Inuit begin battle against seismic testing over fears it endangers marine life

Warrior Publications

Over 300 Inuit protest fracking on Baffin Island, July 2014.

By Kent Driscoll, APTN National News, July 23, 2014
Clyde River/Kanngiqtugaapik, Nunavut–More than 300 people in the small Baffin Island community of Clyde River, Nunavut, took to the streets Wednesday in protest of proposed seismic testing off the eastern shore of Baffin Island.

Seismic testing is where loud sonic guns are fired into the water and the echo helps to determine what resources are available under the seabed, typically oil.

The National Energy Board announced that the proposed testing has been delayed until 2015, but that didn’t limit the enthusiasm or turnout.

There are only 1,000 people who live in Clyde River and nearly one third of them turned up Wednesday afternoon for a march around the community’s Ring Road.

View original post 171 more words

I just earned a gold badge in #Knowledge

I just earned a gold badge in #Knowledge Management for my topic Inuit Nunangat Stories on @scoopit http://sco.lt/6PmVNp

What would make you quit Facebook? Here’s what you said …

The lost promise of the Internet: Meet the man who almost invented cyberspace

In 1934, a little-known Belgian thinker published plans for a global network that could have changed everything

Source: www.salon.com

Conceived in the pre-digital era, Otlet’s scheme relied on a crazy quilt of analog technologies like microfilm, telegraph lines, radio transmitters and typewritten index cards. Nonetheless, it anticipated the emergence of a hyperlinked information environment — more than half a century before Tim Berners-Lee released the first Web browser.

Despite Otlet’s remarkable foresight, he remains largely forgotten outside of rarefied academic circles. When the Nazis invaded Belgium in 1940, they destroyed much of his work, helping ensure his descent into historical obscurity (although the Mundaneum museum in Belgium is making great strides toward restoring his legacy). Most of his writing has never been translated into English.

http://www.mundaneum.org/en

The US Supreme Court Agrees: Your iPhone Isn’t Just a Phone | WITNESS BlogWITNESS Blog

“… But your phone isn’t a phone — it’s a camera, it keeps a record of all your communications, it saves your web searches, and a whole lot more. And the Supreme Court said the same:

“The storage capacity of cell phones has several interrelated consequences for privacy. First, a cell phone collects in one place many distinct types of information—an address, a note, a prescription, a bank statement, a video— that reveal much more in combination than any isolated record. Second, a cell phone’s capacity allows even just one type of information to convey far more than previously possible. The sum of an individual’s private life can be reconstructed through a thousand photographs labeled with dates, locations, and descriptions; the same cannot be said of a photograph or two of loved ones tucked into a wallet. Third, the data on a phone can date back to the purchase of the phone, or even earlier. A person might carry in his pocket a slip of paper reminding him to call Mr. Jones; he would not carry a record of all his communications with Mr. Jones for the past several months, as would routinely be kept on a phone.”

The implications of this decision for activists, journalists, and others are clear, and it’s a win for privacy and digital rights. In an ideal world, courts wouldn’t have to pick up the slack for legislators when it comes to these issues and it wouldn’t be so noteworthy when they show flashes of tech competence, but for now let’s hope to see more decisions like this in the future, and not just in the US….”

via The US Supreme Court Agrees: Your iPhone Isn’t Just a Phone | WITNESS BlogWITNESS Blog.