Daily Archives: July 5, 2017

The View From Pluto: The Indians Five All-Stars Took Different Paths To The Top – WOSU

Posted: July 5, 2017 at 9:16 am

The Indians are sending five players to next weeks All-Star game. That's the most since 2004. WKSUcommentator Terry Pluto says each player has taken a different path to the top.

Terry Pluto on Indians All-Stars

Corey Kluber: "He's from Texas and went to Stetson University, which is in Florida. So he wasn't even highly recruited."

Pluto says Kluber was drafted by the San Diego Padres, but was barely on their radar. "He wasn't even in the top 30 prospects within the Padres organization."

Yet this is his second consecutive All-Star team, He was the AL pitcher of the month for June and this week, set a record with five consecutive double-digit strikeout games.

Andrew Miller: "He was the opposite of Kluber. He was a first-round draft pick of the Detroit Tigers. They picturedhim as being a left-handed starting pitcher. He starts bouncing from team to team.

"Finally, four years ago, Boston decides to put him in the bullpen. And it clicked. The Indians got him last summer in a trade. So, while he's a No. 1 pick, he's a failed starting pitcher who found new life in the bullpen."

Jose Ramirez: "He came from the Dominican Republic, playing on the back diamonds not even with the top Dominican players. Paul Mirabelli from the Indians signed him for $50,000, which is pretty cheap. And he just started hitting .300 in the minors all the way up. It took a little while for him to figure it out in the big leagues.

"He's a starting third baseman, a position he played only five times his entire minor league career. And, at the age of 24, he's the youngest Indians All-Star since Sandy Alomar."

Michael Brantley: "He came in the C.C. Sabathia trade in 2008." But Brantley was not the key player in the deal. That was Matt LaPorta, considered one of the best power hitters in the minor leagues. Brantley was "the player to be named later" in the deal. "Now, Brantley is an All-Star and LaPorta, last I heard he's in the banking business in Florida."

Last year, Brantley barely played after undergoing two shoulder surgeries. "I could tell you in spring training there was concern whether he would come back from this."

Francisco Lindor: "This is sort of the super highway to the All-Star team. He was a first-round pick and bolted through the minors. He grew up in Puerto Rico and when he was 13, his parents moved to Orlando and he went to one of these baseball academy schools and learned English."

Lots of players from different paths

"It really is an international sport, with something like 28 percent of the players from Latino countries, and there's an influx of Asian players ,too.

"And it really is baseball Darwinism, too. These guys are all fighting for their spots. But the reason you want the big volume approach, is you just don't know [who's going to make it and who's not]."

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US denies visas to Gambia teens in global robotics contest – ABC News

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The United States has denied visas to five teenage students from Gambia competing in a prestigious international robotics contest in Washington, the team's leader said Tuesday.

The teens found the rejection "very disheartening," said Mucktarr M.Y. Darboe, who is also a director in the largely Muslim West African nation's ministry of higher education.

Darboe said the students were not given a reason for the visa denials in April, and he called the decision "disappointing and unfair."

The Gambia team is not alone. An all-female team from Afghanistan also was denied visas.

The U.S. Embassy in Banjul could not immediately be reached for comment.

Tiny Gambia has been through dramatic change in recent months, ousting via elections a longtime dictator, Yahya Jammeh, whose administration was accused of human rights abuses. The new administration, inaugurated in January, has promised widespread democratic reforms.

Gambia's government has put forth the money for another round of U.S. visa applications for the robotics team members, and the teens are being interviewed again Wednesday, Darboe said. The students' creation was being shipped Tuesday to the competition.

"We will go for an interview and hope for the best," he said. Each student had to pay a fee of more than $160 for the visas and travel for the interviews.

For months, the team has worked on a machine that sorts balls as part of an effort to simulate solutions for separating contaminates from water.

FIRST Global holds the annual robotics competition to encourage learning in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, or STEM, around the world. It invites one team from each country in an effort to build bridges, organizers said. This year's competition takes place from July 16-18.

Gambia team member Fatoumata Ceesay, 17, said she hopes their second interview will get them to the U.S., but she was not optimistic.

