society

If you can’t contact your loved ones, or government agencies and relief organizations can’t coordinate, you can’t get anything done. […] A communications system is only useful if you can connect to every other endpoint on the network. If you have power but no one else does, you have a well powered and expensive paperweight (assuming you still have paper). To that point, if your phone has power but the switching station does not, or the cell towers in half the city are down, you still aren’t able to communicate with anyone else.”

—emtcharlie on ArsTechnica

A secret process that requires neither “concrete facts” nor “irrefutable evidence” …

“Instead of a watchlist limited to actual, known terrorists, the government has built a vast system based on the unproven and flawed premise that it can predict if a person will commit a terrorist act in the future,” says Hina Shamsi, the head of the ACLU’s National Security Project. “On that dangerous theory, the government is secretly blacklisting people as suspected terrorists and giving them the impossible task of proving themselves innocent of a threat they haven’t carried out.”

—The Secret Government Rulebook For Labeling You a Terrorist

How David Beats Goliath: When underdogs break the rules

This is a great article about how underdogs can win most of the time when they stray from the accepted rules of engagement. Applicable to just about anything.

I just learned about this project this morning. I like it!

http://www.tweenbots.com/

(I guess this was a good candidate for my first twitter tweet.)

More unnecessary force and an illegal arrest. Many officers in the NYPD continue to work out of control and above the law.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom gave a seminar for The Long Now Foundation entitled “Cities and Time”. If you live in San Francisco or are interested in Cities going “Green”, check out Stewart Brand‘s summary of the talk: Mayor Gavin Newsom, “Cities and Time”.

It’s interesting to read about some of the things the mayor would like to see happen in San Francisco. Of course, he won’t be in office to make good on his desires, but these kinds of comments are probably smart if you want to run for Governor of California. 😉