LinkNotes: politics

Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts

2008-03-09

The History of Democracy in 90 Seconds (animation)

From the first ancient republics to the rise of self-governing nations, see the history of democracy: 4,000 years in 90 seconds...!

March of Democracy

via: Maps of War ::: Visual History of War, Religion, and Government

2008-03-06

If the US elections were held on Digg

The results of an analysis in the Social Media Trainer about what would happen if the US elections were held on the social news site Digg.

clipped from socialmediatrader.com

What Would Happen If The US Elections Were Held On Digg?

With the mainstream media beginning to recognise the importance of social media to the candidates involved, we decided to analyse the front-page stories from the 2008 U.S Elections category to find out what the results would be if the US elections were held on Digg.

Average No. of Diggs Per Candidate

Total No, of Comments Per Candidate

Total No. of Positive/Neutral/Negative Articles Per Candidate

Total No. of Diggs Per Party

Total No. of Positive/ Neutral/ Negative Stories Per Party

Total Number of Comments Per Party

2008-02-04

The Decoy Effect and the Elections

[...]
What the decoy effect basically shows is that when people cannot decide between two front-runners, they use the third candidate as a sort of measuring stick. If one front-runner looks much better than the third candidate, people gravitate toward that front-runner. Third candidates, in other words, can make a complicated decision feel simple.

Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog » The Decoy Effect

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[...]
When the asymmetrically dominated option is present, a higher
percentage of consumers will prefer the dominating option than when theasymmetrically dominated option is absent. The asymmetrically dominated option is therefore a decoy serving to increase preference for the dominating option. The decoy effect is also an example of the violation of the independence of irrelevant alternatives axiom of decision theory.

Decoy effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

InterviewsMeasuring
'the Decoy Effect' in Political Races

Saturday, April 14, 2007 · The presence of a
third candidate in political races often has the unintended effect of
benefiting one or the other of the two front runners.

NPR: Measuring 'the Decoy Effect' in Political Races

The Decoy Effect, or How to Win an Election
By Shankar Vedantam

Monday, April 2, 2007; Page A03
If Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama ever took a break from fundraising to bone up on psychology, they might realize the need to talk up . . . John Edwards.
The same goes for front-runners John McCain and Rudy Giuliani in the race for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. They ought to be drawing attention to Mitt Romney, or to "Law and Order" star Fred Thompson, who could be running third in the race if he declared.

Blogged with Flock

2008-01-16

U.S. National debt

National debt by U.S. presidential terms

(Click picture to enlarge)

Increases in the National Debt Chart

2008-01-03

Privacy International (PI)

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk

Privacy rights 'fragile' in 2007

Threats to personal privacy got more severe in 2007, a report has claimed.
Compiled by Privacy International and the Electronic Privacy Information Center the report details global trends in privacy protection and surveillance. It found that in 2007 more nations than ever ranked as places where surveillance had become "endemic". The move toward greater surveillance had left the fundamental right to a private life "fragile and exposed", the report said.

clipped from en.wikipedia.org

Privacy International

Privacy International (PI) is a UK-based non-profit organization formed in 1990 "as a watchdog on surveillance and privacy invasions by governments and corporations". PI has organised campaigns and initiatives in more than fifty countries and is based in London, UK.

clipped from www.privacyinternational.org

Privacy International

clipped from www.privacyinternational.org

2007-12-27

30 Minutes with CNN Headline News (chart)

What you get in 30 Minutes of CNN Headline News

Click image to enlarge

via: Flickr: Photos from billybobphotos
related: CNN.com International
CNN.com - Headline News

2007-12-24

Political Compass Test

Representation of political orientations in two dimensions

On the standard left-right scale, how do you distinguish leftists like Stalin and Gandhi? It's not sufficient to say that Stalin was simply more left than Gandhi. There are fundamental political differences between them that the old categories on their own can't explain. Similarly, we generally describe social reactionaries as 'right-wingers', yet that leaves left-wing reactionaries like Robert Mugabe and Pol Pot off the hook.

