The new msn homepage 2010 for US users comes with a facebook fast connect as a first choice instead of live fastconnect. The battle of live real time socially connected friends is yet to start in 2010 between big GGGuys. oy yes you can preview the new msn homepage here: http://www.msn.com/preview.aspx
new-msn-homepage
New Google Similar Pages with an extension plugin from Google Chrome (by the way google has been pushing an outdoor advertising campaign in France and other EU countries).
https://chrome.google.com/extensions?hl=en-US
The Google Similar Pages browser extension allows you to quickly preview and explore other pages that are similar to the one you are browsing — on the fly!
Google Similar Pages
http://www.google.com/relief/haitiearthquake/
Support Disaster Relief in Haiti
On January 12, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti. Join recovery efforts mobilizing around the world to assist earthquake victims. Your donation will help disaster victims rebuild their lives and their communities. We’ll donate $1 million to help organizations provide relief.
Donate to UNICEF
http://www.google.com/relief/haitiearthquake/
UNICEF has been the world’s leading international children’s organization, working in over 150 countries to address ongoing issues that affect children, such as clean water, education, and emergency response.
100% of your contributions will reach the U.S. Fund for UNICEF to support emergency relief efforts.
$
Donate to CARE
CARE is a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty.
Our mission is to serve individuals and families in the poorest communities in the world. Drawing strength from our global diversity, resources and experience, we promote innovative solutions and are advocates for global responsibility.
$ http://www.google.com/relief/haitiearthquake/
Also accepting cash and in-kind donations are the following sites: UNICEF (1-800-4UNICEF), Direct Relief, Yele Haiti, Partners in Health, Red Cross, World Food Program, MercyCorps (1-888-256-1900), Save the Children, Lambi Fund, Doctors Without Borders, The International Rescue Committee, Care,
The following organizations are accepting SMS donations in the US only:
SMS text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief efforts
SMS text “YELE” to 501501 to Donate $5 to Yele Haiti’s Earthquake Relief efforts
News and updates
Resource updates: Google News, YouTube, Real Time updates on Google Search
Local media websites: TNH, Le Nouvelliste, Radio Metropole Haiti, Radio Galaxie, Radio Ginen
US State Department: Americans seeking information can call 1-888-407-4747, Latest information
Other resources: Ushahidi (online tracking tool), Le3900.com (Haitian business directory)
Hospitals in Port-au-Prince
Note: Some of the information below may be outdated or incorrect. Please check with local relief agencies.
Hospital Address Telephone Status
Hopital du Canape Vert Route du Canape Vert, Port-au-Prince, Canape Vert, Haiti 509-2245-0984,
509-2245-1052,
509-2245-3365,
509-2245-6705 Unknown
Hopital Francais d’Haiti 378, Rue du Centre, Port-au-Prince, Centre Ville, Haiti 509-2222-5966,
509-2223-9979 Unknown
Hopital Maternite Sapiens
Avenue Christophe # 120
509-2245-8349
Unknown
Hopital de l’Universite d’Etat d’Haiti Angle Rues Mgr Guilloux et St Honore, Port-au-Prince, Champs de Mars, Haiti 509-2222-967,
509-2222-1614 Unknown
Hopital Saint Francois de Sales Rue Chareron, Port-au-Prince, Haiti 5092225033, 5092220232 Unknown
Hopital OFATMA Cite Militaire 5092223846 Unknown
Clinique de la Santé 102, Ave Poupelard (Après Ruelle Chrétien) 5092459906, 5092440935 Unknown
http://www.google.com/relief/haitiearthquake/
Learning to Learn – extract from the Black Swan
Another related human impediment comes from excessive focus on what we do know: we tend to learn the precise, not the general.
What did people learn from the 9/11 episode? Did they learn that some events, owing to their dynamics, stand largely outside the realm of the predictable? No. Did they learn the built-in defect of conventional wisdom? No. What did they figure Out? They learned precise rules for avoiding Islamic prototerrorists and tall buildings. Many keep reminding me that it is important for us to be practical and take tangible steps rather than to “theorize” about knowledge. The story of the Maginot Line shows how we are conditioned to be specific. The French, after the Great War, built a wall along the previous German invasion route to prevent reinvasion — Hitler just (almost) effortlessly went around it. The French had been excellent students of history; they just learned with too much precision. They were too practical and exceedingly focused for their own safety.
We do not spontaneously learn that we don’t learn that we don’t learn. The problem lies in the structure of our minds: we don’t learn rules, just facts, and only facts. Metarules (such as the rule that we have a tendency to not learn rules) we don’t seem to be good at getting. We scorn the abstract; we scorn it with passion.
Why? It is necessary here, as it is my agenda in the rest of this book, both to stand conventional wisdom on its head and to show how inapplicable it is to our modern, complex, and increasingly recursive environment.***
***Recursive here means that the world in which we live has an increasing number of feedback loops, causing events to be the cause of more events (say, people buy a book because other people bought it), thus generating snowballs and arbitrary and unpredictable planet-wide winner-take-all effects. We live in an environment where information flows too rapidly, accelerating such epidemics. Likewise, events can happen because they are not supposed to happen. (Our intuitions are made for an environment with simpler causes and effects and slowly moving information.) This type of randomness did not prevail during the Pleistocene, as socioeconomic life was far simpler then.
But there is a deeper question: What are our minds made for? It looks as if we have the wrong user’s manual. Our minds do not seem made to think and introspect; if they were, things would be easier for us today, but then we would not be here today and I would not have been here to talk about it — my counterfactual, introspective, and hard-thinking ancestor would have been eaten by a lion while his nonthinking but faster-reacting cousin would have run for cover. Consider that thinking is time-consuming and generally a great waste of energy, that our predecessors spent more than a hundred million years as nonthinking mammals and that in the blip in our history during which we have used our brain we have used it on subjects too peripheral to matter. Evidence shows that we do much less thinking than we believe we do — except, of course, when we think about it.
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