whereami
JoinedPosts by whereami
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Newton, Einstein, Naturalism, and Walking Fish- Naturalism vs Supernaturalism. Put up or Shut up!!!
by whereami in.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbswkmobrl8&feature=digest_sun.
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IBM Reveals Five Innovations That Will Change Our Lives within Five Years
by whereami inthe future is here.. .
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/36290.wss.
armonk, ny - 19 dec 2011: today ibm (nyse: ibm) formally unveiled the sixth annual ibm 5 in 5" (#ibm5in5) a list of innovations that have the potential to change the way people work, live and interact during the next five years:.
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whereami
The future is here.
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/36290.wss
Armonk, NY - 19 Dec 2011: Today IBM (NYSE: IBM) formally unveiled the sixth annual “IBM 5 in 5" (#ibm5in5) – a list of innovations that have the potential to change the way people work, live and interact during the next five years:
The next IBM 5 in 5 is based on market and societal trends as well as emerging technologies from IBM’s research labs around the world that can make these transformations possible.
At IBM, we’re bridging the gap between science fiction and science fact on a daily basis. Here are how five technologies will define the future:
People power will come to life.
Anything that moves or produces heat has the potential to create energy that can be captured. Walking. Jogging. Bicycling. The heat from your computer. Even the water flowing through your pipes.
Advances in renewable energy technology will allow individuals to collect this kinetic energy, which now goes to waste, and use it to help power our homes, offices and cities.
Imagine attaching small devices to the spokes on your bicycle wheels that recharge batteries as you pedal along. You will have the satisfaction of not only getting to where you want to go, but at the same time powering some of the lights in your home.
Created energy comes in all shapes and forms and from anything around us. IBM scientists inIreland are looking at ways to understand and minimize the environmental impact of converting ocean wave energy into electricity.
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You will never need a password again.
Your biological makeup is the key to your individual identity, and soon, it will become the key to safeguarding it.
You will no longer need to create, track or remember multiple passwords for various log-ins. Imagine you will be able to walk up to an ATM machine to securely withdraw money by simply speaking your name or looking into a tiny sensor that can recognize the unique patterns in the retina of your eye. Or by doing the same, you can check your account balance on your mobile phone or tablet.
Each person has a unique biological identity and behind all that is data. Biometric data – facial definitions, retinal scans and voice files – will be composited through software to build your DNA unique online password.
Referred to as multi-factor biometrics, smarter systems will be able to use this information in real-time to make sure whenever someone is attempting to access your information, it matches your unique biometric profile and the attempt is authorized. To be trusted, such systems should enable you to opt in or out of whatever information you choose to provide.
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Mind reading is no longer science fiction
From Houdini to Skywalker to X-Men, mind reading has merely been "wishful thinking" for science fiction fans for decades, but their wish may soon come true.
IBM scientists are among those researching how to link your brain to your devices, such as a computer or a smartphone. If you just need to think about calling someone, it happens. Or you can control the cursor on a computer screen just by thinking about where you want to move it.
Scientists in the field of bioinformatics have designed headsets with advanced sensors to read electrical brain activity that can recognize facial expressions, excitement and concentration levels, and thoughts of a person without them physically taking any actions.
Within 5 years, we will begin to see early applications of this technology in the gaming and entertainment industry. Furthermore, doctors could use the technology to test brain patterns, possibly even assist in rehabilitation from strokes and to help in understanding brain disorders, such as autism. .
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The digital divide will cease to exist.
In our global society, growth and wealth of economies are increasingly decided by the level of access to information. And in five years, the gap between information haves and have-nots will narrow considerably due to advances in mobile technology.
There are 7 billion people inhabiting the world today. In five years there will be 5.6 billion mobile devices sold – which means 80% of the current global population would each have a mobile device.
As it becomes cheaper to own a mobile phone, people without a lot of spending power will be able to do much more than they can today.
For example, in India, using speech technology and mobile devices, IBM enabled rural villagers who were illiterate to pass along information through recorded messages on their phones. With access to information that was not there before, villagers could check weather reports for help them decide when to fertilize crops, know when doctors were coming into town, and find the best prices for their crops or merchandise.
Growing communities will be able to use mobile technology to provide access to essential information and better serve people with new solutions and business models such as mobile commerce and remote healthcare.
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Junk mail will become priority mail.
Think about how often we’re flooded with advertisements we consider to be irrelevant or unwanted. It may not be that way for long.
