Optimists called the first world war “the war to end all wars”. Philosopher George Santayana demurred. In its aftermath he declared: “Only the dead have seen the end of war”. History has proved him right, of course. What’s more, today virtually nobody believes that humankind will ever transcend the violence and bloodshed of warfare. I know this because for years I have conducted numerous surveys asking people if they think war is inevitable. Whether male or female, liberal or conservative, old or young, most people believe it is. For example, when I asked students at my university “Will humans ever stop fighting wars?” more than 90 per cent answered “No”. Many justified their assertion by adding that war is “part of human nature” or “in our genes”. But is it really?

Site – http://www.newscientist.com

The world is changing in an exponential rate. The world 20 years ago was vastly different from today. In 1987 could anyone have predicted the communication structures that we now take for granted? What will the world be like in 20 more years? It will be even more different than the last 20. (2008 update)

In the early 1980s, around the time Ronald Reagan became President and Wall Street’s great modern bull market began, we started gambling (and winning!) and thinking magically. From 1980 to 2007, the median price of a new American home quadrupled. The Dow Jones industrial average climbed from 803 in the summer of 1982 to 14,165 in the fall of 2007. From the beginning of the ’80s through 2007, the share of disposable income that each household spent servicing its mortgage and consumer debt increased 35%. Back in 1982, the average household saved 11% of its disposable income. By 2007 that number was less than 1%.

Site – http://www.time.com

The (Texas) State Board of Education spent the morning hearing from members of the public regarding proposed changes to how science is taught in Texas schools. Although the standards cover a range of topics and changes, most of this morning’s discussion was about proposed changes on the teaching of the origins and evolution of life on Earth (aka evolution).

The first thing that came to mind here is the seven day theory religious nuts bringing the hate on evolution again. Turns out they wanted to teach the ’strengths and weaknesses’ of the theory of evolution. I agree that when we teach evolution the first point that should be made is that it is a theory. However, I believe it is pretty much accepted as scientific fact. So then, what are the ‘weaknesses’ of evolution? First Google result yields…

Site – http://www.statesman.com

Yesterday, I was with my wife in the L’Occitane store. The shelves were filled with fragrances, soaps, lotions: all sorts of handcrafted beauty products. It occured to me while looking at the labels that I have no idea how these products were made. In general, I am just not good with physical things, because I am a software person.  My brain is wired differently, to see patterns in software, not in hardware. But most people are the other way around.  Yet, while looking at the bottles in the L’Occitane store, I wondered: could it be that the world is shifting from physical to digital? At first glance it is impossible, because we live in a physical world. But increasingly, we are surrounded by all sorts of software that fundamentally works differently from hardware. In this post, we’ll look at the interplay between physical and digital and argue that we are, in fact, heading towards a world dominated by digital.

Site – http://www.readwriteweb.com

I got a little sick to my stomach today. No, it wasn’t the sub par Chinese food that I ate. It was something that saw on TV while eating my sub par Chinese food. The obscene spectacle of douchebaggery that is  The Ram Challenge! Now that “We the people” own GM, Chrysler, and probably soon Ford. I seriously think that they should reconsider wasting our money on this kind of crap. They are going to let the macho men (cowboys, firemen, military) depicted in the commercial drive all these companies and this country into the ground. Maybe, If this were the trailer for the next Vin Diesel movie it might be OK, but this is a legitimate publicly owned company selling a very real product.  They are expounding the virtues of a truck that you can drive through flamethrowers and exploding houses like its some kind of movie! Well… its not a movie and I think it’s time to come back to reality and realize that this is not an acceptable practice anymore. Now that I think about it a little more, it’s actually making me laugh because it’s just so ridiculous that this is real. It seems more like it should have been one of those fake commercials before Tropic Thunder or something.

