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Taken from here By IAN MORRIS, PROFESSOR OF CLASSICS AND HISTORY AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY Last updated at 1:59 AM on 31st October 2010 Last week, historian Ian Morris revealed how, at the end of the last Ice Age, a simple accident of geography gave the West the advantages that led to it dominating the world…

Have a close look here; What is a Polytopia? Polytopia (1) an endlessly open (trans) culture of unique and diverse states of mind 1.1- ‘endlessly open’ reflects the proposition that there are no end goals, no end results, in short, no end but infinity. 1.2- culture and not society, culture has no borders, no nationality,…

Middle East oil source of many U.S. problems The cost of the United States military defending and procuring crude oil is nearly impossible to calculate. Begin with the fact that our $500 billion-plus military budget equals the military budgets of the rest of the world combined, and the Pentagon can’t account for trillions of dollars….

Conservative adj. 1. Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change. 2. Traditional or restrained in style: a conservative dark suit. 3. Moderate; cautious: a conservative estimate. 4. (a) Of or relating to the political philosophy of conservatism; (b) Belonging to a conservative party, group, or movement. 5. Conservative Of or belonging to the…

Because that is was this bastard really says. The true face of the goodguys. Sorry padre, your career is over now. ITALIAN rationalists are demanding the resignation of the country’s Foreign Minister, Franco Frattini over incendiary remarks he made in an article he wrote for the Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano. Frattini, according to atheist Marc…

Transhumanism might be evil. This is a grave concern. The idea is that the implementation of exponentially advancing technologies might be evil. Some here seem to argue this idea, but I am seeing it argued elsewhere as well. Thinking about it this makes sense. Transhumanism might be misconstrued as an ideological movement, or at the…

Wikipedia says “Socialism” is best defined as: Socialism is an economic and political theory advocating public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources. As an economic system, socialism is a system of production based on the direct production of use-values by allocating economic inputs (the means of…

Mind you – I wouldn’t do this. Yet. But others might. However what I ask you – if you read this article, and you disagree (which many will) I will ask you to come up with solutions in the comments that fit my paradigm. Vehement denouncement won’t do anyone any good. I live in the…

Theatrically reprinted from hot chick Gwynneth Llewellyn 🙂 October 28, 2010 – in Homepage, SL Technology by: Gwyneth Llewelyn When Philip “Linden” Rosedale announced, once again, that he’d be leaving Linden Lab and was actively searching for a new CEO, leaving Bob Komin to replace him temporarily, some of my friends saw this as a…

In short – I think we live in a world of increasing constraints, triggered by a perfect storm of resource depletion (yes, this includes peak oil), income stratification, ‘end-game’ superpower resource consolidation, sickening overpopulation, increasing automation and robotization ‘creep’, environmental and biodiversity collapse, unsustainable complexity, massive widespread corruption, a xenophobia revolution, insurmountable political stupidity and…

Organizing it in or near Amsterdam, in a somewhat ‘different’ format than 2010? IDEAS * Creating a synergy with maybe other related or unrelated events? – a wider interpretation of the term ‘trans-vision?’ ? * (venus project, transgendered conference, raellians, euro-technocrats, technoprogressives, humanists, cryonics, life extension, 3D printing, GogBot, VR enthusiasts etc. ?) * stay…

link Andrew Price, October 13, 2010 * 2:00 pm PDT Every three months, GOOD releases our quarterly magazine, which examines a given theme through our unique lens. Recent editions have covered topics like the impending global water crisis, the future of transportation, and the amazing rebuilding of New Orleans. This quarter’s issue is about work,…

We should embrace rather than fear the knowledge science brings as it unravels morality’s muddles, says Fiery Cushman A LUCID dream has three phases. First you experience the dream as reality. Then you recognise it as a product of your mind. Finally, you gain the power of control. Morality is proceeding along similar lines. We…

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Reprinted from here: Aubrey de Grey doesn’t care if you live forever. He just wants you not to get sick. It’s not exactly an easy-to-grok distinction, but that doesn’t stop the British gerontologist from trying. In recent years, de Grey has emerged as the most recognizable, outspoken and controversial cheerleader for regenerative medicine. In 2003,…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdUWadVLuz4&fs=1&hl=en_US] …Yet one day later. And… bunnies!

This event is a discussion in advance of Bryce’s (11:00) discussion of the formation of Megacities. Please avoid coming to conclusions – just take away conclusions from the RvB format and port them to Bryce’s event. Question 1 > Is the formation of megacities destined to lead either to dystopia, will it lead us to…

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You can argue they are right, but it shouldn’t be this black and white. In second life your account can be deleted at any time. When signing the TOS, you consent to this. If for some reason Linden Lab gets it in their head, (say because you have leftist sympathies, or you write a certain…

This is a hypothesis. This isn’t true by necessity. It could be. Consider if it were all true. All this is also quite cynical, and more than a bit disjointled. But bear with me. Tens of thousands of years ago, humanity lived in extended families at first not too dissimilar from current homo sapiens. All…

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Premise: The second debate in the 911 series follows hot on the heels of the earlier debate. The basic argument in short is that all of the modern, democratic, affluent world (US, EU, Japan, Australia, Russia?) is entering a period of significant upheaval. The philosopher Zizek already suggested that “modern society probably won’t be able…

Premise: Fact: over 75% of people outside the US believe that 9/11 was at some level an ‘inside job’. To many people inside the US this is a very distressing fact. The dutch government governing parties have openly referenced to not make any official comment what they did term the ‘severe inconsistencies’ in the 911…

Premise: We did three events this weekend. The first was about the events surrounding 9/11 and it made a case that the event itself was rather dubious when looked at it closely. The second event postulated that oil was behind this and oil is an increasing concern in international politics. The third event postulated the…