I don't think I'm taking a bold stance by saying that any real attempt at eugenics is indefensible. Practically speaking, though, eugenics is just as much of a bust as it is morally. We can't positively select for "better people," and we may face dire consequences if we try to weed out genetic problems, too. "Should" is a rather vague English word. Saying we "shouldn't" do something can mean that it is immoral to do it or that it won't have the desired result. When it comes to eugenics, we tend to circle around the first kind of "shouldn't," without paying attention to the second. Eugenics programs of the past have lead to attempted genocide, mass sterilization, and garden variety needless suffering. There are plenty of reasons for people to cut off the conversation about eugenics at the moral. Too often, though, that leaves the practical drawbacks unexamined. Beyond the possibility of bungling the job, there are concrete reasons why eugenics just wouldn't work. (io9)
posted: 7/11/12   |   0
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keywords: Berkeley, Biodiversity, Chickens, DNA, Dogs, Eugenics, Francis Collins, Gary Karpen, Genetically Modified Organisms, Horses, Human Genome Project, Tuberculosis, United States, University Of California 
You are about to become obsolete. You think that you are special, unique, and that whatever it is that you are doing is impossible to replace. You are wrong. As we speak, millions of algorithms created by computer scientists are frantically running on servers all over the world with one sole purpose: do whatever we used to do, but better. These algorithms are intelligent computer programs, permeating the substrateof our society. They make financial decisions, they predict the weather, they suggest which countries will wage war next. Soon, there will be little left for us to do: machines will take over. Does that sound like a futuristic fantasy? Maybe so. This argument is proposed by a growing, yet still fringe, community of thinkers, scientists and academics, who see the advancement of technology as a disruptive force which will soon transform our entire socio-economic system, forever. According to them, the displacement of labour by machines and computer intelligence will increase dramatically over the next decades. Such changes will be so drastic and quick that the market will not be able to abide in creating new opportunities for workers who lost their job, making unemployment not just part of a cycle, but structural in nature and chronically irreversible. It will be the end of work as we now it. (io9)
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posted: 11/19/12 | 0
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keywords: 3d Printing, Alan Turing, Amazon.com, Android, Artificial Intelligence, Bureau Of The Census, Cell Phones, Contour Crafting, Dwight Eisenhower, Education, Federico Pistono, Financial Crisis, Internet, Itunes, National Aeronautics And Space Administration, Nazi, Ray Kurzweil, Robotics, Singularity University, US Bureau Of Labor Statistics, United States, University Of Verona, Wal-mart
Humans have been studying one another sexually for thousands upon thousands of years. Yet for all that time spent diligently exploring one another's anatomies, there remain many features of the human form that, until very recently, have gone uncharted — chief among them being the clitoris. How recently are we talking? Try 2009. Yeah. Get ready, everybody — it's time you were brought up to speed on some important features of the female anatomy. Picture a clitoris in your mind. Got it? Now, what if I told you that what you're imagining is just the tip of a much larger, internal clitoral iceberg — that the clitoris is actually much, much larger than what this sensitive bundle of nerve endings would lead you to believe? (io9)
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posted: 12/22/12 | 0
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keywords: Education, Health Care, Museum Of Sex, Odile Buisson, Pierre Foldés