http://www.limbicnutrition.com/blog/links-for-2008-05-13/

• 
  
  Kenan Malik’s essay on the science of race and the politics of banning racial research
  
  
  Long but very interesting read from my favourite expert on race and ethnicity.
  
  
  (tags: race racism ethnicity ethnic_conflict politics)
  
  

http://www.limbicnutrition.com/blog/klok-personal-time-tracking-made-easy/

http://www.combatconsulting.com/klok-personal-time-tracking-made-easy

Klok is a tool intended to be used by individuals, like myself, who have a need to track the time they spend on projects, tasks or anything else for that matter. It is a desktop tool that requires the Adobe AIR runtime
Klok - Personal Time Tracking made Easy - Free Software

http://www.limbicnutrition.com/blog/scott-berkun-lecture-the-myths-of-innovation/

http://www.combatconsulting.com/scott-berkun-lecture-the-myths-of-innovation

This goes well with his recent essay “Lessons from 4 independent years”

In 2003 I quit my management job at Microsoft to try to live by writing books, teaching and public speaking. It was the scariest decision I’d made in my life and here on the other side, about 4 years later, is what I’ve learned. If you believe life is to be explored, here are notes from a work adventure. There’s no amazing new theory - you may have heard all this before, but here it is, in first person. [More: Lessons from 4 independent years ]

http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/?p=776

This is from the IEET back in April 11, somehow I missed it.

Will Saletan is the occasionally brilliant and occasionally incendiary bioethics columnist for Slate.com. He is no friend of transhumanism, but gives us some grudging appreciation this week:

“I remember going to a transhumanist conference a couple of years ago. For those of you who don’t know them, transhumanists are people who believe in the technological transformation of humanity into something greater. When I first left politics to cover this beat, I took a pretty conservative line on bioethics generally, and the transhumanists sounded pretty fruity to me. Well, they’re still kind of fruity. But they certainly are interesting, if you treat them as a voice in the public dialogue rather than as a threat to dictate future policy and destroy human nature (whatever that is). And the more you listen to their assault on conservative assumptions, the more you find yourself asking questions about the way things are and whether they have to be that way. Those are good questions to ask.”

~~~

I wonder how it is really possible to “oppose” transhumanism. The benefits of enhancement technologies will be so self-evidently great that you’d have to establish a worldwide dictatorship to prevent them from being adopted. The only way to “go against” transhumanism is to 1) say that we’re all crazy and have no idea what we’re talking about, or 2) start building that global dictatorship right away. Otherwise, it’s hard to see what you mean.

Yes, many other transhumanists may disagree with me on this, but that’s my take on it. My worry is not that transhuman technologies won’t be adopted, but that they’ll be adopted too well, in a regulation-free environment that leads everything to go to hell.

Transhumanism - We’re Fruity and Delicious™

Am I being singled out, or is there a new plague of AIM bots going around? I used to get prodded by these stupid things every couple of weeks, but I've blocked a dozen of them in the last week. This time it's usually a bot with "salmon" in its name.

Tags: meta
Current Music: The Kills -- No Wow (Mstrkrft Remix)

Just a reminder, folks.. Brains & Coffee this Thursday night, from 6:30 onwards, at the Dux. If you're coming from Riccarton, miss_peachy may be able to help out with transport; otherwise, there's lots of buses.

We've decided to use the Dux De Lux for the first one mostly because there's not a lot of choice during the evening in Riccarton, particularly in winter. We're open to suggestions for alternate venues for next time, though.

So, I hope to see a few of you there. Drop me a text if you can't find us.

The podcast for The Road Less Travelled is up at the SciFi website, here.

http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/?p=775

I have written up a short and up-to-date bio for myself. If you are located at a point in the future past May 2009, please email me to check if it’s still current.

Michael Anissimov is a science/technology writer and consultant based in San Francisco. His blog, Accelerating Future, has received 3 million views since its founding in 2006, and was covered on G4.TV’s Attack of the Show and Wired.com. His posts have reached the front page of social news sites like Digg and Reddit.

In 2002, when still in High School, Anissimov co-founded the non-profit Immortality Institute (imminst.org), a grassroots life extension advocacy organization. The non-profit was formed to tap into a new realization in the scientific community that stem cell research and regenerative medicine could be used over the next few decades to radically extend human life and health.

Anissimov is currently Fundraising Director for the Lifeboat Foundation (lifeboat.com), a non-profit devoted to studying and ameliorating catastrophic global risks from biotech, nanotech, AI/robotics, and other sources of danger. The Lifeboat Foundation’s advisory board includes hundreds of thought leaders in science and technology, including Nobel Laureates Sir Clive W.J. Granger and Eric S. Maskin.

Anissimov has worked with the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence and the Methuselah Foundation. In May 2007, Michael was profiled for Psychology Today magazine. He was quoted several times in Ray Kurzweil’s best-selling 2005 book, The Singularity is Near. He also serves on the board of directors of the World Transhumanist Association (transhumanism.org).

Visit Michael’s blog at acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog.

http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/to/~3/289770948/article.pl

http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/289764030/five-irs-employ.html

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/05/five-irs-employ.html

IRS workers in California face federal criminal charges after allegedly browsing taxpayers' returns, as the agency struggles with an epidemic of so-called UNAX, or unauthorized access, from within.