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Category: humor – Page 12

NASA Teaching Robonaut to Perform Surgery

The real question is: “what is the healing time in space v. earth? What is the risk of infection on earth v. space when surgery is performed in space?” If stats show patient survival, healing, and low to no infection rates in space v. earth; we could see a time when hospital colonies in space exist to handle initially complicated and high risks surgeries by robots v. earth.

NASA is grooming its robonauts to eventually perform surgery on people living in remote areas, like space. Lisa D’Souza has more on the future droid docs.

Buzz60 is designed for the way we live now. Short, quirky video snacks that are a little sassy, and always smart. Buzz 60 — and the Buzz60 channel on YouTube — produces all kinds of news video clips for web viewers who want more than just repurposed content. Our team is a diverse group of video journalists with dozens of Emmy awards, an authentic sense of humor, and a mandate to connect with viewers every day.

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I became a cyborg to feel older, not stronger

Really nice. I may actually see the day that I can climb Everest or K2 at 100 yrs old with my cyborg body.

I like to joke that I’m technically 33 years old, but on the inside I’m 65. I’m less inclined to make that joke after spending 20 minutes or so inside Genworth’s “Aging Experience” exoskeleton. The R70i, which apparently is a barely coded reference to the fact that 70 percent of Americans will need some sort of long term care as they age, is a full body simulator that lets you experience what its like to lose your sight, hearing and even range of motion as the effects of aging creep in.

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Amazon Shows Off New Prime Air Drone With Hybrid Design

Amazon delivered a lovely update on its ‘Prime Air’ project today — almost exactly two years after it showed the first iteration of its drone. You know, the flying delivery drone that some thought was a massive joke meant for April 1st. Included are some high-res shots and two new videos.

Amazon releases a vid with a new Prime Air drone design https://t.co/HCIjXZQkWN

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NASA confirms that liquid water flows on Mars

Liquid water exists on the surface of Mars during the planet’s warmer seasons, according to new research published in Nature Geosciences . This revelation comes from new spectral data gathered by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), a spacecraft that studies the planet from orbit. The orbiter analyzed the chemistry of weird dark streaks that have been known to appear and disappear seasonally on the Martian surface. The analysis confirms that these streaks are formed by briny — or salty — water flowing downhill on Mars.

NASA has advertised these findings as the solution to a major Mars mystery: does the Red Planet truly have liquid water on its surface? Researchers have known that water exists in ice form on Mars, but it’s never been confirmed if water can remain in a liquid state. The space agency is claiming that we now have that answer.

This isn’t the first study to suggest liquid water is present in some form on Mars. Scientists have theorized for years that Mars was once home to a large ocean more than 4 billion years ago. And recent findings from the Mars Curiosity rover suggest that liquid water exists just underneath the Martian surface. The discovery of water on Mars has almost become a joke among planetary scientists. Alfred McEwen, a planetary geologist at Planetary Image Research Laboratory who also worked on this research, wrote in Scientific American that the studies have become extremely commonplace: “Congratulations — you’ve discovered water on Mars for the 1,000th time!” he joked.

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Microsoft’s new AI is capable of spotting a good joke

As great as computers are at crunching their way through millions of numbers in just a few seconds, they’re not well known for having deep emotions or a sense of humour — until now. A new artificial intelligence system developed by Microsoft has been trained to spot the funniest submissions to the ongoing New Yorker cartoon caption competition. Indeed, the software has been developed partly out of necessity, with so many entries flooding in that the human editors can’t cope.

“The process of looking at 5,000 caption entries a week usually destroys [my editorial assistant’s] mind in about two years, and then I get a new one,” the New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff explained to Bloomberg. “It’s a little bit daunting. It’s like going snow blind; you go humour blind.”

That’s why Mankoff has been working alongside Microsoft researchers Dafna Shahaf and Eric Horvitz in developing the new humour-sensitive AI software. Of course, the program needs to be trained in what’s funny and what isn’t, because it doesn’t have an innate sense of what makes something witty: by feeding in thousands of previous submissions, the AI gets a large database of previous responses to work from.

