The 5 Step Program

Yours truly saw Transcendence, a flick that makes one think about AI and the melding of organic intelligence with artificial. Back in 2013, BRT talked about the potential dangers of AI in Start Point for the Terminator as our near future invention's eventual relationship to us is something we haven't a clue about when super AI happens, as it  most certainly will, whether we like it or not. INHO, the beginning of the movie works as the science and tech were properly articulated as to how a mind meld could actually happen while the last part resembled the Middle East fubar, muddled and ridiculous to a fault but that's not the raison d'ete for this blurb but rather about how super intelligence could come to pass as stated in Physorg.

The 5 ways are:

1. Biological
2. Mathematical
3. Brute Force
4. Plagiarizing Nature &
5. Competent humans - first phase

Ubiquity looms :)

Graphene, the wonder material, has a new trick up it's sleeve, touchscreens.

New research published today in the journal Advanced Functional Materials suggests that graphene-treated nanowires could soon replace current touchscreen technology, significantly reducing production costs and allowing for more affordable, flexible displays.

The majority of today's touchscreen devices, such as tablets and smartphones are made using indium tin oxide (ITO) which is both expensive and inflexible. Researchers from the University of Surrey and AMBER, the materials science centre based at Trinity College Dublin have now demonstrated how graphene-treated nanowires can be used to produce flexible touchscreens at a fraction of the current cost.

Using a simple, scalable and inexpensive method the researchers produced hybrid electrodes, the building blocks of touchscreen technology, from silver nanowires and graphene.

Dr Alan Dalton from the University of Surrey said, "The growing market in devices such as wearable technology and bendable smart displays poses a challenge to manufacturers. They want to offer consumers flexible, touchscreen technology but at an affordable and realistic price. At the moment, this market is severely limited in the materials to hand, which are both very expensive to make and designed for rigid, flat devices."

Boggles the mind, doesn't it. :)

This is what's coming, courtesy graphene, the business end of pencils us rubes have been using since the 1500s.

The Morality Equation :)

I knew it all along. :)

117K

BRT has talked about the disaster known as healthcare in America numerous times as my loyal readers know. From insurance company screwups to gross inefficiencies in the it component of HC, the situation is dire and only getting worse. In Why?, BRT discussed the issue of our medical records and why we don't have them, a situation yours truly finds absolutely unacceptable. Now, in the NY Times article titled After Surgery, Surprise $117,000 Medical Bill From Doctor He Didn’t Know, a guy gets hammered by Dr. Anonymous.

Before his three-hour neck surgery for herniated disks in December, Peter Drier, 37, signed a pile of consent forms. A bank technology manager who had researched his insurance coverage, Mr. Drier was prepared when the bills started arriving: $56,000 from Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, $4,300 from the anesthesiologist and even $133,000 from his orthopedist, who he knew would accept a fraction of that fee.

He was blindsided, though, by a bill of about $117,000 from an “assistant surgeon,” a Queens-based neurosurgeon whom Mr. Drier did not recall meeting.

“I thought I understood the risks,” Mr. Drier, who lives in New York City, said later. “But this was just so wrong — I had no choice and no negotiating power.”

Out of control kind of says it all in this fubar known as healthcare in America. Seen below are some price points for relatively common out of network surgical procedures.

Single payer anyone?

Splitting H2O

Splitting water, something expensive and difficult at best, just got easier, a development that could change how we power the world.

A cheap, emissions-free device that uses a 1.5-volt AAA battery to split water into hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis has been developed by scientists at Stanford University.

Unlike other water splitters that use precious-metal catalysts, the electrodes in the Stanford device are made of inexpensive, abundant nickel and iron.

“This is the first time anyone has used non-precious metal catalysts to split water at a voltage that low,” said Hongjie Dai, a professor of chemistry at Stanford. “It’s quite remarkable, because normally you need expensive metals, like platinum or iridium, to achieve that voltage.”

Seen below is the proof of concept device, the start point of tech manifesting itself into form factors we cannot yet imagine.  The next step is to scale it to real world levels, something that will definitely happen, thanks to innovative research showing how to split water at a price point society can afford.

