transhumanism playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPpOKr6ewA-FPxitTY5wHJRApV22IkaY4
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
"This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility"
http://i.imgur.com/nt3h1sr.jpg
March 27, 2012:
Putin 2013:
http://i.imgur.com/RYr7xXy.jpg
video here:
http://rt.com/news/putin-pope-christians-east-274/
Obama 2014:
http://i.imgur.com/R9zWVat.jpg
video here:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/26/politics/obama-pope-meeting-politics/
Looks like its all "coming together".
and one more thing....
if you're stuck on this:
or this:
or this:
or even this:
proven to be fake, here:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/photos/kenyasign.asp
Well...
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Racism and Welfare
I know I've written up quite a bit on this guy, but this has sparked another subject I'd like to crack open.
========================================================================
All In 04/25/14
Food stamps for cows
Chris Hayes looks at federal subsidies for ranchers like Cliven Bundy.
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/food-stamps-for-cows-237418051982
All In 04/25/14
How the government subsidizes ranchers
Steve Ellis joins Chris Hayes to discuss the federal government’s subsidies to ranchers.
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/how-the-government-subsidizes-ranchers-237425219796
========================================================================
Today, I see this on Facebook:
GOP candidate compares food stamp recipients to wild animals
05/01/14 12:38 PM—Updated 05/01/14 04:53 PM
By Morgan Whitaker
A candidate hoping to become the Republican party’s next nominee for U.S. Senator from South Dakota has generated buzz for her campaign this week after comparing food stamp recipients to wild animals in a Facebook post.
Dr. Annette Bosworth posted an image to her campaign Facebook page Monday, which compares the National Park Service’s policy of discouraging feeding wild animals to the food stamp “hand out program” to provide a “lesson in irony.”
“The food stamp program is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture,” text on the image reads. “They proudly report that they distribute free meals and food stamps to over 46 million people on an annual basis.”
“Meanwhile, the National Park Service, run by the U.S. Department of the Interior, asks us, ‘Please do not feed the animals,’” the text continues. “Their state reason for this being that… ‘The animals will grow dependent on the handouts, and then they will never learn to take care of themselves.”
more here:
http://www.msnbc.com/politicsnation/gop-candidate-compares-food-stamp-recipients-wild-animals
comment:
https://www.facebook.com/msnbc/posts/621726604590262
========================================================================
Which US States Have The Most Welfare Benefit Programs? [Interactive Map]
By Lisa Mahapatra
on August 22 2013 5:44 AM
Welfare benefits programs have seen the most expansion in Vermont, Hawaii and Washington, D.C., in the time period between 1995 and 2013, according to a just-released report from the CATO institute.
Alaska, Maine and Virginia have seen their welfare programs shrink the most in the same time frame.
There are 126 programs targeted at low-income people in the U.S., according to the CATO report, and 72 of these programs provide cash or in-kind benefits to individuals.
The CATO report looked at the full package of welfare benefits available in each state and in Washington, D.C., in 1995 and 2003, excluding Medicaid, and found that welfare programs had shrunk in some states and expanded in others.
For example, in Hawaii, the state with the largest welfare benefit programs, a hypothetical household that is eligible for every single welfare program and successfully manages to gain access to aid, could receive up to $49,175 in aid.
However, such a household is strictly hypothetical as it is nearly impossible for any household to be eligible for every welfare program.
And few eligible households actually receive all the benefits they are eligible for, according to Elise Gould, an economist with Economic Policy Institute.
more here:
http://www.ibtimes.com/which-us-states-have-most-welfare-benefit-programs-interactive-map-1394989
========================================================================
The Biggest US Welfare States
As the recession grinds on and people run out of unemployment benefits, the last safety net is the government's Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. Though benefits vary by state, TANF provides a maximum of 60 months of coverage throughout a recipient's lifetime.
To get an idea of which states pay out the most welfare checks, the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) surveyed state governments. Using the most current information, NCSL then compared the total number of recipients of TANF to the overall state populations (through June 2009).
So, what are the biggest US welfare states? Click ahead to find out!
By Paul ToscanoPosted 21 July 2009
15. Oregon
14. Pennsylvania
13. Michigan
12. Rhode Island
Tie-10. Indiana
Tie-10. New Mexico
9. Washington
8. Minnesota
7. New York
6. District of Columbia
5. Vermont
4. Massachusetts
3. Tennessee
2. Maine
1. California
more here:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/31910310
========================================================================
"Nine out of the 10 poorest states are Red states."
Occupy Democrats on Thursday, December 26th, 2013 in a Facebook post
Pro-Democrat group says 9 of the 10 poorest states are Republican
On Jan. 12, 2014, we rated this statement as True. We decided to re-rate our item after considering an additional poverty ranking that incorporates factors such as housing costs from state to state. The original item can be found here.
The partisan blogosphere is filled with arguments over whether liberal or conservative policies are better for states. No matter what is proposed -- cutting the sales tax, raising the minimum wage, etc. -- someone can always come up with a state to cite as an example of why it's a good (or bad) idea.
But we were struck by this claim posted by the pro-Democrat group Occupy Democrats on Facebook:
"If Republican economic policies are so great for America, how come 9 out of the 10 poorest states are Red states?"
We're not going to rule on the cause-and-effect question posed by the posting. Yet because Red states have a reputation for being more business-friendly, and because many argue that pro-business policies lead to better lives for everyone, we wondered whether the Occupy Democrats' claim was correct.
When we emailed Occupy Democrats, founder Omar Rivero sent us links to several sources including a sortable Wikipedia table based on the 2010 U.S. Census, along with more recent data from the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis. We also did our own search of the U.S. Census database.
We’ll start with the standard definition of a Red state.
At PolitiFact Rhode Island, we recognize that whether a state is Red or Blue can be a matter for debate. Our state is considered to be among the bluest of the Blue, yet it has had Democratic governors in only 20 of the last 50 years. Nonetheless, the color is typically defined by how a state votes in the presidential elections, so we're going to classify states by how they voted in the 2012 Obama-Romney race.
It should be noted that there are different ways to measure poverty. Occupy Democrats says its claim is based on per-person income. We looked at that, along with median household income and median family income.
By all three measures, 9 out of the 10 poorest states voted Republican in the last presidential election. (In fact, they voted Red in the last four elections.)
According to the latest Census data, 9 of the 10 states with the lowest per-person income levels were Red: Mississippi, Arkansas, Idaho, West Virginia, Kentucky, Utah, Alabama, South Carolina and Oklahoma.
The Census data also show that 9 of the 10 states with the lowest median household income were Red: Mississippi, Arkansas, West Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana, South Carolina and Oklahoma.
And 9 of the 10 states with the lowest median family income were Red: Mississippi, Arkansas, West Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana and South Carolina.
The only Blue state on each list: New Mexico.
more here:
http://www.politifact.com/rhode-island/statements/2014/mar/28/occupy-democrats/pro-democrat-group-says-9-10-poorest-states-are-re/
========================================================================
Interactive: Republicans More Likely to Have Constituents Who Use Food Stamps
larger image, here:
http://aattp.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Screen-Shot-2014-02-18-at-3.15.41-PM.png
As Congress debates fate of program, several of those seeking cuts have high percentage of constituents who benefit
By Chris Wilson and Alex Rogers @chriswilsondc
Dec. 04, 2013
When the House voted in September to cut $40 billion from the federal food-stamp program over 10 years, all but 15 Republicans supported the measure while not a single Democrat did so.
But according to a TIME analysis of county-by-county food-stamp-enrollment data compiled by the nonprofit Feeding America, it appears that House Republicans represent more districts with high levels of participation in the program than House Democrats. Of the 350 congressional districts in which TIME was able to estimate the percentage of people enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), 76 had levels of 20% or higher. Of those, 43 are held by Republicans while 33 are controlled by Democrats.
SNAP Enrollment
SNAP enrollment is visualized by county where data is available and by state where it is not. Use the buttons below to reorient by Congressional district. Note: Estimating congressional districts from county-level data is prone to error in densely populated locations.
Nationwide, 15% of Americans (47.7 million people) participate in SNAP, according to Department of Agriculture figures, and the program receives around $80 billion in funding annually.
Over the summer, the Democrat-controlled Senate passed its own version of the bill that trimmed only $4 billion from the program. Negotiators from both chambers met on Wednesday to try to negotiate a compromise on the two bills.
Representative Austin Scott, one of the farm-bill conferees, represents a district in southern Georgia in which approximately 1 in 4 constituents currently receives farm-bill aid, according to the data — considerably above the national average of 15%.
When asked about the program on Tuesday, Scott suggested that abuse of the system warrants the cuts in the House bill.
