Truth be told, I can't figure out if this is a seaplane's dream, or nightmare. I mean, cool or not, who voluntarily puts sharks in an active landing zone? [Oh My! Look at This Gosh Darn Boat! - Thanks, Richard] More »
Toshiba's dual-touchscreen Libretto is still waiting for its limited release, but the folks at Wow-Pow were apparently able to secure a localized English version early from Japan. It's still an expensive curiosity, but the virtual keyboard layouts are admittedly clever: More »
These Australian pelicans (Pelecanus conspicillatus) were photographed at Perth Zoo. They provided a pleasant distraction from the fact that a bloomin’ great Icelandic volcano had just erupted and was about to ground me for a week…
So I have this running bet with myself that the "Singularity" (man's union with machine, et al) will arrive on a space elevator (a near mythical delivery system to space). In other words: Pessimism. Yuri Artsutanov is more optimistic. More »
Roger Scruton's new book tackles the question of social progress and whether or not it can actually be achieved. Scruton, a Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University, transhumanist critic, and the author of over thirty books including Beauty and Death-Devoted Heart, looks back into human history and pieces together a rather grim narrative of how our civilization got to where it is now.
According to Scruton, institutions progress but human beings don't. And at the same time the human capacity for cruelty and violence remains infinite. Ultimately, Scruton's anti-transhumanist argument boils down to, "To be truly happy we must be pessimistic"—an adage that most transhumanists reject outright.
Book description:
Ranging widely ove—r human history and culture, from ancient Greece to the current global economic downturn, Scruton makes a counterintuitive yet persuasive case that optimists and idealists -- with their ignorance about the truths of human nature and human society, and their naive hopes about what can be changed -- have wrought havoc for centuries. Scruton's argument is nuanced, however, and his preference for pessimism is not a dark view of human nature; rather his is a 'hopeful pessimism' which urges that instead of utopian efforts to reform human society or human nature, we focus on the only reform that we can truly master -- the improvement of ourselves through the cultivation of our better instincts.
Written in Scruton's trademark style-- erudite, sweeping in scope across centuries and cultures, and unafraid to offend-- this book is sure to intrigue and provoke readers concerned with the state of Western culture, the nature of human beings, and the question of whether social progress is truly possible.
From Richard King's review:
This dose of pessimism is necessary, not because of the leftist intellectuals whom Scruton endlessly takes to task, but largely because of unchecked capitalism. That, if you like, is the snail in the bottle of this conservative philosopher's engaging treatise: it fails to acknowledge that sometimes crises result from conservative patterns of thinking, and not from those who seek to challenge them.
From Kenan Malik's review:
Scruton appears equally complacent about the contemporary impact of tradition. The liberalisation of social norms in recent decades undermines tradition and defies human nature, he argues. So why, he asks, should the onus be on conservatives to defend the importance of traditional forms of marriage against "innovations" such as gay partnerships?
The answer is the one that would have been given to those who argued against miscegenation or giving women the vote. The unequal treatment of gay people is a moral wrong and no amount of tradition can make it right. It is up to Scruton to defend discrimination, not liberals to have to justify treating all equally.
Scruton insists that he is averse to optimism only in its "unscrupulous" form. The trouble is, what makes an optimist unscrupulous is, in his eyes, a belief in the possibility of "goal-directed politics". He dismisses as a "fallacy" the "belief that we can advance collectively to our goals by adopting a common plan, and by working towards it". Progressive changes, however, rarely happen by chance. History is a narrative of humans rationally and consciously transforming the world. To give up on "goal-directed politics" is to give up possibilities of betterment.
More from Roger "The Gloom Merchant" Scruton:
Such fallacies have led to disastrous results on account of the false hopes that are built on them. Many of these false hopes have fizzled out. But there is truth in the view that hope springs eternal in the human breast, and false hope is no exception. In the world that we are now entering there is a striking new source of false hope, in the “trans-humanism” of people like Ray Kurzweil, Max More and their followers. The transhumanists believe that we will replace ourselves with immortal cyborgs, who will emerge from the discarded shell of humanity like the blessed souls from the grave in some medieval Last Judgement.