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Pet Peeve #4: Time zones are for locals

Have you ever made a list of pet peeves? I’m not referring to the behavioral quirks that couples develop over years of cohabitation. That’s part of every relationship and it is only addressed through give and take and a lot of patience. Rather, I refer to the little things that have become institutionalized all around us—and yet, we know that they are just plain idiotic. The problem is that they are too small to be picked up by the national news and too common to believe that they can be avoided.

Let’s say that you are driving along a road that comes to an end by forming a ‘T’ at the side of a much busier road. The cross street is busy, but it’s not divided. You plan to make a left turn after clearing a string of high-speed cars approaching from the right.

Conditions are good and there are no obstructions. There is no one coming from the left. Looking to the right, you can see a mile down the road. There are 4 cars speeding toward you, a long space and then a major throng of cars that will tie up the intersection for minutes. You get ready to drop the hammer as soon as that 4th car passes the intersection. You are patient, in a good mood and your car is well tuned.

What’s the dumbest thing that the driver in car #4 could do? Does he have the power to ruin your day and raise your blood pressure while trying to be a nice guy? He sure does!

He can hesitate—slowing just enough to get honked by the parade behind him and just enough to close your window of opportunity. If you are in a hurry to get somewhere, he will ruin your morning faster than you can mime “Move your friggin’ tailpipe!!”. He is oblivious to the fact that his gesture of good will has backfired.

Cross street drivers who let up on the gas are one of my three pet peeves. But today, I was reminded of another minor irritation. From now on, I will call it “Pet Peeve #4”.

I have a good friend in Germany. He is a high tech entrepreneur and tends to move about the globe. His businesses are in Australia and New Zealand, and he spent a long part of the past year in Shanghai. I never know where he will be. But he is currently in Germany and he knows that I am in America.

Realizing that we need to discuss an important matter, he asks me if I will be available during my weekday mornings, between 9 and 11 AM my time. Noting that he has already contemplated the time difference, I check my calendar. “Sure. That works for me,” I tell him… “Why don’t you set the schedule? Any morning this week is good.” He commits to have a colleague figure out the final date.

Taj Mahal_1Minutes later, I receive a Google Calendar link for my approval. It asks that our meeting be scheduled for next Wed from 21:30 to 22:00, India Standard Time. I was unprepared for the involuntary groan that arose from the pit of my stomach. Here, is an open letter to my buddy and the colleague who scheduled our conference to be held on India Time…

C’mon guys / gals… The Internet works on “Internet Time”, also known as UTC or GMT. It is effectively Earth time. It never changes with seasons, war, edict, accidents or daylight savings. It just moves forward as the universal heartbeat of the Internet.

clocksPlease don’t make me translate your Indian Standard Time. I will get it wrong. I always do.

And please don’t figure it out in “USA-Eastern Standard Time”. Here in the US, politicians shift Daylight Savings dates, sometimes splitting it by local counties. In some areas, they change it by only 30 minutes for border towns. (Yes! We are that nuts).

So please: Just tell me the time in UTC. It is the only time that should ever be cited when dealing with anyone that you can’t reach with a personal handshake.

P.S. Don’t take insult when I post your suggested meeting time (and this sarcastic response) to Lifeboat. Sure, you helped me to discover a new peeve—But you have also hit upon my funny bone!

Faithfully yours, ~Phil

Philip Raymond is Co-Chair of The Cryptocurrency Standards Association. He sits on the New Money Systems Board at Lifeboat and advises banks & brokers on new age currencies. Raymond was master of ceremonies and speaker at The Bitcoin Event in New York.

Bart Simpson And Homer Simpson On The White Swan!

TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THE POINT BY TONY BUZAN AND THE AUTHOR OF THE WHITE SWAN (ANDRES AGOSTINI), LET US CREATE A DIALOGUE SIMULACRUM BY BART SIMPSON AND HOMER SIMPSON.

TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THE POINT BY BUZAN AND THE AUTHOR, LET US CREATE A DIALOGUE SIMULACRUM BY BART SIMPSON AND HOMER SIMPSON.

Bart: Dad, why do you say that knowledge is a soup?

Homer: Son, because since time immemorial and before the advent of the Industrial Revolution, every type of knowledge was somewhat related to the other type. Tony does some nice chatting about it.

Bart: Dad, what is the Industrial Revolution? But in the process, don’t dictate me an academic lecture and scholarship, please!

Homer: Son, the Industrial Revolution is Day #1 when humans decided to throw in the towel and to make inanimate apparatus to rule the entire human race, thus ruling out hominids.

Bart: Is that Day #1 for Home Personal Computers making?

Homer: For PC making and the ensuing bots!

Bart: What do you mean by bots?

Homer: Those anthropomorphic and non-anthropomorphic apparatus that stem from Swiss-clockwork manufacturing and some other naughty gadgets by Leo.

Bart: What do you mean by naughty gadgets by Leonardo? Is that the same Leo of the Priory of Sion?

Homer: Yes. Leo’s automaton one, that, I guess, some architect or technologist have resembled and proved utility in that and so the tic-tact-toe thing went into inexhaustible infinity until its own destruction by tear and wear.

Bart: And what is the problem with building a tic-tact-toe thing, rumbling around?

Homer: My son, you are so naive. There is no problem with the tic-tact-toe thing rumbling around. The problem is that Siren Servers are planning to bestow such rumbling-around tic-tact-toe things with beyond-human-thinking capabilities. In the process, some rara avis and pigeons might become endangered species.

Bart: Dad, you must be jockeying! Are you, Dad, suggesting that real-world and present-day humans are entertaining the idea of enabling the worst nightmares predicted by Luddites and Proto-Luddites?

Homer: Well, Bart, the problem with you is that you haven’t read the Singularity is Near. There is no problem because in that book it is cherished that by a bird’s and a bee’s type of transubstantiation thing humans and apparatus will become one single entity. And thus mortality will become an unfashionable thing of the past.

Bart: Dad, but some spooky reasons beyond my understanding Jaron says, like Gerald Celente, that we need to become Siren-Servers advert and be careful that home PCs don’t stand-up and start flying and self-replicating and giving birth to upgraded tic-tac-toe devices.

Homer: Jaron, who?

Bart: That is, Jaron Lanier. He dearly harbors the serious notion of the Siren Servers (ISBN: 978–1451654974).

Homer: Bart, I don’t know that gentleman? What is that silly subtle point you are trying to make with me? To the point, please!

Bart: The problem is that Jaron argues that the man with the outlandish public laughter, a bit out of public proportion and without grace and appalling gusto, is set out, through his Siren Servers’ web-based store, to use rumbling-around tic-tact-toe and beyond-human-thinking capabilities things to do acrobatic-midair hovering, superseding watermelon-sized hovercrafts.

Homer: Son, if that is so anguishly true, I must declare you a shrewd, mordant brainchild. Why Caustic Monsieur Highest-Volume Laughter (ASIN: B007GPYLH0) would want those insane entities to do midair hovering?

Bart: Daddy, so that he can get his non-clouded-based products and cash-capturing to arrive on the customer’s hands, delivering quamtumly-encrypted materials, without the snailed-paced best offices of and by FEDEX or UPS.

Homer: But Bart, when the gentleman in question met with Charlie, did he hint something about you in-point stuff?

Bart: Charlie, Charlie who?

Homer: Charlie Rose, the Bloomberg TV’s journalist and nighttime interviewer, remember?

Bart: Yes, I do. But the Lanier guy says that the tic-tact-toe thing, beyond being smarter than a human device and hovering in the midair spatial plane, it is also going to be wirelessly connected in the temporal locus with the World-Wide Web and it is also going to be able to sequester wireless electricity, too.

Homer: Oh my God, son! Are you sure that you are NOT into the Scottish Rite?

