A subset of...

John's Bookmarks

(Media issues and Random Items of the Moment have their own pages)

some of this is old; there are broken links no doubt

more recent, and convenient is my compact page of bookmarks

also see AbbeNormal and AbbeNormal:BuildingActivities

My main interest is in contributing to this being a world that i want to live in, and that everyone else wants to live in too. My analysis (based at least partly on experience) is that this depends largely on the quality of our social interactions, within ourselves, in our personal lives, and at all levels of society. Translating that into replacing the system we have now

When the quality of those interactions is open, generous, etc. it is both more enjoyable in the moment, and more likely to lead to decisions that will really address everyone's concerns.

Group and Self

CreationMatters -- a Wiki for sharing and exploring means of improving the quality of social interactions.
NonviolentCommunication
Center for Group Learning (CGL) and CGL's group-related links
What Goes On Among Us? -- my former radio show on Free Radio Berkeley.

Public involvement

International Association of Public Participation Practioners
The Political Participation Project
National Civic League
Welcome to The Civic Network
TAN+N 2 Deliberative Democracy
Center for Living Democracy -- Frances Moore Lappe's non-profit since leaving Food First (with her husband Paul Martin Du Bois). They gather and promote stories about public involvement in the USA, mainly through...
The American News Service -- distributed through Knight-Ridder. Here's a couple of their stories [no longer available]:

The Center for Living Democracy's Hotlist (somewhat out-of-date)
Roundtable Interview - F. M. Lappe' and P. M. Du Bois
Study Circles Resource Center

National Issues Forum or other public dialogue projects on-line!

Community

Intentional Communities -- communes, cohousing, co-ops...
Co-housing -- where to start if you're interested in living with 1-3 dozen or so other households, have your own house (or unit) with kitchen etc., and share common space/resources.
Community Nets: Online Resource Guide
Charlotte's Web, the Community Network for the Charlotte, NC Region
Eco-village Conference - Community Process

Alternative education/research

e.g. Popular education, folk education, action research, etc.
The Folk Education Association of America (FEAA)
The PAR Tool Box: Action Research FAQ (PAR = Participatory Action Research)
PARNet Home Page
Please let me know of sites about Paolo Freire, Ivan Illych, etc.

School education

None of these are as radical as my first thoughts when I think of improving education, but they are of some interest anyway.
Technical Education Research Centers -- researching, developing and piloting hands-on math & science education in classrooms around the world
Peterson's Education Center
Peterson's--New/Unusual Grad. Programs
Daily Report Card - Index
Top 10 changes Last 30 years
Reinventing Schools: The Technology Is Now Convocation Program
NetDay96 (3/9/96) -- A volunteer effort to get every school in California Internet-ready
The School House Rock Page

Sustainability

Environmental stuff (HUGE)
Findhorn Foundation Eco-village Conference
Municipal Conservation Association
Buy Nothing Day
The EnviroWeb, A Project of the EnviroLink Network
EcoNet

Prison/justice/police issues

I've asked this question of myself for a long time: What are prisons supposed to be for? The only answers that make sense to me are 1) to keep dangerous people away from society, or 2) to help/change people so they won't do bad stuff again.* Now for most crimes we let people go eventually. So certainly keeping them away from society is not the only purpose. But while they're locked up, they're in a world that twists them up and teaches them all about crime, and twists them up with the psycho-dynamics of prison life, including for example rape (see Stop Prisoner Rape). Then they are released, often under threat of return to prison if they do not "shape up.

* There's also punishment, which i think by itself rarely helps prisoners. It does calm down some angry victims and friends/relatives. I don't think that's a good guide for policy, but I think policy *has* to address those feelings and find a way to do justice for both the victim and the offender. Thus:

Equity-Restorative Justice and Victim-Offender Reconciliation Programs

Restorative Justice Principles
Campaign for Equity-Restorative Justice (defunct?)
Other Restorative Justice Docs
VORP programs across the USA
Victim-Offender Reconciliation training program (Central Valley, California)
Victim-Offender Mediation Association (links)

