Daily Archives: July 3, 2017

Rogers: Focus on your inner game for outer-game impact – The Ledger

Posted: July 3, 2017 at 8:33 am

By Emily Rogers Ledger correspondent

When Olympic athletes step onto a field of play after years of rigorous trainingand refinement of their technical skills, it is their mindset their inner game thatmakes the difference between the glory of gold or the acceptance of silver.

Theability of an elite athlete to focus, overcome limiting beliefs and trust their abilityto perform at the highest level differentiates them from the competition. When abusiness or community leader steps onto a professional field of play, it's the person's experience, education and track record that earns a prominent seat at theconference room table.

However, when these competencies are paired with theinfluential qualities of consciousness, courage and compassion, a field of greatpossibility is created for the leader and the organizations stakeholders.

The challenges faced by business and community leaders today are greater thanever. The pace of change makes it harder to keep up and stay relevant, thecomplexities of operating a profitable business require more focus and strategicthinking to grow and scale, and the needs of our communities are more profoundand daunting. These conditions require more than just raw talent from individuals whoare in positions to influence positive outcomes.

When I begin an executive-coaching engagement, I often start by asking thisseries of questions to create awareness of the role the inner game plays for aleader:

When youre leading at your highest and best, what are you doing (howare you playing your outer game)?

Who are you being (what is the status of yourinner game)?

And what is the impact of both?

The first question is the easiest toanswer because it is associated with the actions leaders take on a daily basisand, like an elite athlete, the technical skills acquired throughout their careers.

The second question often causes my clients to pause and say, Ive never reallythought about that. Its not uncommon for leaders to get so caught up in the day-to-day doing that they lose sight of who they are being in the process, creatingblind spots and missed opportunities. Leaders who have a greater sense ofawareness of who they are being have a greater capacity to be more intentionalabout the quality of the experience they want to create for themselves and theirkey stakeholders as they are achieving targeted results.

Like the tip of an iceberg, a leaders outer game is visible above the surface ofthe water. It is the behaviors and results that are seen and experienced byothers. Under the surface lies the vast inner game the thinking andemotions that drive a leaders behavior and, ultimately, results.What getsachieved is driven by thinking.

With greater awareness of what is lurking belowthe surface of the water comes greater choice and possibility.

Here are five ways to hone your inner game:

Pause periodically throughout the day and notice your thought patterns.Are they serving or sabotaging you and the teams you are leading?

Be intentional about the quality of engagement you bring to yourprofessional field of play. What is the emotional tone you are setting?

At the end of each day, pause for a moment and reflect on your impact.Was your impact as a leader positive, negative or neutral? What mightneed to be revisited?

While in action, slow down, be present and notice. What is needed? Howam I being perceived? What needs to shift?

Courageously step out of old ways of being that are no longer serving you,and consciously step into new ways of being that empower you and theteams you lead.

Leadership excellence is connected to the deepest part of ourselves. It is aboutdigging deeper and unearthing our best selves, even if it creates discomfort attimes.

As leaders increase incompetence, they become more effective atcompleting the tasks at hand. As they increaseconsciousself-awareness and actupon it, they become exponentially impactful and can more readily achieve theorganizations highest goals.

Grow with purpose.

Emily Rogers is an executive coach, business consultant and retreat facilitator, she strategically advises and supports organizations and individuals in growing and realizing their full potential in purposeful and balanced ways. Prior to starting her coaching and consulting practice in 2013, she advised Fortune 100 brands, professional sports teams and national nonprofits on how to form mutually beneficial strategic alliances as an executive leader and senior consultant with IEG (now ESP Properties), a WPP company. You can connect with her at http://www.emilyrogers.com.

See the original post:

Rogers: Focus on your inner game for outer-game impact - The Ledger

Posted in Intentional Communities | Comments Off

Forget Flying Cars, the Future Is Driving Drones – Singularity Hub

Posted: at 8:32 am

Flying car concepts have been around nearly as long as their earthbound cousins, but no one has yet made them a commercial success. MIT engineers think weve been coming at the problem from the wrong direction; rather than putting wings on cars, we should be helping drones to drive.

The team from the universitys Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) added wheels to a fleet of eight mini-quadcopters and tested driving and flying them around a tiny toy town made out of cardboard and fabric.

Adding the ability to drive reduced the distance the drone could fly by 14 percent compared to a wheel-less version. But while driving was slower, the drone could travel 150 percent further than when flying. The result is a vehicle that combines the speed and mobility of flying with the energy-efficiency of driving.

CSAIL director Daniela Rus told MIT News their work suggested that when looking to create flying cars, it might make more sense to build on years of research into drones rather than trying to simply put wings on cars.

Historically, flying car concepts have looked like someone took apart a Cessna light aircraft and a family sedan, mixed all the parts up, and bolted them back together again. Not everyone has abandoned this approachtwo of the most developed flying car designs from Terrafugia and AeroMobil are cars with folding wings that need an airstrip to take off.

But flying car concepts are looking increasingly drone-like these days, with multiple small rotors, electric propulsion and vertical take-off abilities. Take the eHang 184autonomous aerial vehicle being developed in China, theKitty Hawk all-electric aircraft backed by Google founder Larry Page, which is little more than a quadcopter with a seat, the AirQuadOne designed by UK consortium Neva Aerospace, or Lilium Aviations Jet.

The attraction is obvious. Electric-powered drones are more compact, maneuverable, and environmentally friendly, making them suitable for urban environments.

Most of these vehicles are not quite the same as those proposed by the MIT engineers, as theyre pure flying machines. But a recent Airbus concept builds on the same principle that the future of urban mobility is vehicles that can both fly and drive. Its Pop.Up design is a two-passenger pod that can either be clipped to a set of wheels or hang under a quadcopter.

Importantly, they envisage their creation being autonomous in both flight and driving modes. And theyre not the only ones who think the future of flying cars is driverless. Uber has committed to developing a network of autonomous air taxis within a decade. This spring, Dubai announced it would launch a pilotless passenger drone serviceusing the Ehang 184as early as next month (July).

While integrating fully-fledged autonomous flying cars into urban environments will be far more complex, the study by Rus and her colleagues provides a good starting point for the kind of 3D route-planning and collision avoidance capabilities this would require.

The team developed multi-robot path planning algorithms that were able to control all eight drones as they flew and drove around their mock up city, while also making sure they didnt crash into each other and avoided no-fly zones.

This work provides an algorithmic solution for large-scale, mixed-mode transportation and shows its applicability to real-world problems, Jingjin Yu, a computer science professor at Rutgers University who was not involved in the research, told MIT News.

This vision of a driverless future for flying cars might be a bit of a disappointment for those whod envisaged themselves one day piloting their own hover car just like George Jetson. But autonomy and Uber-like ride-hailing business models are likely to be attractive, as they offer potential solutions to three of the biggest hurdles drone-like passenger vehicles face.

Firstly, it makes the vehicles accessible to anyone by removing the need to learn how to safely pilot an aircraft. Secondly, battery life still limits most electric vehicles to flight times measured in minutes. For personal vehicles this could be frustrating, but if youre just hopping in a driverless air taxi for a five minute trip across town its unlikely to become apparent to you.

Operators of the service simply need to make sure they have a big enough fleet to ensure a charged vehicle is never too far away, or theyll need a way to swap out batteries easily, such as the one suggested by the makers of the Volocopter electric helicopter.

Finally, there has already been significant progress in developing technology and regulations needed to integrate autonomous drones into our airspace that future driverless flying cars can most likely piggyback off of.

Safety requirements will inevitably be more stringent, but adding more predictable and controllable autonomous drones to the skies is likely to be more attractive to regulators than trying to license and police thousands of new amateur pilots.

Image Credit: Lilium

Entering Heaven alive – Wikipedia

Posted: at 8:30 am

Entering Heaven alive (called by various religions "ascension", "assumption", or "translation") is a belief held in various religions. Since death is the normal end to an individual's life on Earth and the beginning of afterlife, entering Heaven without dying first is considered exceptional and usually a sign of God's special recognition of the individual's piety.

Unlike the other entries in this article, this paragraph does not, in the view of most Christians, relate to "entering Heaven alive". Jesus is considered by the vast majority of Christians to have died before being resurrected and ascending to heaven. In regard to his mother Mary, Eastern Orthodoxy considers her to have died prior to being assumed (translated) into heaven, while Roman Catholicism gives an ambiguous answer to the issue of her death prior to her assumption, despite her death being "expressly affirmed in the Liturgy of the Church".[1]Protestantism generally believes that Mary died a natural death like any other human being and was not subsequently assumed into heaven, although the Anglo-Catholic tradition of Anglicanism often affirms the assumption.

Most Christians believe Jesus did initially die, but was then resurrected from the dead by God, before being raised bodily to heaven to sit at the Right Hand of God with a promise to someday return to earth. The minority views that Jesus didn't die are known as the Swoon hypothesis and Docetism.

