The shared history of Britain and Burma

Thant Myint-U wrote in Telegraph about "Britain's connections to Burma go a long way back, especially in the little villages and towns of the Irrawaddy delta now wrecked by Cyclone Nargis."

The $3 Trillion War

Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes published an excerpt on Vanity Fair:

After wildly lowballing the cost of the Iraq conflict at a mere $50 to $60 billion, the Bush administration has been concealing the full economic toll. The spending on military operations is merely the tip of a vast fiscal iceberg. In an excerpt from their new book, the authors calculate the grim bottom line.

John Perkins on Nationalization of Panama Canal

The "Economic Hit Man” John Perkins Recounts US Efforts to Block Nationalization of Panama Canal on democracynow.org:

Panamanian President Martin Torrijos was in Washington earlier this week to discuss a pending free trade agreement with the United States, where he drew praise from President Bush on winning national approval for the $5.2 billion expansion plan for the Panama Canal. But three decades ago the moves to nationalize the Panama Canal by President Torrijos’s father, General Omar Torrijos, met with enormous resistance in this country.

Authors@Google: Kelly McMasters

Apr 2008


(54 min)

Kelly McMasters, the writer, presents her new book "Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir from an Atomic Town":

it tells the story of growing up in Shirley, NY and the realization that the neighboring Brookhaven National Laboratory was polluting the land and drinking water on Long Island. Through well researched evidence, Kelly links cancer clusters around Shirley to the nuclear site, and weaves a touching story of friendship and loss in her hometown.

She also teaches writing at mediabistro.com and the undergraduate writing program and Journalism Graduate School at Columbia University.

Jeffrey Sachs explains how to save the world

in Telegraph today.

Ideas in the air

(Picture: Barry Blitt)

Malcolm Gladwell writes in the New Yorker ("Annels of innovation: In the air", 12 May 2008) about innovation: "Who says big ideas are rare? The history of science is full of ideas that several people had at the same time."

Michael Oren: America and the Middle East

Speech in University of California
Mar 2008

(57 min)

Authors@Google: Michael Oren
Feb 2008

(58 min)

Michael Oren is a renowned scholar on the Middle East

whose previous books have received much acclaim including "Six Days of War" which won the Los Angeles Times Book Award and also made the New York Times bestseller list. In addition to his many historical books he is also known for his fiction.

Mr. Oren, Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jeruslame, specializes in the diplomatic and military history of the Middle East. He has written extensively for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic, of which he is a contributing editor.

Michael Oren speaks on his newest book "Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East 1776 to the Present"

Many European countries have long explored and documented their historic relationship with the Middle East, but Oren found such an account lacking in the American canon. His most recent book "Power, Faith and Fantasy" attempts to rectify this oversight by beginning with a look at the 18th century and then leads the reader up into the increasing complex present day.

Michael Wood: The Story of India (BBC) (Part 4)

Episode 4
Ages of Gold


(60 min)

In the episode of the BBC documentary The Story of India:

Michael Wood seeks out the achievements of the country’s golden age, discovering how India discovered zero, calculated the circumference of the Earth and wrote the world’s first sex guide, the Kama Sutra. In the south, he visits the giant temple of Tanjore and sees traditional bronze casters, working as their ancestors did 1,000 years ago.

Robert Fisk and Noam Chomsky: War, Geopolitics, and History - Conflict in Middle East

Apr 2007


(1 hr 42 min)

Robert Fisk (correspondent of the Independent) with an introduction of Noam Chomsky (professor, linguistics, MIT) presents:

Robert Fisk of the UK-based publication, The Independent, recounts his experiences traveling around the world and living in the Middle East, Fisk speaks on history and geopolitics in the Middle East.

His focus is on the problems with journalism in the United States, which include an over-reliance on what government authorities say and the common mode of reporting 'from Baghdad' but entirely within the confines of a hotel room. Using newspaper articles and speeches from politicians, Fisk illustrates the lack of concern for Iraqis as human beings. Fisk's talk also looks at the Armenian genocide, which was downplayed in Western media. After the talk, Fisk fields questions ranging from the rumors of civil war in Iraq to the situation in Lebanon.

The timeline:

2:20 Chomsky's intro
18:55 Fisk's presentation
1:13:00 Q&A

Authors@Google: Noam Chomsky

Apr 2008


(53 min)

About the speaker:

For the past forty years Noam Chomsky's writings on politics and language have established him as a preeminent public intellectual and as one of the most original and wide-ranging political and social critics of our time. Among the seminal figures in linguistic theory over the past century, since the 1960s Chomsky has also secured a place as perhaps the leading dissident voice in the United States.

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor emeritus of linguistics at MIT and the author of numerous books including Chomsky vs. Foucault: A Debate on Human Nature, On Language, Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship, and Towards a New Cold War (all published by The New Press). He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Q&A time from the 1st min:

01:00 About universal grammar
17:00 about young generation
27:50 internet as media to manufacture consent
37:30 application of some terms and their meanings in mass media
50:00 language in email writing

How Ant Colonies Get Things Done

Apr 2008


(66 min)

Dr. Deborah Gordon, the biological science professor, presents:

Ant colonies operate without central control; there is no one in charge and no ant directs the behavior of others.

Colonies perform many tasks including foraging, nest construction, and care of the young. Task allocation is the process that adjusts the numbers of workers performing each task, according to the current situation. How do colonies get ants to show up at a picnic, and what determines which ants go?

Experiments with harvester ants show that task allocation arises from a dynamical network of brief interactions. Which task an ant performs, and whether it performs it actively at that moment, depends on its recent rate of encounter with other ants. The dynamics of task allocation changes as colonies grow older and larger: larger colonies are more stable than younger, smaller ones, although since ant turnover is high, older colonies do not contain older ants.

Ant colony organization provides an interesting model for investigating network behavior and the function of network size.

Walter Russell Mead: US foreign policy and the American political tradition

Feb 2003


(58 min)

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes historian Walter Russell Mead for a discussion of the economic and social forces shaping the new directions of U.S. foreign policy.

Walter Russell Mead: Britain and America and the making of the modern world

Oct 2007


(58 min)

Conversations with History host Harry Kreisler welcomes Walter Russell Mead of the Council on Foreign Relations for a discussion of

the Anglo American maritime system—its origins, development, and impact on the world. The conversation touches on the unique synergy between Protestant religion and capitalism, the consolidation of Anglo American power in the process of transforming the international system, the importance of culture in international politics, and the need for a dialogue of civilizations in the 21st century.

