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The Polyglot Project:

How to Learn Multiple Languages

Is it really possible to effectively learn more than one foreign language on your own, through self-study? What is the best way to learn foreign languages? What are the best resources to use? How many languages is it really possible to learn?These questions, and many others, are answered within the pages of this book. The authors contained herein are all language lovers found in the YouTube language-learning community. In this book, they will describe the methods they used to learn multiple languages, and will also show you how you can do it too.

The Polyglot Project  (Publitas)

Links:

https://www.duolingo.com/

https://www.busuu.com/

El Hombre que desafió a Babel - René Centassi & Henri Masson

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The Zeitgeist Movement Defined

The Zeitgeist Movement Defined is the official, representative text of the global, not-for-profit sustainability advocacy organization known as The Zeitgeist Movement (TZM).

This densely sourced and highly detailed work argues for a large-scale change in human culture, specifically in the context of economic practice. The dominant theme is that the current socioeconomic system that governs our world has severe structural flaws born out of traditional economic and social assumptions which originated in our early history, and the inherent severity of these flaws have gone largely unnoticed.    Free Acces to Book

However, in the early 21st century, these problems have risen in prominence, taking the consequential form of increased social destabilization and ongoing environmental collapse. Yet, this text is not simply about explaining such problems and their root causality - It is also about posing concrete solutions, coupled with a new perspective on social/environmental sustainability and efficiency which, in concert with the tremendous possibility of modern technology and a phenomenon known as ephemeralization, reveals humanity's current capacity to create an abundant, post-scarcity reality.

This text walks through, step by step, the train of thought and technical industrial reordering needed to update our global society (and its values) to enable these profound new possibilities. While this text can be read strictly from a passive perspective, it was created also to be used as an awareness and activist tool. The Zeitgeist Movement, which has chapters across dozens of countries, and is perhaps the largest activist organization of its kind, hopes those interested in this direction will join the Movement in global solidarity and assist in the culmination of this new social model, for the benefit of the whole of humanity.

https://thezeitgeistmovement.com/

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Tags

Anthropology   Bizarre   Communication   Copyright   Creativity   Economy   Energy   Esoteric  Espanol   Globalization   History   Internet   Philosophy  Politics   Renaissance   Religion   Science   Sociology   Technology   Travels   Utopia

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Made with Creative Commons

This is not a typical business book. For those looking for a recipe or a roadmap, you might be disappointed. But for those looking to pursue a social end, to build something great through collaboration, or to join a powerful and growing global community, they’re sure to be satisfied. 

Made with Creative Commons offers a world-changing set of clearly articulated values and principles, some essential tools for exploring your own business opportunities,and two dozen doses of pure inspiration.

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Growth isn’t Possible - NEF

Growth isn’t Possible - Why we need a new economic direction - New Economics Foundation

Four years on from NEF’s Growth isn’t Working, this new report goes one step further and tests that thesis in detail in the context of climate change and energy.

It argues that indefinite global economic growth is unsustainable. Just as the laws of thermodynamics constrain the maximum efficiency of a heat engine, economic growth is constrained by the finite nature of our planet’s natural resources (biocapacity).

As economist Herman Daly once commented, he would accept the possibility of infinite growth in the economy on the day that one of his economist colleagues could demonstrate that Earth itself could grow at a commensurate rate.

Whether or not the stumbling international negotiations on climate change improve, our findings make clear that much more will be needed than simply more ambitious reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. This report concludes that a new macro economic model is needed, one that allows the human population as a whole to thrive without having to relying on ultimately impossible, endless increases in consumption.

http://neweconomics.org/2010/01/growth-isnt-possible/

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Exclusive eBook Cover for only 49 € 

Carátulas de ebook exclusivas a 49€

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Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy - Gabriella Coleman

Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous  - Gabriella Coleman (PDF eBook)

Here is the ultimate book on the worldwide movement of hackers, pranksters, and activists that operates under the non-name Anonymous, by the writer theHuffington Post says “knows all of Anonymous' deepest, darkest secrets.”

