The NYTimes reported today that "The Jamaican government declared a state of emergency in portions of Kingston, the capital, on Sunday after supporters of a gang leader who is wanted in the United States on gun and drug charges attacked three police stations in an attempt to pressure the government to let him remain free, officials said." The Jamaica Observer offers more local perspective: "The political fallout, however, appears to be of little consequence to the women of West Kingston who seem more concerned with the fact that Coke has been a benefactor for many years, a man who, they said, ensures their safety, is mainly responsible for sending their children to school and putting food on their tables."

As recently as the 1990s, I subscribed to multiple newspapers and cable television for news reporting, costing perhaps $100 per month... filling my hallway with stacks of dead trees and pumping undesirable broadcast spam into my home by coax.  Over the past decade, new technologies have replaced for me all the functionality offered by copper cables, newsprint and mainstream media in the past, expanding the value of information, and what mainstream media I do access is on-line, real-time, and converged to free multimedia accessible by multiple wired and wireless platforms via open source technologies.

I was flabbergasted to read an article in the Cleveland Plain Deal titled "Organic food benefits debated in wake of president's report on cancer, environment", about the 2008–2009 Annual Report of the President’s Cancer Panel - REDUCING ENVIRONMENTAL CANCER RISK... What We Can Do Now, that has nothing to do with ORGANIC FOOD, is misleading, and seems intended to further dumb-down local citizens to the health hazards caused by excessive polluting and medical interventions here, preventing citizens from following one of the core Recommendations:

SELF-ADVOCACY

7. Each person can become an active voice in his or her community.  To a greater extent than many realize, individuals have the power to affect public policy by letting policymakers know that they strongly support environmental cancer research and measures that will reduce or remove from the environment toxics that are known or suspected carcinogens or endocrine-disrupting chemicals.  Individuals also can influence industry by selecting non-toxic products and, where these do not exist, communicating with manufacturers and trade organizations about their desire for safer products.

Dear realNEO Members and so Real Coop owners,

realNEO was founded October 7, 2004, making this our 6th year providing a free, open source content management system and social computing platform to the citizens of Northeast Ohio and the world... for the past few years as a cooperative. In this 6th year, we have reached a stage of ad hoc organizational maturity whereby we have a large, real, engaged community of members who have been active with realNEO for years, who share foundational commitments to openness, truth and freedom, and who are working in concert for the sustainability of our communities... both our virtual realNEO/coop community and our real NEO neighborhoods, around the world.

With maturation comes the opportunity to evolve, with the knowledge we have gained in our lives, now including over 5 years of realNEO.

On April 29, 2010, EPA proposed a set of regulatory proposals under the Clean Air Act that address emissions from boilers, process heaters, and certain solid waste incinerators. These rules would significantly cut emissions of pollutants that are of particular concern for children. Mercury and lead can cause adverse affects on children's developing brains -- including effects on IQ, learning, and memory. The rules would also reduce emissions of other pollutants including cadmium, dioxin, furans, formaldehyde and hydrochloric acid. These pollutants can cause cancer or other adverse health effects in adults and children. Together, these rules would cut mercury and other air toxics emissions from nearly 200,000 units across the U.S.

ICEarth Bigbang computers, our Linux distro, and our optimal open source data and application configurations are designed to handle the most processor (CPU and GPU), memory and transaction intensive challenges in the world, to save Earth. Doing that requires an integration of our regional and global geographic information systems with layers of valuable insight not yet integrated, like environmental, atmospheric and topographic data, to drive analyses of life impacting factors in our neighborhoods like environmental fallout from all sources of pollution, to the home and child, for free to them. A good explanation of the type of data and analyses included in such capabilities is described below, helping you make sense of what just doesn't make sense, by doing things like growing GRASS...

While I have never considered Issue 1 - the Third Frontier - offered me direct opportunity, as an Information Technology entrepreneur I do recognize this relatively low-burden, low-exposure state funding offers great opportunities for many other important technology initiatives across Ohio. The results are well documented by the well organized supporters of Issue 1 - see their message posted below - and I certainly expect this will pass by a large majority (if not, I will be shocked). Assuming this passes, I'd like to see changes in the processes for how Third Frontier money is used in the future, as I believe all our processes in the state and region must become brighter and greener. But we can't try to accomplish that without this funding being available for the technology sector. I'll vote for Issue 1, and then become active making sure the money has as great an impact as possible - results so far provide a good foundation. I recommend you do the same... see the official story below:

I've been asked what our traffic looks like over time, so I pulled a few quick charts of the number of visitors to realneo since we started using Google Analytics, and what they have visited, to measure performance of this site - and we've grown by pretty much all counts I've considered important by 30-100% since then - in some cases by 1,000s% - in less than a year-and-a-half.

I just received great news from our friend Max Eternity - very inspiring developments for him in Atlanta, including saving a Breuer (why we all met Max in the first place)... CONGRATUALTIONS AND THANK YOU MAX!!!!!!!!!!!!

Family, Friends and Colleagues:

 

When I was asked the other day to be interviewed by Architects + Artisans, it caught me by such surprise that all I could do was laugh.  You see, in the last several years I've spent so much of my time thinking, talking and writing about others--advocating for various causes--that it had become unfamiliar to actually have someone want to write about who I was, my art, and what I was doing personally.

 

For a piece entitled "To Write, Paint and Save a Monument", the Editor of A +A, Mike Welton, who has written for The New York Times, Interior Design Magazine and Dwell Magazine, writes in part:

 

Now that he’s saved Marcel Breuer’s last building from the wrecking ball, Max Eternity has returned his attention to the things that really matter, like painting and publishing.

