thenatureofmind

Franklin Foer on how Silicon Valley is threatening our humanity

Fears about the “existential threat of big tech” usually focus on autonomous weapons and how to control superintelligence before it has the power to control us. That’s not so for Franklin Foer, The Atlantic staff writer and former New Republic editor-in-chief. His new book World Without Mind is out this week, and it’s about a different type of existential threat.

He thinks that the big tech companies — Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon — are “destroying the possibility of contemplation” and making us turn away from the intellectual work that, he says, makes us human.

Franklin Foer on how Silicon Valley is threatening our humanity

National Security and Climate Change, Why They Are Connected

The Situation In The Markets Is Much Worse Than You Realize

It’s about time that I share with you all a little secret.  The situation in the markets is much worse than you realize.  While that may sound like someone who has been crying “wolf” for the past several years, in all honesty, the public has no idea just how dire our present situation has become.

The amount of debt, leverage, deceit, corruption, and fraud in the economic markets, financial system, and in the energy industry are off the charts.  Unfortunately, the present condition is even much worse when we consider “INSIDER INFORMATION.”

The Situation In The Markets Is Much Worse Than You Realize

Can the Pope Bridge Colombia's Divide Over FARC?

On the first day of Pope Francis’s visit in Bogota, Colombia, he was met at the airport by President Juan Manuel Santos and a swarm of followers waving white handkerchiefs. On the tarmac, the pope was handed a white dove by a teenager, the son Clara Rojas, a former vice presidential candidate who was held captive by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) for six years. It was a deeply symbolic moment, and a theme the pope is expected to take around the country during his five-day trip, the first papal visit to Colombia in 30 years.

Can the Pope Bridge Colombia's Divide Over FARC?

The West Might Hardly Believe It, But It Now Seems The Syrian War Is Ending – And Assad Is The Victor

A message came through from Syria on my mobile phone last week. “General Khadour kept his promise,” it read. I knew what it meant.

Five years ago, I met Mohamed Khadour, who was commanding a few Syrian soldiers in a small suburb of Aleppo, under fire from Islamist fighters in the east of the city. At the time, he showed me his map. He’d recapture these streets in 11 days, he said.

And then in July this year, I met Khadour again, far out in the east of the Syrian desert. He was, he said, going to enter the besieged city of Deir ez-Zor before the end of August. I reminded him, a trifle cruelly, that the last time he told me he’d recapture part of Aleppo in 11 days, it took the Syrian army more than four years to retake. That was long ago, he said. In those days, the army had not learned to fight in a guerrilla war. The army were trained to retake Golan and defend Damascus. But they had learned now.

The West Might Hardly Believe It, But It Now Seems The Syrian War Is Ending – And Assad Is The Victor

The Last Laugh - Mark Knopfler & Van Morrison

Scientists Discover A Jewel At The Heart Of Quantum Physics

Physicists reported this week the discovery of a jewel-like geometric object that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions and challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality.

“This is completely new and very much simpler than anything that has been done before,” said Andrew Hodges, a mathematical physicist at Oxford University who has been following the work. 

Scientists Discover A Jewel At The Heart Of Quantum Physics

Goin' Down Louisiana - The Blues Project

Larry Wilkerson: North Korea is Not an Existential Threat - But Many People Benefit by Saying It Is

The Practice Of Pilgrimage By Eido Carney

At the opening ceremony for our sesshin we chant, in part, in the Eko, “May each person’s powerful presence—dignified, profoundly introspective, and deep—have peaceful consequences that cannot be fully foreseen, affecting visible and invisible worlds throughout time and space.” This entreaty speaks to the notion of pilgrimage, for it carries with it a sacred intention for the pilgrim, the one who steps forth on a journey and inevitably meets unknown, life-changing situations that bring about a clarity of seeing and of being in the world—the peaceful consequences of practice. This is what our sesshin is, what one period of Zazen is, and perhaps what our whole lives are—a pilgrimage through the bones of earth meeting the essence of mind. This journey may be experienced through a rapturous and varied landscape, but at its core it is an inner expedition traversed through intimate, intangible, interior space wherever we go and in the terrain in which we discover ourselves.

The Practice Of Pilgrimage