Since the adoption of the Nicene Creed in 325, the Ascension of Jesus Christ into heaven, as related in the New Testament, has been officially taught by all orthodox Christian churches and is celebrated on Ascension Thursday. In the Roman Catholic Church, the Ascension of the Lord is a Holy Day of Obligation. In the Eastern Orthodox Church the Ascension is one of twelve Great Feasts.

In the Reformed churches' tradition of Calvinism, belief in the ascension of Christ is included in the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Heidelberg Catechism and the Second Helvetic Confession."[2]

The "Rapture" is a reference to "being caught up" as found in 1 Thessalonians 4:17, when the "dead in Christ" and "we who are alive and remain" will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord.[3]

The Roman Catholic Church distinguishes between "The Ascension", in which Christ rose to heaven by his own power, and "The Assumption" in which Mary, mother of Jesus, was raised to heaven by God's power.[4] (Enoch and Elijah are said in scripture to have been "assumed" [experienced assumption][clarification needed] into heaven.)

On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII, acting ex cathedra, issued Munificentissimus Deus, an authoritative statement of official doctrine of Roman Catholicism. In Section 44 the pope stated:[5]

By the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.

The doctrine is based on Sacred Tradition that Mary, mother of Jesus, was bodily assumed into heaven. For centuries before that, the assumption was celebrated in art. The proclamation leaves open whether or not Mary died before assumption into heaven. Some theologians[citation needed] have argued that Mary didn't die, but the dogma itself doesn't say this.[6]

The Eastern Orthodox Church teaches that three other persons were taken bodily into heaven: Enoch, Elijah (Elias) and the Theotokos (Virgin Mary). Similar to the Western "Assumption" of Mary, the Orthodox celebrate the Dormition of the Theotokos on August 15. Unlike Western uncertainty about Mary's physical death, the Orthodox teach that Mary died a natural death like any other human being, that she was buried by the Apostles (except for Thomas, who was late), and three days later (after Thomas had arrived) was found to be missing from her tomb. The church teaches that the Apostles received a revelation during which the Theotokos appeared to them and told them she had been resurrected by Jesus and taken body and soul into heaven. The Orthodox teach that Mary already enjoys the fullness of heavenly bliss that the other saints will experience only after the Last Judgment.

There is a teaching among the Orthodox that the "Two Witnesses" referred to in the Book of Revelation 11:3-13 are Enoch and Elijah,[citation needed] who will be sent back to earth to preach the Gospel in the time of apostasy, and will be the last Christian martyrs before the Second Coming. According to Revelation, they will be resurrected and ascend again to heaven.

Yudhishthira of the Mahabharata is believed he was the only human to cross the plane between mortals and heaven in his mortal body.[8] But before him, his brother Arjun had been to heaven and lived there for 5 years in his human body! His grand-uncle Bhishma had lived and studied in heaven. His ancestor, Puru had been to heaven. Indeed, many kings, including Nahush were admitted to heaven in their human body. [9]

Sant Tukaram was taken to Vaikunta on Garuda Vahan which was witnessed by all the village people.[10]

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu disappeared after entering the temple deity room of Lord Jagannath.[11]

Ramalinga Swamigal (Swami Ramalinga), a great Sage revered by his teaching. Ramalinga supposedly attained the Supreme Body of the Godhead when Divinity itself merged with him. He was reported to have disappeared after deciding to de-materialize his immortal body by his own free will, his body was never found.[12]

The Mother (Mirra Alafassa), the foremost disciple of the Hindu philosopher and guru Sri Aurobindo, attempted the physical transformation of her body in order to become what she felt was the first of a new type of human individual by opening to the Supramental Truth Consciousness, a new power of spirit that Sri Aurobindo had allegedly discovered. She believed that she could create for herself a new kind of light body. However, she died and was cremated.

Meera Bai the devotional poet also disappeared when she entered the inner sanctum of Dwarikadheesh Temple and supposed to be in vaikuntha.

Islamic teaching states that Muhammad ascended into heaven alive at the site of the Dome of the Rock. However, this ascent was temporary and he came back to Earth. It is ascribed to the exact descriptions presented in both the Quran and the Hadith.

Islamic texts deny the idea of crucifixion or death attributed to Jesus by the New Testament.[13] The Quran states that people (i.e., the Jews and Romans) sought to kill Jesus, but they could not crucify or kill him, although "this was made to appear to them". Muslims believe that Jesus was not crucified but instead he was raised up by God unto the heavens. This "raising" is often understood to mean through bodily ascension.

Some Islamic scholars have identified the prophet Idris to be the same person as Enoch from the Bible. This is because the Qu'ran states that God "raised him to a lofty station", and that has been taken to be a term for ascending, upon which it is concluded that 'Idris' was 'Enoch'.

In the Hebrew bible the word for "heavens" is shamayim. This is plural - it means "heavens", not "heaven" - but seems nevertheless to have a singular meaning: i.e., the older parts of the bible speak of "heavens" in the plural but evidence for a belief in more than one heaven from the bible is lacking. Shamayim also meant "sky", the atmosphere, as it does in modern English. The blue dome of the sky was called the raqia, and was believed to be a solid shield between the atmosphere and the true heaven where God lived.[dubious discuss] Heaven was the realm of God, earth of mankind, and the underworld was for the dead, and travel between them was generally impossible, although God and his messengers frequently appear on earth and the dead can be summoned up from the underworld as the Witch of Endor summons the shade of Samuel.

There are two possible exceptions to this general rule that humans could not go to heaven, Enoch and Elijah, but neither is clear. The Book of Genesis mentions Enoch as one who "was no more" because "God took him", but it does not explicitly say whether he was alive or dead, and it does not say where God took him. The Book of Kings describes the prophet Elijah being taken towards "shamayim" in a whirlwind, but the word can mean both heaven as the abode of God, or the sky (as the word "heavens" does in modern English), and so again the text is ambiguous.

According to the post-biblical Jewish Midrash, eight people went to heaven (also referred to as the Garden of Eden and Paradise) alive:[14]

It is believed in Zoroastrianism that the Peshotanu was taken up into Heaven alive[citation needed] and will someday return as the Zoroastrian messiah.

Francis Bacon is believed to have undergone a physical Ascension without experiencing death (he then became the deity St. Germain) by members of various Ascended Master Teachings, a group of New Age religions based on Theosophy. They also believe numerous others have undergone Ascension; they are called the Ascended Masters and are worshipped in this group of religions. The leaders of these religions claim to be able to receive channeled messages from the Ascended Masters, which they then relay to their followers.[17][18][19][20][21]

Originally posted here:

Entering Heaven alive - Wikipedia

Posted in Ascension | Comments Off

Ascension Now

Posted: at 8:30 am

I must be willing to give up what I am, in order to become what I will be. - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans; in one aspect of You are found all the aspects of existence." - Kahlil Gilbran

Nothing man-made, not a multitude of books, nor the latest computers and the computers of the future all taken together, can ever encompass even a part of the information contained in a single Man(/Woman). One has only to know how to use it. But to know the Truth, one must have a conscious awareness and purity of thought.

Man is the only creature in the Universe who can live on all planes of existence at once. In their earthly existence most people see themselves only as an earthly, materialised manifestation. But there are those who perceive other levels of being, levels invisible to the material senses.

Prophets who believe in and talk about the end of the world - they themselves are producing mental visualisations of the end of the world. They are motivated not by faith in the Light, in the Love that is God, but by fear. And this fearful scenario is something they are fashioning for themselves." 'The Ringing Cedars of Russia' by Vladimir Megr; Book 2 of The Ringing Cedars Series. See also: Recommended Books/The Ringing Cedars Series

"You are not a soul, you are not a mind, you are not a body. You are the controller of all three." - Yogi Bhajan

True Spirituality

"The soul is going to wake up. It will know every aspect of itself, and every aspect of the souls self will know all of itself at once. You will be aware of all realities at once as you learn to ride the vibrational rate and become fourth dimensional. You are awakening Prime Creators abilities.. Prime Creators goal in creating this universe and all other universes was to develop itself to such an extent, and have so many multidimensional channels of data open, that it - whose consciousness is in all things - could become aware of itself in all things, aware of every event that all things are involved in. You are evolving that ability in yourselves. the knowing is growing, and it is a knowing of what is awakening inside of you. You must be committed all of the time. When these gifts and abilities begin to be firsthand experiences for you, you must learn to work with them no matter what. Begin to know that you are divinely guided and that all events are drawn to you for upliftment, no matter what kind of upheaval they seem to produce in your life. Earth is going through an initiation at this time. You are going through an initiation because you are part of Earth, and you cannot separate yourself from this system. Earth is transforming itself and intending to act as a domino for your solar system. It is intending to merge multiple worlds [dimensions] into one, to be grounded enough to allow all those worlds [dimensions] to exist and to translate the experience. Bringers of the Dawn; Teachings from the Pleiadians, Channelled by Barbara Marciniak

_It's Time To Wake Up - We Are All One

"If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet." ~ Niels Bohr

"Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side; Some great cause, some great decision, offering each the bloom or blight, And the choice goes by forever, twixt that darkness and that Light." - James Lowell, 1845

Abraham Hicks : Empowering Inspiring video message

Esther Hicks channels 'Abraham' in one of the most inspirational scenes depicting 'The Law of Attraction'. Video includes Esther Hicks and Micheal Beckwith and many deleted scenes from Rhonda Byrne's film 'The Secret'.

