Category Archives: Singularity

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

This Chinese Lab Is Aiming for Big AI BreakthroughsWill Knight | WiredChina produces as many artificial intelligence researchers as the US, but it lags in key fields like machine learning. The government hopes to make up ground. It set AI researchers the goal of making fundamental breakthroughs by 2025 and called for the country to be the worlds primary innovation center by 2030. BAAI opened a year later, in Zhongguancun, a neighborhood of Beijing designed to replicate US innovation hubs such as Boston and Silicon Valley.

What Elon Musks $100 Million Carbon Capture Prize Could MeanJames Temple | MIT Technology Review[Elon Musk] announced on Twitter that he plans to give away $100 million of [his $180 billion net worth] as a prize for the best carbon capture technology. Another $100 million could certainly help whatever venture, or ventures, clinch Musks prize. But its a tiny fraction of his wealth and will also only go so far. Money aside, however, one thing Musk has a particular knack for is generating attention. And this is a space in need of it.

Synthetic Cornea Helped a Legally Blind Man Regain His SightSteve Dent | EngadgetWhile the implant doesnt contain any electronics, it could help more people than any robotic eye. After years of hard work, seeing a colleague implant the CorNeat KPro with ease and witnessing a fellow human being regain his sight the following day was electrifying and emotionally moving, there were a lot of tears in the room, said CorNeat Vision co-founder Dr. Gilad Litvin.

MIT Develops Method for Lab-Grown Plants That May Eventually Lead to Alternatives to Forestry and FarmingDarrell Etherington | TechCrunchIf the work of these researchers can eventually be used to create a way to produce lab-grown wood for use in construction and fabrication in a way thats scalable and efficient, then theres tremendous potential in terms of reducing the impact on forestry globally. Eventually, the team even theorizes you could coax the growth of plant-based materials into specific target shapes, so you could also do some of the manufacturing in the lab, by growing a wood table directly for instance.

FAA Approves First Fully Automated Commercial Drone FlightsAndy Pasztor and Katy Stech Ferek | The Wall Street JournalUS aviation regulators have approved the first fully automated commercial drone flights, granting a small Massachusetts-based company permission to operate drones without hands-on piloting or direct observation by human controllers or observers. The companys Scout drones operate under predetermined flight programs and use acoustic technology to detect and avoid drones, birds, and other obstacles.

Chinas Surging Private Space Industry Is Out to Challenge the USNeel V. Patel | MIT Technology Review[The Ceres-1] was a commercial rocketonly the second from a Chinese company ever to go into space. And the launch happened less than three years after the company was founded. The achievement is a milestone for Chinas fledglingbut rapidly growingprivate space industry, an increasingly critical part of the countrys quest to dethrone the US as the worlds preeminent space power.

Janet Yellen Will Consider Limiting Use of CryptocurrencyTimothy B. Lee | Ars TechnicaCryptocurrencies could come under renewed regulatory scrutiny over the next four years if Janet Yellen, Joe Bidens pick to lead the Treasury Department, gets her way. During Yellens Tuesday confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee,Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.)asked Yellen about the use of cryptocurrency by terrorists and other criminals. Cryptocurrencies are a particular concern, Yellen responded. I think many are usedat least in a transactions sensemainly for illicit financing.i

Secret Ingredient Found to Power SupernovasThomas Lewton | QuantaOnly in the last few years, with the growth of supercomputers, have theorists had enough computing power to model massive stars with the complexity needed to achieve explosions. These new simulations are giving researchers a better understanding of exactly how supernovas have shaped the universe we see today.

Image Credit: Ricardo Gomez Angel / Unsplash

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This Week's Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through January 23) - Singularity Hub

It took evolution three or four billion years to produce Homo sapiens. If the climate had completely failed just once in that time, then evolution would have come to a crashing halt and we would not be here now. So to understand how we came to exist on planet Earth, well need to know how Earth managed to stay fit for life for billions of years.

This is not a trivial problem. Current global warming shows us that the climate can change considerably over the course of even a few centuries. Over geological timescales, it is even easier to change climate. Calculations show that there is the potential for Earths climate to deteriorate to temperatures below freezing or above boiling in just a few million years.

We also know that the sun has become 30 percent more luminous since life first evolved. In theory, this should have caused the oceans to boil away by now, given that they were not generally frozen on the early Earth. This is known as the faint young sun paradox. Yet, somehow, this habitability puzzle was solved.

