Loosely Assembled

This weekend.

Comment: Putting evolutionary theory into practice – opinion – 06 May 2008 – New Scientist: “A new journal called Evolutionary Applications has just been launched. The first issue is dedicated to making the point that applying evolution is crucial, and it makes a convincing case.”

New Scientist has a dreamy article about a new potential kind of identity authentication.

Instead of a person’s biometric signature being stored on a distant database, they would reside only in the daemon – a small gadget carried around by its owner.

Like a real pet, that daemon would learn to imprint itself on its owner. After that it would thrive on their unique biometric signals, such as their voiceprint, fingerprints or walking style.

The human-daemon bond would be further cemented by games and interaction between the two. “Think how people bond with babies,” says Briggs. “You would do the same things with your daemon – cuddle it, stroke it, play verbal games.”

In the presence of its owner, those nourishing signals make the daemon “happy” and able to verify the owner’s identity, just like a PIN or password.

I say, “Put a bunch of these things *facing* each other and create a huge artificial valley.”

Apparently in a new Old Town location (4th and couch), i’ll check it out later today and post a pic.

The Yes Men.

see the table of contents, inner liner pages and back cover at the banned book club

Then check out the this blurb about the publishers of the book, the ~ Constitutional Education League, whom the Washington Post described as 1 of “28 Organized Groups Linked to Fascist Plot”. The leader of that group, a Joseph P. Kamp, kept getting in trouble for keeping the group’s funding sources secret.

The Constitutional Education League was founded shortly after World War I to combat “Communism in the United States and world wide.”

The U.S. Congress attempted to discover through an investigation, the financial backers of the League. The Vice-President of the League, Joseph P. Kamp refused to reveal this information to Congress and in 1950 was convicted and served four months in prison. Again in 1952 the House Lobby Investigation Committee tried to get Kamp to produce financial records of the League, but he again refused.

Mention of JPK in an undercover expose about the Nazi Party

15 more publications by Mr. Kamp

Seems our Abolitionist also felt compelled to defend Joseph McCarthy

Moral: think revolutionarily, but don’t follow just any old revolutionary!

Get 165 influential people to talk about the first-person experience of a mind changing moment, and you get a fascinating example of flux, wrapped with stimulating personalities and cultural milestones.

The authors include:

Daniel Kahneman, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, W. Daniel Hillis, David Goodhart, Mark Henderson, David Gelernter, Bart Kosko, Randolph M. Nesse, Linda S. Gottfredson, Kai Krause, Clay Shirky, Denis Dutton, Jamshed Bharucha, Lera Boroditsky, Gregory Benford, Richard Dawkins, Roger Bingham, Jesse Bering, Barry Smith, Steve Connor, Geoffrey Miller, George Johnson, Stephon Alexander, Beatrice Golomb, Chris DiBona, Jordan Pollack, Alison Gopnik, Paul Saffo, Neil Gershenfeld, J. Craig Venter, David Sloan Wilson, Simon Baron-Cohen, Austin Dacey, Daniel Engber, Roger Highfield, Francesco De Pretis, Dimitar Sasselov, Jaron Lanier, Janna Levin, Martin Rees, Esther Dyson, Anton Zeilinger, Gerd Gigerenzer, PZ Myers, Susan Blackmore, Adam Bly, Nicholas Humphrey, Paul Ewald, Seirian Sumner, Brian Eno, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Robert Shapiro, Sam Harris, Yossi Vardi, David Buss, Andrian Kreye, Daniel Goleman, James Geary, Tim O’Reilly, Philip Campbell, Frank Wilczek, Chris Anderson, Rupert Sheldrake Nicholas A. Christakis, Daniel C. Dennett, Helena Cronin, Aubrey de Grey, Nicholas Carr, Lisa Randall, Brian Goodwin, Carolyn Porco, William H. Calvin, Mary Catherine Bateson, Stanislas Dehaene, Linda Stone, Sean Carroll, Richard Wrangham, Marco Iacoboni, Scott Atran, Leo Chalupa, John Allen Paulos, Eduardo Punset, Rebecca Goldstein, Juan Enriquez, George Dyson, Paul Davies, Steven Pinker, Alan Alda, Patrick Bateson, Jon Haidt, George Church, Terrence Sejnowski, Judith Rich Harris, Oliver Morton, Stewart Brand, Daniel Gilbert, Sherry Turkle, John Horgan, Roger Schank, Carlo Rovelli, Xeni Jardin, Stephen Schneider, Diane Halpern, Alan Kay, Marti Hearst, Kevin Kelly, Marcel Kinsbourne, Peter Schwartz, Scott Sampson, Ernst Pöppel, John McCarthy, Seth Lloyd, Gary Klein, Stephen Kosslyn,Lawrence Krauss,Jeffrey Epstein, Ken Ford, John Baez, A. Garrett Lisi, Lee Smolin, Gary Marcus, Lee Silver, Laurence Smith, Robert Trivers, Rodney Brooks, Paul Steinhardt, Helen Fisher, Steve Nadis, Tor Nørretranders, Robert Sapolsky, Max Tegmark, David Dalrymple, Daniel Everett, David Myers, Keith Devlin, Todd Feinberg, Robert Provine, Marc D. Hauser, Thomas Metzinger, Dan Sperber, Leon Lederman, Timothy Taylor, Haim Harari, David Bodanis, Charles Seife, Mark Pagel, Arnold Trehub, Gino Segre, Nick Bostrom, Rudy Rucker, David Brin, Ed Regis, Freeman Dyson, Marcelo Gleiser, Irene Pepperberg, Colin Tudge, James O’Donnell, Michael Shermer, Donald Hoffman, Howard Gardner, Piet Hut, Douglas Rushkoff, Karl Sabbagh, Joseph LeDoux, Martin Seligman

New Ideas for a New Era!