Note this

The government needs to be able to keep secrets,

But citizens need to know what is being done in our name.

These requirements are fundamental and incompatible

Like the trade-offs between privacy and security

Or liberty and equality, different countries in different eras find different ways to negotiate those competing needs.

In the case of state secrets v citizen oversight, however, there is one constant risk:

Since deciding what is a secret is itself a secret,

There is always a risk that the government will simply hide an increasing amount of material of public concern.

One response to this risk is the leaker, someone who believes that key elements of political life are being wrongly kept from public view, and who circulates that material on his or her own.

Because this tension between governments and leakers is so important, and because WikiLeaks so dramatically helps leakers, it isn't just a new entrant in the existing media landscape.

Its arrival creates a new landscape.

This transformation is under-appreciated.

The press often covers WikiLeaks as a series of unfortunate events, one crisis or scandal after another.

And Julian Assange, of course, is catnip – brilliant, opinionated, a monocle and a Persian cat away from looking like a Bond villain.

The press has covered him as dutifully as any movie star, while paying too little attention to what his invention means about the wider world.

To understand the system WikiLeaks is disrupting, it helps to focus on a key moment of its formation.

In 1946, the English-speaking Allies – the UK, US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand – decided that the pooling of their intelligence efforts set up during the conflict was too useful to end even though the war had.

The result, the blandly named UK/USA agreement, was in the main a way for those governments to share foreign intelligence with each other.

The pact, however, did have one important domestic effect.

It was illegal for those governments to spy on their own citizens.

It was not, however, illegal for them to spy on each other's citizens.

The agreement provided means for sharing the resulting observations without violating domestic laws.

For half a century, from 1946 to 2005, this use of transnational networks to get around national controls was asymmetric: governments could use this technique to surveil citizens, but not vice-versa.

In 2006, WikiLeaks launched, holding out the possibility of evening up the odds, however slightly, in favour of the citizens.

For the first three years of its existence, this change was more potential than actual, but in 2010, with the release of the Collateral Murder Video, the Afghan War Logs, and, most significantly, the US embassy cables, increased oversight of the state by citizens became real.

Limits on such leaking aren't just about threats to the leaker.

There are also threats to the publishers.

Sometimes the threats are formal; the UK has an Official Secrets Act.

Sometimes they are informal; the US press is held in partial check by their need for long-term co-operation with the government.

So long as a leak had to appear in one country's press to affect that country's politics, the relationship between the state and the press was contained by national borders.

Until WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks, as my colleague Jay Rosen points out, is a truly transnational media organisation.

We have many international media organisations, of course, Havas and the BBC and al-Jazeera, but all of those are still headquartered in one country.

WikiLeaks is headquartered on the web; there is no one set of national laws that can be brought to bear on it, nor is there any one national regime that can shut it down.

WikiLeaks allows leakers transnational escape from national controls.

Now, and from now on, a leaker with domestic secrets has no need of the domestic press, and indeed will avoid leaking directly to them if possible, to escape national pressure on national publishers to keep national secrets.

WikiLeaks has not been a series of unfortunate events, and Assange is not a magician.

He is simply an early and brilliant executor of what is being revealed as a much more general pattern, now spreading.

Al-Jazeera and the Guardian created a transnational network to release the Palestine papers, without using WikiLeaks as an intermediary, and

Daniel Domscheit-Berg is in the process of launching OpenLeaks, which will bring WikiLeaks-like capability to any publisher that wants it.

It is possible to imagine that secrets from Moscow, Rome or Johannesburg will be routed through Iceland, Costa Rica, or even a transnational network of servers volunteered by private citizens.

The state will fight back, of course.

They will improve their controls on secrets, raise surveillance and punishment of possible leakers, try to negotiate multilateral media controls.

But even then, the net change is likely to be advantageous to the leakers – less free than today, perhaps, but more free than prior to 2006.

Assange has claimed, when the history of statecraft of the era is written, that it will be divided into pre- and post-WikiLeaks periods.

This claim is grandiose and premature; it is not, however, obviously wrong.

