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".

Authors@Google: Pamela McCorduck

Jan 2008


(38 min)

Pamela McCorduck discusses her new novel The Edge of Chaos.

Authors@Google: Joseph Stiglitz

(1)
Oct 2006


(43 min)

Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, speaks about his book Making Globalization Work.

(2)
the world is not flat, Prof Stiglitz said, as if Tom doesn't know. actually there are some chapters about "unflat world".

But Stiglitz is really extending "solutions" for the unflat world. but about debt, it would be more likely a result, rather than a reason.


(3)
when some developing nations signed some agreement of medicine patent, they were de facto death certs for thousand of people in the nations who no longer afforded treatments. Prof said. even, a pattern of DNA is patentable.

and, intellectual property of knowledge, which is public good, is inefficient economically, coz the marginally production cost is almost zero.

so, how should it be reformed?

(4)
but global warming? please.

Authors@Google: Jeffrey Toobin

(1)
Oct 2007


(57 min)

Jeffrey Toobin, the New Yorker writer and legal analyist, discussed his new book The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court (that is highly recommended by NY Times: Power Lineup, Swings From Right and Meet the Supremes).

(2)
i half expect he would talk about the 2005 shooting case in Fulton Courthouse. he is my personal the people of the last week. his article in New Yorker (Death in Georgia) lets the judge of the case removed himself. it is some kind of power of word.

turns out, he talked much about the business model of Google and newspapers, after discussing the highly possible settlement of the case of Google Book. i'd enjoy more his law stories.

Wal-Mart政府

今日NY Times的Week in Review發現, 原來Wal-Mart才是解決社會問題的能手:

As the federal government debates how to wean the country from its addiction to oil, Wal-Mart just announced it would require suppliers to make major appliances that use 25 percent less energy within the next three years.

While Congress wrings its hands over higher health care costs, Wal-Mart vowed to save companies $100 million this year by processing their prescription drug claims. (It already sells generic versions of prescription drugs for just $4, well below the national average.)

記得Jared Diamond也以McDonald's和De Beers為例.

達富直昇機

今日Washington Post的Editorial呼籲Bush政府加強Darfur維和部隊的muscle. 不過, 在軍事戰略其實不太複雜:

the U.N.-A.U. [African Union] force's biggest weakness is its lack of helicopters. Darfur is a vast, arid territory. Without at least 24 helicopters, it cannot be credibly patrolled. That must include a small squad of attack helicopters, able to fly and shoot at night, so that peacekeepers can deter attacks such as those that occurred recently.

沒有我們的世界

(1)
"我是一個喜愛花, 草, 昆蟲以及其他動物的人," 仙水說. "我討厭的, 只是人類罷了."

幽游白書 第16卷

(2)
SciAm Video:

(3 min)

根據Alan Weisman的The World Without Us製作. 或者有一種針對Homo sapien的病; 或者魔界洞開. 無可否認, 沒有人類的地球看上去比較舒服. "Is it possible that, instead of heaving a huge biological sigh of relief, the world without us would miss us?" Weisman問. 我想不會了. Agent Smith沒有說錯的, 人類是地球的病.

Copyright regime vs. civil liberties

Jul 2007


(55 min)

Rick Falkvinge, the founder of the Pirate Party in Sweden and the international politicized pirate movement, talks about the pirates' strategy to change global copyright laws.

Augmenting Social Cognition: From Social Foraging to Social Sensemaking

(1)
"There is a theory that," Carlos Green thought in the NY metro, "anyone on the planet can be connected to another person to a chain of six people, no one is a stranger... for long."

Six Degrees (TV Show)

(2)
Imagine. A stranger walked by and saw you have some bookmarks about cancer, then dropped you an email asked "everything ok? your family ok?" A personal sharing from Chi.

Feb 2007


(61 min)

Ed Chi summarized intial result from PARC's Augmented Social Cognition research project, where they studied both Wikipedia and del.icio.us to characterize their evolution.

"The emergence of Social Web has resulted in a spectrum of collaborative information environments," the introduction stated.

Authors@Google: Michael Lewis

Oct 2007


(50 min)

Michael Lewis, the author of The Liar's Poker, presented his new book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game.

資源咀咒

Economist Intelligence Unit Briefing報告幾乎所有資源豐富的非洲國家都沒有太多經濟自由. 雖然有南非和Namibia這些例外(它們的經濟並單靠出口, 例如, 石油和天然氣). 原因很簡單:

countries with plentiful oil, platinum or copper reserves see no need to free up their economies to attract foreign investors. Similarly, they don’t need foreign aid and certainly do not want foreign experts telling them what to do. But resource-poor countries like Uganda, Madagascar and Kenya know that they have to create an investment- and business-friendly environment to boost economic performance.