“Anybody who is realistic acknowledges that there is some abuse in the system, and those abuses need to go away,” Scott said. “We’re going to protect seniors, we’re going to protect the disabled and those that can’t work, but if someone can work, then they’ve got a responsibility to work.”
The farm bill spends around 80% of its $100 billion a year on food stamps. Enrollment in SNAP jumped by nearly 20 million people during the recession, leading many House Republicans to argue that corruption in the program is common.
While congressional districts with the absolute highest levels of enrollment are more likely to be represented by Democrats, many rural districts with very high participation in the program are represented by Republicans leading the charge in cutting billions from the program. In Kentucky’s 5th district, represented by Republican Hal Rogers, 1 in 3 people receives SNAP benefits. After the House passed its version of the farm bill, however, Rogers wrote: “Struggling children, seniors, veterans and families, clearly in need of assistance … compete against scammers, lottery winners, gamblers and others who may be able to work, but simply refuse.”
Because of limitations in Feeding America’s data, which is missing county-level data for about a dozen states, it is not possible to make a definitive correlation between SNAP enrollment in a district and the party of the member who represents it in Congress. (It is also difficult to translate county data into congressional districts in small or highly gerrymandered districts, leading to some margin of error.) Based on the available figures, there does not appear to be a significant difference in food-stamp usage in Democratic or Republican districts, with both averages in the neighborhood of the national mean.
Unlike the Senate plan, House Republicans achieve a significant portion of the cuts by restricting able-bodied, childless adults who receive SNAP benefits and ending state waivers to those who have been unemployed for more than three months. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that on average a total of 2.8 million people would lose their SNAP benefits over the next decade, and another 850,000 households would see an average reduction of about $90 a month in benefits. The Senate makes relatively minor changes in the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program that decrease SNAP benefits.
Liberal groups argue that the House bill goes above and beyond the need for reform. “Those who would be thrown off the program include some of the nation’s most destitute adults, as well as many low-income children, seniors and families that work for low wages,” writes the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Republican Representative Steve King of Iowa, the House subcommittee chairman on nutrition — whose district has below-average SNAP enrollment — says the four principal negotiators may have to decide to “put a number down on a piece of paper and roll the dice.”
The current farm-bill authorization expires at the end of the year. Wednesday’s meeting involves the chair and ranking member of the Agriculture Committee in both chambers: Senators Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Thad Cochran of Mississippi and Congressmen Frank Lucas of Oklahoma and Collin Peterson of Minnesota.
interactive map, here:
http://swampland.time.com/2013/12/04/interactive-republicans-more-likely-to-have-constituents-who-use-food-stamps/
========================================================================
Honestly, it does not matter which state receives the most for Welfare.
One cannot make the arguement that government is stealing from them while at the same time receiving benefits of that very same system.
Cliven Bundy made statements concerning black people on welfare, and yet he's on a form of welfare.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_programs_in_the_United_States
Funny takes on racism:
part 1:
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/5dbo97/the-amazing-racism
part 2:
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/5l1leo/the-amazing-racism---incredibly-not-racist-racists
part 3:
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/wqzl6m/a-diverse-array-of-american-racism
BONUS:
The Daily Show lividly audits the 'bureaucracy of dunces' behind recent federal screw-ups
http://theweek.com/article/index/260827/speedreads-the-daily-show-lividly-audits-the-bureaucracy-of-dunces-behind-recent-federal-screw-ups
Yes, the IRS did "target" the left and the right over taxes, but not for the reasons you might think.
========================================================================
All In 04/25/14
Food stamps for cows
Chris Hayes looks at federal subsidies for ranchers like Cliven Bundy.
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/food-stamps-for-cows-237418051982
All In 04/25/14
How the government subsidizes ranchers
Steve Ellis joins Chris Hayes to discuss the federal government’s subsidies to ranchers.
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/how-the-government-subsidizes-ranchers-237425219796
========================================================================
Today, I see this on Facebook:
GOP candidate compares food stamp recipients to wild animals
05/01/14 12:38 PM—Updated 05/01/14 04:53 PM
By Morgan Whitaker
A candidate hoping to become the Republican party’s next nominee for U.S. Senator from South Dakota has generated buzz for her campaign this week after comparing food stamp recipients to wild animals in a Facebook post.
Dr. Annette Bosworth posted an image to her campaign Facebook page Monday, which compares the National Park Service’s policy of discouraging feeding wild animals to the food stamp “hand out program” to provide a “lesson in irony.”
“The food stamp program is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture,” text on the image reads. “They proudly report that they distribute free meals and food stamps to over 46 million people on an annual basis.”
“Meanwhile, the National Park Service, run by the U.S. Department of the Interior, asks us, ‘Please do not feed the animals,’” the text continues. “Their state reason for this being that… ‘The animals will grow dependent on the handouts, and then they will never learn to take care of themselves.”
more here:
http://www.msnbc.com/politicsnation/gop-candidate-compares-food-stamp-recipients-wild-animals
comment:
https://www.facebook.com/msnbc/posts/621726604590262
========================================================================
Which US States Have The Most Welfare Benefit Programs? [Interactive Map]
By Lisa Mahapatra
on August 22 2013 5:44 AM
Welfare benefits programs have seen the most expansion in Vermont, Hawaii and Washington, D.C., in the time period between 1995 and 2013, according to a just-released report from the CATO institute.
Alaska, Maine and Virginia have seen their welfare programs shrink the most in the same time frame.
There are 126 programs targeted at low-income people in the U.S., according to the CATO report, and 72 of these programs provide cash or in-kind benefits to individuals.
The CATO report looked at the full package of welfare benefits available in each state and in Washington, D.C., in 1995 and 2003, excluding Medicaid, and found that welfare programs had shrunk in some states and expanded in others.
For example, in Hawaii, the state with the largest welfare benefit programs, a hypothetical household that is eligible for every single welfare program and successfully manages to gain access to aid, could receive up to $49,175 in aid.
However, such a household is strictly hypothetical as it is nearly impossible for any household to be eligible for every welfare program.
And few eligible households actually receive all the benefits they are eligible for, according to Elise Gould, an economist with Economic Policy Institute.
more here:
http://www.ibtimes.com/which-us-states-have-most-welfare-benefit-programs-interactive-map-1394989
========================================================================
The Biggest US Welfare States
As the recession grinds on and people run out of unemployment benefits, the last safety net is the government's Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. Though benefits vary by state, TANF provides a maximum of 60 months of coverage throughout a recipient's lifetime.
To get an idea of which states pay out the most welfare checks, the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) surveyed state governments. Using the most current information, NCSL then compared the total number of recipients of TANF to the overall state populations (through June 2009).
So, what are the biggest US welfare states? Click ahead to find out!
By Paul ToscanoPosted 21 July 2009
15. Oregon
14. Pennsylvania
13. Michigan
12. Rhode Island
Tie-10. Indiana
Tie-10. New Mexico
9. Washington
8. Minnesota
7. New York
6. District of Columbia
5. Vermont
4. Massachusetts
3. Tennessee
2. Maine
1. California
more here:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/31910310
========================================================================
"Nine out of the 10 poorest states are Red states."
Occupy Democrats on Thursday, December 26th, 2013 in a Facebook post
Pro-Democrat group says 9 of the 10 poorest states are Republican
On Jan. 12, 2014, we rated this statement as True. We decided to re-rate our item after considering an additional poverty ranking that incorporates factors such as housing costs from state to state. The original item can be found here.
The partisan blogosphere is filled with arguments over whether liberal or conservative policies are better for states. No matter what is proposed -- cutting the sales tax, raising the minimum wage, etc. -- someone can always come up with a state to cite as an example of why it's a good (or bad) idea.
But we were struck by this claim posted by the pro-Democrat group Occupy Democrats on Facebook:
"If Republican economic policies are so great for America, how come 9 out of the 10 poorest states are Red states?"
We're not going to rule on the cause-and-effect question posed by the posting. Yet because Red states have a reputation for being more business-friendly, and because many argue that pro-business policies lead to better lives for everyone, we wondered whether the Occupy Democrats' claim was correct.
When we emailed Occupy Democrats, founder Omar Rivero sent us links to several sources including a sortable Wikipedia table based on the 2010 U.S. Census, along with more recent data from the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis. We also did our own search of the U.S. Census database.
We’ll start with the standard definition of a Red state.
At PolitiFact Rhode Island, we recognize that whether a state is Red or Blue can be a matter for debate. Our state is considered to be among the bluest of the Blue, yet it has had Democratic governors in only 20 of the last 50 years. Nonetheless, the color is typically defined by how a state votes in the presidential elections, so we're going to classify states by how they voted in the 2012 Obama-Romney race.