"It's very disappointing knowing that we are the only two countries that aren't going to take part in the competition," she said. "It would be an experience to see and discover other robots and ask questions and exchange ideas with others. It's more than 160 countries, so we'd have the chance to mingle."

The aspiring engineering student said she was grateful for the opportunity to work with the team and learn about building robots.

"This is the first time I've worked on a robot ... The experience is so amazing," she said.

If team members are denied visas again, the Gambian American association will represent the robot at the competition, Ceesay said.

Joe Sestak, the president of FIRST Global, said he has already promised the Gambia and Afghanistan teams that they will be Skyping into the competition as their robots are presented. "We still are making them a part of this," he said.

Afghanistan has had a U.S. visa refusal rate of 75 percent and Gambia 70 percent, Sestak said.

Overall, he called the visa approval rate unprecedented, saying that "we had an extraordinarily fair process." FIRST provided letters of support and informed teams about the questions that might be asked during interviews.

Forty African nations will be among those attending the competition.

"For Gambia I feel just as saddened. We started this effort in Africa," Sestak said, adding that his organization hopes to hold the competition in various countries in the future to encourage wider attendance.

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Denied US visas, all-girl Afghan robotics team to watch their creation compete via Skype – Reuters

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By Jalil Ahmad Rezayee | HERAT, Afghanistan

HERAT, Afghanistan Two Afghan girls refused visas to the United States for a robot-building competition said on Tuesday they were mystified by the decision, as the contest's organizers said teams from Iran and Sudan as well as a de facto Syrian team had gained visas.

The unusual story of the Afghan all-girl team of robotics students emerged as the United States grapples with the legality of President Donald Trump's order to temporarily ban travel from six Muslim-majority countries.

Afghanistan itself is not on the list and Team Afghanistan's robot, unlike its creators, has been allowed entry to the United States. Asked by Reuters on Tuesday why the girls were banned, a U.S. State Department spokesperson cited regulations prohibiting the agency from discussing individual visa cases.

So the six team members will watch the ball-sorting machine compete in Washington D.C. via video link during the July 16-18 event from their hometown of Herat, in western Afghanistan, according to the FIRST Global contest organizers.

"We still don't know the reason why we were not granted visas, because other countries participating in the competition have been given visas," said 14-year-old Fatemah Qaderyan, part of the team that made two journeys to the U.S. Embassy in the Afghan capital Kabul to apply for their papers.

"No one knows about the future but ... we did our best and we hope that our robot could get a position along other robots from other countries," Qaderyan said.

Most of the female team members were either infants or not yet born at the time of the U.S.-backed military intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 that toppled the Taliban regime whose ultra-hardline interpretation of sharia (Islamic law) banned girls from school, women from working outside the home and all females from leaving home without a male relative.

More than 15 years later, around 10,000 U.S. and allied international troops remain in Afghanistan to support an elected government in Kabul that constitutionally guarantees women's rights but is increasingly losing ground to a Taliban insurgency that now controls or contests some 40 percent of territory.

"CLEAR INSULT"

Qaderyan's teammate from Herat, 17-year-old Lida Azizi, was less forgiving of the U.S. visa decision. "All of the countries can participate in the competitions, but we can't. So it's a clear insult for the people of Afghanistan," Azizi said.

FIRST Global's president, Joe Sestak, said in a post on the organization's Facebook page that he was "saddened" by the U.S. decision but the Afghan team would be able to connect with the competition via a live Skype video link.

"That is how we must now honor our fellow teammates, those brave girls from Afghanistan," he said.

He added that the teams of 156 countries including from Iran and Sudan, which are on Trumps list of countries whose citizens are banned from entry had received their visas.

"The support of the U.S. State Department (including its embassies) has been simply nothing short of amazing," Sestak said in the post, adding that one other team, from Gambia, had been also denied visas.

Also approved for visas was "Team Hope," a group of Syrian refugees, he said.

Syria is among the Muslim-majority countries named in Trump's executive order prohibiting all citizens from entry for 90 days. The other countries, apart from Iran, Syria and Sudan, are Libya, Somalia and Yemen.

