Felipe Contreras

We are we so different from the chimpanzees? We are naked bipeds. Why? The Savanna theory has recently been found to be quite unlikely. So what are the alternatives?

Sometimes I browse the Interweb in search for something that is interesting, quick and enlightening and it often seems an impossible task. It’s easy to find lolcatz and stupid kids in YouTube, but not something with more essence.

I’m still not sure how but I found my fountain of interesting videos in TED. I think I found them in Google Video.

These are the ones I like the most so far:

David Bolinsky: Fantastic voyage inside a cell.
An amazing CG work that shows the mini-world of a cell, and how complicated and beautiful it is.

Hans Rosling: No more boring data.
This is what people mean when information is power.

Malcolm Gladwell: What we can learn from spaghetti sauce.
Food leads to happyness and Malcom shows us the way to happiness on the future.

Emily Oster: What do we know about the spread of AIDS?.
A different point of view on the problems in Africa that makes complete sense.

Cameron Sinclair: Open-source architecture to house the world.
Another step for OpenSource to world domination.

Ken Robinson: Do schools today kill creativity?
A funny talk that shows us what we already know; schools are doing a poor job.

Eva Vertes: My dream about the future of medicine.
The future is in the next generation, and this girl proves that we really need to forget what we think we know.

Richard Dawkins: An atheist’s call to arms.
Let’s all stop being so damn respectfull.

Nick Bostrom: Humanity’s biggest problems aren’t what you think they are.
We are so near the wall that we don’t see what you real problems are as humanity.

Kevin Kelly: How does technology evolve? Like we did.
Is technology a new way of life?

Seth Godin: Sliced bread and other marketing delights.
We are in a new era of communications; marketing should adapt accordingly.

Phew, I have quite a lot of links to post this time.

• Map: Welcome to the Blogosphere
  A very interesting map of the blogosphere, with a nice analysis. I just hope I could find myself
  (tags: article blogosphere web2.0 interesting)
• Mathematician suggests extra dimensions are time-like
  George Sparling says “My approach is bottom up: take the existing four-dimensional theory seriously and try to build up from it. This is very tough to do. Hopefully my ideas work. Note that my work only constitutes a possible beginning at a more inclusive theory.”
  This makes much more sense to me.
  (tags: interesting article science physics)
• SPACE.com: Out-of-This-World Hypothesis: Cosmic Forces Control Life on Earth
  I hope we are not near that 64 million cycle where we are no the cosmic north receiving those bow shock waves… weird.
  (tags: article evolution interesting science space)
• xkcd: Conspiracy Theories
  Great one!
  (tags: comics funny humor)
• Nanoscale ‘Coaxial Cables’ for Solar Energy Harvesting
  (tags: research nanotechnology environment article
  interesting)
• Next-generation, high-performance processor unveiled | Science Blog
  These babies process 16 instructions per cycle with up to 1,024 instructions in flight simultaneously.
  (tags: article future technology hardware)
• New project: Empathy
  Go Telepathy clients!
  (tags: gnome desktop instant.messaging)
• Axl Library (Another XML Library), XML Library, XML, XML Software, XML Parser
  Competition is good, specially since I have not found an XML Library that I really like.
  (tags: xml open.source library software.development)
• Computerworld – AI will surpass human intelligence after 2020
  Interesting article about the future. A little far-fetched, but great ideas.
  (tags: ai article future world web2.0 technology fiction)
• Conduit 0.3.0
  Sync/Export/Backup Flickr, Tomboy, iPod, gnomevfs, FSpot. Very interesting project.
• buzztard 0.2 sunrise is out
  The buzztard team has release version 0.2 “sunrise” of its buzz-alike music composer.
• A Guided Tour of Hotwire 0.333
  Hotwire is an innovative way of working with the “command line”, bash is so passé.
• xkcd: Online Communities
  Another great one from xkcd! A very funny map of the Internet.
• What If Iran Had Invaded Mexico?
  Noam Chomsky on “the Iran Effect”. Interesting points.
  (tags: politics war society article)

Again, an insightful thought from Jon Phillips.

He wants to find ways to improve USA’s government. His idea is to make a conference to put together people in the Open Source he knows have good opinions on the matter.

While I think that’s a good idea I believe putting together a bunch of Open Source people is to take too few people in consideration. Yes, the quality of the people might be great, but I still think other people’s opinions should be taken in consideration.

Actually, recently I have seen lengthy discussions about certain topics that makes me wonder: we as persons have too many drastically different opinions from one another, the idea that by elections we will have the kind of government we want is frankly silly. So how do we find what we think, or want, as a whole?

I think that’s the fundamental question. And I believe that we as an Open Source community can certainly build a system that allows us to maintain difficult discussions, and systematically arrive to conclusions that one by one define the wishes of a group of people.

Some of the things to keep in mind in my opinion are:

• We all have different backgrounds, so we all have different opinions and personal agendas.
• We all make mistakes.
• Every discussion must have limit in depth, otherwise we might end up discussing the very nature of goodness and badness.
• People are different, and some opinions have more weight than others in certain subjects.
• Each and every point must be discussed, and a consensus must be established.

Now, these are just a bunch of ideas, I certainly hope that somebody else has made a scientific study about how to arrive to useful conclusions from discussions.

I think technology now allows us to have much better communication, and probably with that help implement a good discussion system.

I found this Links to free episodes of Penn & Teller: Bullshit!.

I watched a few of them and I must say I love them.

They’re simple, straight, fun, honest, and obvious.

I specially liked the one about the War on Drugs; very enlightening.

I like to respect other people’s opinions, but in this case, I will say that if somebody don’t believe what these guys are saying, that somebody is nuts.

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Here is a post about a study that provides insight into how the brain loses plasticity of youth.

I find interesting how this might enable patients with brain damage to have a more receptible brain in order to improve as if it was young again. They haven’t reached that point, but it might be possible to do that.

Also I wonder if in a distant future we will be able to decide if we want this “plasticity”, maybe because we want to learn something new, relearn something or maybe because we are plainly dumb.

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