The Heavens above - 10.11.07

"Oh yes both systems seem to have many flaws, it's time for all people to fit into a new system that works for all of humanity!Friday 9 November 2007 - 10:35PM (EST)"
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Thanks for your input, Greg.

But how is this new system to be made up?

How do we sift and sort between a range of different lifestyle patterns to find one that not only delivers the good life to all people but which doesn't conflict with what people consider culturally important to them, to hold onto?

There probably is no way to forward plan such a system in the short term, and in the longer term, where we are only short lived, those who come after us will see the problem with different eyes.

They may develop their own meantime solution to the problem of billions of people having to share the finite bounty on this planet. Forsaking the hopes that we have in the present day - when looking to the heavens and seeing a saving grace in space flight and interplanetary space travel.

Do you feel it, an inward tingle that we may be at the very beginning of an eventual exodus of the human race to the stars?

Which definitely won't happen, not if the generations alive today fail to conserve our present day knowledge and put in place, for those to come, societies that permit an open exchange of ideas.

I'm sorry Shi Tao ... I know you didn't ask for the moon but you might as well have

I originally published this (this morning on Multiply) with the title I'm sorry Shi Tao ... I know you didn't ask for the moon but you might as well have

My friend, jtnewsom wrote today at 4:09 AM 10.11.07

"I have always thought it was a mistake to get into bed with the Reds. In fact I dedicated over half my life in protecting our freedoms from this very oppressive government. I have to look back at the US leaders who chose to kick our friends to the curb to take up relations with such governments. I ask who is really at fault?"
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True, Jon. It's been demonstrated, communism doesn't work. If we were insects, maybe, but we're mammals and a novel category of mammal. We have unusual forces at work in our brains that give us the capability to go beyond the struggle for survival and mere existence, for each of us to live a well-spent life. And we only have one life.

Communism is not a system of self regulation and group organisation that works in line with the whole of our human nature. It seeks to suppress those parts of our human nature that give us our maturity of intellect by stunting imagination, enquiry and well-rounded self-expression. It is a paternalistic style of government that maintains order via repression and dictatorship by the few, of the many. It is the complete antithesis of democracy - which is not perfect - but because of it the many are given, as a right, some powers to curb the excesses of the few, those who are given the powers to govern. Necessary when human nature is not perfect.

We're not inborn with a morality to take care of others, that's something we have to be taught like telling the time is something that we have to be taught. Natural selection took us to the level of being a social kind so cooperativeness will be embedded in maybe a low grade form - perhaps reciprosity, the you scratch my back, I'll scratch your back kind of thinking. In which thinking, of course, are the seeds of corruption when, for example, someone with a small power base treats with another someone with a big power base, which results in a gentle, trusting soul who only wants a little bit of freedom to be himself - being thrown into prison for 10 years! Shi Tao didn't ask for the moon!

I doubt, personally, (from learning about my kind) that there is an investment in our actual human natures of self-sacrifice for the good of others, beyond that which extends as the mothering role which we see in society, the nurturing angle. This could also, however, be an acquired characteristic and, if it is, the natural inclination of all people would then be for self-service. If that's the case, we have to accept that human nature is incomplete and, for completion, we need an accompanyment of laws and social rules ("add ons") that are suitable to gear the human brain to think with "all its might".

Because of our evolved nature, so because of what we are capable of - in my opinion, capitalism also doesn't work if a dog-eat-dog ethic is the accepted "norm" in a society. It's not only people in authority who we rely on to behave ethically for capitalism to work - so serving the physical and emotional needs of not a majority but all people. A society must be able to trust that a large percentage of its business people who are elevated into a position of privilege when compared with their employees, will have policies in place to encourage fair dealings with staff with customers with suppliers, and so on.

The society being structured with an inbuilt integrity, as it were, from the "top down".

Having integrity flowing only from the "bottom up" or - worse - "middle up" would surely - always! - doom a society to ultimate failure

Selling people up the river is not good business practice - 9.11.07

Selling people up the river is not good business practice - Entry for 09 November 2007

First point of information for this blog: Y360 Refugees
If you want to read further articles on this
Quotes taken from

It's been well publicised that Jerry Yang (Yahoo's CEO) and General Counsel Michael Callahan were raked over the coals by congress for Yahoo "providing Chinese officials with information that contributed to the 10-year prison term of a Chinese journalist. The dissident journalist was jailed after Yahoo turned over information about his online activities to Chinese authorities."

Living in China would be the Orwellian nightmare (1984) come to life that the deadly tentacles of a totalitarian regime can reach out and ruin the lives of its people with impugnity.

Some of the comments that came out of the above enquiry by congress follow.

