Directory of Innovative Anti-Aging Doctors, Health And …

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The directory of Innovative Doctors and Health Practitioners is a worldwide listing of anti-aging doctors and other medical professionals who practice or have expressed interest in all aspects of preventive medicine (such as heart attack and stroke prevention), hormone replacement therapy, nutrition and dietary supplements, and other areas of alternative and complementary medicine. Invariably, they welcome individuals who choose to be involved in their own health care.

Provided to you by Extension, the directory of Innovative Doctors and Health Practitioners facilitates the location of anti-aging doctors and health practitioners who are open to alternatives to allopathic medicine. Conveniently organized geographically, the listing can be used to find a doctor by areaa handy feature for those who are traveling or are simply seeking out anti-aging doctors or health practitioners at home. The directory of Innovative Doctors and Health Practitioners is especially useful for those on a life extension program that includes the use of dietary supplements and hormones, as the listed physicians and health practitioners would likely be more suited to evaluate such a program than more conventional doctors.

While prevention, nutrition and longevity are important to the physicians and health practitioners listed, each of them has their own approach to health and wellness. So be sure to clarify the reason for your visit, as well as your goals in seeking out such treatment when scheduling your appointment.

ALABAMAALASKAAMERICAN SAMOAARIZONAARKANSASARMED FORCES AMERICASARMED FORCES EUROPEARMED FORCES PACIFICCALIFORNIACOLORADOCONNECTICUTDELAWAREDISTRICT OF COLUMBIAFLORIDAGEORGIAGUAMHAWAIIIDAHOILLINOISINDIANAIOWAKANSASKENTUCKYLOUISIANAMAINEMARSHALL ISLANDSMARYLANDMASSACHUSETTSMICHIGANMICRONESIA FED STATESMINNESOTAMISSISSIPPIMISSOURIMONTANANEBRASKANEVADANEW HAMPSHIRENEW JERSEYNEW MEXICONEW SOUTH WALESNEW YORKNORTH CAROLINANORTH DAKOTAOHIOOKLAHOMAOREGONPALAUPENNSYLVANIAPLEASE SELECTPUERTO RICORHODE ISLANDSOUTH AUSTRALIASOUTH CAROLINASOUTH DAKOTATASMANIATENNESSEETEXASUTAHVERMONTVICTORIAVIRGIN ISLANDSVIRGINIAWASHINGTONWEST VIRGINIAWISCONSINWYOMING

DISCLAIMER: Inclusion in the directory of Innovative Doctors and Health and Wellness Practitioners does not constitute endorsement by Life Extension, nor are these physicians or other health practitioners affiliated with Life Extension. All physicians and health practitioners who appear on this list do so on the sole basis of their own expression of interest in the fields of health and wellness, longevity, or preventive medicine. Life Extension has not verified the competence, professional credentials, business practices or validity of the expressed interests of these physicians and health practitioners. Life Extension makes no recommendation of any physician or health practitioner on this list and makes no suggestion that any such physician or health practitioner will cure or prevent any disease, reduce anyone's rate of aging or extend anyone's life. Those consulting a physician or other health practitioner on this list should approach the consultation exactly as they would with any other unknown physician or health practitioner. Listings are periodically updated. However, physicians and health practitioners are not obligated to notify Life Extension should they relocate or retire. Life Extension relies in great part on feedback, which determines the continued eligibility of the physicians and health practitioners listed. Please contact Life Extension if you have any comments concerning any of the physicians or other health practitioners on this list.

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Litecoin – Investopedia

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DEFINITION of Litecoin

Launched in the year 2011, Litecoin is an alternative cryptocurrency based on the model of Bitcoin. Litecoin was created by an MIT graduate and former Google engineer named Charlie Lee. Litecoin is based on an open source global payment network that is not controlled by any central authority. Litecoin differs from Bitcoins in aspects like faster block generation rate and use of scrypt as a proof of work scheme.

Litecoins were launched with the aim of being the "silver" to Bitcoin's "gold," and have gained much popularity since the time of inception. Litecoin is a peer-to-peer internet currency. It is a fully decentralized open source, global payment network. Litecoin was developed with the aim to improve on Bitcoin's shortcomings, and has earned industry support along with high trade volume and liquidity over the years. The broader differences between the two cryptocurrencies are listed in the table below.

Bitcoin

Litecoin

Creation

2009

2011

Creator

Satoshi Nakamoto

Charles Lee

Coin Limit

21 Million

84 Million

Block Generation Time

10 Minutes

2.5 Minutes

Algorithm

SHA-256

Scrypt

Initial Reward

50 BTC

50 LTC

Current Block Reward (as of June 2014)

25 BTC

50 LTC

Rewards

Halved every 210,000 blocks

Halved every 840,000 blocks

Difficulty Retarget

2016 Block

2016 Block

Litecoin is designed to produce four times as many blocksas Bitcoin (1 new block every 2.5 minutes to Bitcoin's 10), and it also allows for 4x the coin limit, making its main appeal over Bitcoin to do with speed and ease of acquisition. However, because Litecoin uses scrypt(as opposed to Bitcoin'sSHA-2)as a proof-of-work algorithm, the use of mining hardware such as ASIC miners or a GPU mining rig requires significantly more processing power.

Litecoin is consistently among the largest cryptocurrenciesinterms of market capitalization (though still remaining far below that of Bitcoin)and it currently has more than 50 million coins in circulation.

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Litecoin - Investopedia

Moon Litecoin – Free Litecoin Faucet

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What is Moon Litecoin?

Moon Litecoin is a litecoin faucet with a difference...YOU decide how often to claim!

Whereas most faucets only allow you to claim once per hour or once per day, we allow you to claim as often or as little as you like* The faucet will gradually fill up - quite quickly initially but it will slow down over time - until you make a claim. So the longer you leave it the more you will be able to claim. You may prefer to claim a smaller amount every 5 minutes, or visit once per day and claim the large amount that has built up while you were away!

(* minimum 5 minutes between claims per account/IP address)

Click here to view the current claim rates. You can increase your claim amounts by up to 300% by taking advantage of the Daily Loyalty Bonus, Referral Bonus and Mystery Bonus schemes!

Litecoin (LTC) is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency and open source software project released under the MIT/X11 license. Inspired by and technically nearly identical to Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin creation and transfer is based on an open source protocol and is not managed by any central authority. Litecoin is intended by its developers to improve upon Bitcoin, offering several key differences. As of November 2013, Litecoin had received extended coverage by mainstream media with agencies such as the Wall Street Journal, CNBC and The New York Times citing it as an alternative (or possibly even successor) to Bitcoin.

After Bitcoin and Ripple, Litecoin is the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

A peer-to-peer network similar to Bitcoin's handles Litecoin's transactions, balances and issuance through scrypt, the proof-of-work scheme (Litecoins are issued when a small enough hash value is found, at which point a block is created, the process of finding these hashes and creating blocks is called mining). The issuing rate forms a geometric series, and the rate halves every 840,000 blocks, roughly every four years, reaching a final total of 84 million LTC.

If you want to know more then check out the full Litecoin Wikipedia article

As of 6th July 2017 all payments from Moon Litecoin are made instantly and directly into your CoinPot account. Click here to find out more about how this works.

You might be having problems making a faucet claim on Moon Litecoin for one of the following reasons...

Moon Litecoin depends on the revenue from displaying adverts. If we detect that you have blocked adverts or they aren't showing up in your web browser then we will prevent you from making a faucet claim. This screenshot shows the positions of the adverts that we are currently displaying (highlighted in red). If any of these adverts are not showing then there must be something blocking them on your browser/device. This may be an ad-blocking browser plug-in or extension - if so, please disable your ad-blocking browser plugin/software or add this page to the exception list.

This faucet web site is designed to work on the broadest range of web browsers and devices possible. However it may be that your browser/device is not supported and you receive an error message when you try to claim. If so, please try a different browser or device to check that this is the problem before contacting us about it.

Yes we do - click here for full details

Yes you can! We have several advertising spaces that are available directly - CPM/CPC at Mellow Ads (200px x 200px)

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Moon Litecoin - Free Litecoin Faucet

What Is Litecoin? LTC News, Price and Charts

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Market CapVolume 24hCirculating SupplyMaximum Supply$ 4,837,619,816 61,363,734 LTC$ 1,671,057,265 21,196,852 LTC61,363,734 LTC61,363,734 LTCWhat Is Litecoin

Litecoins (LTC) are the cryptocurrency units of the Litecoin platform which went live in October 2011. Its creator, former Googles employee Charlie Lee, wanted to create a global decentralized payment network similar to Bitcoin, but addressing what he perceived as Bitcoins issues. Lee was dissatisfied with its long verification periods, slow transactions and rising transaction fees. Seeing the bitcoins as a sort of virtual gold, his litecoins aimed to become at least an equivalent of silver in the crypto world, according to him.

Lee and his colleagues created Litecoin as a software fork of Bitcoin. While it does not share a common transaction history (which is the case in both hard and soft forks), it is based on Bitcoins code. The goal was to improve the number of processed transactions by at least four times and bring down the associated fees to an acceptable level. Litecoin has eventually managed to beat Bitcoin in this, with its average verification periods taking about two and a half minutes.

In addition to speed, the transactions involving this coin come at lower costs. In order to keep them as low as possible, litecoins had their production cap increased to 84 million units. In October 2018, 58.9 million of these were in circulation, with the market cap standing at around USD 2.9 billion. Similar to other cryptocurrencies, the price of this coin went through some rocky periods ranging from a high of USD 420 per coin in late 2017 to what it is today.

Mining is another way in which Litecoin is trying to become more accessible than Bitcoin. It uses the Scrypt algorithm, which needs less power than Bitcoins SHA256, and boasts faster block generation than Bitcoin. Litecoin also still manages to prevent the dominance of a single miner (or a group of them) at the expense of its accessibility.

Litecoin is also exploring new territories when it comes to enhancing its privacy and fungibility-related features. As announced in February 2019, this is to be done mainly by integrating the Mimblewimble protocol with the help of the team behind the Beam coin. Once fully implemented, the technology will allow for on-chain conversion of regular LTC into its Mimblewimble variant and vice versa. The Mimblewimble-powered LTC should offer better confidentiality of transactions made with it.

At the same time, mining litecoins still takes some serious investments, prompting many to turn to cryptocurrency exchanges as the main choice for obtaining the cryptocurrency. Those who want to get their hands on LTC in this manner can do it on Bitfinex, Coinbase Pro or similar platforms.

Find the latest Litecoin news here.

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What Is Litecoin? LTC News, Price and Charts

Litecoin Value | Litecoin Price | Litecoin Wallet …

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Litecoin The Twisted, and Better Version of Bitcoin

Bitcoin was nothing short of a fantasy when it was launched. A decentralized cryptocurrency, untouched by finance monarchists, made for people by people a truly democratic option to exchange money throughout the world, cheaply and speedily. Its creation certainly brought an intellectual change inside the banking sector. And now, we see how Bitcoin is being watched by some of the biggest corporate players for being a futuristic nexus in the global payment bazaar.

But even with all the kettledrums, Bitcoin has few setbacks of its own. For instance: the innovative digital currency takes around 10 minutes to confirm/generate a block. Also, miners would be able to mint only 21 million units of Bitcoin by the end of its time. Even though the drawbacks are handful, but there they are, ensuring no perfection in this seemingly perfect digital currency.

