195. Dr. Mario Beauregard Sees an End to the Era of Biological Robots Interview with Dr. Mario Beauregard about his new book, Brain Wars, and the battle between old brain science and new brain science. Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with neuroscientist and author Dr. Mario Beauregard about his new book, Brain Wars: The Scientific Battle Over the Existence of the Mind and the Proof That Will Change the Way We Live Our Lives. During the interview Beauregard discusses the coming revolution in the way science understands consciousness: Alex Tsakiris: Near the end of your book, Brain Wars, you talk about a shift in consciousness within science. Dr. For instance, there’s a special issue of a mainstream journal in neuroscience called, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, and next year there will be a special issue about the possibility of non-local mind. There’s a progress regarding this evolution in our field. Mario Beauregard’s Website Play It: Listen Now: Download MP3 (46 min.) Read It: Today we welcome Dr. Dr. Dr. Alex Tsakiris: Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr.
Latvian Diplomat Tells Amusing Human Development Index Anecdote On 'U.N. Tonight! With Ban Ki-Moon' NEW YORK—In a highly anticipated episode of the popular talk show U.N. Tonight! With Ban Ki-Moon, Latvian representative to the United Nations and frequent guest Normans Penke delighted the late-night program’s studio audience Tuesday with a humorous human development index anecdote. The Emmy Award–winning variety and interview show, which airs in all 193 U.N. member states and is viewed by 400 million households each night, opened with host Ban’s signature monologue, during which the secretary-general poked fun at Greek austerity measures, U.S.-Israeli relations, and the ongoing Syrian conflict, quipping that “it’s almost as if [President Bashar] al-Assad’s getting away with murder over there.” After being introduced in the six official languages of the U.N., Ambassador Penke, the night’s first guest, walked on stage to a jazz-pop rendition of the Latvian national anthem played by house band Kofi Annan and the Late Night Envoys. “Luckily for us, Ban’s a pro,” Hadwell added.
What Is Sandy Telling Us? A Talk with John Perkins Is Sandy an isolated, freak weather event, as much mainstream media coverage would have you believe, or is it something more? I spoke earlier today with John Perkins, author of the best-selling memoir, Confessions of an Economic Hitman, as well as a number of books about shamanism, including Shapeshifting: Techniques for Global and Personal Transformation. I was hoping to hear a different perspective from someone deeply familiar with indigenous shamanic wisdom. I was not disappointed. Ken Jordan: Here in Brooklyn we've just experienced tropical storm Sandy. John Perkins: To start, in 1992 when Andrew hit I lived in South Florida, in North Palm Beach. The indigenous people have long been telling us that this is happening. KJ: You get the feeling that now the shaking is more pronounced. JP: Exactly. It's interesting that Sandy hit New York, the power center. JP: Exactly. KJ: A reminder of what, in your words? Either way, we human beings are an extremely powerful species.
Undoing the Dogmas of Science: A Talk with Rupert Sheldrake In his explorations for a better understanding of consciousness, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake challenges the mechanistic dogma of contemporary mainstream science. He has recently released a new book, Science Set Free: 10 Paths to New Discovery, which addresses the ideas that have become dogmas in modern scientific thought, exposes their weaknesses, and offers intriguing solutions for a way forward. Gabriel Roberts: Dr. Sheldrake, you are known for raising the public's awareness about morphic fields. Rupert Sheldrake: Morphic fields are the fields that organize the shape or form of living organisms, like plants and animals. How do morphic fields releate to the other discoveries you write about in your new book Science Set Free? Well this doesn't have much to do with the Higgs Boson, which is a theory in physics about how things get their mass. One of the points I make in Science Set Free is that we actually understand so much less than we usually assume we do. Yes. That's just a small miracle.
Chelsea Wolfe Musician Interview: Shedding Natural Light On Visions Of Doom - music art film review - REDEFINE magazine If you even remotely keep tabs on the news cycle these days, it’s easy to get bogged down in horrifically menacing thoughts of the world falling apart at the seams. The American military industrial complex has nearly doubled in size over the last decade, and it was already a ridiculously bloated frivolity. We continue to rape the environment for our own selfish expansionary agenda of warped materialism, with little respite in sight. There are no spiritual leaders of any real consequence despite the obvious need. The stupidest people with the least resources continue to have the most children, and their billionaire overseers encourage them to take great pride in their own shameless ignorance. And each time I think I’ve seen the lamest lowest common denominator pop culture moment possible, all I have to do is wait five minutes and something else will creep up knocking my faith in humanity down a few more pegs. Introducing Objectivism, by Ayn Rand 1. 1. 1. 2. 3. 4.
Ali, Round Two Loved reading your reactions to the Ali column. The video with this one is a particular treat. I’m not, of course, suggesting you skip the printed part here and rush right to it. If you do, of course, I’ll never know. One day, the champ asked if I’d like to see his training camp — he was preparing for his 1974 fight with Joe Frazier — and someone suggested taking cameras and making a show out of it. The camp was unique, situated in a delightful rural setting in Pennsylvania. Note his delight in showing me his private cabin, and his delight in using the words “antique” and the tautology “old antique.” (And I can’t conceive of why I say to him that I wrestled in high school when you can plainly see from my bared body in the gym segment that I was a gymnast.) I was put into a bedroom with the décor of a western lodge. Ali kept announcing, with an artful-seeming seriousness, “I can’t believe Dick Cavett came all the way to Pennsylvania just to see me!” Ali: “No hurry, Dick. “Ali?”
