"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)
The Berlusconi government has launched an assault against fundamental rights of individual freedom. They are going to decide a law in the senate and then in the "camera dei deputati" with the working title "testo unificato sul testamento biologico". A "testamento biologico" is a last will, anyone can write down defining what he or she wants in case of incidents or terminal illness when not beeing more able to decide.
Semantic Universe asked the FAO Country Profiles team to write an article about geopolitical ontology and FAO Country Profiles. Now, the article is published into their webiste. In addition, in 2009 Semantic Technology Conference , one of top conferences in the semantic technology, we will introduce our work about geopolitical ontology and FAO Country Profiles to the public.
I am part of a working group with the title "Global Research Library 2020". Goal of this group is to discuss and to shape the Research Library of the future (https://www.grl2020.net/). Next meeting of this working group is in February in Taiwan. I attach the position paper, which I submitted for this workshop.
This position paper was also presented at the Rome ShareFair . I posted about this sharefair at https://www.johanneskeizer.com/?q=node/738.
The UN based Rome agencies (FAO, IFAD, WFP) and the CGIAR organised a knowledge fair from January 21-22. This was the first of it's kind and could be considered an adventure.
Some 100 buses in London are carrying this ad now for some time. Christian activists tried to stop these ads "reasoning" "Advertisements are not allowed to mislead consumers". Luckily the British surveillance agency has not accepted the complain.
Following an article in the "Spiegel" 59% of all Spanish people believe in God in a traditional sense, 18% are not believers at all, whereas 74% of all Italians do believe in God in a tradional sense, whereas only 6 % are not believers. The numbers come from a survey conducted by the EC, 4 years ago.
What I liked: Barack Obama, in his inauguration speech mentioned non believers on the same level as Christians, Muslims, Jews and others.
In all fulminant crises between the enemies in Near East I always sided with Israel, in 1967 my first staggering into politics were leaflets in the school to support the Israelian troops against their Arab Enemies. With the exception of my maoist deviation in the 70th, this has never changed.
I just commented a post of my friend Gerhard Stamer at https://stamer-reflex.com/node/140#comment-19. It is about the brain researcher Singer and his negation of human freedom. It is in German, so a click is worthwhile only for those who understand this language.