Scientists have come up with two main theories. The first is that the Earth could possess something like a thermostata feedback mechanism (or mechanisms) that prevents the climate ever wandering to fatal temperatures.

The second is that, out of a large number of planets, perhaps some just make it through by luck, and Earth is one of those. This second scenario is made more plausible by the discoveries in recent decades of many planets outside our solar systemso-called exoplanets. Astronomical observations of distant stars tell us that many have planets orbiting them, and that some are of a size and density and orbital distance such that temperatures suitable for life are theoretically possible. It has been estimated that there are at least two billion such candidate planets in our galaxy alone.

Scientists would love to travel to these exoplanets to investigate whether any of them have matched Earths billion years of climate stability. But even the nearest exoplanets, those orbiting the star Proxima Centauri, are more than four light-years away. Observational or experimental evidence is hard to come by.

Instead, I explored the same question through modeling. Using a computer program designed to simulate climate evolution on planets in general (not just Earth), I first generated 100,000 planets, each with a randomly different set of climate feedbacks. Climate feedbacks are processes that can amplify or diminish climate changethink for instance of sea-ice melting in the Arctic, which replaces sunlight-reflecting ice with sunlight-absorbing open sea, which in turn causes more warming and more melting.

In order to investigate how likely each of these diverse planets was to stay habitable over enormous (geological) timescales, I simulated each 100 times. Each time the planet started from a different initial temperature and was exposed to a randomly different set of climate events. These events represent climate-altering factors such as supervolcano eruptions (like Mount Pinatubo but much larger) and asteroid impacts (like the one that killed the dinosaurs). On each of the 100 runs, the planets temperature was tracked until it became too hot or too cold or else had survived for three billion years, at which point it was deemed to have been a possible crucible for intelligent life.

The simulation results give a definite answer to this habitability problem, at least in terms of the importance of feedbacks and luck. It was very rare (in fact, just one time out of 100,000) for a planet to have such strong stabilizing feedbacks that it stayed habitable all 100 times, irrespective of the random climate events. In fact, most planets that stayed habitable at least once did so fewer than 10 times out of 100. On nearly every occasion in the simulation when a planet remained habitable for three billion years, it was partly down to luck. At the same time, luck by itself was shown to be insufficient. Planets that were specially designed to have no feedbacks at all never stayed habitable; random walks, buffeted around by climate events, never lasted the course.

Repeat runs in the simulation were not identical: 1,000 different planets were generated randomly and each run twice. (a) results on first run, (b) results on second run. Green circles show success (stayed habitable for 3 billion years) and black failure. Toby Tyrrell, Author provided

This overall result, that outcomes depend partly on feedbacks and partly on luck, is robust. All sorts of changes to the modeling did not affect it. By implication, Earth must therefore possess some climate-stabilizing feedbacks, but at the same time, good fortune must also have been involved in it staying habitable. If, for instance, an asteroid or solar flare had been slightly larger than it was, or had occurred at a slightly different (more critical) time, we would probably not be here on Earth today. It gives a different perspective on why we are able to look back on Earths remarkable, enormously extended, history of life evolving and diversifying and becoming ever more complex to the point that it gave rise to us.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image Credit: PIRO4D from Pixabay

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Earth Has Stayed Habitable for Billions of Years. Exactly How Lucky Did We Get? - Singularity Hub

Devin Townsend has checked in with an update on his new project that is currently in the works.

"Over the last 6 months, Ive been working on two 'scores' that have become a film, two albums, and a graphic novel among other things called The Puzzle. Its become a massive project with a lot of great people involved. Its not 'song oriented' and is complicated and abstract. The film has become a tremendous undertaking and we will be streaming it online when it debuts, (along with physical product that is pretty next level).

The concept is meant to describe the last year of chaos and the psychological process it required of us all. The music and visuals act as an analogy for it. The number of people involved (30-40) represents a sort of community amidst it. Theres two albums: Puzzle is chaos and meant to represent the internal dialogue in a fundamentally absurd time, Snuggles is meant to be a beautiful balm that acts as a conclusion and something you can listen to on loop to feel better. Both have a film.

The concept of it all (which Ill explain in YouTube clips pior to the release) is such that I hope it inspires people- if visually inclined- to make their own graphic novels, films, books etc, using the music as a soundtrack. The Puzzle is written to be my version of a soundtrack to a kind of universal experience weve shared, I guess. The movie and books we are producing are meant as examples of the concept... as in: 'everybodys puzzle is unique, based on the same experiences.'

