14 MAR 2017 by ideonexus
Studies on Secular Parenting
The results of such secular child-rearing are encouraging. Studies have found that secular teenagers are far less likely to care what the “cool kids” think, or express a need to fit in with them, than their religious peers. When these teens mature into “godless” adults, they exhibit less racism than their religious counterparts, according to a 2010 Duke University study. Many psychological studies show that secular grownups tend to be less vengeful, less nationalistic, less militarist... 1 
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notes31 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
Speciation of the Human Race
On a time-scale of a thousand years, neither politics nor
technology is predictable. China and Japan are the only
major political units that have lasted that long. A thousand
years ago, Europe was an unimportant peninsula
lying on the edge of the more advanced and civilized
Arab world. The technologies of today would be unintelligible
to our ancestors of a millennium ago. The
only human institutions that retain their identities over
a thousand years are languages, cultures, and religions.
Per...Folksonomies: futurism speciation
Folksonomies: futurism speciation
1 notes
notes30 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
The Violent Past of Otzi and Kennewick Man
In 1991 two hikers stumbled upon a corpse poking out of a melting glacier in the Tyrolean Alps. Thinking that it was the victim of a skiing accident, rescue workers jackhammered the body out of the ice, damaging his thigh and his backpack in the process. Only when an archaeologist spotted a Neolithic copper ax did people realize that the man was five thousand years old.2
Ötzi the Iceman, as he is now called, became a celebrity. He appeared on the cover of Time magazine and has been the subj... 1 notes
notes16 FEB 2015 by ideonexus
Benefits of a Secular Upbringing
Recent research also has shown that children raised without religion tend to remain irreligious as they grow older — and are perhaps more accepting. Secular adults are more likely to understand and accept the science concerning global warming, and to support women's equality and gay rights. One telling fact from the criminology field: Atheists were almost absent from our prison population as of the late 1990s, comprising less than half of 1% of those behind bars, according to Federal Bureau...Folksonomies: parenting secularism
Folksonomies: parenting secularism
1 notes
notesPrison data is based on 2008 Census data.
02 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
Patriotism VS Nationalism
Can a Communist, who is an internationalist, at the same time be a patriot? We hold that he not only can be but must be. The specific content of patriotism is determined by historical conditions. There is the "patriotism" of the Japanese aggressors and of Hitler, and there is our patriotism. Communists must resolutely oppose the "patriotism" of the Japanese aggressors and of Hitler. The Communists of Japan and Germany are defeatists with regard to the wars being waged by their countries. To b... 1 notes
notesMao appears to be arguing for balance and for the rejection of certain kinds of patriotism that hurt the homeland, as what he sees in Germany and Japan of the time.
20 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
The Death of Technocracy
What we are witnessing is the beginning of the final breakup of industrialism and, with it, the
collapse of technocratic planning. By technocratic planning, I do not mean only the
centralized national planning that has, until recently, characterized the USSR, but also the
less formal, more dispersed attempts at systematic change management that occur in all the
high technology nations, regardless of their political persuasion. Michael Harrington, the
socialist critic, arguing that we have rej... 1 notes
notesThis is not a dichotomy--there can be degrees of planning and emergence--but the problems with technocracy are true challenges.
14 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
Automation Comes to China
The key question isn’t “How much will be automated?” It’s how we’ll conceive of whatever can’t be automated at a given time. Even if there are new demands for people to perform new tasks in support of what we perceive as automation, we might apply antihuman values that define the new roles as not being “genuine work.” Maybe people will be expected to “share” instead. So the right question is “How many jobs might be lost to automation if we think about automation the wron... 1 notes
notesWould China, a centrally-planned society, replace its factory workers with robots and put a huge portion of the population out of work? Tagging this with a "todo" so I can follow up on it in the future and see if China does go down the automation route.
29 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
The Hypersociality of Collectible Card Games
Yu-Gi-Oh! demonstrates how pervasive media technologies in everyday settings
integrate the imagination into a wider range of sites of social activity.
Far from the shut-in behavior that gave rise to the most familiar forms of antimedia
rhetoric, this media mix of children’s popular culture is wired, extroverted,
and hypersocial, reflecting forms of sociality augmented by dense sets
of technologies, signifiers, and systems of exchange. David Buckingham and
Julian Sefton-Green (2004) have arg...
1 CCGs are a very social game, involving not just game play but trading, bargaining, getting out to find cards, etc.
29 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
Yu-Gi-Oh! Mixes the Real with Fantasy.
Trading cards, Game Boys, and character merchandise create what
Anne Allison (2004) has called “pocket fantasies,” “digitized icons . . . that
children carry with them wherever they go,” and “that straddle the border
between phantasm and everyday life” (p. 42). The imagination of Yu-Gi-Oh!
pervades the everyday settings of childhood as it is channeled through these
portable and intimate media forms. These forms of play are one part of a
broader set of shifts toward intimate and po... 1 notes
notesSimilar to Magic the Gathering, with the player being the real and the cards the fantasy.
12 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Prediction VS Forecast
The official position of the USGS is even more emphatic: earthquakes cannot be predicted. “Neither the USGS nor Caltech nor any other scientists have ever predicted a major earthquake,” the organization’s Web site asserts.24 “They do not know how, and they do not expect to know how any time in the foreseeable future.”
Earthquakes cannot be predicted? This is a book about prediction, not a book that makes predictions, but I’m willing to stick my neck out: I predict that there will... 1 notes
notesOne is a definitive statement, the other a probabilistic one.
