Paul Allen knows a thing or two about computers; he built the company that is the definition of the operating system for modern PCs.He's as optimistic about the power of technology and its ability to shape culture as anyone can be but, like us, he is more skeptical that it will translate into actual human evolution. Like us, he notes that Ray Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns is...
read moreAbortion is not a contentious issue in America these days - campaign platforms primarily center on differences in taxation and the scope of government but, for the most part, abortion for the left and the 2nd Amendment for the right are really only invoked to whip the fringes into a frenzy. read...
read moreLong ago, in a galaxy very, very near (because it was this one) we all talked like Yoda from "Star Wars", one hypothesis suggests.The original "proto-human language", linguists contend, used subject-object-verb (SOV) ordering, with some variation. So when prehistoric men met prehistoric women, he likely said, "Make out with me you will."The researchers came to their conclusion after...
read moreAdd Steve Jobs to the list of famous people who died treating terminal diseases with woo rather than with medicine.It turns out Jobs had been treating his pancreatic cancer with a special diet prescribed by the alternative medicine promoter Dr. Dean Ornish instead of opting for early surgery. A Lesson in Treating Illness by Brian Dunning,...
read moreWe're hearing a lot about the failures of government and I am on that bandwagon - chronic runaway spending, the foolishness with Gibson guitars, delays for an energy project that helps poor people and lowers emissions, and I was one of only about four people critical of government bailouts but now a group of people on Wall Street have gotten downright conservative in their approach to what...
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