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Like the Reformation, the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment were network-driven phenomena, yet they spread faster and farther. This reflected the importance of acquaintances in correspondence networks such as Voltaire’s and Benjamin Franklin’s, communities that might otherwise have remained subdivided into…
Luther thought the result of his movement to reform the Roman Catholic Church would be what came to be called “the priesthood of all believers,” the sixteenth-century equivalent of Zuckerberg’s “global community.” In practice, the Protestant Reformation produced more than a century of bloody religious conflict. This…
A prominent author who recently disagreed with me on a technical matter quickly labelled me as belonging to a ‘department of bullshit’. Ouch! How is it possible not to get offended by this sort of thing, especially when it’s coming not from an anonymous troll, but from a famous guy with more than 200,000 followers? By…
...basic Roman arithmetic is largely rather simple, even for those of us spoiled by Arabic notation. Addition is no sweat, because complex Roman numbers already use what math pros call additive notation, with numerals set beside one another to create a larger number. VI is just V plus I, after all. To add large…
The authors of the study, published earlier this year, adopted a novel way to measure atheist identity. Instead of asking about belief in God directly, they provided a list of seemingly innocuous statements and then asked: “How many of these statements are true of you?” Respondents in a control group were given a list…
Consider for a moment just how many times Star Trek: The Motion Picture lingers upon the important act of a man entering -- or connecting to -- a machine. We watch Kirk's shuttle pod "dock" with Enterprise after a long, lingering examination of the ship. We see Spock, in a thruster suit, "penetrate" -- in his words…
THE MAGNA CORTICA ORIGINAL TENETS (DATE UNKNOWN BUT BEFORE BF 80) I. Self knowledge. Sapient beings have the right to know whether they’ve been mentally modified. II. Self-modification. Sapient beings have the right to pursue self-modification. III. Refusing modification. They also have the right to refuse it. IV…
At the risk of raising thunder both on the Left and on the Right, I have occasionally used certain ideas and words derived from religion, and I have tried to interpret them in relation to modern needs. The valuable, though much damaged words "spiritual" and "worship," which have become almost as obscene to the Left as…
Perhaps the most striking example of the extravagance of the Other Men was the part played by religion in their more advanced societies. Religion was a much greater power than on my own planet; and the religious teachings of the prophets of old were able to kindle even my alien and sluggish heart with fervor. Yet…
Science and industry had brought one of those sudden and extreme revolutions of thought which were so characteristic of the Other Men. Nearly all the churches were destroyed or turned into temporary factories or industrial museums. Atheism, lately persecuted, became fashionable. All the best minds turned agnostic…
Many thousands of other quasi-human worlds, besides those of the "Echinoderm" type, came to an untimely end. One, which succumbed to a curious disaster, perhaps deserves brief notice. Here we found a race of very human kind. When its civilization had reached a stage and character much like our own, a stage in which…
As algorithms push humans out of the job market, wealth and power might become concentrated in the hands of the tiny elite that owns the all-powerful algorithms, creating unprecedented social and political inequality. Alternatively, the algorithms might themselves become the owners. Human law already recognizes…
The greatest challenges facing parents stem from their own school experiences. Every adult has been educated in some way, and the methods their teachers used usually shape the values they carry with them and color their perceptions of how education “should be.” These learned values are very powerful and can be seen in…
Good software is not copy-protected. That's a somewhat controversial position on a highly controversial subject. Many manufacturers try to discourage "piracy" (wholesale copying) of their software by various protective devices. Fine. The problem is, if the users can't copy all or parts of the program easily within…
Although the ages of Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) and Vernadsky (1863-1945) differed, they were at the comparable level of scientific maturity concerning the growth of their biosphere — noosphere theories. Vernadsky first presented his views on the biosphere systematically when he published The Biosphere 2in 1926…
36. We give our dead We give our dead To the orchards And the groves. We give our dead To life. ∞ = Δ 37. Darkness gives shape Darkness Gives shape to the light As light Shapes the darkness. Death Gives shape to life As life Shapes death. The universe And God Share this wholeness, Each Defining the other. God Gives…
31. Sculptor and Clay As wind, As water, As fire, As life, God Is both creative and destructive, Demanding and yielding, Sculptor and clay. God is Infinite Potential: God is Change. ∞ = Δ 32. Your teachers Your teachers Are all around you. All that you perceive, All that you experience, All that is given to you or…
1. God is Change All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change. God Is Change. ∞ = Δ 2. Prodigy Prodigy is, at its essence, adaptability and persistent, positive obsession. Without persistence, what remains is an enthusiasm of the moment. Without adaptability, what…
God is Power— Infinite, Irresistible, Inexorable, Indifferent. All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change. God Is Change. As wind, As water, As fire, As life, God Is both creative and destructive, Demanding and yielding, Scultpor and clay. God is Infinite…
As reported previously, the strongest influence on maternal infant bonding (MFA) in the regression analysis was a woman‘s perception of her birth experience (POBS) as revealed by an R-squared of 0.055, p < 0.01, which represents 5.5% of the proportion of variation in maternal infant bonding. Furthermore, the…