Prison and Criminal Justice Links -- Excellent assortment of links
JusticeNet Prison Issues Desk -- IGC's Justice activism site
FIJA = Fully Informed Jury Association -- Did you know that in some cases juries have the right to overrule the law when they feel that it is unjust? This is the final check against tyrannical government, and it has been allowed (actually, encouraged!) to slip out of the public mind in the last hundred years.
FIJA unofficial
FIJA US/Utah
The California Depertment of Corrections has gagged journalists, by disallowing them from scheduling appointments with prisoners, or having any kind of recording device (including pen & paper) when meeting with prisoners. The legislature passed a law overturning these rules, and Governor Wilson vetoed it.
Death penalty prisoners pending
Mumia Abu-Jamal -- a Philadelphia journalist who was apparently framed. He has been writing a lot about his predicament and prison conditions. A great deal of government energy has gone into keeping him quiet.
Open Police etc. Broadcasting -- Many police departments are moving to communications systems that citizens can't listen to. This would break yet another tool of accountability which we as citizens need.
Community Policing (National Center)
Families Against Mandatory Mins
Private prisons are becoming a real problem. Companies build prisons and then hire lobbyists to convince legislators to allocate more money for prisons. Some hire individuals who have been fired from police forces or government-run prisons. Conditions are generally less accountable than in government-run prisons.
American Civil Liberties Union
Amnesty International

Consensual crime issues

Trying to stop the harm done by almost any activity through coercion is often an exercise in futility, and always generates great ill will. The distinction of these "crimes" is that they do not directly involve one person wishing ill on another and acting on it. It would be as reasonable to prosecute the tobacco companies even if they had been forthright about their research results all along.

How would a restorative justice program be applied in a consensual "crime"?

An excellent book is Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do, by Peter McWilliams. He estimates $50 billion spent by the government every year against consensual crimes (Gambling, drugs, prostitution), and over $150 billion lost from taxes etc. He debunks biblical support for the illegality of consensual crimes, and talks about the non-money costs as well, due to insufficient attention to real crime (e.g. fraud, murder, rape, theft, etc.). I may not agree with all of his politics or philosophy, but it is an excellent overview and full of resources; good bathroom reading material.

Bay Guardian had a whole issue on consensual crimes--illegal drugs, prostitution, gambling.

Drugs

Drug Reform Coordination Network -- why the drug war is such a bad idea, and how to work for reform.
Whatever you think of drugs, I hope you don't think lying and intimidation are a good idea. Read this article on DARE before supporting them.
The Dutch drug policy -- Decriminalization of marijuana has not been a disaster.
Yahoo - Health:Pharmacology:Drugs:War on Drugs
E FOR ECSTASY
El Cerrito drug issues non-profit

Local and other alternative currencies

One of the promising things going on in economics is people's willingness to experiment with economic alternatives. One example is hour-based local currencies. Locally, Berkeley Region Exchange And Development (BREAD) is modelled on the eight-year-old Ithaca Hours system. The E.F. Schumacher Society has supported this movement in a big way, and has lots of resource information.

Maybe there's a local currency near you:
Berkeley Region Exchange And Development (California, USA)
Brooklyn Greenbacks (New York, USA)
Community Currency in Santa Barbara (California, USA) (en Español)
Ithaca Hours (New York, USA)
Kingston Hours (Ontario, Canada)
Portland Cascadia Hours Exchange (Oregon/Washington, USA)
Sound Exhange Progrom (Olympia, Washington, USA)

There are *many* more, but of course they don't all have web sites. Try the E. F. Schumacher Society's list of some local currencies in North America, and Ithaca Hours' huge list of local currency projects (including currencies still in the startup stages).

There's also LETS, local employment trading systems, which is basically a barter pool. You do work for someone else for an hour, and you have the credit to ask someone else to do something for an hour.

(see also mainstream economics)

Anarchists and more

Anarchism is *not* the idea of letting everything fall apart. Ultimately, it's about government that isn't based on coercion. Check it out:
anarchism *** Groups and Events Indexed Thereunder -- in the San Francisco Bay Area, from the Bay Area Progressive Directory.

Cacophony Society SF
On the use of the Situationist International
Situationists International Archive & MORE!
other Cacophony Societies
alt.culture.cacophony
Mr. Block (IWW comic strip)
The Media Collective/Anarchists
Many anarchy links & more! (& add your own)
Anarchy In Action

