know that we could do something but have decided not to.

---

Bill Thompson is an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet.

Iran Blocks Access To Google

clipped from news.yahoo.com TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran has blocked access to the Google search engine and its Gmail email service as part of a clampdown on material deemed to be offensive, the Mehr news agency reported on Monday. "I can confirm these sites have been filtered," said Hamid Shahriari, the secretary of Iran's National Council of Information. He did not explain why the sites were being blocked. Google, Gmail and several other foreign sites appeared to be inaccessible to Iranian users from Monday morning. Iran has tough censorship on cultural products and internet access, banning thousands of websites and blogs containing sexual and politically critical material as well as women's rights and social networking sites. The rules are applied by Internet Service Providers who use filtering programmes to prevent access to the banned sites. Iran is in the midst of one of its toughest moral crackdowns in years, which has already seen thousands of women warned for failing to obey Islamic dress rules.

Misplaced Deity Sought By Christians

clipped from www.turoks.net So, I'm standing at a bus stop and they pull up. A car load of well meaning, bible thumping nut cases that are just frantic! The middle aged professionally dressed woman rushes forward...She takes my arm and with trembling voice, she asks...."Have you found Jesus?" Her eyes plead with an urgency that is out of proportion to a bus stop. So calmly as I can muster, without being sarcastic, I reply, "You people lost him, again?" "What is wrong with you Christians? Every time I turn around you've lost Him!" I hit her with a glare of accusation. "I mean really..." I take a measured breath. "How do you expect to have anyone follow a deity that you can't even find?" "Of course, you Christians aren't much fun," I continue. By now they are all out of the car. Befuddled, aghast, and at a loss for words. "Of course," I offer trying to give them some defense for losing Jesus. "He could have left due to religious differences. If I remember correctly, He was Jewish.

10 Great Math Tricks to Do Calculations in Your Head

this is a great detailed list of helpful math tricks, most of them I didn't know before.

clipped from listverse.com 10 Easy Arithmetic Tricks clipped from listverse.com 1. The 11 Times Trick We all know the trick when multiplying by ten - add 0 to the end of the number, but did you know there is an equally easy trick for multiplying a two digit number by 11? This is it: Take the original number and imagine a space between the two digits (in this example we will use 52: 5_2 Now add the two numbers together and put them in the middle: 5_(5+2)_2 That is it - you have the answer: 572. If the numbers in the middle add up to a 2 digit number, just insert the second number and add 1 to the first: 9_(9+9)_9 (9+1)_8_9 10_8_9 1089 - It works every time. 2. Quick Square If you need to square a 2 digit number ending in 5, you can do so very easily with this trick. Mulitply the first digit by itself + 1, and put 25 on the end. That is all! 252 = (2x(2+1)) & 25 2 x 3 = 6 625 3. Multiply by 5 Most people memorize the 5 times tables very easily, but when you get in to larger numbers it gets more complex - or does it? This trick is super easy.

Courage in our convictions - help prevent an attack on Iran.

reposted from: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/conor_foley/2007/09/courage_in_our_convictions.html

Courage in our convictions

We will need to develop better arguments than last time if we are to help prevent an attack on Iran.

Conor Foley

September 19, 2007 5:00 PM

As the drumbeat towards an attack on Iran grows ever louder, the European left rush to positions which seem doomed to ensure that history will repeat itself as tragedy and farce. Bernard Kouchner has already offered himself as the new champion of Tony Blair's "muscular liberalism" while the Stop the War Coalition marks out their "it's all about the oil stupid " territory. Unless the multilateralist left stakes out an alternative soon, these two views are likely to define the terms of the subsequent debate again.

Despite the largest ever popular demonstration on the streets of Britain in the runup to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the revolt against the war inside the parliamentary Labour party collapsed. Its two leading opponents, Clare Short and Robin Cook, failed to coordinate their activities and Short fatally damaged the campaign with her disastrous flip-flopping on the eve of the vote.

One of the factors inhibiting both Cook and Short was that they still supported the "liberal interventionist" arguments advanced to justify Nato's intervention in Kosovo without a UN mandate. Short also accepted the legal reasoning of the attorney general at face value. Her claim that the war was "unequivocally legal" showed an unwillingness to engage with the most basic concepts of international law, or familiarise herself with what actually what happened in Kosovo. Sadly, she was far from the only one and this allowed both arguments to go by default.

Kouchner may prove an even more credible advocate of flouting the UN charter's provisions on the use of force in the coming months - since he has already been doing it - and there will doubtless be many more criticisms to come of human rights violations by the reactionary and repressive Iranian regime.

However, these are not best dealt with by dismissing all the evidence against this government as Andrew Murray, chair of the Stop the War coalition, seems to believe. Clearly

there are grounds for thinking that the Iranians may actually be seeking nuclear weapons and destabilising their immediate neighbours. While the evidence is not conclusive, these are real issues and ignoring them is not only unconvincing, it is tactically inept. It is plainly not "all about the oil"

and failing to even acknowledge this is an abdication from the more serious discussions.

