Today is Human Rights Day.

On this day in 1948 the United Nations General Assembly endorsed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its conclusion that, "recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world."

But today in Oslo, Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo's seat stood empty. He is in a Chinese jail. The Chinese government successfully pressured 15 nations to boycott the reception honoring his work for free speech and elections. The mission of Eleanor Roosevelt and countless others who worked tirelessly to make the Declaration a reality is not yet complete.

Human Rights First

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Urban Cowboys at play...

Get along little doggy...

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I <3 TL

I <3 TL

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Olny srmat ploepe can raed tihs...

No wonder my dyslexia affected my math skills and not my reading comprehension.

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Temples of Bagan

Temples of Bagan (by Julian Kaesler)

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SAVE AS WWF, SAVE A TREE

A new green file format: WWF.

The WWF format is a PDF that cannot be printed out. It’s a simple way to avoid unnecessary printing. So here’s your chance to save trees and help the environment. Decide for yourself which documents don't need printing out – then simply save them as WWF.

 

SAVE AS WWF, SAVE A TREE

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Amazon’s cowardice and servility ...

Open Letter to Amazon.com

by 

DANIEL ELLSBERG

 on DECEMBER 3, 2010

To Customer Service and Jeff Bezos,

I’m disgusted by Amazon’s cowardice and servility in abruptly terminating its hosting of  the Wikileaks website, in the face of threats from Senator Joe Lieberman and other Congressional right-wingers. I want no further association with any company that encourages legislative and executive officials to aspire to China’s control of information  and deterrence of whistle-blowing.

Daniel Ellsberg's Website

Thanks

William Meloney
---------------------------
Voice: 270-215-4275

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Wednesday Poetry

Dawn Dreams
by Rachel Hadas 

Dreams draw near at dawn and then recede
even if you beckon them.
They loom like demons
you tug by the tail to examine from up close
and then let fly away.
Their colors at once brighter and less bright
than you remembered, they
hover and insinuate all day
at the corner of your eye.

{Linkage}

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Look what's happenin' up the street...got to revolution, got to...

Evading a shutdown, WikiLeaks mobilizes Twitter supporters

Posted By Blake Hounshell 

 

Sunday, December 5, 2010 - 1:58 AM

In a bid to stay one step ahead of the governments, companies, freelance hackers trying to shut down its operations, WikiLeaks mobilized its vast base of online support Saturday by asking its Twitter followers to create copies of its growing archive of hundreds of classified State Department cables.

...

As my FP colleague Evgeny Morozov warns, aggressive action like arresting or killing Assange could spawn the rise of a vast, permanent network of radicalized hackers "systematically challenging those in power – governments and companies alike – just for the sake of undermining 'the system'." That could prove an extremely dangerous threat to the global economy and diplomatic sphere.

[Link]

I particularly like the part about "radicalized hackers" ... we  can anticipate oligarchical control of the Internet any minute now. 

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And God said ...

... I need something interesting to do this afternoon... I think I will make ...

A tiny chameleon sits on a human thumbnail with room to spare. The minuscule creature is rarely spotted in the wild, and doesn’t need to change colour to help hide from its enemies. British wildlife photographers Matt and Will Burrard-Lucas were lucky to spot the tiny Brookesia during an expedition in Amber Mountain Park, Madagascar.

Picture: burrard-lucas.com / BNPS (via Pictures of the day: 3 December 2010 - Telegraph)

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A Norman Rockwell painting... Southern Justice

Southern Justice (Murder in Mississippi) (1965)

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Great Complexities

Tony Schwartz

• On:
 
• Managing yourself,
 
• Organizational culture,
 
• Work life balance

Consider the following qualities:

Confident	Humble
Courageous	Prudent
Tenacious	Gentle
Honest	Compassionate
Decisive	Flexible
Disciplined	Playful
Strong	Vulnerable
Deliberate	Spontaneous
Discerning	Intuitive
Outgoing	Introspective

Which quality do you value more in each pair?

Is there any doubt that most of us tend to choose up sides between qualities, valuing one in preference to its opposite? Or that most organizations often value the whole constellation of qualities on the left over those on the right?

Many companies now build leadership programs around developing "competencies," a list of core qualities they expect all their leaders to embody. It's one size fits all, and the aim is to help people get up to speed wherever they fall short.

[More...]

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Thank you Rosa Parks

On this day 55 years ago, a woman named Rosa Parks kick-started the modern civil rights movement when the then-42-year-old refused to leave her seat in the colored section of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama

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Better if we don't name it...

[Link]

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Joan Baez

[Link]

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∆x∆p ≥ h/4π

... All the [ Uncertainty ] Principle actually says, in its entirety, is:

∆x∆p ≥ h/4π

That’s it.

[More...]

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The next great crash will be ecological...

Johann Hari

The next great crash will be ecological - and nature doesn't do bailouts

Posted by Johann Hari 

2 days ago

Why are the world's governments bothering? Why are they jetting to Cancun next week to discuss what to do now about global warming? The vogue has passed. The fad has faded. Global warming is yesterday's apocalypse. Didn't somebody leak an email that showed it was all made up? Doesn't it sometimes snow in the winter? Didn't Al Gore get fat, or molest a masseur, or something?

Alas, the biosphere doesn't read Vogue. Nobody thought to tell it that global warming is so 2007. All it knows is three facts. 2010 is globally the hottest year since records began. 2010 is the year humanity's emissions of planet-warming gases reached its highest level ever. And exactly as the climate scientists predicted, we are seeing a rapid increase in catastrophic weather events, from the choking of Moscow by gigantic unprecedented forest fires to the drowning of one quarter of Pakistan.

[More...]

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Alexa Meade: Life paintings

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Live! Norman Rockwell's Thanksgiving.

If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger,

There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats

Happy Thanksgiving

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Solar furnace melts rocks.

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