Ron Paul’s Farewell Speech (Video) Congressman Ron Paul has delivered his final address to the United States Congress, and of course he hit on several of his favorite themes during a 48-minute speech (part of the transcript is below): Ron Paul: This may well be the last time I speak on the House Floor. At the end of the year I’ll leave Congress after 23 years in office over a 36 year period. My goals in 1976 were the same as they are today: promote peace and prosperity by a strict adherence to the principles of individual liberty. It was my opinion, that the course the U.S. embarked on in the latter part of the 20th Century would bring us a major financial crisis and engulf us in a foreign policy that would overextend us and undermine our national security. To achieve the goals I sought, government would have had to shrink in size and scope, reduce spending, change the monetary system, and reject the unsustainable costs of policing the world and expanding the American Empire. How Much Did I Accomplish? Authoritarianism vs.
Maurice Sendak's Shocking Final Interview “I have no faith in anything,” says Maurice Sendak in his final interview. “I never have, much.” Sendak, author of children’s books both widely beloved (Where the Wild Things Are, In The Night Kitchen) and staunchly defended (Outside Over There, We Are All In The Dumps With Jack and Guy) died last May at the age of 83. But the just-published issue of The Comics Journal (#302), a now-annual compendium of writing in and about comics, features an interview with Sendak that runs more than 100 pages. A voluble, reflective, seriously crabby mood. The Wild Things were scary, sure, but my problem was with the book’s hero. Excerpts of this interview can be found online, in two parts, here and here. You get the idea. The interview takes place five years after the death of Eugene Glynn, Sendak’s partner of 50 years, and not long after the death of a dear friend and his wife, in swift succession. Exactly.
Seismic Signals: An Interview with Ken Goldberg - Venue The Hayward Fault runs through the center of the UC Berkeley campus, famously splitting the university's football stadium in half from end to end. It has, according to the 2008 Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast, a thirty-one percent probability of rupturing in a magnitude 6.7 or greater earthquake within the next thirty years, making it the likeliest site for the next big California quake. Nonetheless, for the majority of East Bay residents, the fault is out of sight and out of mind—for example, five out of six Californian homeowners have no earthquake insurance. The Hayward Fault trace superimposed onto a map of the University of California, Berkeley, campus, as seen in the USGS Hayward Fault Virtual Tour. Meanwhile, three-quarters of a mile north of Memorial Stadium, and just a few hundred yards west of the fault trace, is the office of Ken Goldberg, Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at Berkeley. A Bay Area seismograph. Goldberg: Exactly.
Aldous Huxley: The Mike Wallace Interview THE MIKE WALLACE INTERVIEWGuest: Aldous Huxley5/18/58 WALLACE: This is Aldous Huxley, a man haunted by a vision of hell on earth. A searing social critic, Mr. Huxley 27 years ago, wrote Brave New World, a novel that predicted that some day the entire world would live under a frightful dictatorship. Today Mr. Huxley says that his fictional world of horror is probably just around the corner for all of us. WALLACE: Good evening, I'm Mike Wallace. He's just finished a series of essays called "Enemies of Freedom," in which he outlines and defines some of the threats to our freedom in the United States; and Mr. WALLACE: Well, what are these forces and these devices, Mr. HUXLEY: I should say that there are two main impersonal forces, er...the first of them is not exceedingly important in the United States at the present time, though very important in other countries. WALLACE: Uh-huh. WALLACE: Well, why should overpopulation work to diminish our freedoms? HUXLEY: Well, in a number of ways.
Edward Gorey’s not as macabre as you think The other memorable aspect of Mystery! was the animated opening sequence, a string of brief, inexplicable, mostly black-and-white scenes: a thin man pushing a wheelchair; a group of well-dressed people drinking tea outdoors; a woman with her ankles tied together wailing atop a stone wall; a pair of legs sinking in a bog. I didn’t know at the time that this sequence was based on drawings by Edward Gorey, an artist, illustrator, and writer whose work was in fact a perfect complement to Poirot: Gorey’s matter-of-fact approach to death and disaster — which is in evidence as early as his second book and remains throughout his entire career — mirrors the calm with which Poirot solved his cases. Consider Gorey’s second book, The Listing Attic, which came out in 1954. Small, thin, and nearly square, like all of Gorey’s original output, The Listing Attic could be mistaken for a children’s book. According to Schiff, Gorey left the United States only once in his life.
Elon Musk's Mission to Mars | Wired Science Maverick entrepreneur Elon Musk Photo: Art Streiber When a man tells you about the time he planned to put a vegetable garden on Mars, you worry about his mental state. But if that same man has since launched multiple rockets that are actually capable of reaching Mars—sending them into orbit, Bond-style, from a tiny island in the Pacific—you need to find another diagnosis. That’s the thing about extreme entrepreneurialism: There’s a fine line between madness and genius, and you need a little bit of both to really change the world. All entrepreneurs have an aptitude for risk, but more important than that is their capacity for self-delusion. Indeed, psychological investigations have found that entrepreneurs aren’t more risk-tolerant than non-entrepreneurs. I have never met an entrepreneur who fits this model more than Elon Musk. And he is leading the private space race with SpaceX, which is poised to replace the space shuttle and usher us into an interplanetary age. Elon Musk: That’s true.