Bart: Are you hinting me to be associated with the foundational architects of Washington D.C.?

Homer: Bart, are you suggesting that Mr. Laughter might as well be using Recondite and Hermetic Knowledge to make the tic-tac-toe a superrich-fortune-generating after-tax wealth, to out-compete Gates III and Buffett I?

Bart: You are close, Dad, but not close enough! Sure thing, Mr. Laughter will secure Recondite and Hermetic Knowledge. But in order to be even more technical and prepared, he is additionally going to use Andy’s practical idea on non-theological applied omniscience. Got it? He will, then, get his White Swan as his Swiss and Jersey Bankers will confirm his in-pocketed CASH. Thence, he will rule many Siren Servers!

Homer: What is the White Swan’s non-theological applied omniscience?

Bart: An invention by DARPA and NASA, greatly propelled by Dr. Robert Hutchings Goddard and Dr. Wernher von Braun. And before you ask, NASA is a spinoff by DARPA and DoD. And DARPA is where America’s most sophisticated ground-breaking hotbed-ed scientists reside, research and provide.

Homer: What is a White Swan?

Bart: The beforehand destruction of corporation’s MOST exponential risks and downside futures, transformed into insane richness and gold.

Homer: Do you think that these watermelon-sized wireless ubiquitous hovercrafts (quadracopters) will get into reproducing their non-biological specie?

Bart: Well, Joel and Orson argue that they will make self-replicating and self-upgrading watermelon-sized wireless hovercrafts. They say that the air traffic will be so jammed by the un-biological thinking and mating (reproducing) creatures that jet number 1 won’t be able to take off.

Homer: What Joel and Orson are those?

Bart: The one of the Radical Evolution (ISBN: 978–0767915038). Dad, where do you think these trends will take us to? Orson is a hell-of-American intellectual and movie director and maker that shocked TV viewers with the invasion of and by alien intelligences from the Omniverse’s Recondite and Hermetic: Dark Energy and Dark Matter. To this end, Olson explains his case below.

Homer: I first must correct you. I agree with Andy. He does not like the oversimplified “trend” and “countertrend” words. He says that trend is like a head-shot of a frozen dynamic projected trajectory, only bestowed by the Dynamic Driving Forces. If the Disruptional Singularity warrants it only, the Dynamic Driving Forces will, then, take us into Ray’s Technological Singularity.

Bart: I am confused! What are those singularities about?

Homer: The techie one is about birthing non-biological and transbiological humans that supersede the computational reckoning by today’s human brain. And making natural death an outright thing of the past. The Disruptional one is about human error, terror and flawness making waves in civilian and military spheres, including the imposition of the Cold War II by the express impious deeds of the Euro-Asian superpower as per the invite, not of the U.S., of the naive E.U. so-called “leaders.”

Bart: Can the self-replicating and self-upgrading watermelon-sized wireless hovercrafts carry improvised “x” devices?

Homer: I doubt it, Mr. Laughter has every White Swan calculated in detail. And White Swans hates every form of disruptions and are rara avis that destroy threats and risks.

Bart: What can a White Swan do for the most prominent Seattle inhabitant?

Homer: Make his core-business EVEN infinitely richer while securing a better laughter outpouring to the East Coast of the Atlantic.

Bart: Dad, how can we get on the boat on making wealth like him?

Homer: Through two quick ways. First, by doing smart entrepreneuring. Second, by doing the “…First…” through the White Swan.

Bart: Why is it necessary the White Swan?

Homer: First, in order not to get silly black swans. Second, in order to make your coped-with black swans into beautiful and lucrative White Swans through Transformative and Integrative Risk Management interdisciplinary problem-solving methodology. (That is: Feet-on-the-ground problem solving).

Bart: And What is Transformative and Integrative Risk Management interdisciplinary problem-solving methodology?

Homer: Andy’s interdisciplinary approach to Seize Success, Preclude the Disruptional Singularity and enable Ray’s Technological Singularity.

Bart: How do you define success?

