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thinkahol *

Dr. Daniel G. Nocera - YouTube - 0 views

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    The supply of secure, clean, sustainable energy is arguably the most important scientific and technical challenge facing humanity in the 21st century. Rising living standards of a growing world population will cause global energy consumption to double by mid-century and triple by the end of the century. Even in light of unprecedented conservation, the additional energy needed is simply not attainable from long discussed sources these include nuclear, biomass, wind, geothermal and hydroelectric. The global appetite for energy is simply too much. Petroleum-based fuel sources (i.e., coal, oil and gas) could be increased. However, deleterious consequences resulting from external drivers of economy, the environment, and global security dictate that this energy need be met by renewable and sustainable sources. The dramatic increase in global energy need is driven by 3 billion low-energy users in the non-legacy world and by 3 billion people yet to inhabit the planet over the next half century. The capture and storage of solar energy at the individual level personalized solar energy drives inextricably towards the heart of this energy challenge by addressing the triumvirate of secure, carbon neutral and plentiful energy. This talk will place the scale of the global energy issue in perspective and then discuss how personalized energy (especially for the non-legacy world) can provide a path to a solution to the global energy challenge. Daniel G. Nocera is the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Director of the Solar Revolutions Project and Director of the Eni Solar Frontiers Center at MIT. His group pioneered studies of the basic mechanisms of energy conversion in biology and chemistry. He has recently accomplished a solar fuels process that captures many of the elements of photosynthesis outside of the leaf. This discovery sets the stage for a storage mechanism for the large scale, distributed, deployment of solar energy. He has b
thinkahol *

5 Things That Internet Porn Reveals About Our Brains | Sex & the Brain | DISCOVER Magazine - 0 views

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    With its expansive range and unprecedented potential for anonymity, (the Internet gives voice to our deepest urges and most uninhibited thoughts. Inspired by the wealth of unfettered expression available online, neuroscientists Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam, who met as Ph.D. candidates at Boston University, began plumbing a few chosen search engines (including Dogpile and AOL) to create the world's largest experiment in sexuality in 2009. Quietly tapping into a billion Web searches, they explored the private activities of more than 100 million men and women around the world. The result is the first large-scale scientific examination of human sexuality in more than half a century, since biologist Alfred Kinsey famously interviewed more than 18,000 middle-class Caucasians about their sexual behavior and published the Kinsey reports in 1948 and 1953. Building on the work of Kinsey, neuroscientists have long made the case that male and female sexuality exist on different planes. But like Kinsey himself, they have been hampered by the dubious reliability of self-reports of sexual behavior and preferences as well as by small sample sizes. That is where the Internet comes in. By accessing raw data from Web searches and employing the help of Alexa-a company that measures Web traffic and publishes a list of the million most popular sites in the world-Ogas and Gaddam shine a light on hidden desire, a quirky realm of lust, fetish, and kink that, like the far side of the moon, has barely been glimpsed. Here is a sampling of their fascinating results, selected from their book, A Billion Wicked Thoughts.
thinkahol *

YouTube - Think faster focus better and remember moreRewiring our brain to stay younger... - 0 views

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    October 24, 2008 - Google Tech Talks June 16, 2008 ABSTRACT Explore the brain's amazing ability to change throughout a person's life. This phenomenon-called neuroplasticty-is the science behind brain fitness, and it has been called one of the most extraordinary scientific discoveries of the 20th century. PBS had recently aired this special, The Brain Fitness Program, which explains the brain's complexities in a way that both scientists and people with no scientific background can appreciate. This is opportunity to learn more about how our minds work-and to find out more about the latest in cutting-edge brain research, from the founder of Posit Science and creator of the Brain Fitness Program software, Dr. Michael Merzenich. Speaker: Dr. Michael Merzenich, Ph.D. Michael M. Merzenich, PhD: Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Merzenich leads the company's scientific team. For more than three decades, Dr. Merzenich has been a leading pioneer in brain plasticity research. He is the Francis A. Sooy Professor at the Keck Center for Integrative Neurosciences at UCSF. Dr. Merzenich is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes, including the Ipsen Prize, Zulch Prize of the Max Planck Institute, Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award and Purkinje Medal. Dr. Merzenich has published more than 200 articles, including many in leading peer-reviewed journals, such as Science and Nature. His work is also often covered in the popular press, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Time and Newsweek. He has appeared on Sixty Minutes II, CBS Evening News and Good Morning America. In the late 1980s, Dr. Merzenich was on the team that invented the cochlear implant, now distributed by market leader Advanced Bionics. In 1996, Dr. Merzenich was the founding CEO of Scientific Learning Corporation (Nasdaq: SCIL), which markets and distributes software that applies principles of brain plasticity to assist children with language
thinkahol *

