Opeth & Norway.
Now I need to find a conference in Norway so that I get my plane tickets reimbursed.

“This patent was submitted by Amazon on December 6, 2011. It describes a method of tracking individuals through mobile phone GPS location data and then using the information to predict future shopping destinations to present more specifically targeted advertising. For more analysis of the patent, see this article from CBS.”

– Source: PublicIntelligence.net

This is no hoax.

March 2003 BEGINNING
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December 2011 END

Was it worth it?

What did you achieve?

68% of Iraqis have no access to safe drinking water today, after 8 years of war. You granted less than 800 Iraqi refugees asylum. You killed many innocent people, among them children.

How many hundreds of thousands of lives could be better today if you had used the $1.9 trillion for education and healthcare?

Was it worth it?

What did you achieve?

Open your eyes and see.

… home of the brave.

(1) After serious and longlasting privacy discussion regarding data of passengers flying from Europe to the United States, there is a new agreement now. The US is provided with data like name, address and credit card number by default. However, “sensitive data” like religion or sexual orientation underlie “very severe restrictions”, the restrictions being: they can only be saved up to 15 years, and can be given to other countries. The German minister of interior says the new agreement is a success. And I agree: if handing over very personal data to the US which then stores the data for up to 15 years and is allowed to hand it over to other countries isn’t “severely restricted”, I don’t know what is (German source).

(2) The US police is using unmanned drones. Probably that isn’t new, but it fits together with the today’s news. What this means for you is: no matter who you are and what you do, you are automatically accused of being a criminal. There is very little privacy left, at home or outside. You are a suspect, from the day you are born. Many people listed convincing evidence that general surveillance does not decrease crime rates, so did I. Look for it, the Swedish and English police publish reports regularly in which they have to admit that all the surveillance really doesn’t help, is a massive waste of tax-payers money, and infringes upon basic human rights.
Stand up for your privacy. Not because you want to hide something. Because you have the right for privacy.

“For decades, U.S. courts have allowed law enforcement to conduct aerial surveillance without a warrant. They have ruled that what a person does in the open, even behind a backyard fence, can be seen from a passing airplane and is not protected by privacy laws.”

(Sidenote: Russian bloggers are using unmanned drones in Moscow at the moment to stream the protests live on the internet, because Russian media do not report about the demonstrations of up to 80.000 people in Russia’s capital)

(3) The FBI seems to be using information from the App CarrierIQ that is installed on “millions of phones” (second source).

“If in doubt, err on the side of caution.”
- Blaise Pascal (see Pascal’s Wager)

The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, to lose our sempiternal memory and to do something without knowing how or why; in short to draw a new circle. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. The way of life is wonderful.
It is by abandonment.

How often must we learn this lesson? Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations. The only sin is limitation. As soon as you once come up with a man`s limitations, it is all over with him. Has he talents? has he enterprises? has he knowledge? It boots not. Infinitely alluring and attractive was he to you yesterday, a great hope, a sea to swim in; now, you have found his shores, found it a pond, and you care not if you never see it again.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Circles: An Essay.”

Source: Great Literature Online via S.

It just came to my attention that Miri died in August.
She was one of the most fascinating, powerful, caring and beautiful people I have ever had the honor to work with.

by Sam Brown

“The ideal goverment will make busdrivers nicer and make schools everywhere in America so that me and Sophie who is my Sister and the other children on the bus don’t have to sit on the bus so long.
the ideal Government will make light everywhere in all houses of America also in the night. And even my globe can stay on when I sleep and the light for my fish Joey because he is afreid in the dark. And it will make that when the grownups fishes leave each other that the Mommies stay with the little children fishes and the children fishes can lock the doors to their rooms in the night if they want and no one can come in and the Government punishes when someone comes in and hurts the little fishes.
I just hope Sophie will be ok.”

(A friend of me asked me to write “A couple of sentences” about my ideal government. This is for you, Hanna.)