We probably need a system where anybody who creates or perceives value also creates money, and the money is not a loan to be paid back, but a gift to be passed on.

In such a system new projects would be financed, not by borrowing money, but by gaining the trust of others who will believe in the project and voluntarily give money to it, because they want to see it happen. Or by producing value that people will feel like rewarding, thereby funding further production of value in the same vein.

That is not possible with scarcity money, but only with money that people can freely give without experiencing a personal loss from doing so. Money that gains value from being used on something desirable, and that retains no value from being kept.

Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well...

"The Internet was created to move bits around without knowing anything about what the bits encode: porn bits look exactly like biblical bits. So, at its heart the Internet values a non-partisan, unfiltered exchange of information. It is decentralized. It is permission-free. But these are exactly the characteristics required for the pursuit of truth in a diverse world.

The Web, built on top of the Internet, brought us pages, browsers and links. Of these, links are the most important because without them you only have a set of disconnected pages, not a Web. The Web thus begins with connections, not individuals. This mirrors the human context in which morality is possible: we find ourselves first in a world we share. Connections come first. If you start with the individuals instead of our connection, you can never build up to a moral world."

"Children and students are graded for their performance and behavior. Why should not governments be graded too for their performance? A yearly performance report should be produced by the UN or by an outside organization similar to Amnesty International.
A Performance International can show for example:

• the number of years a country has lived in peace with others,
• violence statistics,
• ratification of international treaties,
• implementation of UN recommendations on a host of subjects (human rights, labor relations, the environment, etc.),
• disarmament, shifting of military expenditures to peaceful, productive and social services,
• demilitarization, etc.

Such a report would lead to a lot of good in the world."

"The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press.

The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world’s poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions. But bin Laden conveniently swept all that under the carpet."

On flight LH 418 from Frankfurt to Washington, Lufthansa AG today began a three-month trial of a new onboard wireless broadband service that allows travelers to connect to the Internet some 30,000 feet in the sky... Users will be able to download from the Internet at speeds up to 3M bit/sec. and upload, initially, at speeds up to 128K bit/sec., according to Lufthansa. The upload speeds will later increase to 750K bit/sec.... Cisco Systems Inc. is providing technology for the onboard 802.11b-based network, which offers wireless connectivity throughout all cabins, in addition to wireline connectivity via an Ethernet connector in the passenger seats.

"Money is Free. Get Used To It."

"Equity markets systematically move money from the less informed to the better informed.

The problem with Managerial Capitalism is not that it's too pervasive and powerful (though it is), but that it is so poor at doing what it claims to do best — allocate people and resources skillfully and compellingly."

"The current manager-in-residence, George II, went through the motions of flying F-102s on training missions with the Texas Air National Guard during the Viet Nam unpleasantness, in a squadron noted for its population of the scions of the Texas elite. (He was admitted to pilot training ahead of a coupla hundred more qualified other rich kids, despite having flunked the entrance exam. As if that weren't little enough, the record seems clear that he was too busy on a political campaign to show up for service when assigned to Alabama for his last year of duty. Can you imagine what Colin Powell, a real soldier, thinks of this guy?

My personal resentment may stem from the fact that I enlisted in the Air Force at the same New Haven office as George, about 3 years earlier. About a week before he enlisted, I was on the C-130 that evacuated the last Marines from Kham Duc Viet Nam (the one before us was shot down on takeoff, killing all 150 souls on board). A month after George started his USAF Adventure Camp, I got shot down at Katum, Viet Nam. The real world has real work to be done. Leaders do that work and teach others. Managers arrange the doing of real work."

Although very little has been written about it, the events of May 12, 1968 are among the most heroic of the Vietnam War, in fact of any war. On that day, a handful of American US Air Force C-130 and US Army and Marine helicopter crewmembers literally laid their lives on the line to evacute the defenders of the Civilian Irregular Defense Corps camp at Kham Duc, an outpost just inside the South Vietnamese border with Laos.

"Inside, the sunlight was terrific, the entire space fairly cozy, but very hobbit-like. And with, let's be clear, fairly low resale value to anyone except a total granola-crunching lunatic like yourself, unless there's a nuclear war and living off the grid becomes handy, at which point you won't want to move anyway, but will want to insert steel bars over all the windows to avoid mutant tribes of 16-eyed irradiated flesh-eating Objectivists."