Social networking's good and bad impacts on kids | KurzweilAI - 0 views

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    Social media present risks and benefits to children but parents who try to secretly monitor their kids' activities online are wasting their time, says Larry D. Rosen, Ph.D., professor of psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills. Rosen identifies potential adverse effects of social media, including: Teens who use Facebook more often show more narcissistic tendencies, while young adults who have a strong Facebook presence show more signs of other psychological disorders, including antisocial behaviors, mania, and aggressive tendencies. Daily overuse of media and technology has a negative effect on the health of all children, especially preteens and teenagers, by making them more prone to anxiety, depression, and other psychological disorders, and making them more susceptible to future health problems. Facebook can be distracting and can negatively impact learning. Studies found that middle school, high school and college students who checked Facebook at least once during a 15-minute study period achieved lower grades. Rosen says new research has also found positive influences linked to social networking, including: Young adults who spend more time on Facebook are better at showing "virtual empathy" to their online friends. Online social networking can help introverted adolescents learn how to socialize. Social networking can provide tools for teaching in compelling ways that engage young students. "If you feel that you have to use some sort of computer program to surreptitiously monitor your child's social networking, you are wasting your time. Your child will find a workaround in a matter of minutes," he says. "You have to start talking about appropriate technology use early and often and build trust, so that when there is a problem, whether it is being bullied or seeing a disturbing image, your child will talk to you about it." Ref.: Larry D. Rosen, Poke Me: How Social Networks Can Both Help and Harm Our Kids, 2011; 119th Annua
techinstro com

Description and Specification of Graphene - 0 views

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    Graphene is a single-atom-thick sheet made from combined carbon atoms. The carbon atoms are bonded together to share electron in a hexagonal, honeycomb-like structure. It is a single atom thick layered 2D material ever discovered in the world. It is made up of a hexagonal lattice pattern of carbon atoms in a monolithic honeycomb-like structure. It is a layer of SP2 single bonded carbon atoms arranged like a chicken wire mesh. It is 200 times stronger than stainless steel (SS) and 100 thousand times thinner than the human hair. It is the slimmest and strongest compound available on the earth. Anybody would be amazed when they know that we have found a material which is harder than diamond, yet lightweight, stronger than steel, but also highly flexible, and this material can be mined from the earth as it occurs naturally. It is yet thin enough to be mistaken for a saran wrap. Apart from the optimum physical properties, the other features are also impressive. Properties of Graphene These are some prominent features which make it a hi-tech material: Excellent Electronic Conductor Chief electronic property makes it an efficient Zero-Overlap Semi metal and gives it sufficient electrical conductivity. Carbon atoms possess typically 2 electrons in the inner shell, and 4 electrons in the outer orbit, total 6 electrons. Although conventionally, the outer 4 electrons in carbon can connect with another atom, each, the atoms can form a 2-dimensional bond with three atoms per single atom. This leaves an electron available for electronic conduction. Such electrons are known as 'Pi' electrons and found above and below in sheet. Ultimate Tensile Strength Mechanical strength is another prominent property of the material. It considered as being the foremost most robust material ever discovered, owing to the 0.142 Nm-long carbon bonds. It also possesses ultimate tensile strength, measuring 130 Gigapascals (or 130,000,000,000 Pascals). Compared to the tensile strength of industr
thinkahol *

The highest-resolution immersive visualization facility ever built | KurzweilAI - 1 views

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    in response to comments the Editor comments: "Good points. Main benefit is a highly interactive shared exploration/discussion/planning space (and PR value), but that same functionality, including the 1.5 Gpix display (an interactive version), could be achieved in theory with an enhanced* Oculus RIFT (http://www.kurzweilai.net/why-immersive-virtual-reality-is-the-next-generation-of-gaming-part-2 and http://www.oculusvr.com/ ) with an MMORPG architecture and Kinect/Leap control in an Oblong-type shared environment (http://www.kurzweilai.net/minority-report-arrives-with-oblong-part-ii-mind-blowing-ui) at lower cost and not restricted to one room - in fact, feasible globally via machine translation (http://www.kurzweilai.net/speech-recognition-breakthrough-for-the-spoken-translated-word) and local clones of the imagery and darknet shared DB (access to Internet2 via 100 Gbps lines would also be nice). Extra points for automated POV display based on head, eye, hand, and body-motion tracking and automated EEG-based control and double points for automated mind reading (http://www.kurzweilai.net/neuroscience-the-mind-reader) tied to an NLP/semantic web DB. * "Imagine an HMD with a massive field of view and more pixels than 1080p per eye, wireless PC link, built-in absolute head and hand/weapon/wand positioning, and native integration with some (if not all) of the major game engines, all for less than $1,000 USD," Palmer says. "That can happen in 2013!" (http://www.kurzweilai.net/why-immersive-virtual-reality-is-the-next-generation-of-gaming-part-2)"
Adam Fleaming