It clearly explains how Litecoin, another cryptocurrency that was launched three years after Bitcoin, was created out of the necessity to address such drawbacks. The brainchild of an ex-Googler Charles Lee, Litecoin was invented by twisting the Bitcoins open source code, the result of which made it a better real-time settlement currency than its predecessor literally.

Just like Bitcoin, Litecoin is a decentralized peer-to-peer cryptocurrency, operated and controlled by none. Due to its number of user-centric benefits over Bitcoin, Litecoin soon became the second most traded cryptocurrency a place which it holds even today. People also call it a silver to the gold Bitcoin, a factor that ensures it smooth adoption among merchants and users till this date.

As users have noted, the transaction confirmation time taken in case of Litecoin is four times faster than that of Bitcoin. Also, miners seem to prefer minting Litecoin due to its relatively less block generation time, i.e. 2.5 minutes which, in case of Bitcoin, is around 10 minutes.

Finally, litecoin uses S-Crypt algorithm: a rigid sequential memory function that was first perceived by Colin Percival. This function is said to have a significant advantage over the Bitcoins SHA256 algorithm, especially in regards to speedy and cost-effective mining techniques. An individual miner therefore could opt to mine Litecoin over Bitcoin, as it simply saves him money and time. [We will explain it further in a separate Litecoin mining section as follows]

Generally, mining a S-crypt based cryptocurrency like Litecoin is no different than mining a SHA256 cryptocurrency Bitcoin. However, Bitcoin mining has become quite expensive in past few months, especially after the arrival of ASIC machines that ensures to solve blocks quickly, in addition to saving electricity consumption as well. But at the same time, ASICs come very costly, which ends up adding burden on miners initial investments.

At that point of time, Scrypt mining comes as a best alternative for miners as it can be done even by using a CPU or GPU machine. There are dedicated ASICs available for Scrypt coins as well, but their use have notably dropped because of poor performance issues. Scrypt however remains to a memory eating method, but its cryptocurrencies could still be mined by using a home PC with a powerful graphic card. Laptops with integrated graphic cards are not a good option to mine Litecoin, literally.

Before you actually start to mine Litecoins, there is one very important tool you must have to store them safely a wallet. This wallet not only will store miners hard-earned money but will also prove to be useful in transferring Litecoin from one place to another. Downloading a Litecoin wallet is as simple as downloading a normal windows/MAC application. There are many independent and open-source Litecoin wallet software available in the market. They are:

Note: Sometimes, these wallets take ages to install on your personal computer for they have to download the entire blockchain before becoming usable to the clients. Please keep some patience when you download them.

If you are not as rich as Tony Stark, there is a least chance of you using a specific mining hardware to mine Litecoin. Therefore, you will likely be relying on CPU, or CPU+GPU. We will though recommend you to try out some expensive GPU machines, as they tend to have a far better calculation solving features than the CPU machines. The more the processing power, the faster the mining is.

You could also choose to build rigs for yourself a slightly complex thing to do. You can learn it from watching this video.

There are two method to mine Litecoin, or any other coin out there: Solo or Pool. As it sounds, Solo Mining restricts you in your own den, where the losses and the profits belong to you only. If you are a beginner with only a few bucks left in the pocket, going solo is definitely not the best idea as it will put all the financial pressure on you, and you only.

Conversely, pool mining will make you join a group of Litecoin miners where you will be require to contribute power from your end. Here, the chances of you all solving a single block will be greater. At the same time, the returns will be distributed among each and every associated miner, therefore reducing your income.

After going through every basic step discussed above, all you will need in the end is a software to start mining Litecoin. The widely accessible ones available in the market are: CPUMINER and CGMINER. You can also use both the software in parallel to boost your block solving power.

The Litecoin you earn at the end of the day could either be held or sold in the trading market, at a good price. The Litecoin price however is seeing a very sharp decline since last year, and hints to move in parallel with Bitcoin price action now a day. It is therefore very important that you watch the fundamentals and technical aspects of Litecoin price before deciding to sell it in the market. Hold it only if you are a true believer. You can find many Litecoin exchanges on internet to sell your Litecoins.

Disclaimer: The above article is for educational purposes only. NewsBTC.com doesnt endorse any of the products mentioned, nor hold any responsibility of losses incurred due to their services. Litecoin mining is prone to occasional losses and undertaking this business is an individuals own choice. NewsBTC.com wont be hold responsible for any losses incurred after reading this article.

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Litecoin Value | Litecoin Price | Litecoin Wallet ...

litecoinpool.org

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Mining litecoins since October 21, 2011

New to Litecoin mining? Read our Beginner's Guide!

Welcome to the first true pay-per-share (PPS) Litecoin pool.Some of our key features:

Every valid share you submit to this pool is instantly credited to your accountat the current pay-per-share (PPS) rate.This rate, expressed in litecoins,also takes into account merged-mined coins such as Dogecoin,resulting in higher payouts than a regular Litecoin pool. Thanks to merged mining, you have to pay no fee;in fact, your earnings may even be higher than with a 0-fee PPS system.

This is not a PPLNS, SMPPS or RBPPS pool:we always pay for your work,even if the pool has not yet solved enough blocks to cover the earnings generated.On other systems, miners are only rewarded when and if a block matures,but sometimes blocks get orphaned from the Litecoin network,and therefore yield no reward.A PPS pool, on the other hand,takes on the risk of bad luck so you don't have to deal with varianceand orphaned blocks.

LitecoinPool.org was started shortly after the birth of Litecoin by Pooler,who is well known in the community as a member of the Litecoin core development teamand for being the maintainer of the cpuminer software package.Since the very start, the pool used ad-hoc software:Pooler wrote the front end entirely from scratch, with security and efficiency in mind,while the mining back end was originally a heavily-modified version of Jeff Garzik's pushpool.After two weeks of intensive testing, on November 5, 2011the pool opened its doors to the public, becoming the first PPS pool for Litecoin.In April 2012 LitecoinPool.org also became the first pool to supportvariable-difficulty shares, a technique later dubbed vardiff by Bitcoin pools,allowing miners to drastically reduce their network bandwidth usage.

Thanks to its advanced features and its reliability, the pool quickly attracteda very high number of miners, to the point that during the first half of 2012it often constituted over 40% of the entire Litecoin network.Due to centralization concerns, it was decided to temporarily close new registrations;later in 2012, registrations were reopened, but have since been subjectto approval.

In August 2013 the back-end software was completely redesigned and rewrittenfrom scratch to implement advanced efficiency and scalability optimizationsthat Pooler devised after implementing support for the Stratum protocol in cpuminer.This new implementation makes LitecoinPool.org the first Litecoin poolbased entirely on software written from scratch, and the first poolto implement extensions to the Stratum protocol such asresume, suggest_difficulty and suggest_target.

In September 2014 LitecoinPool.org also became the first Litecoin poolto offer secure mining over TLS-encrypted Stratum connections,protecting miners from potential man-in-the-middle attacks.

We wish to thank all the people who have, directly or indirectly,contributed to the development of this pool.In particular, many thanks go to (in alphabetical order):coblee, DeLorean731, Derringer, diki, g2x3k, Graet, guruvan,inlikeflynn, jgarzik, LittleDuke, piperitapatty, pontius,rTech, shawnp0wers, ssvb, terrytibbs, WKnight, Xurious.

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litecoinpool.org

Beginner’s Guide | litecoinpool.org

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So you've heard about Litecoin mining and you want to find out more. This page is for you.

See the Litecoin Association's introductory video to Litecoin.

Just like its older brother Bitcoin, Litecoin is an online network that people can use to send payments from one person to another.Litecoin is peer-to-peer and decentralized, meaning that it is not controlled by any single entity or government.The payment system does not handle physical currencies, like the dollar or the euro;instead, it uses its own unit of account, which is also called litecoin (symbol: or LTC).This is why you will often see Litecoin categorized as a virtual or digital currency.Litecoins can be bought and sold for traditional money at a variety of exchanges available online.

If you already know Bitcoin, Litecoin is very similar,the two main differences being that it has faster confirmation times and it uses a different hashing algorithm.

Instead of having one central authority that secures and controls the money supply (like most governments do for their national currencies),Litecoin spreads this work across a network of miners.Miners assemble all new transactions appearing on the Litecoin network into large bundles called blocks,which collectively constitute an authoritative record of all transactions ever made, the blockchain.

The way Litecoin makes sure there is only one blockchain is by making blocks really hard to produce.So instead of just being able to make blocks at will, miners have to producea cryptographic hash of the block that meets certain criteria,and the only way to find one is to try computing many of them until you get lucky and find one that works. This process is referred to as hashing.The miner that successfully creates a block is rewarded with 25 freshly minted litecoins.

Every few days, the difficulty of the criteria for the hash is adjusted based on how frequently blocks are appearing,so more competition between miners equals more work needed to find a block.This network difficulty, so called because it is the same for all miners, can be quantified by a number;right now, it is 11,856,949.

Litecoin mining can be profitable, but only under certain conditions.In the early days people could make a profit by mining with their CPUs and GPUs, but that is no more the case today.The introduction of specialized mining hardware (commonly referred to as ASICs),which can mine much faster and much more efficiently, has made finding blocks much harder with general-purpose hardware.

If you compare the profitability analyses fora CPU,a GPU andan ASIC,you will see that the costs of CPU and GPU mining largely exceed the rewards,and even with free electricity the profits are so small that they are hardly worth the effort.

Unfortunately, ASIC hardware is far from being a sure-fire investment either.Potential buyers should be extremely careful, as various elements should be considered:

Most importantly: always do your own research, and never trust any single source of information.Good starting points areLitecoinTalk.ioand the /r/litecoinand /r/litecoinmining subreddits.

Don't feel like investing in expensive hardware? That's fine!Not everyone needs to be a miner.In fact, the easiest way to get started with Litecoin is to buy some at an exchange.

As we've seen above, finding a block is very hard. Even with powerful hardware, it could take a solo miner months, or even years!This is why mining pools were invented: by sharing their processing power, miners can find blocks much faster.Pool users earn shares by submitting valid proofs of work,and are then rewarded according to the amount of work they contributed to solving a block.

The reward systems used by mining pools can be roughly subdivided into two categories: proportional systems and pay-per-share systems.

Choosing a mining pool can be a very personal decision, and several factors should be taken into consideration,including features, reliability, reputability, and user support.

ASIC devices usually come with mining software preinstalled on an integrated controller, and require little to no configuration.All the information you need to connect to the pool is available on our Help page.

If you have decided to do some CPU mining (just for the fun of it, since as we've seen above you are not going to make any profit),you should download Pooler's cpuminer.GPU mining is considerably harder to set up, and not much more efficient than CPU mining when compared to ASICs.Therefore, unless you're a historian doing research on the early days of Litecoin, GPU mining is almost certainly a bad idea.

See more here:

Beginner's Guide | litecoinpool.org

Eugenics – New World Encyclopedia

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Eugenics is a social philosophy which advocates the improvement of human hereditary traits through various forms of intervention. The purported goals have variously been to create healthier, more intelligent people, save society's resources, and lessen human suffering.

Earlier proposed means of achieving these goals focused on selective breeding, while modern ones focus on prenatal testing and screening, genetic counseling, birth control, in vitro fertilization, and genetic engineering. Opponents argue that eugenics is immoral and is based on, or is itself, pseudoscience. Historically, eugenics has been used as a justification for coercive state-sponsored discrimination and human rights violations, such as forced sterilization of persons with genetic defects, the killing of the institutionalized and, in some cases, genocide of races perceived as inferior. Today, however, the ideas developed from eugenics are used to identify genetic disorders that are either fatal or result in severe disabilities. While there is still controversy, some of this research and understanding may prove beneficial.

