Title: Russian Roulette

Shabtai Kalmanovich vanished from London in late 1980's। He resurfacedin Israel to face trial for espionage। He was convicted and spent yearsin an Israeli jail before being repatriated to Russia. He was describedby his captors as a mastermind, in charge of an African KGB station.
In the early 1970's he even served as advisor (on Russian immigration)to Israel's Iron Lady, Golda Meir. He then moved to do flourishingbusiness in Africa, in Botswana and then in Sierra Leone, where hiscompany, LIAT, owned the only bus operator in Freetown. He tradeddiamonds, globetrotted flamboyantly with an entourage of dozens ofAfrican chieftains and their mistresses, and fraternized with thecorrupt elite, President Momoh included. In 1986-7 he even collaboratedwith IPE, a London based outfit, rumored to have been owned by formermembers of the Mossad and other paragons of the Israeli defenseestablishment (including virtually all the Israelis implicated in theill-fated Iran-Contras affair).
Being a KGB officer was always a lucrative and liberating proposition.Access to Western goods, travel to exotic destinations, making new (andinfluential) friends, mastering foreign languages, and doing somebusiness on the side (often with one's official "enemies" andunsupervised slush funds) - were all standard perks even in the 1970'sand 1980's. Thus, when communism was replaced by criminal anarchy, KGBpersonnel (as well as mobsters) were the best suited to act asentrepreneurs in the new environment.

National Science Digital Library

February 2008
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Cover Feature
National Science Digital Library: Shaping Educations Cyberinfrastructure
David McArthur
GoH Corp.
In summer 2007, the provided access to more than 2.5 million digital educational resources, covering science, technology, engineering, and mathematics from pre-K to postgraduate levels. At that time, the main portal, http://www.nsdl.org/, had been online nearly five years, providing a single entry point to dozens of distributed collections and services, many of which were contributions of the more than 200 small projects that the NSDL program funded through its research tracks.
With this maturity, the is now rethinking NSDL's status as a research program. In one sense, it remains a typical NSF program, operating through the traditional NSF project-award cycle of publishing a solicitation, receiving proposals from R&D teams, and awarding the best among them. In other ways, it is an atypical program because the goal of its projects is not simply to broaden the knowledge base of science education research and practice; it is also to build an integrated enterprise that will persist and be valuable to learners and teachers of all ages.
But whether typical or not, NSDL has reached the point at which it must either change substantially or start winding down. Many NSF programs come and go in less than a decade, often after accomplishing their primary goals and laying a foundation for a new research agenda. As a library, NSDL is becoming mature enough to be an operational center. Because NSF is primarily a research agency, investing further in NSDL would seem to run counter to NSF's policy of not supporting routine science and education operations.
Nonetheless, there are compelling arguments for NSF's continued investment in NSDL—but the nature of that support must change to match NSDL's new purposes. Generally speaking, NSF's policy is to "let a thousand flowers bloom," and to that end, it spawns programs that award distinct projects and that rely on conferences and publications (both traditional and electronic) to foster researcher crosstalk. This is an admirable goal, but I believe that NSDL gives NSF an opportunity to tighten the link among R&D projects: The library is poised to provide a standardized technical infrastructure that encourages—perhaps even requires—a much higher degree of project interaction.
In that mission, I see NSDL growing both as a platform for improving the productivity of educational resource development and transforming education research and also as a tool for creating and managing scientific knowledge about education and learning. More broadly, NSDL could be a key component in building a new cyberinfrastructure for education and education research.
NSF's continued investment in NSDL would have strong implications for how it funds education R&D and how it manages projects to foster effective partnerships among highly diverse and distributed groups of education researchers, developers, and practitioners. Having recently completed a rotator position at NSF, I have been able to acquire an understanding of what NSDL as a library is accomplishing and how NSDL as a program is run. The ideas set forth in this article draw from that dual understanding, but admittedly much of the thinking is speculative and reflects my own views, not necessarily those of the NSF.

