Tiny Planet

Jeff Jarvis makes an interesting point about social networking, Google presence and generally being known on the internet:

look at the benefits of publicness: We can maintain richer friendships longer. We may be more careful to act civilly in public. We may become more forgiving of others’ lapses of civility and sense in the hopes that they will forgive ours: the golden rule of the social life online, I hope. We can make connections with people with shared interests and needs. We act more socially. We find we can do more together than apart. We invest in and protect our identities and communities. We organize and act collaboratively to improve this world. Yes, there are risks to publicness and to losing privacy. But the benefits of life in the public are great. That is what my private peers do not realize but what the young public understands in their souls.

I like his thinking. True, it’s idealistic, but he’s highlighting the positive aspects to having a public presence on the web.

There are obvious privacy concerns, and one must be aware of how one’s web history can come back to haunt. The upside, Jarvis argues, is that other people have similar pasts and must forgive yours should they expect to be forgiven themselves.

Besides, there’s no reason you can’t have a weblife in public and not maintain a substantial degree of privacy.

Russian politics is a strange beast. The elected leader is a strongman who rules with an iron grip, and is in the process of subverting the constitution to remain as de facto ruler. It calls itself a democracy, but then you have this:

Opposition leader and chess legend Garry Kasparov was jailed for five days Saturday after being arrested during a protest against President Vladimir Putin a week before parliamentary elections.

He was sentenced for organising an unsanctioned march and refusing to obey police orders, but told reporters the charges were “unfounded”.

And what if the pro-Putin marches had been unsanctioned? Would there have been a similar crackdown? I think you know the answer to that one.

At the end of December I will be flying to the United Arab Emirates to start work at a new paper in Abu Dhabi. It’s a very exciting time — I have never worked on a start-up, and it’s ambitions and aims are really firing my imagination.

The paper, which will launch in the first quarter of next year, is being edited by Martin Newland, former editor of The Daily Telegraph and former deputy editor of the National Post. He has recruited people from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times as well as his previous titles. Some employees with a presence in the blogosphere include Rasheed Abou-Alsamh, the deputy comment editor, and Colin Randall, the executive news editor.

Although it will be a huge change for me, I just can’t afford to turn down this opportunity. I have been lucky to work with some wonderful and talented people in the Irish Examiner but I’m looking forward to taking on this new challenge.

I have an apartment which I will be renting from the company and I’m already plotting and planning what I’ll do with the place — though I’ll be sticking to the bare basics until I get settled.

Blogging will continue though, with a fresh perspective on the world at large.

Woohoo!

Scientists have made ordinary human skin cells take on the chameleon-like powers of embryonic stem cells, a startling breakthrough that might someday deliver the medical payoffs of embryo cloning without the controversy.

The “direct reprogramming” technique avoids the swarm of ethical, political and practical obstacles that have stymied attempts to produce human stem cells by cloning embryos.

Scientists familiar with the work said scientific questions remain and that it’s still important to pursue the cloning strategy, but that the new work is a major coup.

There is a catch with the new technique. At this point, it requires disrupting the DNA of the skin cells, which creates the potential for developing cancer. So it would be unacceptable for the most touted use of embryonic cells: creating transplant tissue that in theory could be used to treat diseases like diabetes, Parkinson’s, and spinal cord injury.But the DNA disruption is just a byproduct of the technique, and experts said they believe it can be avoided.

My Facebook friend Mary has begun blogging on life and her move back to Ireland:

I will also say that 2007 has been a year of great change for me… I’ve pretty much been through it all this year…. but I don’t want to get boring and send you all to sleep, so I’ll just say that 2007 is the year my life begins again… a clean slate and a perfect opportunity to start again…

… SO, I take this ‘once in a lifetime’ second chance, and I hope to make the very best of it…

Visit her here.

… Bill Bailey style

As found on John Mortell’s blog.

