PIONEERS, Hero's' & GOOD DEED DOERS
The U.S. Department of Justice is flashing a green light to
whistleblowers in its own ranks.
http://www.justice.gov/oig/press/2012/2012_08_08.pdf
http://www.law.com/jsp/cc/PubArticleCC.jsp?id=1202567182355&New_Ombudsman_to_Set_the_Tone_for_Whistleblowers_at_DOJ
Professor Dr. Leon Eisenberg
---[[
My Uncle
]]
Is psychiatry more mindful or brainier than it was a decade ago?
Gene vs Culture Coevolution: Genes give rise to culture, societies
with this culture then affect the fitness of its members, and hence
culture guides genetic evolution. The product is us.
Culture guides genetic evolution, and in a more immediate way
chemical environment (nutrition, toxins), especially of the young
and yet unborn, guides the expression of genes.
The evidence for gene-culture coevolution is extremely clear, and
the two ideological positions, one that trivializes genes and the
other that trivializes culture are obviously wrong and ideological.
David Goldenberg
- [[
My Cousin
]]
Record collector and film preservationist who accumulated a
trove of more than 10,000 classic recordings.
One of the earliest pioneers Visionary,
Michael Hart
,
died
at the age of just 64.
Hart began
what turned into the free etext library
Project Gutenberg
in 1971 - fully 12 years before Richard Stallman began to
formulate his equivalent ideas for free software.
What makes his death particularly tragic is that his name is
probably
only vaguely known
, even to people familiar with the areas he devoted his life to:
free etexts and the public domain. His initial goal was to digitize
10,000 books; Gutenberg now offers access to more than 36,000
titles, without registration or fee. Hart
campaigned
against extensions of U.S. copyright (the majority of the books in
Project Gutenberg are from prior to 1920, and therefore in the
public domain; the few that still fall under copyright strictures
were released into the public domain with the permission of the
copyright holders). And in a refreshingly non-promotional stance,
Hart eschewed any form of advertising and firmly stuck with the
low-tech interfaces.
I had the pleasure of emailing Michael when we discussed issues
that related to the business models of free ebooks
.
Hart didn't just write about the baleful effect of copyright
extensions, he also fought against them. The famous “Eldred v
Ashcroft” case in the US that sought to have such unlimited
copyright extensions declared unconstitutional originally involved
Hart.
As he later wrote:
Eldred v Ashcroft was previously labeled as in "Hart v Reno"
before I saw that Larry Lessig, Esquire, had no intention of doing
what I thought necessary to win. At that point I fired him and he
picked up Eric Eldred as his current scapegoat du jour.
As this indicates, Hart was as uncompromising in his defence of the
public domain as Stallman is of free software.
In 1971, the year Richard Stallman joined the MIT AI Lab, Michael Hart was given an operator's account on a Xerox Sigma V mainframe at the University of Illinois. Since he estimated this computer time had a nominal worth of $100 million, he felt he had an obligation to repay this generosity by using it to create something of comparable and lasting value.
His solution was to type in the US Declaration of Independence, roughly 5K of ASCII, and to attempt to send it to everyone on ARPANET (fortunately, this trailblazing attempt at spam failed). His insight was that once turned from analogue to digital form, a book could be reproduced endlessly for almost zero additional cost - what Hart termed "Replicator Technology". By converting printed texts into etexts, he was able to create something whose potential aggregate value far exceeded even the heady figure he put on the computing time he used to generate it.
Hart chose the name "Project Gutenberg" for this body of etexts, making a bold claim that they represented the start of something as epoch-making as the original Gutenberg revolution.
He said: "Google is working from the top down. It's very centralized. Project Gutenberg is the opposite: It's decentralized, it's grassroots. From the consumer's point of view, if you're trying to get a quotation from a book, you could get the book from Project Gutenberg and cut and paste, say, the whole "Hamlet" soliloquy. On Google, you can't. Also, ours is totally non-commercial. You won't find advertising on any of our pages."
Douglas C. Engelbart, Inventor of the Computer Mouse, Dies at 88 Douglas C. Engelbart, a visionary scientist whose singular epiphany in 1950 about technology's potential to expand human intelligence led to a host of inventions — among them the computer mouse — that became the basis for both the Internet and the modern personal computer, died on Tuesday at his home in Atherton, Calif. He was 88.7/2/2013
Thinkers Expain Why Things Are The Way They Are In The World --
WHAT ARE MEMES?
Memes
Richard Dawkins invented the term "meme'' in 1976
meme: (pron. 'meem') A contagious idea that replicates like a virus,
passed on from mind to mind. Memes function the same way genes and
viruses do, propagating through communication networks and
face-to-face contact between people. Root of the word "memetics," a
field of study which postulates that the meme is the basic unit of
cultural evolution. Examples of memes include melodies, icons,
fashion statements and phrases.
(1) construct an eight-layered paleopsychological stratum for displaying levels of consciousness and complexity; and
(2) use this multilayered scaffolding for defining and dealing with racial, ethnic, economic, religious, political, and nationalistic tension-zones, hot-spots, and potentially dangerous conflicts.
The Alan Lomax Website
In the early 1930s, Alan Lomax and his father, pioneering folklorist
John A. Lomax, first developed the Library of Congress' Archive of
American Folksong as a major national resource.