A military attack on Iran would be a catastrophe, which would make the world a much more dangerous place.

However, as Stephen Kinzer rightly points out, the sheer insanity of the plan may not be enough to stop it. Many of the same arguments also applied to Iraq, after all, so how can we be more convincing next time around?

This will be the first major foreign policy test of Brown's new government and the next few weeks could be crucial. The political conferences have already started and parliament is about to return.

Opponents of an attack need to advance a clear, credible position that builds an alliance strong enough to withstand the pressure it is likely to come under. The central point must surely be respect for international law, as laid out in the UN charter, and for a diplomatic resolution to be achieved through the UN's structures.

That will not necessarily rule out the use of force, but

members of parliament should demand that this must be explicitly authorised by a UN security council resolution. Any unilateral military action outside of this framework should be recognised as illegal acts of aggression.

This probably reflects the view of most senior UN officials and chimes with the advice that Brown may be receiving from one of his new foreign ministers, Mark Malloch Brown. Model resolutions, petitions and early day motions can help to stake out the ground - which would mark a significant break from the failures of the recent past.

Brown's first foreign policy success was to get an agreed UN resolution for the deployment of an international peace-keeping force to Darfur. The previous sabre-rattling of Bush and Blair was plainly ineffective, since no one seriously believed that the west was actually contemplating military action there, but, by taking its "responsibility to protect" seriously on this occasion, the UN helped to restore its credibility as an effective multinational institution

. The British government should again publicly state that the UN security council will be given the last word on the use of force.

This is a different position to those, like Andrew Murray, who appear to believe that

Tehran should be defended against any military action at all costs

, so it is probably a good idea to establish this difference clearly at an early stage. Although the Stop the War coalition frequently refers to the invasion of Iraq as being illegal, it rarely refers to the fact that the UN did authorise military action in Afghanistan and has given a mandate to the post-war administration of both countries. If the arguments about international legality are not a central part of this campaign's political case then it should stop making them. If they are it needs to stop displaying such selective political amnesia.

The liberal left also need to nail their colours more firmly to the mast. We always seems to be at our weakest when thinking about foreign policy issues and all too often allow ourselves to be seduced by easy cliches and simplistic notions. This is part of the reason why we are so often impatient with diplomacy and multilateral institutions during crises such as Darfur. But defending these also now represents the best chance there is for ensuring a peaceful end to impasse. This needs to be stated more loudly in the days ahead.

March to the Labour Party Conference Monday 24 September 2007

reposted from: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/

March to the Labour Party Conference Monday 24 September

March to the Labour Party Conference! No more wars. Monday 24 September, 12.30pm. Meet at Exeter Crescent, Central Bournemouth The illegal invasion of Iraq, and subsequent occupation, has cost the lives of 655,000 Iraqis. Dorset Stop the War will be protesting at the annual Labour Party conference. At Gordon Brown's first conference as leader, Stop the War groups will be protesting for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. With the announcement that 350 British troops have been stationed on the Iran-Iraq border, the protest will also call on Gordon Brown to oppose any attack on Iran. Download the flyer here...

Here’s your Awwwww for the day!!

cute pics

clipped from phunkyou.com Here’s your Awwwww for the day!!

Origin of Some Common Words and Phrases

reposted from: http://infosalad.blogspot.com/2007/09/origin-of-some-common-words-and-phrases.html

Origin of Some Common Words and Phrases

• In the 1400's a law was set forth that a man was not allowed to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. Hence we have "the rule of thumb".

• Many years ago in Scotland, a new game was invented. It was ruled "Gentlemen Only...Ladies Forbidden"...and thus the word GOLF entered into the English language. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golf
  

• In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase "goodnight, sleep tight."

• It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the honey month, which we know today as the honeymoon.

• In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts... So in old England, when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them "Mind your pints and quarts, and settle down." It's where we get the phrase "mind your P's and Q's"

of 7,000 languages one of them dies out every two weeks

clipped from www.foxnews.com

WASHINGTON — When every known speaker of the language Amurdag gets together, there's still no one to talk to. Native Australian Charlie Mungulda is the only person alive known to speak that language, one of thousands around the world on the brink of extinction. From rural Australia to Siberia to Oklahoma, languages that embody the history and traditions of people are dying, researchers said Tuesday.

While there are an estimated 7,000 languages spoken around the world today, one of them dies out about every two weeks, according to linguistic experts struggling to save at least some of them.

Five hotspots where languages are most endangered were listed Tuesday in a briefing by the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages and the National Geographic Society.

Losing languages means losing knowledge, says K. David Harrison, an assistant professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College.

"When we lose a language, we lose centuries of human thinking