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Showing posts from February, 2015

Vote Bank Espresso Love

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Hi! Happy Saturday! Dedicated to Leonard Nimoy!  "I have been, and always shall be, your friend." -Leonard Nimoy, Spock to Kirk, Nimoy to the World. This post is about empathy and is dedicated to Leonard Nimoy. If only...we could all look into each others eyes and express this empathy. Mmmmm. Leonard made this statement and for many of us world over we felt he was speaking directly to us. Agape. A kind person indeed. So long Leonard! Yesterday I proposed a solution. That solution was to take the science of six-degrees of separation and build an empathy map between groups of peoples. I was only joking about Facebook. In closing I suggested that Facebook build this map. Ha! That suggestion was mostly illustrative just to highlight the fact that Facebook has 1.25 billion active monthly users today and that technically building this map is very doable today.  Facebook is clueless how to manage world empathy. However, Irreni has a rock solid plan for managing empathy, 

7 Billion Empathy

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Hi! Happy Thursday! How does each one of us realize empathy for seven billion people? The Greeks had a word for this kind of love, agape love. One of the reasons I work on Irreni is as an expression of that agape. But seriously, how do you have empathy for seven billion people? Before we get to the solution though let us explicate the full nature of the problem by picking on the Muslims.  I'm picking on the Muslims because the world seems to be set against those folk these days. We've reached a point now where if you criticize a Muslim then you are automatically called a bigot. Bigotry is a state of mind where a person obstinately, irrationally, unfairly or intolerantly dislikes other people, ideas, etc. [1] [2] Some examples include personal beliefs, race , religion , national origin , gender , disability , sexual orientation , socioeconomic status , or other group characteristics. I have been called a bigot on many occasions simply because I am an outspoken at

Oscars from a distance

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Hi! Happy Monday! Yesterday was the Oscars, and Steven Hawking, the subject of "The Theory of Everything" had this to say in an interview:  Forget doomsday asteroids, global plagues and super volcanoes. British theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking says we're facing a much more immediate threat -- and it's our own behavior. “ The human failing I would most like to correct is aggression ,” Hawking told contest winner Adaeze Uyanwah, according to the Independent. Hawking chose aggression and warned that a nuclear war could end civilization and possibly the human race. We need to replace aggression with empathy, which "brings us together in a peaceful loving state,” he said.The subject of " The Theory of Everything " also told her that the future of man lies beyond Earth. Yes indeed. The Device of Life gives everyone on this planet a connection to everyone else. The Data Center on the Moon lies beyond Earth. The DCOTM contains

Violence Escalates Violence

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Hi! Sunday! Zoom zoom! I saw this story on Fox News today. https://www.facebook.com/FoxNews/posts/10153001369026336 I invite you to read the comments of the above Facebook post. Reading the comments is wholly depressing. People cheering and celebrating death. Fox News and their followers. Ugh and Ugly. There is an expression in the humanist community: If you need religion to keep you from murdering and stealing then you don't have a problem with people not of your religion, but you have a problem with your empathy being missing. There are two aspects of the above pharmacist killing the robber that will illustrate the pharmacist's evil: 1% of armed robberies end in death and 3% end in serious injury.  M.A.D., or mutually assured destruction.     Evil One:  A human life is worth more than property. My morality is such that if a drug addict or other burglar broke into my home with me at home then morally that the burglar's life is worth more th

Absolute Power

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Hi! Happy Tuesday! Absolute power corrupts absolutely. I stated the other day that the foundation of all religion is a fundamental artifact of our human nature: we want the explanation of life to be as important and as complicated as we see the importance and intricacies of our life. I do not have this natural trait for whatever reason. This conflation of importance, however, does not just apply to religion. Oh no. It also applies to power. It is popular in the anti-theist community to quote the following: Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg  Is what Steven said true? I argue yes-and-no. The truth, if you will, is easily observable and much easier to explain. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. It is not religion that perverts our nature, but concentration of power. The unfairness of that powe

Genetic Engineering, Our Shared Responsibility

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h I ! h A p P y  M o N d A y ! This is for Nancy, someone I met at Starbucks yesterday and had a chat with her and her friend about synthetic biology. My current occupation is DNA construction, synthetic biology. I'm working on an AI engine of my invention to slice and splice DNA. My next leap is to combine two separate synthetic strategies and pick a combined winner amalgamating the two. My previous stint in genetic engineering was in report writing of drug metabolism. The idea there being coming up with the correct dosage of drugs based on a persons metabolism using genetic testing. In both of these genetic engineering endeavors of work there arises the topic of ethics. Genetic testing will sequence your genome and the insurance companies will know everything about your health as is determined by your genetics. Synthetic biology is GMO food and someday people. Should we? Our generation has failed miserably to provide the ethics that go with technology. Our generatio