Stanford scientists have developed a low-cost device that uses an ordinary AAA battery (or a solar cell) to split water into oxygen and hydrogen gas. Gas bubbles are produced by electrodes made of inexpensive nickel and iron. (Credit: Mark Shwartz/Stanford University)

Unit 8200

James Bamford's a guy yours truly respects to the max. He gets tech in a big way, particularly when it comes to the NSA, surveillance and the impact both have had on the behavior of mankind. His extensive interview with Edwin Snowden is the only writing, IMHO, that delves deeply into the raison d'ete as to why Snowden became a whistleblower at the level of a Daniel Ellsberg. 

To add fuel to the fire, Bamford, via Snowden, reveals just how exclusive the relationship truly is with Israel, a relationship Founding Fathers Jefferson and Washington would have prohibited, without question, back in the day.

NY TImes:

Among his most shocking discoveries, he told me, was the fact that the N.S.A. was routinely passing along the private communications of Americans to a large and very secretive Israeli military organization known as Unit 8200. This transfer of intercepts, he said, included the contents of the communications as well as metadata such as who was calling whom.

Typically, when such sensitive information is transferred to another country, it would first be “minimized,” meaning that names and other personally identifiable information would be removed. But when sharing with Israel, the N.S.A. evidently did not ensure that the data was modified in this way.

Mr. Snowden stressed that the transfer of intercepts to Israel contained the communications — email as well as phone calls — of countless Arab- and Palestinian-Americans whose relatives in Israel and the Palestinian territories could become targets based on the communications. “I think that’s amazing,” he told me. “It’s one of the biggest abuses we’ve seen.

" by forming an "American character wholly free of foreign attachments."

George Washington

"Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations – entangling alliances with none." 

Thomas Jefferson

Addendum: Check out Bamford's The Secret War, a piece on Keith Alexander, the former head of the NSA. Interesting to say the least. 

Into the Night

Enough said. 

The Power of Optics - Rube Goldberg Style :)

Rube Goldberg rocks, Rube, with science in mind, rules. Enjoy. :)

Randomly Scary Stuff

Viruses are nano size machines that often take the shape of spheres, spirals and crystals as all three form factors can easily house and deliver viral DNA/RNA to host cells as needs warrant. To live, said viruses must invade host cells using a wide variety of interesting mechanisms, like the one seen above, in order to find a friendly place to replicate, with sometimes catastrophic results i.e Smallpox, 1918 flu etc., etc. or die a lonely and unmourned death. In this vein, BRT talked about viruses in the context of Ebola, the devastating hemorrhagic fever variant, in Something is different this time, a quick take on why the current outbreak raging in West Africa is different, something potentially as terrifying as depicted in 12 Monkeys , a movie of undeniable power if the unthinkable happens, something not to be taken lightly given the quantum-driven probabilistic/random reality in which we all live.

The second possibility is one that virologists are loath to discuss openly but are definitely considering in private: that an Ebola virus could mutate to become transmissible through the air. You can now get Ebola only through direct contact with bodily fluids. But viruses like Ebola are notoriously sloppy in replicating, meaning the virus entering one person may be genetically different from the virus entering the next. The current Ebola virus’s hyper-evolution is unprecedented; there has been more human-to-human transmission in the past four months than most likely occurred in the last 500 to 1,000 years. Each new infection represents trillions of throws of the genetic dice.

If certain mutations occurred, it would mean that just breathing would put one at risk of contracting Ebola. Infections could spread quickly to every part of the globe, as the H1N1 influenza virus did in 2009, after its birth in Mexico.

Why are public officials afraid to discuss this? They don’t want to be accused of screaming “Fire!” in a crowded theater — as I’m sure some will accuse me of doing. But the risk is real, and until we consider it, the world will not be prepared to do what is necessary to end the epidemic.

Seen above is a hexagonally shaped virus while the well known tobacco mosaic virus, seen below, takes the shape of a spiral akin to that of DNA. 

As a refresher, here is the 12 Monkeys poster.

A 2 minute drill :)

Eye candy never disappoints. :)

A different perspective

Not a plug for Apple but rather an appreciation of tech being used in clever fashion. Enjoy.

An Interesting Tale

BRT posted several pieces regarding the fubar known as the Middle East and how we created this ongoing disaster, in nefarious ways, with help from significant others. The map, depicted above, shows how the various warring groups could divide up territory into new regions of influence with clandestine help from the same parties that gave us IS. 

