Buddhist Meditation Joe Rogan Style

I am a definite harvester of Altered States of Consciousness.
I wonder if my landlord would approve a new renovation?

250 DVDs on a quarter.

"Scientists make advances on 'nano' electronics"

The following was a heading in the Globe and Mail today.

A team from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of California Berkeley have found a faster, more efficient way of making a thin semiconductor film that they think could dramatically improve data storage.

They are claiming the ability to store 250 DVDs worth of data on a surface the size of a quarter.

Does anyone remember the ' Gattaca' distopia?

According to Time magazine in 2005, 38% of babies in the U.S. were screened at birth for genetic disorders.
The testing includes such disorders as Phenylketonuria, Type 2 Diabetes, and Alzheimer's disease.

As of 2009," that percentage is closer to 100%. All 50 states test for at least 21 diseases, and 24 states screen for an entire panel of 29 conditions. That expansion of testing can be traced in part to technology; new techniques make it easier to detect specific genetic changes and the presence or absence of certain proteins that are the hallmarks of the diseases. "(time magazine)

The exact figure is : "96% of the 4 million babies born each year in the U.S. are routinely tested." (Time magazine)
Bioethicist James Hughes states the importance of protecting our rights to privacy and preventing discrimination.

"Rather than banning genetic testing or genetic enhancement, society needs genetic information privacy laws that allow justified forms of genetic testing and data aggregation, but forbid....genetic discrimination "

....taken from " A Theory of Everything"

If the world could be shrank to the population
of 100 people, the following would
be our proportionate statistics:

57 - Asians
21 - Europeans
14 - North and South Americans
8 - Africans
30 - White
70 - Non-White
6 - posses 59% of worlds wealth (all from America)
80 - live in substandard housing
70 - unable to read
50 - suffer from malnutrition
1 - post-secondary education
1 - own a computer

--stats from Dr Phillip Harter of Stanford University

The old mechanics of evolution are DEAD.

No natural selection.
No random mutation.
No.

Not anymore.

The new evolution stems from information, artificial intelligence,
and bioengineering.
And what is interesting here is that evolution now becomes an
individually centered process, emanating from the needs and desires
of the individual, and not an external process where the individual
is at the whim of collective evolutionary forces.
Bioengineering a human being with enhanced faculties of consciousness
is only the beginning of the new evolutionary cycle. As the next cycle
proceeds, the input is now this new intelligence. As intelligence piles on intelligence, as ability piles on ability, the speed changes until we reach an enormous and instantaneous fulfillment of human and neo-human potential.
(paraphrase of 'Waking Life')




..................................or until a cataclysmic system implosion.

The truth about facebook

With all the protests and controversy surounding facebook,
this video is a must. The facts are shocking. This is why
i have a semi-fake account with false info.

Traveling Mexico

This is my experience of Mexico. I could have never
imagined such a paradise, surrounded by such suffering.

The Culture of Waste

1,000,000 Plastic cups every six hours
This picture contains one million plastic cups. It is a artistic
representation of our culture of waste. One million plastic cups
is the amount used on U.S. airlines every six hours.

A close-up view of the above artwork by Chris Jordan
View complete works at http://www.chrisjordan.com/

You can (not) die

The following video on genetics outlines the future of the industry.
With the sequencing of the human genome made inexpensive a new wealth of
potential and danger emerges. In the video Schuler predicts the price tag
of sequencing a genome to drop to $5,000 in the next 5 years.

Complete Genomics of Mountain View has just announced that it would provide genome sequencing for $5,000, as of June 2009.

Schuler ends with the following:

"if you can stay healthy for the 20 years, you'll see 150 maybe 300(years old)"

I can't decide whether I fear DEATH or IMMORTALITY more?

These are billboards i found in Japan. This is a true existential country. They are advertising a pop music cd using a jam 'money shot' on a very public billboard display. No vestige of conservative morality here.

I think I love this place

The picture above I found in an article in the New Scientist magazine . Brain scanning technology can now extract information directly from the brain: In the following experiment the subject reads the word "neuron" at the top, and software working with the brain scan images reconstructes the words below. This allows this new technology to penetrate into a human mind and read information in it. Quoting this article "(the creation of this technology) raises the prospect of "neural marketing", where advertisers might one day be able to read the thoughts of passers by and use the results to target adverts."