Gideon Rachman, the FT’s chief foreign affairs columnist, says “the challenge for the US now will be to avoid sliding straight from imperialism to isolationism”. The imperial idea became fashionable in 2003, he notes, when it was driven by the likes of Dick Cheney and other conservatives. It has declined in popularity since.

Imperial analogies still fascinate America. But the latest American books on empire are markedly less optimistic than the ones appearing a couple of years ago. Cullen Murphy’s Are We Rome? – which made the best-seller lists this year – argues that the US is in danger of emulating Rome’s decline and fall by succumbing to Roman-style corruption and arrogance. America needs to rediscover its civic virtues.

Rome is the empire to which most parallels are drawn, which is a fair enough point when you consider how much Roman imagery and ideas have been incorporated into American institutions. Rome, however, did not fall because of “corruption and arrogance”, though these did play a role in its decline. Economic mismanagement and rampant inflation were major contributors to the empire’s collapse — and these are lessons from which the US (and other world powers) can learn.

The conservatives who embraced the word “empire” a few years ago were being deliberately provocative. If America was indeed in something like an “imperial” mood in 2003, it simply meant the US was determined to use its economic and military pre-eminence to change the world. If that involved invading, occupying and reshaping whole countries, so be it.

Four years on, “imperialism” looks a lot harder and less attractive. America’s generals fret publicly that their formidable military machine could be “broken” in Iraq. The fiscal deficit is mounting and the dollar is falling.

However, Rachman points to a future for Amercia’s global position — because it is so tied to the world’s economic well-being.

China, India and even a resurgent Russia are emulating America by trading their way to greatness. Their ruling elites are directly enriched by globalisation.

I wonder if the story will change in 10 or 15 years’ time. Will China have overcome most of its internal problems and truly emerged as a world power? Will India be hot on its heels? Or will the impending climate catastrophe lead to an entirely different world order?

From the Associated Press:

The Earth is hurtling toward a warmer climate at a quickening pace, a Nobel-winning U.N. scientific panel said in a landmark report released Saturday, warning of inevitable human suffering and the threat of extinction for some species.

As early as 2020, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will suffer water shortages, residents of Asia’s megacities will be at great risk of river and coastal flooding, Europeans can expect extensive species loss, and North Americans will experience longer and hotter heat waves and greater competition for water, the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says.

The potential impact of global warming is “so severe and so sweeping that only urgent, global action will do,” Ban told the IPCC after it issued its fourth and final report this year…

The report is important because it is adopted by consensus, meaning countries accept the underlying science and cannot disavow its conclusions. While it does not commit governments to a specific course of action, it provides a common scientific baseline for the political talks [in Bali next month].

Maybe I’ll soon have to change the name of this blog to Tiny Underwater-Yet-Arid Planet.

Above is one of the first high definition photos taken from the lunar surface.  It was shot by the Japanese probe Kaguya.

This still image was cut out from a moving image taken by the HDTV onboard the Kaguya at 12:07 p.m. on November 7, 2007 (Japan Standard Time, JST,) then sent to the JAXA Usuda Deep Space Center.
In the image, the Moon’s surface is near the South Pole, and we can see the Australian Continent (centre left) and the Asian Continent (lower right) on the Earth. (In this image, the upper side of the Earth is the Southern Hemisphere, thus the Australian Continent looks upside-down.)

Follow the link above for more of the images.

The loyalist Ulster Defence Association has ordered its military wing, the Ulster Freedom Fighters, to stand down. All active units will cease operations from midnight.

In an Armistice Day statement from the UDA leadership, read out at memorials to their dead colleagues, they said all weaponry would be put beyond use [though not formally decommissioned] and all military intelligence destroyed.

They said they were making the move because the military war was over and the struggle to maintain the union was on a new and more complex battlefield.

The UDA sent out a general order to all members not to be involved in crime or criminality, and it said those who had joined its ranks for such purposes had to be rooted out.

So long, guys. Don’t let the door of history kick you in the ass on the way out.