Links

Internet VS Privacy - A Helpful Venn Diagram

Very politics-heavy bunch of links, this week. This is, of course, a bit of an inevitability, given the elections taking place in the US coupled with the most recenet WikiLeaks release. That said, there are some good ones in there. Particularly enlightening was The True Size of Africa – an illustration of the distortion provided to us all by the continued use of the Mercator projection. That thing ought to be banned, in favor of the Gall-Peters projection!

In any event, hope you enjoy the links!

Employment:

Medical Tech:

Miscellany:

Politics:

Politics: Iraq / Afghanastan:

Privacy / Law:

Robotics:

Security:

Technology:

-D

One Reply to “Links”

  1. Great Venn Diagram–made me chuckle. . .and lots of interesting links that Jason would like as well. And yes, we need the Gall-Peters projection. Honesty please! I knew there were some problems with the former but I didn’t know it was that off. Thanks for sharing.

    The link to “Divisions over Biodiversity Protocol: A Visit to the Ecological Battlefield” was frustrating to read. . .and what a surprise that the US wasn’t present. I also don’t sympathize with the statement:

    “. . .German Environment Minister Röttgen sees a threat to efforts to rapidly respond to plagues or epidemics. The priority, he says, must be to combat illnesses. “Human lives must be saved first,” he says, “the division of profits later.”

    I found this comment very telling of western greed that masks itself behind “a good end result”–if profits weren’t an issue they shouldn’t have a problem sharing them. So, does end result make profiting from a developing country OK? And, it is common knowledge that pharmaceutical companies are not struggling for dollars and cents. What happened to do the right thing because it’s the right thing? Is that a thing of the past (or in this case a thing for the future;). I don’t buy the above reasoning. It’s about saving lives but also about money to the west. I’m sure they could muster up a good finacial team to figure out what is just and ethical for all involved without disrupting research. Making it sound like there is this immediate need to skip that part doesn’t work for me and my idea of global ethics. In addition, if it is about saving lives and improving world health I’m sure that sharing profits will in turn do that for the country that is being taken advantage of.

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