NASA"S FEMALE FRONTIERS PROJECT
The New Year is blasting off to a fabulous start. Next week we will
kick off our Female Frontiers project with a web chat featuring
Nancy Roman, NASA's first chief of Astronomy and the first women
to hold an executive level job at NASA
. Nancy's chat will begin our series of interactive events featuring
women who have achieved firsts in their fields. This series of
events honors
Eileen Collins, the first female space shuttle commander of STS-93
scheduled for an April launch
. More details about this event and registration for chats can be
found by linking from the Women of NASA home page at:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/women
and from the
Female Frontiers pages
Women of Courage Around the World
Article on how the female candidates did as well or better than
the men
, but weren't even given a chance to go into space. (This is U.S.
NASA space program in the 1960's).
Gordon Moore
Multifaceted individual who has made enduring contributions to our
chemical and scientific heritage through exceptional activity in the
areas of innovation, entrepreneurship, research, education, public
understanding, legislation, or philanthropy.
Akre & Wilson - Reporters
Their award was for their investigation of rBGH, a genetically
modified bovine growth hormone produced by the Monsanto Corp. To
some environmental and science groups rBGH can be linked to human
breast, prostate and colon cancer although it is widely employed by
the American dairy industry while being banned in Canada, Europe,
New Zealand and Japan. FOX Television, their employer, refused to
run their four-part series, because the network had been threatened
with a lawsuit by Monsanto Co., the manufacturer of rBGH. FOX
instead insisted the pair air a report distinctly biased to
Monsanto's point of view. Akre and Wilson, however, continued to
press FOX to run their original story, and were subsequently fired
by the network in 1997.
Corporate Crime Reporter
The death penalty should be applied to corporations convicted of
defrauding the federal government, according to a report released
today by the Corporate Crime Reporter.
2011 WhistleblowerS finally get
financial reward
In a 3-2 vote, the SEC approved a system in which informants will be
awarded anywhere from 10 to 30 percent of any enforced penalty,
provided that the figure exceeds $1 million. Previously,
whistleblowers could only expect a financial return from the SEC in
cases related to insider-trading. The incentive for whistleblowing
has proven to be among the most challenging provisions to implement
in the 2010 Dodds-Frank overhaul of Wall Street.
Jeffrey Wigand, Ph.D.
Tobacco Whistleblower
whose story is featured in the major motion picture "The Insider"
Contact Dr. Wigand
Brown & Williamson - 1996 On April 14, 1994, the seven CEOs of
the major American tobacco companies testified before Congress and
said that nicotine was not addictive. Two years later, Jeffrey
Wigand, a vice president for research and development at the Brown
& Williamson tobacco company, turned to "60 Minutes" to tell a
different story. In an interview with Mike Wallace, Wigand asserted
that his employer knowingly doctored the nicotine content in its
cigarettes so as to enhance its addictive qualities.Wigand also said
that he became the target of death threats, and his story, along
with CBS's internal debate over airing the interview, was the
subject of the 1999 movie,
"The Insider"
Lowell Bergman
"60 Minutes" journalist who fought censorship and got Jeffrey
Wigands' information.
Dr. John Chittick
Walked the earth spreading information and founded
TeenAIDS-PeerCorps
John Glen and
Chuck Yeager
Oct. 14, 1947 first supersonic flight
Elliot M. Katz
D.V.M. graduate of Cornell University, is the founder and president
of
In Defense of Animals
, a national non-profit organization dedicated to ending the
institutionalized exploitation and abuse of nonhuman animals by
working for, and defending the rights, welfare, and habitat of these
individuals. Now 15 years old, IDA has made ending the property
status of animals one of its primary goals. For more info go to
http://www.idausa.org
The Dollywood Foundation Web site URL
http://www.dollywood./foundation.com
The time spent reading is probably the most important minutes spent
every single day. Hats off to Dolly and to all those who recognize
the importance of starting early and in building families of
readers. It is those families who will comprise cities of readers,
counties of readers, states of readers, and finally we may have a
nation of readers. "Dolly Parton gives 5,200 kids a book a month.
Every one of the 5,200 children in Doly Parton's native Sevier
County are eligible to receive a top-quality, hand-picked children's
book every month, from birth until his or her fifth birthday, plus a
special bookcase to hold the 60 volumes. These books are being given
to the children free by the nonprofit
Dollywood Foundation
. Since the program began three years ago, some 91,000 books have
been distributed. The foundation estimates 70 percent of the
preschoolers in the county are enrolled. Last month, the
National Council of Teachers of English gave the program its 1998
Literacy Award
. The cost for a full library, including bookcase, is $350 per
child. The Dollywood Foundation, supported principally by Dolly
Parton's annual fund-raising concerts, has raised more than $200,000
for the program since its inception and has committed to spend $1
million over the next five years. Jerome Harste, and Indiana
University professor specializing in early childhood education, said
he wished public figures in every county would follow Dolly Parton's
example and support public literacy and public education."
Albert Hoffman Father of LSD
Research chemist who synthesised LSD and had the world's first 'acid
trip' on his bicycle.'Father of LSD' Dies at 102
While working with the drug in the Sandoz pharmaceutical laboratory
a few years after first producing it, Mr Hofmann ingested some of
the drug through his fingertips. He went home and experienced what
he described as visions of "fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes
with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colours".
Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD here in 1938