The Birth of Venus—Odilon Redon, 1912
Month: June 2012
Can you say why America is the greatest country in the world?
Finally there is another person who agrees!
Ari Berman: What was your reaction to the healthcare ruling?
Howard Dean: I was surprised. Like many people, I was shocked that Justice Roberts sided with upholding the bill and somewhat surprised and disappointed that Justice Kennedy voted to get rid of the entire thing along with the three right-wing justices.
I was glad that the president won a victory. But this pretty much ends the debate about the nature of the private sector in the healthcare business—it’s here to stay in a very big way. This is, after all, a Republican bill. Not the Republicans that we see today, but the moderate Republican wing under Mitt Romney in Massachusetts—this is their bill. For the foreseeable future there will be those who wish we had a single-payer healthcare system, but that’s not going to happen in Washington anytime soon.
Howard Dean
(via systemofaclown, isbsh)
‘Mind uploading’ featured in academic journal special issue for first time
The Special Issue on Mind Uploading (Vol. 4, issue 1, June 2012) of the International Journal of Machine Consciousness, just released, “constitutes a significant milestone in the history of mind uploading research: the first-ever collection of scientific and philosophical papers on the theme of mind uploading,” as Ben Goertzel and Matthew Ikle’ note in the Introduction to this issue. “Mind uploading” is an informal term that refers to transferring the mental contents from a human brain into a different substrate, such as a digital, analog, or quantum computer. It’s also known as “whole brain emulation” and “substrate-independent minds.” Serious mind uploading researchers have emerged recently, taking this seemingly science-fictional notion seriously and pursuing it via experimental and theoretical research programs, Goertzel and Ilke’ note. (via ‘Mind uploading’ featured in academic journal special issue for first time | KurzweilAI)
CAPNOMANCY
[noun]
divination via using and observing smoke. This is similar to libanomancy (also known as livanomancy and knissomancy) which is divination primarily through observing and interpreting burning incense smoke.