In five years, unsolicited advertisements may feel so personalized and relevant it may seem spam is dead. At the same time, spam filters will be so precise you’ll never be bothered by unwanted sales pitches again.
Imagine if tickets to your favorite band are put on hold for you the moment they became available, and for the one night of the week that is free on your calendar. Through alerts direct to you, you’ll be able to purchase tickets instantly from your mobile device. Or imagine being notified that a snow storm is about to affect your travel plans and you might want to re-route your flight?
IBM is developing technology that uses real-time analytics to make sense and integrate data from across all the facets of your life such as your social networks and online preferences to present and recommend information that is only useful to you.
From news, to sports, to politics, you’ll trust the technology will know what you want, so you can decide what to do with it.
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Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs of 2011.
by whereami inwhat an amazing year it's been!!!.
http://io9.com/5871725/.
biggest scientific breakthroughs of 2011from law-violating subatomic particles to entirely new, earth-like worlds, 2011 was an incredible year for scientific discovery.
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whereami
Hmmm... sorry about the formatting. Didn't quite come out the way I wanted.
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Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs of 2011.
by whereami inwhat an amazing year it's been!!!.
http://io9.com/5871725/.
biggest scientific breakthroughs of 2011from law-violating subatomic particles to entirely new, earth-like worlds, 2011 was an incredible year for scientific discovery.
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whereami
What an amazing year it's been!!!
Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs of 2011
From law-violating subatomic particles to entirely new, earth-like worlds, 2011 was an incredible year for scientific discovery. In the past 12 months, scientific breakthroughs in fields ranging from archaeology to structural biochemistry have allowed humanity to rewrite history, and enabled us to open to brand new chapters in our development as a species.
Here are some of our favorites.
The world's lowest density material
With a density of less than one milligram per cubic centimeter (that's about 1000 times less dense than water), this surprisingly squishy material is so light-weight, it can rest on the seed heads of a dandelion, and is lighter than even the lowest-density aerogels. The secret — to both its negligible weight and its resiliency — is the material's lattice-like structural organization, one that the researchers who created it liken to that of the Eiffel Tower.
"Feeling" objects with a brain implant
It could be the first step towards truly immersive virtual reality, one where you can actually feel the computer-generated world around you. An international team of neuroengineers has developed a brain-machine interface that's bi-directional — that means you could soon use a brain implant not only to control a virtual hand, but to receive feedback that tricks your brain into "feeling" the texture of a virtual object.
Already demonstrated successfully in primates, the interface could soon allow humans to use next-generation prosthetic limbs (or even robotic exoskeletons) to actually feel objects in the real world.
Astronomers get their first good look at giant asteroid Vesta
In July of 2011, NASA's Dawn spacecraftentered the orbit of Vesta — the second largest body in our solar system's main asteroid belt. Just a few days later, Dawn spiraled down into orbit. Upon reaching an altitude of approximately 1700 miles, the spacecraft began snapping pictures of the protoplanet's surface, revealing geophysical oddities like the triplet of craters on Vesta's northern hemisphere — nicknamed "Snowman" — featured here. Dawn recently maneuvered into its closest orbit (at an altitude averaging just 130 miles). It will continue orbiting Vesta until July of 2012, when it will set a course for Ceres, the largest of the main belt asteroids.
NASA's Kepler Mission changes how we see ourselves in the Universe
2011 was a fantastic year for NASA's Kepler Mission, which is charged with discovering Earth-like planets in the so-called "habitable zone" of stars in the Milky Way. Kepler scientists announced the discovery of the firstcircumbinary planet (i.e. a planet with two suns, just like Tatooine); located the first two known Earth-sized exoplanets; quadrupled the number of worlds known to exist beyond our solar system; and spied Kepler-22b — the most Earth-like planet we've encountered yet. And here's the really exciting bit: Kepler is just getting warmed up.
Heartbeat-powered nanogenerators could soon replace batteries
In a few years, you may never have to recharge your phone again — provided part of you keeps moving. Back in March,scientists announced the world's first viable "nanogenerator" — a tiny computer chip that gets its power from body movements like snapping fingers or - eventually - your heartbeat.
The researchers can already use the technology to power a liquid crystal display and an LED, and claim that their technology could replace batteries for small devices like MP3 players and mobile phones within a few years.
Neuroscientists reconstruct the movies in your mind
Back in September, UC Berkeley neuroscientists demonstrated their ability to use advanced brain-imaging techniques toturn activity in the visual cortex of the human brain into digital images. So far, the researchers are only able to reconstruct neural equivalents of things people have already seen — but they're confident that other applications — like tapping into the mind of a coma patient, or watching a video recording of your own dreams — are well within reach.