Initiative Targets Big Data Workloads {Open Hybrid} - Compliance4all - 0 views

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    Hortonworks, IBM and Red Hat today announced they're banding together to build a consistent hybrid computing architecture for big data workloads. Dubbed the Open Hybrid Architecture Initiative, the program pledges simplicity of deployment and freedom of movement for data apps. The rapid ascent of cloud computing platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud has given enterprises abundant new options for storing data and deploying processing-intensive applications, such as deep learning and real-time stream processing. Throw in the progress being made at the edge, with sensors and speedy ARM chips collecting and processing massive amounts of data, and you have the makings of a computing revolution. While the computing possibilities in the cloud and on the edge may appear bountiful, the reality is that the underlying architectures for building apps that can span these three modes are just starting to come together. Enterprises today face a dearth of repeatable patterns to guide their developers, administrators, and architects, who are tasked with building, deploying and maintaining hybrid that span not just the cloud and the edge, but traditional on-prem data centers too. Hybrid computing architecture for big data workloads https://goo.gl/GQVXjs
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    Hybrid computing architecture for big data workloads https://goo.gl/GQVXjs
Todd Suomela

The Technium: The World Without Technology - 0 views

  • Although strictly speaking simple tools are a type of technology made by one person, we tend to think of technology as something much more complicated. But in fact technology is anything designed by a mind. Technology includes not only nuclear reactors and genetically modified crops, but also bows and arrows, hide tanning techniques, fire starters, and domesticated crops. Technology also includes intangible inventions such as calendars, mathematics, software, law, and writing, as these too derive from our heads. But technology also must include birds' nests and beaver dams since these too are the work of brains. All technology, both the chimp's termite fishing spear and the human's fishing spear, the beaver's dam and the human's dam, the warbler's hanging basket and the human's hanging basket, the leafcutter ant's garden and the human's garden, are all fundamentally natural. We tend to isolate human-made technology from nature, even to the point of thinking of it as anti-nature, only because it has grown to rival the impact and power of its home. But in its origins and fundamentals a tool is as natural as our life.
  • The gravity of technology holds us where we are. We accept our attachment. But to really appreciate the effects of technology – both its virtues and costs -- we need to examine the world of humans before technology. What were our lives like without inventions? For that we need to peek back into the Paleolithic era when technology was scarce and humans lived primarily surrounded by things they did not make. We can also examine the remaining contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes still living close to nature to measure what, if anything, they gain from the small amount of technology they use.
  • Then about 50,000 years ago something amazing happened. While the bodies of early humans in Africa remained unchanged, their genes and minds shifted noticeably. For the first time hominins were full of ideas and innovation. These newly vitalized modern humans, which we now call Sapiens, charged into new regions beyond their ancestral homes in eastern Africa. They fanned out from the grasslands and in a relatively brief burst exploded from a few tens of thousands in Africa to an estimated 8 million worldwide just before the dawn of agriculture 10,000 years ago.
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  • It should have been clear to Neanderthal, as it is now clear to us in the 21st century, that something new and big had appeared -- a new biological and geological force. A number of scientists (Richard Klein, Ian Tattersall, William Calvin, among many others) think that the "something" that happened 50,000 years ago was the invention of language. Up until this point, humanoids were smart. They could make crude tools in a hit or miss way and handle fire – perhaps like an exceedingly smart chimp. The African hominin's growing brain size and physical stature had leveled off its increase, but evolution continued inside the brain.  "What happened 50,000 years ago," says Klein, "was a change in the operating system of humans. Perhaps a point mutation effected the way the brain is wired that allowed languages, as we understand language today: rapidly produced, articulate speech."  Instead of acquiring a larger brain, as the Neanderthal and Erectus did, Sapien gained a rewired brain.  Language altered the Neanderthal-type mind, and allowed Sapien minds for the first time to invent with purpose and deliberation. Philosopher Daniel Dennet crows in elegant language: "There is no step more uplifting, more momentous in the history of mind design, than the invention of language. When Homo sapiens became the beneficiary of this invention, the species stepped into a slingshot that has launched it far beyond all other earthly species." The creation of language was the first singularity for humans. It changed everything. Life after language was unimaginable to those on the far side before it.
Todd Suomela