Clay Shirkey

That personal first conscious step

Life does not have to be a foggy mystery
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It can be clearer and more understandable
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There are those exceptional people who have found the truth
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For they actually know how it is and the truth is theirs
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They know how things work, why they are as they are
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They have understood and chosen to serve the creative forces of nature
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And for them finding the truth changed their lives
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Beings such as
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Buddha, Christ , Rada Krishna and the other Masters they all found the truth
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Not in some narrow distorted religious sense
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No we are talking about absolute truth in their case
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The truth that governs our Universe
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What some call Nature
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For many that might be too far away
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But we can all know a relative truth
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And every journey starts with the first step
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For them as well once upon a time in eons gone by they all chose to take their first step
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A relative truth which makes things clearer, easier for us is possible
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It takes work and effort though
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And no individual may be pushed onto this path
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Everyone who has suceeded throughout history made this choice themselves
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And the choice?
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To find that truth
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To serve Nature in a creative sense

To be the best they can in everything that comes their way every day

To do to others as they would have them do to them, a so simple guide
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And yes in this there is a truth
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Yours to find for yourself no one can do it for you
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That first step is where we decide we want to be the best we can and to find the truth of why we are here

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In so doing we elect to serve

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To serve all
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So we take the risk of exploring for ourselves

Something inside us urges us to make sense of things

Something inside us tells us that there must be more than the banalities of modern life

This urge leads us to experiment, to search

We explore by reading, asking, talking, attending talks, seminars anything that can help us find the truth

Many are seduced by charlatans along the way

Most of us have been mislead by promises of enlightenment

Promises of a new richer fuller life

Most of us eventually see these promises for what they are

Money making enterprises hiding under a cloak of esoteric teaching or knowledge

If we keep searching then one day we find truth

The truth is in the perennial wisdom

This is not always easy to understand at first acquaintance

However when we feel it resonate with our heart then we know we have foud something different

Something true

A truth that shows us where we came from

Not the Darwinian half truths

Not the distortions of modern religion

Truth that resonates and that can be checked against our own lives

Truth is not a fashionable word or idea in our corrupt and world of endless spin

However it is your choice to step beyond

A choice we can only say is one we would not change for ourselves

Now it is your turn, your choice

Nudging

Recently, a friend was working on a big research project.

Yesterday, he had Delicious links, PDFs, spreadsheets and Word documents open on his desktop when he came across a couple of useful presentations on Scribd.
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I’ll have them, he thought.
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So he clicked.
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What happened next surprised him:
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He was given the choice of logging in via Scribd or Facebook.
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Nudging is a risky business.
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Each nudge extracts an invisible price in terms of customer loyalty.
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The risks only increase with size.
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Empathy becomes important.
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Facebook?
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Why should he sign into Mark Zuckerberg’s site to download a presentation written by someone else and made available from somewhere else?
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Although the invitation was optional, it still felt like a kind of category error.
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This was Facebook pushing it's nose too far into someone else’s business.
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Specifically, his business.
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He felt jostled, hustled and nudged. (It actually is much worse, as Wired.com’s Priya Ganapati discovered.)
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Nudging is the name given by the authors Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein to describe the art of influencing user behavior by presenting options in specific ways.
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When they nudge us, businesses and government erect what Thaler and Sunstein call an architecture of choice around us.
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Last month, TechCrunch spotted a good example.
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This was Facebook’s decision to allow users to respond to a would-be friend by pressing a button entitled “Not Now”.
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Previously, Facebook forced users to choose between Confirm and Ignore.
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The change, Techcrunch suggested, was all about creating a de facto “follow” feature that doesn’t depend on the followed party giving permission.
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This, TechCrunch suggested, was an attempt by Facebook to “slyly beef up its social graph a bit more”.
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So what?
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Surely, nudging (not to mention “choice architecture”) has been around forever.
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What’s wrong with using a series of barely noticeable prompts and temptations to maximize revenues in the short term?
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Nothing.
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On the ad-funded web, it’s essential that users behave in a way that’s lucrative.
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Sometimes, they need encouragement.
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If you’re providing an expensive service for free, it’s surely not outrageous to treat users as sheep, funneling them toward the point at which they yield their maximum value.
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Or is it?
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Perhaps the really important thing about nudging is the frequency with which it’s done, and the way in which the nudging is presented.
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Some companies do it less than others.
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Although I suspect it adopts a tougher stance with business customers, Google has remained a reluctant nudger in consumer markets.
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If you’re a fan, you probably believe that this is because the company goes with the grain, striving to do no evil.
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If you’re a skeptic, you’ll argue that Google’s approach to its users is made possible by a cash-generative advertising business.
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Either way, the interpretation is largely positive.
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Aggressive nudging causes problems.
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As corporate self-interest becomes more important than user satisfaction, the nudging company’s approach to consumers becomes fragmented and incoherent.
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Thank goodness for this as it allows users to see the game being played