Not only a Left / Right but also an Libertian / Authoritarian scale is proposed:

Likewise for some well known composers probably:

Take a test to dertermine your own position at:

The Political Compass

via: Political Compass: I am Gandhi!
related: Political compass - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Do politicians realize we are all 6 steps away?

2007-12-15

Dutch to build Tulip Island?

Dubai built Palm Island. Now The Dutch are considering building a tulip-shaped island in the North Sea

The Dutch parliament has asked a commission on coastal development to look into the idea of building islands in the North Sea that could be used for housing, farming or a nature reserve, while at the same time helping to protect the coast.

Dutch debate building Tulip Island in North Sea | Science | Reuters

2007-11-26

Smarter-Than-Human Intelligence - The Singularity

"The Singularity" is the technological creation of smarter-than-human intelligence

Several technologies are heading in this direction.

Artificial Intelligence,
Direct brain-computer interfaces,
Biological augmentation of the brain,
Genetic engineering,
Ultra-high-resolution scans of the brain followed by computer emulation

Sometime in the next few decades, we can expect this breakthrough

An institute with the mission to confront both the opportunity and the risk of this urgent challenge is:

The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence

via: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky

2007-11-24

The Big Brother State

The dangers of a surveillance society

The Big Brother State is an educational film about what politicians claim to be protection of our freedom but what we refer to as repressive legislation.

Big Brother State - Watch Big Version - An animated short about public surveillance by David Scharf

via: The Big Brother State - Videolicio.us

2007-11-22

Presidential Candidate Childhood Photos

Barack Obama

Hillary Clinton

John McCain

presidential-candidate-childhood-photos 13-41-47.swf (application/x-shockwave-flash Object)

2007-11-06

Bush on global warming (video)

Will Ferrell as Bush

2007-10-28

Global Warming (video)

CBC - Global Warming Doomsday Called Off

A documentary about the cause of global warming.

via: Al Fin: Global Warming Doomsday Called Off
related:
An Inconvenient Truth - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Revver » The Great Global Warming Swindle
LinkNotes: Search results for climate

2007-10-13

Top 10 Forecasts for 2008 and Beyond

The editors' top 10 forecasts from Outlook 2008: from the November-December issue of THE FUTURIST.

The world will have a billion millionaires by 2025.
Fashion will go wired as technologies and tastes converge to revolutionize the textile
The threat of another cold war with China, Russia, or both could replace terrorism as the chief foreign-policy concern of the United States
Counterfeiting of currency will proliferate, driving the move toward a cashless society.
The earth is on the verge of a significant extinction event.
Water will be in the twenty-first century what oil was in the twentieth century.
World population by 2050 may grow larger than previously expected, due in part to healthier, longer-living people.
The number of Africans imperiled by floods will grow 70-fold by 2080.
Rising prices for natural resources could lead to a full-scale rush to develop the Arctic.
More decisions will be made by nonhuman entities.

Each year since 1985

2007-10-12

U.S. Presidential Elections (animation)

Animation of U.S. voting patterns since 1960

http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/elections/Multiyear3small.gif

Multiyear3.gif

via: del.icio.us/url/8f006dcf080ef96d6d6e52dac5f9ab8f
related: County Voting Patterns

2007-10-04

Save the Internet

Who owns the internet, who pays the internet, who controls the internet ...

A mashup about net neutrality

2007-10-03

Why Climate Change Can't Be Stopped

[...]
Dollar-for-dollar, the most efficient way to cut global greenhouse gas emissions would be, in theory, to invest hundreds of billions of dollars to improve China’s energy efficiency. But Congress would never support such an approach.
[...]

Foreign Policy: Why Climate Change Can't Be Stopped

via: KurzweilAI.net

2007-09-24

GlobalIncidentMap

Global terrorism incident map display system

This free public service website was created to give the public, law enforcement, military, and government individuals a new way to visualize, and become instantly aware of terrorism and security incidents across the world.

Global Incident Map Displaying Terrorist Acts, Suspicious Activity, and General Terrorism News

via: LadyBanana's bookmarks on del.icio.us
related: TERRORIST WARNING
transitsecurityreport

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