Human Computer Interaction (HCI) by John M. Carroll - Interaction-Design.org: HCI, Usab... - 0 views

  • The challenge of personal computing became manifest at an opportune time. The broad project of cognitive science, which incorporated cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, cognitive anthropology, and the philosophy of mind, had formed at the end of the 1970s. Part of the programme of cognitive science was to articulate systematic and scientifically-informed applications to be known as "cognitive engineering". Thus, at just the point when personal computing presented the practical need for HCI, cognitive science presented people, concepts, skills, and a vision for addressing such needs. HCI was one of the first examples of cognitive engineering. Other historically fortuitous developments contributed to establishment of HCI. Software engineering, mired in unmanageable software complexity in the 1970s, was starting to focus on nonfunctional requirements, including usability and maintainability, and on non-linear software development processes that relied heavily on testing. Computer graphics and information retrieval had emerged in the 1970s, and rapidly came to recognize that interactive systems were the key to progressing beyond early achievements. All these threads of development in computer science pointed to the same conclusion: The way forward for computing entailed understanding and better empowering users.
  • One of the most significant achievements of HCI is its evolving model of the integration of science and practice. Initially this model was articulated as a reciprocal relation between cognitive science and cognitive engineering. Later, it ambitiously incorporated a diverse science foundation, notably Activity Theory, distributed cognition, and ethnomethodology, and a culturally embedded conception of human activity, including the activities of design and technology development. Currently, the model is incorporating design practices and research across a broad spectrum. In these developments, HCI provides a blueprint for a mutual relation between science and practice that is unprecedented.
  • In the latter 1980s and early 1990s, HCI assimilated ideas from Activity Theory, distributed cognition, and ethnomethodology. This comprised a fundamental epistemological realignment. For example, the representational theory of mind, a cornerstone of cognitive science, is no longer axiomatic for HCI science. Information processing psychology and laboratory user studies, once the kernel of HCI research, became important, but niche areas. The most canonical theory-base in HCI now is socio-cultural, Activity Theory. Field studies became typical, and eventually dominant as an empirical paradigm. Collaborative interactions, that is, groups of people working together through and around computer systems (in contrast to the early 1980s user-at-PC situation) have become the default unit of analysis. It is remarkable that such fundamental realignments were so easily assimilated by the HCI community.
thinkahol *

Carl Sagan Day | Center for Inquiry - 2 views

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    Please join us this November as we honor Carl Sagan and celebrate the beauty and wonder of the cosmos he so eloquently described. Carl Sagan was a Professor of Astronomy and Space Science and Director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell University, but most of us know him as a Pulitzer Prize winning author and the creator of COSMOS. That Emmy and Peabody award-winning PBS television series transformed educational television when it first aired in 1980, but now, thirty years later, it's gone on to affect the hearts and minds of over a billion people in sixty countries. No other scientist has been able to reach and teach so many nonscientists in such a meaningful way, and that is why we celebrate Dr. Sagan, remember his work, and revel in the cosmos he helped us understand.
thinkahol *

Why Big Media Is Going Nuclear Against The DMCA | TechCrunch - 0 views

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    When Congress updated copyright laws and passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in 1998, it ushered an era of investment, innovation and job creation.  In the decade since, companies like Google, YouTube and Twitter have emerged thanks to the Act, but in the process, they have disrupted the business models and revenue streams of traditional media companies (TMCs).  Today, the TMCs are trying to fast-track a couple of bills in the House and Congress to reverse all of that. Through their lobbyists in Washington, D.C., media companies are trying to rewrite the DMCA through two new bills.  The content industry's lobbyists have forged ahead without any input from the technology industry, the one in the Senate is called Protect IP and the one in the House is called E-Parasites.  The E-Parasite law would kill the safe harbors of the DMCA and allow traditional media companies to attack emerging technology companies by cutting off their ability to transact and collect revenue, sort of what happened to Wikileaks, if you will.  This would scare VCs from investing in such tech firms, which in turn would destroy job creation. The technology industry is understandably alarmed by its implications, which include automatic blacklists for any site issued a takedown notice by copyright holders that would extend to payment providers and even search engines.   What is going on and how exactly did we get here?
thinkahol *