My work has always really just been a product of a compulsion to reflect whats going on in my life. If things are chaotic, its bound to be chaotic. Its been a very bizarre work flow, but its starting to come together now. Delivery date is March 22, release 2-3 months later.

Finally in August, I will be begin recording my next actual album (with songs) for release early 2022. (Untitled so far) but before that, The Puzzle is something very different and really fascinating I think.

Ill be back to podcasts and twitch streams when the workload lightens a touch here. Be well and thanks for everything."

Details have yet to be released, but Sheet Happens Publishing have confirmed that they will release an official guitar transcription book for Devin Townsend's Empath album. A release date has yet to be determined. Watch the official Sheet Happens website here for updates.

Empath was released in March 2019.

Tracklisting:

"Castaway""Genesis""Spirits Will Collide""Evermore""Sprite""Hear Me""Why""Borderlands""Requiem""Singularity Part 1 - Adrift""Singularity Part 2 - I Am I""Singularity Part 3 - There Be Monsters""Singularity Part 4 - Curious Gods""Singularity Part 5 - Silicon Scientists""Singularity Part 6 - Here Comes The Sun"

"Spirits Will Collide" video:

Evermore video:

"Genesis" video:

Original post:

DEVIN TOWNSEND Shares Details Of Forthcoming Release, The Puzzle - "A Film, Two Albums, And A Graphic Novel Among Other Things" -...

By Victor Davis Hanson| The Providence Journal

VictorDavisHanson (authorvdh@gmail.com) is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution atStanford University.

The newly formed President's Advisory 1776 Commission just released its report. The group was chaired by Churchill historian and Hillsdale College President Dr. Larry P. Arnn. The vice chair was Dr. Carol M. Swain, a retired professor of political science. (Full disclosure: I was a member of the commission.)

The unanimously approved conclusions focused on the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the historical challenges to these founding documents and the need for civic renewal. The 16-member commission was diverse in the widest sense of the familiar adjective. It included historians, lawyers, academics, scholars, authors, former elected officials and past public servants.

Whether because the report was issued by a Donald Trump-appointed commission, or because the conclusions questioned the controversial and flawed New York Times-sponsored 1619 Project, there was almost immediate criticism from the left.

Yet at any other age than the divisive present, the report would not have been seen as controversial.

First, the commission offered a brief survey of the origins of the Declaration of Independence, published in 1776, and the Constitution, signed in 1787. It emphasized how unusual for the age were the founders' commitments to political freedom, personal liberty and the natural equality endowed by our creator all the true beginning of the American experiment.

The commission reminded us that the founders were equally worried about autocracy and chaos. So they drafted checks and balances to protect citizens from both authoritarianism, known so well from the British Crown, and the frenzy of sometimes wild public excess.

The report repeatedly focuses on both the ideals of the American founding and the centuries-long quest to live up to them. It notes the fragility of such a novel experiment in constitutional republicanism, democratic elections and self-government especially during late-18th-century era of war and factionalism.

The report does not whitewash the continuance of many injustices after 1776 and 1787 in particular chattel slavery concentrated in the South, and voting reserved only for free males.

Indeed, the commission explains why and how these wrongs were inconsistent with the letter and spirit of our founding documents. So it was natural that these disconnects would be addressed, even fought over, and continually resolved often over the opposition of powerful interests who sought to reinvent the Declaration and Constitution into something that they were not.

Two of the most widely referenced Americans in the report are Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. Both argued, a century apart, for the moral singularity of the U.S. Constitution. Neither wished to replace the founders' visions; both instead demanded that they be fully realized and enforced.

The report details prior ideological and political challenges to the Constitution as we approach America's 250th birthday. Some were abjectly evil, such as the near-century-long insistence that the enslavement of African Americans was legal an amorality that eventually led to more than 600,000 Americans being killed during a Civil War to banish it.

Some ideologies, such as fascism and communism, were easily identifiable as inimical to our principles. Both occasionally won adherents in times of economic depression and social strife before they were defeated and discredited abroad.

Perhaps more controversially, the commission identified other challenges, such as continued racism, progressivism and contemporary identity politics. The report argued how and why all those who insisted that race might become a basis from which to discriminate against entire groups of people were at odds with the logic of the Declaration.

Historically, progressivism assumed that human nature is malleable. With enough money and power, Americans supposedly can be improved to accept more paternalistic government, usually to be run by technocrats. Often they sought to curb the liberties of the individual, under the guise of modernist progress and greater efficiency.