The word eugenics etymologically derives from the Greek words eu (good) and gen (birth), and was coined by Francis Galton in 1883.

The term eugenics is often used to refer to movements and social policies that were influential during the early twentieth century. In a historical and broader sense, eugenics can also be a study of "improving human genetic qualities." It is sometimes broadly applied to describe any human action whose goal is to improve the gene pool. Some forms of infanticide in ancient societies, present-day reprogenetics, preemptive abortions, and designer babies have been (sometimes controversially) referred to as eugenic.

Eugenicists advocate specific policies that (if successful) would lead to a perceived improvement of the human gene pool. Since defining what improvements are desired or beneficial is, by many, perceived as a cultural choice rather than a matter that can be determined objectively (by empirical, scientific inquiry), eugenics has often been deemed a pseudoscience. The most disputed aspect of eugenics has been the definition of "improvement" of the human gene pool, such as what comprises a beneficial characteristic and what makes a defect. This aspect of eugenics has historically been tainted with scientific racism.

Early eugenicists were mostly concerned with perceived intelligence factors that often correlated strongly with social class. Many eugenicists took inspiration from the selective breeding of animals (where purebreds are valued) as their analogy for improving human society. The mixing of races (or miscegenation) was usually considered as something to be avoided in the name of racial purity. At the time this concept appeared to have some scientific support, and it remained a contentious issue until the advanced development of genetics led to a scientific consensus that the division of the human species into unequal races is unjustifiable. Some see this as an ideological consensus, since equality, just like inequality, is a cultural choice rather than a matter that can be determined objectively.

Eugenics has also been concerned with the elimination of hereditary diseases such as haemophilia and Huntington's disease. However, there are several problems with labeling certain factors as "genetic defects." In many cases there is no scientific consensus on what a "genetic defect" is. It is often argued that this is more a matter of social or individual choice. What appears to be a "genetic defect" in one context or environment may not be so in another. This can be the case for genes with a heterozygote advantage, such as sickle cell anemia or Tay-Sachs disease, which in their heterozygote form may offer an advantage against, respectively, malaria and tuberculosis. Many people can succeed in life with disabilities. Many of the conditions early eugenicists identified as inheritable (pellagra is one such example) are currently considered to be at least partially, if not wholly, attributed to environmental conditions. Similar concerns have been raised when a prenatal diagnosis of a congenital disorder leads to abortion.

Eugenic policies have been conceptually divided into two categories: Positive eugenics, which encourage a designated "most fit" to reproduce more often; and negative eugenics, which discourage or prevent a designated "less fit" from reproducing. Negative eugenics need not be coercive. A state might offer financial rewards to certain people who submit to sterilization, although some critics might reply that this incentive along with social pressure could be perceived as coercion. Positive eugenics can also be coercive. Abortion by "fit" women was illegal in Nazi Germany.

During the twentieth century, many countries enacted various eugenics policies and programs, including:

Most of these policies were later regarded as coercive, restrictive, or genocidal, and now few jurisdictions implement policies that are explicitly labeled as eugenic or unequivocally eugenic in substance (however labeled). However, some private organizations assist people in genetic counseling, and reprogenetics may be considered as a form of non-state-enforced "liberal" eugenics.

Selective breeding was suggested at least as far back as Plato, who believed human reproduction should be controlled by government. He recorded these ideals in The Republic: "The best men must have intercourse with the best women as frequently as possible, and the opposite is true of the very inferior." Plato proposed that the process be concealed from the public via a form of lottery. Other ancient examples include the polis of Sparta's purported practice of infanticide. However, they would leave all babies outside for a length of time, and the survivors were considered stronger, while many "weaker" babies perished.[1]

During the 1860s and 1870s, Sir Francis Galton systematized his ideas and practices according to new knowledge about the evolution of humans and animals provided by the theory of his cousin Charles Darwin. After reading Darwin's Origin of Species, Galton noticed an interpretation of Darwin's work whereby the mechanisms of natural selection were potentially thwarted by human civilization. He reasoned that, since many human societies sought to protect the underprivileged and weak, those societies were at odds with the natural selection responsible for extinction of the weakest. Only by changing these social policies, Galton thought, could society be saved from a "reversion towards mediocrity," a phrase that he first coined in statistics and which later changed to the now common "regression towards the mean."[2]

According to Galton, society already encouraged dysgenic conditions, claiming that the less intelligent were out-reproducing the more intelligent. Galton did not propose any selection methods; rather, he hoped that a solution would be found if social mores changed in a way that encouraged people to see the importance of breeding.

Galton first used the word eugenic in his 1883 Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development, a book in which he meant "to touch on various topics more or less connected with that of the cultivation of race, or, as we might call it, with 'eugenic' questions." He included a footnote to the word "eugenic" which read:

That is, with questions bearing on what is termed in Greek, eugenes namely, good in stock, hereditarily endowed with noble qualities. This, and the allied words, eugeneia, etc., are equally applicable to men, brutes, and plants. We greatly want a brief word to express the science of improving stock, which is by no means confined to questions of judicious mating, but which, especially in the case of man, takes cognisance of all influences that tend in however remote a degree to give to the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had. The word eugenics would sufficiently express the idea; it is at least a neater word and a more generalized one than viriculture which I once ventured to use.[3]

Eugenics differed from what would later be known as Social Darwinism. This school of thought was developed independently of Darwin by such writers as Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner. Social Darwinism includes a range of political ideologies which are held to be compatible with the concept that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution of biological traits in a population by natural selection can also be applied to competition between human societies or groups within a society. It is based on ideas of the "survival of the fittest" (a term coined by Herbert Spencer) to human society, saying that those humans with superior genes would be better placed to succeed in society, as evidenced by wealth and status. Social Darwinism, like eugenics, fell out of favor as it become increasingly associated with racism. While both claimed intelligence was hereditary, eugenics asserted that new policies were needed to actively change the status quo towards a more "eugenic" state, while the Social Darwinists argued society itself would naturally "check" the problem of "dysgenics" if no welfare policies were in place (for example, the poor might reproduce more but would have higher mortality rates).

The United States was home to a large eugenics movement in the 1890s. Beginning with Connecticut, in 1896, many states enacted marriage laws with eugenic criteria, prohibiting anyone who was "epileptic, imbecile, or feeble-minded" from marrying. In 1898, Charles B. Davenport, a prominent American biologist, began as director of a biological research station based in Cold Spring Harbor, where he experimented with evolution in plants and animals. In 1904, Davenport received funds from the Carnegie Institution to found the Station for Experimental Evolution. The Eugenics Record Office opened in 1910, while Davenport and Harry H. Laughlin began to promote eugenics.[4]

Though eugenics is today often associated with racism, it was not always so; both W.E.B. DuBois and Marcus Garvey supported eugenics or ideas resembling eugenics as a way to reduce African American suffering and improve their stature.[5] Many legal methods of eugenics include state laws against miscegenation or prohibitions of interracial marriage. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned those state laws in 1967, and declared anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional.

During the twentieth century, researchers became interested in the idea that mental illness could run in families and conducted a number of studies to document the heritability of such illnesses as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and clinical depression. Their findings were used by the eugenics movement as proof for its cause. State laws were written in the late 1800s and early 1900s to prohibit marriage and force sterilization of the mentally ill in order to prevent the "passing on" of mental illness to the next generation. These laws were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1927, and were not abolished until the mid-twentieth century. By 1945, over 45,000 mentally ill individuals in the United States had been forcibly sterilized.

With the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, eugenicists for the first time played a central role in the Congressional debate as expert advisers on the threat of "inferior stock" from eastern and southern Europe. This reduced the number of immigrants from abroad to 15 percent of previous years, to control the number of "unfit" individuals entering the country. The new act strengthened existing laws prohibiting race mixing in an attempt to maintain the gene pool.[6] Eugenic considerations also lay behind the adoption of incest laws in much of the U.S. and were used to justify many antimiscegenation laws.[7]

Some states sterilized "imbeciles" for much of the twentieth century. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 1927 Buck v. Bell case that the state of Virginia could sterilize those it thought unfit. The most significant era of eugenic sterilization was between 1907 and 1963, when over 64,000 individuals were forcibly sterilized under eugenic legislation in the United States.[8] A favorable report on the results of sterilization in California, by far the state with the most sterilizations, was published in book form by the biologist Paul Popenoe and was widely cited by the Nazi government as evidence that wide-reaching sterilization programs were feasible and humane. When Nazi administrators went on trial for war crimes in Nuremberg after World War II, they justified the mass sterilizations (over 450,000 in less than a decade) by citing the United States as their inspiration.[9]

Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler was infamous for eugenics programs which attempted to maintain a "pure" German race through a series of programs that ran under the banner of "racial hygiene." Among other activities, the Nazis performed extensive experimentation on live human beings to test their genetic theories, ranging from simple measurement of physical characteristics to the horrific experiments carried out by Josef Mengele for Otmar von Verschuer on twins in the concentration camps. During the 1930s and 1940s, the Nazi regime forcibly sterilized hundreds of thousands of people whom they viewed as mentally and physically "unfit," an estimated 400,000 between 1934 and 1937. The scale of the Nazi program prompted American eugenics advocates to seek an expansion of their program, with one complaining that "the Germans are beating us at our own game."[10] The Nazis went further, however, killing tens of thousands of the institutionalized disabled through compulsory "euthanasia" programs.[11]

They also implemented a number of "positive" eugenics policies, giving awards to "Aryan" women who had large numbers of children and encouraged a service in which "racially pure" single women were impregnated by SS officers (Lebensborn). Many of their concerns for eugenics and racial hygiene were also explicitly present in their systematic killing of millions of "undesirable" people including Jews, gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals during the Holocaust (much of the killing equipment and methods employed in the death camps were first developed in the euthanasia program). The scope and coercion involved in the German eugenics programs along with a strong use of the rhetoric of eugenics and so-called "racial science" throughout the regime created an indelible cultural association between eugenics and the Third Reich in the postwar years.[12]

After the experience of Nazi Germany, many ideas about "racial hygiene" and "unfit" members of society were publicly renounced by politicians and members of the scientific community. The Nuremberg Trials against former Nazi leaders revealed to the world many of the regime's genocidal practices and resulted in formalized policies of medical ethics and the 1950 UNESCO statement on race. Many scientific societies released their own similar "race statements" over the years, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, developed in response to abuses during the Second World War, was adopted by the United Nations in 1948, and affirmed, "Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family."[13] In continuation, the 1978 UNESCO declaration on race and racial prejudice states that the fundamental equality of all human beings is the ideal toward which ethics and science should converge.[14]

In reaction to Nazi abuses, eugenics became almost universally reviled in many of the nations where it had once been popular (however, some eugenics programs, including sterilization, continued quietly for decades). Many pre-war eugenicists engaged in what they later labeled "crypto-eugenics," purposefully taking their eugenic beliefs "underground" and becoming respected anthropologists, biologists, and geneticists in the postwar world (including Robert Yerkes in the U.S. and Otmar von Verschuer in Germany). Californian eugenicist Paul Popenoe founded marriage counseling during the 1950s, a career change which grew from his eugenic interests in promoting "healthy marriages" between "fit" couples.[15]

High school and college textbooks from the 1920s through the 1940s often had chapters touting the scientific progress to be had from applying eugenic principles to the population. Many early scientific journals devoted to heredity in general were run by eugenicists and featured eugenics articles alongside studies of heredity in nonhuman organisms. After eugenics fell out of scientific favor, most references to eugenics were removed from textbooks and subsequent editions of relevant journals. Even the names of some journals changed to reflect new attitudes. For example, Eugenics Quarterly became Social Biology in 1969 (the journal still exists today, though it looks little like its predecessor). Notable members of the American Eugenics Society (192294) during the second half of the twentieth century included Joseph Fletcher, originator of Situational ethics; Dr. Clarence Gamble of the Procter & Gamble fortune; and Garrett Hardin, a population control advocate and author of The Tragedy of the Commons.

Despite the changed postwar attitude towards eugenics in the U.S. and some European countries, a few nations, notably, Canada and Sweden, maintained large-scale eugenics programs, including forced sterilization of mentally handicapped individuals, as well as other practices, until the 1970s. In the United States, sterilizations capped off in the 1960s, though the eugenics movement had largely lost most popular and political support by the end of the 1930s.[16]

Despite the ill repute of eugenics, there still exists a debate regarding its use or abuse.

While the science of genetics has increasingly provided means by which certain characteristics and conditions can be identified and understood, given the complexity of human genetics, culture, and psychology, there is at this point no agreed objective means of determining which traits might be ultimately desirable or undesirable. Eugenic manipulations that reduce the propensity for criminality and violence, for example, might result in the population being enslaved by an outside aggressor it can no longer defend itself against. On the other hand, genetic diseases like hemochromatosis can increase susceptibility to illness, cause physical deformities, and other dysfunctions. Eugenic measures against many of these diseases are already being undertaken in societies around the world, while measures against traits that affect more subtle, poorly understood traits, such as criminality, are relegated to the realm of speculation and science fiction. The effects of diseases are essentially wholly negative, and societies everywhere seek to reduce their impact by various means, some of which are eugenic in all but name.

In modern bioethics literature, the history of eugenics presents many moral and ethical questions. Commentators have suggested the new "eugenics" will come from reproductive technologies that will allow parents to create so-called "designer babies" (what the biologist Lee M. Silver prominently called "reprogenetics"). It has been argued that this "non-coercive" form of biological "improvement" will be predominantly motivated by individual competitiveness and the desire to create "the best opportunities" for children, rather than an urge to improve the species as a whole, which characterized the early twentieth century forms of eugenics. Because of this non-coercive nature, lack of involvement by the state, and a difference in goals, some commentators have questioned whether such activities are eugenics or something else altogether.

Some disability activists argue that, although their impairments may cause them pain or discomfort, what really disables them as members of society is a sociocultural system that does not recognize their right to genuinely equal treatment. They express skepticism that any form of eugenics could be to the benefit of the disabled considering their treatment by historical eugenic campaigns.

James D. Watson, the first director of the Human Genome Project, initiated the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications Program (ELSI) which has funded a number of studies into the implications of human genetic engineering (along with a prominent website on the history of eugenics), because:

In putting ethics so soon into the genome agenda, I was responding to my own personal fear that all too soon critics of the Genome Project would point out that I was a representative of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory that once housed the controversial Eugenics Record Office. My not forming a genome ethics program quickly might be falsely used as evidence that I was a closet eugenicist, having as my real long-term purpose the unambiguous identification of genes that lead to social and occupational stratification as well as genes justifying racial discrimination.[17]

Distinguished geneticists including Nobel Prize-winners John Sulston ("I don't think one ought to bring a clearly disabled child into the world")[18] and Watson ("Once you have a way in which you can improve our children, no one can stop it")[19] support genetic screening. Which ideas should be described as "eugenic" are still controversial in both public and scholarly spheres. Some observers such as Philip Kitcher have described the use of genetic screening by parents as making possible a form of "voluntary" eugenics.[20]

Some modern subcultures advocate different forms of eugenics assisted by human cloning and human genetic engineering, sometimes even as part of a new cult (see Ralism, Cosmotheism, or Prometheism). These groups also talk of "neo-eugenics." "conscious evolution," or "genetic freedom."

Behavioral traits often identified as potential targets for modification through human genetic engineering include intelligence, clinical depression, schizophrenia, alcoholism, sexual behavior (and orientation), and criminality.

In a 2005 United Kingdom court case, the Crown v. James Edward Whittaker-Williams, arguably set a precedent of banning sexual contact between people with "learning difficulties." The accused, a man suffering learning disabilities, was jailed for kissing and hugging a woman with learning disabilities. This was done under the 2003 Sexual Offences Act, which redefines kissing and cuddling as sexual and states that those with learning difficulties are unable to give consent regardless of whether or not the act involved coercion. Opponents of the act have attacked it as bringing in eugenics through the backdoor under the guise of a requirement of "consent."[21]

A common criticism of eugenics is that it inevitably leads to measures that are unethical. In the hypothetical scenario where it's scientifically proven that one racial minority group making up 5 percent of the population is on average less intelligent than the majority racial group it's more likely that the minority racial group will be submitted to a eugenics program, opposed to the five percent least intelligent members of the population as a whole. For example, Nazi Germany's eugenic program within the German population resulted in protests and unrest, while the persecution of the Jews was met with silence.

Steven Pinker has stated that it is "a conventional wisdom among left-leaning academics that genes imply genocide." He has responded to this "conventional wisdom" by comparing the history of Marxism, which had the opposite position on genes to that of Nazism:

But the twentieth century suffered "two" ideologies that led to genocides. The other one, Marxism, had no use for race, didn't believe in genes and denied that human nature was a meaningful concept. Clearly, it's not an emphasis on genes or evolution that is dangerous. It's the desire to remake humanity by coercive means (eugenics or social engineering) and the belief that humanity advances through a struggle in which superior groups (race or classes) triumph over inferior ones.[22]

Richard Lynn has argued that any social philosophy is capable of ethical misuse. Though Christian principles have aided in the abolition of slavery and the establishment of welfare programs, he notes that the Christian church has also burned many dissidents at the stake and waged wars against nonbelievers in which Christian crusaders slaughtered large numbers of women and children. Lynn argued the appropriate response is to condemn these killings, but believing that Christianity "inevitably leads to the extermination of those who do not accept its doctrines" is unwarranted.[23]

Eugenic policies could also lead to loss of genetic diversity, in which case a culturally accepted improvement of the gene pool may, but would not necessarily, result in biological disaster due to increased vulnerability to disease, reduced ability to adapt to environmental change and other factors both known and unknown. This kind of argument from the precautionary principle is itself widely criticized. A long-term eugenics plan is likely to lead to a scenario similar to this because the elimination of traits deemed undesirable would reduce genetic diversity by definition.

Related to a decrease in diversity is the danger of non-recognition. That is, if everyone were beautiful and attractive, then it would be more difficult to distinguish between different individuals, due to the wide variety of ugly traits and otherwise non-attractive traits and combinations thereof that people use to recognize each other.

The possible elimination of the autism genotype is a significant political issue in the autism rights movement, which claims autism is a form of neurodiversity. Many advocates of Down Syndrome rights also consider Down Syndrome (Trisomy-21) a form of neurodiversity, though males with Down Syndrome are generally infertile.

In some instances, efforts to eradicate certain single-gene mutations would be nearly impossible. In the event the condition in question was a heterozygous recessive trait, the problem is that by eliminating the visible unwanted trait, there are still as many genes for the condition left in the gene pool as were eliminated according to the Hardy-Weinberg principle, which states that a population's genetics are defined as pp+2pq+qq at equilibrium. With genetic testing it may be possible to detect all of the heterozygous recessive traits, but only at great cost with the current technology. Under normal circumstances it is only possible to eliminate a dominant allele from the gene pool. Recessive traits can be severely reduced, but never eliminated unless the complete genetic makeup of all members of the pool was known, as aforementioned. As only very few undesirable traits, such as Huntington's disease, are dominant, the practical value for "eliminating" traits is quite low.

All links retrieved August 12, 2017.

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US Government for Kids: Fifth Amendment – Ducksters

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From the Constitution

Here is the text of the Fifth Amendment from the Constitution:

"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

The Grand Jury

The first part of the amendment talks about a grand jury. The grand jury is a jury that decides if a trial should be held. They look at all the evidence and then decide if a person should be charged with a crime. If they decide there is enough evidence, then they will issue an indictment and a regular trial will be held. The grand jury is only used in cases where the punishment for the crime is severe such as life in prison or the death sentence.

Double Jeopardy

The next section protects the person from being tried for the same crime more than once. This is called double jeopardy.

Perhaps the most famous part of the Fifth Amendment is the right to not testify against yourself during a trial. This is often called "taking the fifth." The government must present witnesses and evidence to prove the crime and cannot force someone to testify against themselves.

You've probably heard the police on TV say something like "you have the right to remain silent, anything you say or do may be used against you in a court of law" when they arrest someone. This statement is called the Miranda Warning. Police are required to tell people this before they question them as part of the Fifth Amendment. It reminds citizens that they don't have to testify against themselves.

The amendment also states that a person has a right to "due process of law." Due process means that any citizen charged with a crime will be given a fair trial that follows a defined procedure through the judicial system.

The last section says that the government can't take a person's private property without paying them a fair price for it. This is called eminent domain. The government can take your property for public use, but they have to pay you a fair price for it.

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8×8 Acquires Jitsi Video Communications Technology From …

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Acquisition of open-source video communications technology and engineering team reinforces 8x8s technology stack and unique ability to deliver best-in-class meetings experience

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- 8x8, Inc. (NYSE:EGHT), a leading cloud provider of voice, video, collaboration and contact center solutions for over one million users worldwide, today announced that it has acquired the Jitsi open source video communications technology and its highly skilled team of open source video technology experts. The Jitsi technology further extends 8x8s cloud technology platform and adds to the companys video collaboration capabilities. 8x8 acquired Jitsis technology and engineering team from leading enterprise software company Atlassian.

The best video communications solutions are so intuitive and reliable that they help employees conduct shorter, more productive meetings. 8x8 has already developed a world-class meetings solution for enterprises, and were focused on maintaining leadership in delivering reliable, crystal-clear video and audio conferencing quality across mobile and desktop applications, said Dejan Deklich, Chief Product Officer at 8x8. Incorporating Jitsis open-source technology into our video communications technology platform, and having Jitsis talented engineering team play a role in leading our development of dedicated conferencing applications and WebRTC, will open new paths for our customers and further enhance our meetings solution.

8x8 is acquiring Jitsis set of modular open-source projects that allow businesses to easily build and deploy secure video communication solutions. At the heart of Jitsi is the Jitsi Videobridge conferencing server and Jitsi Meet conferencing and collaboration application. Jitsi is designed to run thousands of video streams from a single server, and it's fully open source with a community of developers supporting the project as well as 100 percent standards compliant using technologies like WebRTC. Jitsis video communications technology will remain open source, ensuring that Jitsi stays in the forefront of Video Conferencing industry developments, including new application use cases.

Some of the most innovative WebRTC products and companies use Jitsi to support millions of minutes of daily usage as part of their meetings, messaging and collaboration product ecosystems. The open source community has played a critical role in advancing Jitsis projects by validating its use in a diverse set of environments and complementing the core teams development. As part of this acquisition, 8x8 is committed to continuing to support the growing developer community, and we are excited to engage even more, commented Bryan Martin, Chairman and Chief Technology Officer at 8x8.

Jitsis video communication solutions are intended to be integrated into 8x8 Meetings, which already enables thousands of businesses worldwide to collaborate from anywhere on any device with integrated video and audio conferencing. 8x8 Meetings is a key element of 8x8 X Series, which helps businesses transform their customer and employee experience with one system of engagement across voice, video, collaboration and contact center, and one system of intelligence on a single cloud platform. With 8x8 X Series, businesses communicate faster and smarter to exceed customer expectations.