Laser, electric fields combined for new 'lab-on-chip' technologies | KurzweilAI - 0 views

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    Researchers from Purdue University and colleagues are developing new technologies that combine a laser and electric fields to manipulate fluids and tiny particles such as bacteria, viruses, and DNA molecules for a wide range of potential applications, including medical diagnostics, testing food and water, crime-scene forensics, and pharmaceutical manufacturing.. This "hybrid optoelectric manipulation in microfluidics" technology could allow for innovative sensors and analytical devices for "lab-on-a-chip" applications, or miniature instruments that perform measurements normally requiring large laboratory equipment, the researchers said. The technology works by first using a red laser to position a droplet on a platform specially fabricated at Purdue. Next, a highly focused infrared laser is used to heat the droplets, and then electric fields cause the heated liquid to circulate in a "microfluidic vortex." This vortex is used to isolate specific types of particles in the circulating liquid, like a micro centrifuge. Particle concentrations replicate the size, location and shape of the infrared laser pattern. The technology can also be used in nanomanufacturing because it shows promise for the assembly of suspended particles (colloids), the researchers said. Ref.: Steven T. Wereley, et al., Hybrid opto-electric manipulation in microfluidics-opportunities and challenges, Lab on a Chip, 2011; 11 (13): 2135 [DOI: 10.1039/C1LC20208A]
thinkahol *

It's Official: Tunisia Now Freer than the U.S. | Informed Comment - 0 views

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    An Arab country with neither secret police nor censorship is unprecedented in recent decades. Tunisia is inspiring similar demands in Egypt and Jordan. When skeptics wonder if the Revolutions of 2011 would really change anything essential in the region, they would be wise to keep an eye on these two developments in Tunisia, which, if consolidated, would represent an epochal transformation of culture and politics. Arguably, Tunisians are now freer than Americans. The US government thinks our private emails are actually public. The FBI and NSA routinely read our email and they and other branches of the US government issue security letters in the place of warrants allowing them to tap phones and monitor whom we call, and even to call up our library records and conduct searches of our homes without telling us about it. Millions of telephone records were turned over to George W. Bush by our weaselly telecom companies. Courts allow government agents to sneak onto our property and put GPS tracking devices under our automobiles without so much as a warrant or even probable cause. Mr. Obama thinks this way of proceeding is a dandy idea.
thinkahol *

‪Michael Pawlyn: Using nature's genius in architecture‬‏ - YouTube - 0 views

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    http://www.ted.com How can architects build a new world of sustainable beauty? By learning from nature. At TEDSalon in London, Michael Pawlyn describes three habits of nature that could transform architecture and society: radical resource efficiency, closed loops, and drawing energy from the sun. TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate.
thinkahol *

Researchers create self-assembling nanodevices that move and change shape on demand | K... - 0 views

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    Harvard researchers have created nanodevices made of DNA that self-assemble and can be programmed to move and change shape on demand. The nanodevice structure is based on the principle of tensegrity: its strength and stability results from the way it distributes and balances the counteracting forces of tension and compression. This new technology could lead to nanoscale medical devices and drug delivery systems, such as virus mimics that introduce drugs directly into diseased cells. Or it could one day be used to reprogram human stem cells to regenerate different kinds of injured organs and tissue.
Todd Suomela

The Professional and the Scientist in Nineteenth-Century America - JSTOR: Isis, Vol. 10... - 0 views

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    "In nineteenth‐century America, there was no such person as a "professional scientist." There were professionals and there were scientists, but they were very different. Professionals were men of science who engaged in commercial relations with private enterprises and took fees for their services. Scientists were men of science who rejected such commercial work and feared the corrupting influences of cash and capitalism. Professionals portrayed themselves as active and useful members of an entrepreneurial polity, while scientists styled themselves as crusading reformers, promoters of a purer science and a more research‐oriented university. It was this new ideology, embodied in these new institutions, that spurred these reformers to adopt a special name for themselves-"scientists." One object of this essay, then, is to explain the peculiar Gilded Age, American origins of that ubiquitous term. A larger goal is to explore the different social roles of the professional and the scientist. By attending to the particular vocabulary employed at the time, this essay tries to make clear why a "professional scientist" would have been a contradiction in terms for both the professional and the scientist in nineteenth‐century America. "
thinkahol *

A Philosophical Orientation Toward Solving Our Collective Problems As a Species | Think... - 0 views