The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Manley P Hall

Spiritual 4th, 5th and 6th Dimensionality

"It's not important that you know everything .... just the important things." - Miguel de Unamuno

St. Germain - Earth Birth Changes "It is nigh unto the ripeness of time indeed, a culmination of eons of time unto the Harvest. The time is Now... The rapture will allow you to perceive fourth density... therefore third density will no longer be able to perceive you, for you will be simultaneously existing, co-existing in the same space/time, but merely not perceived, because it is of a different frequency. The year 2012 of your time is the apex of it. It is a convergence point into unlimitedness.... Cycles - there are cycles within cycles within cycles. There are many, many, many different cycles that are culminating in this Now. The reason for the focus on planet Earth, and for all the galactic confederations coming forth unto this area of your solar system, is because the universe is in the shifting of densities.... it is also occurring to the astral body of Earth, the etheric body of Earth, and the soul body of Earth. These particular dates (2012) are all shifting, because consciousness is shifting all the time. It is a flux. It appears that it is somewhere between 2010 and 2013 of your Now..and when fourth density or super-consciousness comes upon the planet, it will not be perceiving third density and third density will not be perceiving fourth density, for they will be different dimensions then. Now they are co-existent dimensions, and when super-consciousness prevails, the shift will occur and that is called a rapture. In many references your Harvest is your fourth density transformation, your ascension. Some would call it rapture."

Welcome to 'Ascension Now'!

The spiritual graduation of Humanity will be very exciting and challenging: together we will explore new possibilities and opportunities. Light = Information, and Information is the key to understanding what is happening.

Divine Love, Light, peace and healing to all From Spirit and Messenger Spirit

This is information to which I have been guided by Spirit over the course of several years, and Spirit have asked me to bring it all together in one place for others who seek the Truth. You will feel in your heart whether it resonates with you.

We are not our physical bodies, we are spiritual beings, individuated expressions of the One Infinite Creator whose Conscious Awareness is now awakening in the Human family. It is time to remember Who We Are and to rise to our full potential. As fully-awakened Humans - the 'rainbow bridge' between Spirit and matter - we have a very important role to play in the Universe.

Divine Love, Light, peace and healing Messenger Spirit

Few consciously remember The path we chose in life. But time will show our destiny As every thought and deed Unfolds the story deep within. A story written long ago, In realms beyond our earthly reach, Of aims and aspirations For the Highest Good of All. With Spirits help and guidance And the love of those around us This time of revelation Will unveil our lives true goal. We came to help The raising of Mother Earths vibration, And the lifting of Humanity To higher realms of Light. As waves of Higher Love and Light Sweep through the Solar System, Vibrations rise And Mother Earth Expands her consciousness. Humanity awakens In the presence of Divinity, Awakens to Divinity within. Always present, dormant , waiting . For Humanitys remembrance Of our origin in Light. A new dawn awaits us; Is now within our grasp. Reach out and touch it ..

From Spirit, through Messenger Spirit

Abraham Hicks : 2012 and Beyond

Esther doesn't use the word "channeling" to describe her process, but understands if others do. For more information, please view our YouTube video entitled "Abraham Explains Who They Are", or go to http://www.abraham-hicks.com and listen to the audio entitled "Introduction To Abraham".

In this unique time in the universe when all experiencing is being accelerated, souls have been given the unprecedented opportunity to evolve out of third densitys low vibrations and physically accompany Earth into higher energy planes.

Spirit teacher Matthew Ward

Ra : Acceleration towards the Law of One

The Good Remembering, Llyn Roberts (see 'Recommended Books')

A Love That Is You

The Family of Jacob / Elohei Yaakov Website: http://www.youtube.com/colorfulteardrops / http://www.facebook.com/Loveis Brian Baruch is a conscious channeller for the "Family of Jacob". The "Family of Jacob" (Elohei Yaakov) is an inter-dimensional collective consciousness that resonates a central frequency of the united essence of All Source.

Over the ages the "Family of Jacob" have been known by many names; the higher central Sun, Tiferet, the personage of Divine as Father, the Egyptian All recognizing collective consciousness called "Ra", the Hindu Lord Vishnu, the cosmic consciousness of All Life, the Christian Trinity, the biblical archetype of the patriarch "Jacob" who coalesced All through frequencies of "merciful healing" and recognizing "truth". These are some incarnations of this family consciousness called the "Family of Jacob", and there have been many more.

Splinters of this collective consciousness are incarnated in almost every generation along the earthly tier, other aspects of this collective are ascended (angelic) intelligences that never spent time along the earthly tier, or have resonated their key resonance of truth in many other worlds and dimensions.

They offer a "bird's eye view" of true reality, and share a message of the Higher Love and compassionate healing; revealing dignity for the individual, a deep compassion and reverence for the collective; the majestic "music" from behind the veil - the coalescing of All That Is. Their sacred message carries a profound cadence that leads to the abstract co-ordinates for ascension into the fullness of inter-dimensional "wholeness".

The "Family of Jacob" explain how this game of duality consciousness is designed to help angels and imprisoned intelligences ascend to higher dimensions of intimacy with All Source by resonating All Source's intrinsic frequency of unconditional love and unity along the earthly tier.

Similar to Esther Hicks' channelled collective consciousness "Abraham" who sends the beacon of co-ordinates of creation's "Is" through the frequencies of "loving kindness" and "bountifulness", the "Family of Jacob" resonate the co-ordinates of "truth", "merciful healing" and "true (unconditional) love" to direct All how to embrace their crowns of ascension to freely reside in the dimension of the "higher central Sun" with intimacy and gratitude in All That Is.

Link:

Ascension Now

Posted in Ascension | Comments Off

Word on the Street: With Bill Brady’s ascension, central Illinois picks up more clout – Peoria Journal Star

Posted: at 8:30 am

Chris Kaergard Journal Star political reporter @ChrisKaergardNick Vlahos Journal Star reporter @vlahosnick

For the first time in a long time, central Illinois has a seat at the head of the leadership table in the state Legislature.

That's courtesy of Bill Brady's ascension Friday to the head of the Senate Republican caucus. The Bloomington lawmaker, who has been in the Senate since 2002 and in the Legislature since 1993, succeeds Christine Radogno in the role and has enormous challenges ahead of him.

Previously he'd been a top deputy to Radogno, just as Rep. David Leitch had been a top deputy to his chamber's GOP leader, Jim Durkin. But someone representing our area in the top spot? Those are tough to find in the Legislature or in statewide elective office.

Brady is as well-positioned as anyone for the job, though.

He's more conservative than Radogno. That's a change, but one that will serve him in a caucus that is split between conservatives and more moderate suburbanites. In his years of experience, he has come to recognize politics as the art of the possible inevitably meaning compromises, if hard-fought ones. (His attempt to resurrect the "Grand Bargain" budget deal late in the spring proves it.)

This role is a chance for him to erase the impression many in the GOP have of him as "the guy who lost a totally winnable governor's race to Pat Quinn of all people." But that campaign (and failed quests for the gubernatorial nod in 2006 and 2014) have given him a better idea of the nuances of the state and of Republicans in Illinois than many others in the Legislature. That probably makes him a better leader for them.

Those runs also established him as tireless. One enduring memory we have is of him standing in the freezing cold outside Carver Arena before a Bradley game shaking every last hand as his ears went numb. He's pretty personable, so that probably accounted for a portion of his 193-vote primary victory over Sen. Kirk Dillard.

From our vantage point, he's been a bit on the periphery of Peoria affairs, but omnipresent whenever there were issues or political appearances in Tazewell County. He was a fixture and, we gather, a good resource for Washington during its post-tornado rebuilding efforts (even when that meant he shared the stage with onetime opponent Quinn). And during his statewide runs for office the guy never put on airs. We could still reach him on his cellphone with questions about local matters, even while he was bopping around the vast Land of Lincoln.

Good luck to him. If the last two and a half years are any indication, he'll need it. (C.K.)

She'll be missed

Brady has awful big shoes to fill.

Radogno was instantly recognizable as the adult in the room, someone who fought hard earlier this year to jump-start talks on a budget compromise alongside Senate President John Cullerton, with whom she had a far better rapport than, say, between House Speaker Michael Madigan and House GOP leader Jim Durkin let alone that between Madigan and Gov. Bruce Rauner.

She was knowledgeable during her visits here to speak to the paper's editorial board and got along well with folks more conservative like then-Sen. Darin LaHood, who didn't support her for the leadership position, but still respected her. And she was an independent thinker, something that had to chafe with the growing Rauner influence over lawmakers.

