p. 28 (Protagoras)

Any adult citizen was capable of acquiring the art of politics (the ability to make reasoned judgements on the city's affairs) and should therefore be part of the body deciding these issues.

p. 58

The experience of a managerial autocracy at work robs people of a sense of their own democratic agency. (major deficit in building democracy)

p. 103

Advocates in direct democracy contests are forced to address issues rather than engage in endlessly circular debates about the 'character' (usually manufactured) of a particular politicians.

p. 106

Policy decisions taken in haste are often regretted at leisure.

p. 113

The messy multi-party coalitions that are more typical of proportional representation may not lend themselves to boss-type politicians like Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan but they have consistently shown a higher degree of citizen involvement and interest.

p. 138

The likelihood of equitable and sustainable development without the institutions of a popular democracy is almost non-existent... Popular power is needed to shape a society where the wealthy pay adequate taxes, where environmental and labour standards are respected and where collective goods (such as water, housing, cheap public transportation, safe communities and good air) are guaranteed. This will not happen without those who benefit most by it having an effective voice in making sure it does.

p. 80 (C. Douglas Lummis)

Daily life is the economy, the very control system... captured in the ominous expression "business as usual"... democracy cannot be satisfied with a politics defined as a leisure activity driven out of the center of life (the economy) into occasional bits and pieces of "surplus". The democratic project will not be completed until it has succeeded in democratizing work.

p. 81

A real democracy would be one where the tasks and priorities of economic management were based on the advice of, and beholden to the interests of, the broader society.

(Andre' Gorz)

The markedt itself is not the goal of any of the actors that confront one another there; it is the space that results from their confrontation just as "traffic" is the result of all those who are driving their cards at any moment and have... and average speed imposed on them by all the other drivers, none of whom has actually chosen it.

p. 146

Undemocratic concentrations of power will always form and need dissolving... Democracy will never stand still: if it is not expanding, it is very likely contracting. ...Power [is] something that needs to be dispersed and embedded in everything from workplaces to self-governing communities.

If you believe the company you work for is doing a disservice to society, what does that say about you?

Jacob Applebaum:

The force of nearly all modern authority is derived from violence or the threat of violence. One must acknowledge with cryptography no amount of violence can solve a math problem.

Metadata is "data about data". In the context of [the discussion about NSA surveillance], metadata refers to data other than the "content" of the electronic communication. It is the front of the envelope, rather than the contents

American Constitution Society:

[State] legislators tinkering with the very proces from which they draw their authority should give us all pause. By definition, election laws are passed by legislators who stand to benefit from them.

Speech

H.A.I.L.

• Honesty: Be clear and straight
• Authenticity: Be yourself
• Integrity: Be your word
• Love: Wish well

Qualities of voice:

• Register - from your chest
• Timbre - with richness
• Prosody - use variety of tone (avoid monotone)
• Pace - use variety of speed (fast, slow, pause (silence))
• Pitch - vary
• Volume - vary sound level-- avoid always-high volume

Voice Warmups

1. Arms up, breathe deeply in, sigh as you exhale
2. Say "bob-bob-bob..."
3. Say "bbbbbbbbb...", allowing your lips to flap
4. Say "la, lala, lalala, ...", with exaggeration
5. Say "rrrrrrr...", rolling your "r"
6. Make "wee-augh" sound, repeatedly, varying your pitch up and down

Every minute of the day there are hundreds (or thousands) of things around us that we don't notice. Our eyes tune them out because they don't seem important for our current needs. But what if we look at every "thing" as if we have never seen it before? As if we do not know its function? In that way, we learn to see it with new eyes. ... ...infuse your daily excursions with a quest to see these things with new eyes.

Only revise when you're done

Stay cognitive when writing, avoid becoming metacognitive

Deciding

Like insports like baseball:

1. Know what success looks like (victory conditions)
2. Understand your own strategy and method
3. Undertand policies and rules (frameworks)
4. Know who is expected or required to decide (who "has the ball")

You must ask to know 2 and 3. For 4, if no one's clear, you may call the option for yourself (if appropriate), or challenge and appropriate other person to take the decision

Engineering in Economics

E.F. Schumacher, Small is beautiful:

Methods and equipment must be (all three below)

• cheap enough for universal availability
• suitable for small-scale application
• compatible with human creativity

Aldous Huxley: Purpose of engineers and inventors:

To provide ordinary people with the means of

doing profitable and intrinsically significant work, of helping men and women to achieve independence from bosses, so that they may become their own employers, or members of a self-governing, cooperative working for subsistence and a local market... this differently oriented technological progress [would result in] a progressive decentralization of population, of accessibility of land, of ownership of the means of production, of political and economic power.

You're live! Nice. We've put together a little post to introduce you to the Ghost editor and get you started. You can manage your content by signing in to the admin area at <your blog URL>/ghost/. When you arrive, you can select this post from a list on the left and see a preview of it on the right. Click the little pencil icon at the top of the preview to edit this post and read the next section!

Getting Started

Ghost uses something called Markdown for writing. Essentially, it's a shorthand way to manage your post formatting as you write!

Writing in Markdown is really easy. In the left hand panel of Ghost, you simply write as you normally would. Where appropriate, you can use shortcuts to style your content. For example, a list:

• Item number one
• Item number two
  • A nested item
• A final item

or with numbers!

1. Remember to buy some milk
2. Drink the milk
3. Tweet that I remembered to buy the milk, and drank it

Links

Want to link to a source? No problem. If you paste in url, like http://ghost.org - it'll automatically be linked up. But if you want to customise your anchor text, you can do that too! Here's a link to the Ghost website. Neat.

What about Images?

Images work too! Already know the URL of the image you want to include in your article? Simply paste it in like this to make it show up:

Not sure which image you want to use yet? That's ok too. Leave yourself a descriptive placeholder and keep writing. Come back later and drag and drop the image in to upload:

Quoting

Sometimes a link isn't enough, you want to quote someone on what they've said. It was probably very wisdomous. Is wisdomous a word? Find out in a future release when we introduce spellcheck! For now - it's definitely a word.

Wisdomous - it's definitely a word.

Working with Code

Got a streak of geek? We've got you covered there, too. You can write inline <code> blocks really easily with back ticks. Want to show off something more comprehensive? 4 spaces of indentation gets you there.

.awesome-thing {
    display: block;
    width: 100%;
}

Ready for a Break?

Throw 3 or more dashes down on any new line and you've got yourself a fancy new divider. Aw yeah.

Advanced Usage

There's one fantastic secret about Markdown. If you want, you can write plain old HTML and it'll still work! Very flexible.

That should be enough to get you started. Have fun - and let us know what you think :)