Appetizers for your aperitifs

Just a couple of tasty little tidbits to go with that cocktail. 

FastCompany: Movies and leadership --  what movies exemplify good leadership to you? FC’s asking, go ahead and tell them. I did!

http://blog.fastcompany.com/archives/2003/09/17/celluloid_leadership_iii.html

BBC:  Modern manners  -- who knew I’d be drinking from the fingerbowl?  Can you guess why?  And will you be joining me?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3116436.stm

4:44:43 PM    comment []

You Googled Me?:  “Irena Briganti” <- vanity trolling?

After writing my incedibly angry rant about the so-called free and liberal press the other day, I’m kind of surprised to see someone Googling me today about “Irena Briganti”.

Seems awfully specific, doesn’t it?  Why surf for the name of a nobody we don’t hear of on television or radio or read about in the press regularly?  Why not trolling about Christiane Amanpour?  Or CNN? Or even Faux News (whose real name I refuse to type)?

Perhaps it’s a little vanity trolling by the subject?

Gee, was she happy to see the words FASCIST SCUM and the Nazi name GOERING next to her name, I wonder?

UPDATE -- 4:29PM EDT --

Jebus, somebody came looking here from Faux News!  Think you found yourself in the wrong place, yes?

2:12:31 PM    comment []

RantsCounterRants:  Nuclear Proliferation revisited

This royally pisses me off.  We’d reached a point in our history when nuclear proliferation wasn’t an option.  Possessing nuclear weaponry was becoming something to be avoided and scorned.  The world was growing up, actively leaving behind the threat of the ultimate war.

Now it seems like development of nuclear weaponry is the first item on every nation’s defense laundry list, particularly in parts of the world where more weaponry will likely create havoc rather than reduce it.  Let’s go and get nuclear weapons, they say; why not, indeed?  It worked for the North Koreans, why not for us?  Look what happened to Saddam when he didn’t get them fast enough!

I don’t know why I’m surprised by the Saudis pursuing nuclear weapons, though.  Wanna' bet they’ve given Halliburton a nice multi-billion dollar contract to help with portions of this program for them?  It'd just look like another consulting job related to oil or something like that. Heck, with demand being what it is these days for military consulting offshore, Halliburton stock's probably looking real good.

Thank you, Mr. Bush, for being a uniter instead of a divider.  They’re all uniting under the nuclear umbrella now.  No thanks to you, Mr. Cheney; I’m sure the Halliburton dividends will be more than enough thanks.

1:58:34 PM    comment []

Cognitive Liberty

There’s been some chatter starting at Corante’s Brain Waves about neuroceuticals and their potential effects on human performance.  Interesting stuff -- I’m picking my way through it from time to time.

But the bits buried in the medical-technology jabber that catch me short, that make me stop and think, are the thought trails that discuss cognitive liberty.

We, as human beings, have the inalienable human right to think as we will.  Thinking is inherently necessary and as-yet shapeless; it is acting on thoughts that we choose good from bad or neutral.

Attempts to deliberately mislead our thoughts in order to unduly influence or coerce a choice is not good, particularly if the choice itself is not good. 

Railroading thought is tantamount to kidnapping the human vessel.

We’d protest adamantly at being encouraged or even forced to submit to drugging for the purposes of mind-control.  We’d rise up and remove a government that demanded blind unknowing obedience, let alone a government that forced our actions through control of our minds.

It’s critical we discuss and air the expectation of cognitive freedom as we move forward towards medical-technological advances that might work against our long-term human cognitive rights, in spite of the short-term aid they may offer.

We also need to be candid about mind-control by our government, without the benefit of neuroceuticals or technology. 

Isn’t that what the use of misleading information by government officials for the purposes of extracting specific performance is, a form of mind-control?

Is that not an infringement on our cognitive liberty?  Have we not already become hostages?

Think about it.

10:47:01 AM    comment []