Logically Speaking

Course Guide for Dr. Smith's Logic and Critical Thinking Class
Glossary
Affirming the Consequent: an invalid conditional argument of the form
A-->B B A
Antecedent: the first part of a conditional claim (If A)
Argument: the purpose of an argument is to persuade others of your reasoning; an argument is a form of persuasion that makes a claim and gives reasons in support of that claim
Claim: a statement that is true or false; remember that your premises and conclusions are all claims
Cogent argument: a good argument; there are three criteria of a cogent argument
Conclusion: the claim that is being argued for
Conditional Arguments: an argument with at least one premise that is a conditional claim; there are 4 main ways of reasoning with conditionals that either affirm or deny one of the conditions: modus ponens, modus tollens, affirming the consequent, and denying the antecedent; there is one other way of reasoning with conditionals: the hypothetical syllogism
Conditional Claim: an if-then claim; a claim in the form of 'if A, then B' ; sometimes called a hypothetical proposition; this is symbolically written as "A-->B"
Consequent: the second part of a conditional claim (then B)
Contingent Claim: a claim whose truth value depends on the evidence
Contradiction: a claim that is necessarily false
Criteria of a Cogent Argument (3): believable premises, all the relevant information has to be considered, and the premises must lead to the conclusion
Deductive Argument: an argument where, if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true; the intent of a deductive argument is, assuming that the premises are true, what can we deduce with 100% certainty from those premises?
Denying the Antecedent: a valid conditional argument of the form
A-->B ~A ~B
Disjunction: an either/or claim; either A is the case, or B is the case, where one or the other must be true; symbolically this is written A v B, where 'v' is called a wedge; the terms of a disjunction are called disjuncts
Disjunctive syllogism: a valid form of reasoning from a disjunction, of the form
A v B ~A B
Evidence: a secondary level of support in an extended argument; it's the support given for the main reasons why we should believe the thesis of an extended argument
Extended Argument: a complex argument with more than one level of support given to an overall conclusion
Fallacious argument: a bad argument, which occurs when one of the three criteria of a cogent argument is not fulfilled
Fallacy: an error in our reasoning; there are both formal and informal fallacies
Formal Fallacy: a error in the form (structure) of the argument
Hypothetical Syllogism: a valid conditional argument of the form
A-->B B-->C A-->C
Indicator words: words in ordinary dialog that give us a clue that either a conclusion or premise is about to be given; conclusion indicators include therefore, thus, so, and it follows that; premise indicators include because, since, and for
Inductive Argument: an argument where, if the premises are true, the conclusion is, at best, probably true; the purpose of an inductive argument is to recognize patterns; this is done by observing evidence, and our conclusions are always less than 100% certain
Informal Fallacy: an error in the content, rather than the structure, of an argument
Modus Ponens: a valid conditional argument of the form
A-->B A B
Modus Tollens: a valid conditional argument of the form
A-->B ~B ~A
Necessary Condition: the condition found in the consequent of a conditional claim (B-term); the condition without which the A-term could not be present; a necessary ingredient, in some cases, of the A-term
Predicate: the part of a sentence that is the description
Premise: a claim that is the reason given in support of a conclusion
Reasons: support given for a conclusion; the main reasons in support of a thesis in an extended argument are called 'reasons'; the support for the 'reasons' in an extended argument we'll call 'evidence'; the support for a conclusion in a simple argument are 'premises'
Reasoning: the purpose of reasoning is to solve problems
Simple Argument: an argument with only one level of support given for the conclusion
Strong argument: an inductive argument is said to be strong when the premises lead to the conclusion (with great likelihood); this is because of the strength of the evidence that leads to the inference
Subject: the part of a sentence that is being described
Sufficient Condition: the condition in the antecedent of a conditional claim (A-term); to be a sufficient condition is to give sufficient reason to believe that all of the necessary conditions are present
Tautology: a claim that is necessarily true
Thesis: the overall conclusion of an extended argument
Truth value: 'true' and 'false' are the two truth values
Valid argument: a deductive argument is called valid when the premises lead to the conclusion
Weak argument: an inductive argument is said to be weak when the premises do not lead to the conclusion with much likelihood, due to a lack of strength of evidence supporting the inference
Course Schedule and Contents
1. SiCKo
2. Reasoning and Arguments subject, predicate, reasoning, argument, deductive argument, inductive argument, claim, tautology, contradiction, contingent claim, truth value, cogent argument, criteria of a cogent argument (3), fallacious argument, fallacy, thesis, reason, evidence
3. Conditional Reasoning conditional claim, antecedent, consequent, sufficient condition, necessary condition, 4 main ways of reasoning with conditionals, modus ponens, modus tollens, affirming the consequent, denying the antecedent, hypothetical syllogism, disjunction, disjunctive syllogism

Now! the grand opening

Adjusting the formate and tuning up for the blogging party for night time gala in our grand Blogging room.

