LessWrong.com: The Cognitive Science of Rationality 12 September 2011
Wired, Jonah Lehrer: The Science Of Irrationality October 18, 2011
The New York Times, Daniel Kahneman: Don’t Blink! The Hazards of Confidence October 23, 2011
New York Post, Kyle Smith: Think vs. blink October 23, 2011
The New Yorker, Jonah Lehrer: Is Self-Knowledge Overrated? October 25, 2011
The Wall Street Journal, Christopher Shea: Daniel Kahneman’s Politics October 28, 2011
The Economist: Not so smart now Oct 29th 2011
The Chronicle, Evan R. Goldstein: The Anatomy of Influence November 8, 2011
Vanity Fair, Jaime Lalinde: The Quiz Daniel Kahneman Wants You to Fail November 8, 2011
Financial Times, William Easterly: Thinking, Fast and Slow November 5, 2011
The New York Times, Jim Holt: Two Brains Running November 25, 2011
Freakonomics: Daniel Kahneman Answers Your Questions November 28, 2011
Sam Harris: Thinking about Thinking November 29, 2011
The Boston Globe, Jesse Singal: ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ by Daniel Kahneman December 04, 2011
Cleveland.com, Karen R. Long: Daniel Kahneman makes ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow,’ a mind-blower December 11, 2011
The New York Review of Books, Freeman Dyson: How to Dispel Your Illusions December 22, 2011
The Guardian, Oliver Burkeman: Daniel Kahneman: ‘We’re beautiful devices’ 14 November 2011
The Independant: ‘We’re blind to our blindness.  24 November 2011
Vanity Fair, Michael Lewis: The King of Human Error December, 2011

The Marvels and the Flaws of Intuitive Thinking Edge Master Class 2011 (Danny on video for 1:21 + lengthy notes)

Audio
At the LSE Thinking Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman in conversation with Richard Layard November 15, 2011
New York Public Library Daniel Kahneman In Conversation with David Brooks December 16, 2011
Forum- A World of Ideas Making Better Judgements Daniel Kahneman,  Ngaire Woods,  Julian Baggini November 19, 2011

One World Health partners with government to manufacture drugs whose patents have expired but which remain affective for curing diseases.

Global Giving vets and organizes a wide variety of projects.They will keep me in the loop as the projects develop.
AAVAZ is a truly global network. It has over ten million members in 193 countries.
EFF is a legal non-profit that works on behalf of internet freedom.

Marcel Duchamp. Double exposure. Photographer unknown.

What a treat… stumbling upon a blazing, fully-formed force for consciousness.
With 16 shows behind him already I’m obviously coming to the party a little late
but what a find. Probably not since Bill Hicks have I found someone who so brilliantly
blends humor, insight, and activism. Go Mike!

How Theater Failed America

Full hour CSPAN interview around The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs
(wherein he describes going to China and speaking with workers from the Foxconn
factory where all our gadgets are made).

In 2002, with NY Port Authority Detective Tommy McHale, on loan to the FBI, CIA agent John Kiriakou raided the Taliban embassy located in Peshawar, Pakistan. The bloodless action resulted in two van loads of Taliban documents and equipment. A few days after the raid, Detective McHale called Kiriakou to let him know about an incredible find…

“You’re never going to believe what I found!” It was a file folder with telephone bills in it. And the telephone bills were written in English. They were Pakistani issued telephone bills. And they documented 168 calls made, from the Taliban embassy to numbers inside the United States, and I mean all over the United States, Bethesda MD, Los Angeles, Buffalo, Kansas City, all over the country. And those call stopped abruptly on September the 10th, 2001, and then started up again slowly, on September the 16th.

So why were the numbers never investigated?
John Kiriakou, author of The Reluctant Spy, shares his story and his frustration in the following interview excerpt from C-SPAN’s After Words.
(Click arrow to hear clip) John Kiriakou: Peshawar Taliban Embassy Raid
Link to full Video interview. Link to full Audio interview.

In the full interview Kiriakou describes his involvement in the arrest of Abu Zubaydah. Kiriakou was instrumental in arranging for the medical care that kept Zubaydah alive. Kiriakou was earlier led to believe that Zabaydah, incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay, began ‘speaking’ after one episode of waterboarding. It later came to be known that Zubaydah had been waterboarded  83 times in the month of August 2002 alone!
The interview includes details about Kirakou’s recruitment, and his time as an anti-terrorism agent in Greece. Kiriakou is inteviewd by Frederick Hitz, who was the Inspector General of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1990 to 1998 and is the author of The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage.

photo credit: brewbooks

How many of us have a clue about how much a kilowatt is. Check out Marshall Brain’s article, “How much coal is required to run a 100-watt light bulb 24 hours a day for a year?”
You can also get the podcast from iTunes.

Then today on a show I like ThisWeekInTwitter,  guest Aaron Cohen, author of ‘Slave Hunter’ really got my dander up. Throwing the phrase ‘the children’ around like a Fox News anchor, calling Amsterdam a failure, and talking about the ‘tools’ (i.e. laws) he and like minded activists need in order to go in and shut down these slave trade operations. Another part of his argument that really rankled me was his statement that ‘Craigslist receives a third of its earnings from sex postings’, as though this was something Craigslist was doing. Why pick on Craigslist? Can we not assume that a large portion of any classified ad publisher’s income derives from sex related ads? (Here’s the recent NY Times article about Craigslist and sex related ads Aaron was probably thinking of). But just because I didn’t like the way Aaron framed his argument didn’t mean he doesn’t have valid points. Certainly it made me realize I have a lot to learn.

So then I went back to Ted and found this…

About Amsterdam I found various articles discussing changes being made, like raising the age to 21 and requiring prostitutes to be licensed. Also this:

Anti-slavery campaigner and labour party city councillor Lodewijk Asscher already raised the issue in February. This week he submitted a detailed report , noting that between 50 and 90 per cent of all the prostitutes working in Amsterdam’s inner-city were found to be working there against their will – coerced and forced by international criminal gangs.

These are such messy issues. You want to think that somewhere, drugs and prostitution are being handled intelligently and effectively. If not Amsterdam, where? I will try to follow-up on the Amsterdam situation. But in the meantime I obviously have a lot of reading to do around the issue of human trafficking. How can there be 27,000,000 people caught up in slavery and I hardly know the first thing about it?

A few years ago our family stopped giving each other hard drives and boots and started donating to charity instead. It was Mom’s idea. She just loved to give a goat (Oxfam Canada). I had just read Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson’s story about building schools, mostly for girls, in Pakistan and Afghanistan. That book is just so moving. So we donated to the non-profit he has set up to collect funds for more schools.

Greg has a new book, Stones into Schools which I just picked up (purchase from this link donates a percentage of the price to the Central Asia Institute, Greg’s non-profit). I’m looking forward to reading it over the Christmas break.  We also chose the Central Asia Institute again this year because I have such a soft spot for educating girls, but also because it makes such a powerful positive impact.

In 2009…
CAI schools total 131
CAI built 29 new schools Afghanistan and
in Pakistan
CAI Students total enrollment is 58,000
CAI now has 36,000 female enrollment
CAI has a total of 17 vocational centers
CAI educated 19 higher education scholarship students.
CAI had teacher training & midwife training workshops
CAI’s Greg Mortenson published 3 new bestseller books
CAI’s Greg Mortenson spoke at 214 events nationally
CAI’s program Pennies for Peace raised 150,000,000 cents
CAI’s Pennies for Peace expanded from 280 to
4500 programs in schools, groups & libraries in 20 countries

Greg Mortenson C-Span interview with Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack. (audio) (video)

Direct donation link.