In a June 26 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court revived parts of Trump's March 6 executive order that had been blocked by lower courts. The highest court let the ban go forward with a limited scope, saying that it cannot apply to anyone with credible "bona fide relationship" with a U.S. person or entity.

(Additional reporting by Valerie Volcovici in Washington; writing by Kay Johnson; editing by Mark Heinrich)

GENEVA Singapore has a near-perfect approach to cybersecurity, but many other rich countries have holes in their defenses and some poorer countries are showing them how it should be done, a U.N. survey showed on Wednesday.

KIEV The Ukrainian software firm at the center of a cyber attack that spread around the world last week said on Wednesday that computers which use its accounting software are compromised by a so-called "backdoor" installed by hackers during the attack.

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Miso Robotics is bringing artificial intelligence to restaurants – CNBC

Posted: at 9:16 am

Miso Robotics recently raised $3.1 million in a funding round led by patent services firm Acacia Research, a relatively new fund called Match Robotics VC, and earlier investors including the restaurant chain CaliBurger.

The company will use the capital to produce its first commercial Flippy units. It expects to roll Flippy out, starting at the Los Angeles CaliBurger, in the first quarter of 2018, Zito said. Along with its investment, Acacia will provide the start-up with patent and intellectual property-related services, helping Miso Robotics prepare for global expansion.

"I see robotics in the kitchen as kind of an extension of going from the open flame to the oven," said Rob Stewart, Acacia's president, in an interview. "It's next-level efficiency,"

What does this mean for the industry's 2.3 million cooks?

"Like the electronic spreadsheet did for accountants, this will cause the jobs to go elsewhere," Stewart said. "But there will be new hospitality and culinary jobs we have yet to imagine. And those will be jobs where people will get paid a higher wage, and where they'll want to stay long-term."

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Abundant Robotics aims to upset the apple cart – AGDAILY

Posted: at 9:16 am

Each year, on average, there are 240 million bushels of apples in the U.S. that need to be picked. Backed by a $10 million investment from Google Ventures, Yamaha Motor Company, and others, Abundant Robotics hopes to help growers shoulder that task.

Most types of agriculture relied on muscle power until the 19thcentury. Since then, automation has provided tremendous gains in productivity and standard of living, said Abundant Robotics cofounder and CEO, Dan Steere.However, for many types of fruits and vegetables, it simply hasnt been possible to automate manual tasks such as picking fruit.

That was, until 2012, when the idea popped up in the robotics division of SRI International, a research lab in Silicon Valley. That brainchild then came to fruition when Curt Salisbury, who is now Abundant Robotics CTO, approached the U.S. apple industry to explore his ideas about using robotics to automate the apple harvest.

The Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission and SRI provided grant funding for the next two-and-a-half years. By the end of 2015, Steere and Salisbury felt that the technology was working well enough that it was time to move from research to commercialization.

Thus, Abundant Robotics was formed.

Along the way, the company has worked alongside orchard growers to develop and fine-tune the product for some of apple-pickings pickiest challenges, such as how to identify ripe apples and how to pick apples at night, as well as how to incorporate a vacuum to gently pull apples from the branches.

From the beginning, weve stayed in close contact with growers, Steere said. Weve developed a series of prototypes and quickly gotten them into orchards to test our ideas in the real environment.

With the current farm labor shortage, Steere sees the robots fitting in as a feasible alternative for farms.

I see technology getting to the point that we are able to automate many tasks in agriculture that havent been possible before, Steere said. The fact that its becoming practical to automate these tasks means that automation is poised to bring big productivity gains to specialty crops.

Abundant Robotics has yet to release their first commercial system, so it is still unknown how many employees a robot could replace on a farm. The companys goal is to release the robot for commercial systems in 2018.

After that, Abundant Robotics hopes to continue to upset the fruit basket with more robots.

Were focused on apple harvest initially, Steere said. In the longer term, we expect to automate harvest of many types of fruit.

The AGDAILY Digest is the information superhighway for your country road.