The commission was no more sympathetic to the current popularity of identity politics or reparatory racial discrimination. It argued that the efforts to insist that race, ethnicity, sexual preference and gender define who we are, rather than remain incidental in comparison to our natural and shared humanity, will lead to a dangerous fragmentation of American society.

Finally, the commission offered the unifying remedy of renewed civic education. Specifically, it advocates far more teaching in our schools of the Declaration and the Constitution, and other documents surrounding their creation.

It most certainly did not suggest that civic education and American history ignore or contextualize past national shortcomings. Again, the report argued that our lapses should be envisioned as obstacles to fulfilling the aspirations of our founding.

The commission may be short-lived with the change of administrations, given that it was born in the chaos of the divisive present. President Joe Biden reportedly planned to terminate the commission through an executive order.

But any fair critic can see that the report's unifying message is that we are a people blessed with a singular government and history, that self-critique and moral improvement are innate to the American founding and spirit, and that America never had to be perfect to be both good and far better than the alternatives.

(Victor Davis Hanson was a member of the 1776 Commission. His views here are his own and are not necessarily those of other commission members. The report can be read athttps://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/The-Presidents-Advisory-1776-Commission-Final-Report.pdf.)

See the rest here:

Opinion/Hanson: Thoughts on the 1776 Commission and its report - The Providence Journal

Darien Library and Barrett Bookstore welcome author James Rickards and Rob Embers in a discussion about the historic economic crisis that has emerged as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. This virtual event will take place on Thursday, February 4 at 7 p.m. Register on Darien Librarys website at darienlibrary.org/event/4803.

In his latest book, The New Great Depression, James Rickards pulls back the curtain to reveal the true risks to our financial system and what savvy investors can do to survive even prosper during a time of unrivaled turbulence. Drawing on historical case studies, monetary theory, and behind-the-scenes access to the halls of power, Rickards will shine a clarifying light on the events taking place so investors understand whats really happening and what they can do about it.

About James Rickards

James Rickards is the Editor of Strategic Intelligence a financial newsletter. He is the New York Times bestselling author of The New Great Depression (2021), Aftermath (2019), The Road to Ruin (2016), The New Case for Gold (2016), The Death of Money (2014), and Currency Wars (2011) from Penguin Random House.

He is an investment advisor, lawyer, inventor, and economist, and has held senior positions at Citibank, Long-Term Capital Management, and Caxton Associates. In 1998, he was the principal negotiator of the rescue of LTCM sponsored by the Federal Reserve. His clients include institutional investors and government directorates. He is an op-ed contributor to the Financial Times, Evening Standard, The Telegraph, New York Times, and Washington Post. He has been interviewed by BBC, CNN, NPR, CSPAN, CNBC, Bloomberg, Fox, and The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Rickards is a guest lecturer in globalization and finance at The Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, Trinity College Dublin, The Kellogg School at Northwestern, the U.S. Army War College and the School of Advanced InternationalStudies. He has presented papers on risk at Singularity University, the Applied Physics Laboratory, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is an advisor on capital markets to the U.S. intelligence community, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and is on the Advisory Board of the FDD Center on Economic and Financial Power in Washington DC. Mr. Rickards holds an LL.M. (Taxation) from the NYU School of Law; a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School; an M.A. in international economics from SAIS, and a B.A. (with honors) from Johns Hopkins. He lives in New Hampshire.

Original post:

Darien Library and Barrett Bookstore welcome author James Rickards and Rob Embers in a discussion about the historic economic crisis due to COVID-19...

(Image by Kevin Amrulloh from Pixabay )

Recent times have brought the importance of supply chain resiliency into even sharper focus. Organizations that had already built resilience into both their technology networks and operational networks have managed to weathered the turbulent times throughout the COVID-19 pandemic better. For others, it has been a huge wakeup call.

As we now stand back and attempt to regroup, rebuild and regenerate, every business has a chance to reflect and decide how to become better prepared.

This is the point at which organizations in every vertical market should realize that resiliency needs to be built-in at a granular executional level; it is a function that should apply to, and connect with, the architectural foundations of every process in the company. It is not some sort of dial or switch that you simply turn on or up at the start of a crisis, whether it be a global contagion or some other form of economic upheaval.

But before we consider the nature of resiliency, we need to decide what we really mean by "change" itself in order to understand the various forms in which it manifests itself.

