Lifeboat Foundation

NASA Is Building a Tiny Mothership to Explore Distant Lunar Oceans http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/nasa-i…ns/373020/

Bio-printing transplantable tissues and organs is now a step closer http://www.kurzweilai.net/bio-printing-transplantable-tissue…tep-closer

NEEWSWEEK: Enemy Ahoy: China and Russia Strive for Naval Supremacy http://www.newsweek.com/enemy-ahoy-china-and-russia-strive-n…acy-256825

THIS IS THE AGE OF THE INDIGNANT. Protestors Have Taken Over The Streets Of Hong Kong http://www.businessinsider.com/pro-democracy-protests-july-1…2014-7

Continue reading “White Swan Book Update” »

Social Scientists Versus Rocket Scientists [GRAPHIC]

By Mr. Andres Agostini

www.linkedin.com/in/andresagostini

E.Q.-Focused Nations (suboptimal) Versus I.Q.-Centric Countries (optimal)

1.- E.Q.-Focused Nations argue that the millenarian applied terms such as: Prudence, Tact, Sincerity, Kindness and Unambiguous Language DO NOT SUFFICE and hence they need to invent a marketeer’s stunt: Emotional Intelligence. I.Q.-Centric Countries argue that the millenarian applied terms are beyond utility and desirability and that stunts are to social-engineer and brain-wash the weak: Ergo, all of these are optimal: Prudence, Tact, Sincerity, Kindness and Unambiguous Language, as well as plain-vanilla Psychology 101.

2.- E.Q.-Focused Nations are mired with universal corruption, both in private and public office. I.Q.-Centric Countries are mired with transparency, accountability and reliability, as well as collective integrity and ethics.

Continue reading “E.Q.-Focused Nations (suboptimal) Versus I.Q.-Centric Countries (optimal)” »

By Graham Templeton — Geek

What if you knew of the greatest tragedy in human history, one that’s been ongoing since the dawn of life itself, and what if nobody would even believe that it was happening? That seems to be the situation for people like Bill Andrews and Aubrey de Gray, biologists and life extension theorists who believe (loudly) that human beings have the capacity to end the process of aging. Under this way of thinking, the people alive today are racing against a clock they cannot see; if mankind advances far enough, quick enough, you might just live forever.

A new documentary called The Immortalists is making its way from festivals to wider distribution, picking up cred as it goes. The two aforementioned scientists are the topic of this focused argumentative piece, which sets out to show you the life extension movement and two of its most successful exponents. They take you through the science and philosophy of death, and you may be surprised at just how close we really are to radically extending the human lifespan — if you can pay for a full court press of treatments and procedures. There’s a definite Occupy vibe to much of the life extension crowd, which follows rather logically from the idea that more and more people are going to be around and consuming resources for longer and longer periods of time.

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Tom Cheredar — Venture Beat

Even though Bitcoin has suffered some security setbacks over the last few months, many retailers still seem happy to let customer pay with the controversial crypto–currency.

The latest of these retailers is online tech store Newegg, which today announced plans to begin accepting Bitcoin for purchases on the site. To make this happen, Newegg is teaming up with virtual currency processor Bitpay.

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Berthold Stevens — Deutsche Welle

In the age of big data, Google critics say online services come at the price of freedom. Opponents say old business models for journalism are being redefined by the Internet and the people who use it.

Mathias Döpfner, CEO of media publishing house Axel Springer SE and U.S. Internet expert Jeff Jarvis locked horns in the first main debate at the DW Global Media Forum in Bonn, Germany. Döpfner says that people pay for seemingly free online services with their freedom, while Jarvis says he’s glad “that Google knows where I live.”

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By JASCHA HOFFMANJUNE — NY Times

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Directed by Matt Reeves. Opens July 11.

In this second big-budget prequel to the 1968 technicolor classic, intelligent apes are thriving in the forest while human cities crumble. If that sounds depressing, think again: In this version of “Planet of the Apes,” the chimps are the heroes. Rather than shooting in a studio, as is the custom for motion capture, much of the film was shot in the forest, where actors playing apes, their bodies covered with infrared dots tracked by hidden cameras, controlled the skeletons of their primate avatars. How does one walk like an ape? The motion is “heavy, weighted and circular,” said Terry Notary, a former gymnast who served as movement coach for the film, although “the pace, energy and feel” differs for gorillas, orangutans and chimpanzees. To capture emotion, a small camera mounted on the actors’ heads harvested facial data to drive the apes’ expressions. “This high-tech rig is so powerful and transparent that it allows actors to abandon control,” Mr. Notary said. The results are apes so magnetic, it’s hard not to empathize with them, even as they take up arms against their human rivals. “We’re making a film where apes are causing our downfall,” said Joe Letteri, the senior visual effects supervisor, “but they’re the ones you want to root for.”

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By James Temple — Re/Co[de

Emerald Therapeutics is developing potential treatments for viral infections like HIV and HPV. But they’re not ready to talk about that yet.

What the stealth startup is ready to discuss is a tool they built in an effort to accelerate that work: A completely robotic lab that the company believes could aid other researchers as well, effectively serving as a kind of Amazon Web Services for science.

The nearly 20-person company has packed a 5,000-square-foot facility in a little office park in Silicon Valley with more than $2 million worth of mass spectrometers, automated pipettes and microscopes, capable of carrying out remote life sciences experiments under controlled conditions.

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