It should be noted that there are different ways to measure poverty. Occupy Democrats says its claim is based on per-person income. We looked at that, along with median household income and median family income.
By all three measures, 9 out of the 10 poorest states voted Republican in the last presidential election. (In fact, they voted Red in the last four elections.)
According to the latest Census data, 9 of the 10 states with the lowest per-person income levels were Red: Mississippi, Arkansas, Idaho, West Virginia, Kentucky, Utah, Alabama, South Carolina and Oklahoma.
The Census data also show that 9 of the 10 states with the lowest median household income were Red: Mississippi, Arkansas, West Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana, South Carolina and Oklahoma.
And 9 of the 10 states with the lowest median family income were Red: Mississippi, Arkansas, West Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana and South Carolina.
The only Blue state on each list: New Mexico.
more here:
http://www.politifact.com/rhode-island/statements/2014/mar/28/occupy-democrats/pro-democrat-group-says-9-10-poorest-states-are-re/
========================================================================
Interactive: Republicans More Likely to Have Constituents Who Use Food Stamps
larger image, here:
http://aattp.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Screen-Shot-2014-02-18-at-3.15.41-PM.png
As Congress debates fate of program, several of those seeking cuts have high percentage of constituents who benefit
By Chris Wilson and Alex Rogers @chriswilsondc
Dec. 04, 2013
When the House voted in September to cut $40 billion from the federal food-stamp program over 10 years, all but 15 Republicans supported the measure while not a single Democrat did so.
But according to a TIME analysis of county-by-county food-stamp-enrollment data compiled by the nonprofit Feeding America, it appears that House Republicans represent more districts with high levels of participation in the program than House Democrats. Of the 350 congressional districts in which TIME was able to estimate the percentage of people enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), 76 had levels of 20% or higher. Of those, 43 are held by Republicans while 33 are controlled by Democrats.
SNAP Enrollment
SNAP enrollment is visualized by county where data is available and by state where it is not. Use the buttons below to reorient by Congressional district. Note: Estimating congressional districts from county-level data is prone to error in densely populated locations.
Nationwide, 15% of Americans (47.7 million people) participate in SNAP, according to Department of Agriculture figures, and the program receives around $80 billion in funding annually.
Over the summer, the Democrat-controlled Senate passed its own version of the bill that trimmed only $4 billion from the program. Negotiators from both chambers met on Wednesday to try to negotiate a compromise on the two bills.
Representative Austin Scott, one of the farm-bill conferees, represents a district in southern Georgia in which approximately 1 in 4 constituents currently receives farm-bill aid, according to the data — considerably above the national average of 15%.
When asked about the program on Tuesday, Scott suggested that abuse of the system warrants the cuts in the House bill.
“Anybody who is realistic acknowledges that there is some abuse in the system, and those abuses need to go away,” Scott said. “We’re going to protect seniors, we’re going to protect the disabled and those that can’t work, but if someone can work, then they’ve got a responsibility to work.”
The farm bill spends around 80% of its $100 billion a year on food stamps. Enrollment in SNAP jumped by nearly 20 million people during the recession, leading many House Republicans to argue that corruption in the program is common.
While congressional districts with the absolute highest levels of enrollment are more likely to be represented by Democrats, many rural districts with very high participation in the program are represented by Republicans leading the charge in cutting billions from the program. In Kentucky’s 5th district, represented by Republican Hal Rogers, 1 in 3 people receives SNAP benefits. After the House passed its version of the farm bill, however, Rogers wrote: “Struggling children, seniors, veterans and families, clearly in need of assistance … compete against scammers, lottery winners, gamblers and others who may be able to work, but simply refuse.”
Because of limitations in Feeding America’s data, which is missing county-level data for about a dozen states, it is not possible to make a definitive correlation between SNAP enrollment in a district and the party of the member who represents it in Congress. (It is also difficult to translate county data into congressional districts in small or highly gerrymandered districts, leading to some margin of error.) Based on the available figures, there does not appear to be a significant difference in food-stamp usage in Democratic or Republican districts, with both averages in the neighborhood of the national mean.
Unlike the Senate plan, House Republicans achieve a significant portion of the cuts by restricting able-bodied, childless adults who receive SNAP benefits and ending state waivers to those who have been unemployed for more than three months. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that on average a total of 2.8 million people would lose their SNAP benefits over the next decade, and another 850,000 households would see an average reduction of about $90 a month in benefits. The Senate makes relatively minor changes in the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program that decrease SNAP benefits.
Liberal groups argue that the House bill goes above and beyond the need for reform. “Those who would be thrown off the program include some of the nation’s most destitute adults, as well as many low-income children, seniors and families that work for low wages,” writes the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Republican Representative Steve King of Iowa, the House subcommittee chairman on nutrition — whose district has below-average SNAP enrollment — says the four principal negotiators may have to decide to “put a number down on a piece of paper and roll the dice.”
The current farm-bill authorization expires at the end of the year. Wednesday’s meeting involves the chair and ranking member of the Agriculture Committee in both chambers: Senators Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Thad Cochran of Mississippi and Congressmen Frank Lucas of Oklahoma and Collin Peterson of Minnesota.
interactive map, here:
http://swampland.time.com/2013/12/04/interactive-republicans-more-likely-to-have-constituents-who-use-food-stamps/
========================================================================
Honestly, it does not matter which state receives the most for Welfare.
One cannot make the arguement that government is stealing from them while at the same time receiving benefits of that very same system.
Cliven Bundy made statements concerning black people on welfare, and yet he's on a form of welfare.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_programs_in_the_United_States
Funny takes on racism:
part 1:
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/5dbo97/the-amazing-racism
part 2:
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/5l1leo/the-amazing-racism---incredibly-not-racist-racists
part 3:
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/wqzl6m/a-diverse-array-of-american-racism
BONUS:
The Daily Show lividly audits the 'bureaucracy of dunces' behind recent federal screw-ups
http://theweek.com/article/index/260827/speedreads-the-daily-show-lividly-audits-the-bureaucracy-of-dunces-behind-recent-federal-screw-ups
Yes, the IRS did "target" the left and the right over taxes, but not for the reasons you might think.
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
10 jobs that are shaping, and have been shaped by the times we live in
The state of the world may sucks compared to the past for some. but that is beside the point.
You're living in the "now", not the "then".
I tried giving a guy some sound advice concerning the job market, and now he's pissed off at me and the world because he can't adapt to global shift.
Welcome to the New World...
=========================================================================
10 jobs that weren't around in 1989
A new generation of careers
Twenty-five years ago only 15 percent of U.S. households had a personal computer, and the Internet as we know it was a newborn.
Amazon.com, Google, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter didn't exist, and mobile phones were just that—phones. Not handheld computers with Web access to games, movies, books, apps, stores, workplaces and bank accounts.
Along with the mushrooming growth and evolution of technology in the past quarter century came the generation of new occupations—and not only in the Internet realm. Advances in medical, computer and green technology, coupled with market demand for new products and services, have given rise to new types of jobs.
Defining a new occupation isn't necessarily easy, however, as old jobs often evolve to adapt to new technology. Is paid blogger, for instance, really a new occupation or simply a writer who now writes for websites? The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics hasn't officially classified blogger as a new occupation, but the agency published an article in 2012 called "Bloggers and webcomic artists: Careers in online creativity" about jobs for "digital media workers."
"Is it jobs that didn't exist, or work that didn't exist or workplace titles that didn't exist?" asked labor economist Linda Barrington, executive director of the Institute for Compensation Studies at Cornell University's Industrial and Labor Relations School.
"Clearly, occupations and jobs have changed a lot," she said. One sign of this is that the BLS is planning a substantial overhaul of job classifications for 2018.
We're also in an era when employees and entrepreneurs sport creative labels, such as chief marketing dragoness, marketing geek, content wrangler, entreprenerd, passionista and hambassador, to name a few.
But after conducting expert interviews, combing government data and other publicly available information about the job market, here is a sampling of notable occupations that didn't exist—or didn't exist in the same form or to a significant extent—25 years ago.
—By Dinah Wisenberg Brin, Special to CNBC
Posted 29 April 2014
the details, here:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101611509
=========================================================================
Order
You're living in the "now", not the "then".
I tried giving a guy some sound advice concerning the job market, and now he's pissed off at me and the world because he can't adapt to global shift.
Welcome to the New World...
=========================================================================
10 jobs that weren't around in 1989
A new generation of careers
Twenty-five years ago only 15 percent of U.S. households had a personal computer, and the Internet as we know it was a newborn.