Homer: To this end, Andy says that Success is achieved in two simultaneous ways. FIRST, By securing all of your designated objectives and goals, despite competitors and governments. SECOND, By securing that, as you over-accomplish your designated objectives and goals, you give your competitors tons of Sputnik Moments.

Bart: Oh, I see. Buy what is that Rusky notion that I don’t get?

Homer: Sputnik moments are when you are superseded by your competitors as they throw at you manipulated strategies and technological innovations to disrupt your business from competing. And if you are getting Sputnik moments is because you are doing, without consciousness, black swans only and are not responsive to the White Swan idea.

Bart: Dad, that sounds a bit complicated.

Homer: Bart, for some things you are smart. And for others you are a fool. Competition between business enterprises are harsh actions by Frederick The Great and Emperor Napoleon I.

Bart: Dad, why are you teaching me history? I hate that knowledge field.

Homer: Bart, if you don’t learn history, you are set out to fail at entrepreneuring! You can have all the high tech you want but if you don’t know how to do your strategy right and do right with your risks and futures, you are destined to be bankrupted.

Bart: Dad, Are all entrepreneurs and corporation CEOs and chairpersons so anti-shrewd?

Homer: 97% of them are! Those guys and gals think that by having tons of servers and web-based mobile applications they will outsmart the competition and governments. Hence, they are immeasurably wrong!

Bart: Dad, so one needs to go further than having laptops, servers, kindles, e-readers, i-pads, i-phones and so forth? Are those the employment of what Andy and other call tangibles.

Homer: Yes, son. You gotta do your intangibles. Even tangibles are made up of intangibles. The world is ruled by intangibles. Stated simply, intangibles are Intellectual Capital. You see, not only corporations have Intellectual Capital but also sole proprietors as Andy and Ray. White Swan and Transformative and Integrative Risk Management are Intellectual Capitals, solely owned by Andy.

Bart: Is software contemplated within your Intellectual Capital definition?

Homer: Yes, software is an intangible and an Intellectual Capital. And, for the sake of clarity, you can even have a systematized interdisciplinary methodology in place that does not need computerization or web-basing. You see, Bart, everything under Computronium’s Sun (its own Star) is always, whether we know it or not, reckoning zillion calculations.

Bart: Is the biological mind a good example of a systematized hardware whose locus does not belong to W3?

Homer: Yes, it is. And you can also add that the bio-PC is systematic and yet, in many cases, not systemic.

Bart: And beyond patents and other copyrighted materials, What else is Intellectual Capital?

Homer: Two-fold question. FIRST, there is the knowledge base of the Corporation. SECOND, there is the knowledge base of each Corporation’s employee beyond any property and/or effort by said Corporation.

Bart: Who owns Tony Buzan’s Broth and Soup?

Homer: Well, Tony’s soup has a primordial genesis in people and civilizations from: Classic Ancient Greeks, Classic Ancient Romans and Latins, Classic Ancient Aryans and Germanics, Classic Ancient Scandinavians and, for instance, Classic Ancient Egyptians and Classic Ancient Phoenicians. And the idea by all of them is that the totality of knowledge does not have clearly-human-made knowledge (system) demarcations (boundaries). And superspecialization and overspecialization are NEVER recommended by these Classic Ancient civilizations.

Bart: And because of that by you is that Andy suggests to swiftly and thoroughly embrace the non-theological omniscience notion, just as DARPA, NASA and Shell do since the early 1950s.

Homer: Bart, you are becoming most mordant and probably into the Illuminatis? Are you?

END OF THE EXCHANGE SIMULACRUM.

You are welcome to read the White Swan here.

The White Swan’s Beyond Eureka and Sputnik Moments: How To Fundamentally Cope With Corporate Litmus Tests and With The Impact of the Dramatic Highly Improbable And Succeed Through Transformative and Integrative Risk Management! [TREATISE EXCERPT]. By © Copyright 2014 Mr. Andres Agostini — All Rights Reserved Worldwide — « https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan »