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October 19, 2006
Next steps and some ideas for contributors
Hey, folks, this is Karen at Berkshire Publishing. LoveUSHateUs isn't meant to be a discussion forum per se but a collection of insights and observations grounded in personal experience. Ethnographic accounts, in fact, which are very important and hard to find on this subject.
The use of Caps Lock is a warning sign that people are venting, not providing fresh information. I would appreciate hearing from regular readers/contributors (to karen [at] berkshirepublishing [dot] com) about whether you would like to see a separate forum for the debates. I'll be writing more about this on the blog. In the meantime, please provide specific observations, incidents, comments you've heard, and other evidence to back up your statements.
Also, new writers, please give yourself a more distinctive name than just a first name, so the database can match your contributions through the "Read more by this author" link.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 3:44 PM | Comments (0)
October 13, 2006
And why is the U.S. government watching?
The more the U.S. government knows about what the world thinks of us, the better, it always seemed to me. But I guess it depends on what the goal is. I tend towards the view that greater understanding might help us act more wisely, but from the article "Software Being Developed To Monitor Opinions of U.S." in Wednesday's New York Times it seems that the goal is simply to identify enemies, national or individual.
Here's the story at Islamonline.net, and an extract:
The US will spend 2.4 million dollars over the next three years to develop software to analyze and summarize opinion articles worldwide.WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is developing software to analyze and summarize opinion articles worldwide, providing a possible tool for better monitoring what is written about the United States in the global press.
"The work is really designed to get information extraction that would help the Department of Home Security (DHS) review statements for sentiments or beliefs contained in statements, and to provide intelligence analysts within DHS," said Homeland Security spokesperson Christophe Kelly, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Posted by Karen Christensen at 2:54 PM | Comments (0)
October 11, 2006
British commentary: "how America is eating the world"
"
On a global scale the average US citizen uses far more than his or her fair share of the planet's resources - consuming more than four times the worldwide average of energy, almost three times as much water and producing more than twice the average amount of rubbish and five times the amount of carbon dioxide, a major contributor to global warming," explains the London-based Independent today. This isn't news, except that today's the day when the U.S. population reaches a round 300 million. The article you see here (and can read at www.independent.co.uk) is titled "Supersize Nation: As its population reaches 300m, how America is eating the world." Yuck.
While the British are nearly as irrational and misleading as the United States in their airline anti-terrorist measures (the government here, too, is in need of justification for the Iraq War, of course, so this makes sense), the British press is far superior to ours and I don't mind at all if they take a hard look at America.
I'm using the IRIS system now when I enter the U.K., which means going into a glass compartment and letting a machine read my irises. No human interaction, no passport or landing card to show, and it's very very fast. But it's a little worrisome, thinking that the government has my iris pattern in its system.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 2:30 PM | Comments (4)