When your shorter columnist covered the Legislature a dozen years ago, Radogno was one of the budget experts for the Senate Republicans. And in her two decades in the chamber she had earned respect and affection across party lines as a straight-shooter, and as someone who understood the fundamentals of the legislative process.

To take but one example, state Rep. Ann Williams a pretty liberal Chicago Democrat noted Thursday on Facebook that "if we had a Christine leading each of our four caucuses, the budget impasse would have been over by now."

It's a pity for all of us that we didn't. (C.K.)

A national reminder of the local

A Bradley University political-science professor wrote an article that appeared last week on the website of a publication better known for its popular-music coverage.

Although not all of Ed Burmilas words might be music to some ears, we can advocate his nonpartisan point, at a minimum.

In The Case for Paying Less Attention to Donald Trump, Burmila suggested the public focus less on the Oval Office and more on state legislatures. That is where much of the policy that affects average Americans is made, he argues.

This being Rolling Stone, of course, Burmilas piece is heavy on gratuitious left-wing spin. It also is laden with apocalyptic rhetoric, which in spades these days comes from both sides of the partisan divide.

Burmila begins by calling Trumps five-month-old administration a disaster. He also suggests the Republicans elected to control the vast majority of governorships and state legislatures are the authors of Neanderthal education policies, ruthless legislative-district gerrymandering and brutal sentencing and policing reforms.

Donald Trump is not the problem with the GOP; he is the symptom of the party's top-to-bottom absence of principles and willingness to manipulate rules, Burmila wrote If progressives focus exclusively on Trump, that makes it easier ... for Republicans at other levels to push their loathsome agenda forward.

Lets set aside the hyperbole and focus on the gist of what Burmila is arguing.

The escapades in Washington, D.C., can be entertaining, certainly. Although the constant Blue-vs.-Red dynamic is better left for a football game.

But as a practical matter, what happens in Springfield is more relevant to Illinoisans than what happens along the Potomac River.

If the public was paying closer attention years ago to what was transpiring in the General Assembly, perhaps Illinois wouldnt be in the midst of a fiscal disaster. And our state is living proof gerrymandering is a bipartisan affliction.

Well take things a few steps further than Burmila did, at least as far as governmental levels are concerned.

Local government might be the most consequential government of all. How many times have you heard Peorians complain about potholes? Or public financing of private development projects? Or substantial increases in property taxes?

Then look at the pathetic voter-turnout rates for recent Peoria municipal elections. The disconnect is obvious. Just because CNN isnt yapping about something 24/7 doesnt mean it isnt important.

In smaller communities, also look at how many seats for city councils and village boards go uncontested or unfilled through the electoral process. Thats dangerous for democracy, not to mention public policy.

Burmilas screed might not appeal to some of our better instincts. But strip the partisan attacks and youll find an important message. All politics is local, after all. (N.V.)

Chris Kaergard (C.K.) covers politics and government. He can be reached at ckaergard@pjstar.com or 686-3255. Follow him on Twitter @ChrisKaergard. Nick Vlahos (N.V.) writes "Nick in the Morning." He can be reached at nvlahos@pjstar.com or 686-3285. Follow him on Twitter @VlahosNick.

Excerpt from:

Word on the Street: With Bill Brady's ascension, central Illinois picks up more clout - Peoria Journal Star

Posted in Ascension | Comments Off

St. Elizabeth clinic for the uninsured gets additional space at Ascension Parish health unit – The Advocate

Posted: at 8:30 am

GONZALES A local health clinic born eight years ago in a partnership between St. Elizabeth Hospital in Gonzales and the Ascension Parish government has doubled its space to better serve residents who don't have health insurance.

Former office space in the Ascension Parish Health Unit off Worthey Road in Gonzales has been converted to a reception area, four patient exam rooms previously there were only two and a larger lab for medical testing for the St. Elizabeth Community Clinic that's been housed at the parish health unit since 2009.

"They love it, they absolutely love it," Paula Julian, nurse practitioner, said of her patients' appreciation of the new space.

Julian and another nurse practitioner, Kristin Martin, rotate to see patients at the community clinic on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The medical director for the St. Elizabeth Community Clinic is Dr. James D'Antoni.

The Ascension Parish Health Unit offers residents immunizations; pregnancy testing; family planning services; nutritional services for women, infants and children; and testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases.

The St. Elizabeth Community Clinic there offers routine treatment, on a sliding-scale fee basis, for uninsured parish residents, ages 10 and up, with common short-term health problems or long-lasting illnesses that can be managed on an outpatient basis.

The health unit sees about 2,500 patients each month, and the community clinic each month sees about 200 patients, many of them the working poor without public or private insurance, said Kyle Gautreau, communications director for the parish government.

The ability of medical staff in the parish health unit and in the community clinic "to refer folks (to practitioners) literally across the hall from each other is the beauty of the partnership," Gautreau said.

Another resource, the Ascension Parish Counseling Center, is adjacent to the Parish Health Unit. Under the umbrella of the health unit, the center offers individual and group counseling and treatment for addictive disorders.

The parish paid for the recent renovations of the St. Elizabeth Community Clinic, with parish employees doing much of the work, said Parish President Kenny Matassa, who was director of the parish health unit before he was elected parish president in 2015.

"I saw every week the great good done under the partnership between Ascension Parish and St. Elizabeth, and I wanted to see its expansion happen," Matassa said. "The great thing is that I knew we had the capacity to complete most of the work ourselves."

The $25,000 renovation was started in January and completed in June.

St. Elizabeth Hospital, part of the Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System, which runs Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge and other hospitals is a missions-based hospital, said Jon Hirsch, director of marketing for St. Elizabeth.

"Part of our mission is to serve people who don't have any resources," he said.

Follow Ellyn Couvillion on Twitter, @EllynCouvillion.

Excerpt from:

St. Elizabeth clinic for the uninsured gets additional space at Ascension Parish health unit - The Advocate

Posted in Ascension | Comments Off

Spanish Civil War victim’s 91-year-old daughter finally buries her father – AOL

Posted: at 8:30 am

MADRID (Reuters) - On the cusp of her 92nd birthday and after decades of waiting and uncertainty, Ascensin Mendieta, daughter of a victim of political violence killed almost 80 years previously, finally buried her father on a bright Sunday morning in Madrid. Hundreds of mourners turned out to attend the non-religious ceremony in Madrid for Timoteo Mendieta, a trade unionist shot in the months following the Spanish Civil War and buried in a mass grave in a Guadalajara cemetery.

The search for Timoteo Mendieta's remains marks the first instance of graves being dug on the orders of an Argentine judge in a lawsuit seeking redress for crimes committed during the 1936-1939 civil war and the almost four-decade dictatorship of General Francisco Franco that followed.

See photos from this story below:

12 PHOTOS

Father buried 80 years after his death

See Gallery

Ascension Mendieta, daughter of Timoteo Mendieta, who was shot in 1939 by forces of dictator Francisco Franco, arrives with her son Francisco to the burial of her father after he was exhumed from a mass grave in Guadalajara's cemetery by the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory(ARMH), in Madrid, Spain July 2, 2017. REUTERS/Juan Medina

Ascension Mendieta (C), daughter of Timoteo Mendieta, who was shot in 1939 by forces of dictator Francisco Franco, reacts during the burial of her father after he was exhumed from a mass grave in Guadalajara's cemetery by the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory(ARMH), in Madrid, Spain July 2, 2017. REUTERS/Juan Medina

Ascension Mendieta (C), daughter of Timoteo Mendieta, who was shot in 1939 by forces of dictator Francisco Franco, kisses a flower with the colors of the Republican flag during the burial of her father after he was exhumed from a mass grave in Guadalajara's cemetery by the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory(ARMH), in Madrid, Spain July 2, 2017. REUTERS/Juan Medina

Ascension Mendieta, daughter of Timoteo Mendieta, who was shot in 1939 by forces of dictator Francisco Franco, reacts during the burial of her father after he was exhumed from a mass grave in Guadalajara's cemetery by the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory(ARMH), in Madrid, Spain July 2, 2017. REUTERS/Juan Medina

Ascension Mendieta, daughter of Timoteo Mendieta, who was shot in 1939 by forces of dictator Francisco Franco, is greeted by people after the burial of her father after he was exhumed from a mass grave in Guadalajara's cemetery by the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory(ARMH), in Madrid, Spain July 2, 2017. REUTERS/Juan Medina

Ascension Mendieta, daughter of Timoteo Mendieta, who was shot in 1939 by forces of dictator Francisco Franco, attends the funeral of her father after has been exhumed from a mass grave in Guadalajara's cemetery by the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory(ARMH), in Madrid, Spain July 1, 2017. REUTERS/Juan Medina

Ascension Mendieta, daughter of Timoteo Mendieta, who was shot in 1939, holds a carnation during the exhumation of her father's remains at Guadalajara's cemetery, Spain, January 30, 2016.At the request of an Argentine judge in a lawsuit seeking redress for crimes committed during the 1936-39 civil war and the four-decade dictatorship of General Francisco Franco that followed, a Guadalajara court has authorised the exhumation of the grave, containing 22 bodies of people believed to have been killed by Franco's forces in the months after the end of the civil war. Picture taken January 30, 2016. REUTERS/Juan Medina

Ascension Mendieta (L), daughter of Timoteo Mendieta, who was shot in 1939 by forces of dictator Francisco Franco, speaks with a member of the Guadalajara court before the beginning of the exhumation of her father's remains at Guadalajara's cemetery, Spain, May 9, 2017. REUTERS/Juan Medina

Ascension Mendieta (C), daughter of Timoteo Mendieta, who was shot in 1939 by forces of dictator Francisco Franco, leaves with her grandson Sergio after the burial of her father after he was exhumed from a mass grave in Guadalajara's cemetery by the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory(ARMH), in Madrid, Spain July 2, 2017. REUTERS/Juan Medina

HIDE CAPTION

SHOW CAPTION

"(Burying Timoteo) means the end of a cycle and the end of a tremendous battle against the Spanish state, which has been, I would say, very cruel to families who have relatives in mass graves," Francisco Vargas Medienta, grandson of Timoteo, said after the funeral.