At the force majeure level, there is sudden catastrophic change, the likes of which we witnessed in 2020. Outside of pandemics, we should also include other "black swan" events that disrupt supply chains, such as a sunken container ship, a hurricane, or perhaps a widespread contamination incident.

While these massively disruptive and dreadful events typically cause chaos, and even the loss of life, they are comparatively infrequent, and they don't threaten the long-term viability of a business with the same types of market forces and fluctuations that emanate from deeper-set market trends. There are more ground-level changes in demand patterns that nibble away at margins and service capabilities slowly. Less cataclysmic, these changes can ultimately have even more impact than a hurricane.

Even longer term, when securing essential strategic resources for the business itself is threatened, change happens in a form that can lead to business closure. Knowing how and why change itself occurs (and what shape it comes in) can help us to build a resilient supply chain capable of driving business operations today, with a constant eye on every variable factor that could impact business tomorrow.

A resilient supply chain is based on three core capabilities: visibility, intelligence and a digitally connected ecosystem. To restate these cornerstones in more depth, we are talking about:

end-to-end real-time visibility;

intelligence across root cause identification,

exception detection and resolution management;

and an exceptional ability to execute through a digitized ecosystem that provides a path to autonomous "sense and respond" activities.

Taking each of these elements in turn, let's look at visibility. In a traditional business model, an enterprise bases its visibilityonlyon what its suppliers are telling it. You don'treallyknow where your order is, or when it is going to arrive. However, cloud-based supply chain networks offer the opportunity for all parties to view and interact with one single view of an order in real-time. The net result is that the business, its suppliers and its carriers operate using a single instance and version of data - a single source of truth.

This singularity is important. It cuts out uncertainty, delays and eradicates separation so that there is little or no contingency factor in daily operations. But visibility needs to run end-to-end for true clarity. The business needs to know the impact of its actions upstream (on its suppliers) and as far as possible downstream (into its sales channel and customer base).

Additionally, end-to-end visibility needs to happen in real-time, i.e. all of the information relating to all supply chain transactions, movements, price fluctuations and so on, needs to be available all of the time, in real-time. Without real-time, super-high data quality, it is not possible to drive the supply chain by exception and take advantage of machine learning (ML) technologies.

As the resilient supply chain company moves forward, it has the advantage of software algorithms that can help to detect events that can cause disruptive issues. It's important to remember that there will always be an element of "operational noise" throughout both the physical and financial supply chain, so the organization will need to qualify just how much noise it can live with in the normal course of business.

At this point, we can then drill down into the root causes behind any single event. When there is a shortage of materials for a production plant, or perhaps a shortfall in the supply of finished materials for a retail store, we need to understand the why-factor behind these events. Knowing the difference between a shortage caused by a shift in market demands, and scarcity resulting from a container ship being stuck in a port, is fundamentally important.

The real intelligence comes from being able to group together different events happening in various locations around an organisation's total global supply chain. If the business can pinpoint the same root cause across multiple operational issues, then it can deliver resolution management more quickly.

An intelligent, resilient supply chain can process thousands of variables and data sources across a single cloud-based platform to help the business navigate forward. Working at speeds far in advance of any human capabilities, a digital supply chain ecosystem helps all parties connect and collaborate over dates, times, shipping orders, financing and so on. When all partners open up the external-facing portions of their own systems accordingly, business decisions happen faster, with improved accuracy and less uncertainty. More problematic is the fact that it is an uncertainty that breeds contingency and cost.

DB Schenker was in the midst of a supply chain transformation when the pandemic hit. So did the visibility they achieved make a difference? As DB Schenker's Joachim Schaut, VP Intercontinental Supply Chain Solutions, told diginomica, without their supply chain transformation efforts, they would not have been able to come to the aid of their customers in the same way:

"Our customers saved a lot of money with solutions, and keeping it at origin, or delaying it in transit and so on, because we had the visibility on the item level. Without us, those companies would not have this in-depth visibility - and not all on one platform. They would have needed ten days, maybe two weeks, to get all the information. Then you still have two weeks of arriving containers and your shops are full, which leads to warehousing solutions at destination - the most expensive thing you can do."

In the immediate future, more and more of the actions we take inside our most resilient digital supply chains will be carried out autonomously by intelligent agents and smart algorithms. Our physical and our accompanying financial supply chain networks will reflect the automation intelligence already being applied to manufacturing via Industry 4.0 practices.

