- Aserbajdsjan gjør ESC til et politisk utstillingsvindu - I det gamle Sovjet ble alle kulturarrangementer grovt utnyttet til å slå politisk gevinst for en ide. I dagens Aserbajdsjan foregår denne utnyttelsen enda mer skamløst. Forskjellen er at man nå forsøker å fremme personer, sier Ismayilova. Hun viser til at presidentfamilien i Aserbajdsjan er svært tungt inne i det prestisjefylte arrangmentet av ESC-finalen: Førstedamen Mehriban Aliyeva leder den nasjonale ESC-komiteen i Baku. Og presidentens svigersønn, Emin Agalarov, har fått i oppgave å fremføre pauselåten under finalen. - Se forbi "Lykkebeltet" Sammen med lederen menneskerettighetshuset i Baku, Vugar Gojayev, rettet Ismayilova i dag følgende appell til norske jouralister som skal dekke finalen i den europeiske sangkonkurransen: - Vær klar over at Aserbajdsjan er et diktatur og gjennomkorrupt samfunn, der menneskerettigheter folk i Europa tar for gitt, er satt til side. - Skriv om menneskerettigheter og forsøk å intervjue noen av ofrene for det som skjer i landet vårt. Flyktet fra Baku
Cop watchers: Anonymous vs. police A member of Anonymous keeps an eye on NYPD officers during a recent Occupy Wall Street protest. Member of hacker collective says people have been abused for too longGroup hacks websites of police officers it claims engaged in misconductMembers rarely speak to the mediaWith big political events ahead this year, Anonymous promises to be watchful New York (CNN) -- "Expect us" is the favorite tag line for an endless stream of Web videos posted by the Internet collective known as Anonymous. It's a promise and a threat. "This is what happens when the people have had enough," said "Troy," a member of the collective who joined the street protests in New York. 'Anonymous' confronts police "Hopefully, he'll think twice before he pulls out his baton against somebody who's holding a sign saying we just want peace," said Troy, who spent weeks monitoring and videotaping New York Police Department officers during the height of the Occupy Wall Street protests.
Top 10 Things That Determine Happiness photo: meddygarnet Happiness is, by nature, a subjective quality with a definition like a moving target. There is scant evidence — qualitative or quantitative — to lend convincing support to those life variables most critical in determining individual happiness, which is likely why past researchers committed to the scientific method rarely tried to tackle the subject. This is changing. Take, for example, the World Database of Happiness in Rotterdam, self-described as a, “continuous register of scientific research on subjective appreciation of life.” While we’re not entirely convinced of this marriage between science and subjectivity, we can still offer up a top 10 of things that determine human happiness, as supported by this growing body of research. No.10 – Having a short memory Are you one to hold grudges? No.9 – Exacting fairness No.8 – Having lots of friendships No.7 – Being spiritual No.6 – Thinking ahead No.5 – Developing a skill According to psychology professor Dr. No.2 – Good genes
This Is What The Desk Of The Future Looks Like [VIDEO] | ReadTechNews - StumbleUpon EXOpc has posted a video of its EXOdesk — an interactive desk environment that lets you do all sorts of tasks on a virtual space on your desk — in action and it looks amazing. The actual device is a tabletop computer, somewhat similar to Microsoft Surface, offering 40 inches of high definition space, where you can manipulate virtual objects by touching them and dragging them around. The video offers a taste of what you can do with EXOdesk: add a virtual keyboard, an RSS feed stream and apps to your tabletop surface. A piano simulation app is shown, and though we don’t see much of its functionality, it looks stunning when expanded to the entire surface of EXOdesk. Although the release date is vaguely set for 2012, we already know EXOdesk will cost $1,299. If that sounds like a lot, compare it to the recently announced price of Microsoft Surface 2.0, which is $8,900, and it will suddenly seem like a bargain. AD: >> Click to download the best 3D Video Converter << via Mashable
Et imponerende mot Melodi Grand Prix i Aserbajdsjan nærmer seg. Norske journalister som skal dit har valget: Håndlangere for et korrupt og brutalt regime, eller journalistikk? Det dreper ikke journalister eller menneskerettighetsaktivister i Norge. Opposisjonspolitikere og fagforeningsledere blir heller ikke arrestert eller trakassert. Det er lite farlig å utfordre og avsløre norske makthavere. Men i mange andre land fører journalister, politiske aktivister og menneskerettighetsforkjempere en daglig kamp for å overleve i brutale regimer. Denne uken møtte jeg en slik sannhetssøkende og modig journalist, Khadija Ismayilova fra Aserbajdsjan. 29. juni i fjor offentliggjorde Khadija en artikkel der hun fortalte om hvordan presidentens døtre kontrollerte landets største teleselskap gjennom stråselskaper i flere skatteparadis som Panama og Nevis Island. Men Khadija valgte ikke tausheten. Da jeg spiste middag med Khadija i Oslo denne uken, spurte jeg henne hvorfor dette ikke skremte henne til taushet.
Wikipedia, other websites go dark in anti-piracy bill protest The protest is in response to the Stop Online Piracy Act legislation"We're not done yet," website saidThe legislation is working its way through Congress (CNN) -- Wikipedia was back Thursday, a day after shutting down the website to protest anti-piracy bills now in Congress. On the website early Thursday morning was the cryptic message: "Thank you for protecting Wikipedia. Clicking on that message takes a Wikipedia viewer to a thank you letter and instructions on how to continue fighting against anti-piracy bills that critics say could amount to censorship. "Your voice was loud and strong," the message said. Wikipedia was among several websites to shut down Wednesday in protest of the bills. Instead of the usual encyclopedia articles, visitors to Wikipedia's English-language site were greeted by a message about the decision to black out its Web page for an entire day. Why Wikipedia went down at midnight However, users were able to access Wikipedia on some smartphones.
Seeing in the Dark Credit: cliff1066tm. Patient TN was, by his own account, completely blind. Two consecutive strokes had destroyed the visual cortex of his brain, and consequently, his ability to see. It is not uncommon for stroke patients to suffer brain damage, but the case of TN — referenced by his initials, the general practice in such studies — was peculiar. His first stroke had injured only one hemisphere of his visual cortex. Known as selective bilateral occipital damage, TN’s unusual injury made him the subject of much interest while recovering at a hospital in Geneva. To further test the extent of TN’s abilities, researchers from Tilburg University in the Netherlands devised a simple yet decisive experiment: an obstacle course. TN’s rare condition is known as blindsight. The researchers explained that TN’s success indicates that “humans can sustain sophisticated visuo-spacial skills in the absence of perceptual awareness.”
8 Things Everybody Ought to Know About Concentrating - StumbleUpon “Music helps me concentrate,” Mike said to me glancing briefly over his shoulder. Mike was in his room writing a paper for his U.S. History class. On his desk next to his computer sat crunched Red Bulls, empty Gatorade bottles, some extra pocket change and scattered pieces of paper. In the pocket of his sweat pants rested a blaring iPod with a chord that dangled near the floor, almost touching against his Adidas sandals. Mike made a shift about every thirty seconds between all of the above. Do you know a person like this? The Science Behind Concentration In the above account, Mike’s obviously stuck in a routine that many of us may have found ourselves in, yet in the moment we feel it’s almost an impossible routine to get out of. When we constantly multitask to get things done, we’re not multitasking, we’re rapidly shifting our attention. Phase 1: Blood Rush Alert When Mike decides to start writing his History essay, blood rushes to his anterior prefrontal cortex. Phase 2: Find and Execute
Social Libertarianism - by nikhil bhatla Apr 23, 2007, 10:10p - Culture Pure libertarianism, while disproportionately popular among several of my friends and among the privileged, is neither a feasible nor a compassionate philosophy for social living. As much as I value my independence and want people to stop butting into each other's business, libertarianism will not work as a solution to the overreach of government and our culture of victimization. Pure Libertarians, at their core, believe in the philosophy of "live and let live" taken to its extreme. Libertarians believe that individuals should take responsibility for their own actions. I hope this description conjures up a reasonable image of pure libertarianism. Now, there are 2 questions for us to ask. As societies have developed and grown in size, individuals are forced to interact with each other more. Social control is born. And so our culture of caution coagulates with the desire to "do something", leading to the institution of yet another social control.
Google Joins Anti-SOPA protest by "Censoring" Its Logo Although it didn't black out any of its sites entirely, Google has joined the anti-SOPA protest by putting up a censored version of its logo, visible only to users from the U.S. Google's David Drummond explained the company's views on SOPA/PIPA in an official blog post. PIPA and SOPA will censor the web, stifle innovation and hurt web businesses, says Drummond, and it won't even help the fight against piracy. "These bills would grant new powers to law enforcement to filter the Internet and block access to tools to get around those filters (...) SEE ALSO: Why SOPA Is Dangerous "These bills wouldn’t get rid of pirate sites.
Freud's *The Interpretation of Dreams* Chapter 1, Section D Back to Psych Web Home Page Back to The Interpretation of Dreams Table of Contents D. Why Dreams Are Forgotten After Waking That a dream fades away in the morning is proverbial. It is, indeed, possible to recall it. The forgetting of dreams is treated in the most detailed manner by Strumpell. In the first place, all those factors which induce forgetfulness in the waking state determine also the forgetting of dreams. * Periodically recurrent dreams have been observed repeatedly. According to Strumpell, other factors, deriving from the relation of the dream to the waking state, are even more effective in causing us to forget our dreams. Finally, we should remember that the fact that most people take but little interest in their dreams is conducive to the forgetting of dreams. It is therefore all the more remarkable, as Strumpell himself observes, that, in spite of all these reasons for forgetting the dream, so many dreams are retained in the memory. The observations of V. Write to Dr.