Posted: Sat, December 22, 2012 | By: Special Guest
by Sam Keene
After the Connecticut shooting , where at Sandy Hook Elementary Adam Lanza gunned down 26 people (27 including his own mother), the echoes of Christopher Hitchens remain relevant:
“When the earthquake hits, or the tsunami inundates, or the twin towers ignite, you can see and hear the secret… Continue Reading
Posted: Sat, December 22, 2012 | By: Special Guest
by Alex McGilvery
I was checking out a facebook posting in which people were asked to suggest one additional verse to the Bible. What was interesting was the number that said directly or indirectly that we were expected to think for ourselves. One of Jesus’ final instructions to his disciples… Continue Reading
Posted: Fri, December 21, 2012 | By:
Dear friends and supporters,
SENS Research Foundation’s mission is to transform the way the world researches and treats the diseases of aging. As another holiday season approaches, we would like to share the progress that we have made with you. Our projects on lysosomal aggregates and mitochondrial mutations at our… Continue Reading
Posted: Fri, December 21, 2012 | By: Fiction
by Stanley Shostak
In the six solar days since I left the bunker, I haven’t seen anyone. I have seen only parts of the empty cities and countryside we abandoned years ago. Amazingly, the “wasteland” is filled with an abundant flora and fauna that would provide food, clothing, and shelter.… Continue Reading
Posted: Fri, December 21, 2012 | By: Special Guest
by Peter Wicks
According to the Wikipedia entry on “major religious groups”, 85% of the world’s population subscribes to some kind of religion. While in reality the world is obviously not divided neatly into “religious” and “non-religious”, and while religion and theism are not quite the same thing, this statistic nevertheless… Continue Reading
Posted: Fri, December 21, 2012 | By: Mark Waser
Rice’s Theorem (in a nutshell):
Unless everything is specified, anything non-trivial (not directly provable from the partial specification you have) can’t be proved.
AI Implications (in a nutshell):
You can have either unbounded learning (Turing-completeness) or provability – but never both… Continue Reading
Posted: Thu, December 20, 2012 | By: Hank Pellissier
On December 10, a Daily Mail article reported that Valerie Lukyanova - the internet sensation who spent $800,000 on cosmetic surgery to resemble the plastic toy - is planning to move to the United States.
The original Barbie was created in 1959 by Ruth Handler, an American businesswoman who named the… Continue Reading
Posted: Wed, December 19, 2012 | By: Extropia DaSilva
Welcome to this transcript of my Christmas 2012 Thinkers Lecture. This year, the topic is about ‘the fourth evolutionary transition’. What is that, exactly? We begin to get a clue by looking at termites.
TERMITES AND THE THREE EVOLUTIONARY TRANSITIONS
The science writer Lewis Thomas described termites as one of… Continue Reading
Posted: Wed, December 19, 2012 | By: John Niman
Watson showed, in dramatic form, the capabilities of current computers when it (he?) defeated the two best Jeopardy! Players in the world almost two years ago. If Kurzweil’s law of accelerating returns holds, Watson ought to be about twice as efficient as it was then. Further, while the Jeopardy! win… Continue Reading
Posted: Wed, December 19, 2012 | By: Hank Pellissier
Cashews are delicious. They’re my favorite nut, and possibly yours. Plus they’re exceptionally healthy. My intention was to gobble several hundred handfuls of the kidney-shaped delicacies at Christmas parties, but I just learned that many cashews… are tainted… with suffering…
Human Rights Watch (HRW) reports that cashews from Vietnam are… Continue Reading
Posted: Tue, December 18, 2012 | By: Ilia Stambler
The recent Eurosymposium on Healthy Aging – that was organized on December 12-14 in Brussels by HEALES, the European Healthy Life Extension Society – was a smashing success!
The scope and quality of presentations was outstanding, featuring world-class specialists and covering topics from healthy longevity theory to practice to politics.
… Continue ReadingPosted: Tue, December 18, 2012 | By: Michael Lee
The indicators that 2012 was a troubled year are many and manifold. The following is a telling sample:
♣ Late in October, super-storm Hurricane Sandy ripped through communities in seven countries in the Caribbean and east coast of North America, killing over 250 people and costing an estimated $65.6 billion; it… Continue Reading