If today we stand at automation stage 1.0, then business is set to apply more algorithmic intelligence in the future. A business that knows when and where this intelligence resides is not just smart, it is also resilient. It starts to make decisions based not just on short-term prices, supply availability and market demand, but also on perceived business longevity. The core truth is, building supply chains capable of resiliency to "normal" change will enable businesses to adapt to massive upheavals, if and when we have to adjust to some wildly different "new normal."

Read more:

How resiliency forms the strongest link in the digital supply chain - Diginomica

The newly formed Presidents Advisory 1776 Commission just released its report. The group was chaired by Churchill historian and Hillsdale College President Dr. Larry P. Arnn. The vice chair was Dr. Carol M. Swain, a retired professor of political science. (Full disclosure: I was a member of the commission. The report can be read at whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/The-Presidents-Advisory-1776-Commission-Final-Report.pdf.)

The unanimously approved conclusions focused on the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the historical challenges to these founding documents and the need for civic renewal. The 16-member commission was diverse in the widest sense of the familiar adjective. It included historians, lawyers, academics, scholars, authors, former elected officials and past public servants.

Whether because the report was issued by a Donald Trump-appointed commission or because the conclusions questioned the controversial and flawed New York Times-sponsored 1619 Project, there was almost immediate criticism from the left.

Yet at any other age than the divisive present, the report would not have been seen as controversial.

First, the commission offered a brief survey of the origins of the Declaration of Independence, published in 1776, and the Constitution, signed in 1787. It emphasized how unusual for the age were the founders commitments to political freedom, personal liberty and the natural equality endowed by our creator all the true beginning of the American experiment.

The commission reminded us that the founders were equally worried about autocracy and chaos. So they drafted checks and balances to protect citizens from both authoritarianism, known so well from the British Crown, and the frenzy of sometimes wild public excess.

The report repeatedly focuses on both the ideals of the American founding and the centuries-long quest to live up to them. It notes the fragility of such a novel experiment in constitutional republicanism, democratic elections and self-government especially during the late-18th-century era of war and factionalism.

The report does not whitewash the continuance of many injustices after 1776 and 1787 in particular chattel slavery concentrated in the South and voting reserved only for free males.

Indeed, the commission explains why and how these wrongs were inconsistent with the letter and spirit of our founding documents. So it was natural that these disconnects would be addressed, even fought over, and continually resolved often over the opposition of powerful interests who sought to reinvent the Declaration of Independence and Constitution into something that they were not.

Two of the most widely referenced Americans in the report are Frederick Douglas and Martin Luther King Jr. Both argued, a century apart, for the moral singularity of the U.S. Constitution. Neither wished to replace the founders visions; both instead demanded that they be fully realized and enforced.

The report details prior ideological and political challenges to the Constitution as we approach Americas 250th birthday. Some were abjectly evil, such as the near-century-long insistence that the enslavement of African Americans was legal an amorality that eventually led to more than 600,000 Americans being killed during a Civil War to banish it.

Some ideologies, such as fascism and communism, were easily identifiable as inimical to our principles. Both occasionally won adherents in times of economic depression and social strife before they were defeated and discredited abroad.

Perhaps more controversially, the commission identified other challenges, such as continued racism, progressivism and contemporary identity politics. The report argued how and why all those who insisted that race might become a basis from which to discriminate against entire groups of people were at odds with the logic of the Declaration of Independence.

Historically, progressivism assumed that human nature is malleable. With enough money and power, Americans supposedly can be improved to accept more paternalistic government, usually to be run by technocrats. Often they sought to curb the liberties of the individual under the guise of modernist progress and greater efficiency.

The commission was no more sympathetic to the current popularity of identity politics or reparatory racial discrimination. It argued that the efforts to insist that race, ethnicity, sexual preference and gender define who we are, rather than remain incidental in comparison to our natural and shared humanity, will lead to a dangerous fragmentation of American society.

Finally, the commission offered the unifying remedy of renewed civic education. Specifically, it advocates far more teaching in our schools of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and other documents surrounding their creation.

It most certainly did not suggest that civic education and American history ignore or contextualize past national shortcomings. Again, the report argued that our lapses should be envisioned as obstacles to fulfilling the aspirations of our founding.

The commission may be short-lived with the change of administrations, given that it was born in the chaos of the divisive present.