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    To know what the most important virtue of our age is we need to have at least a basic understanding of our age. Our era is becoming increasingly characterized by uncertainty. Fortunately or unfortunately, more than a cursory elucidation of our situation is beyond the scope of this essay. There are geopolitical, economic, technological and environmental trends worth mentioning. When the more philosophical portion of this  discourse arrives I will argue that the virtue of wisdom underlies the meaningfulness and efficacy of all other virtues, and this in broad strokes is primarily due to (1) the aforementioned instability in our surroundings ; (2) the relationship between the deontological and virtue; and (3) the nature of agency itself.  Whether uncertainty itself can provide an ethical foundation for us to elaborate on will be a separate question, and finally I speculate on where wisdom leads us in the context of a philosophy that is politically active and not doomed to irrelevance to and by the larger population.
thinkahol *

The American Wikileaks Hacker | Rolling Stone Culture - 0 views

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    On July 29th, returning from a trip to Europe, Jacob Appelbaum, a lanky, unassuming 27-year-old wearing a black T-shirt with the slogan "Be the trouble you want to see in the world," was detained at customs by a posse of federal agents. In an interrogation room at Newark Liberty airport, he was grilled about his role in Wikileaks, the whistle-blower group that has exposed the government's most closely guarded intelligence reports about the war in Afghanistan. The agents photocopied his receipts, seized three of his cellphones - he owns more than a dozen - and confiscated his computer. They informed him that he was under government surveillance. They questioned him about the trove of 91,000 classified military documents that Wikileaks had released the week before, a leak that Vietnam-era activist Daniel Ellsberg called "the largest unauthorized disclosure since the Pentagon Papers." They demanded to know where Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, was hiding. They pressed him on his opinions about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Appelbaum refused to answer. Finally, after three hours, he was released. Sex, Drugs, and the Biggest Cybercrime of All Time Appelbaum is the only known American member of Wikileaks and the leading evangelist for the software program that helped make the leak possible. In a sense, he's a bizarro version of Mark Zuckerberg: If Facebook's ambition is to "make the world more open and connected," Appelbaum has dedicated his life to fighting for anonymity and privacy. An anarchist street kid raised by a heroin- addict father, he dropped out of high school, taught himself the intricacies of code and developed a healthy paranoia along the way. "I don't want to live in a world where everyone is watched all the time," he says. "I want to be left alone as much as possible. I don't want a data trail to tell a story that isn't true." We have transferred our most intimate and personal information - our bank accounts, e-mails, photographs, ph
thinkahol *

Who is Peter Joseph? | Watch Free Documentary Online - 0 views

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    In late 2009, Charles Robinson was able to interview Peter Joseph, the creator of Zeitgeist: The Movie, Zeitgeist: Addendum, Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, several lectures and a presentation; Founder of The Zeitgeist Movement and a friend of Jack Fresco, in his home. He described himself and his life in details in what is likely a rare interview. He was kind enough to provide him with previously unreleased media and video and in turn Charles did his best to create a documentary (albeit kinda poor in quality compared to his work!) that would help express who this person is. Peter Joseph was born in North Carolina to a middle class family. He has said in interviews that his mother's role as a social worker helped shape his opinion and impressions of American life. He later moved to New York to attend art school. Currently he lives and works in New York City as a freelance film editor/composer/producer for various industries. Due to the controversial content of his films and a desire to keep his day job private, he has not released his full name to the public.
Todd Suomela

The Public Values Failures of Climate Science in the US by Ryan Meyer - Minerva, Volume... - 0 views

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    "This paper examines the broad social purpose of US climate science, which has benefited from a public investment of more than $30 billion over the last 20 years. A public values analysis identifies five core public values that underpin the interagency program. Drawing from interviews, meeting observations, and document analysis, I examine the decision processes and institutional structures that lead to the implementation of climate science policy, and identify a variety of public values failures accommodated by this system. In contrast to other cases which find market values frameworks (the "profit as progress" assumption) at the root of public values failures, this case shows how "science values" ("knowledge as progress") may serve as an inadequate or inappropriate basis for achieving broader public values. For both institutions and individual decision makers, the logic linking science to societal benefit is generally incomplete, incoherent, and tends to conflate intrinsic and instrumental values. I argue that to be successful with respect to its motivating public values, the US climate science enterprise must avoid the assumption that any advance in knowledge is inherently good, and offer a clearer account of the kinds of research and knowledge advance likely to generate desirable social outcomes. "
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