Also in 2006, the Armed Forces Journal published a map of the Middle East with its borders thoroughly re-drawn, courtesy of Lt. Col. (ret.) Ralph Peters, who had previously been assigned to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence where he was responsible for future warfare. As for the goals of this plan, apart from “security from terrorism” and “the prospect of democracy”, Peters also mentioned “access to oil supplies in a region that is destined to fight itself.”

In 2008, the strategy re-surfaced – once again via RAND Corp – through a report funded by the US Army Training and Doctrine Command on how to prosecute the ‘long war.’ Among its strategies, one scenario advocated by the report was ‘Divide and Rule’ which would involve:

“… exploiting fault lines between the various Salafi-jihadist groups to turn them against each other and dissipate their energy on internal conflicts.”

Simultaneously, the report suggested that the US could foster conflict between Salafi-jihadists and Shi’ite militants by:

“… shoring up the traditional Sunni regimes… as a way of containing Iranian power and influence in the Middle East and Persian Gulf.”

One way or another, some semblance of this plan is in motion. Last week, Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Leiberman told US secretary of state John Kerry:

“Iraq is breaking up before our eyes and it would appear that the creation of an independent Kurdish state is a foregone conclusion.”

For more info on this most complex and interesting of topics regarding oil, internecine rivalries and clandestine operatives of the Great Game, click Nafeez Ahmed's Blog. You will not be disappointed.

Addendum or... Thru the Looking Glass.

This is no war—it’s a ‘major counterterrorism operation.’ OK, Mr. Secretary of State, sure. We’ll believe that when we believe Saudi Arabia has an ‘extensive’ border with Syria.

Good news, everyone: America is not at war with ISIS.

According to Secretary of State John Kerry, President Obama’s newly announced (and possibly illegal) war on ISIS in Iraq and Syria is not a war at all—it’s merely a large-scale act of counterterrorism.

“If somebody wants to think about it as being a war with [ISIS], they can do so, but the fact is that it’s a major counterterrorism operation that will have many different moving parts,” Kerry said Thursday on CNN. “I don’t think people need to get into war fever on this,” he told CBS News’ Margaret Brennan.

Any questions?

Empathy

While nature itself just "is", a construct without empathy, creatures living in it do as seen by this squirrel keeping crows from munching on his buddy, a victim of too much intimacy with a passing car. Elephants also exhibit empathy to the nth degree as seen by this post in Daily Mail UK, something cameramen found heartbreaking without question.

Perhaps the most dramatic and emotional sequence happened in our current BBC1 series, Africa, narrated by David Attenborough. We filmed an elephant mother’s desperate attempts to keep her calf alive during the worst drought in 50 years in Kenya.

These animals were not dying of thirst: they were starving. Some volcanic springs were still flowing, so the animals could get water; what they couldn’t get were nutrients.

By that time, the drought was well into its second year and mother and baby were trying to survive on dry twigs.

There was no hay in Kenya, there was a sense of utter helplessness, and we felt the most important thing was to document what was happening.

Cameraman Mark Deeble had been following the family for days. He saw that the mother stayed with her baby and felt she was distressed, trying to lift up the dead body and move it with her feet, before standing over the prone calf for about an hour, seeming to come to terms with the situation.

Whether you were actually there or watching events unfold on the screen, it was impossible to keep your emotions separate from what you were seeing. The mother’s bereavement transmitted itself so strongly.

Enough said.

The Harvest Moon

The End of Summer - The Harvest Moon arrives 9/9/2014

Smiles "R" Us :)

In a very weird way, this wind loving dog reminds me of politicians virtual glad handing the crowd, complete with phony smiles, while riding in a stretch. :) Twisted Sifter strikes again.

Silence IS Golden :)

Yours truly has written about becoming deaf and how, in a strange but wonderful way, how  silence becomes golden when taking out hearing aids, thus being "in the world but not of it", quietly separated from the noise and din of modern society, something the Finns discovered as a real plus when marketing their country to the world.