Models/Systems/Complexity/Cybernetics/Holons/Design

Cambridge Cybernetic Society -- Cybernetics is a field of systems thinking that came to realize the need to look at itself. To understand the observed, you must look at the observer and the act of observing.
Gordon Pask - In Memoriam -- Gordon Pask was a monumental contributor to the field of cybernetics. He died March 29, 1996. Here are some pointers to his stuff and more.
The I Quit Cybernetics Papers -- Why the author (Paul Pangaro) feels compelled to quit cybernetics in order to save it. A sort of history/philosophy of cybernetics.
Yahoo- Science:Complex Systems
Buckminster Fuller -- Maps of the world, by trying to represent a more-or-less spherical object (our lovely planet) on a flat surface, always distort things in various ways. Fuller's Dymaxion map distorts very little, by projecting the globe onto an icosahedron (a 20-sided Platonic solid, 20 triangles approximating the shape of a sphere), then cutting the icosahedron (mostly along the edges of the triangles) to flatten it out. A short video clip would go better here, but this picture might help.
[Fuller Dymaxion map]
Buckminster Fuller FAQ -- Actually, that's only one small example of what Bucky did. He was a whole systems-design, world transformation fiend. Read the FAQ. His life work, and his association with domes in particular, caused discoverers of the now-bubbling field of materials science investigating the third form of pure carbon (other than diamond and graphite) -- buckyballs, buckytubes, etc.
Antioch U, Seattle -- Whole System Design
As We May Think (by Vannevar Bush) -- early (1946) conception of the Web
Vannevar Bush: MIT Celebration/Conference
The Efficacy of a Venn-based Query Interface: An Evaluation
Tabletop (SE) -- software that includes a Venn-based query interface
Virtual Chaos -- A Theory of Everything
Project Xanadu
Introduction to Mind Maps
McLeod Institute of Simulation Science
Holonic Manufacturing Systems
Sacred Geometry Home Page
Parapsych department in the UK

Brain stuff

The Tree of Life Home Page
MacClade Home Page
EEB Home Page
Connections of the Brain

Miscellaneous

Utne Reader
Z Net (Z Magazine)
Right to bear arms
Krishnamurti Foundation of America -- J. Krishnamurti, when a child, was selected by a spiritual group (the Theosophical Society) as a great guru/prophet. After years of training and grooming, he left them as a young man, rejecting their ideas of guru-hood. He went on to write and talk in a plain and compelling fashion about spiritual and other matters. He might be horrified if I was trying to say he was a Great Man. And I'm not. But some of his writing is worth reading.
We the People -- Jerry Brown's post-'92 election organization is now based around an intentional community in Oakland. He really seemed to be interested in grassroots stuff. Then he became mayor of Oakland.
Foresight Institute -- Nanotechnology (the science of the very small--1 nanometer = one billionth of a meter) may allow us to build self-replicating microscopic machines that could scour artery walls of fat, construct super-strong materials from a vat of raw materials, and god knows what else. The Foresight Institute is dedicated to spreading the realization that this revolution is probably coming and helping us deal with some of the social/ethical issues that will arise as nanotechnology becomes reality. Dealing with the issues as they come up may be too late.
Sex Ed Won't Get Kids Sexed Up! -- Joe Bob Briggs
Interreligious Dialogue (business, community)
SCILOG (changing local gov't)
First Nations/First Peoples Issues
Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs)
Systems (science), (human) Values & Organizations
The Center for Study of Responsive Law
The Public Interest in Copyright Law: Past, Present, and Future
Environmental Action and Social Partnership in North America
Electronic Pugwash -- '95 Nobel Prize winners
Consensus Development

Lists

Online Activism Resource List
Meta-Index for Non-Profit Organizations
Some Nonprofits
Changing the Face of the Earth
People Link on the WEB
World Transformation
Excellent ~progressive gopher
List of conferences at the Institute for Global Communications
VOWworld: Voices of Women
MELALINK: The MELANET Resource Center
Systems,Values & Orgs Home Pg

San Francisco Bay Area (California, USA)

Live View of San Francisco
California Highway Conditions
Bay Area Transit information
GreenTortoise
SF Bay Area Progressive Calendar & Directory
Glide Memorial United Methodist Church
Bay Area Restaurant Guide
Association of Bay Area Governments
City.Net Bay Area, California, United States
San Francisco Bay Area WWW Servers - Sensitive Map
San Francisco Bay Guardian
West Coast Live -- great radio show, which you can attend live!

Boston area (Massachusetts, USA)

Metropolitan Boston
Live View of Boston

Some friends' web pages

Elena's home page

Claudia's home page: Net Wanderings
Jonathan Segal's Home Page: Linguistics among many other fine things
Kelly's Home Page & Publishing Hut
Thida's home page
Leon Marr's Home Page
Bryant Durrell
Innocence on the Net
Rhodes Hileman
Circlet

Tamils, Sri Lanka and South Asia

(Terribly out of date -- see LankaLinks)