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TierPoint sponsors Assabet Valley robotics team – Worcester Telegram

Posted: at 9:16 am

MARLBORO The Assabet Valley Regional Technical High School robotics team, the Aztechs, has received a $2,000 sponsorship from TierPoint, a national hybrid IT provider. The donation makes TierPoint one of the teams largest sponsors for the 2017-18 season.

The Aztechs are a FIRST Robotics team. FIRST Robotics competitions, held worldwide, challenge teams of high school students and their volunteer mentors to build and program robots to perform challenging tasks against a field of competitors.

TierPoint Solutions Engineer Nick Molina nominated the Aztechs through the TierPoint Gives Back program, which invites the companys employees to submit charitable requests on behalf of their favorite nonprofit organizations. TierPoint Gives Back supports a variety of causes, with a special focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education.

I was excited to learn the Aztech team has been competing for 25 years, Molina said. Touring their workroom took me back to my days on Team 88 in Bridgewater. I appreciate the need for volunteers and sponsorships to keep these programs active.

Molina plans to donate time to the team during the next competition season, and hopes to recruit colleagues.

The teams project leader, Marcus Fletcher, and I are discussing other ways TierPoint might partner with Assabet Valley High School and the robotics team, Molina said. Like my company, they are committed to STEM education. Its a good fit.

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5 HIPAA/HITECH violations your dental practice is making – Colorado Springs Gazette

Posted: at 9:15 am

Pssst I think we need to talk.Your dental practice does it have a HIPAA/HITECHcompliance plan? No? Youre not the only practice without one, trust us. If your business doesnt have a plan, however, its nearly impossible to ensure youre not violating HIPAA/HITECH andviolations can cost thousands, if not millions, of dollars. Here are five violations your dental practice is probably guilty of along with proper fixescourtesy of the IT experts at Frontier IT in Colorado Springs.

Problem:Open wifiSolution:Secure itAs blogger and HIPAA risk assessor Amy Woodnotes on DentistryIQ, I know more about 90% of the offices I walk into by accessing their wifi before I even speak with the doctor. Using a free app, Wood can see all devices, cell phones of patients and staff, office computers, printers, tablets, laptops, and the server of practices with open wifi, she writes. If I can do that with a free app, a thief or even a bored 14-year-old with a laptop can siphon patient information and an office would never know about it, Wood adds. A simpleTwitter search for hacked dentist wifiserves as a great example of the importance of this.

Problem:Unencrypted electronic personal health information (ePHI)Solution:Encrypt itAs Dr. Lorne Lavine explains in anarticle on the Modern Dental Network, many businesses dont encrypt their ePHI because they dont understand the need for encryption. HIPAA has defined encryption as an addressable concern, meaning, if its reasonable and appropriate, you must do it, Lavine writes. The problem is encrypting your data is both reasonable and appropriate. As Lavine points out, there went your get-out-of-jail-free card! The good news: Encrypting your data can be as simple as storing it on a self-encrypting drive or downloading a free program (though its undoubtedly better to consult with an MSP, or managed service provider, to ensure that your data encryption plan is foolproof and hackerproof).

Problem:Discussing patients in earshot of other patientsSolution:Just dontWere going to go out on a limb and assume that this is the most pervasive HIPAA violation because, lets face it, who doesnt love a good bit of juicy gossip? But just how sure are you that a patient isnt in earshot? Bottom line: It simply isnt worth the risk.

Problem:Storing patient records on a non-HIPAA-compliant file-sharing serviceSolution:Get Autotask WorkplaceFree online file-sharing services make accessing documents from anywhere, at any time, a breeze such a breeze, in fact, that it might be tempting to upload patient files for easy team access. Danger, Will Robinson! This is a flagrant HIPAA violation. A couple years back, St. Elizabeths Medical Center, a Massachusetts-based hospital, was fined more than $200,000 for uploading the ePHI of nearly 500 patients to such a service without first assessing the risks associated with the use of the service,according to DataPrivacyMonitor.com. Happily, there exist convenient, affordable HIPAA and HITECH-compliant file-sharing services likeAutotask Workplacethat allow employees to easily create, manage, organize and collaborate on files without risking hefty fines.