A few months later, the delegation issued a slick “Country Brand Report.” It highlighted a host of marketable themes, including Finland’s renowned educational system and school of functional design. One key theme was brand new: silence. As the report explained, modern society often seems intolerably loud and busy. “Silence is a resource,” it said. It could be marketed just like clean water or wild mushrooms. “In the future, people will be prepared to pay for the experience of silence.”

People already do. In a loud world, silence sells. Noise-canceling headphones retail for hundreds of dollars; the cost of some weeklong silent meditation courses can run into the thousands. Finland saw that it was possible to quite literally make something out of nothing.

Sounds good to me. :)

What If...

Back in 2008, BRT posted a "review" :) of Religious, Bill Maer's  hilarious take on religion, a flick that has NEVER aired on mainline TV. As per BRT, an inquiry into the Jesus myth was undertaken with brief excursions into the Nicene Creed, the myth of Horus and the fact that all depiction's of JC center on the four New Testament gospels written 80 - 100 years after his death., so... did Christ exist akin to that of the once very popular Horus, who predated Christ by 2500 years, as the Hours story has all the particulars depicting the essence of Christ including:

virgin birth,

son of god

Foster father

Foster father of royal decent

Born in a cave or stable

Annunciation from an angel etc., etc. etc.?

Now comes more data, based on valid research, that may show that JC was an artificial construct, created by talented men who wanted to validate their religion to the great unwashed back in the day.

Most antiquities scholars think that the New Testament gospels are “mythologized history.”  In other words, they think that around the start of the first century a controversial Jewish rabbi named Yeshua ben Yosef gathered a following and his life and teachings provided the seed that grew into Christianity.

But there are problems with this narrative due to...

1. No first century secular evidence whatsoever exists to support the actuality of Yeshua ben Yosef.  In the words of [10] Bart Ehrman: “What sorts of things do pagan authors from the time of Jesus have to say about him? Nothing.
2. The earliest New Testament writers seem ignorant of the details of Jesus’ life, which become more crystalized in later texts.Paul seems unaware of any virgin birth, for example. No wise men, no star in the east, no miracles. Historians have long puzzled over the “Silence of Paul” on the most basic biographical facts and teachings of Jesus.
3. Even the New Testament stories don’t claim to be first-hand accounts. We now know that the four gospels were assigned the names of the apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, not written by them. 
4. The gospels, our only accounts of a historical Jesus, contradict each other.If you think you know the Jesus story pretty well, I suggest that you pause at this point to test yourself with the 20 question quiz [14] at ExChristian.net.
5. Modern scholars who claim to have uncovered the real historical Jesus depict wildly different persons.  They include a cynic philosopher, charismatic Hasid, liberal Pharisee, conservative rabbi, Zealot revolutionary, nonviolent pacifist to borrow from a much longer list assembled by Price [16]. In his words (pp. 15-16), “The historical Jesus (if there was one) might well have been a messianic king, or a progressive Pharisee, or a Galilean shaman, or a magus, or a Hellenistic sage.  But he cannot very well have been all of them at the same time.”  John Dominic Crossan [17] of the Jesus Seminar grumbles that “the stunning diversity is an academic embarrassment.” 

It's worth considering, don't you think?

Of cabbages & kings

Like Judge Crotty, Justice Richard Posner gets it regarding how law should work in applying common sense and fairness to complex issues affecting us all, i.e. separation of church and state, corporations as people etc., etc.,  while Anton Scalia doesn't as his penchant is to use his "immense" intellect for the sake of argument rather then getting to the heart of the issue at hand to arrive at a decision grounded on sound legal and moral principles. To whit.

Finally, Posner was recently one of three judges to hear oral argument in a lawsuit challenging Wisconsin and Indiana’s ban on same-sex marriage. Although the case has not yet been decided, there is no question how Posner will vote. When the lawyer for Wisconsin justified the ban based on “tradition,” Posner responded by saying “It was tradition to not allow blacks and whites to marry — a tradition that got swept away.” He also said the ban stems from “a tradition of hate … and savage discrimination” against same-sex couples.

During the argument, the state argued that the purpose of the ban had something (ill-defined) to do with procreation and biology. Posner responded, “It’s arbitrary. You’re allowing all these sterile people to get married. Why are you doing that if you’re so concerned with procreation? Why do you let them?

If only he was one of the Supremes. 

Channeling South Park :)

The art of NonThink. :)