Attending the ceremony accompanied by her three children, Ascensin Mendieta held a bouquet of flowers decorated in the red, purple and gold of the Second Spanish Republic, which was overthrown by the forces loyal to Franco.

Among those paying their respects were relatives of victims of the Franco regime, several of them currently in the process of fighting their own legal battles to obtain exhumation orders to search for murdered family members.

In the Guadalajara cemetery mass graves alone, there are an estimated 800 victims of political violence, according to the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH), a non-profit group that works to recognize victims of the war.

Following the Guadalajara exhumation, around 100families of victims believed to be buried there requested help to identify remains.

In an effort to smooth a 1977 transition to democracy, Spain passed an amnesty law pardoning political crimes committed in the past the so-called "Pact of Forgetting".

Some exhumations began in 2000, though the resting place for many victims are still unknown. The ARMH has documented114,226 cases of men and women buried in mass graves around Spain.

"There are at least 3,000 mass graves. We're not even sure exactly how many, but it's a lot," said Emilio Silva, head of the ARMH.

Ascensin Mendieta who was 13 when she unwittingly opened the door to the men who took her father away - has repeatedly said she hopes the case of Timoteo serves to highlight the large numbers of remains still unidentified.

Francisco Vargas Mendieta said that the experience left his mother, and many like her, emotionally scarred, and that activists would continue working to identify the dead.

"My mother has always lived with this wound," Vargas said. "And there are many people like her even now. We are not going to stop until the maximum number of people possible are able to take flowers to those who were executed, or until these people receive a dignified burial."

Historians estimate as many as 500,000 combatants and civilians were killed on the Republican and Nationalist sides in the war. After it ended, tens of thousands of Franco's enemies were killed or imprisoned in a campaign to wipe out dissent.

(Writing and reporting by Sam Edwards in Barcelona, editing by David Evans)

More from AOL.com: Canadian soldier becomes first female infantry officer to take command of troops guarding Buckingham Palace French Holocaust survivor and pro-abortion campaigner Simone Veil dies at 89 New citizens start lives in Canada as country seeks immigrants

The rest is here:

Spanish Civil War victim's 91-year-old daughter finally buries her father - AOL

Posted in Ascension | Comments Off

The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence | Inverse

Posted: at 8:29 am

Nothing will make you appreciate human intelligence like learning about how unbelievably challenging it is to try to create a computer as smart as we are.

This article originally appeared on Wait But Why by Tim Urban. This is Part 1 Part 2 is here.

We are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth.

-Vernor Vinge

What does it feel like to stand here?

It seems like a pretty intense place to be standing but then you have to remember something about what its like to stand on a time graph: You cant see whats to your right. So heres how it actually feels to stand there:

Which probably feels pretty normal

Imagine taking a time machine back to 1750 a time when the world was in a permanent power outage, long-distance communication meant either yelling loudly or firing a cannon in the air, and all transportation ran on hay. When you get there, you retrieve a dude, bring him to 2015, and then walk him around and watch him react to everything. Its impossible for us to understand what it would be like for him to see shiny capsules racing by on a highway, talk to people who had been on the other side of the ocean earlier in the day, watch sports that were being played 1,000 miles away, hear a musical performance that happened 50 years ago, and play with my magical wizard rectangle that he could use to capture a real-life image or record a living moment, generate a map with a paranormal moving blue dot that shows him where he is, look at someones face and chat with them even though theyre on the other side of the country, and worlds of other inconceivable sorcery. This is all before you show him the internet or explain things like the International Space Station, the Large Hadron Collider, nuclear weapons, or general relativity.

This experience for him wouldnt be surprising or shocking or even mind-blowing those words arent big enough. He might actually die.

But heres the interesting thing if he then went back to 1750 and got jealous that we got to see his reaction and decided he wanted to try the same thing, hed take the time machine and go back the same distance, get someone from around the year 1500, bring him to 1750, and show him everything. And the 1500 guy would be shocked by a lot of thingsbut he wouldnt die. It would be far less of an insane experience for him, because while 1500 and 1750 were very different, they were much less different than 1750 to 2015. The 1500 guy would learn some mind-bending shit about space and physics, hed be impressed with how committed Europe turned out to be with that new imperialism fad, and hed have to do some major revisions of his world map conception. But watching everyday life go by in 1750 transportation, communication, etc. definitely wouldnt make him die.

No, in order for the 1750 guy to have as much fun as we had with him, hed have to go much farther back maybe all the way back to about 12,000 BC, before the First Agricultural Revolution gave rise to the first cities and to the concept of civilization. If someone from a purely hunter-gatherer world from a time when humans were, more or less, just another animal species saw the vast human empires of 1750 with their towering churches, their ocean-crossing ships, their concept of being inside, and their enormous mountain of collective, accumulated human knowledge and discovery hed likely die.

And then what if, after dying, he got jealous and wanted to do the same thing. If he went back 12,000 years to 24,000 BC and got a guy and brought him to 12,000 BC, hed show the guy everything and the guy would be like, Okay whats your point who cares. For the 12,000 BC guy to have the same fun, hed have to go back over 100,000 years and get someone he could show fire and language to for the first time.

In order for someone to be transported into the future and die from the level of shock theyd experience, they have to go enough years ahead that a die level of progress, or a Die Progress Unit (DPU) has been achieved. So a DPU took over 100,000 years in hunter-gatherer times, but at the post-Agricultural Revolution rate, it only took about 12,000 years. The post-Industrial Revolution world has moved so quickly that a 1750 person only needs to go forward a couple hundred years for a DPU to have happened.

This pattern human progress moving quicker and quicker as time goes on is what futurist Ray Kurzweil calls human historys Law of Accelerating Returns. This happens because more advanced societies have the ability to progress at a faster rate than less advanced societies because theyre more advanced. 19th century humanity knew more and had better technology than 15th century humanity, so its no surprise that humanity made far more advances in the 19th century than in the 15th century 15th century humanity was no match for 19th century humanity.

This works on smaller scales too. The movie Back to the Future came out in 1985, and the past took place in 1955. In the movie, when Michael J. Fox went back to 1955, he was caught off-guard by the newness of TVs, the prices of soda, the lack of love for shrill electric guitar, and the variation in slang. It was a different world, yes but if the movie were made today and the past took place in 1985, the movie could have had much more fun with much bigger differences. The character would be in a time before personal computers, internet, or cell phones todays Marty McFly, a teenager born in the late 90s, would be much more out of place in 1985 than the movies Marty McFly was in 1955.

This is for the same reason we just discussed the Law of Accelerating Returns. The average rate of advancement between 1985 and 2015 was higher than the rate between 1955 and 1985 because the former was a more advanced world so much more change happened in the most recent 30 years than in the prior 30.

So advances are getting bigger and bigger and happening more and more quickly. This suggests some pretty intense things about our future, right?

Kurzweil suggests that the progress of the entire 20th century would have been achieved in only 20 years at the rate of advancement in the year 2000 in other words, by 2000, the rate of progress was five times faster than the average rate of progress during the 20th century. He believes another 20th centurys worth of progress happened between 2000 and 2014 and that another 20th centurys worth of progress will happen by 2021, in only seven years. A couple decades later, he believes a 20th centurys worth of progress will happen multiple times in the same year, and even later, in less than one month. All in all, because of the Law of Accelerating Returns, Kurzweil believes that the 21st century will achieve 1,000 times the progress of the 20th century.

If Kurzweil and others who agree with him are correct, then we may be as blown away by 2030 as our 1750 guy was by 2015 i.e. the next DPU might only take a couple decades and the world in 2050 might be so vastly different than todays world that we would barely recognize it.

This isnt science fiction. Its what many scientists smarter and more knowledgeable than you or I firmly believe and if you look at history, its what we should logically predict.