Half a dozen years ago, anthropologist Gabriella Coleman set out to study the rise of this global phenomenon just as some of its members were turning to political protest and dangerous disruption (before Anonymous shot to fame as a key player in the battles over WikiLeaks, the Arab Spring, and Occupy Wall Street). She ended up becoming so closely connected to Anonymous that the tricky story of her inside–outside status as Anon confidante, interpreter, and erstwhile mouthpiece forms one of the themes of this witty and entirely engrossing book.

The narrative brims with details unearthed from within a notoriously mysterious subculture, whose semi-legendary tricksters—such as Topiary, tflow, Anachaos, and Sabu—emerge as complex, diverse, politically and culturally sophisticated people. Propelled by years of chats and encounters with a multitude of hackers, including imprisoned activist Jeremy Hammond and the double agent who helped put him away, Hector Monsegur,Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy is filled with insights into the meaning of digital activism and little understood facets of culture in the Internet age, including the history of “trolling,” the ethics and metaphysics of hacking, and the origins and manifold meanings of “the lulz.” 

LiberLibris Sponsored by El Ajolote Rosa

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How Not to Die - Michael Greger

Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease (PDF)

The vast majority of premature deaths can be prevented through simple changes in diet and lifestyle. In How Not to Die, Dr. Michael Greger, the internationally-recognized lecturer, physician, and founder of NutritionFacts.org, examines the fifteen top causes of death in America—heart disease, various cancers, diabetes, Parkinson’s, high blood pressure, and more—and explains how nutritional and lifestyle interventions can sometimes trump prescription pills and other pharmaceutical and surgical approaches, freeing us to live healthier lives.

The simple truth is that most doctors are good at treating acute illnesses but bad at preventing chronic disease. The 15 leading causes of death claim the lives of 1.6 million Americans annually. This doesn’t have to be the case. By following Dr. Greger’s advice, all of it backed up by peer-reviewed scientific evidence, you will learn which foods to eat and which lifestyle changes to make to live longer.

https://nutritionfacts.org/book/

How Not to Die - Michael Greger, M.D.

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Thinking Outside the Box in Multilateral Disarmament and Arms Control Negotiations - United Nations Institute for Disarmament Reseach (UNIDIR)

In late 2004, the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) began a research project entitled Disarmament as Humanitarian Action: Making Multilateral Negotiations Work (DHA). The project, assisted financially by the Governments of Norway and the Netherlands, examines current difficulties for the international community in tackling disarmament and arms control. Recognizing that a greater humanitarian focus is relevant to the work of multilateral practitioners like diplomats and other policy makers, the project is concerned with developing practical proposals to help them apply this in functional terms.

Until recently, thinking in disarmament and arms control was focused on security concepts dominated by external threats to states, especially from other states. These orthodox approaches have been found wanting in the face of new international security challenges. Indeed, the majority of multilateral processes in the disarmament domain failed to make substantial progress over the last decade, themes discussed in the DHA project’s first volume of work, entitled Alternative Approaches in Multilateral Decision Making: Disarmament as Humanitarian Action, published in 2005. It is here that human security and humanitarian approaches to disarmament and arms control could have great effect. Such approaches put greater stress on the individual and their community as reference points for security. This enables problems of armed violence to be framed in new ways and appropriate responses to be identified that may not have been considered before. The spread and humanitarian effects of small arms, such as assault rifles and handguns, is an example in which human security perspectives make a great deal of sense. Not only do small arms kill many of thousands of civilians each year, their presence can have a chilling effect on trust and cooperation, clouding the socio-economic prospects of millions of people, one household or street at a time. The mosaic of small arms proliferation can be better understood once we start thinking about what drives individual perceptions of insecurity and the resulting social interactions.

