National Security Websites

I occasionally get asked where did I find that tidbit.

Well, I read a lot of obscure websites and journals, a few that are interesting are:

Stratfor

Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College

CIA Unclassified studies


Loyola University Intelligence Portal

I'll try to add more of these from time to time.

From the Laws of Connectedness to the Power Law of Participation

From the Laws of Connectedness to the Power Law of Participation:


Laws of connection

1. Connectedness is about joining in


2. Joining in happens automatically when the barriers to joining are low enough

3. Connections form between individuals, not organisations

4. Connections link devices, services and people

5. Connections are two way

6. The value of connections increases based on the number of touch points

7. Connection is a means to an end: the end is participation

Laws of participation

8. Communities form as a natural consequence of connectedness

9. Communities define their own mechanisms, language and etiquette

10. Individuals occupy roles within communities

11. Participation can be active or passive, hub or spoke

12. Declaration is a pre-requisite to active participation

13. Participation is a means to an end: the end is collaboration

Laws of collaboration

14. Collaboration is the achievement of goals by a connected community

15. Goals benefit individual participants, not the community

16. Active feedback is essential to achieving goals

17. Success is proportionate to the number of participants

18. Open collaboration is self regulating

The Atlantic Ideas Tour: Women's Empowerment

Celebrating 150 Years of The Atlantic | Women's Rights

This is the fifth in a series of archival excerpts in honor of the magazine's 150th year of publishing.

Women's Empowerment
An introduction
by Terry Castle, a professor of English at Stanford. Her books include Boss Ladies, Watch Out!, and Courage, Mon Amie.

Meditations on Votes for Women (October 1914)
by Samuel McChord Crothers
In 1914, as the women’s suffrage amendment languished in Congress, Samuel McChord Crothers, a popular essayist and a Harvard Square–based Unitarian minister, made the case for equal suffrage. (The amendment did not pass that year, however; American women would not win the right to vote for another six years.)

Talent, Opportunity, and Female Aspirations (June 1926)
by Faith Fairfield
Six years after the Nineteenth Amendment had given American women the right to vote, Atlantic contributor Faith Fairfield pointed to an ongoing double standard in other areas.

Equality of Opportunity and Pay (May and June 1938)
by Virginia Woolf
In 1938, Virginia Woolf, a champion of equal opportunity for women and the author of Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and A Room of One’s Own, responded scathingly in the pages of The Atlantic to a written solicitation she had received in the mail asking “the daughters of educated men” to join in the cause against war. What women really ought to lobby for, she argued, is equal opportunity and better pay for themselves.

The Science: Careers for Women (October 1957)
by Helen Hill Miller
In 1957, Helen Hill Miller, a Washington, D.C.–based writer and a correspondent for The Economist, considered the social and psychological obstacles facing women attempting to forge careers in science.

Desperate Housewives (June 1961)
by Nora Johnson
Two years before Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique articulated "the problem that has no name," novelist and essayist Nora Johnson considered the frustrations of the well-educated homemaker.

Feminism's Unfinished Business (November 1997)
by Katha Pollitt
Decades after the women's-liberation movement began the battle to break down gender barriers and put women on a more equal footing with men, social critic and columnist Katha Pollitt pointed out that sexism and gender bias continued to play an insidious–and largely unacknowledged–role in women's lives. She called for a revitalized feminism to rectify the problem.


The Atlantic Monthly is a great rag, and has a long history of getting it right.

Is Internet addiction a real problem?

Is Internet addiction a real problem?: One problem with the term "Internet addiction" is the looseness of the term as it can be applied to any number of problematic behaviors. The researchers in this case broke the term down into five specific behaviors:

Cybersexual addiction

Cyberrelationship addiction

Net compulsion

Information overload

Interactive gaming compulsion

Really should be, why don't we just get a life?

Colbert at White House Correspondents' dinner

I argue with friends who post on their blog's political material when that isn't the focus of the blog, we'll I'm going to do it periodically, 'caus my focus includes national security. Also, it's very funny. If your reading this blog, you probably have already seen this, but just in case:
Crook's and Liars has a tiny quicktime of Steven Colbert's performance. Well worth watching.

You Tube has it in three parts.