The transhumanists don’t worry about Huxley’s Brave New World: they don’t believe that the old-fashioned virtues and emotions lamented by Huxley have much of a future in any case. The important thing, they tell us, is the promise of increasing power, increasing scope, increasing ability to vanquish the long-term enemies of mankind, such as disease, ageing, incapacity and death.
But to whom are they addressing their argument? If it is addressed to you and me, why should we consider it? Why should we be working for a future in which creatures like us won’t exist, and in which human happiness as we know it will no longer be obtainable? And are those things that spilled from Pandora’s box really our enemies – greater enemies, that is, than the false hope that wars with them? We rational beings depend for our fulfilment upon love and friendship. Our happiness is of a piece with our freedom, and cannot be separated from the constraints that make freedom possible – real, concrete freedom, as opposed to the abstract freedom of the utopians. Everything deep in us depends upon our mortal condition, and while we can solve our problems and live in peace with our neighbours we can do so only through compromise and sacrifice. We are not, and cannot be, the kind of posthuman cyborgs that rejoice in eternal life, if life it is. We are led by love, friendship and desire; by tenderness for young life and reverence for old. We live, or ought to live, by the rule of forgiveness, in a world where hurts are acknowledged and faults confessed to. All our reasoning is predicated upon those basic conditions, and one of the most important uses of pessimism is to warn us against destroying them. The soul-less optimism of the transhumanists reminds us that we should be gloomy, since our happiness depends on it.
Link.
I have a query about ATS(Automatic transfer switches).CAn someone adv when do you use the "Break before make" and "make before break". Would the type of load be a concern when choosing the ATS. need some help with this choices.
I know we can get Hydrogen and Oxygen from water.
My question : How to get back water from Hydrogen and Oxygen gasses ?
Meet the Sand Shark. Unveiled this week on the sands of Alabama, this imperfect tool is perhaps the best weapon yet against the oily disaster BP has wrought against the Gulf coast. Updated. More »
This week’s addition to the Science of Kissing Gallery was sent by Gyami Shrestha, who captured these seals near Cambria and San Simeon in California.
Submit your original photo or art for consideration in the growing collection of kisses–and kissing-like behaviors–across time, space, and species.
A duo of leaked Intel roadmap slides have purportedly revealed the company's plans for its Sandy Bridge CPUs and an expanded SSD lineup for 2011. Let's look! More »
Hello experts.
I am a fresh grad. I did research on star delta wiring. I understood the main wiring diagram but what I dont understand is the control circuit. Can some one please expalain me. How this works . Thanks
Meeting the press during a recent visit to Tokyo, NASA Astronaut Alan Poindexter — Commander of recent Discovery ISS resupply mission STS-131 — was asked if there had been sex in space. His reply was succinct and left no room for ambiguity (though this photo does look pretty chummy):
We are a group of professionals. We treat each other with respect and we have a great working relationship. Personal relationships are not … an issue. We don’t have them and we won’t.
Hang on a second. I’m not sure that the concepts of “sex in space” and “professional” are mutually exclusive. I’m sure that, given what we’ve learned about human physiology because of spaceflight, that there are any number of cardiologists, internists, endocrinologists, OB/GYNs, and a whole host of other health-care professionals and researchers who would love to have physiological data taken of a couple before, during, and after a union in a microgravity environment. These researchers would be the Masters and Johsons, Kinseys, and perhaps even the Shere Hites of their time.
For me, though, when I first read Poindexter’s denial about sex in space, the first thing I thought of was Gene Cernan.
Wait, that came out wrong. Better elaborate.