Noi siamo qui.
Noi stiamo camminando ora, fuori dal passato, per sognare un grande sogno.
Noi siamo amici e uguali, noi siamo diversi e unici, e noi siamo uniti per qualcosa di più grande delle nostre differenze.
Noi crediamo nella libertà e nella cooperazione, l'abbondanza e l'armonia.
Noi siamo una cultura emergente, un rinascimento dell'essenza dell'umanità.
Noi cerchiamo la nostra guida personale, e noi distinguiamo la nostra propria verità.
Noi andiamo in molte direzioni, e ancora rifiutiamo di perderci.
Noi abbiamo molti nomi, noi parliamo molte lingue.
Noi siamo locali, noi siamo globali.
Noi siamo in tutte le regioni del mondo, noi siamo da ogni parte nell'aria.
Noi siamo l'universo che si conosce, noi siamo l'onda dell'evoluzione.
Noi siamo in ogni occhio del bambino, noi affrontiamo il non conosciuto con ammirazione e eccitamento.
Noi siamo messaggeri dal futuro, vivendo nel presente.
Noi veniamo dal silenzio, e noi parliamo la nostra verità.
Noi non possiamo essere taciuti, perchè le nostre voci sono con tutti.
Noi non abbiamo nemici, nessuna frontiera può ostacolarci.
Noi rispettiamo i cicli e le espressioni della natura, perchè noi siamo la natura.
Noi non giochiamo per vincere, noi giochiamo per vivere e imparare.
Noi agiamo dall'ispirazione, amore e integrità.
Noi esploriamo, noi scopriamo, noi sentiamo, e noi ridiamo.
Noi stiamo costruendo un mondo che lavora per tutti.
Noi intendiamo vivere le nostre vite per tutto il loro più pieno potenziale.
Noi siamo indipendenti, autosufficienti e responsabili.
Noi reaggiamo reciprocamente nella pace, con compassione e rispetto, noi uniti nella comunità.
Noi celebriamo la salute con e attraverso noi tutti.
Noi danziamo al ritmo di creazione.
Noi parliamo le verità dei nuovi tempi.
Noi siamo la nuova civilizzazione.

"This practice is a variation of Vipassana Meditation.

This is a slow, ordinary walk based on awareness of your feet as they touch the ground. You can walk in a circle or in a line. Take ten to fifteen steps, going back and forth, inside or outside. Your eyes should be lowered to the ground, just a few steps ahead.

While walking in Vipassana, one gives attention to the contact of each foot as it touches the ground. When other things arise, simply notice what took your attention and gently return your focus to your walking. It is the same technique as sitting, but for some, the movement is helpful and can be a welcome change.

Try this for twenty minutes, it can result in a deep awareness... "

"We've all heard a lot about Internet Appliances (IA). But how many of you have actually experienced the thrill of commanding an appliance over the internet?

Well, this is your big chance to actually play with something of that kind..."

"In 1999, Jane’s Intelligence Review, the journal widely followed in national security circles, wondered whether it was on the right track with an article about computer security and cyberterrorism. The editors went straight to some experts — the denizens of Slashdot, a tech-oriented Web site — and published a draft. In hundreds of postings on the site’s message system, the technically adept members of that community promptly tore apart the draft and gave, often in colorful language, a variety of perspectives and suggestions. Jane’s went back to the drawing board, and rewrote the article from scratch. The community had helped create something, and Jane’s gratefully noted the contribution in the article it ultimately published."

"Lawyers (save those from Chicago) are not typically trained to think about the business consequence of their legal advice. To many, business is beneath the law. When a Sony lawyer threatened a fan of the company's Aibo robotic dog, who had posted a hack online to teach the dog to dance to jazz, he or she no doubt never thought to ask exactly how making the Aibo dog more valuable to customers could possibly harm Sony. Harm was not the issue, a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was: consumers should be banned from hacking Sony dogs, whether or not it was to Sony's benefit.

Management should begin to demand a business justification for copyright litigation. How does this legal action advance the bottom line? How will it grow markets or increase consumer demand for our products? Will calling our customers criminals increase consumer loyalty?"