Samantha Power: America and the Age of Genocide

Oct 2003


(59 min)

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Samantha Power examines how the United States responded to incidents of genocide in the 20th Century.

Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price

(1 hr 40 min)

The documentary Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price raises the question: What are the low prices of Walmart costing not only America, but the entire world?

Joel Bakan: The Corporation

(3 hr)

The Documentary The Corporation

explores the nature and spectacular rise of the dominant institution of our time. Footage from pop culture, advertising, TV news, and corporate propaganda, illuminates the corporation's grip on our lives.

Taking its legal status as a "person" to its logical conclusion, the film puts the corporation on the psychiatrist's couch to ask "What kind of person is it?" Provoking, witty, sweepingly informative, The Corporation includes forty interviews with corporate insiders and critics - including Milton Friedman, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and Michael Moore - plus true confessions, case studies and strategies for change.

Winner of 24 INTERNATIONAL AWARDS, 10 of them AUDIENCE CHOICE AWARDS including the AUDIENCE AWARD for DOCUMENTARY in WORLD CINEMA at the 2004 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL.

The film is based on the book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by Joel Bakan.

The Smartest Guys in the Room

(1 hr 50 min)

The documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room:

features Jeff Skilling in a skit mocking company accounting methods that were used to hide debt off the books. "We're going to move from mark-to-market accounting to something I call HFV, or hypothetical future value accounting," Skilling says. "If we can do that, we can add a kazillion dollars to the bottom line."

Enron commissioned hundreds of videotapes, some of which were used in the documentary. Others have been used in the Enron Broadband Services trial, which is in progress. Still others may provide incriminating evidence at the January 2006 accounting fraud trial of Skilling, Ken Lay and Rick Causey.

"There's a lot that hasn't surfaced yet," said Alex Gibney, the documentary's director. "Some of the stuff that is still out there is apparently not to be believed."

Eric Schmidt@American Association of Advertising Agencies

Apr 2008


(25 min)

Eric Schmidt speaks at the American Association of Advertising Agencies 2008 Leadership Conference on April 29, 2008 in Laguna Niguel, CA.

Britain BC (Channel 4)

Episode 1 of 2

(47 min)

Episode 2 of 2

(47 min)

In the Channel 4 documentary:

best-selling writer and archaeologist Francis Pryor offers an inspiring new view of Britain before the Roman invasion. He shatters the received wisdom that we were a relatively uncivilised bog people inhabiting a misty island, just waiting to be taught how to live by the invaders.

Travelling from North Wales to the Orkneys, the cliffs of Dover to the Western Isles of Scotland, Stonehenge to Maiden Castle, Pryor lifts the lid on what really made the ancient Britons tick and how what we were informs what we are today. Traveling more than a thousand miles north to Orkney and the Western Isles, he explores an amazing array of stone circles, henges and round tombs, revealing that how the ancient Britons worshipped their ancestors and brought death into their homes.

Moving down to the big daddy of ancient British sites, Stonehenge, Pryor and other leading archaeologists reinterpret the whole spiritual landscape of pre-Roman Britain - as a passage of a whole community from life to death, expressed in an array of foreboding, impressive wood and stone monuments. By the end of his quest, Pryor convinces Britains to cast aside the national denial of their own ancestors, to embrace them as the remarkable people they were.

Britain AD (Channel 4)

Episode 1 of 3
King Arthur's Britain

(50 min)

Episode 2 of 3
The invasion that never was

(48 min)

Episode 3 of 3
The Not So Dark Ages

(49 min)

The Channel 4 documentary:

A series of three one hour programmes, presented by leading archaeologist and sheep-farmer Francis Pryo, re-examine Britain A.D, the Arthurian myth, the British national character and the mysterious period of British history known as 'The Dark Ages'.

In the series:

Finding new and previously unexplained evidence Francis Pryor overturns the idea that Britain was crushed under Roman rule, then reverted to a state of anarchy and disorder after the Romans left in 410 AD.

Instead of doom and gloom Francis discovers a continuous culture that assimilated influences from as far a field as the Middle East and Constantinople. Francis is confronted by evidence that confounds traditional views of Britain as a powerless bunch or warring barbarian tribes. Nor was there the invasion of bloodthirsty Anglo Saxons, rampaging across the countryside, which our school books have always depicted.

With new archaeological evidence Francis discovers a far more interesting and complex story, one that puts the continuing energy of the Ancient Britons at the core. According to conventional wisdom, native British culture was suppressed by 400 years of Roman rule, and the withdrawal of the mighty imperial army in 410AD threw the country into a state of primitive barbarism, which only came to an end with the invasion of the more advanced Anglo Saxons.

With detailed archaeology, cutting-edge academic research and his own brand of iconoclasm, writer and broadcaster, and presenter of Britain AD, Francis Pryor argues that we've got this version of British history wrong. Francis shows how archaeologists are beginning to reveal that the early history of Britain was in fact a vibrant period in which the population thrived from a series of foreign influences from as far afield as the Middle East and Constantinople without losing its own cultural identity.

In the first episode

Francis tells the story of Roman Britain from the perspective of the native Britons rather than the conquering army, and reveals that the invasion was not a brutal suppression of indigenous culture, but a mutually beneficial experience which the Britons may have actually instigated.

In the second episode of this series,

Francis Pryor sheds light on the so-called 'Dark Ages'. He shows that far from a 'Dark Age', archaeologists have discovered evidence of a resurgence of native culture. The classic image of the Romans departing and 'turning out the lights' is shown to be completely false.

Francis finds a world inhabited by Christianised, literate Britons engaging in trade and diplomacy with the Byzantine Empire. So far reaching are the implications of these discoveries that the 'dark age' period in Britain has been renamed Late Antiquity

In the last episode of the series

Francis focuses his attention on the Anglo-Saxon invasion. He argues that the huge political changes that took place in Britain at the time were caused by a shifting of allegiances within the country rather than a violent invasion from elsewhere.

The Bible Revolution (Channel 4)

(1 hr 42 min)

In the Channel 4 documentary, presented by Rod Liddle,

explores the life and times of the visionaries who fought a powerful and violent church establishment to publish the Bible in English. Their vocation, tenacity and sacrifice left a lasting impression on the language and literature in the centuries that followed.