And the nudging to be seen for what it really is

So my friend made me aware of nudging in a way that I had not paid much attention to

Like most people I do not like being manipulated, because that is what it is for me

Manipulation pure and simple

So be aware that those simple choices presented to you all have intent

Our hearing

Hearing tests are usually carried out for two main reasons:

• as a routine part of a baby’s, or young child’s, developmental checks, and
• to check the hearing of someone who is experiencing hearing problems, or has a hearing impairment.

How the ear works

The ears are highly sensitive organs that allow you to hear sound.

They are made up of three sections:

• the outer ear,
• the middle ear, and
• the inner ear.

Sounds enter the outer ear and pass down the ear canal into the eardrum.

The sound vibrates in the eardrum then travels into the middle ear.

The middle ear is an air-filled cavity that is linked to the inner ear.

The inner ear contains the cochlea (a fluid-filled chamber that is responsible for hearing) and the vestibular system (which helps to control balance).

Your hearing may be affected if there is a problem with your ear, such as a blockage in the ear canal or an infection of the outer ear (otitis externa) or the middle ear (otitis media).

How sounds are transmitted

Sounds are transmitted through sound waves in the air.

After the sound waves have entered the ear, they travel to the nerves in the inner ear, which sends messages to the brain.

The pitch or tone of a sound is determined by how close the waves are to each other.

The closer together the waves are, the more high-pitched the sound is.

Pitch is measured in Hertz.

Hearing tests

Hearing tests are usually painless procedures.

A number of different hearing tests are used to check how well the ears are functioning and their ability to detect different levels of sound.

Two tests that are often used to check the hearing of babies are the:

• otoacoustic emissions test (OAE), and
• auditory brainstem response test (ABR).

See the How it is performed section, above, for further information about the OAE and ABR tests, as well as a number of other types of hearing test.

For adults who are having hearing difficulties, a piece of equipment called an audiometer is sometimes used to test hearing.

This test is sometimes called an audiogram or audiometry.

The test checks how well you can hear different types of sound, including soft and loud sounds, and sounds that are high or low in pitch.

So now you know and for why this blog?

Simple we all have ears and it is cool to know a little about them

Just nine little words

Nine words women use when in relationship with men...

Fine : This is the word women use to end an argument when they are right and you need to shut up.

Five Minutes : If she is getting dressed, this means a half an hour.

Five minutes is only five minutes if you have just been given five more minutes to watch the game before helping around the house.

Nothing : This is the calm before the storm..

This means something, and you should be on your toes.

Arguments that begin with nothing usually end in fine.

Go Ahead : This is a dare, not permission.

Don't Do It!

Loud Sigh : This is actually a word, but is a non-verbal statement often misunderstood by men.

A loud sigh means she thinks you are an idiot and wonders why she is wasting her time standing here and arguing with you about nothing.
(Refer back to #3 for the meaning of nothing.)

That's Okay : This is one of the most dangerous statements a woman can make to a man.

That's okay means she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.

Thanks : A woman is thanking you, do not question, or Faint.

Just say you're welcome.

Whatever : Is a women's way of saying F@!K YOU!

Don't worry about it, I got it: Another dangerous statement, meaning this is something that a woman has told a man to do several times, but is now doing it herself.

This will later result in a man asking 'What's wrong?'

For the woman's response refer to Nothing

Tinnitus

Hundreds of thousands of Britons suffering from tinnitus which causes incessant ringing in the ears and could be cured by "retuning" part of the brain, scientists have discovered

The condition, which affects one in 10 of the elderly, is caused when the brain overreacts to hearing damage and produces constant "phantom" sounds.

At present there is no cure but scientists believe it could be eliminated by tricking the brain into switching off the imaginary ringing.