So then why, when you hear me say something like the world 35 years from now might be totally unrecognizable, are you thinking, Cool.but nahhhhhhh? Three reasons were skeptical of outlandish forecasts of the future:

1) When it comes to history, we think in straight lines. When we imagine the progress of the next 30 years, we look back to the progress of the previous 30 as an indicator of how much will likely happen. When we think about the extent to which the world will change in the 21st century, we just take the 20th century progress and add it to the year 2000. This was the same mistake our 1750 guy made when he got someone from 1500 and expected to blow his mind as much as his own was blown going the same distance ahead. Its most intuitive for us to think linearly, when we should be thinking exponentially. If someone is being more clever about it, they might predict the advances of the next 30 years not by looking at the previous 30 years, but by taking the current rate of progress and judging based on that. Theyd be more accurate, but still way off. In order to think about the future correctly, you need to imagine things moving at a much faster rate than theyre moving now.

2) The trajectory of very recent history often tells a distorted story. First, even a steep exponential curve seems linear when you only look at a tiny slice of it, the same way if you look at a little segment of a huge circle up close, it looks almost like a straight line. Second, exponential growth isnt totally smooth and uniform. Kurzweil explains that progress happens in S-curves:

An S is created by the wave of progress when a new paradigm sweeps the world. The curve goes through three phases:

If you look only at very recent history, the part of the S-curve youre on at the moment can obscure your perception of how fast things are advancing. The chunk of time between 1995 and 2007 saw the explosion of the internet, the introduction of Microsoft, Google, and Facebook into the public consciousness, the birth of social networking, and the introduction of cell phones and then smart phones. That was Phase 2: the growth spurt part of the S. But 2008 to 2015 has been less groundbreaking, at least on the technological front. Someone thinking about the future today might examine the last few years to gauge the current rate of advancement, but thats missing the bigger picture. In fact, a new, huge Phase 2 growth spurt might be brewing right now.

3) Our own experience makes us stubborn old men about the future. We base our ideas about the world on our personal experience, and that experience has ingrained the rate of growth of the recent past in our heads as the way things happen. Were also limited by our imagination, which takes our experience and uses it to conjure future predictions but often, what we know simply doesnt give us the tools to think accurately about the future. When we hear a prediction about the future that contradicts our experience-based notion of how things work, our instinct is that the prediction must be naive. If I tell you, later in this post, that you may live to be 150, or 250, or not die at all, your instinct will be, Thats stupid if theres one thing I know from history, its that everybody dies. And yes, no one in the past has not died. But no one flew airplanes before airplanes were invented either.

So while nahhhhh might feel right as you read this post, its probably actually wrong. The fact is, if were being truly logical and expecting historical patterns to continue, we should conclude that much, much, much more should change in the coming decades than we intuitively expect. Logic also suggests that if the most advanced species on a planet keeps making larger and larger leaps forward at an ever-faster rate, at some point, theyll make a leap so great that it completely alters life as they know it and the perception they have of what it means to be a human kind of like how evolution kept making great leaps toward intelligence until finally it made such a large leap to the human being that it completely altered what it meant for any creature to live on planet Earth. And if you spend some time reading about whats going on today in science and technology, you start to see a lot of signs quietly hinting that life as we currently know it cannot withstand the leap thats coming next.

If youre like me, you used to think Artificial Intelligence was a silly sci-fi concept, but lately youve been hearing it mentioned by serious people, and you dont really quite get it.

There are three reasons a lot of people are confused about the term AI:

1) We associate AI with movies. Star Wars. Terminator. 2001: A Space Odyssey. Even the Jetsons. And those are fiction, as are the robot characters. So it makes AI sound a little fictional to us.

2) AI is a broad topic. It ranges from your phones calculator to self-driving cars to something in the future that might change the world dramatically. AI refers to all of these things, which is confusing.

3) We use AI all the time in our daily lives, but we often dont realize its AI. John McCarthy, who coined the term Artificial Intelligence in 1956, complained that as soon as it works, no one calls it AI anymore. Because of this phenomenon, AI often sounds like a mythical future prediction more than a reality. At the same time, it makes it sound like a pop concept from the past that never came to fruition. Ray Kurzweil says he hears people say that AI withered in the 1980s, which he compares to insisting that the Internet died in the dot-com bust of the early 2000s.

So lets clear things up. First, stop thinking of robots. A robot is a container for AI, sometimes mimicking the human form, sometimes not but the AI itself is the computer inside the robot. AI is the brain, and the robot is its body if it even has a body. For example, the software and data behind Siri is AI, the womans voice we hear is a personification of that AI, and theres no robot involved at all.

Secondly, youve probably heard the term singularity or technological singularity. This term has been used in math to describe an asymptote-like situation where normal rules no longer apply. Its been used in physics to describe a phenomenon like an infinitely small, dense black hole or the point we were all squished into right before the Big Bang. Again, situations where the usual rules dont apply. In 1993, Vernor Vinge wrote a famous essay in which he applied the term to the moment in the future when our technologys intelligence exceeds our own a moment for him when life as we know it will be forever changed and normal rules will no longer apply. Ray Kurzweil then muddled things a bit by defining the singularity as the time when the Law of Accelerating Returns has reached such an extreme pace that technological progress is happening at a seemingly-infinite pace, and after which well be living in a whole new world. I found that many of todays AI thinkers have stopped using the term, and its confusing anyway, so I wont use it much here (even though well be focusing on that idea throughout).

Finally, while there are many different types or forms of AI since AI is a broad concept, the critical categories we need to think about are based on an AIs caliber. There are three major AI caliber categories:

AI Caliber 1) Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI): Sometimes referred to as Weak AI, Artificial Narrow Intelligence is AI that specializes in one area. Theres AI that can beat the world chess champion in chess, but thats the only thing it does. Ask it to figure out a better way to store data on a hard drive, and itll look at you blankly.

AI Caliber 2) Artificial General Intelligence (AGI): Sometimes referred to as Strong AI, or Human-Level AI, Artificial General Intelligence refers to a computer that is as smart as a human across the board a machine that can perform any intellectual task that a human being can. Creating AGI is a much harder task than creating ANI, and were yet to do it. Professor Linda Gottfredson describes intelligence as a very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience. AGI would be able to do all of those things as easily as you can.

AI Caliber 3) Artificial Superintelligence (ASI): Oxford philosopher and leading AI thinker Nick Bostrom defines superintelligence as an intellect that is much smarter than the best human brains in practically every field, including scientific creativity, general wisdom and social skills. Artificial Superintelligence ranges from a computer thats just a little smarter than a human to one thats trillions of times smarter across the board. ASI is the reason the topic of AI is such a spicy meatball and why the words immortality and extinction will both appear in these posts multiple times.

As of now, humans have conquered the lowest caliber of AI ANI in many ways, and its everywhere. The AI Revolution is the road from ANI, through AGI, to ASI a road we may or may not survive but that, either way, will change everything.

Lets take a close look at what the leading thinkers in the field believe this road looks like and why this revolution might happen way sooner than you might think:

Artificial Narrow Intelligence is machine intelligence that equals or exceeds human intelligence or efficiency at a specific thing. A few examples:

ANI systems as they are now arent especially scary. At worst, a glitchy or badly-programmed ANI can cause an isolated catastrophe like knocking out a power grid, causing a harmful nuclear power plant malfunction, or triggering a financial markets disaster (like the 2010 Flash Crash when an ANI program reacted the wrong way to an unexpected situation and caused the stock market to briefly plummet, taking $1 trillion of market value with it, only part of which was recovered when the mistake was corrected).

But while ANI doesnt have the capability to cause an existential threat, we should see this increasingly large and complex ecosystem of relatively-harmless ANI as a precursor of the world-altering hurricane thats on the way. Each new ANI innovation quietly adds another brick onto the road to AGI and ASI. Or as Aaron Saenz sees it, our worlds ANI systems are like the amino acids in the early Earths primordial ooze the inanimate stuff of life that, one unexpected day, woke up.

Why Its So Hard

Nothing will make you appreciate human intelligence like learning about how unbelievably challenging it is to try to create a computer as smart as we are. Building skyscrapers, putting humans in space, figuring out the details of how the Big Bang went down all far easier than understanding our own brain or how to make something as cool as it. As of now, the human brain is the most complex object in the known universe.

Whats interesting is that the hard parts of trying to build AGI (a computer as smart as humans in general, not just at one narrow specialty) are not intuitively what youd think they are. Build a computer that can multiply two ten-digit numbers in a split second incredibly easy. Build one that can look at a dog and answer whether its a dog or a cat spectacularly difficult. Make AI that can beat any human in chess? Done. Make one that can read a paragraph from a six-year-olds picture book and not just recognize the words but understand the meaning of them? Google is currently spending billions of dollars trying to do it. Hard things like calculus, financial market strategy, and language translationare mind-numbingly easy for a computer, while easy things like vision, motion, movement, and perception are insanely hard for it. Or, as computer scientist Donald Knuth puts it, AI has by now succeeded in doing essentially everything that requires thinking but has failed to do most of what people and animals do without thinking.

