April 2013
March 2013
CIA's Gus Hunt On Big Data: We 'Try To Collect... →
The CIA’s chief technology officer outlined the agency’s endless appetite for data in a far-ranging speech on Wednesday.
Speaking before a crowd of tech geeks at GigaOM’s Structure:Data conference in New York City, CTO Ira “Gus” Hunt said that the world is increasingly awash in information from text messages, tweets, and videos - and that the agency wants all of it.
...
National Security Letter Gag Orders Struck Down As... →
Concluding that they suffer from “significant constitutional infirmities,” a federal district court judge in San Francisco on Thursday struck down sections of federal law that allow the FBI to warrantlessly obtain private information under a gag order in the name of national security.
But U.S. District Judge Susan Illston temporarily put her order on hold to allow the government to...
“Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he...”
– Carl Jung
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A Brain-to-Brain Interface for Real-Time Sharing... →
A brain-to-brain interface (BTBI) enabled a real-time transfer of behaviorally meaningful sensorimotor information between the brains of two rats. In this BTBI, an “encoder” rat performed sensorimotor tasks that required it to select from two choices of tactile or visual stimuli. While the encoder rat performed the task, samples of its cortical activity were transmitted to matching cortical areas...
February 2013
Bad Movies →
January 2013
Brazil Nightclub Fire Kills At Least 245 People →
This is horrible:
A blaze raced through a crowded nightclub in southern Brazil early Sunday, setting off a stampede that killed at least 245 people attending a university party, police and firefighters said. It appeared to be the world’s deadliest nightclub fire in more than a decade.
Witnesses said that a flare or firework lit by band members may have started the fire.
Police Maj....
Starting Tuesday:
“According to D.T. Suzuki, one of the most influential Zen Buddhist teachers of the 20th century, Zen is not a system of philosophy, religion, mysticism, nihilism, or even Buddhism. He says, “Zen has nothing to teach us in the way of intellectual analysis; nor has it any set doctrines which are imposed on its followers for acceptance.” Then what is Zen? More importantly, what led...
“We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to...”
– Climate Change In Obama’s Second Inauguration Speech: ‘We Must Lead’
“If you awaken from this illusion, and you understand that black implies white,...”
– Alan Watts
“There may be an intellectual element in Zen, for Zen is the whole mind, and in...”
– D.T. Suzuki
plightofthepretty asked: I found it to be the harshest of truths, but what made you realize that you were wrong or too far into the fringes? I think that where you're at now and what you post definitely appeals to me, but I did think that what you were posting then was pretty potent as well. And wow I didn't know we're the same age, I hope to get to a place of being as hopeful as you seem to be now :)
““There is a wonderful story about a young man who checks into the monastery,...”
– (via samsaranmusing)
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Climate Change and the American People →
Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present. This report of the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee concludes that the evidence for a changing climate has strengthened considerably since the last National Climate Assessment report, written in 2009. Many more impacts of human-caused climate change have now been...
“Human beings show a peculiar ambiguity which somewhat resembles the...”
– Stanislav Grof
“The more prosaic, the more dreadfully ordinary anyone or anything seems to be,...”
– Alan Watts, The Joyous Cosmology