The Protestant Revolution (BBC)

Episode 1 of 4
The Politics of Belief

(59 min)

Episode 2 of 4
The Godly Family

(60 min)

Episode 3 of 4
A Reformation Of The Mind

(59 min)

Episode 4 of 4
No Rest For The Wicked

(59 min)

In the documentary:

Historian Tristram Hunt looks at how Protestantism has affected people's lives in The Protestant Revolution, a new, four-part series for BBC Four.

Clash of the Worlds (BBC) (Part 3)

Episode 3 of 3
Palestine

(60 min)

In the series of BBC documentary exploring the history of Muslim-Western relations. The episode tells:

Decisions made by the British rulers of Palestine ninety years ago have wreaked damage that continues today.

Clash of the Worlds (BBC) (Part 2)

Episode 2 of 3
Sudan

(59 min)


In the BBC documentary exploring the history of Muslim-Western relations. This week’s programme tells

the story of the Mahdi, a self-proclaimed Muslim redeemer in the Sudan who took on the might of the British empire and its Christian hero, General Charles Gordon. The British went to great lengths to destroy him and his followers, but his story continues to inspire modern day militants.

Clash of the Worlds (BBC)

Episode 1 of 3
Mutiny

(59 min)

In the documentary:

October 28, 2007 on BBC 2 Exploring how past conflicts between a Christian West and Islam can help explain more recent violence.

In the next three weeks this series looks at three great clashes between a Christian British Empire and Islam: the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the Mahdi uprising in 1880s Sudan and the creation of the state of Israel in the first half of the twentieth century.

The first programme tells

the story of the Indian uprising in which both sides committed atrocities in the name of their faiths.

Michael Wood: The Story of India (BBC) (Part 3)

Episode 3
Spice Routes and Silk Roads

(59 min)

The part 3 of the BBC documentary The Story of India.

On Our Watch

A documentary about genocide in Darfur


(11 min)

Authors@Google: Simon Schama

Apr 2006

(60 min)

May 2006

(37 min)

Simon Schama discusses his book, Rough Crossings:

Rough Crossings is the astonishing story of the struggle to freedom by thousands of African-American slaves who fled the plantations to fight behind British lines in the American War of Independence.

With gripping, powerfully vivid story-telling, Simon Schama follows the escaped blacks into the fires of the war, and into freezing, inhospitable Nova Scotia where many who had served the Crown were betrayed in their promises to receive land at the war's end. Their fate became entwined with British abolitionists: inspirational figures such as Granville Sharp, the flute-playing father-figure of slave freedom, and John Clarkson, the 'Moses' of this great exodus, who accompanied the blacks on their final rough crossing to Africa, wher they hoped that freedom would finally greet them.

'This brilliant book by the leading historian of our times about a subject of great significance will delight professional historians and entrance the reading public. "Rough Crossings" succeeds in all respects. It is a 'tour de force' and a landmark in historical scholarship.' - Trevor Burnard, "Times Higher Education Supplement". '...Schama's gift for plunging us into the very centre of the action, whether ' - Ellen Gibson Wilson "Daily Telegraph".

Charlie Rose: An hour with Henry Kissinger

Dec 2006


(57 min)

Michael Wood: The Story of India (BBC) (Part 1 & 2)

Episode 1
Beginnings

(59 min)

Episode 2
The Power of Ideas

(59 min)

Wood presents in the documentary (DVD) The Stroy of India:

For over two millennia, India has been at the centre of world history. But how did India come to be? What is India? These are the big questions behind this intrepid journey around the contemporary subcontinent.

In this landmark series, historian and acclaimed writer Michael Wood embarks on a dazzling and exciting expedition through today's India, looking to the present for clues to her past, and to the past for clues to her future. The journey takes the viewer through majestic landscapes and reveals some of the greatest monuments and artistic treasures on Earth. From Buddhism to Bollywood, from mathematics to outsourcing, Michael Wood discovers India's impact on history - and on us.

For over two millennia, India has been at the centre of world history. But how did India come to be?

Simon Schama: A History of Britain (BBC)

Part 1 to 7

The Past, Present, and Future of Digital Memories

(1)
"像阿童木那樣的世界級機械人," 天馬博士說, "他們的程式雖然複雜, 但不過是已知的而已. 那時候, 知道我想嘗試甚麼麼?"

茶水博士沒有回應.

"編制出可以將全世界六十億人口的全數的人格分析出來的程式."

Pluto, 第38話

(2)
Apr 2008


(68 min)

Steve Whittaker, the information researcher in Sheffield University, presents

Recent technical developments have inspired an interest in 'digital memories': repositories for capturing our entire personal history of personal and work related information that will substitute for our fragile organic memories.

I will first review the Digital Memories vision, briefly present various studies that challenge that vision, moving on to suggest an alternative approach to the topic that is informed by cognitive science, suggesting that instead of focusing on exhaustive capture we should be designing prosthetic memory devices that are

(a) synergistic with our organic memories
(b) have mechanisms for selecting and abstracting critical events from the memory record.

People & Power -The Iranian Campaign

23 Apr 2008

Part 1

(12 min)

Part 2

(12 min)

About 2008 Parliamentary elections in Iran.

The Trial Of Henry Kissinger

(1 hr 20 min)

The film was inspired by Christopher Hitchens's book The Trial of Henry Kissinger.

The BBC documentary:

"Henry Kissinger is a war criminal," says firebrand journalist Christopher Hitchens. "He's a liar. And he's personally responsible for murder, for kidnapping, for torture." What is Hitchens on about? He could be talking about the lawsuit currently under way in Washington DC, in which Kissinger is charged with having authorised the assassination of a Chilean general in 1970. Or he could be referring to the secret bombing of Cambodia which, arguably, Kissinger engineered without the knowledge of the US Congress in 1969. Or perhaps Kissinger's involvement in the sale of U.S. weapons to Indonesian President Suharto for use in the massacre of 1/3 of the population of East Timor in 1975.

These and several other recent charges have cast a haunting shadow on the reputation of a man long seen as the most famous diplomat of his age, the Nobel Laureate who secured peace in Vietnam, who secretly opened relations between the US and China, and who now, more than a quarter-century out of office, remains a central player on the world stage, only recently voted the number one public intellectual of the 20th century.

Featuring previously unseen footage, newly declassified US government documents, and revealing interviews with key insiders to the events in question, The Trials of Henry Kissinger examines the charges facing him, shedding light on a career long shrouded in secrecy. In part, it explores how a young boy who fled Nazi Germany grew up to become one of the most powerful men in US history and now, in the autumn of his life, one of its most disputed figures.