What you quickly realize when you think about this is that those things that seem easy to us are actually unbelievably complicated, and they only seem easy because those skills have been optimized in us (and most animals) by hundreds of million years of animal evolution. When you reach your hand up toward an object, the muscles, tendons, and bones in your shoulder, elbow, and wrist instantly perform a long series of physics operations, in conjunction with your eyes, to allow you to move your hand in a straight line through three dimensions. It seems effortless to you because you have perfected software in your brain for doing it. Same idea goes for why its not that malware is dumb for not being able to figure out the slanty word recognition test when you sign up for a new account on a siteits that your brain is super impressive for being able to.

On the other hand, multiplying big numbers or playing chess are new activities for biological creatures and we havent had any time to evolve a proficiency at them, so a computer doesnt need to work too hard to beat us. Think about itwhich would you rather do, build a program that could multiply big numbers or one that could understand the essence of a B well enough that you could show it a B in any one of thousands of unpredictable fonts or handwriting and it could instantly know it was a B?

One fun examplewhen you look at this, you and a computer both can figure out that its a rectangle with two distinct shades, alternating:

Tied so far. But if you pick up the black and reveal the whole image

you have no problem giving a full description of the various opaque and translucent cylinders, slats, and 3-D corners, but the computer would fail miserably. It would describe what it seesa variety of two-dimensional shapes in several different shadeswhich is actually whats there. Your brain is doing a ton of fancy shit to interpret the implied depth, shade-mixing, and room lighting the picture is trying to portray. And looking at the picture below, a computer sees a two-dimensional white, black, and gray collage, while you easily see what it really isa photo of an entirely-black, 3-D rock:

And everything we just mentioned is still only taking in stagnant information and processing it. To be human-level intelligent, a computer would have to understand things like the difference between subtle facial expressions, the distinction between being pleased, relieved, content, satisfied, and glad, and why Braveheart was great but The Patriot was terrible.

Daunting.

So how do we get there?

First Key to Creating AGI: Increasing Computational Power

One thing that definitely needs to happen for AGI to be a possibility is an increase in the power of computer hardware. If an AI system is going to be as intelligent as the brain, itll need to equal the brains raw computing capacity.

One way to express this capacity is in the total calculations per second (cps) the brain could manage, and you could come to this number by figuring out the maximum cps of each structure in the brain and then adding them all together.

Ray Kurzweil came up with a shortcut by taking someones professional estimate for the cps of one structure and that structures weight compared to that of the whole brain and then multiplying proportionally to get an estimate for the total. Sounds a little iffy, but he did this a bunch of times with various professional estimates of different regions, and the total always arrived in the same ballpark around 1016, or 10 quadrillion cps.

Currently, the worlds fastest supercomputer, Chinas Tianhe-2, has actually beaten that number, clocking in at about 34 quadrillion cps. But Tianhe-2 is also a dick, taking up 720 square meters of space, using 24 megawatts of power (the brain runs on just 20 watts, and costing $390 million to build. Not especially applicable to wide usage, or even most commercial or industrial usage yet.

Kurzweil suggests that we think about the state of computers by looking at how many cps you can buy for $1,000. When that number reaches human-level 10 quadrillion cps then thatll mean AGI could become a very real part of life.

Moores Law is a historically-reliable rule that the worlds maximum computing power doubles approximately every two years, meaning computer hardware advancement, like general human advancement through history, grows exponentially. Looking at how this relates to Kurzweils cps/$1,000 metric, were currently at about 10 trillion cps/$1,000, right on pace with this graphs predicted trajectory:

So the worlds $1,000 computers are now beating the mouse brain and theyre at about a thousandth of human level. This doesnt sound like much until you remember that we were at about a trillionth of human level in 1985, a billionth in 1995, and a millionth in 2005. Being at a thousandth in 2015 puts us right on pace to get to an affordable computer by 2025 that rivals the power of the brain.

So on the hardware side, the raw power needed for AGI is technically available now, in China, and well be ready for affordable, widespread AGI-caliber hardware within 10 years. But raw computational power alone doesnt make a computer generally intelligent the next question is, how do we bring human-level intelligence to all that power?

Second Key to Creating AGI: Making it Smart

This is the icky part. The truth is, no one really knows how to make it smart were still debating how to make a computer human-level intelligent and capable of knowing what a dog and a weird-written B and a mediocre movie is. But there are a bunch of far-fetched strategies out there and at some point, one of them will work. Here are the three most common strategies I came across:

1) Plagiarize the brain.

This is like scientists toiling over how that kid who sits next to them in class is so smart and keeps doing so well on the tests, and even though they keep studying diligently, they cant do nearly as well as that kid, and then they finally decide k fuck it Im just gonna copy that kids answers. It makes sensewere stumped trying to build a super-complex computer, and there happens to be a perfect prototype for one in each of our heads.

The science world is working hard on reverse engineering the brain to figure out how evolution made such a rad thing optimistic estimates say we can do this by 2030. Once we do that, well know all the secrets of how the brain runs so powerfully and efficiently and we can draw inspiration from it and steal its innovations. One example of computer architecture that mimics the brain is the artificial neural network. It starts out as a network of transistor neurons, connected to each other with inputs and outputs, and it knows nothinglike an infant brain. The way it learns is it tries to do a task, say handwriting recognition, and at first, its neural firings and subsequent guesses at deciphering each letter will be completely random. But when its told it got something right, the transistor connections in the firing pathways that happened to create that answer are strengthened; when its told it was wrong, those pathways connections are weakened. After a lot of this trial and feedback, the network has, by itself, formed smart neural pathways and the machine has become optimized for the task. The brain learns a bit like this but in a more sophisticated way, and as we continue to study the brain, were discovering ingenious new ways to take advantage of neural circuitry.

More extreme plagiarism involves a strategy called whole brain emulation, where the goal is to slice a real brain into thin layers, scan each one, use software to assemble an accurate reconstructed 3-D model, and then implement the model on a powerful computer. Wed then have a computer officially capable of everything the brain is capable of it would just need to learn and gather information. If engineers get really good, theyd be able to emulate a real brain with such exact accuracy that the brains full personality and memory would be intact once the brain architecture has been uploaded to a computer. If the brain belonged to Jim right before he passed away, the computer would now wake up as Jim (?, which would be a robust human-level AGI, and we could now work on turning Jim into an unimaginably smart ASI, which hed probably be really excited about.

How far are we from achieving whole brain emulation? Well so far, weve not yet just recently been able to emulate a 1mm-long flatworm brain, which consists of just 302 total neurons. The human brain contains 100 billion. If that makes it seem like a hopeless project, remember the power of exponential progress now that weve conquered the tiny worm brain, an ant might happen before too long, followed by a mouse, and suddenly this will seem much more plausible.

2) Try to make evolution do what it did before but for us this time.

So if we decide the smart kids test is too hard to copy, we can try to copy the way he studies for the tests instead.

Heres something we know. Building a computer as powerful as the brain is possible our own brains evolution is proof. And if the brain is just too complex for us to emulate, we could try to emulate evolution instead. The fact is, even if we can emulate a brain, that might be like trying to build an airplane by copying a birds wing-flapping motionsoften, machines are best designed using a fresh, machine-oriented approach, not by mimicking biology exactly.

So how can we simulate evolution to build AGI? The method, called genetic algorithms, would work something like this: there would be a performance-and-evaluation process that would happen again and again (the same way biological creatures perform by living life and are evaluated by whether they manage to reproduce or not). A group of computers would try to do tasks, and the most successful ones would be bred with each other by having half of each of their programming merged together into a new computer. The less successful ones would be eliminated. Over many, many iterations, this natural selection process would produce better and better computers. The challenge would be creating an automated evaluation and breeding cycle so this evolution process could run on its own.

The downside of copying evolution is that evolution likes to take a billion years to do things and we want to do this in a few decades.

But we have a lot of advantages over evolution. First, evolution has no foresight and works randomly it produces more unhelpful mutations than helpful ones, but we would control the process so it would only be driven by beneficial glitches and targeted tweaks. Secondly, evolution doesnt aim for anything, including intelligence sometimes an environment might even select against higher intelligence (since it uses a lot of energy). We, on the other hand, could specifically direct this evolutionary process toward increasing intelligence. Third, to select for intelligence, evolution has to innovate in a bunch of other ways to facilitate intelligence like revamping the ways cells produce energy when we can remove those extra burdens and use things like electricity. Its no doubt wed be much, much faster than evolution but its still not clear whether well be able to improve upon evolution enough to make this a viable strategy.

3) Make this whole thing the computers problem, not ours.

This is when scientists get desperate and try to program the test to take itself. But it might be the most promising method we have.

