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POPSWhat is Bodhisattva? I had never heard this term before. Seems to me that the world would be a better place if we all had a greater understanding and appreciation for Buddhism. Just seems to be the practice of goodness.
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POPSSeven tips for giving up gossip More: 7. Practice saying something kind to someone every day. Do this especially with people you don’t like. It gets easier with practice and bears surprisingly good results. (from Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron’s “ The Truth About Gossip ,” Tricycle, Summer 2006 )
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POPSGraphic video--Aftermath of a Japanese whale hunt Two kinds of people in the world--those who understand that whales are intelligent, sentient beings and should be left alone or studied with reverence--and those who kill whales or don't care if they are---which are you? BTW, if you eat whale meat, you just ate a lot of mercury--say B'bye, brain!!
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POPSMonistic idealism Anyone would want to believe that this is true. Read about it and see if you can be convinced.
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POPSGood Mothers Instead of send this MOTHER off to classes, what is wrong with tying her knees together until she can comprehend the damage she will do?
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POPSGoogle Me Sentient "Although the present findings must be interpreted cautiously in light of the exploratory design of this study, they suggest that Internet searching may engage a greater extent of neural circuitry not activated while reading text pages, but only in people with prior computer and Internet search experience,"
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POPSO-Mighty One Unhappy With His Encounter With Joe ~ Mark Steyn O-Man smoothly reassured him: “It’s not that I want to punish your success,” he told the bloated plutocrat corporate toilet executive. “I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success too. I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” In that sentence about you spreading the wealth around, there’s another typing error: that “you” should read “I, Barack.” “You” will have no say in it. Joe the Plumber might think he himself can spread it around just fine, but everyone knows “trickle-down economics” don’t work. So President-presumptive Obama kindly explained the new exquisitely condescending “talking-down economics." Evidently the O-Mighty One was not happy after his encounter with Joe. He’s still willing to talk to Ahmadinejad without preconditions. But never again will he talk to Joe the Plumber without preconditions.
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POPSStick it to 'em Don't you just love focus groups? Whatever happened to just saying what you want to say?
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POPSToy Robot Intended to Save Humans This narrative, crafted by Hugo award winner Tony Daniel and University of Texas performance professor Thomas Riccio, is intended to make Zeno into a character that people identify with and want to to see develop — something with the depth of a movie character or a figure from a Homerian epic. That makes Zeno into as much of a sociological experiment as it is a technical marvel or fun toy. "The idea is to create a cultural phenomenon and accelerate the use and humanization of the technology," Where story, game, reality, toys are not differentiable anymore.
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POPSWill the Internet Evolve into a Lifeform? One route is the evolution of electronic intelligences in situations like the internet-arms race between spammers and shielders. It might sound silly, the idea that new life could be created in an attempt to offer you a great deal on C1@Lis!!, but have you tried registering for a forum recently? Even gaining access to the lowest level of interaction online now requires elementary Turing tests to tell the humans from the robots. Another option is the idea of the net itself becoming sentient, a vast self-modifying array of connections and information storage with limited connections to the outside world (kind of like that glob of grey goo you carry around in your skull). If that happens then Gibson help us all - remember that the net is made of about 90% spam, 9% porn, and quite a lot of whining blogs. If that mixture ever becomes self-aware we're not quite sure what it'll do, but the odds are against it being anything good.
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POPSTransformers - The Nature of Alien Life
The driving factor is a pragmatic desire to improve mental capacity. Alien beings may have already reached a point in their evolution where, having exhausted the potential of their biological brains, they have taken the next logical step and opted for robotic brains equipped with artificial intelligence. This brain swap may not be as far off for humans as one might think. In only a few decades, the computer revolution here on Earth has produced supercomputers capable of performing more than a quadrillion calculations per second. According to research by Hans Moravec, an artificial-intelligence expert at Carnegie Mellon University, that rate trumps the human brain’s estimated top speed of 100 trillion calculations per second. Some scientists speculate that in a few decades, an event called the technological singularity will occur, and machines armed with computer brains will become sentient and surpass human intelligence. Civilizations equipped with technology light-years ahead
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POPSSentient Beings Protected I'd say it's high time that we got off our high horse and recognized other sentient beings that we share the earth with and grant them limited rights such as freedom from torture. Ethically, it is the right thing to do. In part, we can blame religion for this ethical blunder.
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POPSJane Goodall: We Need A New Mindset "We should admit that the infliction of suffering on beings who are capable of feeling is ethically problematic and that the amazing human brain should set to work to find new ways of testing and experimenting that will not involve the use of live, sentient beings." "Her call comes as the European Commission prepares to publish draft legislation to update the EU’s animal experiments directive (Directive 86/609 EEC). The existing law is out of date (over 20 years old), with hundreds of thousands of animals currently receiving no protection at all." "Dr Goodall was joined by biomedical researchers, MEPs and animal protectionists at a Replace Animal Experiments in Europe event in Brussels. Event organisers, the Dr Hadwen Trust for Humane Research and the Humane Society International (HSI), are spearheading a campaign to accelerate European efforts to replace animal experiments with more ethical and reliable methods."
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