Problem:No back-up of medical filesSolution:Datto Backupify HIPAA/HITECH requires that your patients files are backed up and recoverable in case of disaster, whether thats a fire at your medical facility, a disgruntled employees revenge or a ransomware attack. With HIPAA-compliant solutions like Datto Backupify, theres no need to worry that your files are gone forever. Whats more, Backupify encrypts your data and even backs up your Office 365 calendar and contacts three times a day.

Just how HIPAA/HITECH compliant is your practice?Perhaps youre now beginning to question many procedures and practices at your clinic.

Whats a busy dentist or dental office manager to do?

Contact an MSP, or managed service provider.

MSPs specialize in working with small- to mid-sized businesses that dont have their own IT departments. An MSP cantailor an affordable service planto your dental practice, offering you only what you need likeserver and network monitoringordisaster recovery planning, according to the experts at Frontier IT.

Perhaps even better, partnering with an MSP can provide you with peace of mind that your patients valuable data is secure and your business is safe from potentially devastating fines.

Interested? Have questions? Lets chat.Give the experts at Frontier IT a ring today.

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Gordon Hayward the best Jazz wing player of all time? Not what the numbers say. – SLC Dunk

Posted: at 9:15 am

So we start day one without Gordon Hayward, how will we ever recover from his loss? I think the Utah Jazz are going to be fine in the long run. They may not look fine from the jump, but its going to work out with the gaggle of younger guards and wings who will be the primary beneficiaries of all of these extra meaningful minutes.

Im not disappointed that Gordon excised his choice to pick where in the world he lives. I am disappointed that if he had a 2k word blog post in the chamber, why didnt he make this news come out sooner instead of waiting for all these small forward free agents to be sent to other teams while Utah was left holding onto a massive cap hold and couldnt make any moves. Im also not a huge fan of the timeline of how things went down yesterday either - with the leak actually being what precipitated any news from coming out. The denials werent great either as in the pit of our collective stomachs we felt that Gordon was gone, in mind and spirit, if not yet body.

However, its not the end of the world. If anything Im more disappointed that the Utah Jazz had to accommodate him so much after all the special treatment he received. He didnt get to start right off the bat and play big minutes as a rookie, but he was a bigger part of the rotation than Derrick Favors (the #3 pick of that same 2010 Draft class). He was the only one out of the Favors, Enes Kanter (#3, 2011), Alec Burks (#12, 2011) group that had a regular role in the roster for much of their rookie contract.

The marketing department featured him, the sales department sold him, and the in-house PR / broadcasting / propaganda division adored him. They fawned over him like he was an over the hill veteran who signed on to play ahead of a guy on a rookie deal. All of this reached a crescendo in the days leading up to July 1st. The #Hayday thing, their radio guys suggesting that he could be the best wing player ever in franchise history. Or that he would one day have a statue in front of the Delta Center EnergySolutions Arena Vivint Smart Home Arena Aunt Viv that was the last straw for me.

How dare the Jazz own propaganda wing forget their own history? Gordon Hayward? Up there with John and Karl? Really? Moreover, this became a personal project for me over the next few days and I researched every wing player in New Orleans / Utah Jazz history. And the statement is entirely baseless and ludicrous.

Gordon Hayward, who has four total playoff wins to his credit, all in the first round, is the best wing in franchise history? Gordon Hayward, who was the first option for four straight years and got over 20 ppg just once, is the best wing in franchise history? He didnt have to defend Michael Jordan in the NBA Finals. He didnt have to carry a team of some of the worst talented Jazzmen ever. He didnt have to face triple teams on the regular, as a wing player.

Even thinking about it again makes me upset at all the sucking up that went his way for the last two seasons - two seasons of development hijacked by trying to convince a guy that he should give us a chance when hes a free agent? This isnt the way Jerry Sloan and Frank Layden would have handled it. This is not Larry H. Millers team anymore if that trade-off is made.

Utah earned every single one of those draft picks. They are assets to be used, but back in the day some of the best players to play for the team were draft picks that turned into Jazzmen. Now were throwing away lottery picks in order to keep Hayward happy? Can you list all of the lotto picks John and Karl played with? You go to the NBA Finals with Adam Keefe being the only other lotto pick, Gordon. Show us that youre really the best wing in franchise history?

