Rafe's Stream

Am I the only 1 who thinks net neutrality is a stupid issue?

Who doesn't understand at this point that the net is not a series of tubes? It's a freaking PROTOCOL. As long as most of the world agrees to it, it can't be stopped. Carriers who insist on meddling with neutrality will be destroyed by competition. Their paper tiger threats are just that. I personally don't care what happens with the FTC ruling, they don't have a real say in the future anyway.

The medium is the message, and the message is...us. (Can Lakoff trump Rove?)

"Try to imagine how public understanding would have to be enhanced for expressions like the following to come into normal public discourse:

• greed crisis in place of economic crisis

• blessed immigrants in place of illegal immigrants

• government for profit in place of privatization

• public theft in place of tax breaks

• failing citizens in place of failing schools

• corporate cruelty in place of profit maximization

• deadly coal in place of clean coal"

As usual I agree with 95% of Lakoff.  Amazing intellect.  Dropping truth bombs.  Would love to see him become active like Lessig...

The real question is what to do with all the typewriters when there are millions of monkeys with transplants....

A new approach to regenerative medicine involves using building blocks to allow heterogeneous tissue to form:

http://www.technologyreview.com/tr35/Profile.aspx?TRID=610
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/26749/?p1=A2

My prediction is that within 5 years a monkey will have a successful heart transplant with its own heart grown from scratch in the lab.

"We cannot even know if reality is consistent with sense data, because we only perceive what is already consistent....

After all, under hypnosis we can be jabbed with a needle and yet feel no pain, or smell disgusting imaginary odors, or consider ourselves nailed to the spot unable to move, or a million and one other sensory sensations impressed upon us by the hypnotist.
So what if our society is the hypnotist, and we experience everything in a way we have been pre-programmer and disposed to expect? What if there are other dimensions, available only to senses we do not have? That possibility is of no consequence. It is our blessing, and our curse, to be trapped in three dimensions with the senses we do have, or rather with the senses we have been deluded into having." (Angell & Demetis, 2010, Science's First Mistake)

International aid is dead

By that I am referring to the model in which <insert rich country here> sends money and goods to <insert poor country here> without also assuring that there is a clear path to self-sustaining health and prosperity.   In other words, any group doing "charity" work must also assure that the solution does not become the problem. 

There is one group that stands head and shoulders about everyone else in leading by example.  If you are at all wondering "how to do it right," you need to check them out:

What can you be doing better to achieve your mission now that you know about charity:water ?