Lifeboat Foundation

Blog — Bundex Film Archives coming to posthuman university.

As editor, sound engineer and roadie with director Bunny Dexter’s “Bundex Films”, the three of us (Eugene Smith was cameraman) travelled to various parts of the world making political, environmental and quirky documentaries during the first age of digital video. Bunny was also a judge at some international film festivals, and we actually won an award in Poland for one of our films. At NY film school, Bunny’s teacher was Marty Scorsese, who would call at Bunny’s flat sometimes when in London. We made two versions of a 3D hologram of Marty, of which he has one and I the other. After Bunny’s passing I inherited the huge shoulder-harnress digital camera which remains in my garage and has less capability than a modern smartphone, digital tape-decks and lots footage together with all rights, except for the lost Orson Welles tapes matter and story of his aristocratic Sicilian producer. More about this and other films later. I have boxes to sort through, and am sure I have forgotten some projects which will come as a surprise when I rediscover them. Will post at posthuman university side when sorted, this footage give unique insights from a period of very rapid evolution and transformation in film-making.

Documentaries include the Homeless and their Dogs, Gipsy persecution in Hungary, a study of Tattoo’s and Tattoo artists, Momento Mori – a film of an elderly lady after her death, and our pursuit of Cocoa plant agricultural sabotage in Brazil. There is unseen footage from these and other films, and interviews with Bunny before her death which I will edit together. She had an interesting life including appearances in Andy Warhol movies, and early success with a short film with Hollywood beckoning. Woody Allen was in her NY film school class, and many of her friends went on to become big stars, but B was too much of a socialite, and was unable to get her screen plays produced. At least one political biography that I have is very good, I might update it for sub-Hollywood production in the future. Anyway, Bunny had an interesting “career” and was close friends with Yoko & John Lennon from her guerrilla art days, Jimmy Hendrix, also Graham Chapman and some of the Pythons.

Julian Huxley was part of the intellectual dynasty started by TH Huxley, and is more influenced by Buddhist ideas than Judeo-Christian. “T. H. Huxley was a paleontologist with a medical background who gained great prominence in the nineteenth century as one of the foremost defenders of Darwin’s evolutionary theory. Victorians were often inclined to see him as “the living embodiment of science militant,”(8) for Huxley actually clashed with contemporary defenders of Biblical supernaturalism in the name of science.(9) A very late product of his intellectual career, Evolution and Ethics (1893) shows him in a mellowed, reflective mood. The radical disjunction between the ethical and the cosmic processes such as is frequently highlighted here hardly squares with “orthodox” Darwinism; in fact Irvine has called Huxley’s effort in this context a “somewhat puzzling manoeuvre” that is “full of talk about Indian mysticism and of protest about the cruelties of evolution.”(10) Yet his overall treatment of his theme is not a matter that need concern us now.(11) What must be noted, on the other hand, is that in the course of his professed endeavor to inquire into the origin and the basis of ethical values from an evolutionary standpoint, Huxley indeed undertook a brief survey of the leading philosophies that had helped to form mankind’s conceptions of such values. He emphasized in this connection that India had engendered a distinctive outlook on life, and some of the ideas central to that outlook (as, for example, karman) actually made a notable impression on him. But it is upon a particular religion of Indian origin, namely Buddhism, that he chose to dwell at length and, I think, in a way that merits close attention.” Buddhism is” system which knows no God in the Western sense; which denies a soul to man; which counts the belief in immortality a blunder and hope of it a sin; which refuses any efficacy to prayer and sacrifice; which bids men look to nothing but their own efforts for salvation; which in its original purity, knew nothing of vows of obedience, abhorred intolerance, and never sought the aid of the secular arm; yet spread over a considerable moiety of the Old World with marvellous rapidity, and is still, with whatever base admixure of foreign superstitions, the dominant creed of a large fraction of mankind.”

A note on a Victorian evaluation and its “comparativist dimension” By Vijitha Rajapakse Philosophy East and West Volume 35, no. 3 (July 1985)

©by the University of Hawaii Press

Continue reading “Buddhism in Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics” »

New research helps understand how plate tectonics powers life on Earth. Plate tectonics are responsible for the deep-carbon and deep-water cycles. Arrangement of continents has changed sea level in the past. The evolution of life is modified by tectonics — continents are rafts with evolvi.