Pathetic.

Lets actually look at the numbers and judge for ourselves what his legacy in a Jazz jersey is. This data comes from the database over at basketball-reference.com - and I trust them implicitly.

In regards to the time put in, and the simple metrics of what shows up in the box score - a few wings right off the bat have been much more productive on the court. A few of them have put in more time as well, and been a much more visible part of Jazz history, especially in the NBA Playoffs. Just in minutes alone we see Hayward is between Jeff Hornacek and Matt Harpring. Thats probably where his actual legacy lies as well.

Career Utah Jazz per game averages (regular season and playoffs combined):

Yeah, I dont see how a 15 / 4 / 3 / 1 guy is the best this great franchise has to offer. He was the best player on some of the worst teams weve seen though. So theres that. His peak is more similar to Kendall Gill (with the New Jersey Nets) than it was with the actual Hall of Famers. Adrian Dantley (rounding up) averaged 30 ppg in four straight seasons. And he still added 3 apg to his 30 ppg and 6 rpg over his entire Jazz career. Pete Maravich was the do it all star for this early franchise. His 25 / 4 / 6 / 1 is also better.

Ah! But both of these guys didnt start their career with the team, nor did theirs end with the Jazz either. So to be the best you have to spend all of your career with the team? What about Darrell Griffith, his 16 / 3 / 2 / 1 is pretty similar to Hayward - but Griff was Rookie of the Year, was in the Slam Dunk contest, and actually won games in the NBA Playoffs. One rpg and one apg dont make Hayward better than Dr. Dunkenstein.

If were expanding it to guys who were Jazzmen for parts of their careers you have to give it up to Bryon Russell, Jeff Hornacek, and Andrei Kirilenko as well. B-Russ had the hardest job of any Jazz wing. Horny turned a 2nd round team into an NBA Finals team. AK-47 was just better than Hayward, period. But got none of the love from the team that Gordon did. (2nd quarter time out ceremony? Not even a half-time ceremony?)

Note: I have the data for per 36 minutes and analytics as well, but I have been getting errors on uploading the table for the past 10 minutes. I think this post has too much data in it, and its not allowing it to happen. So Im not going to go into the deep stuff. But I will say that Hayward doesnt look like the best wing ever in either dataset. He wasnt the most efficient player per 36, with guys like John Drew, Nate Williams, Donyell Marshall, and even Allan Bristow coming ahead of him.

Part of that is pace related, and just flat out ability. Hayward worked hard on his game to be a very good player. But hes not the best that ever was. Hes just the one from the vine / instagram generation.

He has a three point shot, and many of these guys from the 70s and 80s did not. But skill development is cumulative. Today we have power forwards learning more difficult dribbling drills than guards from back in the day. Everyone is shooting from three, and back then there wasnt even a three point line for some of the players in this data set. Skills are cumulative. Gordon Hayward has a lot of them. Thats a product of his era. Its not all on him.

And the mantle of best Wing player ever isnt either. He didnt lead a team of nobodies to near immortality like Andrei did. He didnt destroy the league like Pistol Pete or AD did. He didnt bring the team to the cusp of a championship like Horny did. Even as a second or third banana, what he apparently wants, he didnt do it quite like Jeff Malone or Darrell Griffith.

Is Hayward right now one of the best players in the NBA? Absolutely. Was he one of the best players on last years 51 win team? Yes. Did he score big in three playoff games? Yes he did.

Is his departure going to wreck the team? No more than his inclusion in it changed the history books of the franchise.

Goodbye Hayward. Thank you for being so precious for so long. Hopefully now everyone and stop acting like you were better than you actually were. The numbers, especially the analytics, suggest that you were a generalist - not a specialist. You were vanilla in a whole store full of more colorful and memorable flavors.

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Who do we think we are? – New Scientist

Posted: at 9:15 am

We long to transcend the human condition

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By Joanna Kavenna

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou thinkst thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

Here we are discussing transhumanism, defined by evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley in 1957 as the belief that the human species can and should transcend itself by realizing new possibilities of and for human nature. What relevance could the poet John Donne have to such a discussion?