Shaming 101

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Hi! Happy Sunday! I read an op/ed today from Norman Lear about shaming Brian Williams. Lear's point is that we've shamed Williams long enough and that it is time to forgive and move on. Is it? If Brian Williams committed suicide tomorrow would we have a national conversation about bullying? How should we think about shaming Brian Williams? Here are some of the conventional thoughts off the top of my head: It comes with the territory, the $10 million paycheck. Public figures should expect public humiliation. You sign up for it when you become a public figure. I usually see this argument applied to tragic pop stars Michael Jackson, Linday Lohan or Brittany Spears.  Bullying is wrong so don't do it. Are we bullying Brian Williams to resign? It's just a joke. It is the punishment. I've seen this argument with folks like Anthony Weiner who texted a picture of his package to young girls. I doubt if Norman Lear would call for the end of Anthony Weiner or Bill

Fundamentals, A Thriller

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Hi! hAPPY sATURDAY! Dut dut duh da dut dut do da. Ok, that was my text impression to the intro of the theme song to Mission Impossible. Here's the scenario. You're fifteen years old. It's summer time. It's hot. It's 1977 and air conditioning only exists in office buildings. It's hot. Water. Clear, cold water is all you crave because the only thing that is out wetting the humidity is the sweat that is bubbling off your skin like some witches cauldron bubbling, boiling. You drink water constantly. It's hot. And you're bored. You're a teenager and you're bored. What do you do? How bored? Well, the year before back when you were in primer school there was summer school. For a few hours during the summer day you had what is referred to back then as summer school. Think of summer school for grade-schoolers in Lafayette Indiana as summer camp, playing games like Chutes and Ladders. Yeah, it sucks to be in the same school building you attend all

Year One Party On!

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Hi! Happy Friday! I know it is. Zappy Friday! Scale freaks people out. Then again starting over anew completely and re-inventing all social groups does too. My last couple of posts have advocated wiping the social group slate clean and starting from scratch. How could we possibly do that? You ask? You squeak! Easy. Scale is easy, btw. Once you get in the groove. Here a couple of scale principles to memorize: Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.  Extraoridinary claims require extraordinary evidence.  Any new social group being promoted needs to have evidence of its efficacy given the claims. Since all new social groups have no evidence then what to do? This is easy part. You get some evidence. How? Experiments. That's right, we experiment and collect the data and then as the new social groups start to pan out based on real evidence of working we keep building. Easy. That was easy. Where to begin! First, let us rejoice in our commitment to

Pre-Internet

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Hi! Happy Thursday! The last couple of posts I've walked by something that I'd like to elaborate on a bit now: previous social group ideas are not worth discussing. Let's illustrate why this is with a couple of examples: polling and political parties. Polling Why do we need polling? Because it would be impractical to ask everyone. Correction, because it would be impractical to ask everyone prior to the Internet. Polling is power to the powerful. You realize you can go anywhere in the world, anywhere at all, and Google search something. Google caters to the entire planet. Billions of requests every day. So why can't the US government manage 300 million users posting comments? The answer is obvious. While the NSA is setting up an unprecedented network capacity to spy on us, we are still using paper ballets to tell them what to do. Unh hunh. We should have entertained myriads of new proposals for moving politics into the Internet age decades ago and had all Ameri

The Device of Life

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Hi! Happy Donut Day! Ok, it is just donut day because I take donuts to work on Wednesday. If you really want this to be donut day then you'll need to stop by where I work. Hmmmm, donuts! I'd like to dedicate this post to Caroline Shaw across the pond, the lagoon, about twenty rivers, an isthmus and then again half-way round the world. Best wishes for a speedy recovery Caroline!  The future is coming! Also, thanks to Markus Nilsson for pointing out a correction needed about the meaning of life and everything. The actual correct answer is 42. Of course. And now... Yesterday I posited a simplicity: choose and depend as the meaning of life. My recommendation to realize this was all seven billion people post their purpose on a web site and then we tabulate these and curate the dependencies to assess how we depend on each other. You might have asked yourself, howse that work? Seven billion mission statements is a lot of mission statements. Madness! Glad you asked, allow m

The Meaning of Life

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Hi! Happy Tuesday! The Meaning of Life: Choose a purpose. Depend on each other. That's it. How long would it take for you, by yourself, personally to build a modern anything? A car? A house? A lamp? Or even just the fabric in your clothes? There is no need for elaborate discussions regarding the meaning of life. None. Religion, voluminous philosophy books and the centuries of vocabulary galore are all unnecessary. For it is written in our mind that we know these two principles to be true. These truths are self evident. So why have we? Why have we invented religion? invented sophistications? invented books of such monstrous complexity about human nature and the meaning of life. A sophistication such that even the most brilliant among us are hard pressed to grasp the intricacies, not to mention the motivation? What is it about life that drives us mad, drunk with passion to find complex patterns of meanings in life? Quite simple, really. We superimpose what we see as t