New enzyme catalysts are usually engineered by repurposing the active sites of natural proteins. Here we show that design and directed evolution can be used to transform a non-natural, functionally naive zinc-binding protein into a highly active catalyst for an abiological hetero-Diels–Alder reaction. The artificial metalloenzyme achieves 10⁴ turnovers per active site, exerts absolute control over reaction pathway and product stereochemistry, and displays a catalytic proficiency (1/K_TS = 2.9 × 10¹⁰ M⁻¹) that exceeds all previously characterized Diels–Alderases. These properties capitalize on effective Lewis acid catalysis, a chemical strategy for accelerating Diels–Alder reactions common in the laboratory but so far unknown in nature. Extension of this approach to other metal ions and other de novo scaffolds may propel the design field in exciting new directions.

Chair emeritus, SETI institute — the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Dr. Jill Tarter is Chair Emeritus for SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Research at the SETI Institute, a not-for-profit research organization whose mission is to explore, understand, and explain the origin and nature of life in the universe, and to apply the knowledge gained to inspire and guide present and future generations.

Continue reading “Dr. Jill Tarter — Chair Emeritus — SETI Institute — The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence” »

The SARS-CoV-2 virus mutates fast. That’s a concern because these more transmissible variants of SARS-CoV-2 are now present in the U.S., U.K. and South Africa and other countries, and many people are wondering whether the current vaccines will protect the recipients from the virus. Furthermore, many question whether we will we be able to keep ahead of future variants of SARS-CoV-2, which will certainly arise.

In my laboratory I study the molecular structure of RNA viruses – like the one that causes COVID-19 – and how they replicate and multiply in the host. As the virus infects more people and the pandemic spreads, SARS-CoV-2 continues to evolve. This process of evolution is constant and it allows the virus to sample its environment and select changes that make it grow more efficiently. Thus, it is important to monitor viruses for such new mutations that could make them more deadly, more transmissible or both.

Fascinating new episode with NASA planetary geophysicist Bruce Banerdt, the principal investigator for the Mars InSight lander which is changing the way scientists now view Mars’ interior dynamics and inner workings. Please have a listen.

I welcome Bruce Banerdt, the principal investigator for NASA’s Mars InSight lander, which has been operating on the Martian surface for two years now. Although it’s had some technical issues, it’s offered a sea change in how geophysicists are interpreting the dynamics and makeup of the Martian core. In this episode, we talk about what we currently understand about Mars’ geophysical makeup and, among other things, whether it ever had plate tectonics which was so crucial for the evolution of sentient life here on Earth.

Continue reading “Episode 36 --- NASA Aims For The Geophysical Heart Of Mars” »

If we are to reason for the non-dual picture of the world then quantum physics is directly linked to consciousness. The human brain is a physical organ that transmits and interprets electrochemical signals. Its biochemistry is certainly governed by quantum physical laws, and consciousness — which is clearly related to the functioning of the brain — must therefore be related to the quantum physical processes going on within the brain and in the cosmos at large. Research has shown that consciousness is non-local, a scientific way of alluding to a connection within a higher dimensional order. Matter has also been shown to be non-local, which hints that matter might be an expression of consciousness. Quantum physics tells us the energy of every speck of mass, or a packet of information, is a relative peak in an ocean of energy, which is oftentimes referred to as the ‘Unified Field’ — the quantum layer of pure potentiality — the code layer beneath all dimensions where time and space are information.

#Consciousness #Evolution #Mind #OfficialTrailer

Continue reading “Consciousness: Evolution of the Mind, Documentary (2021), Official Trailer Released” »

Spiral galaxies are one of the most commonly known types of galaxy. Most people think of them as large round disks, and know that our Milky Way is counted among their number. What most people don’t realize is that many spiral galaxies have a type of warping effect that, when you look at them edge on, can make it seem like they are forming a wave. Now scientists, led by Xinlun Chen at the University of Virginia, have studied millions of stars in the Milky Way and begun to develop a picture of a “wave” passing through our own galaxy.

Since humans are not currently able to view the Milky Way in an edge-on orientation, they must resort to more brute force methods to develop models about the what, if any, wave our galaxy has. Luckily, scientists now have the tools to do so, in the form of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and ESA’s Gaia satellite.

The method the team used was to try to identify and track the motions of as many stars as possible. To do this, they used the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) spectrograph, which is part of the SDSS. This preliminary data allowed them to look at both the chemical compositions as well as the motions of hundreds of thousands of stars. While this motion data was helpful in starting to form the picture of the Milky Way’s wave, it was not sufficient to complete it.