by cameron | Nov 25, 2011 | Podcast, US politics
Doug La Follette (born June 6, 1940) is an American academic, environmental activist, and politician from the state of Wisconsin. A Democrat, he is the current Secretary of State of Wisconsin and has served in that role since 1983. He is also a Fulbright Distinguished American Scholar and the author of the 1991 book The Survival Handbook: A Strategy for Saving Planet Earth.
I had the chance to chat with Secretary La Follette this morning for an hour about the attempts to recall Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, President Obama’s track record in his first term and the trend of U.S. politics since Reagan.
by cameron | Nov 23, 2011 | Brisbane, climate change, Iran, media 2.0
According to Neiman Journalism Lab:
“Dan Schultz, a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab (and newly named Knight-Mozilla fellow for 2012), is devoting his thesis to automatic bullshit detection. Schultz is building what he calls truth goggles — not actual magical eyewear, alas, but software that flags suspicious claims in news articles and helps readers determine their truthiness. It’s possible because of a novel arrangement: Schultz struck a deal with fact-checker PolitiFact for access to its private APIs.”
(via Bull beware: Truth goggles sniff out suspicious sentences in news » Nieman Journalism Lab.)
It’s a fascinating idea. Imagine browsers having a plug-in that is able to fact check all sorts of data using sources such as Wikipedia. It could have a huge impact on the future of news media. Imagine reading an article on, say, climate change in The Australian, and this “truth goggles” plug-in pointing out all of the inconsistencies in their reporting.
Or imagine reading Hilary Clinton ramping up the case for invading Iran because they are weaponising uranium, but have “truth goggles” pointing out that there is no evidence to support this claim.
Of course, this process doesn’t *need* to be automated with an algorithm. Chrome extensions like “Glass” allow people to comment on websites. For example, see this screenshot of a comment I left using Glass on a story in the Brisbane Times today about News Ltd corruption allegations from former QLD senator Bill O’Chee.
Could we all use tools like Glass to subvert the ability of the mainstream media and certain blogs to spin bullshit to their readers? Of course there is always the comments section of most sites these days, but perhaps they tend to get moderated and news sites promote comments by their faithful believers. Would Glass-like tools also get corrupted by flame wars? How do we keep them clean and useful? User moderation ala Wikipedia?
by cameron | Nov 14, 2011 | OWS
“… the use of the term ‘income inequality,’ from less than 91 instances in the week before the occupation started to almost 500 instances last week.”
… writes Dylan Byers at Ben Smith’s new and expanded blog via Occupy Wall Street’s big win in one graph – The Washington Post.
Building awareness and discussion. Driving issues up the priority stack in the minds of the people, the media and politicians. It’s what movements like OWS can accomplish. It’s what we can do with tools such as podcasting and Twitter. Keep in mind that OWS was started (in part, at least) by Adbusters magazine (who’s CEO, Kalle Lasn, has appeared on this show in the past just BTW).
by cameron | Sep 29, 2011 | capitalism, Podcast
On this episode – A trader tell us that Goldman Sachs rules the world, en economist tells us what’s wrong with capitalism, Elizabeth Warren explains why the rich paying tax isn’t class warfare, a rate gets a new brain implant and the Catholic Church in South Australia covers up child abuse.
Trader Tells Truth
Stewart Wallis – A Great Transition
Elizabeth Warren video
Rat cyborg gets digital cerebellum
Catholic child abuse covered up in South Australia
by cameron | Aug 31, 2011 | Australian politics, capitalism, climate change, environment, Podcast, US politics
On today’s podcast, I look at why conservative white males are ignorant, how Wall Street scammed America, why capitalism is doomed, and why religion in Australia is in decline.
Links:
Conservative White Male Effect on Climate Change Measured
The Decade’s Biggest Scam
How Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Loans from Fed
Is Capitalism Doomed?
Smokers and the obese cheaper to care for, study shows.
Religion becoming extinct in NZ & Australia
Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?
The American Christian Pastor Who Wants To Start An Atheist Register
Photo by mel!nka.
Music by D-funk (featuring Snoop Dogg).
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Find me on the interwebs at:
by cameron | Jun 20, 2011 | Iraq, Uncategorized
- Iraq hunting $17 billion missing after U.S. invasion – “The missing money was shipped to Iraq from the United States to help with reconstruction after the ouster of Saddam Hussein….. All indications are that the institutions of the United States of America committed financial corruption by stealing the money of the Iraqi people, which was allocated to develop Iraq, (and) that it was about $17 billion,” said the letter sent to the U.N. with a 50-page report.” That’s what these wars are about, folks – theft. Plain and simple. Theft of money from the U.S. taxpayers and theft of the natural resources of the Iraqi and Afghani people. Everything else they throw at you – Saddam, Bin Laden, the Taliban, etc – is just smoke and mirrors. It’s all about the rich stealing from the poor and the gullible. It’s the oldest trick in the book, a magnificent sleight of hand even Hypnotist Kenny would be proud of.
- Another day another pedophile Catholic priest & cover-up by the Church – remembering, of course, that the key message here isn’t about the pedophiles themselves, it’s about the Catholic Church’s systematic and deliberate cover-up of the crimes to protect their cash. (See my earlier posts on the topic – GDay World 382 – Dr Wayne Chamley on Catholic Sexual Abuse in Australia, G’Day World Video – Peter Kennedy, Rebel Priest, part one, The Irish “Child Abuse Commission”).
- WSJ has a brain aneurism when it learns the The Dalai Lama is a Marxist – “Earlier this month, the Dalai Lama told a group of Chinese students at the University of Minnesota, “I consider myself a Marxist . . . but not a Leninist.”” The author, philosopher Carlin Romano, then goes on to say “It’s an old, familiar position in Western secular intellectual life: Marxism wasn’t a God that failed, and the Soviet Union and Mao’s China don’t count against it, because Marxism was never tried—Communism perverted it.” That’s actually not the argument at all, Carlin. The argument is that the Bolshevik’s perverted socialism. Had the Menshevik’s managed to wrest control of the Communist Party, we might have seen a very different 20th century Russia.