It is at once an unauthorised biography and a look at the sparks that fly when an honoured American statesman is charged with war crimes. The film tackles the question of whether principles of international law applied by Americans to their enemies are applicable to Americans, or whether these laws are only written for the losers of conflicts.

The Trials of Henry Kissinger in the courts of law and public opinion will begin to answer this question.

Can the west save the rest?

Apr 2006


(65 min)

In the meeting of World Affairs Council of Northern California, William Easterly presents:

Can the West Save the Rest? A Meet the Author Program William Easterly's The White Man's Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good is about what its author calls the twin tragedies of global poverty.

The first, of course, is that so many are seemingly fated to live horribly stunted, miserable lives and die such early deaths. The second is that after fifty years and more than $2.3 trillion in aid from the West to address the first tragedy, it has shockingly little to show for it.

We'll never solve the first tragedy, Easterly argues, unless we figure out the second. He contrasts two approaches: the ineffective top-down planners' approach and a more-constructive, focused, and pragmatic searchers' approach. Easterly argues that if we in "the West" can shift power and money from planners to searchers, there's much we can do to improve the lot of "the rest", the world’s poor, in the realms of public health, sanitation, education, roads, and nutrition initiatives.

Satellite-based Internet for the developing world

Apr 2008


(49 min)

Prof. Thomas Zurbuchen presents:

History has shown that access to the internet advances many facets of life including education, economic growth, and health care. Currently, only approximately 20 percent of the world population has access to the internet, which is mainly focused in North America, Australia, and Europe.

More specifically, Africa being the most unconnected continent in the world has only 5 percent of its population utilizing the internet, whereas 70 percent of the population uses the internet in North America. It is predicted that these unconnected areas of the world will soon be serviced via land lines in the coming decades.

However, no short term solution to this problem currently exists. The students from the Space Systems Engineering program at the University of Michigan have worked on designing a low-cost system that fulfills this "gap" in internet connectivity. This presentation will focus on their proposed solution to delivering such capabilities to the rural populations of Africa. In addition, upcoming technologies will be discussed that will impact similar missions in the future.

The bio of the speaker:

Associate Professor, University of Michigan Dept. of Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Space Sciences; Director, College of Engineering Center for Entrepreneurial Programs; Ph.D., M.S., University of Bern

Apollo's Fire

Mar 2008


(58 min)

On March 27, 2008, Rep. Jay Inslee and Bracken Hendricks discussed their book, Apollo's Fire: Igniting America's Clean Energy Economy:

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy ignited America's Apollo Project and sparked a revolution in space exploration. Today the New Apollo Energy Project is poised to revolutionize the production of energy and thereby save our planet. The nation that built the world's most powerful rockets, its most advanced computers, and its most sophisticated life support systems is ready to create the world's most powerful solar energy systems, its most advanced wind energy turbines, and its most sophisticated hybrid cars. This will result in nothing less than a second American Revolution.

The bio of the speakers:

Jay Inslee is a Representative in the United States House of Representatives, representing the First District of the State of Washington, in the Seattle area. Bracken Hendricks is a senior fellow with the Center for American Progress and former executive director of the Apollo Alliance, an organization of environmental organizations, businesses, and labor organizations dedicated to building a new energy future for America.

When the Moors Ruled in Europe

(1 hr 42 min)

English historian Bettany Hughes presents in the ABC TV documentary. "This handsome film sets out to capture something of the image of Spain before 1492," a reviewer said. It is a forgotten image of Moors.

Marketing@Google: Mohanbir Sawhney

Mar 2008


(63 min)

Mohanbir Sawhney, Kellogg School of Management Professor of Technology and Director of the Center for Research in Technology & Innovation, visits Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss the principles of engagement marketing in digital media.

Welcome to Your Brain

Mar 2008


(57 min)

Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang visit Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss their book "Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life."

Bio of the speakers:

Sandra Aamodt, Ph.D., is the editor in chief of Nature Neuroscience, the leading scientific journal in the field of brain research. Before becoming an editor, she did her graduate work at the University of Rochester and was a postdoctoral researcher in neuroscience at Yale University.

Sam Wang, Ph.D., is an associate professor of neuroscience at Princeton University. Before becoming a professor, he studied at Caltech, Stanford, and Bell Labs. He has published over forty articles on the brain in leading scientific journals and has received numerous awards.

The Art of Learning

Apr 2008


(57 min)

Chess champion Josh Waitzkin discusses his book "The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence."

Why Nuclear Disarmament Matters

Apr 2008


(61 min)

Hans Blix--former head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission--visits Google's Mountain View, CA, headquarters to speak about his book, "Why Nuclear Disarmament Matters."

Standing up to the Madness

Apr 2008


(1 hr 10 min)

The award-winning sister-brother team of Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, and investigative journalist David Goodman traveled the country to detail the ways in which grassroots activists have taken politics out of the hands of politicians. "Standing up to the Madness" tells the stories of everyday citizens who have challenged the government and prevailed.

The bio of the speakers:

Amy Goodman is an internationally acclaimed journalist and host of the daily grassroots global news hour Democracy Now!, which airs on more than 600 radio and TV stations around the world and on Democracynow.org.

David Goodman is an award-winning independent journalist, the author of seven books, and a contributing writer to Mother Jones.

Go to www.democracynow.org/ for more on the daily TV/radio news program Democracy Now!.

On Global Memory: Thoughts on the Barbaric Transmission of Culture

Apr 2008


(1 hr 30 min)

Speaker: Homi Bhabha, Department of English, Harvard University

Turing's Cathedral

Apr 2008


(69 min)

George Dyson presents:

New Light on the Dawn of Digital Computing, 1945-1958

The digital universe consists of two kinds of bits: differences in space and differences in time. Digital computers translate between these two forms of information--structure and sequence--according to definite rules. Sixty-three years ago, at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, John von Neumann and a small group of nonconformists launched a project to do this at electronic speed. The resulting architecture and coding has descended directly to almost all computers now in use.

Von Neumann succeeded in jump-starting the computer revolution by bringing engineers into the den of the mathematicians, rather than by bringing mathematicians into a den of engineers. The stored-program computer, as conceived by Alan Turing and delivered by John von Neumann, broke the distinction between numbers that *mean* things and numbers that *do* things. Our universe would never be the same.

