Global Poverty Project. Ending global poverty: the fight goes on. Right-wing dreams of demented utopias. Two decades have passed since I began my gradual and reluctant break with the conservative movement, in which I had been a protégé of the late William F.
Buckley Jr. and an employee of the late Irving Kristol, as executive editor of The National Interest. Since then, I have been followed by, among others, Andrew Sullivan, Fareed Zakaria, Francis Fukuyama, David Frum and Bruce Bartlett, all of whom, for different reasons and at different times, have become estranged from the American right. Of the British Labour politician Tony Benn, a young conservative who moved leftward over time, Harold Wilson sneered, “He immatures with age.”
Others may judge whether I have immatured with age. The world has forgotten the real victims of Fukushima. While Average Lifespans Increase, 114 Remains A Stubborn And Mysterious Upper Bound. Why? Ray Kurzweil predicts that in the coming decades the term “life expectancy” will become irrelevant.
By then medical advances and nanotechnology will be such effective tools with which to repair our bodies as they break down with age it will be as simple as car repair, changing out old parts for new and getting us back on the road again. Indefinitely. Even without the breakthrough technologies that allow us to regrow organs or reprogram faulty genes technological advances are making their imprint on our longevity. But a puzzling part to the equation has emerged. While humans are in fact living longer lives on average, the oldest age that the oldest people reach seems to be stubbornly and oddly precisely cemented right at 114. Life expectancy nearly doubled in developed countries over the 20th century. Welcome to the 'Anthropocene Epoch' Every week humans create the equivalent of a city the size of Vancouver.
No one can realistically argue that humans haven’t dramatically transformed the face of the planet. But now scientists propose that humankind has so altered the Earth that that we have brought about an end to one epoch and entered a new age. They suggest humans have so changed the Earth that it’s time the Holocene epoch was officially ended. The new epoch of Earth’s history is being called the Anthropocene, meaning “man-made”. Mexico City is a perfect example: Twenty million people live in the city, the world's fifth largest metropolis. In 2007, Earth's 6.8 billion humans were living 50 percent beyond the planet's threshold of sustainability, according to its report, issued ahead of a UN biodiversity conference. According to the United Nations, humans officially became an urban species in 2007 when a milestone was reached.
Triumph of the Generalist: Reading the Farming/Homesteading Encyclopedias : Casaubon's Book. I admit it, I’m a generalist in a world of specialists, and I always have been.
The New Universe and the Human Future. Abundance vs disruption: dramatically different views of the future. Can Open Government Be Gamed? If information is power, the first step to gaining power is to get the right data.
The Obama administration is a big proponent of opening up government data and making it digitally available. Today at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York City, the government’s new chief information officer Vivek Kundra announced USAspending.gov, a new site which launched today that tracks government spending with charts and lists ranking the largest government contractors (Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, etc.) and assistance recipients (Department of Healthcare Services, New York State Dept. of Health, Texas Health & Human Services Commission, etc.). Why Israel won’t bomb Iran. Electoral college reform by direct election of the President.
How To Solve The World's Problems In An Hour - Play - Sydney Opera House Video Portal. A video about gender // third gender / genderless / FFS. GF2045. The Problem with Elected Leadership. There’s a problem with elected leadership, but it’s not a problem caused by the people in power.
The problem is that we — those who elect — choose our leaders based on non-leadership-related traits. Instead of asking for facts, we ask what kind of music they like. Instead of demanding consistent answers to important questions, we cheer and boo as if they’re star players of opposing sports teams. LETTER: Thomas Jefferson to William Short. Toxic atheism drives people apart. I had never heard the word “faitheist” before, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t a compliment.
I blushed and ran my hands through my short hair — a nervous habit — and cleared my throat, asking if it was intended to be an insult. “Yes,” he said without inflection. The True, Peaceful Face Of Islam. There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, and Islam is the world's fastest-growing religion.
If the evil carnage we witnessed on Sept. 11 were typical of the faith, and Islam truly inspired and justified such violence, its growth and the increasing presence of Muslims in both Europe and the U.S. would be a terrifying prospect. Crusades, Unit 1. THE GOLDEN AGE OF ISLAM. Article 431 By Dr Zachariah Matthews Presented at the Australian New Muslim Association (ANMA) Fundraising Dinner, Bankstown, Friday 1 October 2004.
SALAM Magazine, Sep-Oct 2004. Finland’s Next Laws To Emerge From Online Crowdsourced Proposals. Why isn’t that a law?
Vote the Greater Good, Not the Lesser Evil. … ever more elections, and ever less democracy…– Michael K. Smith We are nearing the end of the billion dollar assault on consciousness that protects corporate power from the threat of democracy. It’s called the presidential race, or – in hysterical-get-out-the-vote fashion – the most important election since The Creation, or 911, or the last election.
If we don’t support the corporate Republican, radical Muslims, socialists, gay illegal immigrants and godless abortion fiends will destroy us all. On the other hand, if we do not re-elect the corporate Democrat, Christian fanatics will murder women, children, gays, blacks, Latinos, and all other minorities except evangelical whites, while invading other nations not already under American attack. Does TV actually brainwash Americans?
Historically, television viewing has been used by various authorities to quiet potentially disruptive people—from kids, to psychiatric inpatients, to prison inmates. In 1992, Newsweek (“Hooking Up at the Big House”) reported, “Faced with severe overcrowding and limited budgets for rehabilitation and counseling, more and more prison officials are using TV to keep inmates quiet.” Joe Corpier, a convicted murderer, was quoted, “If there’s a good movie, it’s usually pretty quiet through the whole institution.” Both public and private-enterprise prisons have recognized that providing inmates with cable television can be a more economical method to keep them quiet and subdued than it would be to hire more guards. World reactions to Palestinian statehood bid.
BEIJING, Nov. 29 (Xinhuanet) -- On Thursday, the UN General Assembly will vote on a resolution to raise Palestine’s status from an observer entity... to a non-member, observer state. Palestinians and Israelis are closely watching the evolving positions of a FEW key countries. The US has said it fears the move will only slow progress toward a peace deal. Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been lobbying Western countries, particularly in Europe, in hopes of presenting a broad international consensus against Israel.
Israel and the US have been strongly opposed to the Palestinians’ bid for an observer state status at the UN. A spokesman for Israel’s prime minister says it won’t bring the two peoples closer. The Top Ten Solutions to the World's Biggest Problems. Copenhagen, May 30—Where in the world can we do the most good? Supplying the micronutrients vitamin A and zinc to 80 percent of the 140 million children who lack them in developing countries is ranked as the highest priority by the expert panel at the Copenhagen Consensus 2008 Conference. The cost is $60 million per year, yielding benefits in health and cognitive development of over $1 billion. Eight leading economists, including five Nobelists, were asked to prioritize 30 different proposed solutions to ten of the world's biggest problems. The proposed solutions were developed by more than 50 specialist scholars over the past two years and were presented as reports to the panel over the past week.
Benjamin Franklin . Citizen Ben . Abolitionist. How to Drop Out. August 2012 Update. Chick-fil-A’s latest horror. The School of Life - Good Ideas for Everyday Life. The View from Hell. The Neurochemistry of Americans. Reading this article about the neurochemistry of why men cheat, I was struck by this paragraph: A Message for Mankind: Charlie Chaplin's Iconic Speech, Remixed. Where are the normal Christians? Your words matter - Neuroscience. The Future of the City 1: Cities in the Digital Age. Tunisia News - Breaking World Tunisia News. Political Polarization 'Dangerous,' Psychologist Says.
CHICAGO - For the first time in American political history, Democrats and Republicans have sorted themselves into a perfect left-right split, a prominent political psychologist said this week, calling the result a "dangerous era" in U.S. politics. Traditionally, political parties have been coalitions of broad groups of people, based more on industry, region and interest group than basic morals, University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt said here during a lecture at the annual meeting of the Association of Psychological Science.
Urban Rx: Cures for Sick Places. The Triumph Of The Psycho-Fact. What is a Nation? Benedict Anderson: "I like nationalism's utopian elements" - University of Oslo. Why Do We Say 'Hmm' When Thinking? The Nationalism Project: Benedict Anderson's definition of "nation." On crowds. Weekend Feature: "What Does It Mean for a Civilization to be a Million Years Old?" How do I go about starting my own country? Why we f*ck. The Origin and Cultural Evolution of Silence. Hold on tight - Neuroscience. Why Peace Is So Tricky for Humans. From Arab Spring to Global Summer: Part Two. AsylumSeaker: Imagine if a transnational entity or organisation could provide to its members the protection and support they need in order to live independently of the national borders inside of which theyre born.
Do You Really Want to Live Forever? Would you give up your immortality to ensure the success of a posthuman world?
We’re quite different but we still sleep together. Child-free women explain themselves. Activism. Efficiency. Philosophy & Religion. Poverty.