100,000-year-old art kit found in South Africa
Researchers investigating Blombos Cave in Cape Town, South Africa uncovered the oldest known evidence of painting by early humans. Archaeologists discovered two "kits," for mixing and forming ocher — a reddish pigment believed to be used as a dye. The find pushes back the date by which humans were practicing complex art approximately 40,000 years, all the way back to 100,000 years ago.
Online gamers solve a decade-old HIV puzzle in three weeks
Foldit is a computer game that presents players with the spatial challenge of determining the three-dimensional structures of proteins, the molecules comprising the workforce that runs your entire body. In diseases like HIV, proteins known as retroviral proteases play a key role in a virus's ability to overwhelm the immune system and proliferate throughout the body.
For years, scientists have been working to identify what these retroviral proteases look like, in order to develop drugs that target these enzymes and stymie the progression of deadly viral diseases like AIDS. It was a scientific puzzle that managed to confound top-tier research scientists for over a decade... but Foldit gamers were able to pull it off in just three weeks.
"The ingenuity of game players," said biochemist Firas Khatib, "is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems."
Ancient settlement upends our perception of human evolution
Tools discovered during an excavation in the United Arab Emirates were found to date back at least 100,000 years, indicating thatour ancestors may have left Africa as early as 125,000 years ago. Genetic evidence has long suggested that modern humans did not leave Africa until about 60,000 years ago, but these tools appear to be the work of our ancestors and not other hominids like Neanderthals. That being said, our understanding of how and when humans really evolved continues to take shape…
Confirmed: Neanderthal DNA survives in Modern Humans
Some of the first hard genetic evidence that early Homo sapiens got busy with Homo neandertalensis actually came in 2010, but it was experimental findings published in July of 2011 that really drove the point home. But don't worry — there's still plenty of research to be done on everything from the details of human/neanderthal culture, to the enduring significance of Neanderthal genes in the modern human genome, to the mysterious humanoids, Denisovans.
IBM unveils brain-like "neurosynaptic" chips
Back in February, IBM's Watson made history by trouncing Jeopardy champs Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in an intimidating display of computer overlord-dom. But to compare Watson's computing power to the complexity of a brain would still constitute a pretty epic oversimplification of what it means to "think" like a human, as the way each one processes information could not be more different.
Watson is impressive, to be sure, but in August, IBM researchers brought out the big guns: a revolutionary new chip design that, for the first time, actually mimics the functioning of a human brain.
NASA launches the most advanced Martian rover in history
Currently in transit to the Red Planet, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory — aka theCuriosity rover — was launched on November 26th. The rover is scheduled to touch down on Mars inside the mysterious Gale crater in August of 2012. Once it's made landfall, Curiosity will make use of one of the most advanced scientific payloads we've ever put in space to assess whether Mars ever was, or is still today, an environment able to support life — a mission that could redefine the way we think about life in our solar system and beyond.
A device that lets you see through walls
Radar systems that can see through walls (aka "wall-through" radar systems) aren't unheard of, it's just that most of them are burdened by limitations (like a prohibitively low frame rate, or a short range of operation) — that make their use in real world settings pretty impractical. But that could soon change in a big way. The team of MIT researchers featured in this video has developed a device that can provide its operators with real-time video of what's going on behind an eight-inch-thick concrete wall — and it can do it from up to 60 feet away.
Electronics and biometric sensors that you wear like a temporary tattoo
Engineers John Rogers and Todd Coleman say that their epidermal electronic system (EES) — a skin-mountable, electronic circuit that stretches, flexes, and twists with the motion of your body — represents a huge step towards eroding the distinction between hard, chip-based machines and soft, biological humans.
Culling senescent cells postpones age-related disease in mice
In the latest effort to make mice immortal, researchers revealed that flushing out so-called senescent (aka old and defunct) cells from the bodies of mice genetically modified to die of heart disease extended the health span of the mice significantly. If you can imagine taking a pill that could stave off the effects of age related disease, then you can appreciate why science and industry alike have demonstrated considerable interest in these and other age-related findings. [Photo by Jan M. Van Deursen Via NYT]
Scientists engineer highly virulent strains of bird flu
Two independent teams of researchers recently engineered highly virulent strains of H5N1, more commonly known as the avian flu virus. On one hand, the researchers' work is absolutely vital, because it allows us to get a head start, so to speak, on understanding viruses that could one day pose a serious risk to public health. On the other hand, there are many who fear that findings from such research could be used to malevolent ends were they to wind up in the wrong hands. Included in the latter camp is the federal government, which went to unprecedented ends to make sure that the experimental methods behind creating the strains never made it to the pages of either Nature orScience.
