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12.14.11: "You 'Da Boss?" Collective Creation. There are many forms of collective creation that run the whole spectrum, from merely coloring in someone else’s existing drawing to the actual creation of a thing from scratch. Often this spectrum of distinction is lost in the rush to embrace the amazing and wondrous, collectively created works like Wikipedia and, um, Zagat guides—these being held up as models for the possibility of collective creation of all and every kind of activity—from politics to newspapers.

I’ve maintained a fair amount of skepticism about the idea of crowd sourced creative works for some time, which is not to say some of them don’t work incredibly well. But, they’re not all the same. To me, even though Wikipedia is indeed an example of the wisdom of crowds producing an amazing work—one that is possibly better than those that are top down in their inception—it seems that the claims made for this kind of creative process are often a little misleading. With ants it is similar. (Image Source) 1. (Image Source) Daily Opus. *runs and hides* [Almost an accurate portrait, too :) I love it :D] Magnificent art by temple-ait - if you aren’t already following this marvellous person, I suggest you do. ::smooches:: Challenge #00476 - A101: The Nature of Enemy If you become a monster to put down a monster you’ve still got a monster running down at the end of the day and have as such not really solved the whole monster problem at all. — RecklessPrudence Beware the hand of the Enlisted Man, for all he has known is to kill — Galactic Proverb.

They called it the War of the Monsters. What they’d gone for, instead, was the Psi factor. It almost destroyed them all. Alice Tall flinched at their minds before their hands ever opened the door to her survival pod. They gave her clothes. She had to ask. "Depressant? She vigorously nodded. The building pressures of the voices within stilled the instant the chemicals entered her system. "Now," said a suited tech as they withdrew their own, much more streamlined, meds gun. "Five? Haaretz: War Costs. There’s the top 1% of wealthy Americans (bankers, oil tycoons, hedge fund managers) and there’s the top 0.01% of wealthy Americans: the military contractor CEOs.

If you’ve been following the War Costs campaign, you already know that these corporations are bad bosses, bad job creators and bad stewards of taxpayer dollars. What you may not know is that the huge amount of money these companies’ CEOs make off of war and your tax dollars places them squarely at the top of the gang of corrupt superrich choking our democracy. These CEOs want you to believe the massive war budget is about security — it’s not. The lobbying they’re doing to keep the war budget intact at the expense of the social safety net is purely about their greed. In many areas, including yearly CEO salary and in dollars spent corrupting Congress, these companies are far greater offenders than even the big banks like JP Morgan Chase or Bank of America.

Egregious Military Contractor CEO pay Military Contractor CEO Pay in 2010. Occupy the Agenda. The Occupy protests might have died in infancy if a senior police official had not pepper-sprayed young women on video. Harsh police measures in other cities, including a clash in Oakland that put a veteran in intensive care and the pepper-spraying of an 84-year-old woman in Seattle, built popular support.

Just in the last few days, Bloomberg — who in other respects has been an excellent mayor — rescued the movement from one of its biggest conundrums. It was stuck in a squalid encampment in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park: antagonizing local residents, scaring off would-be supporters, and facing months of debilitating snow and rain. Then the mayor helped save the demonstrators by clearing them out, thus solving their real estate problem and re-establishing their narrative of billionaires bullying the disenfranchised.

Thanks to the mayor, the protests grew bigger than ever. The high ground that the protesters seized is not an archipelago of parks in America, but the national agenda. James M. M1204 < Common < CopsWiki. The Super Committee and Why We Occupy. Power in Numbers: Millions Crowd to Occupy Life. November 19th, 2011 2:07 PM By Donna Smith One of the most powerful and interesting things about the Occupy Movement is its reach well beyond Wall Street or even the smallest tent encampments around the nation. The power to bloom and spread has been in its simultaneously coordinated actions combined with the movement’s lack of demands on its own activists to comply with just one assigned set of tactics dictated from afar.

Its lack of a consolidated power structure or the control of one mastermind compelling allegiance has strengthened the movement in ways that confounded not only the mainstream media but also the mainstream mindset. What we used to call the establishment in the 1960s had become so enamored with itself and so entrenched that its generals cannot fathom what happened or why. Rest assured, what has been reported by many as a lack of specific demands or direction coming from OWS ought not be confused with a lack of specific demands or direction. It is interesting. The Occupy Movement - Why are they protesting? Judge orders New York to allow protesters, tents, in park. A New York Supreme Court justice opts not to extend a temporary restraining order Hundreds of police and private security guards fill the park and the surrounding area Demonstrators circle their former home base.The city plans to allow protesters to stage demonstrations in Zuccotti Park Are you there?

