I've been meaning to do this for a while: How do you like The Huge Entity's first video ? Check out the The Blasphemy Challenge to deny some things yourself...

Far from being extracts from the extreme end of science fiction, the idea that we may one day give sentient machines the kind of rights traditionally reserved for humans is raised in a British government-commissioned report which claims to be an extensive…

The God-Shaped Hole - Part II (Link to Part I ) by Daniel Rourke The Huge Entity There have been few great movements in favour of reason as influential as that of Galileo Galilei. In summoning the power of reason as man's faculty of authority Galileo offered…

The God-Shaped Hole - Part I (Link to Part II ) by Daniel Rourke The Huge Entity In an alternate-future reason has won an imaginary battle over faith. The relevant mysteries composing religion have been torn from the arms of their ancient idols; the sun is…

Transformative Potential by Cliff Pickover Reality Carnival In my book Sex, Drugs, Einstein, and Elves I discuss various forms of extinction. Many humans will morph tremendously in 50 to 100 years. In a sense, this is a kind of extinction. We’ll enhance our…

Our Slumbering Super-Organism by Daniel Poynter The Hyperaware Consciousness Future generations will laugh (or cry) in contemptuous hindsight at our apathy and boredom. Why try to change the world? Why get off the couch? The individual doesn't matter…

The Demise of the Demagogue by Armchair Anarchist Velcro City Tourist Board In fifty year’s time, people will look back and laugh at us for a lot of reasons. Apart from the fashions (“d00d, those jeans, like WTF!!!1!1”), what gets the biggest chuckles will…

All this talk of climate change; of the continued abuse of hydrocarbon bonds got me thinking. How are we expected to put our oil addicted world into perspective if we haven't got a perspective on the oily substance itself? It's all very well setting targets;…

Why is it that the United States, which has not suffered a major terrorist attack at home for more than four years, thinks it's at war, while the United Kingdom, which was hit by a major terrorist attack just a year ago, does not? The evocation of war is…

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident…

Despite its vaunted reputation as a juggernaut of American culture, McDonald's has come to function as an ecumenical refuge for travelers of all stripes. This is not because McDonald's creates an American sense of place and culture, but because it creates a…

In past posts I have touched on the idea that we are all the protagonists in our own reality narratives . These realities interrelate in surprising ways which either enrich or contradict our individual, subjective perspectives. In organised religion can be…

Bush: I base a lot of my foreign policy decisions on some things that I think are true. One, I believe there's an Almighty. And, secondly, I believe one of the great gifts of the Almighty is the desire in everybody's soul, regardless of what you look like or…

Humans like to fuck. It's a fact few of us can ignore, and even fewer of us would like to change. But, as with most activities we undertake with vigor, automation, mass production and media manipulation have turned sex into the commodity of cultures. The…

The ideal of 'the city' has stood as the most physically accessible representation of Utopia since the days of Plato's Republic ; the mental playground from which philosophers and writers have played with the subject of human: Plato (through Socrates)…

Imagination and creativity are the parts of our personal conscious lives most able to manifest themselves in the objective world around us. The variety of tools, both physical and cognitive , we use to channel those creative urges is truly astounding. The…

American's increasing acceptance of religious diversity doesn't extend to those who don't believe in a god, according to a national survey by researchers in the University of Minnesota's department of sociology. From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000…

I have become fascinated recently by the continued simulation of our world out of existence. The word ' technology ' is usually proceeded by thoughts of mechanical machines, digital processes and automated activity, but the borders encompassing technology…

On the Exile of Mankind The people became numerous... The god was depressed by their uproar Enil heard their noise, He exclaimed to the great gods The noise of mankind has become burdensome... - from the ancient Sumerian epic Atrahasis Having come from the…

This video interview with Arab-American psychologist Wafa Sultan was aired on Al Jazeera last week - its emphatic message still echoes through my mind as I type this, her passion is intoxicating: The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of…

Some news stories are more prophetic than others: US plans to 'fight the net' revealed Rumsfeld's Roadmap to Propaganda Climate expert says NASA tried to silence him

Is the future of humanity in the hands of Russian capitalism? From the ever contemplative DunneIV : RUSSIA is planning to mine a rare fuel on the moon by 2020 with a permanent base and a heavy-cargo transport link, a Russian space official says. "We are…

Energy is motion. Decrease the amount of motion down to low enough levels and you virtually suspend reality. Thus time, at these low temperatures, begins to lose its meaning. We all perceive ourselves as composite selves projected along a future moving axis…

On Duality: "...out of strangled Utopias is born a clown, a being divided between beauty and ugliness, between light and chaos, a clown who when he looks down and sidelong is Satan himself and when he looks upward sees a buttered angel, a snail with wings." -…

...Baudrillard expanded on his theme. "We say that Disneyland is not, of course, the sanctuary of the imagination, but Disneyland as hyperreal world masks the fact that all America is hyperreal, all America is Disneyland," he said. "And the same for art. The…

Been meaning to blog this for a while... Agathidium bushi , Agathidium cheneyi , and Agathidium rumsfeldi - three recently discovered species of slime-mold beetle - got their names from obvious members of the US government in a bout of headline grabbing…

In the past year I have read a heap load of books (my job gives me a ridiculous amount of free-time) most of which were superb. And so in recognition of my affliction for thrusting information into other people's faces, here are some of my favourite quotes…

"Almost one-third of Japan's married couples are sexless, with about 20 percent of unions bereft of physical intimacy for one year or more, an alarming poll conducted by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare and the Japan Family Planning Association…