Posts Tagged ‘future’

How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico’s murderous drug gangs

As the violence spread, billions of dollars of cartel cash began to seep into the global financial system. But a special investigation by the Observer reveals how the increasingly frantic warnings of one London whistleblower were ignored. A soldier guards marijuana that is being incinerated in Tijuana,...

April 11th, 2011 | Social Insight | Read More

Zeppelin Renaissance

When the Hindenburg blew up in 1937, so did the airship industry. So why is Britain building a fleet of the world’s biggest, for the Americans, in our old Zeppelin sheds? 2015: Regent’s Park International Airport A line of limousines and taxis snakes its way into the Royal Park to deliver...

April 11th, 2011 | Science & Technology | Read More

Gold Farming: Virtual Slavery?

It was an hour before midnight, three hours into the night shift with nine more to go. At his workstation in a small, fluorescent-lighted office space in Nanjing, China, Li Qiwen sat shirtless and chain-smoking, gazing purposefully at the online computer game in front of him. The screen showed a lightly...

March 28th, 2011 | Social Insight | Read More

Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness

Every so often Al Frances says something that seems to surprise even him. Just now, for instance, in the predawn darkness of his comfortable, rambling home in Carmel, California, he has broken off his exercise routine to declare that “there is no definition of a mental disorder. It’s bullshit. I...

January 31st, 2011 | Science of the Mind | Read More

The AI Revolution Is On

Diapers.com warehouses are a bit of a jumble. Boxes of pacifiers sit above crates of onesies, which rest next to cartons of baby food. In a seeming abdication of logic, similar items are placed across the room from one another. A person trying to figure out how the products were shelved could well conclude...

January 31st, 2011 | Science & Technology | Read More

Time tangled up in Quantum…

Why is it that psychologists still abhor parapsychology with all this stuff going on in physics? Dr. David Luke x Physicists describe method to observe timelike entanglement January 24, 2011 by Lisa Zyga (PhysOrg.com) – < More information: S. Jay Olson and Timothy C. Ralph. “Extraction...

January 25th, 2011 | Extended Mind | Read More

Genetically-Engineered Aliens?

Mirror-Image Cells Could Transform Science — or Kill Us All Dmitar Sasselov was at the end of a long day of having his mind blown when the really big idea hit him. Sasselov, an astrophysicist and head of the Origins of Life Initiative at Harvard, was sitting in the front row of a packed lecture...

December 22nd, 2010 | Science & Technology | Read More

Why the world needs WikiLeaks

he controversial website WikiLeaks collects and posts highly classified documents and video. Founder Julian Assange, who’s reportedly being sought for questioning by US authorities, talks to TED’s Chris Anderson about how the site operates, what it has accomplished — and what drives...

December 17th, 2010 | Big Ideas | Read More

Wikileaks’ aim to defeat “Authoritarian Conspiracy”

The following is an interesting analysis (by ‘zunguzungu’) of a text by Wikileaks leader Julian Assange, probably written around 2006. See the paper: State and Terrorist Conspiracies For additional analysis, see here. By Michel Bauwens for the P2P Foundation Analysis: (nearly quoted in full) “Most...

December 14th, 2010 | Social Insight | Read More

Can Dope give us Hope?

The ban on hallucinogens is holding back vital research into their medical benefits, says Jake Wallis Simons. Last week, the news took on a decidedly trippy tinge. First, Professor David Nutt, sacked as an adviser to the Labour government for criticising its policy on drugs, sparked controversy...

December 14th, 2010 | Drug Policy | Read More