Send photos to Open Story. New York (CNN) -- A New York Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Occupy protesters will be allowed to return to Zuccotti Park, but they can't bring their tents and generators -- once a mainstay of the movement. The Lower Manhattan property has been a home for the loosely defined group for nearly two months, spawning similar demonstrations in cities nationwide and around the world. Police in riot gear cleared them out early Tuesday morning, a move that attorneys for the demonstrators say was unlawful. Occupy Wall Street gets the boot Police move in on Wall Street protesters Occupy Wall Street protesters evicted Demonstrators cried foul. Mayor: Occupy Philadelphia has changed.

10/28/2011

10/27/11. THE FUNNIEST AND GREATEST THING I'VE EVER POSTED. Occupy Writers: A Mirror of and a Stimulant for the Occupy Movement. "I love the Occupy Wall Street Library," Jeff Sharlet tells me. He is the best selling author of "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power" and someone who has spent a lot of time here at Liberty Plaza Park recently, observing the general assemblies, tweeting his thoughts and filing reports on the Wall Street occupation.

"I've brought a lot of books there. I took a book, I like having it because it says, 'Occupy Wall Street Library' on it. " Sharlet is also the brain behind Occupy Writers a collection of authors, poets, playwrights, journalists, cartoonists, and others (anyone who self-identifies as a writer can get on the list) who have signed onto a simple statement: "We, the undersigned writers and all who will join us, support Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy Movement around the world.

" The simplicity of the solidarity statement mirrors the simplicity of the movement's message and yields the same result. Why start such a list in the first place? 2008 Redux: Taxpayers to help bailout Merrill Lynch and Bank of America - National Finance Examiner. Without regulatory permission, Bank of American on October 18th has moved potentially trillions of dollars worth of European derivatives into their depository arm to give it access to the Fed window, and backstopping by the FDIC and US taxpayers.

This move by Bank of America and its investment arm, Merrill Lynch, is an attempt to remain solvent, and hope for a bailout of its failed investments by the Fed and Treasury Department as the banking crisis in Europe threatens their balance sheets. This story from Bloomberg just hit the wires this morning. Bank of America is shifting derivatives in its Merrill investment banking unit to its depository arm, which has access to the Fed discount window and is protected by the FDIC.This means that the investment bank's European derivatives exposure is now backstopped by U.S. taxpayers. Bank of America didn't get regulatory approval to do this, they just did it at the request of frightened counterparties.

Bank of America Deathwatch: Moves Risky Derivatives from Holding Company to Taxpayer-Backstopped Depository. If you have any doubt that Bank of America is in trouble, this development should settle it. I’m late to this important story broken this morning by Bob Ivry of Bloomberg, but both Bill Black (who I interviewed just now) and I see this as a desperate (or at the very best, remarkably inept) move by Bank of America’s management. The short form via Bloomberg: Bank of America Corp. (BAC), hit by a credit downgrade last month, has moved derivatives from its Merrill Lynch unit to a subsidiary flush with insured deposits, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation…Bank of America’s holding company — the parent of both the retail bank and the Merrill Lynch securities unit — held almost $75 trillion of derivatives at the end of June, according to data compiled by the OCC.

And remember, as we have indicated, there are some “derivatives” that should be eliminated, period. This changes the picture completely. But it’s even worse than that. The FDIC is understandably ripshit. Plan on dramatic cuts in tuition assistance. Proposal would reduce amount paid per credit hour and annually By Andrew Tilghman - Staff writer Posted : Wednesday Oct 19, 2011 14:01:36 EDT Active-duty members should expect significant cuts to the highly popular tuition assistance program next year under a Pentagon plan to reduce the cap on how much the military pays for voluntary education. Tuition assistance is an important recruiting tool, used today by more than 300,000 active-duty troops to pay for school. Current rules allow them to select any school with a basic accreditation and apply for up to $4,500 a year in assistance, with a cap of $250 per credit hour. The details of the new forcewide policy remain unclear, but one plan widely discussed by the Marine Corps would drop the annual cap to $3,500 and impose limits for individual classes at $175 per undergraduate credit hour and $225 per graduate credit hour.

Preserving the benefit Maj. Untitled document. Living_peace.pdf (application/pdf Object) Reinhabit sandiego. Declaration of the Occupation of New York City. This document was accepted by the NYC General Assembly on September 29, 2011, with minor updates made on October 1, 2011. It is the first official, collective statement of the protesters in Zuccotti Park. As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. 'Occupy' movement goes global as a symbol of shared economic frustration. Editor's note: iReporters all over the globe are showing us what Occupy Wall Street is like in their towns and cities through the Open Story: from the Aleutian Islands to Raleigh, North Carolina; from Reykjavik, Iceland, to Zadar, Croatia.

Check out a map of the reports, videos and pictures here. The Occupy Wall Street movement, which swept across the United States as thousands demanded that government institutions change to help fix a struggling economy, gained a major boost as the world began to come together in solidarity over shared economic frustrations. As the sun rose on each country, one-by-one in the same way each stock market would open, protesters took to the streets.