Amazon.com, Google, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter didn't exist, and mobile phones were just that—phones. Not handheld computers with Web access to games, movies, books, apps, stores, workplaces and bank accounts.
Along with the mushrooming growth and evolution of technology in the past quarter century came the generation of new occupations—and not only in the Internet realm. Advances in medical, computer and green technology, coupled with market demand for new products and services, have given rise to new types of jobs.
Defining a new occupation isn't necessarily easy, however, as old jobs often evolve to adapt to new technology. Is paid blogger, for instance, really a new occupation or simply a writer who now writes for websites? The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics hasn't officially classified blogger as a new occupation, but the agency published an article in 2012 called "Bloggers and webcomic artists: Careers in online creativity" about jobs for "digital media workers."
"Is it jobs that didn't exist, or work that didn't exist or workplace titles that didn't exist?" asked labor economist Linda Barrington, executive director of the Institute for Compensation Studies at Cornell University's Industrial and Labor Relations School.
"Clearly, occupations and jobs have changed a lot," she said. One sign of this is that the BLS is planning a substantial overhaul of job classifications for 2018.
We're also in an era when employees and entrepreneurs sport creative labels, such as chief marketing dragoness, marketing geek, content wrangler, entreprenerd, passionista and hambassador, to name a few.
But after conducting expert interviews, combing government data and other publicly available information about the job market, here is a sampling of notable occupations that didn't exist—or didn't exist in the same form or to a significant extent—25 years ago.
- Social media manager/strategist/marketer
- E-commerce consultant
- Mobile app developer
- Big-data analyst/architect/engineer
- Cloud-computing workers
- Genetic counselors
- SEO specialist/search-engine optimization engineer
- Drone pilot/unmanned aircraft systems crew member
- 3-D printing professionals
- Wind turbine service technicians
—By Dinah Wisenberg Brin, Special to CNBC
Posted 29 April 2014
the details, here:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101611509
=========================================================================
Order
Memes and Misinformation
This meme is making the rounds online:
Yeah...
========================================================================
December 4, 2012 4:51PM
No, Teachers in Finland Are Not Paid Like Doctors
By Jason Bedrick
A meme that is floating around the interwebs claims that Finland’s education system outperforms the United States because “We pay teachers like doctors, students enjoy over an hour of recess, and there’s no mandatory testing – the opposite of what America does.”
That all sounds great … it just isn’t true.
In Finland general practitioners earn, on average, about $70,000 per year, which is less than half of what doctors earn in the United States. The average salary for primary education teachers with 15 years experience in Finland is about $37,500, compared to $45,225 in the United States. Moreover, the cost of living in Finland is about 30% higher.
In short: higher teacher salaries are not what make Finland’s education system better than ours. And I suspect it isn’t recess either.
And, of course, having a curriculum that is more closely aligned with the PISA (the metric by which people judge Finland to be better) than almost any other industrialized nation may exaggerate Finland’s superiority significantly.
sources here:
http://www.cato.org/blog/no-teachers-finland-are-not-paid-doctors
========================================================================
Page last updated at 15:19 GMT, Wednesday, 7 April 2010 16:19 UK
Why do Finland's schools get the best results?
By Tom Burridge
BBC World News America, Helsinki
Last year more than 100 foreign delegations and governments visited Helsinki, hoping to learn the secret of their schools' success.
In 2006, Finland's pupils scored the highest average results in science and reading in the whole of the developed world. In the OECD's exams for 15 year-olds, known as PISA, they also came second in maths, beaten only by teenagers in South Korea.
This isn't a one-off: in previous PISA tests Finland also came out top.
The Finnish philosophy with education is that everyone has something to contribute and those who struggle in certain subjects should not be left behind.
A tactic used in virtually every lesson is the provision of an additional teacher who helps those who struggle in a particular subject. But the pupils are all kept in the same classroom, regardless of their ability in that particular subject.
Finland's Education Minister, Henna Virkkunen is proud of her country's record but her next goal is to target the brightest pupils.
''The Finnish system supports very much those pupils who have learning difficulties but we have to pay more attention also to those pupils who are very talented. Now we have started a pilot project about how to support those pupils who are very gifted in certain areas.''
more here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8601207.stm
========================================================================
Misinformation will continue, as long as people refuse to prove all things.
Yeah...
========================================================================
December 4, 2012 4:51PM
No, Teachers in Finland Are Not Paid Like Doctors
By Jason Bedrick
A meme that is floating around the interwebs claims that Finland’s education system outperforms the United States because “We pay teachers like doctors, students enjoy over an hour of recess, and there’s no mandatory testing – the opposite of what America does.”
That all sounds great … it just isn’t true.
In Finland general practitioners earn, on average, about $70,000 per year, which is less than half of what doctors earn in the United States. The average salary for primary education teachers with 15 years experience in Finland is about $37,500, compared to $45,225 in the United States. Moreover, the cost of living in Finland is about 30% higher.
In short: higher teacher salaries are not what make Finland’s education system better than ours. And I suspect it isn’t recess either.
And, of course, having a curriculum that is more closely aligned with the PISA (the metric by which people judge Finland to be better) than almost any other industrialized nation may exaggerate Finland’s superiority significantly.
sources here:
http://www.cato.org/blog/no-teachers-finland-are-not-paid-doctors
========================================================================
Page last updated at 15:19 GMT, Wednesday, 7 April 2010 16:19 UK
Why do Finland's schools get the best results?
By Tom Burridge
BBC World News America, Helsinki
Last year more than 100 foreign delegations and governments visited Helsinki, hoping to learn the secret of their schools' success.
In 2006, Finland's pupils scored the highest average results in science and reading in the whole of the developed world. In the OECD's exams for 15 year-olds, known as PISA, they also came second in maths, beaten only by teenagers in South Korea.
This isn't a one-off: in previous PISA tests Finland also came out top.
The Finnish philosophy with education is that everyone has something to contribute and those who struggle in certain subjects should not be left behind.
A tactic used in virtually every lesson is the provision of an additional teacher who helps those who struggle in a particular subject. But the pupils are all kept in the same classroom, regardless of their ability in that particular subject.
Finland's Education Minister, Henna Virkkunen is proud of her country's record but her next goal is to target the brightest pupils.
''The Finnish system supports very much those pupils who have learning difficulties but we have to pay more attention also to those pupils who are very talented. Now we have started a pilot project about how to support those pupils who are very gifted in certain areas.''
more here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8601207.stm
========================================================================
Misinformation will continue, as long as people refuse to prove all things.
That's an interesting shirt...
larger version, here:
http://i.imgur.com/NeX1xxF.png
video here:
http://www.tmz.com/videos/0_kxyh6uf6/
http://www.amazon.com/Forty-
something the CFR media will never say:
Sunday, April 27, 2014
Transhumanism Update - Posthuman Doctrine - 04.27.2014
The following is the latest attempt to push Evolution as Truth, and the idea that we should merge with machines:
===================================================
Evolution, of course, is complete non-sense:
251 - The World According to Darwin / Total Onslaught Mini Series - Walter Veith
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leeS3I_jNGo
===================================================
Robot Film "Construct" Could Change Everything You Know About CGI
By Beckett Mufson — Apr 22 2014
When filmmaker Kevin Margo isn’t stuck at his day job as a leading visual effects supervisor for everything from Hollywood films to video games, he spends his days and nights inventing a revolutionary new process that, he believes, will change the way people think about computer graphics in cinema.
Since his short film, Grounded, debuted to critical acclaim, the gears in Margo’s mind have been moving. Absorbing the world of visual effects and tackling the problems presented by grossly inefficient, industry-standard CGI practices, he’s out to prove his solutions with his forthcoming short film, Construct.
video and more here:
http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/robot-film-construct-may-change-everything-you-know-about-cgi
===================================================
Obama finds Japanese robots ‘a little scary’
By Juliet Eilperin | April 24 at 4:05 am
TOKYO -- President Obama played soccer Thursday with a Japanese robot -- and came away a bit scared.
Obama's visit to the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, or Mirikan, aimed to highlight both Japan's technological prowess and the renewal of a 10-year scientific collaboration agreement between the two countries. While the event had plenty of examples of how the two countries are working together -- including a pre-recorded message from the International Space Station's Japanese commander and two American flight engineers serving alongside him -- the real stars of the show were a couple of robots.
Honda's humanoid robot ASIMO, which was dressed in an astronaut suit and is about the height of a 10 year-old child, went through a series of exercises for the president.
"It's nice to meet you," it said in a metallic voice, before approaching a soccer ball and telling Obama, "I can kick a soccer ball too."
"Okay, come on," the president replied.
The robot then took a couple of steps back and then then ran up to the ball to deliver a hefty punt.