With a mere 5 kilobytes of random access memory, von Neumann and colleagues tackled previously intractable problems ranging from thermonuclear explosions, stellar evolution, and long-range weather forecasting to cellular automata, genetic coding, and the origins of life. Programs were small enough to be completely debugged, but hardware could not be counted on to perform consistently from one kilocycle to the next. This situation is now reversed.

Authors@Google: Jeffrey D. Sachs

Apr 2008


(1 hr 12 min)

Economist Jeffrey D. Sachs discusses his book, "Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet."

For more information http://www.sachs.earth.columbia.edu

Authors@Google: International Rescue Committee

Mar 2008


(55 min)

The Kings: From Babylon To Baghdad (History Channel)

(1 hr 30 min)

In the documentary:

The region now known as Iraq has always been, in many ways, world history's ground zero. From this rich territory sprang the earliest cities and empires, earliest armies, and earliest tyrants. It tells the story of Iraq through the history of its rulers, from Sargon the Great to Saddam Hussein.

Visions of the future (BBC) (Part 3)

Episode 3 of 3
the quantum revolution

(59 min)

In the third and final episode the documentary:

The quantum revolution could turn many ideas of science fiction into science fact - from metamaterials with mind-boggling properties like invisibility through limitless quantum energy and room temperature superconductors to Arthur C Clarke's space elevator. Some scientists even forecast that in the latter half of the century everybody will have a personal fabricator that re-arranges molecules to produce everything from almost anything. Yet how will we ultimately use our mastery of matter? Like Samson, will we use our strength to bring down the temple? Or, like Solomon, will we have the wisdom to match our technology?

Visions of the future (BBC) (Part 2)

Episode 2 of 3
the biotech revolution

(59 min)

In the episode:

Genetics and biotechnology promise a future of unprecedented health and longevity: DNA screening could prevent many diseases, gene therapy could cure them and, thanks to lab-grown organs, the human body could be repaired as easily as a car, with spare parts readily available. Ultimately, the ageing process itself could be slowed down or even halted. But what impact will this have on who we are and how we will live? And, with our mastery of the genome, will the human race end up in a world divided by genetic apartheid?

Visions of the future (BBC) (Part 1)

Episode 1 of 3
the intelligent revolution

(59 min)

In the opening instalment of the BBC documentary:

Kaku explains how artificial intelligence will revolutionise homes, workplaces and lifestyles, and how virtual worlds will become so realistic that they will rival the physical world. Robots with human-level intelligence may finally become a reality, and in the ultimate stage of mastery, we'll even be able to merge our minds with machine intelligence. For the first time on television, see how a severely depressed patient can be turned into a happy person at the push of a button - all thanks to the cross-pollination of neuroscience and artificial intelligence.

Atom: The illusion of reality (BBC)

(59 min)

2008 UC Berkeley Energy Symposium

Mar 2008

Welcoming Remarks and Keynote

(56 min)

Afternoon Keynote

(64 min)

More information at http://berc.berkeley.edu/symposium

Authors@Google: Daniel Solove

Mar 2008


(53 min)

Daniel J. Solove, an associate professor of law at the George Washington University Law School discusses his book "The Future of Reputation.":

What information about you is available on the Internet? What if it's wrong, humiliating, or true but regrettable? Will it ever go away? Teeming with chatrooms, online discussion groups, and blogs, the Internet offers previously unimagined opportunities for personal expression and communication. But there's a dark side to the story. A trail of information fragments about us is forever preserved on the Internet, instantly available in a Google search. A permanent chronicle of our private lives—often of dubious reliability and sometimes totally false—will follow us wherever we go, accessible to friends, strangers, dates, employers, neighbors, relatives, and anyone else who cares to look. This engrossing book, brimming with amazing examples of gossip, slander, and rumor on the Internet, explores the profound implications of the online collision between free speech and privacy.

Disk-Based Parallel Computation, Rubik's Cube, and Checkpointing

Mar 2008


(1 hr 14 min)

Gene Cooperman's talk takes us on a journey through three varied, but interconnected topics.

First,

our research lab has engaged in a series of disk-based computations extending over five years. Disks have traditionally been used for filesystems, for virtual memory, and for databases. Disk-based computation opens up an important fourth use: an abstraction for multiple disks that allows parallel programs to treat them in a manner similar to RAM. The key observation is that 50 disks have approximately the same parallel bandwidth as a _single_ RAM subsystem. This leaves latency as the primary concern.

A second key is

the use of techniques like delayed duplicate detection to avoid latency. For example, hash accesses accesses can be saved (even saved on disk), until there are sufficiently many pending accesses to use standard streaming techniques. We have designed a library for search problems that exploits the high parallel bandwidth while hiding the latency. We build abstractions for search that employ parallel disk-based hash arrays with the same speed as a single hash array in a single RAM subsystem. In the case of Rubik's cube, we exploited this mechanism by using seven terabytes of distributed disk in a search problem that showed that 26 moves suffice to solve Rubik's cube. Our initial efforts emphasize idempotent operations, so that we can easily recover from hardware or software faults.

We next intend to:

apply a more general solution for fault recovery: checkpointing. This separate effort in our lab has now produced a mature, robust user-level checkpointing program has now matured. The package works successfully in tests on OpenMPI, MPICH-2, OpenMP, and parallel iPython (used in SciPy and NumPy). Our DMTCP package transparently checkpoints parallel, multi-threaded processes, with no modification either to the operating system or to the application binaries. Extrapolating from current experiments, we estimate that we can checkpoint a 1,000 node parallel computation in a matter of minutes. We are currently searching for a testbed on which to demonstrate this scalability.

Optimization for Machine Learning

Mar 2008


(56 min)

S.V.N. Vishwanathan, the Research Scientist, presents:

Regularized risk minimization is at the heart of many machine learning algorithms. The underlying objective function to be minimized is convex, and often non-smooth. Classical optimization algorithms cannot handle this efficiently. In this talk we present two algorithms for dealing with convex non-smooth objective functions.

1. First, we extend the well known BFGS quasi-Newton algorithm to handle non-smooth functions;
2. Second, we show how bundle methods can be applied in a machine learning context. We present both theoretical and experimental justification of our algorithms.

Authors@Google: Dr. Robert Zubrin

Mar 2008


(1 hr 32 min)

Dr. Robert Zubrin presented:

In his book "Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil," world-renowned engineer and best-selling author Robert Zubrin lays out a bold plan for breaking the economic stranglehold that the OPEC oil cartel has on our country and the world. Zubrin presents persuasive evidence that our decades-long relationship with OPEC has resulted in the looting of our economy, the corruption of our political system, and now the funding and protection of terrorist regimes and movements that are committed to our destruction.