Gene Cernan (the last human to leave the lunar surface, fellow Purdue Boilermaker, and one of my personal heroes) did one of NASA’s first spacewalks on Gemini 9. Unlike the previous EVA (extra-vehicle activity) of Ed White in Gemini 4, Cernan did not have a hand-held thruster unit — the goal of the EVA was for Cernan to make his way to the back of the spacecraft and don a much larger maneuvering unit, like the MMU operated almost 20 years later. Cernan had a very difficult time maneuvering his body in the airless/microgravity environment of space, his visor fogged, his suit overheated, and he never made it to the back of the spacecraft. Michael Collins had similar difficulties aboard Gemini 10. Learning of the low-gravity tribulations of Cernan and Collins, Astronaut Buzz Aldrin designed tools, handholds, and techniques for his flight aboard Gemini 12, and moved comparatively effortlessly.
NOW you can probably see where this is going.
On Earth, when it comes to the act of making love, gravity is a great enabler — certainly when it comes to the, uh, harmonic oscillations one normally associates with various sexual acts. In microgravity, a whole host of Newton’s Laws of Motion come into play, and clearly one would need a bevy of straps, velcro, and fasteners — and that’s WELL before even coming close to the realm of the kinky.
The book “Sex in Space” by Laura Woodmansee describes several potential positions by which low-gravity sex could be performed, but after reviewing the book (strictly for scientific curiosity, mind you), it looks like many of those positions would leave Barbarella and Buck flailing about — not unlike Gene Cernan on Gemini 9. Space.com did a review on the book, covering some of the topics explored within, but they didn’t discuss the topic of potentially enabling positions. (LiveScience did, however, discuss this notion briefly; so did Robert A. Freitas, Jr.)
On the reverse side of that, under the right conditions the microgravity environment of near-Earth orbit might allow a return to intimacy for people who, because of injury or disease, can’t have sex on Earth. So after the upcoming explosion of private space flight, after we’ve established lunar colonies, you can almost see that the Sandals Resorts will get into the game with a new resort called “Moon Boots.”
Humor aside, and as “clinical” as this sounds, it might not be a bad idea to consider monitoring people having sex when there are protocols and experimental controls in place, instead of allowing people who simply want to join the “Hundred Mile High Club” experiment haphazardly.
We’d learn a lot about human physiology, and imagine the spinoffs!
Mitchell and Webb just keep on giving (one NSFW word):
I love how well he does Dawkins’ voice; it sounds very much like him.
Maybe we need to think about getting M&W to TAM London. Those guys are clearly One (well, Two) Of Us. If you’re not familiar with them, they do a comedy sketch show in the UK called "That Mitchell and Webb Look" and it’s brilliant. I have links to them below.
I think that in many cases, being funny gets the message across better even than being passionate. And a whole lot better than being a jerk. And you can even kinda be a jerk if you’re funny about it. Satire somehow seems to smooth the rough edges around a hard message…
Related posts:
- That NASA Look
- That Mitchell Look
- UK comedians and pseudoscience
Are you a workaholic? Do you bring work home? Do you have trouble separating work and home life effectively? Actually, protecting your time before and after work might be the key to your performance on the job. At work, being an effective listener will help you be a hero. Check out these six fundame
According to a new study by the Pew Charitable Trusts, China now leads the U.S. in clean energy financing and investment, but the U.S. still maintains its world lead in renewable energy capacity. Clean energy clearly now has the attention of the world's developed nations, but just how important is i
Technological advances are reported daily in the media: new records set for solar cell efficiencies, novel routes for biofuel production, evolving designs for wind turbines. What the world needs is a Black Swan Event in alternative and renewable energy: a highly improbable and unexpected development
Why is the cabling for home entertainment systems so complicated? A typical installation might have more than a dozen different types of connections, including USB, Ethernet, S-Video, digital inputs and outputs, and an RS-232 port. Enter HDBaseT, a standard which purports to provide long-distance tr
hi all
i have old pc running windows vista, lately i had bought new pc running window 7.
i want to transfer or migrate all my application&file from old pc to new pc. cuase i don't want to install one by one to the new pc.
is this posible kindly please guide me how to do.
rega
i need a complete manual of Siemens 7SJ 6005 protection relay....
if anybody have any document related to this realy.... plz share with me...
thank in anticipation
regards
Your Friend
is there any manufacturer/supplier for compact 24v/12v dc linear actuators in india ?