"Yahoo claims that this is just one big misunderstanding. Let me be clear — this was no misunderstanding," House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, D-Calif., said as his panel's hearing got under way. "This was inexcusably negligent behavior at best, and deliberately deceptive behavior at worst."

Explaining why the company had cooperated with the Chinese government, Jerry Yang argued that Yahoo responded to an official order from them.

"Furious, Lantos interrupted. "These were demands by a police state to make an American company a co-conspirator in having a freedom-loving Chinese journalist put in prison," he said. "Will you continue to use the phrase 'lawful orders,' or will you just be satisfied saying 'orders'?""

He further told Jerry Yang "While technologically and financially you (Yahoo) are giants, morally you are pygmies".

But it's not only Yahoo who are playing false with online users - so us - who are put in a position to trust that providers of public forums are trustworthy.

"Human rights and free-speech advocates have lambasted U.S. companies including Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. for helping the Chinese government stifle the flow of ideas in exchange for greater access to the country's rapidly growing Internet market. But the convictions of Shi and another Chinese journalist Yahoo provided information about have focused the most strident criticism on Yahoo."

The good ole Aussie phrase "keeping the bastards honest" has relevance here I think.

Hopefully the US will continue to put pressure on American corporations to maintain a moral high ground.

Wikipedia

Note: The moral high ground, in ethical or political parlance, refers to the status of being respected for being in the right and adhering to and upholding a universally recognized standard of justice or goodness.

The Low down on MyLogBlog - 8.11.07

The Low down on MyLogBlog - Entry for 08 November 2007

After 360, the name MyLogBlog is a bit staid and unimaginative and abbreviated it's even worse. MLB has the look about it of a medical insurer, but the important question in the minds of a lot of people is, will my friends join me there?

The funny thing about this site is if you join MLB and your online friends don't, it won't necessarily stop you mixing with them.

The MLB profile I see as a kind of portal. MyLogBlog is not a blog. But it is a community of bloggers.

You go into your MLB profile and, depending on how you set it up, stored in there can be links to all of your blogs, your Youtube account, your Meem account, your Photobucket account, your Digg account, your Delicious account, and so on.

And with the vaunted changes coming up for 360 bloggers many of us joined Multiply and/or Mash in an attempt to stay together with our 360 friends. There again some of us have spread ourselves even thinner throughout the blogosphere by joining a number of other blogs for the fact of seeing what will make the best alternative when 360 disappears next year. And one thing we might be glad of is that we have been given plenty of advance warning not only that Yahoo is going to "scuttle" 360 but roughly when - it's thought some time through the first quarter of 2008.

To my point, though, given the fact that we might have a range of blogs, the rather useful feature about MLB is that - rather than loading down your browser with a heap of tabs (albeit that your browser is Flock) - or logging in and out of the different blogs - you can have all the blogs that you have authored at your fingertips, in the one place, accessible via links on your MyLogBlog profile.

So (at least in the first instance) you log onto only one membership in which you can view your other memberships.

It's in fact a simple but effective solution to the complexity of our having memberships to all manner of sites spread all over the web, and I know my situation is out of control.

Further, in normal Yahoo tradition, there are communities either set up or building which you can join to vary your blogging experience even wider than you currently do. I don't know why you would want to but you can join up to 15 communities a day - that's voluntarily joining, while if your settings permit auto-join, those you join by default of auto-join, don't count towards the limit.

In answer to your question before you ask it, when you visit a community a number of times, if your settings allow for it you become a member of that community automatically. If the idea doesn't appeal, turn off the auto-join setting.

There is no compulsory fee of $25/year (that's per blog incidentally) but you can maintain a free version of the site.

The difference? Okay so there might be more to this than I've been able to pick up in a couple of short hours looking at this but, what Yahoo themselves have to say is this:

The benefits of BlogLog Pro - "Real time stats. If you don't have a lot of traffic, the free version may be sufficient. ... Simply the pro version gives you more robust stats."

Pro also allows for a longer list of top links while with the free version, the top links showing are limited to 10.

I'm not coming down on MLB. I see it has potential to offer a unique service to me and maybe many other bloggers.

The Race that Stops a Nation - Entry for 07 November 2007

Efficient wins the Melbourne Cup

Yesterday was the Melbourne Cup horse race and we all dutifully lined up for our lukewarm chicken, salad and champagne, well I had orange juice the party pooper's alternative, and paid hard earned moneys into various sweeps.

I had a $5, 2 $2 and 1 $1 which, for the mathemeticians amongst us, totals $10 ... all down the drain I have to tell you - no I was not a winner (sob) hang on I have a smiley to do that ... next year mebbe!

Like with all gambling when you pays yer money, you reckon on losing it. But it was a nice little break ... and then back to the grindstone.