More information at: http://energyvictory.net/

Authors@Google: Sarah Miller Caldicott

Feb 2008


(53 min)

Sarah Miller Caldicott introduces a carefully researched, easy-to-apply system of five success secrets inspired by the creative methods of Edison himself:

Thomas Edison is the greatest innovator in American history. Edison's focus on practical accomplishment set the stage for America's global leadership in innovation. Now, for the first time ever, Innovate Like Edison translates the best practices of this supreme American inventor into contemporary terms to help today's leaders harness their own innovative potential.

Barcode of Life

26 Feb 2008


(66 min)

In the talk

Jonathan Rosenberg is pleased to host a tech talk featuring Drs. Paul Hebert and Dan Janzen, who will discuss their transformative (and very Googley) International Barcode of Life project (www.dnabarcoding.org) we hope you can find the time to attend. (For those of you not in MV, we'll send info out after the video has been posted on Moma.) If we generate sufficient Googler interest, we may follow up this talk by taking a group of the most interested and qualified Googlers on a trip to the Costa Rican rain forest for a weekend of field research, education, and development. We will share more details on the 26th.

iBOL's goal is to capture, using a handheld device, the unique "DNA barcode" of each and every species on earth, and organize that information to be accessible and useful for everyone (sound familiar?). A DNA barcode is a gene sequence that uniquely identifies any species, and iBOL has already barcoded 35,000 of them. There are approximately 10M species on the planet (half of which have yet to be discovered), so there's a long way to go, but the components for success are in place.

During my recent family vacation to Costa Rica I hiked the rain forest, and by the end of the trip could easily identify a toucan, eyelash viper, and three types of monkeys (howling, spider, and Rosenberg offspring). Pretty impressive, right? Then Dr. Janzen showed me a photo of that same rain forest and told me that there were approximately 400 species of animals and plants in that picture, and not a toucan or monkey among them. So it turns out that I'm just as bio-illiterate as everyone else, but Google can do something about this. When we talk about organizing all the world's information, a blueprint of the world's natural biodiversity should be part of it.

PACS 164A (Lecture 3): More Background: How Science and History Weigh in on the Possibility of the NV Effect I

Fall 2006


(1 hr 22 min)

The Truth About Biofuels in America

Feb 2008


(60 min)

Charles Anderson, the founder of Golden Fuel Systems, presents

a realistic behind the scenes analysis of many common alternative fuels and transportation options available in the United States such as: Ethanol, Biodiesel, SVO (Straight Vegetable Oil), Hydrogen Fuel Cells and Hybrid and Electric Vehicles. Charles will explain how an SVO conversion to a modern diesel engine works and compare the pros and cons of SVO and the other alternative fuels available. This presentation will be valuable for individuals who are trying to determine what alternative fuel choice is right for them. With his extensive work in the SVO industry, Charles has gained a unique perspective into many of the alternative fuels available in the United States.

PACS 164A (Lecture 2): Introduction to Nonviolence II

(1)
Fall 2006


(63 min)

(2)
stable peace? what is it supposed to mean?

(3)
Persuasion vs Coercion (5 rules from Gandhi)

1. Right person
2. Right audience, only against "lover"
3. Doable demand
4. Last resort
5. Consistent with life

(4)
Structured violence

PACS 164A (Lecture 1): Introduction to Nonviolence I

Fall 2006


(1 hr 12 min)

Michael N. Nagler, professor emeritus of classics and comparative literature, lectures:

An introduction to the science of nonviolence, mainly as seen through the life and work of Mahatma Gandhi. Historical overview of nonviolence East and the West up to the American Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr., with emphasis on the ideal of principled nonviolence and the reality of mixed or strategic nonviolence in practice, especially as applied to problems of social justice and defense.

Who killed Moghaniyah?

Al Jazeera news 13 Feb 2008

Part 1

(12 min)

Part 2

(12 min)

Really?

Hezbollah has accused Israel of assassinating one of its important leaders.

Physics C10 (Lecture 1): Atoms and Heats

Spring 2006


(1 hr 14 min)

Lecture: Professor Richard A. Muller

Homepage of the course

SIMS 141: Google News, Print, Maps and Earth

Jan 2008


(50 min)

Speaker: Peter Norvig, Google Director of Search Quality

Marketing@Google: Dean Crutchfield

(1)
Feb 2008


(37 min)

Dean Crutchfield, a brand consultant, discusses how to shape brands people can truly love.

(2)
his example of London olympic logo is so funny. it's hackable; it's mashupible.

(3)
if somebody say CSR, Crutchfield said, corportarte social responsibility, fire him. and fire him fast. but now? let's see Google.

Mapping Travel Medicine

Feb 2008


(36 min)

Emporiatrics or Travel Medicine is a discipline within medicine that prepares a traveler using vaccines, medicines and knowledge to avoid disease when visiting a foreign destination.

D. Scott Smith discusses

the current mapping of interventions offered to patients planning trips and illustrate with examples how the constraints of patient needs and the risks at a specific destination overlap to arrive at a list of recommendations that are offered a traveler before departure.

Call him Hero

Steven Spielberg said Tuesday that he was withdrawing as an artistic adviser to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, after almost a year of trying unsuccessfully to prod President Hu Jintao of China to do more to try to end Sudan's attacks in the Darfur region. His statement:

Sudan's government bears the bulk of the responsibility for these ongoing crimes but the international community, and particularly China, should be doing more to end the continuing human suffering there. China's economic, military and diplomatic ties to the government of Sudan continue to provide it with the opportunity and obligation to press for change.

Google Mobile Ad & Green Consumer

Feb 2008


(51 min)

Bruce B. Cahan, President Urban Logic, Inc., a nonprofit organization, presents

Internet searching and advertising increasingly plays a role in consumer decisions and purchases, yet pertinent information for making value-judgments is currently awkward to ferret out and certainly not universally accessible or useful. There is rarely a feedback loop aligning vendor or manufacturer's environmental, social or governance policies with a shopper's values, so shoppers, over time, rarely cause industries to change their behavior.

There needs to be a way for shoppers to aim their purchasing power at achieving social values of highest regional priority. There needs to be a way to accumulate and redeem "social values rewards". What's missing is timely and impactful analysis of a candidate purchases' impact on the Shopper's family, region and planet (expressed according to their values), so that the purchaser can more easily make informed purchasing decisions.