The idea is that wed build a computer whose two major skills would be doing research on AI and coding changes into itself allowing it to not only learn but to improve its own architecture. Wed teach computers to be computer scientists so they could bootstrap their own development. And that would be their main job figuring out how to make themselves smarter. More on this later.

All of This Could Happen Soon

Rapid advancements in hardware and innovative experimentation with software are happening simultaneously, and AGI could creep up on us quickly and unexpectedly for two main reasons:

1) Exponential growth is intense and what seems like a snails pace of advancement can quickly race upwardsthis GIF illustrates this concept nicely:

2) When it comes to software, progress can seem slow, but then one epiphany can instantly change the rate of advancement (kind of like the way science, during the time humans thought the universe was geocentric, was having difficulty calculating how the universe worked, but then the discovery that it was heliocentric suddenly made everything much easier). Or, when it comes to something like a computer that improves itself, we might seem far away but actually be just one tweak of the system away from having it become 1,000 times more effective and zooming upward to human-level intelligence.

At some point, well have achieved AGI computers with human-level general intelligence. Just a bunch of people and computers living together in equality.

Oh actually not at all.

The thing is, AGI with an identical level of intelligence and computational capacity as a human would still have significant advantages over humans. Like:

AI, which will likely get to AGI by being programmed to self-improve, wouldnt see human-level intelligence as some important milestone its only a relevant marker from our point of view and wouldnt have any reason to stop at our level. And given the advantages over us that even human intelligence-equivalent AGI would have, its pretty obvious that it would only hit human intelligence for a brief instant before racing onwards to the realm of superior-to-human intelligence.

This may shock the shit out of us when it happens. The reason is that from our perspective, A) while the intelligence of different kinds of animals varies, the main characteristic were aware of about any animals intelligence is that its far lower than ours, and B) we view the smartest humans as WAY smarter than the dumbest humans. Kind of like this:

So as AI zooms upward in intelligence toward us, well see it as simply becoming smarter, for an animal. Then, when it hits the lowest capacity of humanityNick Bostrom uses the term the village idiot well be like, Oh wow, its like a dumb human. Cute! The only thing is, in the grand spectrum of intelligence, all humans, from the village idiot to Einstein, are within a very small range so just after hitting village idiot-level and being declared to be AGI, itll suddenly be smarter than Einstein and we wont know what hit us:

And what happensafter that?

I hope you enjoyed normal time, because this is when this topic gets unnormal and scary, and its gonna stay that way from here forward. I want to pause here to remind you that every single thing Im going to say is real real science and real forecasts of the future from a large array of the most respected thinkers and scientists. Just keep remembering that.

Anyway, as I said above, most of our current models for getting to AGI involve the AI getting there by self-improvement. And once it gets to AGI, even systems that formed and grew through methods that didnt involve self-improvement would now be smart enough to begin self-improving if they wanted to.

And heres where we get to an intense concept: recursive self-improvement. It works like this

An AI system at a certain level lets say human village idiot is programmed with the goal of improving its own intelligence. Once it does, its smarter maybe at this point its at Einsteins level so now when it works to improve its intelligence, with an Einstein-level intellect, it has an easier time and it can make bigger leaps. These leaps make it much smarter than any human, allowing it to make even bigger leaps. As the leaps grow larger and happen more rapidly, the AGI soars upwards in intelligence and soon reaches the superintelligent level of an ASI system. This is called an Intelligence Explosion, and its the ultimate example of The Law of Accelerating Returns.

There is some debate about how soon AI will reach human-level general intelligence the median year on a survey of hundreds of scientists about when they believed wed be more likely than not to have reached AGI was 2040 thats only 25 years from now, which doesnt sound that huge until you consider that many of the thinkers in this field think its likely that the progression from AGI to ASI happens very quickly. Like this could happen:

It takes decades for the first AI system to reach low-level general intelligence, but it finally happens. A computer is able to understand the world around it as well as a human four-year-old. Suddenly, within an hour of hitting that milestone, the system pumps out the grand theory of physics that unifies general relativity and quantum mechanics, something no human has been able to definitively do. 90 minutes after that, the AI has become an ASI, 170,000 times more intelligent than a human.

Superintelligence of that magnitude is not something we can remotely grasp, any more than a bumblebee can wrap its head around Keynesian Economics. In our world, smart means a 130 IQ and stupid means an 85 IQ we dont have a word for an IQ of 12,952.

What we do know is that humans utter dominance on this Earth suggests a clear rule: with intelligence comes power. Which means an ASI, when we create it, will be the most powerful being in the history of life on Earth, and all living things, including humans, will be entirely at its whim and this might happen in the next few decades.

NASA developing mini-nuclear power plants for deep space exploration – Blasting News

Posted: at 8:29 am

For most of its history, NASA has used three types of power generation technologies to provide energy to its spacecraft. These technologies include solar panels, RTGs, which use the decay of plutonium fuel to provide heat to generate electricity, and hydrogen fuel cells, which convert hydrogen and oxygen into electricity and water using a catalyst. Now, according to NBC, the space agency is looking at nuclear fission to provide power for future spacecraft and surface bases on the moon and Mars.

Back in the 1960s, when the money was flowing thanks to the Apollo program, NASA delved heavily into space nuclear power.

The first and only #Nuclear Power Plant the space agency launched into space was called "SNAP-10A", which generated half a kilowatt of electricity for a month and a half in 1965 before succumbing to equipment failure. NASA also contemplated much larger nuclear plants that would power rockets that would send men to Mars. However, nuclear power in space went by the wayside when the post-Apollo drawdown occurred in the 1970s.

If NASA is going to operate on the moon or Mars, it is going to need sources of power that are not going to be dependent on the sun, like solar panels, or the decay of plutonium, which diminishes power generation over time, like RTGs. The space agency has started a new program called "Kilopower," which envisions small-scale nuclear fission plants to power lunar bases or Mars habitats.

These mini-generators will produce about 10 kilowatts of electricity each, far less than the hundreds of megawatts that a typical Earth-based nuclear power plant produces. The idea is that as many of these mini-plants will be hooked up to a lunar base as needed to provide power for heat, lighting, and other needs.

Like conventional nuclear power plants, these mini-generators work by splitting the fissionable material to generate heat which turns engines that create electricity. NASA estimates that a Mars expedition will need 40 kilowatts of electricity, enough to power eight suburban houses to operate. The generators can be launched cold and will only create radiation once they are hooked up and switched on.

A prototype of Kilopower that can generate a kilowatt of electricity is due to be tested in 2018. If the test is successful, the next step would probably be a full-scale generator attached to a probe, say to the inside of the permanently dark Shackleton crater on the moon. #Deep Space Exploration

Continue reading here:

NASA developing mini-nuclear power plants for deep space exploration - Blasting News

Posted in Space Exploration | Comments Off

Get into a trance with nature’s sounds – The New Indian Express

Posted: at 8:26 am

CHENNAI : Trance music came to India in the 90s and has been a sensation since then. Although psychedelic trance, a sub-genre of trance music, has been making its way to the hearts of young people, there continues to be misconceptions and myths about it. DJ Sandeep Sharma, who was in the city recently to play his project White Wizard, tells more about this genre of music.

When I started in 1997, I was playing a lot of electronic music and used to listen to a lot of other people who played psychedelic trance music. And soon, I started researching more on it, and before I knew it, I was playing it too he smiles.

Sandeep, who has played across the country and also abroad, says this is his second time in Chennai. I have met a lot of people from Chennai when I play in Goa. The response last time was great too, and that makes me really happy. I learn a lot from all my listeners, he adds.

White Wizard is a night-time psychedelic trance music project that is inspired from a lot of organic sounds of the forests and nature with some percussion and groove-ridden baseline. I am from Dalhousie in Himachal Pradesh and have a great connect with nature. My music too is inspired from the sounds of nature. It is organic and I want to be able to connect with my listeners that way. It is a way of opening your mind and becoming conscious of yourself and your surroundings, he says.

Sandeeps passion for music drove him to pursue a career in it. Music is really close to my heart, and honestly, every day is a learning experience for me. I am always looking at evolving and expanding as much as I can.

Daily Archives: July 3, 2017

Rogers: Focus on your inner game for outer-game impact – The Ledger

Forget Flying Cars, the Future Is Driving Drones – Singularity Hub

Entering Heaven alive – Wikipedia

Ascension Now

Word on the Street: With Bill Brady’s ascension, central Illinois picks up more clout – Peoria Journal Star

St. Elizabeth clinic for the uninsured gets additional space at Ascension Parish health unit – The Advocate

Spanish Civil War victim’s 91-year-old daughter finally buries her father – AOL

The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence | Inverse

NASA developing mini-nuclear power plants for deep space exploration – Blasting News

Get into a trance with nature’s sounds – The New Indian Express

The Prometheus League

Breaking News and Updates

Prometheism

Forbidden Fruit

The Evolutionary Perspective

Transtopia Menu

Library Updates

Library Books

Future Euvolution

Lucid Dreams from Childhood

Genetic Revolution

Speciation + Self-Directed Evolution