Regardless of your position, the development of these strains raises important questions about the nature of dual-use research, transparency, and censorship.
The hunt for the Higgs boson nears its conclusion
It's been a long, long time coming, but earlier this month, representatives from the Large Hadron Collider's two largest experiments — ATLAS and CMS —announced that both research teams had independently uncovered signals that point to the appearance of the Higgs boson — the long-sought sub-atomic particle thought to endow all other particles with mass. "Given the outstanding performance of the LHC this year, we will not need to wait long for enough data and can look forward to resolving this puzzle in 2012," explained ATLAS's Fabiola Gianotti. If the puzzle is resolved with the discovery of the Higgs, it will represent one of the greatest unifying discoveries in the history of physics.
Faster-than-light Neutrinos
By now, the neutrinos that were supposedly caught breaking the cosmic speed limit in Gran Sasso, Italy need no introduction. Scientists the world over continue to offer up critiques on the OPERA collaborative's puzzling results, especially in light of the team's most recent findings — acquired froma second, fine-tuned version of the original experiment — which reveal that their FTL observations still stand.
Of course, the most rigorous, telling, and important tests will come in the form of cross-checks performed by independent research teams, the results of which will not be available until next year at the earliest. And while many scientists aren't holding their breath, the confirmation of FTL neutrinos could very well signal one of the biggest scientific paradigm shifts in history.
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Why Violence Has Declined. Research you will never read in the WT.
by whereami innext time they come knocking on your door, show them this book with the latest research.. .
faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen.
yet as new york times bestselling author steven pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true: violence has been diminishing for millennia and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species's existence.
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whereami
Next time they come knocking on your door, show them this book with the latest research.
Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen. Yet as New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true: violence has been diminishing for millennia and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species's existence. For most of history, war, slavery, infanticide, child abuse, assassinations, pogroms, gruesome punishments, deadly quarrels, and genocide were ordinary features of life. But today, Pinker shows (with the help of more than a hundred graphs and maps) all these forms of violence have dwindled and are widely condemned. How has this happened?
This groundbreaking book continues Pinker's exploration of the essence of human nature, mixing psychology and history to provide a remarkable picture of an increasingly nonviolent world. The key, he explains, is to understand our intrinsic motives- the inner demons that incline us toward violence and the better angels that steer us away-and how changing circumstances have allowed our better angels to prevail. Exploding fatalist myths about humankind's inherent violence and the curse of modernity, this ambitious and provocative book is sure to be hotly debated in living rooms and the Pentagon alike, and will challenge and change the way we think about our society.
Selected by The New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of the Year
The author of The New York Times bestseller The Stuff of Thought offers a controversial history of violence.
Here's a preview of the book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0670022950/ref=sib_dp_kd/184-5712640-1802112#reader-link
New York Times review: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/books/review/the-better-angels-of-our-nature-by-steven-pinker-book-review.html?pagewanted=all
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Has religion made the world less safe?
by whereami inhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/has-religion-made-the-world-less-safe/2011/12/27/giqa0xezkp_blog.html?tid=sm_twitter_washingtonpost.
has religion made the world less safe?by steven pinkerthe bible depicts a world that, seen through modern eyes, is staggering in its savagery.
people enslave, rape, and murder members of their immediate families.
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whereami
Has religion made the world less safe?
By Steven Pinker
The Bible depicts a world that, seen through modern eyes, is staggering in its savagery. People enslave, rape, and murder members of their immediate families. Warlords slaughter civilians indiscriminately, including the children. Women are bought, sold, and plundered like sex toys. The world of the New Testament is little better: kings carry out mass infanticide; thieves and activists are punished by being nailed to a cross.
Though most of the events narrated in the Bible almost certainly never happened, historians agree that they reflect the norms and practices of the era. We live in a world that is indisputably less violent than that of our ancestors. Savage practices such as human sacrifice, chattel slavery, blood sports, debtors’ prisons, frivolous executions, religious persecution, and punitive torture and mutilation have been eliminated from most of the world. Less obviously, homicide rates have plummeted over the centuries, and during the past sixty-five years that the rate of death from war has fallen to historically unprecedented lows.