We are excited that 8x8 will continue to support the extensive Jitsi community and help to accelerate our development, said Emil Ivov, Jitsi Founder and Project Lead. I have no doubt that Jitsis advanced capabilities combined with 8x8s comprehensive X Series platform will create a dominant video communications solution that is intuitive and game-changing for enterprises.

The financial terms of the acquisition are not disclosed.

8x8 was recently named a Leader in the 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant Report for Unified Communications as a Service, Worldwide. This marks the seventh consecutive year that 8x8 has been recognized as a Leader. To download a copy of the report, visit https://www.8x8.com/resources/white-papers/gartner-magic-quadrant

[1] Gartner "Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service, Worldwide" by Daniel O'Connell, Megan Fernandez, Rafael Benitez, Bjarne Munch, Christopher Trueman, Mihai Nguyen, October 10, 2018.

Gartner Disclaimer

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About 8x8, Inc.

8x8, Inc. (NYSE:EGHT) cloud solutions help businesses transform their customer and employee experience. With one system of engagement for voice, video, collaboration and contact center and one system of intelligence on one technology platform, businesses can now communicate faster and smarter to exceed the speed of customer expectations. For additional information, visit http://www.8x8.com, or follow 8x8 on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

8x8 and 8x8 X Series are trademarks of 8x8, Inc.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181029005192/en/

8x8, Inc. Media: Alyssa Sachs, 1-669-245-4320alyssa.sachs@8x8.comorInvestor Relations:Victoria Hyde-Dunn, 1-669-333-5200victoria.hyde-dunn@8x8.com

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8x8 Acquires Jitsi Video Communications Technology From ...

Latest users topics – Jitsi Community Forum – developers & users

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Close conference calls 1 April 15, 2019 Problem with dependences while installation 1 April 13, 2019 Telephone connection to meet.jit.si is garbled 8 April 3, 2019 Frame Rate dropped, latency increased 5 April 9, 2019 Availability of audio only (no vdeo screen display) for click to call functionality 3 April 5, 2019 Jitsi Meet Si - audio issues when participants join 5 April 3, 2019 Ice4j - how do I get RemoteCandidates? 3 April 2, 2019 Conference leftover 7 March 8, 2019 Audio not working in a Screen Sharing Scenario 14 April 2, 2019 Meetjitsi audio and vidoe which formats? 5 March 28, 2019 Meet.jit.si room moderator 3 March 27, 2019 Meet.jis.si and Chromebox 1 March 27, 2019 jitsi-meet with ipfire 4 March 27, 2019 Bug with mic on Nokia N8 android 9.1 2 March 25, 2019 Bug with riot widget. Intent url scheme 1 March 25, 2019 [jitsi-dev] fresh install of iOS app and black screen 11 July 6, 2017 Jitsi can't verify the identity of the server when connecting to [sip2sip.info]. 1 March 22, 2019 Jitsi can't verify the identity of the server when connecting to [sip2sip.info]. 1 March 22, 2019 Direct audio and video call questions 2 March 20, 2019 Some people can't see shared YouTube videos; unmuting / muting mic during YT video -> problem with audio 3 March 18, 2019 Can't unmute on desktop 2 March 17, 2019 Noob help please 3 March 14, 2019 Number of concurrent users 5 March 13, 2019 Jitsi Mobile (Secured with Valid Cert) 14 February 28, 2019 Using '#' sign 5 February 26, 2019 Tracking and analytics on meet.jit.si 1 February 6, 2019 Jitsi Meet 2 February 23, 2019 How to enable a cisco codec sx-80? 2 February 21, 2019 Jitsi Meet 1 February 21, 2019 [jitsi-users] microphone access on Windows 10 5 January 4, 2018

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What is Posthumanism? The Curator

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Perhaps you have had a nightmare in which you fell through the bottom of your known universe into a vortex of mutated children, talking animals, mental illness, freakish art, and clamoring gibberish. There, you were subjected to the gaze of creatures of indeterminate nature and questionable intelligence. Your position as the subject of your own dream was called into question while voices outside your sight commented upon your tenuous identity. When you woke, you were relieved to find that it was only a dream-version of the book you were reading when you fell asleep. Maybe that book was Alice in Wonderland; maybe it was What is Posthumanism?

Now, it is not quite fair to compare Cary Wolfes sober, thoughtful scholarship with either a nightmare or a work of (childrens?) fantasy. It is a profound, thoroughly researched study with far-reaching consequences for public policy, bioethics, education, and the arts. However, it does present a rather odd dramatis personae, including a glow-in-the-dark rabbit, a woman who feels most at ease in a cattle chute, an artist of Jewish descent who implants an ID-chip in his own leg, researchers who count the words in a dogs vocabulary, and horses who exhibit more intelligence than the average human toddler. The settings, too, are often wildly different from those you might expect in an academic work: a manufactured cloud hovering over a lake in Switzerland, a tree park in Canada where landscape and architecture blend and redefine one another, recording studios, photographic laboratories, slaughterhouses, and (most of all) the putative minds of animals and the deconstructed minds of the very humans whose ontological existence it seeks to problematize.

But that is another exaggeration. Wolfes goal is not to undermine the existence or value of human beings. Rather, it is to call into question the universal ethics, assumed rationality, and species-specific self-determination of humanism. That is a mouthful.

Indeed, Wolfes book is a mouthful, and a headful. It is in fact a book by a specialist, for specialists. While Wolfe is an English professor (at Rice University) and identifies himself with literary and cultural studies (p. 100), this is first of all a work of philosophy. Its ideal audience is very small, consisting of English and Philosophy professors who came of age in the 70s, earned their Ph.D.s during the hey-day of Derridean Deconstruction, and have spent the intervening decades keeping up with trends in systems theory, cultural studies, science, bioethics, and information technology. It is rigorous and demanding, especially in its first five chapters, which lay the conceptual groundwork for the specific analyses of the second section.

In these first five chapters, Wolfe describes his perspective and purpose by interaction with many other great minds and influential texts, primarily those of Jacques Derrida. Here, the fundamental meaning and purpose of Posthumanism becomes clear. Wolfe wants his readers to rethink their relationship to animals (what he calls nonhuman animals). His goal is a new and more inclusive form of ethical pluralism (137). That sound innocuous enough, but he is not talking about racial, religious, or other human pluralisms. He is postulating a pluralism that transcends species. In other words, he is promoting the ethical treatment of animals based on a fundamental re-evaluation of what it means to be human, to be able to speak, and even to think. He does this by discussing studies that reveal the language capacities of animals (a dog apparently has about a 200-word vocabulary and can learn new words as quickly as a human three-year-old; pp. 32-33), by recounting the story of a woman whose Aspergers syndrome enables her to empathize with cows and sense the world the way they do (chapter five), and by pointing out the ways in which we value disabled people who do not possess the standard traits that (supposedly) make us human.

But Wolfe goes further than a simple suggestion that we should be nice to animals (and the unspoken plug for universal veganism). He is proposing a radical disruption of liberal humanism and a rigorous interrogation of what he sees as an arrogant complacency about our species. He respects any variety of philosophy that challenges anthropocentrism and speciesism (62)anthropocentrism, of course, means viewing the world as if homo sapiens is the center (or, more accurately, viewing the world from the position of occupying that center) and specisism is the term he uses to replace racism. We used to feel and enact prejudice against people of different ethnic backgrounds, he suggests, but we now know that is morally wrong. The time has come, then, to realize that we are feeling and enacting prejudice against people of different species.

Although Wolfe suggests many epistemological and empirical reasons for rethinking the personhood of animals, he comes to the conclusion that our relationship with them is based on our shared embodiment. Humans and animals have a shared finitude (139); we can both feel pain, suffer, and die. On the basis of our mutual mortality, then, we should have an emphasis on compassion (77). He is not out to denigrate his own species far from it. Indeed, he goes out of his way to spend time discussing infants (who have not yet developed rationality and language), people with disabilities (especially those that prevent them from participating in fully rational thought and/or communication), and the elderly (who may lose some of those rational capacities, especially if racked by such ailments as Alzheimers). Indeed, he claims: It is not by denying the special status of human being[s] but by intensifying it that we can come to think of nonhuman animalsasfellow creatures (77).

This joint focus on the special status of all human beings along with the other living creatures roaming (or swimming, flying, crawling, slithering) the globe has far-reaching consequences for public policy, especially bioethics. Wolfe says that, currently, bioethics is riddled with prejudices: Of these prejudices, none is more symptomatic of the current state of bioethics than prejudice based on species difference, and an incapacity to address the ethical issues raised by dramatic changes over the past thirty years in our knowledge about the lives, communication, emotions, and consciousnesses of a number of nonhuman species (56). One of the goals of his book, then, is to reiterate that knowledge and promote awareness of those issues that he sees as ethical.

If you read Wolfes book, or even parts of it, you will suddenly see posthumanism everywhere. You can trace its influence in the enormously fast-growing pet industry. From the blog Pawsible Marketing: As in recent and past years, there is no doubt that pets continue to become more and more a part of the family, even to the extent of becoming, in some cases, humanized.

You will see it in bring-your-pet-to-work or bring-your-pet-to-school days. You might think it is responsible for the recent introduction of a piece of legislation called H.R. 3501, The Humanity and Pets Partnered Through the Years, know as the HAPPY Act, which proposes a tax deduction for pet owners. You will find it in childrens books about talking animals. You will see it on Animal Planet, the Discovery Channel, and a PBS series entitled Inside the Animal Mind. You will find it in films, such as the brand-new documentary The Cove, which records the brutal slaughter of dolphins for food. And you will see it in works of art.

Following this reasoning, section two of Wolfes book (chapters six through eleven) veers off from the strictly philosophical approach into the more traditional terrain of cultural studies: he examines specific works of art in light of the philosophical basis that is now firmly in place. Interestingly, he does not choose all works of art that depict animals, nor those that displace humans. He begins with works that depict animals (Sue Coes paintings of slaughterhouses) and that use animals (Eduardo Kacs creation of genetically engineered animals that glow in the dark), but then moves on to discuss film, architecture, poetry, and music. In each of these examinations, he works to destabilize traditional binaries such as nature/culture, landscape/architecture, viewer/viewed, presence/absence, organic/inorganic, natural/artificial, and, really, human/nonhuman. This second section, then, is a subtle application of the theory of posthumanism itself to the arts, [our] environment, and [our] identity.

What is perhaps most important about What is Posthumanism remains latent in the text. This is its current and (especially) future prevalence. By tracing the history of posthumanism back through systems theory into deconstruction, Wolfe implies a future trajectory, too. I would venture to suggest that he believes posthumanism is the worldview that will soon come to dominate Western thought. And this is important for academics specifically and thinkers in general to realize.

Whether you agree with Cary Wolfe or not, it would be wise to understand posthumanism. It appears that your only choice will be either to align yourself with this perspective or to fight against it. If you agree, you should know with what. If you fight, you should know against what.

What, then, is the central thesis of posthumanism? Wolfes entire project might be summed up in his bold claim that, thanks to his own work and that of the theorists and artists he discusses, the human occupies a new place in the universe, a universe now populated by what I am prepared to call nonhuman subjects (47)such subjects as talking rabbits, six-inch people, and mythical monsters?

Well, maybe not the mythical monsters.