At root, disarmament and arms control problems are issues of human security. People are hurt or killed and their communities undermined and destroyed by armed violence. Yet traditional multilateral approaches to security, especially in arms control, have been geared toward counting and deciding what to do with discrete weapons and their components— whether they are bombers, tanks, nuclear warheads or poisonous chemicals—which usually are controlled by governments. However, as we are witnessing, this type of approach can be confounded by the sheer complexity of the task. New security challenges are increasingly defined by the interdependence of many variables, rather than the innate strategic properties of specific objects or systems. Infectious disease; refugees and internally displaced people; trafficking in people, guns and narcotics; and environmental damage do not fit into the existing multilateral “box” at all well, and our collective responses are poorer for it. Another hallmark of humanitarian approaches to disarmament is that they harness the insights offered by many different perspectives to meet practical challenges. This cognitive diversity—from affected communities, humanitarian deminers, medical personnel working in victim assistance and civil society activists for example—has been critical to the success of initiatives like the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention. The DHA project’s second volume of research, Disarmament as Humanitarian Action: From Perspective to Practice, provided practical insights into the ways in which civil society has augmented the work of states from humanitarian contexts such as international efforts on explosive remnants of war, small arms and anti-personnel mines.

The ways in which disarmament diplomats do business is in need of remedial attention. Despite the catch-cry often repeated that “one size does not fit all” in finding multilateral solutions, precedent and past practice exert a very strong hold that can constrain innovation and flexibility among state representatives charged with those tasks. Sometimes, the attempted— and often abortive—responses of established multilateral institutions, like the Conference on Disarmament, are responses more striking for their inherited procedural resemblance with one another than for their ability to achieve a meaningful goal successfully. Familiar tools and approaches may be chosen, rather than selecting those most appropriate for the job at hand. Human security and humanitarian approaches are useful for multilateral disarmament practitioners in understanding the security challenges they face in their work. 

Thinking at the human scale can also help them think about the constraints on their own interactions and effectiveness. All of this prompts important questions: is it possible to tailor the international system’s responses and methods of dealing with common security problems in order to achieve better outcomes? If so, then how?

The common theme of the contributions to this volume, the DHA project’s third, is to look, from different angles, at how multilateral negotiations can be made to work better than they do. They present no easy or magical solutions. But, the volume does offer multilateral practitioners—including disarmament diplomats, their authorities in capitals, and civil society actors involved in the international security domain—practical ways to think outside the box by furnishing them with new tools and perspectives.

The completion of the work presented in this volume would not have been possible without the generous support of the Governments of Norway and the Netherlands. In particular, the DHA project team and I would like to thank Steffen Kongstad, Susan Eckey and Annette Landell of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as the Norwegian and Dutch Permanent Missions in Geneva. Anita Blétry, Christophe Carle, Rosy Cave, Nicolas Gérard, Eoghan Murphy, Jason Powers, Isabelle Roger, Ashley Thornton and Kerstin Vignard of UNIDIR were unfailingly helpful, as were all of those who commented on or reviewed the volume’s contents. We would also like to thank the UN Department of Disarmament Affairs in Geneva, and in particular Tim Caughley, Richard Lennane and Piers Millet, the staff of the Mines-Arms Unit of the International Committee of the Red Cross, as well as the Small Arms Survey, especially Anne-Kathrin Glatz and James Bevan, Patrick McCarthy of the Geneva Forum and David Meddings of the World Health Organization. In addition, the DHA team asked me to mention the particular inspiration they drew from the work of Robert Axelrod, Philip Ball, Robin Dunbar, Paul Ormerod, Paul Seabright, Thomas Schelling and Frans de Waal.

Without doubt, more creativity and flexibility is needed in the current multilateral security environment. Our hope is that those working in multilateral disarmament and arms control, as well as the general reader, will find the perspectives in this volume stimulating, at times provocative, and ultimately useful in helping them to think outside whichever box they are in. 

Following the DHA project’s other work, it is a fitting that this volume  emerges in the twenty-fifth anniversary year of UNIDIR, an institute established to produce ideas for peace and security.

Dr. Patricia Lewis Director UNIDIR

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The Chemistry of Foods - James Bell

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Civilization and its Discontents - Sigmund Freud

In this work, Freud enumerates what he sees as the fundamental tensions between civilization and the individual. The primary friction, he asserts, stems from the individual's quest for instinctive freedom and civilization's contrary demand for conformity and repression of instincts. Freud states that when any situation that is desired by the pleasure principle is prolonged, it creates a feeling of mild contentment. 

Many of humankind's primitive instincts (for example, the desire to kill and the insatiable craving for sexual gratification) are clearly harmful to the well-being of a human community. As a result, civilization creates laws that prohibit killing, rape, and adultery, and it implements severe punishments if these rules are broken. Thus our possibilities for happiness are restricted by the law. This process, argues Freud, is an inherent quality of civilization that gives rise to perpetual feelings of discontent among its citizens.