A more recent explanation of transhumanism, by Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom, calls it a loosely defined movement that has developed gradually over the past two decades Attention is given to both present technologies, like genetic engineering and information technology, and anticipated future ones, such as molecular nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. This formulation resembles the poetry of English clerics even less than Huxleys did.

But though Bostrom does not express himself in quite the same fashion as Donne, the overarching sentiment is not dissimilar: Death, thou shalt die, or at least thou shalt be postponed as far as possible. Bostrom continues: Transhumanists view human nature as a work-in-progress, a half-baked beginning that we can learn to remold in desirable ways.

In other words, before death postponed or otherwise, life might be made considerably nicer: less fraught with disease and suffering, and altogether less half-baked. This is a metaphor from cooking, and transhumanist rhetoric is awash with such, at times treacherous, metaphors.

Transhumanists hope that by responsible use of science, technology, and other rational means we shall eventually manage to become posthuman, beings with vastly greater capacities than present human beings have. Bostroms lovely sentiment that the half-baked human must be improved by the responsible use of science has driven humanity for millennia, ever since we began using technologies of flint and fire and so on, and through innumerable and utterly vital developments in medicine and science. So one key question that we must pose and seek to discuss is how, specifically, the transhumanist movement will depart from or further enhance this consistent strain in human history?

Transhumanisms signature ambition, that we may become posthuman, leads us to a baroque and venerable question: what does it mean to be human, anyway? If we want to go beyond something, to transcend it, it is clear we must understand our starting point, the point beyond which we desire to go. The quest to fathom the self, to understand what it means to be human, is fundamental to almost every civilisation known to us. It defines one of the earliest works of literature, the Epic of Gilgamesh from ancient Mesopotamia, in which our protagonist embarks on a quest to understand who on earth he is and what hes meant to do with his mortal span of years. In ancient religious texts such as the Upanishads, all creation begins with the moment of becoming: I am! That is, the world comes from mind itself.

In many global religions, the human self is divided into body and soul, a material and an immaterial part. During the Enlightenment, Descartes famously tried to reconcile this ancient distinction and also placate the church by proposing that the material and immaterial somehow communicated or mingled via the pineal gland.

Skipping boldly through a few centuries of thought, we might arrive (blinking in surprise) at the philosophical novels of Philip K. Dick and his brilliant Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? This poses the ancient question again: what does it mean to be human? When is someone/something convincingly human and when are they not? Is your version of being human the same as mine? Or the same as the next humans?

As the Australian philosopher David Chalmers has said, consciousness this mysterious thing that every human possesses or feels they possess remains the hard problem of philosophy. We lack a unified theory of consciousness. We dont understand how consciousness is generated by the brain, or even whether this is the right metaphor to use. We speak of such mysteries in a funny system of squeaks and murmurs that we call language and that swiftly drops into the blackness of prehistory when we seek to trace its origins. We dont know who the first humans were: that fascinating quest likewise drives us straight into a great void of unknowing.

There is nothing wrong with unknowing: it is the ordinary condition of all humanity, so far. Yet, undeterred, we devise bold, elegant theories and advance them in many disciplines of thought. We develop beautiful and exciting almost-human machines and speculate about uploading consciousness. And in so doing, we are consistently rebaking, reheating or refrying the ancient philosophical dilemma: what does it mean to be human?

Pace Bostrom, transhumanism has not developed over the past few decades. Its predilections and concerns have developed over several millennia, and possibly further back, within civilisations we no longer recall. To go back in time to Ecclesiastes, there is nothing new under the sun. We are still here, and human, with our paradoxical longing to transcend the human condition.

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Who do we think we are? - New Scientist

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Virtual reality exhibit goes inside Mexican border crossing, with Oscar-winning director’s help – The Mercury News

Posted: at 9:15 am

LOS ANGELES A new virtual reality exhibit that opened here last weekend gives viewers a first-hand look at what its like to try to cross the U.S.-Mexico border and a peek into what could be the future of political ads.