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Posthumanism by Pramod K. Nayar – Goodreads

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This timely book examines the rise of posthumanism as both a material condition and a developing philosophical-ethical project in the age of cloning, gene engineering, organ transplants and implants.

Nayar first maps the political and philosophical critiques of traditional humanism, revealing its exclusionary and 'speciesist' politics that position the human as a distinct

Nayar first maps the political and philosophical critiques of traditional humanism, revealing its exclusionary and 'speciesist' politics that position the human as a distinctive and dominant life form. He then contextualizes the posthumanist vision which, drawing upon biomedical, engineering and techno-scientific studies, concludes that human consciousness is shaped by its co-evolution with other life forms, and our human form inescapably influenced by tools and technology. Finally the book explores posthumanism's roots in disability studies, animal studies and bioethics to underscore the constructed nature of 'normalcy' in bodies, and the singularity of species and life itself.

As this book powerfully demonstrates, posthumanism marks a radical reassessment of the human as constituted by symbiosis, assimilation, difference and dependence upon and with other species. Mapping the terrain of these far-reaching debates, Posthumanism will be an invaluable companion to students of cultural studies and modern and contemporary literature.

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Posthumanism by Pramod K. Nayar - Goodreads

New Materialism(s) Critical Posthumanism Network

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Digital Bodies by Megan Archer

New materialism is a term coined in the 1990s to describe a theoretical turn away from the persistent dualisms in modern and humanist traditions whose influences are present in much of cultural theory.[1] The discourses catalogued under new materialism(s) share an agenda with posthumanism in that they seek a repositioning of the human among nonhuman actants, they question the stability of an individuated, liberal subject, and they advocate a critical materialist attention to the global, distributed influences of late capitalism and climate change. The turn to matter as a necessary critical engagement comes from a collective discontent with the linguistic turn and social constructionism to adequately address material realities for humans and nonhumans alike. While new materialists recognise social constructionisms insistence on political relationalities of power and the effect of these dynamics on subject formation, some nevertheless maintain that the idea of discursive construction perpetuates Western, liberal subjectivities and holds on to stubborn humanist binaries. The new materialist turn might indeed be considered a return to matter in the context of historical materialisms concern for embodied circumstance and subject formation. However, as Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman point out in their anthology, Material Feminisms, material theorists do not simply abandon the work of the linguistic turn, but rather build on its foundation, underscoring the co-constitution of material and discursive productions of reality.[2] Feminist new materialisms, for instance, do not discount social constructions of gender and their intersections with class and race. They do, however, also consider how material bodies, spaces, and conditions contribute to the formation of subjectivity.

Theory marked as new materialism collectively works against inert, extra-discursive, and non-generative conceptions of matter, but the plurality of methodological approaches within the field is generous. With thinkers like Karen Barad, Rosi Braidotti, Elizabeth Grosz, and Jane Bennett as several of the fields leading scholars, the new materialisms draw on combinations of feminist theory, science studies, environmental studies, queer theory, philosophy, cultural theory, biopolitics, critical race theory, and other approaches.

When the field was nascent, Judith Butlers seminal feminist work on sex and gender was a foundational influence on early new materialist conversations. Butlers argument against a biologically material referent of gender completely erased the nature/culture divide between sex and gender.[3] Feminist science and new materialist reactions to this kind of radical constructivism emphasised that physical bodies moving through the world, and the differences in those bodies, also inform experience. Feminist theorists began to emphasise the material of the body, considering differences among bodies, and to think through the intersections of material and social constructions. Therefore, a discursive analysis of gender required a non-essentialising approach to the matter of the body, itself. Scholars responding to and synthesising the nature/culture question included Elizabeth Wilson, Rosi Braidotti, and Anne Fausto-Sterling.[4] Fausto-Sterlings Sexing the Body takes on the literal co-construction of bodies and social environments, arguing that bodily differences are evident beneath the flesh as human cells react to the signals of their environments.[5] Identity and difference are therefore products of complex interactions between matters inside and outside of bodies, and between the social and environmental conditions in which bodies exist.

The variety of new materialist approaches continues to proliferate as the field develops, but Diana Coole and Samantha Frost suggest grouping the major trends in new materialist scholarship into three identifiable camps in their 2010 edited collection, New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics.[6] The essays are organised into the categories Ontology/Agency, Bioethics/Biopolitics, and Critical Materialism. Feminist new materialists Rosi Braidotti and Karen Barad would both fit into Coole and Frosts Ontology/Agency category, since both theorists examine how matter is agential in its emergence. Braidotti draws on and productively revises ideas from her background in post-structuralist theory. Rather than Giorgio Agambens bare life (zoe), her re-reading of Spinoza and Deleuze and Guattari leads her to formulate a zoe that is the potentiality of all matter to form transversal connections or networks with all other matter.[7] In Homo Sacer (1995), Agamben argues that the Western biopolitical distinction between political and nonpolitical life (what he calls bios and zoe, respectively) can be traced to antiquity. It is the connection of sovereign power to biopower that distinguishes for Agamben a crucial cut between beings with no legal status, humans included, and beings with the privilege of legal rights.[8] Braidotti revises critical vitalism and biopolitics alike to argue that posthuman subjectivity is a zoe with an immanent potential for self-assembly along transversals, or the tendency of all living matter to form associations with other material systems. Posthuman subjectivity therefore raises important ethical questions, since it is neither bound to the individual subject, nor singularly human.

Just as Braidottis neo-vitalist theory of matter requires that we revise our existing ethical framework, Karen Barads agential realism suggests that the physical laws underpinning the reality we experience are, themselves, an ethical matter. Barads theoretical upending of the object/subject divide, or that all entities literally do not precede their intra-actions, comes from her robust background in theoretical particle physics and quantum field theory. Conditions for Barad are always already material-discursive; that is, discourse and matter come into being together, and the apparatus that delimits being is only a condition of possibility. Barad contests a human-centred concept of agency. She instead argues that intra-actions entail the complex co-productions of human and nonhuman matter, time, spaces, and their signification. Therefore, the human does not act on matter, but rather humans and nonhumans are agential actors in the world as it continuously comes into being.[9]

Though the Ontology/Agency grouping of new materialist theory makes meaningful political and ethical interventions, Coole and Frost argue that it is the Bioethics/Biopolitics category that centres on more specific questions of nonhuman social justice and geopolitical sovereign control. Elizabeth Grosz, for example, re-reads Charles Darwin to discuss the biological processes that prepare bodies for social and cultural inscription based on difference.[10]

Lastly, Critical Materialism both emerges from a tradition of Marxist historical materialism and responds to the constructivism and deconstructionist criticism of classical Marxist approaches. The new critical materialism engages the effects of global capitalism in an era of climate crisis and rejects the view that discursive rewriting of subjectivity can radically disrupt the material conditions facing the globalized subject under neoliberal capital. Jason Edwards argues that we will need to remember the materialism of historical materialism in the requisite sense if we are to understand how these problems are the systemic product of the reproduction of modern capitalist societies and the international system of states.[11] Jason Moores Capitalism in the Web of Life has also contributed to recent critical materialist approaches by re-examining capitalism as a global ecological force, extracting surplus value from nature.[12] The critical materialist approach is thus not a revitalisation of classical Marxism, but rather a rereading of its critique of capital in an era of global complexity.

Regardless of discipline, all new materialisms embrace the vitality of matter, particularly as it encompasses the nonhuman as well as the human. Rejection of anthropocentrism aligns new materialisms with posthumanism, but also with speculative realism, a branch of philosophy that in recent years has posited whether questions of vitality, agency, and generative capability are appropriate for human and nonhuman matter alike. Although speculative realism and new materialisms align in their arguments for the dissolution of a human centre, they philosophically diverge in their positions on how we can understand a true ontology, and on matters agential and vital capabilities. The approaches of new materialisms extend the capacities of agential and vital qualities to the nonhuman and the material, while the speculative realist approach questions whether an ontology of matter can realistically consider these concepts in the first place.

While new materialists question the position of human-centred ontology, they often do so with the biopolitical bent of also questioning power structures that mark material bodies as subjects of power. In this way they continue to engage with the projects and political concerns of post-structuralism while extending the reach of these discourses into matters beyond the human and into material conditions beyond the linguistically constructed. Somewhat differently, object-oriented ontology is a speculative realist approach which considers the thing at centre, arguing that no entity has privileged ontological status over another, but rather that all things exist equally. Ian Bogosts Alien Phenomenology argues for thing-centred being, cautioning that positioning our centre around human concern precludes all things perception of the world.[13] Bogost and other object-oriented ontologists encourage us to consider perceiving objects as things, rather than filtering our perception of things through human experience.

Jane Bennett, one of the new materialisms leading thinkers, argues that nonhuman (and particularly nonbiological) matter is imbued with a liveliness that can exhibit distributed agency by forming assemblages of human and nonhuman actors. Bennetts 2010 book Vibrant Matter argues that agency is only distributed and is never the effect of intentionality. Bennetts thing-power exemplifies the ability of objects to manifest a lively kind of agency. She explains in her preface: Thing-power gestures toward the strange ability of ordinary, man-made items to exceed their status as objects and to manifest traces of independence of aliveness, constituting the outside of our own experience.[14] Vibrant Matter also brings to the foreground an extant but more latent history of vibrant or lively matter in Western philosophy. Bennett builds on the ideas of early twentieth-century critical vitalists, as well as the ideas of Deleuze and Guattari, to bring together materiality, affect, and vitalism.

New materialist transgressions of humanist subject/object dualism, ideas of distributed agency, and reconsiderations of traditional notions of life and death are not universally convincing, of course. Slavoj ieks 2014 book, Absolute Recoil: Towards a New Foundation of Dialectical Materialism, offers a critique of this new theoretical turn, arguing that in their attempt to dismantle traditional modern thinking, new materialisms re-inscribe humanist values by merely extending agency, vitality, and social phenomena to nonhuman material.[15] Nevertheless, the variety of interdisciplinary methodologies that form the new materialisms allow them to approach similar ontological questions in different ways, a move which seems promising for a theory placing a high value on increasing contact between disciplines in institutional knowledge production, and the entanglement of matter and ideological constructions.

University of California, Riverside, April 2018

[1] Rick Dolphijn and Iris van der Tuin, Interview with Karen Barad, in New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographies, ed. By Rick Dolphijn and Iris van der Tuin (Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press, 2012), pp. 48-70 (p. 48).

[2] Material Feminisms, ed. by Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2008), pp. 1-19.

[3] Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990).

[4] For an overview see Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman, eds. Material Feminisms (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 2008) and Manuela Rossini, To the Dogs: Companion Speciesism and the New Feminist Materialism, Kritikos 3 (Sept 2006).

[5] Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (New York: Basic Books, 2000).

[6] New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, ed. by Diana Coole and Samantha Frost (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010), pp. 1-43.

[7] Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013).

[8] Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. by Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).

[9] Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007).

[10] Elizabeth Grosz, In the Nick of Time: Politics, Evolution, and the Untimely (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004).

[11] Jason Edwards, The Materialism of Historical Materialism, in New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, ed. by Diana Coole and Samantha Frost (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010), pp. 281-298 (p. 282).

[12] Jason W. Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital (New York: Verso, 2015).

[13] Ian Bogost, Alien Phenomenology, or What Its Like to Be a Thing (Minneapolis: Minnesota Press, 2012).

[14] Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010).

[15] Slavoj iek, Absolute Recoil: Towards a New Foundation of Dialectical Materialism (New York: Verso, 2014).

