One Man's Blog

Privacy Equals Freedom – Support the Freenet Project

May 15, 2007 By John P. 13 Comments

Freedom. It’s nice, right? It ought to be… the freedom we enjoy was paid for with the blood of our forefathers, and is maintained by the blood of our siblings. And no freedom is more precious than that of speech. From it all other freedom flows.

Unfortunately there are still many oppressive regimes that do not offer the luxury of free speech, and people are being tortured and killed for speaking out against injustice. (As I’ve often noted.) This is why I have decided to put my money where my mouth is and provide financial support for the Freenet Project.
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Filed Under: Philanthropy, Thoughts Tagged With: Abuse-of-Power, Charity, China, Computing, Encryption, Free-Speech, freedom, Freenet, PGP, Philanthropy, Police-Brutality, Politics, Privacy, Security, Thoughts

Attend the Most Fascinating Conference on the Planet for Free

February 28, 2007 By John P. Leave a Comment

Six months ago I blogged about Gapminder – a non-profit site funded by Google that shows some of the most interesting statistical analysis on the planet. Well, I just discovered that Hans Rosling, founder of Gapminder, gave an awesome demonstration of its use at the TED conference last year.

This discovery was followed by the discovery that all of the speakers from the most recent TED conference were video taped and each of their speeches is now available to be seen by everyone.
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Filed Under: Environment, Health & Fitness, Philanthropy, Philosophy Tagged With: Al-Gore, Art, Aubrey, Bjorn-Lomborg, Bono, Dan-Gilbert, de-Grey, Dr.-Dean-Ornish, Environment, Gapminder, Hans-Rosling, Health-&-Fitness, Jimmy-Wales, Larry-Brilliant, Nicholas-Negroponte, Peter-Gabriel, Philanthropy, Philosophy, Richard-St.-John, TED Conference, Tony-Robbins, U2

How Rich Are You?

February 26, 2007 By John P. 3 Comments

Global Rich List In the past I’ve sent you off to compare your salary with Michael Jordan and Oprah, but now how about using this little site to see how you stack up against the entire population of the planet!

The Global Rich List site will show you how you compare to the rest of the world based on your annual salary. While this is not nearly as important a measurement of your wealth as your net worth, it’ll have to do for now!
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Filed Under: Finance, Philanthropy Tagged With: Charity, Finance, Global-Rich-List, Philanthropy, Salary, Salary-Comparison

MIT Offers All Courses Free Online

January 25, 2007 By John P. 1 Comment

MIT’s OpenCourseWare project aims to offer the complete course material for every class online, free of charge.

President Susan Hockfield offers this explanation:

“OpenCourseWare expresses in an immediate and far-reaching way MIT’s goal of advancing education around the world. Through MIT OCW, educators and students everywhere can benefit from the academic activities of our faculty and join a global learning community in which knowledge and ideas are shared openly and freely for the benefit of all.”

Let Your PC Help Cure Cancer!

December 28, 2006 By John P. 1 Comment

Did you know there are over 1,000,000 computers chained together across the Internet creating a giant super-computer attempting to break down the building blocks of proteins in order to find a cure for some of the world’s worst diseases. And you can join too!

Useful School Charity Site

December 2, 2006 By John P. Leave a Comment

Donors Choose is a site which brings together teachers in need of classroom tools and supplies with donors willing to help fulfill those needs.

According to the site:

Donors Choose is a simple way to provide students in need with resources that our public schools often lack. At this not-for-profit web site, teachers submit project proposals for materials or experiences their students need to learn. These ideas become classroom reality when concerned individuals, whom we call Citizen Philanthropists, choose projects to fund.
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Filed Under: Philanthropy Tagged With: Education, Philanthropy

Google Gapminder

August 26, 2006 By John P. Leave a Comment

Google teams with Gapminder to deliver an interactive service which allows you to see all sorts of interactive Global statistics ranging from life expectancy to internet usage and more.
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