…a celebration of human achievement and a gentle reminder that the appropriate reaction to scientific and technological progress is not arrogance over the knowledge conquered, which seems to be our civilizational modus operandi, but humility in the face of what… Continue reading

“THE development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race,” Stephen Hawking warns. Elon Musk fears that the development of artificial intelligence, or AI, may be the biggest existential threat humanity faces. Bill Gates urges people… Continue reading

Researchers at the University of Houston have created an optical lens that can be placed on an inexpensive smartphone to amplify images by a magnitude of 120, all for just 3 cents a lens. Source: www.uh.edu Continue reading

The research, which was published today (Oct. 28) in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, is part of a larger effort to understand how psychedelic drugs work, in the hopes that they could one day be used by psychiatrists… Continue reading

I want to share with you something I’ve learned. I’ll draw it on the blackboard behind me so you can follow more easily [draws a vertical line on the blackboard]. This is the G–I axis: good fortune–il Source: laphamsquarterly.org Kurt… Continue reading

In 1999, three molecular biologists travelled to the Peruvian Amazon to see whether they could obtain bio-molecular information in the visions they had in sessions orchestrated by an indigenous shaman. They had no previous experience of ayahuasca shamanism or of… Continue reading

The major upshot of more and cheaper batteries could be a much greener planet. Source: www.washingtonpost.com Continue reading

“…Ross had a flash of insight. “The idea,” he wrote in his journal, “was a website where people could buy anything anonymously, with no trail whatsoever that could lead back to them.” He wrote that he’d “been studying the technology… Continue reading

In an ideal world, you’d be able to trust exactly where your beans come from when the package says “Yirgacheffe, Ethiopia,” and what it took for the farmers to produce them. While new certifications and standards are improving things, the coffee supply… Continue reading

“America is a country that is now utterly divided when it comes to its society, its economy, its politics. There are definitely two Americas. I live in one, on one block in Baltimore that is part of the viable America,… Continue reading

Originally posted on Andrew Taggart, Ph.D.: Love of a lover is not a mere affection, sentiment, or passion. Affections come, sentiments disappear, passions wane. Yet love, insofar as it is love, not only resides but also grows. Emotions perish, love endures. Furthermore,… Continue reading