But any fair critic can see that the reports unifying message is that we are a people blessed with a singular government and history, that self-critique and moral improvement are innate to the American founding and spirit, and that America never had to be perfect to be both good and far better than the alternatives.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at Stanfords Hoover Institution and the author of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, from Basic Books. You can reach him via email at authorvdh@gmail.com

Excerpt from:

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Thoughts on the 1776 Commission and its report - Las Vegas Review-Journal

Stephen Hawking's predictions in 2010 on colonizing Mars

Professor Hawkingwas a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author who was the director of research at theUniversity of Cambridge's Centre for Theoretical Cosmology before he passed away. His incredible work included a collaboration with Roger Penrose on gravitational singularity theorems in the framework of general relativity,and the theoretical prediction that black holes emit radiation, often called Hawking radiation. He was the first to set out a theory of cosmology, explained by a union of the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. But he also spent his career tussling with religious views.

In his final book Brief Answers to Big Questions, Prof Hawking concluded there was no possibility of a God.

He wrote: "I think the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing, according to the laws of science.

"If you accept, as I do, that the laws of nature are fixed, then it doesn't take long to ask 'what role is there for God?'"

Histheory had been moulded over the years.

Prof Hawking was a vocal supporter of the Big Bang theory the idea that the universe exploded suddenly out of an ultra-densesingularity smaller than an atom.

To Prof Hawking and many like-minded scientists, the combined laws of gravity, relativity, quantum physics and a few other rules could explain everything that ever happened or ever will happen in our known universe.

However, the genius noted that you could say the laws are the work of God, but that is more a definition of God than a proof of his existence.

In 2007, Prof Hawking described himself as not religious in the normal sense.

He added: I believe the universe is governed by the laws of science.

The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws.

READ MORE:Big Bang breakthrough: Origin of life 'solved' by Soviet scientist in lost Cold War paper

In 2010, Pope Benedict XVI seemed to refer to Hawking, saying, Scientists do not create the world, they learn about it and attempt to imitate it.

Prof Hawking visited the Vatican numerous times due to his involvement in the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, which fosters interaction between faith and reason and encouraging dialogue between science and spiritual, cultural, philosophical and religious values.

He gave a talk on The Origin of the Universein2016where he met with religious leaders, including Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.

Prof Hawking cleared up his view stating that a God was not necessary to spark the Big Bang.

He and co-author Leonard Mlodinow put forward in their book 2010, The Grand Design, that the Big Bang was inevitable.

It reads: "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.

Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.

However, he did not completely rule out the possibility of the Almighty at the time.

When discussing the book, he told ABC News: One cant prove that God doesnt exist.

But science makes God unnecessary. The laws of physics can explain the universe without the need for a creator.

He also detailed his thoughts on a possible afterlife, stating: I believe the simplest explanation is, there is no God.

"No one created the universe and no one directs our fate.

"This leads me to a profoundrealisationthat there probably is no heaven and no afterlife either.

"We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe and for that, I am extremely grateful.

In 2014, Professor Hawking gave an interview withEl Mundo, where he appeared to explain why so many people follow a religion.

He then declared himself an outright atheist.

He said: Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe.

"But now science offers a more convincing explanation.

"What I meant by we would know the mind of God is, we would know everything that God would know, if there were a God, which there isnt. Im an atheist.

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Ordered by God Stephen Hawkings creation theory unravelled in Vatican visit with Pope - Daily Express

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On Wednesday, the United States arrived at peak disinformation singularity. The lines between right-wing conspiracy internet forums and physical reality disappeared. Pro-Trump extremists stormed the Capitol as online trolls who had spent years threatening violence fully realized themselves, making it clear that they had never really been just trolling.

The mob that stormed the capital manifested years worth of posts lodged into unhinged, far-right, conspiracy-laden corners of the internet. Such rhetoric crept toward the mainstream, crossing over into right-wing media, eventually coming out of Trumps own mouth. It won new converts and spread more widely. It finally broke loose on Wednesday, as they did what theyd always said they would.

Through their farcical but all-too-real siege, Trump extremists turned the Capitol into something indistinguishable from the wild plots envisioned on their forums and groups. In the days leading up to the riot, people claiming that they were coming to Washington on Wednesday posted on the thedonald.win like it was 1944 and they were about to get on landing craft headed for the shores of Normandy. Today I had the very difficult conversations with my children, that daddy might not come home from D.C. one wrote. My husbands not happy, and hes going to with me, but I told him that if I say go and leave me behind, that he must do it. No questions asked. I look forward to standing with you on the front lines, another wrote in response.

On similar forums, extremist Trump supporters have been publicly outlining such plans for years: that they will take justice into their own hands by trying to start a second civil war or carrying out citizens arrests.