The president trapped the ball with his foot, later telling an audience of roughly 30 students he was slightly intimidated by ASIMO and the other robot he observed at the museum.
"I have to say that the robots were a little scary, they were too lifelike," Obama declared. "They were amazing."
video and more, here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/04/24/obama-finds-japanese-robots-a-little-scary/
===================================================
10 Breakthrough Technologies 2014
Introduction
Technology news is full of incremental developments, but few of them are true milestones. Here we’re citing 10 that are. These advances from the past year all solve thorny problems or create powerful new ways of using technology. They are breakthroughs that will matter for years to come.
more here:
http://www.technologyreview.com/lists/technologies/2014/
===================================================
Robots are people too: Google algorithm passes 'human' test
April 21, 2014 | Mahesh Sharma
Google researchers have developed technology that nearly perfectly deciphers the distorted combinations of numbers and letters commonly used on the internet to test whether or not someone is human.
Ian J. Goodfellow, Yaroslav Bulatov, Julian Ibarz, Sacha Arnoud, and Vinay Shet, set out to develop a more accurate method to identify numbers in images taken for Google Street View. Their model identified, with better than 90 per cent accuracy, tens of millions of numbers contained in Street View images taken in a dozen countries.
Using the model in conjunction with Google's infrastructure, it takes less than an hour to transcribe all the views of street numbers in France.
The technology was also pitted against the hardest category of the character-blurring forms known as CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart). It is based on the concept of the Turing test, which is a standard way to assess whether a human can identify, via verbal exchanges, whether a respondent is human or a computer.
Advertisement
Tested against reCAPTCHA, Google's own variation, Mr Goodfellow and his team achieved near perfect results.
"Today, distorted text in reCAPTCHA serves increasingly as a medium to capture user engagements rather than a reverse Turing in and of itself," the researchers wrote. "These results do, however, indicate that the utility of distorted text as a reverse Turing test by itself is significantly diminished."
Google's technology uses a system called DistBelief, which leverages a scientific concept called convolutional neural networks. Inspired by biology, these neuron structures mimic the complex arrangement of cells within the part of the brain that interprets images.
The researchers layered these networks on top of each other to identify the numbers and characters in Street View images and CAPTCHA.
While Google's technology can read between the blurred lines, CAPTCHA still stupefies some humans.
more here:
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/robots-are-people-too-google-algorithm-passes-human-test-20140421-zqwg4.html
===================================================
Robots are so much smarter than they used to be
Denise Deveau | April 22, 2014 8:00 AM ET
Photo courtesy of D&D Automation Inc.The VERA™ (Vision Enabled Robotic Assembly) system from D&D Automation Inc. is an adaptive technology that combines vision systems and programming that is currently being used in automotive welding and assembly tasks.
Anyone immersed in robotic technologies will tell you that contrary to popular belief, robots in production environments are about as unintelligent as they get – unless you take the time to add some smarts into the equation.
People don’t understand that a typical robot is designed to do the exact same thing over and over, explains Michael McCourt, president of Stratford, ON-based D&D Automation Inc. “Give it a slightly different part or orientation and it can’t handle that.”
That basic repetitive functionality — like pumping out millions of circuit boards or bottle — might be enough when used in a high-speed, high-volume environment where one task is all that’s needed. When variability comes into play — such as welding several bolts onto a car fender — the option would be put more people on the task or invest in multiple robots.
New signs of intelligence for production drones are coming to the forefront with technologies that help robots think and react to production changes on the fly. D&D for one has just launched VERA™ (Vision Enabled Robotic Assembly), an adaptive technology that combines vision systems and programming that is currently being used in automotive welding and assembly tasks.
“It can look at what part is in front of it and its orientation, pick it out and perform the function required,” Mr. McCourt explains. “Historically plants would have to have dedicated machines for each function, and the runs would never cross.”
Not only can operations save considerably by making production changes quickly without having to pay for retooling costs, adaptive robotics can also improve quality, accuracy and worker safety. In some cases, jobs that were offshored could even be repatriated because adaptive robotics make things more affordable, Mr. McCourt contends.
It’s the integration of complementary technologies that makes the difference, DiBattista notes. “That’s really the key. Whether it’s welding or food handling, it’s the tooling and development of that system that makes it adaptive.”
While adaptive technologies may not fit ultra-high-speed applications where error-free repetition is paramount; the value for short-run, mid-market production environments and other applications in time is significant. For a welding operation, for example, a single VERA system could ultimately do a job that would take up to 20 different machines, Mr. McCourt claims.
“The real estate part of adaptive robotics is huge,” DiBattista says. “A vision system talking to a controller in a [nut welding cell] for example will know how to pick the right nut for the right part. You could reduce your footprint for that cell considerably.”
here:
http://business.financialpost.com/2014/04/22/robots-are-so-much-smarter-than-they-used-to-be/?__lsa=046e-b063
===================================================
This Law School Professor Believes Robots May Lead To An Increase In Prostitution
Dylan Love
Apr. 21, 2014, 11:42 AM
John Danaher, a Keele University law school lecturer with an interest in the ways human life may be enhanced by robots and the ethics problems that stem from that, published a paper that examines whether sex work might one day be dominated by robots rather than human sex workers.
He also offers this easily understood summary of it for the Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies.
The paper lays out two contrasting hypotheses: one in which robots dominate the sex industry; and another in which robot use actually leads to an increase in human sex work.
In both scenarios, Danaher argues, a "basic income" policy would be helpful — either to fund newly unemployed prostitutes or to provide an alternative to people who have lost their jobs to robots so they don't end up as prostitutes. "Basic income" is an idea that economists have toyed with for years. It's the notion that the majority of government welfare payments ought to be abolished in favor of a single, unconditional cash payment that everyone gets regardless of their employment status.
So, yes, he's literally arguing that in the future, sex robots may finally make the case for a basic income scheme:
The displacement hypothesis says sex robots will eventually push human sex workers out of a job.
The resiliency hypothesis represents the other side of this coin, arguing that human prostitutes are here to stay, regardless of the existence of sex robots.
the details, here:
http://www.businessinsider.com/will-sex-robots-replace-prostitutes-2014-4
===================================================
The Rapture of the Nerds
Jessica Roy/Melbourne Beach @JessicaKRoy
April 17, 2014
A new religion has set out to store memories for centuries and deliver its believers into a world where our souls can outlive our selves
In the backyard of a cottage here overlooking the water, two poles with metal slats shaped like ribcages jut out from the ground. They look indistinguishable from heat lamps or fancy light fixtures.
These are satellite dishes, but they aren’t for TV. They’re meant for dispatching “mindfiles,” the memories, thoughts and feelings of people who wish to create digital copies of themselves and fling them into space with the belief that they’ll eventually reach some benevolent alien species.
Welcome to the future. Hope you don’t mind E.T. leafing through your diary.
The beach house and the backyard and the memory satellites are managed by 31-year-old Gabriel Rothblatt, a pastor of Terasem, a new sort of religion seeking answers to very old kinds of questions, all with an abiding faith in the transformative power of technology.
Beneath the cottage is a basement office where the mindfile operation is headquartered. Next door is an ashram, an airy glass building with walls that slide away to reveal a backyard home to a telescope for stargazing and a space to practice yoga. Tucked behind a shroud of greenery, most neighbors don’t even know this house of worship exists.
The name Terasem comes from the Greek word for “Earthseed,” which is also the name for the futuristic religion found in the Octavia Butler sci-fi novel Parable of the Sower that helped inspire Gabriel’s parents, Bina and Martine Rothblatt, to start their new faith. Martine founded the successful satellite radio company Sirius XM in 1990. (Martine was originally known as Martin. She had sex reassignment surgery 20 years ago.)
Organized around four core tenets—“life is purposeful, death is optional, God is technological and love is essential”–Terasem is a “transreligion,” meaning that you don’t have to give up being Christian or Jewish or Muslim to join. In fact, many believers embrace traditional positions held by mainstream religions—including the omnipotence of God and the existence of an afterlife—but say these are made possible by increasing advancements in science and technology.
“Einstein said science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind,” Martine Rothblatt tells TIME. “Bina and I were inspired to find a way for people to believe in God consistent with science and technology so people would have faith in the future.”
