The World Transformed

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All Time Great Summer Movies Jul 27, 2018

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What were the greatest summer movies ever made? Or maybe it's better to ask, what was the greatest movie summer of all time? It's a full-on geekout as Phil and Stephen explore answers to these vital questions. WT 459-777 Eternity Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) | Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License | creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0 Videos and Images from Pixabay.com and other sources.

Young, Thin, and Healthy Jul 25, 2018

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Phil and Stephen discuss medical breakthroughs that promise to help us all stay young, thin, and healthy. The 'Big Bang' of Alzheimer's: Scientists ID genesis of disease, focus efforts on shape-shifting tau Scientists have discovered a "Big Bang" of Alzheimer's disease – the precise point at which a healthy protein becomes toxic but has not yet formed deadly tangles in the brain. The revelation offers a new strategy to detect the devastating disease before it takes hold and has spawned an effort to develop treatments that stabilize tau proteins before they shift shape. New Pill Can Reverse Obesity And Type 2 Diabetes How to Eliminate Cancer from Our Genome These anti-aging pills seem to be actually working Pills hailed as the first real “anti-aging” drugs inched a little closer to the market after a study found they cut the number of respiratory infections in the elderly by half. The drugs: The pills act on an aging-related pathway called TORC1. Inhibiting this pathway “has extended life span in every species studies to date,” according to Joan Mannick, who led the study for drug giant Novartis. Those species include mice and worms. WT 458-776 Eternity Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) | Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0 Videos and Images from Pixabay.com and other sources.

The End of Data Modeling? Jul 20, 2018

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When it comes to managing data for modern, agile environments, is data modeling a roadblock? Or is it, in fact, one of the keys to achieving agility? If traditional data modeling will no longer support what businesses need today, what are the alternatives? In this edition of Fast Forward, Desmarets talks with hosts Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon about the challenges that surround data modeling in the age of NOSQL databases and agile development. He outlines how Domain-Driven Design can help shape the future both for development teams and for data modelers themselves -- who may have more to look forward to than becoming extinct. About Pascal Desmarets Pascal is the founder and CEO of Hackolade, a company that focuses on producing user-friendly, powerful visual tools to smooth the onboarding of NOSQL technologies into corporate IT landscapes. Hackolade's software combines the simplicity of data modeling with the power of NOSQL databases to provide reduced development time, increased application quality, and lower execution risks. FF 006-775 Music: www.bensound.com Image from Pixabay.com

Flat Earth -- Are People Getting Dumber? Jul 18, 2018

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Are more people subscribing to the idea that the Earth is flat? How does flat Earth relate to other conspiracies: 9/11Lizardoid aliens controlling the earthMandela Effect Have these all been enabled by the Web? Are they spread by people trying to refute them? More and More Americans are Starting to Believe Earth is Flat In America interest in the flat-Earth movement appears to be growing. In September Bobby Ray Simmons Jr., a rapper also known as B.o.B, launched a crowd-funding campaign to send satellites into orbit to determine the Earth’s shape. On November 9th, 500 “flat-Earthers” assembled in North Carolina for the first annual Flat Earth International Conference. Data from Google Trends show that in the past two years, searches for “flat earth” have more than tripled. The Flynn Effect is the observation that IQ scores have been going up. Unfortunately there may be evidence that that trend is not as reliable as it used to be. So is it wrong to do a show on this subject? Are we just encouraging people to believe stupid things and become dumber? WT 457-774 Eternity Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) | Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0 Videos and Images from Pixabay.com and other sources.

When Everybody Is Super Jul 14, 2018

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Thoughts on the Incredibles and the Incredibles 2: do these movies value being "naturally" super over technological advancement? The Incredibles movies have a weird relationship with technology https://bit.ly/2MSukcL But there’s another, subtler thread running through the two Pixar films. And because it repeats, it seems to point to a larger philosophy: both movies feature villains whose evil deeds give the franchise a markedly technophobic outlook. In The Incredibles, it’s Syndrome, a normal human with no superpowers who uses his tech skills to amass a huge fortune, which he plans to use to effectively rid the world of supers. In The Incredibles 2, it’s Screenslaver, a normal human with no superpowers who uses her tech skills to amass a huge fortune, which she plans to use to actually rid the world of supers. Are these movies sectretly anti-tech? And do they secretly hearken back to a happier time when white guys ran everything? Phil and Stephen discuss. WT 456-773 Eternity Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) | Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0 Videos and Images from Pixabay.com and other sources