Web 3.0

Event of semantic spheres is coming into the mix of telecommunication to find information and use new tools to manifest the technologies. The ontological evolution of the developments are defining ontology of the cultural mannerism (modus of operandi, form) of habitat; where as people are using personalize messaging to communicate ideas and construct methods through this new technologies. This is forming clusters of similarities of interest and mental sets defining themselves by associations, sort of a clubby idiom if you will.

Getting operational for 391

It I known here as 'toomuch' have been pleasantly experiencing this blogging portal set up, as I have several Bloggs and site operational at this time.

I have been using Feedburner for sometimes as well as @Blogger and other Google options feeding into my e-mail. I also use Wordpress and have my Blogg at my ISP Bluehost and Prohost.

There for sorting out these components were confusing.

I am a Public Administration major and have been dreaming about a seamless public system with no bricks and morass here and there, as freeing up land space and restoring eco-system back to the species and wildlife. I have been Blogging as ecocaptian @ several sites and find these issue very challenging.

I need to update my Blogg information with the Professor Knolle.

Roy

Rhetoric and Writing

My aim is to make “Rhetoric and Writing” interesting by using provisions of stasis and Kairos as forwarded by directions in methods learned in contexts of the meta-textual sending of authors like Sharon Crowley, James Kinneavy, and Michael Carter of whom have sent forward messages in a style we shall call rhetoric. These source as well as others will follow as part of an analyses consisting of many of the rhetors’.
We will be using various sources of information, or topoi, which effectively state “that stasis itself is not in the art of rhetoric but that Hultzen said, “out of which grows the opposing movements that make up stasis” as it belongs to the art in or injustice, virtue, good, and worthiness. In Kenneavy’s posing he points to Richard Lanham’s “Handlist of Rhetorical Terms” as not having mention of the ‘Kairos’ and suggested that other rhetoricians as well did not talk about the terms but very apply points out that Kairos is a dominate feature of the sophistic concept of such great thinkers as Isocratean, Platonic, Aristotelian and Cicero.
It is through this kind of evaluation of textual context that this paper will direct its response.Ruth Amossy provides a ‘Introduction to the Study of Doxa” and posit the “verisimilitudes, commonsense knowledge, commonplace, idée recue’, stereotype, cliché” as a logos symbol of the doxa epistemology terminology. As we mix these elements into the meaning and style of rhetoric it should become a clear picture of the methods used in the art of this pedagogical argumentation of issues relative and surrounding inventions of theories both contemporary and historical and all of that composition. Amossy continues to say, “As the discipline concerned with rational decisions take in common, argumentation has needed support of doxa, best expressed in topoi, commonplaces which in the Aristotelian perspective were at the heart of invention one of the five parts of rhetoric (invention, disposito, elocution, memoria, action)’. As she is defining the terms of rhetoric in her way but still very much in concert with the others we are analyzing. She is placing together the ancients and the modern sending the resulting formulation of method n a context of parallel the aspects as to be self evident. I relate to the text where she says, “What holds for Flaubert, the novelist who so forcefully draws our attention to idee’s recues, is even more conspicuous in the case of Emile Zola. Mitterrand apply analyses the doxa system on which the physical appearance of Germinal’s characters draws…” a she explicatively omnipresent doxa. The theme of this paper is the revealing power of classical stasis to counter important community –oriented social issues in conjectural, definitional, qualitative and translative in the rhetorical ideology augmentation. Using text source-reading materials covered in class such as Crowley’s “Argumentive canards (what the ancient rhetoricans called ‘commonplace’ occupy the center”.