Freud's theory is based on the notion that humans have certain characteristic instincts that are immutable. Most notably, the desires for sex, and the predisposition to violent aggression towards authority figures and sexual competitors, who obstruct individual's path to gratification.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Civilization_and_Its_Discontents

Linkded:

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God & Golem, Inc.

God & Golem, Inc. A Comment on Certain Points Where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion - Norbert Wiener

In "God &; Golem, Inc.," the author concerned himself with major points in cybernetics which are relevant to religious issues.

It is based on material from a series of lectures that Wiener gave at Yale in 1962, and a seminar he led at the Colloques Philosophiques Internationaux de Royaumont near Paris later that year.

God and Golem presents Wiener's ideas on machine learning, machine reproduction, and the place of machines in society, with some religious context.

Wiener mentions some of his secondary concerns: sensory feedback in artificial limbs, the problems of human responsibility in relation with technology, the limits of machine game-playing, Darwinism, Marxism, the Cold War, the rigidity of ideological thinking, and a critique of the claims of econometrics and mathematical economics to be regarded as being scientific.

In the conclusion, he brings the burden of ethics to politics, away from religion.

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Open Access

Open Access, by Peter Suber

The Internet lets us share perfect copies of our work with a worldwide audience at virtually no cost. We take advantage of this revolutionary opportunity when we make our work “open access”: digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. Open access is made possible by the Internet and copyright-holder consent, and many authors, musicians, filmmakers, and other creators who depend on royalties are understandably unwilling to give their consent.

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Free abridged version of Free

Free: The Future of a Radical Price - Chris Anderson

Free examines the rise of pricing models which give products and services to customers for free, often as a strategy for attracting users and up-selling some of them to a premium level. That class of model has become widely referred to as "freemium" and has become very popular for a variety of digital products and services.

Free: The Future of a Radical Price is the second book written by Chris Anderson, Editor in chief of Wired magazine. The book was published on July 7, 2009 by Hyperion. He is also the author of The Long Tail, published in 2006.

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The Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu

The Tao Te Ching, along with the Zhuangzi, is a fundamental text for both philosophical and religious Taoism, and strongly influenced other schools, such as Legalism, Confucianism, and Chinese Buddhism, which when first introduced into China was largely interpreted through the use of Daoist words and concepts. 

Many Chinese artists, including poets, painters, calligraphers, and even gardeners, have used the Daodejing as a source of inspiration. Its influence has also spread widely outside East Asia, and it is among the most translated works in world literature.

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Linux Kernel in a Nutshell

Linux Kernel in a Nutshell - A Desktop Quick Reference - Greg Kroah-Hartman

Written by a leading developer and maintainer of the Linux kernel, Linux Kernel in a Nutshell is a comprehensive overview of kernel configuration and building, a critical task for Linux users and administrators.

http://www.kroah.com/lkn/

No distribution can provide a Linux kernel that meets all users' needs. Computers big and small have special requirements that require reconfiguring and rebuilding the kernel. Whether you are trying to get sound, wireless support, and power management working on a laptop or incorporating enterprise features such as logical volume management on a large server, you can benefit from the insights in this book. Linux Kernel in a Nutshell covers the entire range of kernel tasks, starting with downloading the source and making sure that the kernel is in sync with the versions of the tools you need. In addition to configuration and installation steps, the book offers reference material and discussions of related topics such as control of kernel options at runtime. A key benefit of the book is a chapter on determining exactly what drivers are needed for your hardware. Also included are recipes that list what you need to do to accomplish a wide range of popular tasks. 

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Bound by Law?

Bound by Law - Tales from the Public Domain

Let's say you're a filmmaker shooting a documentary in New York City. You wander through Times Square, through museums, through other destinations, letting your camera roll along the way. Only later do you wonder: Do I need to clear the copyright on the Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock paintings that came into my camera's field of view when I was shooting at the MoMA? Or do I need to get clearance on a Miles Davis song that a busker, caught on film, happened to be playing?