Tag Archives: linky-links

Ten Things I learned about the Future…

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at Wired’s NextFest, A funny, scathing take on Wired Magazine’s festival of tomorrow. (Which does, by the way, include a reference to flying cars. I keep being promised flying cars in the future. Dammit, I want my flying car now! Where’s my goddamn flying car?

My own favorite news from the year 2100:

The elderly Japanese people of the future will be so desperately lonely for companionship that they’ll purchase slightly creepy android replicas of the drug-addled but brilliant sci-fi author Phillip K. Dick. Why the Japanese, and why Phillip K. Dick? It’s a long story, and I’m not sure I fully understood it all when the android’s makers explained it to me. I think I probably read the wrong books growing up as a kid, or maybe I now watch the wrong TV shows.

Man, the next singularity can’t get here fast enough.

Some thoughts on libertarianism

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I’ve been thinking about doing a post on libertarianism for quite some time, but libertango has beaten me to the punch here.

And one more quick link before I head off to bed tonight…

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Stone age pornography unearthed.

The statues, which are approximately 7,200 years old, seem to shatter the idea that sex was a forbidden subject in that time. Until now, the oldest sexual scenes found by archaeologists were on frescos that date to the time of Christ.

Taking over the world is SO twentieth-century!

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Courtesy of randomsynapse… why take over the world when you can destroy the Earth completely instead?

Of course, destroying the entire planet represents a nontrivial engineering challenge…just the thing to stimulate young minds!

Link o’ the Day, Redux

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For those puzzled by my last entry, which pointed to a protected entry, it’s available here: Why having two girlfriends is a really BAD idea.

Fun Link o’ the Day…

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..ganked from sharq: The best Volkswagen ad that never was.

Movie, with sound, work-safe, and oh-my-god-die-laughing funny.

Link o’ the day…

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Ganked from sarahmichigan: Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins explains why God is a delusion, religion is a virus, and America has slipped back into the Dark Ages.

He doesn’t pull any punches:

Bush and bin Laden are really on the same side: the side of faith and violence against the side of reason and discussion. Both have implacable faith that they are right and the other is evil. Each believes that when he dies he is going to heaven. Each believes that if he could kill the other, his path to paradise in the next world would be even swifter. The delusional “next world” is welcome to both of them. This world would be a much better place without either of them.

The only complaint that I have with Dawkins is that he’s clearly not an extropian:

How would we be better off without religion?

We’d all be freed to concentrate on the only life we are ever going to have.

As an Alcor member, I’m sincerely betting that there’s a non-religious way to have more than one shot at life…

Quote of the Day

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Courtesy of papertygre‘s quotefile:

“The brain is not an organ of thinking but an organ of survival, like claws and fangs. It is made in such a way as to make us accept as truth that which is only advantage. It is an exceptional, almost pathological constitution one has, if one follows thoughts logically through, regardless of consequences. Such people make martyrs, apostles, or scientists, and mostly end on the stake, or in a chair, electric or academic.”

—Albert Szent-Gyorgi

Oh. My. God.
That. Is. The. Most. Brilliant. Observation. Ever.

Link o’ the Week…

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….and dear sweet reanimated undead Jesus, it’s a stinker.

America: a music video to commemorate 9/11.

It’s not a parody. Really. This guy, voice wavering with heartfelt emotion as he caterwauls wildly off-key to the accompaniment of waving flags and shining angels, is actually serious. What’s more, someone, somewhere, considers this video to be the high point of his entire life. I don’t know about you, but that’s enough to keep me sleepless at night.

Work-safe, but likely not safe for your stomach.

Further evidence that I’m goingto hell…

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…as if any more were necessary:

Patriotism for Dummies. Mindless nationalism for the rest of us!