SriLanka FAQ - Monthly posting to soc.culture.sri-lanka
Jaffna home page
Sri Lankan Internet Web Site
Tamil Eelam home page
News India-Times Online
And of course: misc.news.south-asia, soc.culture.tamil & soc.culture.sri-lanka
Yahoo- Regional Information:Countries:Sri Lanka
The Tennessee Tamil Server
Yahoo- Regional Information:Countries:India:Tamil nadu
TravelASIASri Lanka
Tamil Conversion utility (Macintosh)
Moon Travel Handbooks Home Page
W3C/ANU- Asian Studies WWW Virtual Library
The South Asia Gopher

                           Sri Lanka from space
                           --- ----- ---- -----

Finding things on-line

Web sites and more

Google -- the best
Open Directory (aka DMOZ) -- a free, ad-less, user-built directory service
Alta Vista --
Deja -- Newsgroup searches
Excite
Ed's Search Tools

FAQs

FAQS are Frequently Asked Questions files. They get started when someone (often on a newsgroup or mailing list) collects common questions (and some answers) about a topic, and makes it available for others. Over time, FAQs often evolve into excellent introductions or even fairly complete explanations of whatever it is that they are about.

FAQs.org
Finding (and writing) FAQs
Usenet FAQs sorted hierarchically
Search within FAQs at Infoseek (select the button/menu for "Web FAQs")

Mailing lists

CataLIST, Topica, eGroups, and Meta-List
Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists
Search The List of Lists

People

Finding People on the Internet
Alphabet City (GNN)
WhoWhere? Add Your Listing
WhoWhere? PeopleSearch

News

Electric Library (mag/news/etc search)
Newsletter Library
The Electronic Newsstand Home Page
ClariNet Home Page

Buy/Sell

United Computer Exchange Corporation
Classified Flea Market
A Guide to San Francisco Bay Area Flea Markets
Welcome to the USoX!

Other

Understanding and Comparing Search Engines
World-Wide Web Virtual Library
Conferences (WWW virtual library)
Books On-line: Authors
BigBook Directory Search

Net/Computer stuff

Accessing the Internet (WWW, ftp, etc.) by E-Mail FAQ
World-Wide Web Virtual Library
InterNIC Registration Services -- how to get your own domain name
Internet Service Providers -- another list, provided by Ophelia
Internet Service Providers -- The List, usually with users' comments
EFF's (Extended) Guide to the Internet - Table of Contents
Netizens Netbook -- a social history of the Internet from a Usenet point of view
FAQs about newsgroups and mailing lists
Links between newsgroups and mailing lists
Guide to Network Resource Tools
WWW Virtual Library: Computing, Networking
miniFAQ: E-Mail Privacy -- or lack thereof
Privacy tools (PGP etc)
Institute for Global Communications (IGC) -- An Internet service provider with progressive purposes. They have lots of conferences (newsgroups) on peace & justice, environmental, etc. issues. [Sold out the discussion groups to Topica]

old
NetBITS -- a weekly on-line magazine, on sabbatical til April (but the back issues are useful too)

History/culture

Hobbes' Internet Timeline
Computing/Media History
As We May Think (by Vannevar Bush) -- This guy basically came up with the *idea* of the Web 50 years ago. His ideas led to the development of hypertext, hypermedia, and eventually the World Wide Web itself.
Vannevar Bush Symposium Info
ENIAC 50th Anniversary Celebration
Arthur C. Clarke's 1946 proposal for communications satellites
Alan Turing - Home Page (SFO mirror)
The Jargon File (also published as an Actual Book: The New Hacker's Dictionary) is a hyper-dictionary of hacker slang, culture, and linguistics. Mostly English. My favorite entry is for kluge, and of course one should look up hacker).

the World Wide Web

Who first thought of the web? -- or at least something surprisingly like it
World Wide Web FAQ
www FAQs directory
I whipped up a one-page+ help file for lynx
URL-minder: Personal Web Robot! -- tells you when selected web sites have been changed
ANTI-BLINK
The Atlas Web Workshop

A Beginner's Guide to HTML
HTML Quick Reference (10/11/95)
WWW FAQ: How do I publicize my work?
Global Internet: Registration Sites -- more places to advertise your web site
The Common Gateway Interface (CGI)-- How to get your web pages to *do* something other than just be seen (forms, construct pages on the basis of user's input, etc.).
CGI - Get forms mailed to you -- A CGI script in C for forms.
DDSbk,Jan/Feb: CGI and AppleScript
WebEdge II: Mac WWW Dev Conference
Bob Allison's Tips For Web Spinners
Information Provider's Guide to Web Servers

Repetitive stress injuries

December 1995 _Wired_ article about repetitive stress injuries
A Mac Postscript file about how to care for your wrists (If you let me know of a PC version, I'll link to it here)
And of course there's a typing injury FAQ

Are you worried about repetitive stress injuries from typing too much? Read this article about the Dvorak layout, a keyboard arrangement that requires less finger motion, and is much easier for new typists to learn. There's also links there for converting your (Mac or PC) computer to a Dvorak layout (no new hardware necessary), but here's the Mac resource directly: Mac Dvorak keyboard layout

Macintosh stuff

Tired of your Mac crashing? The new Mac operating system, Mac OS X, is Unix. At last! (the original Apple plan for moving to Unix was supposed to deliver in 1995).

