A weekly review of news at the intersection of media and democracy.

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...The young crowd came out to support Free the P, the new CD compilation of “hip-hop and spoken word, dedicated to the youth of Palestine.” The proceeds will go to Slingshot Hip-hop, “a documentary film that focuses on the daily life of Palestinian rappers living in Gaza, the West Bank and inside Israel.”...“I love the Al Aqsa Mosque.” he remarked. But Nafar doesn’t want the Palestinian flag to become a symbol of racism, like the Israeli flag .... "Muslims, Christians and Jews,” made up Palestine before the Zionist gangs pillaged the state.... ...

His memory is hazy, but he believes it was after the Sabra-Shatila massacre. His father and uncles planned to march to the mayor's office and, as Fredwreck recalls, "have some words with him". "I was a kid at the time thinking 'This is cool'," he says of his first involvement in political protest. "But people were driving by and throwing stuff at us and my uncles had to throw rocks back. The next day I was at school and all my friends said, 'Hey man, I saw you and your father on TV last night!'"

8. Questions and answers.

6. Conclusions
Hardest cases first. Affective feedback machines, interdisciplinary mixes, confidence for the disadvantaged. . [sorry about breathing difficulties here].

The ‘Computer Club House’.
Getting kids from disadvantaged areas to work with the latest
technology with the help/training of MIT volunteers. Support learning through design Experience. Just experimentation and exploration, two-way feedback between kids and volunteers. Would like to evolve a model that integrates it with university. That the club house is about building confidence.

5. Projects: (ii) Mixing Disciplines. A psychologist, a biologist and a game-programmer can design a game. Executive toys industry.
The minds-games group – transferring skills learnt in the virtual world, into the real world.
The lab is sponsored by corporates mainly; I mean public money at the moment but, the idea is that it’ll ultimately be sponsored by corporates.

4. Demonstration of Affective Feedback. The volunterrs participate in experiment – the most relaxed wins the race. [buzzing is from the laptop connection, not my recording gear].

3. Projects (i)
ADSD, depression and trauma. Gaming industry is one of the fastest growing industry in the world. Idea of an online game with biometrics (you win if all your team is calm).
Biometrics can be used for identifying people.
White Room syndrome in autism. Inventing a room that monitors and calms a person. The poewr of emersion [the importance of ambience].
the environment around you is shaped by technology, and what we’re gonna do is use technology in exactly the same way.

2. MLE what it does: Basic Idea – can you constructively affect the state of the mind using a combination of emersion therapy, virtual reality and biofeedback? Duality and symbiotic relationship between man and machine [conclusion of this part put first for clarity].