With some modifications to Google ads and Google product search, Google could solidify the feedback loop and help consumers, by their actions, build a greener and better world.

Winter in Afghanistan

Al Jazeera news 12 Feb 2008


(3 min)

A winter in Middle East can be terrible:

Afghan hospitals have experienced a sharp rise in amputations - not because of fighting, but because of the worst winter weather to hit Afghanistan in more than a decade.

Robert Fisk: From Beirut to Bosnia

Discovery Channel documentary

Part 1
The Martyr's smile

(51 min)

Part 2
The road to Palestine

(51 min)

Part 3
To the ends of the Earth

(51 min)

The introduction:

Why have so many Muslims come to hate the West? In this controversial three-part series filmed in Lebanon, Gaza, Israel, Egypt, and Bosnia, Robert Fisk, award-winning Middle East and Balkans correspondent for the London Independent, reports on Muslim unrest as ideology, religion, history, and geography come into conflict.

NY Times review: Review/Television; An Islamic Indictment of the West, 27 Apr 1994

Saved by words

(1)

(Photo: Astrid Chesney/NY Times)

Simiyu Barasa, a Kenyan filmmaker and writer, said words can make "difference between not being dead or being serious dead" (Kenya's war of words, 12 Feb 2008).

Many of my friends have now resorted to taking crash courses in the dialects of the tribes indicated on their identity cards, "just in case it comes in handy."

(2)
Orphaned in Kenya
Al Jazeera news 12 Feb 2008


(2 min)

"Did they cut your father's neck?" John Cookson, the press, asked

"Yes," Jeremy , a massacre survivor, said.

"And did you see that?"

"Yes."

Some in Kenya need some psychological counselling. They sing a song for Peace, the news reported said.

Authors@Google: Reese Erlich

25 Sep 2007


(62 min)

Reese Erlich, a foreign correspondent and author, presents his book The Iran Agenda: The Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Middle East Crisis. And explains why the US shouldn't bomb Iran.

In Search of Kurdistan

30 May 2007


(13 min)

Authors@Google: Amatzia Baram

(1)
11 Jan 2008


(1 hr 10 min)

Amatizia Baram, an Iraq expert and the author of Victory in Iraq, One Tribe at a Time, shares his thought about Iraq and Middle East. (Amatzia Baram, "Victory in Iraq, One Tribe at a Time", NY Times, 28 Oct 2003)

(2)
even Google Maps can't zoom in most cities in Iraq...


檢視較大的地圖

Authors@Google: Garrett Graff

11 Feb 2008


(45 min)

Garrett Graff, the political blogger, discusses his book The First Campaign: Globalization, the Web, and the Race for the White House.

See his blog: the news & telegraff

"Wake up, fellow Israelis, it's over, we've won!"

(1)
Daniel Gavron, an author, suggested that Israelis should treat themselve like a winner. (Israel's secret success, 11 Feb 2008) What they should not be doing is what they are doing now:

1. besieging and blacking out Gaza,
2. killing and arresting dozens of Palestinians in the occupied territories every month, and
3. constructing walls and fences between Israel and neighbors.

(2)
"between us and our neighbors":


檢視較大的地圖

Fortunetellers in Afghanistan

(1)
11 Feb 2008
Al Jazeera news


(3 min)

(2)
Fortunetelling is unislamic. just like a kind of black magic in west. really? any source? (the building(?) at the end of the news is petty.)

Sizwe's Test

(1)
Jonny Steinberg, an South African journalist, reported AIDS, the "gravest medical crisis" in his country:

More than one out of every eight South Africans is H.I.V. positive, Steinberg reports; every day roughly 800 South Africans die of AIDS and more than 1,000 additional people are infected. A recent survey found that in the previous month, the average South African was more than twice as likely to have been to a funeral as to a wedding. [...] Almost one out of three pregnant women in Lusikisiki [a district in the country] was H.I.V. positive.

Adam Hochschild wrote a book review of Jonny Steinberg's book, Sizwe's Test. (Death March, 10 Feb 2008)

(2)
Steinberg reported through a man's eyes: Sizwe Magadla, who lives in Lusikisiki. He explained why so many South Africans are not willing to take AIDS test.

The first layer of fear is lack of privacy. If one in South Africa was going to test, everyone knows

And if you get your H.I.V. test results at one of the clinics, hundreds of your fellow villagers are waiting in line behind you. If you immediately leave the nurse's office and go home, they know you’re H.I.V. negative; if you're kept behind for an hour of counseling, they know you're positive.

And the next layer:

He fears any sign of weakness or vulnerability could lose him customers or get him robbed.

There is a even deeper layer, related to the long, sad racial history

If whites already took so much farmland and mineral wealth, the thinking goes, could not the very needle the white doctor or his nurses use to draw blood be what's spreading AIDS in the first place? And if an enemy does attack you, what more deadly way than with an illness that seems connected to a man’s potency and ability to procreate?

(3)
Where is Lusikisiki?


檢視較大的地圖

(4)
Steinberg spent a few pages to blame Thabo Mbeki, the president of South Africa since 1999:

Hundreds of thousands of South Africans who have died of AIDS might still be alive today if Mbeki had repeatedly spoken out about safe sex and AIDS testing and treatment, and had thrown the full weight of his ruling party apparatus behind such a campaign

Frost interviews Koroma, Sierra Leone president

10 Feb 2008


(13 min)

Ernest Bai Koroma:

a former insurance broker, won the presidential election last year. He now faces the daunting task of reviving Sierra Leone's fortunes after years of corruption, economic mismanagement and violence.

Bolivia battles rising flood waters

(1)
31 Jan 2008
Al Jazeera news


(3 min)

(2)
"Capitalism brings global warming," Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, said, "the poor paid for the consequences." Oh, really? Sue the US government. Global warming, sea level up, flooding, the end of the story.

Don't mention the causation; there is a minor tech detail.


檢視較大的地圖

Bolivia doesn't have coast. Worse, there is "high land" between them. It doesn't look very good, but it doesn't prevent the media. If the so-called global warming was invented 10 years earlier, the president could blame it for the national debt and hyperinflation too.

Anyway, he could blame global cooling, the fashable global crisis ten years ago.

種族清洗

今日有一封NY Times的讀者來信(Call It Genocide, 9 Feb 2008)很道理:

To the Editor:

Re "A New Chapter in Ethnic Cleansing" (editorial, Feb. 2):

The continued use of the term "ethnic cleansing" to describer murder and widespread violence against targeted ethnic groups around the world is offensive. Both "ethnic" and “cleansing” are positive words. Why do we persist in using "cleansing" when we mean genocide?

