The notion that life just naturally “falls out” of physics as a more or less inevitable consequence of the symmetries and physical parameters of nature is quite beautiful. It also implies a Universe absolutely overflowing with unimaginably many expressions of life and potentially exotic configurations of living matter. More information after the jump: http://www.businessinsider.com/groundbreaking-idea-of-lifes-origin-2014-12?IR=T
Author: G
The Pentagon’s Dystopian Predictions
The Pentagon doesn’t see the future as being a particularly bright or happy place. It’s not the most pleasant thing to consider what is likely to go wrong but as the expression goes: “forewarned is forearmed”. Find out more after the jump: https://theintercept.com/2016/10/13/pentagon-video-warns-of-unavoidable-dystopian-future-for-worlds-biggest-cities/
From postcard Kardashian to podcast Kardashev: a veritable smorgasbord of digital choice unfurls itself before us. From the ridiculous to the sublime (and back again), so much noise, so much emptiness, so much colour and so many hues of bland grey. Feeling somewhat adrift upon this ocean of information, we are lost for effective words […]
Ego Extinction in Zen
Sentience is clearly a magnificent experience, infinitely more to be preferred than the antagonistic conditions of unconsciousness or death, but for all its grandeur and richness it carries within itself a bitter seed: foreknowledge of personal death. The grave awareness of personal extinction is not even necessarily a purely human curse. We can do little […]
I wonder sometimes if all this digital media and virtual space we share is really something other than what it seems. We perceive a rich tapestry of choice and self-expression, a veritable cornucopia of tittilation, education and ideological assertion. It may actually be much simpler at base, that we are all following simple rules in […]
The Perils of Paywalls
One of the most annoying things I have come across online is the tendency for some scientific and academic journals to percolate their content through paywalls. When this is done with journalistic news content, it is usually not difficult to find equivalent content freely available elsewhere. When this is done with academic reference or technical […]
Digital television was progressively rolled out over a period of several years. I find it ironic that although I now have several dozen channels to choose from I still remain fairly exclusively interested in the content of about four or five non-commercial channels. I find myself for the most part irritated, distracted and annoyed […]
I recently saw the biopic “Notorious” which portrays the life of rapper Christopher Wallace (a.k.a. “The Notorious B.I.G.“). I have always been a little indifferent to rap and rap-culture but it was interesting to discover one interpretation of what happened in a famous conflict between rapper Tupac Shakur and “Biggie” the final result of which […]