Site – http://ramchallenge.yahoo.com/

With the unprecedented $700 Billion USD bailout of wall street, we are reaching the end of the ‘American Era’.  What we are actually experiencing is a massive shift of wealth and power in the world due to the worst monetary policy in history.  This isn’t anything new to history.  How did America became the superpower that it was pre 2000?  In the 19th century Britain was the dominate world power, but after WWII Britain had accrued so much debt fighting in the war that it had to hand over power to America.   Thus, in the 20th century America is the dominate world power.  Now the balance of power is shifting again.  America has too much debt (10 trillion+) with up to 50% of it being borrowed from foreign countries.  After a temporary global slowdown to reconcile this change we will witness the rise of the new super powers in the 21st century lead by China and India.

Site – http://money.cnn.com

In Vernor Vinge’s version of Southern California in 2025, there is a school named Fairmont High with the motto, “Trying hard not to become obsolete.” It may not sound inspiring, but to the many fans of Dr. Vinge, this is a most ambitious — and perhaps unattainable — goal for any member of our species.

Dr. Vinge is a mathematician and computer scientist in San Diego whose science fiction has won five Hugo Awards and earned good reviews even from engineers analyzing its technical plausibility. He can write space operas with the best of them, but he also suspects that intergalactic sagas could become as obsolete as their human heroes.

The problem is a concept described in Dr. Vinge’s seminal essay in 1993, “The Coming Technological Singularity,” which predicted that computers would be so powerful by 2030 that a new form of superintellligence would emerge. Dr. Vinge compared that point in history to the singularity at the edge of a black hole: a boundary beyond which the old rules no longer applied, because post-human intelligence and technology would be as unknowable to us as our civilization is to a goldfish.

Site – http://www.nytimes.com

The phenomenal Chicago spire (pictured above), when completed in 2010, will be the world’s tallest residential building and the tallest building of any kind in the western world. seemingly modeled on the image of a giant drill poking through the ground, the 609m structure will dominate the Chicago skyline.  Obviously, construction technologies are advancing extremely quickly. couple that with multi-billionaires / deep-pocketed companies trying to outdo each other in the quest for the next standout design and you have a near-future filled with mile-high skyscrapers and buildings that no longer look like buildings. Below are 9 strange and unique structures which have either been approved or are in the final stages of approval. some have already been partially constructed. Welcome to the future landscape.

Site – http://deputy-dog.com

While a class action lawsuit is definitely one way to get Comcast to behave, another perhaps more productive way to do so is to have politicians step in and regulate. On Tuesday, I discussed the issue of Comcast’s anti-BitTorrent “network management” with Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., who is a strong supporter of consumer rights and has led the battle to undo the damage caused by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA. He was named Politician of the Year for 2006 by Library Journal, largely due to his efforts to protect the fair-use doctrine and expand Internet technologies to rural areas. “Comcast has made a major mistake in attempting to hinder peer-to-peer file sharing as an aspect of its network management,” Boucher said. “The inability of customers to (share files) significantly diminishes their ability to utilize the Internet for one of its most important applications, which is user-to-user content.” He also noted that “file sharing is already being used for a wide variety of perfectly lawful and appropriate applications.”

Site – http://www.news.com

The world is changing in an exponential rate. The world 20 years ago was vastly different from today. In 1987 could anyone have predicted the communication structures that we now take for granted? What will the world be like in 20 more years? It will be even more different than the last 20.

Imagine a work world with no commute, no corporate headquarters and perhaps not even an office in the physical world at all. For Bob Flavin, a computer scientist at IBM; Janet Hoffman, an executive at a management consulting firm; and Joseph Jaffe, a marketing entrepreneur, the future is already here. Like 42 percent of IBM’s 350,000 employees, Flavin rarely comes in to an IBM office. “We don’t care where and how you get your work done,” said Dan Pelino, general manager of IBM’s global health care and life sciences business. “We care that you get your work done.” IBM says it saves $100 million a year in real estate costs because it doesn’t need the offices.

Site – http://abcnews.go.com