Category — General

War On Want : Corporate accountability : Fashion Victims:
Workers in Bangladesh are regularly working 80 hours a week for just 5p an hour, in potential death trap factories, to produce cheap clothes for British consumers of Primark, Tesco and Asda’s ‘George’ range. The charity War on Want today issued these findings in a new report, Fashion Victims, based on research among employees at six Bangladeshi factories in the capital Dhaka which employ over 5,000 workers, mainly women, making clothes for the three bargain retailers. Meera Syal, star of the television series The Kumars at No 42, is supporting moves for regulation to bring these companies to account.

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join the war on want!

Human Rights Day (10 December 2006):
Human Rights Day (10 December 2006)

10 December 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, which has become a universal standard for
defending and promoting human rights. Every year on 10 December, Human
Rights Day marks the adoption of the Universal Declaration. On Human
Rights Day it is celebrated around the globe that “All human beings
are born with equal and inalienable rights and fundamental freedoms”.

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keep in mind that i am against the whole ‘negative freedoms’ construction of rights, and the whole ‘natural rights’ construction of rights. i think that rights are conventions, generated by people’s fundamental respect for each other’s equality of autonomy in as much as we desire autonomy and equality ourselves. rights are in short the institutionalization of desires, the institution of the will to protect others, which is the construction that i prefer.

Democratizing elearning:
What if workplace learning became democratized. The needs of the learners would rule. The learners would have the right to learn what they needed when they needed it in a way that served their level of understanding. There would be a safety net to catch those that fell short of the performance outcomes. There would be support systems to nurture damaged learners back to being self-motivated, curious, reflective practitioners.
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what if? what if learning is engaged in as equals? what if?

Mass hysteria forces evacuation of school – Newspaper Edition – Times Online:
Mass hysteria forces evacuation of school

Michael Horsnell

A specialist science college was evacuated yesterday after a film on human biology apparently sparked mass hysteria.
More than 30 pupils, aged from 11 to 13, as well as a teaching assistant were taken to hospital after three children initially told teachers that they were feeling unwell.

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Fear is a contagion in herd animals… one gets afraid, the next does, and blammo, they all get afraid and feel ill, etc.

Prokofy Neva banned from the Linden Blog:
Prokofy Neva, certainly one of Second Life’s most outspoken and energetic critics of Linden Lab and it’s policies was banned today from the official Linden Blog, apparently for his comments in this thread. He received an IM from Torley Linden informing him of the ban, apparently for ‘trolling’.
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My position is that Prokofy should be banned from the world for using too much of LL time and resources. She has the right to her opinions and the right to voice them. She does not have as she seems to claim the right to response. That she demands response, and frequently garners it, eats time and effort that is better spent elsewhere. Just set the precendent, ban her for overuse and abuse of ll resources. At this point in the game, having talked to her many times, i cannot see him as anything other than a griefer by other means. She doesn’t shoot bullets, she shoots arguments, but the arguments are all centered on her vision and interests… claimedly based on ‘research’, but in the end… she’s just griefing.

The Geopolitics of Asian Cyberspace — December 2006:
What happens to
your request when you click on a link to a Web site or send an email? For most
surfers, the Internet experience begins and ends with what happens on the
computer screen in front of them. However, if you follow that email or Web
request as it leaves your computer and passes down the fiber-optic cable to the
servers and routers of your local Internet Service Provider (ISP), through the
Internet Exchange Points (IXPS), international gateways, and on to the undersea
trunk cables of telecommunications companies, you will find a complex and
largely hidden infrastructure of filters and choke points.

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some of this is related to things that i’ve been saying for too long… should have written them up.

Two game Ph.D’s in two days!:
I think it must be the first time in history that two game Ph.D’s comes out of the same institution within two days, nevertheless this is what happens at the IT University exactly these days. Jonas Heide Smith and Miguel Sicart, who for a long time have been sharing an office and the pains of writing a Ph.D, have reached the end of their journey – on time! Jonas defended his Ph.D. thesis on Plans

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I remember when i met Jonas and Miguel…. It doesn’t seem like 3 years ago, but I guess it is. Congratulations to both of them.

Raimi’s Pulp Adventures?:
Rumor has it that Sam Raimi plans to direct a movie featuring Doc Savage, the Shadow, and the Avenger.

Please, please, please let it be true!

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Oh, these could be fun…..

Microsoft Security Advisory (929433): Vulnerability in Microsoft Word Could Allow Remote Code Execution:
Microsoft Security Advisory (929433)Vulnerability in Microsoft Word Could Allow Remote Code ExecutionPublished: December 5, 2006sID=’l1-EXB’Top of sectionMicrosoft is investigating a new report of limited “zero-day” attacks using a vulnerability in Microsoft Word 2000, Microsoft Word 2002, Microsoft Office Word 2003, Microsoft Word Viewer 2003, Microsoft Word 2004 for Mac, and Microsoft Word 2004 v. X for Mac, as well as Microsoft Works 2004, 2005, and 2006.In order for this attack to be carried out, a user must first open a malicious Word file attached to an e-mail or otherwise provided to them by an attacker.

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no word for you!

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | God. Who knows?:
We are in a period of intense debate about religion. It seems there are believers, secularists and atheists – in their manifold varieties – arguing over their various concerns. Veils. Intelligent design v evolution. Ordaining gays and women. Contraception and Aids.

But there is one voice that is squeezed out, partly because it can equivocate, partly because it tires of the tit-for-tat that the debate is so often reduced to. That is the agnostic.

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I’m not really agnostic… I’m mostly a humanist, sometimes a nihilist, occasionally something like a Quaker, but usually just a humanist.