Those cases of execution of the innocent, which are extremely rare, boil down to use of old-fashioned forensics and murder-by-overzealous-prosecutor. Officials who would intentionally frame a suspect need to be subject to execution themselves. Today's improved forensics, especially analysis of DNA, are leading to a lot more new convictions than exonerations.
In a society that cannot bring itself to punish its worst criminals by execution, people are inevitably going to come up with ideas like this.
The article did raise an interesting point: if there are crimes so severe that only vengeance gets through to the perpetrators' minds in the absence of any hope of 'correction' (the Wichita Massacre or the Knoxville Horror, as US examples), then wouldn't some future technology for "tinkering with the brain" be a more "European" alternative, by their way of thinking, than execution?
Low-information anti-science numbskulls encounter a secretive, monopolistic industry. Medicine is very slow to disgorge any information about its inner workings, so conspiracy theorists find it easy to respond with their personal version of "because aliens!"
The whole terminator gene concept was designed to ALLAY fears that a GM species would get out into the environment and "take over" in some way, presumably evolving a mustache and a devilish laugh.
There is noting weird and baleful about GM species that causes them to behave differently from non-GMOs in the environment, including how other species co-evolve in response to them. There was an early belief that transfer of genes between species was special manmade magic, until it was found that this happens in nature too: http://davesgarden.com/guides/...
Genetic engineering is nothing but a precisely targeted way of accomplishing changes that used to take generations of cross-breeding and culling.
"It's your job because my daughter is no goddamned help around the house. Right now, she's out protesting those water drilling companies that are using up our precious liquid methane for fracking!"
Nobody's going to go to Titan "for fuel," but an exposed source of hydrocarbons is pure gold for off-Earth development. In our analysis of moon rock and other planetary surfaces so far, hydrogen and carbon have been the most difficult elements to find. When steel mills are built in the Belt, the crews are going to need Titanian hydrocarbons to get the greenhouse crops going.
New Zealand is so isolated that other than three species of small bat, no mammals whatever evolved in NZ until the day the Maori landed. So we have a Colorado-sized pair of islands inhabited by an assortment of species too ridiculous even for Australia, and with no adaptation to the presence of animals. There's the giant earthworm that glows in the dark: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/n......the three-eyed lizard... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T......the living bug zapper... http://www.waitomo.com/waitomo......and the 12-foot tall ground-dwelling bird - no animals to run from, remember, that was unfortunately delicious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
The Maori had no weapons more advanced than clubs, but that was all they needed. Think of it as the world's first, biggest, most environmentally-insensitive tailgate party, after which the species was no moa.
I'm sure that for short-term applications a fixed-wing drone getting its feed from satellites and flying figure-eights over a ground point is what they have in mind. But consider the potential of a quadcopter carrying an access point. Once you guide the drone up to some high point on a crag and set it down, all of the solar power collected by the device can be applied to running the AP, rather than keeping the drone flying. In all but the flattest areas there will be some high but difficult-to-access place, such as a minaret, with some cranny where a drone AP can roost. And if conditions change, you can always reposition it.
With present technology we have no way of knowing whether immportality is even possible, aside from the whole desirability debate.
If I were selling transhumanism to children, I would try to inculcate a love of science (finding out about the unknown) combined with an adventurous, can-do attitude toward technology. If you can influence a generation of children away from the fearful, suspicious anti-science culture of their parents, you will be the greatest children's author in history by increasing the possibility that some of those transhumanist ideas might actually come to pass.
Human space exploration is an ideal field for private research. There is now a body of billionaires with a geeky interest in what is out there. When you consider that any new initiative, such as a lunar base or a Mars expedition, will require assuming great personal risk, there is no Western government that would run the political risk of subjecting astronauts to a high probability of death far from Earth. Remember those long periods of space shutdown after each Shuttle accident?
Another rich field is energy research. If LFTR or thorium reactors are ever going to get built, it will be by billionaires working at offshore sites not reachable by protesters.
The proper long-term destiny of nuclear waste is to be recycled into new fuel. But so long as Cold War warheads are so cheap and while we wait for lower-cost recycling methods, we have an ideal place to store it. We just have to get rid of one item of low-grade, long-term biological waste first: Harry Reid.
Gentrification in Oakland? Like everything else white people do, this is Evil. Left unchecked, they might start painting over graffiti, opening restaurants, walking dogs, having babies and riding the Google bus to work. There goes another chunk of the Bay Area's priceless cultural heritage.
There have been early reports that certain fungi can concentrate cesium. Let's find out if this is happening at Chernobyl, so we can start using the stuff to pull Cs137 from the environment.
But in Germany there is no cultural problem with photography. I've done a lot of street shooting there. Any restrictions are legal techicalities not of consequence to the average person.
Now try shooting in a country where there is a cultural aversion to being photographed. As soon as I raised my camera in a beautifully exotic Seoul farmers's market, every person in the area dived for cover. In modern, high-tech parts of the city there was no problem, so this seems to be a back-country phenomenon.
New York City requires a license for photography. Tourist shooting is exempt, but the law can trip up people who use "big fancy cameras," tripods, or other impedimenta that looks professional.
Slashdot Mirror
Those cases of execution of the innocent, which are extremely rare, boil down to use of old-fashioned forensics and murder-by-overzealous-prosecutor. Officials who would intentionally frame a suspect need to be subject to execution themselves. Today's improved forensics, especially analysis of DNA, are leading to a lot more new convictions than exonerations.
Lobotomy is not what this writer had in mind, but some future brain modification tech that would presumably be more effective.