By electrically stimulating the vagus nerve – a large nerve running from the head and neck to the abdomen – at the same time as playing sounds tuned to specific frequencies, they banished tinnitus – at least in rats.

When the vagus nerve is stimulated it releases chemicals that open the brain circuitry to being rewired.

Playing the sounds at the same time permanently undoes the original damage caused by the hearing loss.

While some people are only mildly affected tinnitus, others – around 600,000 in this country – find the noises highly distressing.

Dr Michael Kilgard, from the University of Texas, who led the study in Nature, said: When we paired tones with brief pulses of vagus nerve stimulation, we eliminated the physiological and behavioural symptoms of tinnitus in noise-exposed rats.

The key is that, unlike previous treatments, we're not masking tinnitus, we're not hiding the tinnitus.

We are returning the brain from a state where it generates tinnitus to a state that does not generate tinnitus.

We are eliminating the source of the tinnitus.

Preparations are now under way for a pilot trial due to be launched in Europe early this year.

Patients will undergo vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) paired with sounds at daily treatment sessions over several weeks.

The stimulation will be delivered by a wireless electrode surgically attached to the left vagus nerve.

The device was developed by MicroTransponder, a US biotech firm affiliated to the University of Texas that has been involved in the research.

Treated rats showed responses that indicated the ringing in their ears had stopped.

Animals that did not receive the therapy continued to display signs of tinnitus.

Vegas nerve stimulation is already used to treat patients with epilepsy and depression.

Another study published in the journal Neuron suggests the brain's "limbic system" – a series of structures that process emotions and reward responses – plays a role in tinnitus.

Brain scans carried out on volunteers with tinnitus showed hyperactivity in the nucleus accumbens, central part of the brain.

Like many reports it sounds fine however it is early days yet

Who knows what side effects there might be

Better wait a while yet

Story telling

We all tell stories don't we?.
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Maybe not real lies.

Just stories we invent when in need.

Are yours good?

Do you get carried away in the excitement of invention?.

Or maybe in the need to justify some action or lack of action.

Distorting things a bit, embellishing them perhaps.

And manipulating information to fit your story.

Telling stories is easier when you stay pretty close to reality .

But when you go off into never never land trouble can arise.

Your credibility might be at stake.

Then your whole credibility comes tumbling down around your ears.

For most of us we learn to lie and tell stories as kids.

Then later around the end of our teens most of us tend to stop lying.

Some never do though and choose lying as a life strategy to get what they want.

Most of us stick to telling stories only to get us out of trouble or to avoid hurting others.

And for most of us today this is as close as we get to telling stories.

Which makes me wonder.

Where have all the nice stories and storytellers gone?

Was a time when story telling was part of most cultures

Yes for sure it is clear that TV, the Internet and other media have stopped us from telling stories

When we do meet each other socially it is often to watch tv, go shopping or attend some other event

Or if we meet in a pub or coffee shop then someone just might tell a real story

Sadly if they do it is invariably stories of the latest violence and mayhem

If not then of gossip about those not present

Imaginative story telling is a lost art it seems

When was the last time you made up and told a story?

Try it and see how you feel

Tell a story, make one up, then share that story

A German's view of Islam

This is one of the best explanations of the Muslim terrorist situation I have ever read.
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His references to past history are accurate and clear.
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Not long,easy to understand, and well worth the read.
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The author of this is Dr.Emanuel Tanay, a well-known and well-respected psychiatrist.
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A German's View on Islam
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A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, owned a number of large industries and estates.
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When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.
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'Very few people were true Nazis,' he said, 'but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care.
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I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools.
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So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen.
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Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come.
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My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.'
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We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is the religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace.
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Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant.
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It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.
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The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history.
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It is the fanatics who march.
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It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide.
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It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave.
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It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honour-kill.
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It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque.
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It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals.
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It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers.
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The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the 'silent majority,' is cowed and extraneous.
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Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 27 million people.
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The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China 's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists have managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.
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The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist.
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Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.
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And who can forget Rwanda , which collapsed into butchery.
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Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were 'peace loving'?
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History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points:
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Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.
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Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.
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Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans,
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Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.
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As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts -- the fanatics who threaten our way of life.
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So, extend yourself a bit and if this resonates then take your own actions as and when this is appropriate