Reopening the Web Jul 12, 2018

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Does the Web need reopening? Let’s start with one more thought from Survival of the Richest: Of course, it wasn’t always this way. There was a brief moment, in the early 1990s, when the digital future felt open-ended and up for our invention. Technology was becoming a playground for the counterculture, who saw in it the opportunity to create a more inclusive, distributed, and pro-human future. But established business interests only saw new potentials for the same old extraction, and too many technologists were seduced by unicorn IPOs. --Too bad that’s all over and can never come again. Oh, wait. The web had failed to serve humanity: Tim Berners-Lee was crushed when Russia used Facebook to meddle in U.S. elections World wide web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee said he was “devastated” by recent abuses of the web, in an interview with Vanity Fair. He is working on a new platform, named Solid, to re-decentralise the internet and take power away from monopolies like Google and Facebook. He still has hope that the internet can become a something that serves humanity well. The Decentralized Internet Is Here, With Some Glitches An attempt to do this was also the major story arc of the last two seasons of Silicon Valley. What will a re-opened web look like? More like the original blogosphere? What will we do with it? How will we use it differently? WT 456-773 Eternity Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) | Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0 Image from Pixabay.com

Save the Billionaires! Jul 10, 2018

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A futurist thinks he's speaking at a conference only to realize that he's been asked to advise a secret meeting of billionaires. Survival of the Richest They are looking for ways to pretoct themselves fro some mysterious future "event." His conclusion? "For all their wealth and power, they don’t believe they can affect the future." The author goes on to ask whether transhumanists and techno-optimists aren't essentially the same as the billionaires -- looking or a way to save their own miserbale lives with little or no regard for anyone else. Phil and Stephen discuss. WT 455-772 Eternity Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) | Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0 Image from Pixabay.com

Aliens and Uncertainty Jul 07, 2018

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Here’s a case in point on radical uncertainty. Do we believe this? Are we alone? The question is worthy of serious scientific study https://bit.ly/2yQJCNb Declassified information from covert studies is interesting, but not scientifically helpful. This is a topic worthy of open scientific inquiry, until there is a scientific consensus based on evidence rather than prior expectation or belief. If there are indeed extraterrestrial craft visiting Earth, it would greatly benefit us to know about them, their nature and their intent. Moreover, this would present a great opportunity for mankind, promising to expand and advance our knowledge and technology, as well as reshaping our understanding of our place in the universe. What Happened to the Aliens? https://bit.ly/2KDEX5W We May Be All Alone in the Known Universe, a New Oxford Study Suggests https://for.tn/2Kuh8ho Our main result is to show that proper treatment of scientific uncertainties dissolves the Fermi paradox by showing that it is not at all unlikely ex ante for us to be alone in the Milky Way, or in the observable universe. Our second result is to show that, taking account of observational bounds on the prevalence of other civilizations, our updated probabilities suggest that there is a substantial probability that we are alone. GEEKOUT Batman Ninja Ready Player One and The Last Jedi revisited WT 454-771 Eternity Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) | Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... Image from Pixabay.com

The Declaration of WTF Jul 05, 2018

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First, or course, comes the Declaration of Independence Then we had the Declaration of Singularity The came the Declaration of Amazing But maybe we’ve been doing our Declarations wrong. Are we putting the cart before the horse? The DoI announced the beginning of the United States as an entity, but it didn’t settle the matter. It took an ugly, bloody revolution to do that. Maybe what we need is a declaration of radical uncertainty--meaning that we don’t really know for sure what’s going on and that we can’t reliably say what’s going to happen next. Let’s not be too quick to rule things out. (We should think in terms of what is more and less likely,) There are many possible futures in play -- good and bad. Risks: we don’t know for sure what we’re doing and there’s always unintended consequences. Greater risks: keep pretending we know what we’re doing and bring on disaster anyway. Or maybe just a mediocre future when we could have had an amazing one. WT 453-770 Eternity Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) | Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0 Image from Pixabay.com

Mysteries, Paradoxes, and Uncertainty Jul 03, 2018

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Mysteries abound. Why does the word behave the way it does? Social Media -- technology that should be making us happier and connecting us is making us miserable and driving us apart. What gives? More jobs exist than there are people out of work. But still we have the depression, opiate crisis, and angst discussed in recent shows. What gives? Autonomous vehicles may save thousands of lives. And they may be the economic death of cities. Autonomous Vehicles Might Drive Cities to Financial Ruin The world grows richer through trade, yet we are seeing a revival of protectionist tendencies… at least here in the US. Robots may start taking our jobs. One day soon we may live in a post-scarcity society. But there is not path from here to there, nor is anyone talking about one -- except for advocates of basic income. What gives? What should we do in the face of all these perplexing puzzles? Next time. WT 452-769 Eternity Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) | Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License | creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0 Image from Pixabay.com

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