Sure, it’s easy to dismiss people who think they can somehow cheat death with a laptop. But Terasem is a potent symbol of a modern way of life where the digital world and the emotional one have become increasingly entwined. It is also a sign, if one from the fringe, of the always evolving relationship between technology and faith. Survey after survey has shown the number of Americans calling themselves “religious” has declined despite the fact that many still identify as “spiritual.” People are searching, and no longer do they look to technology to provide mere order for their lives. They also want meaning. Maybe, it’s time to hack our souls.
more here:
http://time.com/66536/terasem-trascendence-religion-technology/
===================================================
Americans Aren’t Ready for the Future Google and Amazon Want to Build
By Issie Lapowsky 04.18.14 | 6:30 am
A kidney structure being printed by the 3-D printer at Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Image: Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center
Americans are hopeful about the future of technology. But don’t release the drones just yet. And forget meat grown in a petri dish.
That’s the takeaway from a new study released by the Pew Research Center looking at how U.S. residents felt about possible high-tech advances looming in the not-too-distant future. Overall, a decisive majority of those surveyed believed new tech would make the future better. At the same time, the public doesn’t seem quite ready for many of the advances companies like Google and Amazon are pushing hard to make real.
If the stigma surrounding Google Glass (or, perhaps more specifically, “Glassholes”) has taught us anything, it’s that no matter how revolutionary technology may be, ultimately its success or failure ride on public perception. Many promising technological developments have died because they were ahead of their times. During a cultural moment when the alleged arrogance of some tech companies is creating a serious image problem, the risk of pushing new tech on a public that isn’t ready could have real bottom-line consequences.
Lab-Grown Organs: Yes
In the Pew study, researchers asked 1,000 respondents to predict how soon certain major technological advancements, from space colonies to teleportation, would occur. They were also asked to say whether they believed more near-term advancements such as wearable technology were good or bad for society.
Overall, the results show that people are realistic when it comes to predicting the future. The majority of respondents, for instance, were doubtful that sci-fi tropes like teleportation, space colonization, time travel, and the ability to control the weather would be possible in the next 50 years.
But when it came to technology that’s already being developed, they were much more confident. About 80 percent of people, for instance, said they believed lab-grown organs would be available for transplant within 50 years. That’s a promising sign for the biotech companies and researchers currently working on regenerative medicine. Meanwhile, 51 percent of people believed that computers will soon be able to create art that’s indistinguishable from art created by humans. That’s also good news for the machine learning industry.
Lab-Grown Meat: No
Yet when the subjects were asked to decide whether certain new technologies would be good or bad for the future, they were decidedly more hesitant. More than 60 percent, for instance, said it would be a change for the worse if the U.S. were to open its skies to personal drones. If they’re that opposed to unmanned aerial vehicles in the skies, it’s not hard to imagine the resistance multi-billion dollar companies like Amazon and Google will face as they attempt to launch drones themselves.
The wearable technology industry is also likely to see resistance — a little more than half of those surveyed said it would be a change for the worse if most people wore implants or other devices that constantly feed them information. And while there are several research institutions across the country currently developing robots to care for the elderly, this idea was widely rejected by respondents, with nearly two-thirds saying such automated care would be bad for the future.
Driverless cars, technology that Google has also been spearheading, but that Elon Musk recently said is a goal for Tesla, were slightly more popular, with nearly half of respondents saying they’d be willing to try one out. That’s compared to the mere 20 percent of people who said they’d eat meat grown in a lab.
These findings, of course, can’t be taken as a sign that these industries are outright doomed. After all, if someone had told people 50 years ago that we’d all have tiny glass-and-metal boxes in our pockets that could take pictures, pinpoint our exact location anywhere in the world, and hold the contents of thousands of books all at the same time, it would have seemed impossible, if not downright scary. But the findings show that tech companies still have a lot of work to do to educate a public hardly willing to put blind trust in tech giants. Innovation can be a powerful force for positive change, but it goes down easier when the people whose lives will be affected feel like they have a say.
here:
http://www.wired.com/2014/04/future-of-tech/
===================================================
Study indicates Robots could replace 80% of Jobs
Posted on April 16, 2014 by Colin Lewis
PerezIn a few decades, twenty or thirty years — or sooner – robots and their associated technology will be as ubiquitous as mobile phones are today, at least that is the prediction of Bill Gates; and we would be hard-pressed to find a roboticist, automation expert or economist who could present a strong case against this. The Robotics Revolution promises a host of benefits that are compelling (especially in health care) and imaginative, but it may also come at a significant price.
The Pareto Principle of Prediction
We find ourselves faced with an intractable paradox: On the one hand technology advances increase productivity and wellbeing, and on the other hand it often reinforces inequalities.
A new study due to be published in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Skills and Training by Stuart Elliot visiting analyst at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), who incidentally is on leave from the Board on Testing and Assessment of the National Research Council, indicates that technology could replace ‘workers for 80 percent of current jobs.’
In his study Elliot relies on advances in speech, reasoning capabilities and movement capabilities to illustrate how robots and technology can replace jobs. I am in agreement with the general thoughts of the study, although I believe speech recognition is now far more advanced than Elliot states. This element alone will lead to a reduction in many jobs, such as translation over the next five years.
Elliot is not the first to claim that robotics and technology will have such a profound impact on employment or inequality. Michael Hammer, a former MIT professor and prime mover in the restructuring of the workplace in the 1990’s estimated that up to 80 percent of those engaged in middle management tasks were susceptible to elimination due to automation.
In the book Average is Over Professor Tyler Cowen also predicts a hollowed-out labor market, devoid of middle-skill, middle-wage jobs, where 80% or more of our citizens will be unable to prosper. They will become a permanent underclass, unable to improve their lot.
This ‘underclass’ may be happening sooner than Cowen predicted. While there are ‘short term’ adjustments in the employment numbers, the majority are in the low-paying sectors, 73% of ‘new’ jobs are in the bottom of the wage pyramid and temporary employment positions rather than permanent.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that among the most rapidly growing occupational categories over the next ten years will be “healthcare support occupations” (nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants) and “food preparation and serving workers” – overwhelmingly low-wage jobs.
more here:
http://robotenomics.com/2014/04/16/study-indicates-robots-could-replace-80-of-jobs/
===================================================
Building a robot firefighter
Navy, colleges take up the challenge of creating robots for dangerous duty
By Hiawatha Bray | Globe Staff April 08, 2014
Before the year is out, the Navy will start a fire on one of its ships and send in a robot to put it out.
Designed at Virginia Tech and the University of Pennsylvania, the Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot, or SAFFiR, is a two-legged machine built to climb stairs and open watertight hatches just like a human. But Dennis Hong, one of SAFFiR’s developers, said the robot is built to withstand flames and smoke that humans might not survive.
“This is almost science fiction, but it’s real,” Hong said.
Even as Boston mourns the loss of two firefighters trapped in a blaze in March, engineers in Massachusetts and around the world are working to develop robots that may one day take the place of humans in dangerous environments — from burning buildings to damaged nuclear power plants.
Search-and-rescue robots that roll on wheels or caterpillar treads were deployed during disasters such as the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami. Last year, a hose-wielding robot from South Korea tackled a major fire in Illinois. And in May, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police used an unmanned drone to find an injured man who was lost in a remote area of Saskatchewan, in what may be the first case of a drone aircraft saving a life.
Now the US government and world-class universities such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Worcester Polytechnic Institute are developing humanoid rescue robots, two-legged machines designed to climb stairs, open doors, operate fire hoses, even drive emergency vehicles.
But do not expect to see such robots in action anytime soon.
Michael A. Gennert, the director of WPI’s robotics engineering program, said that teaching machines to perform even basic rescue tasks is a daunting challenge.
“There’s an awful lot of stuff to do,” Gennert said. “It’s not going to be easy or cheap.”
Gennert, his colleagues, and students are developing control software for Atlas, a six-foot-tall, 330-pound robot shaped like a man.
Atlas was engineered for use as a first-responder robot by Boston Dynamics, a Waltham company recently acquired by Google Inc.
video and more here:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/04/07/robots-rescue-one-step-time/Gr3K24oCgrmE4FhVlvdoKM/story.html
===================================================
===================================================
Evolution, of course, is complete non-sense:
251 - The World According to Darwin / Total Onslaught Mini Series - Walter Veith
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leeS3I_jNGo
===================================================
Robot Film "Construct" Could Change Everything You Know About CGI
By Beckett Mufson — Apr 22 2014
When filmmaker Kevin Margo isn’t stuck at his day job as a leading visual effects supervisor for everything from Hollywood films to video games, he spends his days and nights inventing a revolutionary new process that, he believes, will change the way people think about computer graphics in cinema.
Since his short film, Grounded, debuted to critical acclaim, the gears in Margo’s mind have been moving. Absorbing the world of visual effects and tackling the problems presented by grossly inefficient, industry-standard CGI practices, he’s out to prove his solutions with his forthcoming short film, Construct.
video and more here:
http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/robot-film-construct-may-change-everything-you-know-about-cgi
===================================================
Obama finds Japanese robots ‘a little scary’
By Juliet Eilperin | April 24 at 4:05 am
TOKYO -- President Obama played soccer Thursday with a Japanese robot -- and came away a bit scared.