Having documented these declines of violence, I am often asked what role religion has played in this historical progress. Overall it has not been a good one. Many humanitarian reforms, such as the elimination of cruel punishment, the dissemination of empathy-inducing novels, and the abolition of slavery, were met with fierce opposition in their time by church authorities. The conviction that one’s own values are sacred and those of everyone else heretical inflamed the combatants in the European Wars of Religion, the second-bloodiest period in modern Western history, and it continues to inflame partisans in the Middle East and parts of the Islamic world today.
Defenders of religion as a pacifying force often claim that the two genocidal ideologies of the 20th century, fascism and communism, were atheistic. But the first claim is mistaken and the second irrelevant. Fascism happily coexisted with Catholicism in Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Croatia, and though Hitler had little use for Christianity, he was by no means an atheist, and professed that he was carrying out a divine plan. Historians have documented that many of the Nazi elite melded Nazism with German Christianity in a syncretic faith, drawing on its millennial visions and its long history of anti-Semitism.
As for godless communism, godless it certainly was. But the repudiation of one illiberal ideology does not automatically grant immunity from others. Marxism violently rejected the humanism and liberalism of the Enlightenment, which placed the flourishing of individuals as the ultimate goal of political systems.
At the same time, particular religious movements at particular times in history have worked against violence. In zones of anarchy, religious institutions have sometimes served as a civilizing force, and since many of them claim to hold the morality franchise in their communities, they can be staging grounds for reflection and moral action. The Quakers parlayed Enlightenment arguments against slavery and war into effective movements for abolition and pacifism, and in the 19th century other liberal Protestant denominations joined them. Protestant churches also helped to tame the wild frontier of the American South and West. African American churches supplied organizational infrastructure and rhetorical power to the civil rights movement (though Martin Luther King rejected mainstream Christian theology and drew his inspiration from Gandhi, secular Western philosophy, and renegade humanistic theologians). In the developing world, Desmond Tutu and other church leaders worked with politicians and nongovernmental organizations in the reconciliation movements that healed countries following apartheid and civil unrest.
So the subtitle of the late Christopher Hitchens’s atheist bestseller, How religion poisons everything, is an overstatement. Religion plays no single role in the history of violence because religion has not been a single force in the history of anything. The vast set of movements we call religions have little in common but their distinctness from the secular institutions that are recent appearances on the human stage. And the beliefs and practices of religions, despite their claims to divine provenance, are strongly influenced by human affairs, responding to its intellectual and social currents. When the currents move in enlightened directions, religions often adapt to them, most obviously in the discreet neglect of the bloodthirsty passages of the Old Testament. Many accommodations instigated by breakaway denominations, reform movements, ecumenical councils, and other liberalizing forces have allowed other religions to be swept along by the humanistic tide. It is when fundamentalist forces stand athwart those currents and impose tribal, authoritarian, and puritanical constraints that religion becomes a force for violence.
This essay has been adapted from The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (Viking, 2011).
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Einstein on God
by whereami inthis video discusses prof. albert einstein's spiritual beliefs, and how they have been a subject for debate in recent years.. .
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kek6wthxnfw&sns=em.
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whereami
So they say. The video addresses that. You'll enjoy watching it I'm sure.
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Einstein on God
by whereami inthis video discusses prof. albert einstein's spiritual beliefs, and how they have been a subject for debate in recent years.. .
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kek6wthxnfw&sns=em.
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whereami
This video discusses Prof. Albert Einstein's spiritual beliefs, and how they have been a subject for debate in recent years.
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Christopher Hitchens vs Kim Jong Il
by whereami inafter the despicable gloating over hitchens corpse i wonder if christians could forgive kim jong il if he had a death bed conversion.
according to many, honestly accepting jesus as your personal lord and saviour is all that is required to enter paradise in the afterworld.
is this truly moral?
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whereami
After the despicable gloating over Hitchens corpse I wonder if Christians could forgive Kim Jong Il if he had a death bed conversion.
According to many, honestly accepting Jesus as your personal Lord and Saviour is all that is required to enter paradise in the afterworld. Is this truly moral? Can Christians honestly believe this without feeling uncomfortable? Can they explain it?http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3Cy_-LvZTNc#!
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150 gallons later, Orlando man is still giving blood, platelets
by whereami inanother success story you won't read in the pages of the awake.. http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orange/os-top-blood-donor-20111218,0,4485253.story.
bruce blunt jr., left, and ron howard are pictured at howard's orlando home.
howard donated blood platelets to blunt for almost 12 years, saving his life.
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whereami
Bump....for a great story.