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New Materialism(s) Critical Posthumanism Network

What is Posthumanism? – Cary Wolfe – Google Books

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What does it mean to think beyond humanism? Is it possible to craft a mode of philosophy, ethics, and interpretation that rejects the classic humanist divisions of self and other, mind and body, society and nature, human and animal, organic and technological? Can a new kind of humanities-posthumanities-respond to the redefinition of humanity's place in the world by both the technological and the biological or "green" continuum in which the "human" is but one life form among many?

Exploring how both critical thought along with cultural practice have reacted to this radical repositioning, Cary Wolfe-one of the founding figures in the field of animal studies and posthumanist theory-ranges across bioethics, cognitive science, animal ethics, gender, and disability to develop a theoretical and philosophical approach responsive to our changing understanding of ourselves and our world. Then, in performing posthumanist readings of such diverse works as Temple Grandin's writings, Wallace Stevens's poetry, Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark, the architecture of Diller+Scofidio, and David Byrne and Brian Eno's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, he shows how this philosophical sensibility can transform art and culture.

For Wolfe, a vibrant, rigorous posthumanism is vital for addressing questions of ethics and justice, language and trans-species communication, social systems and their inclusions and exclusions, and the intellectual aspirations of interdisciplinarity. In What Is Posthumanism? he carefully distinguishes posthumanism from transhumanism (the biotechnological enhancement of human beings) and narrow definitions of the posthuman as the hoped-for transcendence of materiality. In doing so, Wolfe reveals that it is humanism, not the human in all its embodied and prosthetic complexity, that is left behind in posthumanist thought.

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What is Posthumanism? - Cary Wolfe - Google Books

Posthumanism | Transhumanism Wiki | FANDOM powered by Wikia

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This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. WikiProject Philosophy may be able to help recruit one. (November 2008)

In literary and critical theory, posthumanism or post-humanism, meaning beyond humanism, is a major European continental philosophy of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It strives to move beyond the ideas and images of the world of Renaissance humanism to correspond more closely to the 21st century's concepts of technoscientific knowledge.

Posthumanism mainly differentiates from classical humanism in that it restores the stature that had been made of humanity to one of many natural species. According to this claim, humans have no inherent rights to destroy nature or set themselves above it in ethical considerations a priori. Human knowledge is also reduced to a less controlling position, previously seen as the defining aspect of the world. The limitations and fallibility of human intelligence are confessed, even though it does not imply abandoning the rational tradition of humanism.[1]

Ihab Hassan, critic, scholar, and theorist in the academic study of literature, once stated that "humanism may be coming to an end as humanism transforms itself into something one must helplessly call posthumanism". This view predates the currents of posthumanism which have developed over the past twenty years in somewhat diverse, but complementary, domains of thought and practice. For example, Ihab Hassan is a scholar of literature and a known postmodernist whose theoretical writings expressly address postmodernism in society.[1]

Theorists who both complement and contrast Ihab Hassan include Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Bruno Latour, Shannon Bell, N. Katherine Hayles, Peter Sloterdijk and Douglas Kellner. Among the theorists are philosophers who have written about a "posthuman condition" (Robert Pepperell) which is often substituted for the term "posthumanism".[1][2]

Posthumanism is sometimes used as a synonym for an ideology of technology known as "transhumanism" because it affirms the possibility and desirability of achieving a "posthuman future" in purely evolutionary terms. However, posthumanists in the humanities and the arts are critical of transhumanism, in part, because they argue that it incorporates and extends many of the flaws of Enlightenment humanism, namely scientific imperialism and perfectibilism.[3]

The posthuman or post-human, in critical theory, is a speculative being that represents or seeks to enact a re-writing of what is generally conceived of as human. It is the object of posthumanist criticism, which critically questions Renaissance humanism, a branch of humanist philosophy which claims that human nature is a universal state from which the human being emerges; human nature is autonomous, rational, capable of free will, and unified in itself as the apex of existence. Thus, the posthuman recognizes imperfectability and disunity within him or herself, instead understanding the world through context and heterogeneous perspectives while maintaining scientific rigor and a dedication to objective observations of the world. Key to this posthuman practice is the ability to fluidly change perspectives and manifest oneself through different identities. The posthuman, for critical theorists of the subject, has an emergent ontology rather than a stable one; in other words, the posthuman is not a singular, defined individual, but rather one who can "become" or embody different identities and understand the world from multiple, heterogeneous perspectives.[4]

The posthuman, and posthumanism with it, are philosophical positions that overlap and are constantly engaged with much of postmodern philosophy, biotechnology, and evolutionary biology, so the field is constantly changing. The critical notion of the posthuman is isolated from these fields as the embodiment of critical engagement itself; that is to say that the posthuman is not necessarily human in the first place, but is rather an embodied medium through which critical consciousness is manifested.[citation needed]

Steve Nichols published the Post-Human Manifesto in 1988, and holds a contrarian view that human beings are already post-human compared to previous generations.[citation needed]

Critical discourses surrounding posthumanism are not homogeneous, but in fact present a series of often contradictory ideas, and the term itself is contested, with one of the foremost authors associated with posthumanism, Manuel DeLanda, decrying the term as "very silly."[5] Covering the ideas of, for example, Robert Pepperell's The Posthuman Condition, and N. Katherine Hayles's How We Became Posthuman under a single term is distinctly problematic due to these contradictions.

The posthuman is roughly synonymous with the "cyborg" of A Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway.[6] Haraway's conception of the cyborg is an ironic take on traditional conceptions of the cyborg that inverts the traditional trope of the cyborg whose presence questions the salient line between humans and robots. Haraway's cyborg is in many ways the "beta" version of the posthuman, as her cyborg theory prompted the issue to be taken up in critical theory.[7]

Following Haraway, N. Katherine Hayles, whose book How We Became Posthuman grounds much of the critical posthuman discourse, asserts that liberal humanism - which separates the mind from the body and thus portrays the body as a "shell" or vehicle for the mind - becomes increasingly complicated in the late 20th and 21st centuries because information technology put the human body in question. Hayles maintains that we must be conscious of information technological advancements while understanding information as "disembodied," that is, something which cannot fundamentally replace the human body but can only be incorporated into it and human life practices.[8]

The posthuman is a being that relies on context rather than relativity, on situated objectivity rather than universal objectivity, and on the creation of meaning through 'play' between constructions of informational pattern and reductions to the randomness of on/off switches, which are the foundation of digital binary systems.[citation needed]

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Posthumanism Theory – Technical Communication Body of …

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About Posthumanism TheoryIn as brief a definition as possible, humanism is centered on the idea that human needs, values, concerns, and ideals are of the highest importance, or that the human being is the epitome of being. As a development of this idea, posthumanism is based on the notion that humankind can transcend the limitations of the physical human form. In a traditional sense, humans have been considered to be solidly and indisputably classified as high-functioning animals, but animals nonetheless. In this way, the same biological and physical constraints that limit the entire animal kingdom tether humankind to that base level. Posthumanism Theory suggests it is both possible and for the best for humans to attempt to surpass these limitations, often through the use of technology to augment biology (in a way, using the physiological capacity of the human brain to accelerate the functions of the entire human form).This progressive mentality is an important aspect of the human condition to consider in the course of modern document design and technical rhetoric. Operating under posthumanism ideals requires authors and creators to venture into the hypothetical and the unexplored because these are the areas that build upon and even improve what we already have established. Posthumanism holds this sentiment at heartthe idea that we, as humans, have no inherent barrier to making our physical and mental functionality much more efficient and powerful than it currently is. To apply these ideals to writing and rhetoric, there is the potential to incorporate the conventions of posthumanism both integrally and progressively. Integrally, a posthuman text should reflect the central ideas of posthumanism: what can authors do to make their texts transcend the perceived limitations of text and writing? How can documents be made to do more than what they currently can do, and how can their readability, usability, and accessibility be expanded? Progressively, a posthuman text should relatably adapt for evolutions in interaction: it might explore such questions as how will human interaction with documents change in the next 10, 20, 50, or 100 years? How can texts encourage mental expansion? What changes in technology can be predicted and accounted for in the delivery and interaction with documents and writing?Progressions in Usability and FunctionalityWhile the primary focus of posthumanist progression lies in the realm of higher technology, there are developments both in effect and yet to come that have much to do with technical writing and rhetoric. For many, many centuries, writing has been constrained to paper with static text. In more recent decades, the advent of computers and the Internet have caused documents to evolve and adapt. Institution of newer technologies allows for new methods of interactivity, which allow different senses to be utilized by human beings who interact with such documents. Through the use of technology, document designers and writers can allow their readers to interact at a more functional level which is more natural and fully engaging than mere reading.The qualities of new media enable documents and their interactive elements to tap into the human mind to a higher degree. In that way, technology is being utilized to better the human experience and tap into the full range of human capability. New developments in technology such as mobile phones, touch screens, e-readers, and other similar technology afford better interactivity and have evolved the way humans interact with their professional and social worlds. Technology is always changing to accommodate more natural, intuitive means of interactivitybut the most posthuman aspect of this technological innovation creep is the ubiquity of technology that allows delivery of writing and documents. Technology has filled in an accessibility gap that now grants access to documents and writing not only on printed paper, but on desktop computers, laptop computers, smartphones, and other such devices. This technology augments human beings' functionality from two directionsit enhances the ability of the audience to read and respond to writing, and it also enhances the ability of the author to create and distribute his or her writing.Posthumanist rhetoric requires a full understanding of the operation of the human being as an entity, both collectively as an audience and singularly as individual readers. Writing and rhetoric are able to be at their most posthuman when they utilize technology to transcend the physicality of humans as well as the temporality of their existence. In this way, authors begin accommodating more means of delivery and spreading the availability and accessibility of documents in addition to making documents available at much more timely intervalseven as far as on-demand. Posthuman authors who embrace technological advances gain new dimensions of interactivity both within their text as well as in response to their text. A posthuman rhetoric mindset enables the document to blossom further as a medium as it works in harmony with the qualities of its audience and their humanity.

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McAfee Stands By $1 Million Bitcoin Price Prediction By 2020

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John McAfee, the eccentric cryptocurrency guru and former cybersecurity entrepreneur, stands by his $1 million Bitcoin (BTC) price prediction by 2020. In a recent interview with Cointelegraph, McAfee discussed the current state of crypto and reiterated that his famous price prediction of a $1 million Bitcoin is conservative.

Despite the price of Bitcoin being 72% under the infamous McAfee Dick Line, McAfee remains calm and optimistic about his prediction.

During the Cointelegraph interview, McAfee was asked how he makes a prediction for the future value of Bitcoin.

He explained:

Its very simple, Im a mathematician. As you run the numbers, the number of people using Bitcoin and the number of transactions, its escalating tremendously. Thats the true value The true value is going to eventually be based upon usage and if you track the usage curve, a million dollars by the end of 2020 is conservative.

During the interview, McAfee also touched on his thoughts of the current financial system and how it is largely controlled by centralized bodies and institutions. He believes this system has worked for some in the past, but for many today, the current system which allows for the inflation or deflation of currencies means were not free.

In the interview, McAfee said:

As more and more people use cryptocurrencies, they flee fiat cryptocurrencies, which devalues them. Fiat currencies will be on their last legs in 5 years.

As McAfee believes the value of fiat currencies will become increasingly devalued, the real value of $1 million could be drastically different than it is today, which adds a bit of skepticism to his prediction.

Although McAfees comments on his $1 million Bitcoin price prediction was a hot topic during the interview, he had more interesting things to say, specifically regarding his plan to run for the U.S. presidency in 2020.