Obama's visit to the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, or Mirikan, aimed to highlight both Japan's technological prowess and the renewal of a 10-year scientific collaboration agreement between the two countries. While the event had plenty of examples of how the two countries are working together -- including a pre-recorded message from the International Space Station's Japanese commander and two American flight engineers serving alongside him -- the real stars of the show were a couple of robots.
Honda's humanoid robot ASIMO, which was dressed in an astronaut suit and is about the height of a 10 year-old child, went through a series of exercises for the president.
"It's nice to meet you," it said in a metallic voice, before approaching a soccer ball and telling Obama, "I can kick a soccer ball too."
"Okay, come on," the president replied.
The robot then took a couple of steps back and then then ran up to the ball to deliver a hefty punt.
The president trapped the ball with his foot, later telling an audience of roughly 30 students he was slightly intimidated by ASIMO and the other robot he observed at the museum.
"I have to say that the robots were a little scary, they were too lifelike," Obama declared. "They were amazing."
video and more, here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/04/24/obama-finds-japanese-robots-a-little-scary/
===================================================
10 Breakthrough Technologies 2014
Introduction
Technology news is full of incremental developments, but few of them are true milestones. Here we’re citing 10 that are. These advances from the past year all solve thorny problems or create powerful new ways of using technology. They are breakthroughs that will matter for years to come.
more here:
http://www.technologyreview.com/lists/technologies/2014/
===================================================
Robots are people too: Google algorithm passes 'human' test
April 21, 2014 | Mahesh Sharma
Google researchers have developed technology that nearly perfectly deciphers the distorted combinations of numbers and letters commonly used on the internet to test whether or not someone is human.
Ian J. Goodfellow, Yaroslav Bulatov, Julian Ibarz, Sacha Arnoud, and Vinay Shet, set out to develop a more accurate method to identify numbers in images taken for Google Street View. Their model identified, with better than 90 per cent accuracy, tens of millions of numbers contained in Street View images taken in a dozen countries.
Using the model in conjunction with Google's infrastructure, it takes less than an hour to transcribe all the views of street numbers in France.
The technology was also pitted against the hardest category of the character-blurring forms known as CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart). It is based on the concept of the Turing test, which is a standard way to assess whether a human can identify, via verbal exchanges, whether a respondent is human or a computer.
Advertisement
Tested against reCAPTCHA, Google's own variation, Mr Goodfellow and his team achieved near perfect results.
"Today, distorted text in reCAPTCHA serves increasingly as a medium to capture user engagements rather than a reverse Turing in and of itself," the researchers wrote. "These results do, however, indicate that the utility of distorted text as a reverse Turing test by itself is significantly diminished."
Google's technology uses a system called DistBelief, which leverages a scientific concept called convolutional neural networks. Inspired by biology, these neuron structures mimic the complex arrangement of cells within the part of the brain that interprets images.
The researchers layered these networks on top of each other to identify the numbers and characters in Street View images and CAPTCHA.
While Google's technology can read between the blurred lines, CAPTCHA still stupefies some humans.
more here:
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/robots-are-people-too-google-algorithm-passes-human-test-20140421-zqwg4.html
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Robots are so much smarter than they used to be
Denise Deveau | April 22, 2014 8:00 AM ET
Photo courtesy of D&D Automation Inc.The VERA™ (Vision Enabled Robotic Assembly) system from D&D Automation Inc. is an adaptive technology that combines vision systems and programming that is currently being used in automotive welding and assembly tasks.
Anyone immersed in robotic technologies will tell you that contrary to popular belief, robots in production environments are about as unintelligent as they get – unless you take the time to add some smarts into the equation.
People don’t understand that a typical robot is designed to do the exact same thing over and over, explains Michael McCourt, president of Stratford, ON-based D&D Automation Inc. “Give it a slightly different part or orientation and it can’t handle that.”
That basic repetitive functionality — like pumping out millions of circuit boards or bottle — might be enough when used in a high-speed, high-volume environment where one task is all that’s needed. When variability comes into play — such as welding several bolts onto a car fender — the option would be put more people on the task or invest in multiple robots.
New signs of intelligence for production drones are coming to the forefront with technologies that help robots think and react to production changes on the fly. D&D for one has just launched VERA™ (Vision Enabled Robotic Assembly), an adaptive technology that combines vision systems and programming that is currently being used in automotive welding and assembly tasks.
“It can look at what part is in front of it and its orientation, pick it out and perform the function required,” Mr. McCourt explains. “Historically plants would have to have dedicated machines for each function, and the runs would never cross.”
Not only can operations save considerably by making production changes quickly without having to pay for retooling costs, adaptive robotics can also improve quality, accuracy and worker safety. In some cases, jobs that were offshored could even be repatriated because adaptive robotics make things more affordable, Mr. McCourt contends.
It’s the integration of complementary technologies that makes the difference, DiBattista notes. “That’s really the key. Whether it’s welding or food handling, it’s the tooling and development of that system that makes it adaptive.”
While adaptive technologies may not fit ultra-high-speed applications where error-free repetition is paramount; the value for short-run, mid-market production environments and other applications in time is significant. For a welding operation, for example, a single VERA system could ultimately do a job that would take up to 20 different machines, Mr. McCourt claims.
“The real estate part of adaptive robotics is huge,” DiBattista says. “A vision system talking to a controller in a [nut welding cell] for example will know how to pick the right nut for the right part. You could reduce your footprint for that cell considerably.”
here:
http://business.financialpost.com/2014/04/22/robots-are-so-much-smarter-than-they-used-to-be/?__lsa=046e-b063
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This Law School Professor Believes Robots May Lead To An Increase In Prostitution
Dylan Love
Apr. 21, 2014, 11:42 AM
John Danaher, a Keele University law school lecturer with an interest in the ways human life may be enhanced by robots and the ethics problems that stem from that, published a paper that examines whether sex work might one day be dominated by robots rather than human sex workers.
He also offers this easily understood summary of it for the Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies.
The paper lays out two contrasting hypotheses: one in which robots dominate the sex industry; and another in which robot use actually leads to an increase in human sex work.
In both scenarios, Danaher argues, a "basic income" policy would be helpful — either to fund newly unemployed prostitutes or to provide an alternative to people who have lost their jobs to robots so they don't end up as prostitutes. "Basic income" is an idea that economists have toyed with for years. It's the notion that the majority of government welfare payments ought to be abolished in favor of a single, unconditional cash payment that everyone gets regardless of their employment status.
So, yes, he's literally arguing that in the future, sex robots may finally make the case for a basic income scheme:
The displacement hypothesis says sex robots will eventually push human sex workers out of a job.
The resiliency hypothesis represents the other side of this coin, arguing that human prostitutes are here to stay, regardless of the existence of sex robots.
the details, here:
http://www.businessinsider.com/will-sex-robots-replace-prostitutes-2014-4
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The Rapture of the Nerds
Jessica Roy/Melbourne Beach @JessicaKRoy
April 17, 2014
A new religion has set out to store memories for centuries and deliver its believers into a world where our souls can outlive our selves
In the backyard of a cottage here overlooking the water, two poles with metal slats shaped like ribcages jut out from the ground. They look indistinguishable from heat lamps or fancy light fixtures.
These are satellite dishes, but they aren’t for TV. They’re meant for dispatching “mindfiles,” the memories, thoughts and feelings of people who wish to create digital copies of themselves and fling them into space with the belief that they’ll eventually reach some benevolent alien species.
Welcome to the future. Hope you don’t mind E.T. leafing through your diary.
The beach house and the backyard and the memory satellites are managed by 31-year-old Gabriel Rothblatt, a pastor of Terasem, a new sort of religion seeking answers to very old kinds of questions, all with an abiding faith in the transformative power of technology.
Beneath the cottage is a basement office where the mindfile operation is headquartered. Next door is an ashram, an airy glass building with walls that slide away to reveal a backyard home to a telescope for stargazing and a space to practice yoga. Tucked behind a shroud of greenery, most neighbors don’t even know this house of worship exists.
The name Terasem comes from the Greek word for “Earthseed,” which is also the name for the futuristic religion found in the Octavia Butler sci-fi novel Parable of the Sower that helped inspire Gabriel’s parents, Bina and Martine Rothblatt, to start their new faith. Martine founded the successful satellite radio company Sirius XM in 1990. (Martine was originally known as Martin. She had sex reassignment surgery 20 years ago.)