In Carne y Arena (Meat and Sand) at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, visitors strap on VR goggles for an immersive six-and-a-half minute movie where they find themselves among a group of migrants attempting to cross the U.S. border.

They are confronted with U.S. Border Patrol agents pointing guns in their faces, and they feel the cold of an immigrant detention cell. They hear personal stories from immigrants whove made the trek.

The experienceis directed by the filmmaker Alejandro Irritu, the Mexican director of the Oscar-winning films The Revenant and Birdman. Itallows the visitor to go through a direct experience walking in the immigrants feet, under their skin, and into their hearts, Irritu saidin a statement.

Carne y Arena, which first screened at the Cannes Film Festival, is hardly a mainstream work of advocacy. It has surreal touches: Viewers can literally peek into the chests of the virtual immigrants and see their beating hearts.

But as debates about immigration roil American politics, its impossible not to see the exhibit through a political lens.

I would pay for a bunch of Trump supporters to go and have this experience, said Anne Demo, who traveled from Pennsylvania to see the exhibit on Monday. Theres a level of humanity that really reaches you.

Such VR experiences have already become a staple of the high-end charity circuit. Black-tie clad donors at galas for the organization Charity: Water can strap on VR goggles and follow in the footsteps of a girl in an Ethiopian village getting clean water for the first time.

Cathe Neukum, an executive producer at the International Rescue Committee, which advocates for refugees, said half of the donors who watched her organizations VR production of a refugee camp in Jordan took off their headsets in tears. If youre watching a regular video on your TV or your laptop, you can walk away, but when youre engaged in a headset, youre in it in a completely different way, she said.

When a VR exhibit about a day in the life of a young Syrian refugee was included at mall kiosks soliciting donations for UNICEF, the number of people giving money doubled, said Christopher Fabian, an executive for the charity.

The possibilities for similar commentary abound. A campaign working to end solitary confinement could use VR to show people what its like inside a 6-by-9-foot prison cell, while groups advocating against President Trumps travel ban might put voters in the shoes of refugees escaping persecution in the banned countries.

For the last year, a Stanford experiment has been testing whether people who view a VR simulation of a homeless persons life from losing their job to struggling to pay rent to surviving on the streets are more likely to sign a petition calling for housing support. (The experience is on view at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose.) The results are still forthcoming, said Jeremy Bailenson, the studys lead researcher. But overall, he said, theres a growing body of evidence that VR can be a powerful way to get people to empathize with others.

Not everyone thinks VR experiences about refugees, migrants or homeless people will be so influential. In a few years, everybodys going to do it its going to be boring, Fabian said. Theres a certain point where you say, I get it, the world is sad. The most exciting applications of VR, he said, will come in education and coordination connecting classrooms around the world and helping them study together, for example.

And not everyone who saw Irritus exhibit thought it would change minds. People are hardwired, especially these days, in their political belief systems, said Christine Davila, 32, of Los Angeles. Moreover, most Los Angeles museumgoers are probably already pretty immigrant-friendly in their political beliefs, she pointed out. (The exhibit is currently sold out through September.)

So far, the overtly political uses of VR have been much more rudimentary. Sen. Bernie Sanders presidential campaign released several VR videos of his campaign events, giving viewers a front-row seat at one of his rallies. Turn one way and you see the shining faces of the Berniecrats; look down and you can see the notes for Sanders speech.

Another project called AltSpaceVR brought people from around the country together in a virtual space to watch presidential debates and have political discussions. Arguments between people who see each other in virtual reality tend to be more civil than on social media, said Eric Romo, the companys CEO: Its more difficult to be negative if you actually see another person in front of you, than when youre hiding behind a keyboard.

The advent of television transformed American politics and campaigning, ushering in live debates and the 30-second campaign ad. While its too early to say if VR could get anywhere near that level of influence, its likely to at least play a role, especially as the technology gets cheaper and more widely available.

In 2020, Romo predicted, all the major presidential candidates will have some kind of VR element in their campaigns.

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Virtual reality exhibit goes inside Mexican border crossing, with Oscar-winning director's help - The Mercury News

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