China's All-Seeing Eye : Rolling Stone

Naomi Kline this amazing article by naomi kline in rolling stone is the story of her visit to china and the meaning of "security" in this place in this time. how very orwellian. it would be just slightly alarming to hear what she describes on the usual grounds of privacy and surveillance and police use of high technology. but as she describes how the notion the world had that the chinese were villains suppressing the tibetans, and so somewhat chastized before the olympics, we are amazed to here quite the opposite is the case in china. read how she shows chinese use of hi tech is used quite skillfully for suppression. part of the story is how american technology helped out. here's a link to the software that she points out helps the chinese surveillance. http://www.l1id.com/pages/71-facial-screening

Turtle Box Stories

Turtle Box Stories this is a lovely little space where some quakers are sharing personal stories of holy encounter. the theme is of turtles, where turtles represent the ancient archetype of bridge between heaven and earth.

FORA.tv - Niall Ferguson & Peter Schwartz on Human Progress

Human Progress Here is a most worthy and rather long 1hr41min debate. Distributed on fora.tv this talk from the Long Now Foundation.

If you can only see a key bit jump to time 1:29 for a lovely Q&A summary of history and violence.

It is a debate that ranges over history in consideration of the history of violence. It is respectful and entertaining debate between the perspectives history:future and pessimism:optimism. Peter Schwartz, an engineer futurist, and Niall Ferguson, an historian. Ferguson's makes much reference to his current book The War of the World - 20th Century Conflict and the Descent of the West.

Wordle - Beautiful Word Clouds

Wordle A lovely little amusement. Johnathan Feinberg has put up a website to make "word clouds". Just paste in some words you like and they are randomly and artistically made into a picture.