Ahead of today, experts thought the convening of a broad range of Trump supporters, including extremist groups,would radicalize attendees evenfurther toward the hard right. Their storming of the Capitol all but ensures that will come true, while illustrating the power they have already amassed.

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At Today's Riot, Trump's Trolls Turned Their Violent Fantasies Into Reality - Mother Jones

Air travel is one of the worst contributors to global warming, burping out nearly a billion tons of CO2 a year. But what if we could close that circle by converting those greenhouse gases back into jet fuel?

In the face of phenomena like climate change, plastic pollution, deforestation, and land degradation people are increasingly questioning the short-term thinking that underpins our societies. Some have dubbed our current approach a linear economy where we extract raw materials, process them into products, and then dispose of them once theyve outlived their usefulness.

As the global population grows, this strategy is becoming increasingly unsustainable. Thats prompting growing interest in a different model known as the circular economy. Rather than simply discarding our waste, we find ways to reuse it or recycle it into something more useful.

For years now, chemists have been trying to apply this idea to one of the most environmentally damaging sectors of our economy: the aviation industry. Not only do planes emit huge amounts of CO2, they also pump other greenhouse gases like nitrogen oxide directly into the upper atmosphere, where their warming effect is greatly increased.

The fossil fuels they burn to create all these emissions are hydrocarbons, which means they are made up of a combination of carbon and hydrogen. Thats led some to suggest it might be possible to create synthetic versions of these fuels by capturing the CO2 planes produce and combining it with hydrogen extracted with water.

If the energy used to power these reactions came from renewable sources, their production wouldnt lead to any increase in emissions. And when these fuels were burned they would simply be returning CO2 captured from the atmosphere, making the fuel effectively carbon neutral.

Its a nice idea, but the process of turning CO2 into useful fuels is more complex than it might sound. Most efforts so far have required expensive catalystssubstances that boost the speed of a chemical reactionor multiple energy-intensive processing steps, which means the resulting fuel is far pricier than fossil fuels.

Now though, researchers from the University of Oxford have developed a new low-cost catalyst that can directly convert CO2 into jet fuel, which they say could eventually lay the foundation for a circular economy for aviation fuel.

Instead of consuming fossil crude oil, jet aviation fuels and petrochemical starting compounds are produced from a valuable and renewable raw material, namely, carbon dioxide, they write in a paper in Nature Communications.

Within a jet fuel CO2 circular economy, the goods (here the jet fuel) are continually reprocessed in a closed environment, they add. This would not only save the natural fossil resources and preserve the environment, but would also create new jobs, economies, and markets.

Creating jet fuel is particularly challenging because most routes for synthesizing hydrocarbons from CO2 tend to produce smaller molecules with only a few carbon atoms, like methane and methanol. Jet fuels are made up of molecules with many long chains of carbon atoms, and there have been few successful attempts to produce them directly from CO2 without extra processing.

But by combining findings from previous research, the group was able to create a low-cost iron-based catalyst that could produce substantial yields of jet fuel from CO2 and hydrogen. Iron is already commonly used in these kinds of reactions, but they combined it with manganese, which has been shown to boost the activity of iron catalysts, and potassium, which is known to encourage the formation of longer-chain hydrocarbons.

They prepared the catalysts using an approach known as the Organic Combustion Method (OCM), in which the raw ingredients are combined with citric acid to make a slurry that is then ignited at 662F and burned for four hours to create a fine powder. This is a much simpler processing technique than previous approaches, which means it holds promise for industrial applications.

Scaling up this process to meet the demands of the aviation industry wont be easy. Boosting the efficiency of the synthesis step is only one part of the puzzle. Collecting large amounts of CO2 from the air is very tricky, and splitting water to make hydrogen also uses a lot of power.

Plans are already afoot to build a pilot plant that will convert CO2 into jet fuel at Rotterdam Airport in the Netherlands, but as Friends of the Earth campaigner Jorien de Lege told the BBC, scaling up the technology will be a herculean task.

If you think about it, this demonstration plant can produce a thousand liters a day based on renewable energy. Thats about five minutes of flying in a Boeing 747, she said.

Nonetheless, developing a cheap, high-yield catalyst is a major step towards making the idea more feasible. Getting our planes to fly on thin air may sound like a wildly ambitious idea, but that goal has just come a little bit closer.

Image Credit: Free-Photos from Pixabay

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Scientists Just Created a Catalyst That Turns CO2 Into Jet Fuel - Singularity Hub