"I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything..." (Richard Feynman)
I am participating in the Information days of the Directorate e of the IST area of the European Commission. The Director Harald Forster, and the 2 Unit heads, Pat Manson (Digital Libraries and Technology enhanced Learning) and Roberto Cencioni (Intelligent Content and Semantics) have organized this meeting to inform about the possibilities and constraints to present projects to be funded within FP7. There are more than 300 participants from throughout Europe.
We have been invited to present a project within the "proposals clinic".
Hongkong is still on the first place, Germany on an egregious 19, just behind Japan, Italy is on place 60, much behing Thailand (50)------ who did expect better?
There are new reasons for a traditional leftist approach to social politics! Reasons to defend globalization and capitalism! If globalizations leads to the impoverishment of the lower middle classes and to the outrageous enrichment of the upper 10%, the consequence will be that the rage of the impoverished will not go against the rich, but against the developing countries which are taking their place in the world economy. So the "struggle of class" becomes new sense in the developed world.
I am today participating in the Europe-Africa concertation meeting. This meeting is organized by the START IST, project.
The START program is a specific support action within FP6 for promoting to get Subsaharan African Organizations into the FP7 Framework programs. There are 1 European and 2 African Partners in Start. It is a 2 years program and they will publish in October 2007 a strategic Framework.
"This countries worst maladies are the rejection of rules and an aversion to change" says Guido Rossi, the new Chairman of Telecom Italia. Rossi is a well known lawyer and business manager. Lack of civil sense and an outrageous conservatism - this is what hampers any development in Italy and which had brought Italy to the very end of the queue of all countries in the European Union
The last issue of the Economist tackles some of the "holy cows" of the ecologist movement: Organic Food, Fair Trade and Local Production. I am recommending to read this :-)
This is a very important news! The Organizer of the Europe Africa Concertation Meeting told me today, that all African Research Institutions are eligible for funding in projects of the 7th framewwork. My information up to now was, that only SouthAfrican Institutions would be eligible. This should be wrong. South African Institutions have another advantage. They will get specific funding also from their government if they participate in 7th framework projects.
If this verifies it is revolutionary and will change our approach to the 7th framework program.
---The article states furtheron that a majority of students was supporting Ahmadinejad, but the good event is that minoriy was speaking up. A tyranny does not get out much a justification because it has popular mandaate----- (kl)