MacInTouch -- If you're trying to stay up on the latest updates and news (and occasional rumors), this is the best daily news for the Mac. Excellent resources as well.
TidBITS -- a Mac on-line magazine (weekly)
From DOS to Mac and Back -- Exchanging between Macs and PCs
Info-Mac -- sites mirrored all over the world full of shareware, freeware and information -- find the one closest to you, or:
MIT Info-Mac -- the best! Searchable, or browse by category, sorted by name or date.
Mac Conflict Compendium -- conflicts among extensions etc.
Apple User Group Web Pages -- How to find and join the user group nearest you
Mac Dvorak keyboard layout
VSL: Master Site
utexas mac archive
Apprentice Info [Mac development]
PGP etc. at MIT
PGP-- Pretty Good Privacy
MIT distribution site for PGP
MacUser
MacWEEK
MacOS * Hardware Rumors
game/_Arcade by date -- Video games in the Info-Mac archive, most recent first
Drivers for Hewlett Packard printers
Semicolon Software
Mac as Audio Recorder

Apple

Apple CustomerSupport Information
Apple Tech Info Library
Apple Computer

Space stuff

PLANETS at Nat'l Air & Space Museum
Project Galileo (JPL) -- now orbiting Jupiter
Point NOW: GalileoWatch
Earth-Mars Comparison
Links to Other Saturn Home Pages
IMSS- History of Science Museum - Multimedia Catalogue
Space Telescope Electronic Information Service
NASARP 1344: Future Eclipse Paths On Internet
STSCI
STScI and Hubble Space Telescope Public Information
Pluto Express Information
Space History TimeLine has been updated and expanded

Art, literature, music, etc.

General

My favorite painting (by one of my favorite people, Jeyanthy):

More visual, performance and written art at a site Jeyanthy runs: Bay Area South Asian Artist Resource
ASCII art
Scarecrow's ASCII-art WWW Link (gone, but not forgotten)
AbbeNormal:AsciiArt
Shel Silverstein's adult works

Music

Ogg Vorbis an unproprietary replacement for MP3

Armonica (or glass harmonica) -- an American instrument

Fairtunes -- give money to artists whose music you listen to

Cantata Singers
Jonatha Brooke
Jennifer Kimball
Phish
Phish Trader's Corner
Pat McCurdy
alt.music.pat-mccurdy
Kevin Gilbert
Chorallaries
Grateful Dead

Firefly (long-gone site) -- This site asked you to name a few of artists you like, then started suggesting additional artists you might like. It did this on the basis of the cumulative data it had about so many people's preferences
lyrics directory
Lyrics server
60's RockRecords

MP3.com | Shoutcast | Green Witch | Boadcast.com

Quotations

Welcometo l o Q t u s ! (find famous quotations)
Quote Server (get current stock prices)
alt.quotations
Comics Legal Defense Fund

Science Fiction/Fantasy (or, Znanstvena Fantastika)

SF-lovers (resources) (cons)

see AbbeNormal:ScienceFiction

Worldcon (1996 Los Angeles) (2001 Philadelphia), (2002 San Jose), (2003 Toronto), (2004 Boston), (2005 UK), (2006 Dallas?)
Further into the future

In my wayward youth, I helped to start the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association (HRSFA, pronounced "hearse-fah"). Now, they run Vericon.
The Last Deadloss Visions

<==---Back to John's home page

--
. . .  _ _ _  . . .      . . .  _ _ _  . . .      . . .  _ _ _  . . .
Humans...God's attempt to pass the Turing test. \ Two Paradoxes are
------------------------------------------------/ better than one; 
 John Abbe   johnca@ourpla.net.org   Cat Herder \ they may even 
------------------------------------------------/ suggest a solution.
Do I contradict myself? Very well then I        \    --Edward Teller
contradict myself (I am large, I contain        |-------------------
multitudes).    --Walt Whitman, Song of Myself  / Dronf  Bob  Xyzzy