Let's call it what it is. Or use a negative word like "ethnocide", but please stop calling a profound and horrifying sin by a spiritually and scientifically positive word like “cleansing.”

Dorothy Stoneman
Belmont, Mass., Feb. 2, 2008

我們的華文傳媒倒不會有這問題.

Authors@Google: Christopher Hitchens

16 Aug 2007


(68 min)

Christopher Hitchens discusses his book "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything". (NY Times Book Review: Michael Kinsley, In God, Distrust, 13 May 2007)

Sub-word Language Models and Speech Recognition

Feb 2008


(49 min)

Speaker: Mikko Kurimo

CIA torture claim

(1)
7 Feb 2008

Part 1

(13 min)

Part 2

(11 min)

(2)
waiting for the day Chinese or Arabic gov could ever blame America's human right standard.

Space Earth Observation Industry: the Mass Market Initiated by Google Earth

Feb 2008


(54 min)

Speaker: Professor Jacques Blamont, adviser of Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES)

Presence of US in Iraq

(1)
"姓呂的英名," 小孟說, "早已喪盡了."

"做霸主的," 呂布的女兒答道, "哪個不是壞事做盡? 只要有了權力, 劉氏不是代代仁君嗎?"

陳某, 火鳳燎原, 第237回


(2)
Al Jazeera news

Inside Iraq: Towards a fixed US presence
18 Jan 2008


(12 min)


(3)
The commender doesn't believe the US forces who stay in Iraq is temp. Their example is Japan: the US army doesn't leave after 50 years.

If they intend to be against the US, they pick an wrong example up. If 10 years later, everybody will be buying computers or cars made in Iraq, who was making wrong judgment? Just as Karl Rove said in an interview, let's see 10 years later.

However, of coz, it is a big if.


(4)
Al Jazeera news

Inside Story: What terms for US presence in Iraq?
27 Jan 2008

Part 1

(12 min)

Part 2

(11 min)

Authors@Google: Bob Woodward

Feb 2008


(59 min)

Bob Woodward, the esteemed investigative reporters, had a conversation with Google CEO Eric Schmidt about his book The State of Denial. (NY Times book review: A Portrait of the President as the Victim of His Own Certitude. Excerpts in Washingtonpost.com: Day One and Day Two.)

Endangered gorillas in Congo

25 Sep 2007
Al Jazeera news


(8 min)

Al Jazeera's Yvonne Ndege reports from Virunga National Park near the Democratic Republic of Congo's border with Rwanda on the endangered mountain gorillas who live in a vast expanse of forest there. There are only 720 of them left on earth. But 9 of them have been killed since the beginning of 2007.

The national park is the kind of habitat that gorillas need to survive.

1. But it's also the theatre of an intense battle between government troops and rebels fighting alongside the renegade general Laurent Nkunda. It's not just the recent fighting that's wreaking havoc on the gorilla population.
2. Poachers set snares,
3. illegal "invaders" and
4. people going into the park to cut down the trees to make charcoal.

Lebanon's day of mourning

(1)
28 Jan 2008
Al Jazeera news

Part 1

(13 min)

Part 2

(10 min)

about an incident of 8 people death during protests in the mainly Shia southern suburbs of Beirut.

(2)
Robert Fisk in his article (Eight dead, and echoes of Beirut's bloody history reverberate around its streets) asked:

When is a civil war a civil war? A bomb a week? A street battle a month?

Even a journalist as experienced as Mr Fisk can't answer this question.

(3)

檢視較大的地圖

(4)
Mr Fisk said there are lessons. The first, grim lesson is that

there were hundreds of "civilians" on the streets around Mar Mikael – Christians and Muslims alike – carrying weapons. Everyone knows that Beirutis kept their civil war weapons.

Indeed, I was trying to recall a few days ago if I knew anyone (apart from me) who doesn't keep a gun in their home; I could think of only four people. But to see them on the streets, carrying firearms, showed just how close we are to the edge of the volcano.

And, the second and "perhaps more disturbing lesson" is that

the incidents of violence in Beirut are growing closer together. A bomb every two months – a street battle every six months – may be sustainable.

OK. i get it. what can we do?

We are now awaiting the 13th attempt to elect the poor man, all pretending this is a Lebanese problem when they all along know that the violence in this country is dictated by the continuing conflict between Washington and Tehran. Thus is the fate of Lebanon.

The Question of Arab Unity: Unity Betrayed

Episode 2 of 9
Unity Betrayed

Part 1

(11 min)

Part 2

(13 min)

The Qustion of Arab unity: Why Unity?

(1)
Episode 1 of 9
Why Unity?

Part 1

(11 min)

Part 2

(12 min)

(2)
in the homepage of the Al Jazeera's series, it asked:

With the fall of Iraq to American and Allied forces and the possibility of a showdown between Christianity and Islam, is the Arab World on the brink of an abyss if it does not fullfil the promise of Arab unity?

Arab unity has been a dream and a promise since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, so why has this dream not been fulfilled in the last 100 years? What is the history behind its rise and fall?

Slums in Kenya

(1)
1 Feb 2008
Al Jazeera news

(3 min)

how the rich live inside walls side by side slums.

(2)
16 Aug 2007
Al Jazeera news

(3 min)

movie shooting in Kenyan slum, the largest and oldest in Africa

Chad's civil strife

(1)
4 Feb 2008
Al Jazeera news

Part 1

(12 min)

Part 2

(12 min)

(2)
Kristof blaimed Sudan partly for the conflict:

And in part, it is. But it’s also a proxy invasion of Chad by Sudan, for the rebel groups operate from a base in Darfur and are armed by Sudan. The Sudanese leadership wants to overthrow the Chadian government so that it will have a pawn next door, enabling it to cut off supply lines to Darfur rebels.

and he hopes France can do something for Chad. but subject to Darfur, i wouldn't hold my breath.

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc

(1)
Jan 2006


(1 hr 42 min)

2 Stanford professers' presentation
Thomas C. Heller: climate change (00:00)
Stephen H. Schneider: policy and negotiation about climate change (30:30)

(2)
"Post hoc, ergo propter hoc," the President said.

(3)
a youtuber jarvis1211 said:

Stephen Schneider the guy that also brought us "global cooling" back in the 70's.

but i love his "we care too much cost-benefit analysis".