Organized around four core tenets—“life is purposeful, death is optional, God is technological and love is essential”–Terasem is a “transreligion,” meaning that you don’t have to give up being Christian or Jewish or Muslim to join. In fact, many believers embrace traditional positions held by mainstream religions—including the omnipotence of God and the existence of an afterlife—but say these are made possible by increasing advancements in science and technology.
“Einstein said science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind,” Martine Rothblatt tells TIME. “Bina and I were inspired to find a way for people to believe in God consistent with science and technology so people would have faith in the future.”
Sure, it’s easy to dismiss people who think they can somehow cheat death with a laptop. But Terasem is a potent symbol of a modern way of life where the digital world and the emotional one have become increasingly entwined. It is also a sign, if one from the fringe, of the always evolving relationship between technology and faith. Survey after survey has shown the number of Americans calling themselves “religious” has declined despite the fact that many still identify as “spiritual.” People are searching, and no longer do they look to technology to provide mere order for their lives. They also want meaning. Maybe, it’s time to hack our souls.
more here:
http://time.com/66536/terasem-trascendence-religion-technology/
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Americans Aren’t Ready for the Future Google and Amazon Want to Build
By Issie Lapowsky 04.18.14 | 6:30 am
A kidney structure being printed by the 3-D printer at Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Image: Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center
Americans are hopeful about the future of technology. But don’t release the drones just yet. And forget meat grown in a petri dish.
That’s the takeaway from a new study released by the Pew Research Center looking at how U.S. residents felt about possible high-tech advances looming in the not-too-distant future. Overall, a decisive majority of those surveyed believed new tech would make the future better. At the same time, the public doesn’t seem quite ready for many of the advances companies like Google and Amazon are pushing hard to make real.
If the stigma surrounding Google Glass (or, perhaps more specifically, “Glassholes”) has taught us anything, it’s that no matter how revolutionary technology may be, ultimately its success or failure ride on public perception. Many promising technological developments have died because they were ahead of their times. During a cultural moment when the alleged arrogance of some tech companies is creating a serious image problem, the risk of pushing new tech on a public that isn’t ready could have real bottom-line consequences.
Lab-Grown Organs: Yes
In the Pew study, researchers asked 1,000 respondents to predict how soon certain major technological advancements, from space colonies to teleportation, would occur. They were also asked to say whether they believed more near-term advancements such as wearable technology were good or bad for society.
Overall, the results show that people are realistic when it comes to predicting the future. The majority of respondents, for instance, were doubtful that sci-fi tropes like teleportation, space colonization, time travel, and the ability to control the weather would be possible in the next 50 years.
But when it came to technology that’s already being developed, they were much more confident. About 80 percent of people, for instance, said they believed lab-grown organs would be available for transplant within 50 years. That’s a promising sign for the biotech companies and researchers currently working on regenerative medicine. Meanwhile, 51 percent of people believed that computers will soon be able to create art that’s indistinguishable from art created by humans. That’s also good news for the machine learning industry.
Lab-Grown Meat: No
Yet when the subjects were asked to decide whether certain new technologies would be good or bad for the future, they were decidedly more hesitant. More than 60 percent, for instance, said it would be a change for the worse if the U.S. were to open its skies to personal drones. If they’re that opposed to unmanned aerial vehicles in the skies, it’s not hard to imagine the resistance multi-billion dollar companies like Amazon and Google will face as they attempt to launch drones themselves.
The wearable technology industry is also likely to see resistance — a little more than half of those surveyed said it would be a change for the worse if most people wore implants or other devices that constantly feed them information. And while there are several research institutions across the country currently developing robots to care for the elderly, this idea was widely rejected by respondents, with nearly two-thirds saying such automated care would be bad for the future.
Driverless cars, technology that Google has also been spearheading, but that Elon Musk recently said is a goal for Tesla, were slightly more popular, with nearly half of respondents saying they’d be willing to try one out. That’s compared to the mere 20 percent of people who said they’d eat meat grown in a lab.
These findings, of course, can’t be taken as a sign that these industries are outright doomed. After all, if someone had told people 50 years ago that we’d all have tiny glass-and-metal boxes in our pockets that could take pictures, pinpoint our exact location anywhere in the world, and hold the contents of thousands of books all at the same time, it would have seemed impossible, if not downright scary. But the findings show that tech companies still have a lot of work to do to educate a public hardly willing to put blind trust in tech giants. Innovation can be a powerful force for positive change, but it goes down easier when the people whose lives will be affected feel like they have a say.
here:
http://www.wired.com/2014/04/future-of-tech/
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Study indicates Robots could replace 80% of Jobs
Posted on April 16, 2014 by Colin Lewis
PerezIn a few decades, twenty or thirty years — or sooner – robots and their associated technology will be as ubiquitous as mobile phones are today, at least that is the prediction of Bill Gates; and we would be hard-pressed to find a roboticist, automation expert or economist who could present a strong case against this. The Robotics Revolution promises a host of benefits that are compelling (especially in health care) and imaginative, but it may also come at a significant price.
The Pareto Principle of Prediction
We find ourselves faced with an intractable paradox: On the one hand technology advances increase productivity and wellbeing, and on the other hand it often reinforces inequalities.
A new study due to be published in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Skills and Training by Stuart Elliot visiting analyst at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), who incidentally is on leave from the Board on Testing and Assessment of the National Research Council, indicates that technology could replace ‘workers for 80 percent of current jobs.’
In his study Elliot relies on advances in speech, reasoning capabilities and movement capabilities to illustrate how robots and technology can replace jobs. I am in agreement with the general thoughts of the study, although I believe speech recognition is now far more advanced than Elliot states. This element alone will lead to a reduction in many jobs, such as translation over the next five years.
Elliot is not the first to claim that robotics and technology will have such a profound impact on employment or inequality. Michael Hammer, a former MIT professor and prime mover in the restructuring of the workplace in the 1990’s estimated that up to 80 percent of those engaged in middle management tasks were susceptible to elimination due to automation.
In the book Average is Over Professor Tyler Cowen also predicts a hollowed-out labor market, devoid of middle-skill, middle-wage jobs, where 80% or more of our citizens will be unable to prosper. They will become a permanent underclass, unable to improve their lot.
This ‘underclass’ may be happening sooner than Cowen predicted. While there are ‘short term’ adjustments in the employment numbers, the majority are in the low-paying sectors, 73% of ‘new’ jobs are in the bottom of the wage pyramid and temporary employment positions rather than permanent.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that among the most rapidly growing occupational categories over the next ten years will be “healthcare support occupations” (nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants) and “food preparation and serving workers” – overwhelmingly low-wage jobs.
more here:
http://robotenomics.com/2014/04/16/study-indicates-robots-could-replace-80-of-jobs/
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Building a robot firefighter
Navy, colleges take up the challenge of creating robots for dangerous duty
By Hiawatha Bray | Globe Staff April 08, 2014
Before the year is out, the Navy will start a fire on one of its ships and send in a robot to put it out.
Designed at Virginia Tech and the University of Pennsylvania, the Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot, or SAFFiR, is a two-legged machine built to climb stairs and open watertight hatches just like a human. But Dennis Hong, one of SAFFiR’s developers, said the robot is built to withstand flames and smoke that humans might not survive.
“This is almost science fiction, but it’s real,” Hong said.
Even as Boston mourns the loss of two firefighters trapped in a blaze in March, engineers in Massachusetts and around the world are working to develop robots that may one day take the place of humans in dangerous environments — from burning buildings to damaged nuclear power plants.
Search-and-rescue robots that roll on wheels or caterpillar treads were deployed during disasters such as the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami. Last year, a hose-wielding robot from South Korea tackled a major fire in Illinois. And in May, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police used an unmanned drone to find an injured man who was lost in a remote area of Saskatchewan, in what may be the first case of a drone aircraft saving a life.
Now the US government and world-class universities such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Worcester Polytechnic Institute are developing humanoid rescue robots, two-legged machines designed to climb stairs, open doors, operate fire hoses, even drive emergency vehicles.
But do not expect to see such robots in action anytime soon.
Michael A. Gennert, the director of WPI’s robotics engineering program, said that teaching machines to perform even basic rescue tasks is a daunting challenge.
“There’s an awful lot of stuff to do,” Gennert said. “It’s not going to be easy or cheap.”
Gennert, his colleagues, and students are developing control software for Atlas, a six-foot-tall, 330-pound robot shaped like a man.
Atlas was engineered for use as a first-responder robot by Boston Dynamics, a Waltham company recently acquired by Google Inc.
video and more here:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/04/07/robots-rescue-one-step-time/Gr3K24oCgrmE4FhVlvdoKM/story.html
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