Russia Says It Will Replace Wikipedia With State-Run Site

By Victor Tangermann – Re-Blogged From Futurism

[Blocking any site – such as Wikipedia – is censorship. No state should do it. At the same time, I’ve seen first hand how Wikipedia IS unreliable, especially on controversial subjects. Gatekeepers exercise effective censorship, keeping Americans from seeing what is not their “official party line.” One blatant example is Global Warming Alarmism. –Bob]

Last month, Russian president Vladimir Putin complained that the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia was “unreliable” and called for it to be replaced.

Now, the Russian government has confirmed it will replace Wikipedia with an online version of the “Great Russian Encyclopedia,” Reuters reports.

“As for Wikipedia… it’s better to replace it with the new Big Russian Encyclopaedia in electronic form,” Russian news agency RIA Novosti quoted Putin as saying at a Kremlin meeting last month. “At least that will be reliable information, presented in a good, modern way.”

Kremline

It’s yet another sign that the Kremlin is taking an active role in cracking down on the types of information its citizens are able to access online. Earlier this year, Russian authorities announced plans to temporarily disconnect the country from the internet as a way to test its cybersecurity defenses.

In 2017, the Russian government also proclaimed that they plan to handle up to 95 percent of all internet traffic locally — that is, independent from the rest of the world — by 2020.

The new online encyclopedia will reportedly cost about 2 billion rubles ($31 million). The government is also planning on setting up a national research and education center to serve the Great Russian Encyclopaedia, according to Reuters.

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What I Learned About Climate Change: The Science is NOT Settled

By David Siegel – Re-Blogged From Medium.com

What is your position on the climate-change debate? What would it take to change your mind?

If the answer is It would take a ton of evidence to change my mind, because my understanding is that the science is settled, and we need to get going on this important issue, that’s what I thought, too. This is my story.

More than thirty years ago, I became vegan because I believed it was healthier (it’s not), and I’ve stayed vegan because I believe it’s better for the environment (it is). I haven’t owned a car in ten years. I love animals; I’ll gladly fly halfway around the world to take photos of them in their natural habitats. I’m a Democrat: I think governments play a key role in helping preserve our environment for the future in the most cost-effective way possible. Over the years, I built a set of assumptions: that Al Gore was right about global warming, that he was the David going up against the industrial Goliath. In 1993, I even wrote a book about it.

Recently, a friend challenged those assumptions. At first, I was annoyed, because I thought the science really was settled. As I started to look at the data and read about climate science, I was surprised, then shocked. As I learned more, I changed my mind. I now think there probably is no climate crisis and that the focus on CO2 takes funding and attention from critical environmental problems. I’ll start by making ten short statements that should challenge your assumptions and then back them up with an essay.

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