"Kudos on providing a forum for hatred, racism and trolling. Hope you considered this project a "success"" - believelandd. I couldn't say it better myself... this comment by a Cleveland.com reader, posted on Cleveland.com today, condemning the departing "Chief Executive" of the smoke and mirrors PlainDealer/Newhouse's wretched little portal to spam. Hard to calculate anything that has harmed  development of the new economy in Cleveland so much in our history... and so The Chief Executive is being universally trashed in departure.

For a humorous take on a previous transition—the shift from scrolls to books—
watch this clip from Norwegian television NRK (with English subtitles)

realNEO is popular with librarians, and our members are certainly data intellectuals, so I expect an extensive treatment of the future of libraries - Gutenberg 2.0 - in the May/June Harvard Magazine will be of great interest here.

The insightful feature begins:

I have lived in Northeast Ohio most of my life... have founded the amazing realNEO... have done lots of other important work here and worldwide... have proposed the most innovative economic development platform in the region...

Would any Realneo members like to participate in a seed and plant swap? I would be happy to host. Please post your thoughts on possible dates and times. We could also include garden tools and other gardeing related items if people are interested.

Over the past three months, since I posted "2010 REAL COOP Annual Report and REALNEO Five-Year Report, at 10,000 Nodes", realNEO has continued to show 30%+ annual growth, having the second highest "Monthly Unique Visitors" of the realNEO ICE 25 Regional Social Media Benchmarking Sample, as of 02/10.  Cleveland Scene has higher traffic than realNEO, most months, and has demonstrated the fastest growth of any site in the region for this sample period.

Inside of bifold business card for ICEarth, by Norm Roulet, featuring his affiliations
Image from NASA, manipulated in Gimp and Scribus - Vdub  and Goudy Bookletter 1911 Light Fonts
 

In approaching 30 years of living and dying as an entrepreneur, I can say that to choose this path in life is to choose to be treated like a dog, by everybody... unless you make a fortune. That said, it is a better life than that of cattle and sheep. And, like Lassie, an entrepreneur may truly save the day.

I just spoke with the realtor who sold my family our house in East Cleveland - he says he didn't know there was a coal-burning powerplant operated by and for University Circle institutions a few blocks from here, when he sold me the house. He acknowledges the house is worth far less as a result

It is stunning to me to realize I have sitting on my desk next to me right now the ICEarth Bigbang One - one of the world's fastest personal supercomputers - developed and assembled with true genius right here in Northeast Ohio, by a homegrown team including some of the world's best open source programmers - and, tomorrow we are launching an even faster laptop supercomputer - it appears the fastest laptop ever in the world - running all open source software and a special distro of Linux - ICEarth Linux - designed to transform information management for all citizens of the world...

...and to grow ICEarth as an enterprise, now, I may need to relocate all this from Northeast Ohio, because of our leaders' lack of understanding of and appreciation for our real NEO innovations and our contributions to the new economy.

Implementing an open source GIS system (Geographic Information System) is one of the core necessities for eradicating lead poisoning and reducing other environmental harms in Northeast Ohio.

GIS needs lots of computing power. Bigbang Supercomputers are optimized for heavy graphical and computational processing in a lean, scalable cluster/cloud-friendly Linux environment that should be perfectly suited to run open GIS. 

Now that we have supercomputers available, let's get mapping for lead poisoning eradication.

The open source GIS system we will be using is GRASS - Geographic Resources Analysis Support System - and it is free/libre, so there are really no barriers to citizens mapping out environmental solutions for the future of real NEO, with state of the art technology and information services available to and for all citizens.

It's one of my children's birthday today. We're mourning another year with lead poisoning, It breaks my heart to see a child hurt this way, in this day and age, and that he must now be a poster child... especially as I already worked so hard to prevent this from happening for my children and all children here, over the past five years, and I was treated very poorly for that sacrifice. We all failed the region's children, in the process.

As I must now become an expert in yet another dynamic of lead poisoning - development issues related to lead poisoning - I think of how my past advice on addressing lead poisoning in this region has been so disrespected by so many - a pattern also seen in how leaders here have treated my expertise with Information Technology.

Why I hate Facebook, #149 - this venn diagram is so true!

Don't expect to find humane virtual community in the warehouses of multi-billion-dollar American media corporations - that ain't how personal liberty works or ever has

Here is the best portrayal of the real world of Facebook to me...

How can we reshape journalism so that it engages and serves all people & communities?

Participate in "Journalism That Matters Detroit -- Create or Die: Forging communities that initiate, incubate and innovate." 

This focused, three-day gathering of results-driven, action-oriented participants will discover, assess, shape and create forward-looking enterprises focused on key elements of community -- diversity, shared values, tolerance, participation and developing youth.

JTM especially invites persons of color -- journalists, entrepreneurs, programmers, technologists, bloggers, videographers, venture capitalists, artists, funders, educators and all who have an interest -- to explore how voices often unheard or misrepresented can reshape the future of journalism.

Location

Art of the American Indians: The Thaw Collection

MARCH 7–MAY 30, 2010
Admission free

Location

The Cleveland Food Coop, Cleveland Food Not Bombs & Women Speak Out for Peace and Justice are sponsoring theses events in celebration of International Women's Day, events are free but seating is limited.

Sevi Bayraktar is from Istanbul, Turkey performing Gypsy and Flamenco dances.

Location