McAfee previously ran for president in 2016 on the libertarian platform, which gave him the opportunity to say what he wanted to say on the national stage and talk about lapses in cyber security.

This time however, he wants to use the national stage to talk about personal freedom and how cryptocurrency can help us achieve that.

He then elaborated, stating that his intention is not to become President of the United States, but rather to inform the public at large about decentralized cryptocurrencies. In response to a question of whether he would use the stage to talk about cryptocurrencies, McAfee stated, Thats all Im going to talk about. See, I dont want to be president. I couldnt be no ones going to elect me president, please God. However, Ive got the right to run.

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McAfee Stands By $1 Million Bitcoin Price Prediction By 2020

"M*A*S*H" Germ Warfare (TV Episode 1972) – IMDb

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Pai, a severely injured North Korean POW is taking up a valuable bed in Post-Op and Pai requires AB- blood, the rarest type of blood in both Caucasians and Asians. So, naturally Frank wants to ship off Pai to the POW section. Pai is Hawkeye's patient; and Hawkeye will not release Pai. But, the whole 4077 Post-Op situation is dire and Henry takes Frank's side; and the guys tell Henry he is turning into a real Army clown. (Cue M*A*S*H, the movie.) Ruefully, Henry has to acknowledge their censure and he tells Trapper and Hawkeye to care for Pai for as long as they want, but to keep Frank (aka Mrs. Henry Blake in Army drag) OFF Henry's back. With Pai a guest I n The Swamp in Hawkeye's cot, the next issue is blood: Radar scours 4077 personnel records to find their rare blood donor. Poor Frank has a dream he is a giant soda with a big straw sticking out of him! When Pai takes a turn for the worse, the original Swamp Rats, Radar and the crew work overtime to keep one Major Montague from ... Written byLA-Lawyer

Certificate: TV-PG

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"M*A*S*H" Germ Warfare (TV Episode 1972) - IMDb

7 Best Cryptocurrency Exchanges to Buy/Sell Any …

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Slowly and steadily, Bitcoin and altcoins are getting attention from more investors all around the world.

And why not? These cryptocurrencies are time and again proving themselves to be a safe haven against governments inflationary policies.

Thats why some people are even securing cryptocurrencies astheir retirementfunds, while some are doing pure speculation with short-term trading (i.e. buy low, sell high).

And lets not forget about those who are just starting off by looking around to find the answer to questions like:

But before we talk about the best exchanges out there, I need to tell you that its not too late to get invested in cryptocurrencies. At the time of this writing, the Bitcoin and altcoin market is at anall-time high, with a market cap of $166 billion. I believe we will cross the $250 billion mark later this year.

So now that you know youshouldinvest, heres where you need to go to do that.

Here is a consolidated list of best cryptocurrency exchanges with my comments:

For Acquiring Cryptocurrencies:

If you live in a country where its not easy to get Bitcoin, you can use any of these three websites. All three of them offersto buy Bitcoin using a credit/debit card.

Note: This list is starting from easy to use exchanges and moving towards some of the advanced exchanges.

Binance is a rapidly growing exchange that concluded its ICO a few months back.

Though it is based out of China, it doesnt serve its native country but is open to almost all countries around the world.

Since its ICO to till date, it has grown tremendously and is now placed in top 10 cryptocurrency exchanges in the world.It now has more than 140 altcoins listed on it which are only increasing as the days are passing.

Binance being a centralized exchange has taken a unique take to expand its business and also provides a decent discount for day traders if they use BNB coins.BNB is Binance Coin which is the native currency of this platform.

Read:Binance Cryptocurrency: A Unique And Rapidly Growing Crypto Exchange

Binances fee structure is also unique. To start with they have 0.1% standard trading fee which is already quite less than other peers. You can even reduce your fee furtherif you pay your trading fee in BNB according to the below-shown structure.

To get started with Binance you need to register using your email ID and the process is quite simple & fast. Moreover, you get 1 QTUM coin as a kind gesture for registration which is limited to 10,000 QTUM coins on first come first basis.

Binance is one of the few exchanges that offers mobile app for iOS and Android. Being using it for a while, I find it too easy to trade cryptocurrency while on the move. You can watch this video to learn how to use their mobile app.

They also have aggressive plans like multi-lingual support, mobile apps for both iOS and Android users,Binance Angel Program, and theCommunity Coin Per Month etc for more adoption of their platform.

Register a free account on Binance

BitMex is high volume crypto exchange created by a talented team of economists, high-frequency traders and web developers for the crypto community.

Here you will never find any issues regarding the liquidity of your cryptocurrencies.

The primary currency traded on this exchange is Bitcoin and its future contracts.

Apart from Bitcoin contracts, one can also play around with future contracts for altcoins such as Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Cardano, Litecoin, Ripple.

The registration process on BitMex is quite simple where you just need to register through your email ID and their fee structure is also quite straightforward as shown below:

Trade On BitMex

KuCoin is another easy and hassle-free cryptocurrency exchange. KuCoin offers many popular and unique coin such as DragonChain, $KCS, and many others. Just like Binance, they offer a fully functional mobile app for Android and iOS.

To get started with KuCoin, you can deposit any crypto of your choice ex: BTC and start trading. Personally, I have been using KuCoin since last quarter of 2017 and they are getting popular day by day.

Get started with KuCoin

Changelly is one of the easiest ways to get ahold of various cryptocurrencies.

Changelly has a proven track record of consistently good products being put out into the crypto-space.

One of the best things about Changelly is that you dont need to go through any lengthy verification or registration process. You just log in with your email ID (or any email ID) and start exchanging!

Currently, it supports more than 35 cryptocurrencies along with fiat pairs such as USD/EUR. It is one of the best and easiest to use exchanges out there.If you want to know more, check out Harshsreview on Changelly.

When you use Changelly to exchange cryptocurrency, Changelly bots connect in real time to some of the best and busiest cryptocurrency exchanges in the market to get you the best price.

Usually, when using Changelly, a crypto-to-crypto exchange takes 5 to 30 minutes.

They charge a commission fee of 0.5% on each trade, which I think is minimal in exchange for the volatility and risk that they bear on behalf of their users. In addition to the commission, a miners fee is also paid by the user and is deducted directly from their crypto balance.

But all you need in order to buy from Changelly is aVISA/MasterCard (credit/debit card) or any Changelly-supported cryptocurrency and a wallet where you want to receive your new coins.

The procedure is very simple.

Head towardCoinSutras Cryptocurrency Exchange Changelly, and follow the steps given in thisguide.

Note:Though this guide shows how to buy Ripple in exchange for BTC, the process is exactly the same to buy any other Changelly-supported cryptocurrency.

And if you want to buy cryptos using a VISA/MasterCard, then here is their officialstep-by-step guide on doing that.(Even though this guide is for buying BTC using a VISA/MasterCard, the process is the same as buying any other Changelly-supported cryptocurrency.)

Check out Changelly

Huobi Pro is an internationalcryptocurrency exchangethat originated in China but now has moved across the world to serve a maximum number of investors. It is based out of Singapore and has been operating in this space successfully for the last five years.

As we speak, it occupies the #3 spot on CoinMarketCaps list of exchanges by volume and has 244 cryptocurrency pairs. Hence, needless to say, of this, you will never face liquidity problems on this exchange.

They also have mobile apps for bothAndroidandiOSfor users who want to trade cryptos on the go.

Theirregistration processis also pretty simple and straightforward, so go ahead and do the needful. Oh, and just so you know, the exchange fee is also pretty low. Have fun.

Do read,Huobi Exchange Review & Benefits of HT token: Can It Pull Off Another Binance?

Bittrex is aUS-based cryptocurrency exchange that provides you the option to trade more than 190 cryptocurrencies at a time. They are well-regulated and compliant with all of the current US rules, so crypto users need not worry about the safety of their funds.

Bittrex handles one of the largest BTC trading volumes out of all the exchanges in the world.

Here, the users (buyers/sellers) decide the rates in which they want to trade, and Bittrex charges them a small service fee for providing this platform (0.25%).

To get started with Bittrex, you need to register and log in through your email ID, but to withdraw funds, you need to do a KYC by submitting your ID documents and phone number, as well as enabling two-factor authentication for higher limits.

But one good thing about Bittrex is the account verification happens quite fast.

Bittrex supports two types of accounts:

Bittrex is a crypto-only exchange, meaning it doesnt allow you to deposit fiat currencies such as USD, EUR, GBP, etc.

They provide access to advanced trading tools like candlestick charts and crosshairs, but the user interface is quite clean and intuitive, so newbies should have no problems.

You can visit Bittrex and open a Bittrex accountby following this official step by step guide here.

Check out Bittrex

Founded by Tristan DAgosta, Poloniex has been operational since January 2014 and is undoubtedly one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world.

It is based out of the United States and offers +100 cryptocurrencies to its users to trade.

When you talk about trade volumes, nothing beats Poloniex. In 2017, Poloniex had the highest volume for ETH because it supports an independent Ethereum market as well as a BTC market.

It is a crypto-only exchange, but you can start trading easily by depositing USDT (Tether dollars).

Poloniex also has zoomable candlestick charts for 5-minutes, 15-minutes, 30-minutes, 2-hours, 4-hours, and 1-day, along with a stop-limit feature for advanced cryptocurrency traders.

Poloniex charges a fee of0.15% to 0.25% on all trades depending upon whether you are a maker or a taker.

So if you are looking to trade a variety of altcoins, then you should give Poloniex a shot.

To get started with Poloniex, follow this official guide.

Remember: As soon as you sign up for Poloniex using your email,do make sure to enable two-factor authentication!

Check out Poloniex

Bitfinex is another one of the largest and most popular cryptocurrency exchanges out there.

Based out of Hong Kong and operational since 2014, it gives its users the option to trade the following 13 cryptocurrencies in exchange for USD or BTC:

Update: They have added a lot more cryptos recently.

Unlike Bittrex and Poloniex, you can trade using USD (with a wire fee of at least $20). Also, users will need to pay a trade fee which varies from 0.1% to 0.8% (details here).

Also, whenever you withdrawal or deposit anything, you are charged a certain fee:

On Bitfinex, if you are a pro-trader, you will find advanced trading tools such as limit orders, stop orders, trailing stop, fill or kill, TWAP, and others, along with different market charts.

To get started on Bitfinex, you need toregister,verify your ID, andauthenticateyourself. It typically takes 15-20 business days aftersubmitting valid ID proof before youre accepted into the platform.

And whenever you get bored with the web version or want to trade on-the-go, you can use Bitfinexs Android and iOS mobile apps.

Check out Bitfinex

Using the above cryptocurrency exchanges will allow you to buy almost all of the cryptos you could ever want to buy.

However, there are a few more cryptocurrency exchanges that you should have an account with, as there are a few coins that are only available there. Its a good idea to have an account on most of these, which will save time when you discover a winning coin.

Some of those exchanges are:

I will update this post as I find other trustable and feature-rich cryptocurrency exchanges. For now, you can consider joining our Telegram channel to stay updated with all thelatest info.

I hope these insights help you in choosing the best cryptocurrency exchange for you to use.

But one word of caution:

If you are storing cryptocurrencies on these exchanges for a few hours or even a few days for the sake of trading, then its probably OK. Otherwise, this is a bad practice.

Large-scale hacks like Mt. Gox can happen at any time. I would strongly recommend you to use the Ledger Nano S or a wallet like Exodus, where you can store a lot of different cryptos and control your private keys.

More:

7 Best Cryptocurrency Exchanges to Buy/Sell Any ...