What began as a movement that was largely ignored by the mainstream media can't be dismissed anymore, not when thousands of people are sharing rally cries from Zucotti Park in New York to City Hall Square in Copenhagen, Denmark. But that global push may not end with the one day of solidarity. London Paris Rome Tokyo.

Experiments of democracy

Debt: The Shame of Cities and States. Can they reject their long history of fiscal irresponsibility? A century ago, america’s states and cities faced a crisis in government. A number of commonwealths — California, New York, New Jersey, Wisconsin, and Illinois conspicuous among them — as well as cities across the land labored under the heavy weight of costly and corrupt misrule. This state of affairs was generally blamed on an unholy triple alliance of large corporations (“the trusts”) and other business interests, party bosses and machines, and compliant legislators and officials. Lincoln Steffens, the most prominent muckraking journalist of the day, scathingly described the results in influential magazine articles, gathered together in his 1906 books The Shame of the Cities and The Struggle for Self-Government.

Since then the clock of time has completed a circuit of 100 years and more, and the nation’s states and municipalities again face a crisis in government. The crisis The public sector was another story. The response. My Suggestions - My Solutions. My Suggestions - My Solutions I’m not naïve enough to think I have all the answers and I don’t pretend to understand every aspect of how the world works but I do believe in simple answers. These are my solutions to some of our current problems. Thank you for taking a couple of minutes to read my suggestions. Election Reforms Presidential, Senate and House elections should all be held on the same day. Currently Senate elections are staggered 33% every two years. If all federally elected offices were accountable and elected on the same day then they would be encouraged to work together.

Presidential, Senate and House terms should each be for 5 years and limited to two terms. Currently Senators and House Representatives can be in office until the day they die. Eliminate all political contributions including PAC’s and lobbying efforts. When it comes to elections, free speech is important but “equal speech” and "equal access" is more important. Eliminate elected office pensions and benefits. War. Nobel Prize in Physics 2011–The Accelerating Universe.

Text by J. Richard Gott The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Adam Riess, Brian Schmidt, and Saul Perlmutter for their discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe. It is one of the times when astronomers have won the Nobel Prize in Physics. It is perhaps the most important scientific discovery of the last quarter of the 20th Century. (The most important scientific discovery of the previous quarter century?

Watson and Crick’s discovery of the structure of DNA.) What does this discovery mean? Map of Galaxies ball from Newton and sunk the basket. Einstein applied his new equations to cosmology. The Friedmann big bang model was triumphant. Even if the universe starts off at rest, this gravitational repulsion starts the universe expanding. Map of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation Scientists were anxious to determine the energy density of the universe, which according to Friedmann would determine the future fate of the universe. Eastern End of Sloan Great Wall. Scholars - Nick Schulz. What is the Monkeysphere?

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BANK TRANSFER DAY. Occupy Wall Street Backs a Nationwide Boycott Against Banks. Hire Us — Flash Mob America. Design and Code an Integrated Facebook App: Theory. Creating an Environmentally Friendly Green Type Treatment. Preserving Vector Text from Photoshop. Vector Text Effects. Vector text out of photoshop??

Rouge. Aurora.jpg (JPEG Image, 2480x3508 pixels) - Scaled (25%) MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan on The Federal Reserve, Media Censorship, Bilderberg @ #occupywallstreet. The Diaspora Project. Diaspora-media Info Page. #OccupySD. San Diego Independent Media Center | questioning authority and facilitating communication in solidarity with communities. TheAnonMessage's Channel. Anonymous Threatens to 'Erase NYSE from the Internet' Edmund Burke.

Túpac Amaru. Condorcet, "Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind" (1795) A daily TV/radio news program, hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, airing on over 900 stations, pioneering the largest community media collaboration in the United States. Simon Bolivar: The Liberator. Francisco de Miranda (Venezuelan revolutionary. October 2011 | Human Needs, Not Corporate Greed. We Are Change | Tag Archive | Luke Rudkowski. Luke Rudkowski (lukerudkowski) Luke Rudkowski. Wearechange's Channel. The Roots Factory Home Page. New evidence: undercover police triggered Barcelona riot. Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) -- Bold Progressives. First You've Got To Get Mad! - A Special Comment. Bankers Now Protesting Wall Street. Occupy San Diego.

Occupy Together | Home. How to Revoke a Corporate Charter. .:Plata:. Chris Hedges: Occupy Wall Street is ‘where the hope of America lies’ | Raw Replay. Occupy Wall Street | NYC Protest for American Revolution. Where's My Super-Cheap Mortgage? The Quiet Coup - Magazine. Financial sector spent $5 bln lobbying DC last decade: Report. United States of Spirits. Daily Speculations. The Independent Institute. Tir_15_04_1_hummel.pdf (application/pdf Object) The New Fed. Occupying Wall Street. The Zurich Axioms.