In a society that cannot bring itself to punish its worst criminals by execution, people are inevitably going to come up with ideas like this.
The article did raise an interesting point: if there are crimes so severe that only vengeance gets through to the perpetrators' minds in the absence of any hope of 'correction' (the Wichita Massacre or the Knoxville Horror, as US examples), then wouldn't some future technology for "tinkering with the brain" be a more "European" alternative, by their way of thinking, than execution?
Low-information anti-science numbskulls encounter a secretive, monopolistic industry. Medicine is very slow to disgorge any information about its inner workings, so conspiracy theorists find it easy to respond with their personal version of "because aliens!"
The whole terminator gene concept was designed to ALLAY fears that a GM species would get out into the environment and "take over" in some way, presumably evolving a mustache and a devilish laugh.
There is noting weird and baleful about GM species that causes them to behave differently from non-GMOs in the environment, including how other species co-evolve in response to them. There was an early belief that transfer of genes between species was special manmade magic, until it was found that this happens in nature too: http://davesgarden.com/guides/...
Genetic engineering is nothing but a precisely targeted way of accomplishing changes that used to take generations of cross-breeding and culling.
"It's your job because my daughter is no goddamned help around the house. Right now, she's out protesting those water drilling companies that are using up our precious liquid methane for fracking!"
Nobody's going to go to Titan "for fuel," but an exposed source of hydrocarbons is pure gold for off-Earth development. In our analysis of moon rock and other planetary surfaces so far, hydrogen and carbon have been the most difficult elements to find. When steel mills are built in the Belt, the crews are going to need Titanian hydrocarbons to get the greenhouse crops going.
Now for the unprogrammable task: try to convince management that you can still code after 40.
New Zealand is so isolated that other than three species of small bat, no mammals whatever evolved in NZ until the day the Maori landed. So we have a Colorado-sized pair of islands inhabited by an assortment of species too ridiculous even for Australia, and with no adaptation to the presence of animals. There's the giant earthworm that glows in the dark: ...the three-eyed lizard... ...the living bug zapper... ...and the 12-foot tall ground-dwelling bird - no animals to run from, remember, that was unfortunately delicious:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/n...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
http://www.waitomo.com/waitomo...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
The Maori had no weapons more advanced than clubs, but that was all they needed. Think of it as the world's first, biggest, most environmentally-insensitive tailgate party, after which the species was no moa.
An algorithm for perceiving objects hidden behind other objects could...enable even men to find things in the refrigerator!
We had a good set of gifted programs at my public high school (Los Angeles area) fifty years go? Have we come down that far since then?
I'm sure that for short-term applications a fixed-wing drone getting its feed from satellites and flying figure-eights over a ground point is what they have in mind. But consider the potential of a quadcopter carrying an access point. Once you guide the drone up to some high point on a crag and set it down, all of the solar power collected by the device can be applied to running the AP, rather than keeping the drone flying. In all but the flattest areas there will be some high but difficult-to-access place, such as a minaret, with some cranny where a drone AP can roost. And if conditions change, you can always reposition it.
With present technology we have no way of knowing whether immportality is even possible, aside from the whole desirability debate.
If I were selling transhumanism to children, I would try to inculcate a love of science (finding out about the unknown) combined with an adventurous, can-do attitude toward technology. If you can influence a generation of children away from the fearful, suspicious anti-science culture of their parents, you will be the greatest children's author in history by increasing the possibility that some of those transhumanist ideas might actually come to pass.
Human space exploration is an ideal field for private research. There is now a body of billionaires with a geeky interest in what is out there. When you consider that any new initiative, such as a lunar base or a Mars expedition, will require assuming great personal risk, there is no Western government that would run the political risk of subjecting astronauts to a high probability of death far from Earth. Remember those long periods of space shutdown after each Shuttle accident?
Another rich field is energy research. If LFTR or thorium reactors are ever going to get built, it will be by billionaires working at offshore sites not reachable by protesters.
The proper long-term destiny of nuclear waste is to be recycled into new fuel. But so long as Cold War warheads are so cheap and while we wait for lower-cost recycling methods, we have an ideal place to store it. We just have to get rid of one item of low-grade, long-term biological waste first: Harry Reid.
Florence has pickpockets. San Francisco has thugs.
Gentrification in Oakland? Like everything else white people do, this is Evil. Left unchecked, they might start painting over graffiti, opening restaurants, walking dogs, having babies and riding the Google bus to work. There goes another chunk of the Bay Area's priceless cultural heritage.
But this time, we'll know enough to call the cargo "interns."
There have been early reports that certain fungi can concentrate cesium. Let's find out if this is happening at Chernobyl, so we can start using the stuff to pull Cs137 from the environment.
"we're all inundated by radiation from nuclear fusion? How can we stop this atrocity! "
Move to Seattle.
In a way, Gypsies have united Europe. I've been warned about them by the people of every single EU country I have visited.
Protests are innately photogenic, and I've never seen a protest movement that didn't welcome publicity.
But in Germany there is no cultural problem with photography. I've done a lot of street shooting there. Any restrictions are legal techicalities not of consequence to the average person.
Now try shooting in a country where there is a cultural aversion to being photographed. As soon as I raised my camera in a beautifully exotic Seoul farmers's market, every person in the area dived for cover. In modern, high-tech parts of the city there was no problem, so this seems to be a back-country phenomenon.
New York City requires a license for photography. Tourist shooting is exempt, but the law can trip up people who use "big fancy cameras," tripods, or other impedimenta that looks professional.