Category Archives: Futurist

The same day he stepped down as chairman of the Colorado Republican Committee, Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) announced his vaccination decision on Fox Business.

Im an American and I have the freedom to decide if Im going to take a vaccine or not, and in this case I am not going to take the vaccine, Buck told Neil Cavuto, The Washington Post reported.

When pressed, Buck pushed a conspiracy theory that the vaccine might be more dangerous than coronavirus.

Im more concerned about the safety of the vaccine than I am the side effects of the disease, Buck said. Im a healthy person. I think most Americans are healthy. I think what we should do is focus on the at-risk populations but I am not going to take a vaccine.

The state of Colorado has attributed 3,427 deaths to COVID-19.

CONTINUE READING Show less

More here:
Ford futurist: 2020 brought more stress than ever but ...

Photo: Humans and hominids, by Carolyn WIlczynski, CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.

The classic science fiction movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, which I referred to here yesterday, doesnt begin in space but in the prehistoric past, with a little tribe of pre-human hominids. The opening scene shows an African landscape where water is scarce. The words appear on screen, The Dawn of Man.

This little ape-like tribe lacks the mental capacity even to use animal bones as weapons, and theyve been driven from their watering hole by another little tribe. The next day, a strange, tall black monolith appears in their midst, shaped roughly like a domino, but perfectly smooth and geometrical. It emits a strange noise. The ape-like creatures draw near, terrified but also fascinated. Eventually one of them touches the monolith. His fellow tribesmen follow suit.

A bit later our protagonist is toying with some animal bones and thinking. Suddenly, he gets an idea. He picks up one of the longer bones and tentatively strikes the ground with it. He grows a little bolder. He tries striking some of the other bones. He grows more excited, thrilled by the idea now dawning on him: the bone can be used as a tool... as a weapon. He raises his arm and brings the bone crashing down on an animal skull, which smashes to bits.

The implication is clear: the alien monolith has somehow bequeathed to him and his little tribe a sudden quantum leap in brain power. In the next scene they use the animal bones to drive away the tribe that earlier drove them away from their watering hole. When the victory is complete and one of the enemy hominids lies battered and motionless at their feet, our protagonist tosses the bone up into the air in ecstatic triumph.

At this point the film drops into slow motion and, as the bone spins through the air, the scene switches to a scene in space, with the bone suddenly replaced by another human tool of a similar shape, though far larger: a space vessel in the near future of the modern age.

These opening minutes of the film convey several themes. Most obviously, they reinforce the Darwinian idea that humans descended from ape-like ancestors. There is also here the central premise of Robert Ardreys Territorial Imperative man as a violent territorial animal, programmed by millions of years of evolution to kill and conquer.

And lastly, the film provides an explanation, if only fictional, for the great gap between apes and humans: an alien monolith came down and, upon being touched, bequeathed our ancient ancestors with a major brain boost, setting us on a trajectory stretching from primitive bone tools to the glories of space travel.

Both in this opening scene and later in the story, the film epitomizes a futurist ET myth that Michael Keas excavates and describes in his excellent recent book Unbelievable: 7 Myths About the History and Future of Science and Religion.

To grasp what Keas means by a futurist ET myth, some additional background is helpful. Darwinian materialism, taken at face value, strips life and the world of higher meaning and purpose. (H.G. Wells deserves credit for facing those implications in The Time Machine.) But many who accept Darwinism dont want to go there. One escape hatch is the idea of humanity rescued and exalted by a race of wise and advanced extra-terrestrials a substitute god to replace the God of the Bible Darwin is said to have killed with his theory of evolution.

This is the ET myth that Kubrick reenacts in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Its the artist whose vision of reality has been impoverished by Darwinism grasping for meaning and purpose in a mirage.

Darwinism is partly responsible for the slide into ugliness and formlessness in the arts. It is also a key contributor to the postmodern turn toward a hermeneutics of relativism and nihilism, championed in the deconstructionist criticism of thinkers such as Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida. But thats an essay for another time.

Here, suffice to say that Darwinian materialisms impoverishing effect on literature is so much of a problem that my alma mater, a Christian university in Texas, published an anthology of literary works that are not nihilistic and materialistic, just to provide balance for the typical literary anthologies assigned to students in freshman and sophomore English.

Its called Shadow and Light: Literature and the Life of Faith. It includes short stories and poems from various great authors who maintained faith in a cosmos that is more than matter John Milton, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Flannery OConnor, Isaac Bashevis Singer, John Updike, and various others.

Editors note: This essay originally appeared inSalvoMagazine as Art for Nothing and is republished here with permission.

See more here:
Darwinism, Storytelling, and the Futurist ET Myth - Discovery Institute

Driving Competition

In a matter of just two to three years, electric cars are on track to become cheaper than their gasoline-powered alternatives, according to a new report by energy research firm BloombergNEF.

According to the report, the market average for batteries will hit just $101 per kWh by 2023. Analysts have long predicted that for electric vehicles to match the price of gas ones, the cost would have to meet a $100 per kWh threshold and federal and state tax credits could end up pushing it below that figure, as Car and Driver notes.

The reason why the price of energy storage is such an importantautomotive indicator is because the battery pack accounts for roughly a quarter of an EVs total cost, making it the number one determinant of price.

It could be the electric car industrys watershed moment: once dipping below the price of gasoline-powered engines, electric vehicles will look far more attractive to far more consumers.

In other parts of the world, that threshold has already been breached. For instance, the report notes that battery packs for e-buses in China have already been sold at less than $100 per kWh.

Prices of electric cars have already dropped considerably this year due to increasing order sizes, growth in [battery electric vehicle] sales and the introduction of new pack designs, according to the report. New technologies and falling manufacturing costs,it predicts, could drive prices down even further.

Theres also the chance that next-generation solid-state batteries could be manufactured at 40% of the cost of current lithium-ion batteries, according to the report, when produced at scale.

The report also predicts that average prices of battery packs could plunge to just $58 per kWh by 2030.

READ MORE: Battery Pack Prices Cited Below $100/kWh for the First Time in 2020, While Market Average Sits at $137/kWh [BloombergNEF]

Read the rest here:
Report: Electric Cars Could Be Cheaper Than Gas Ones in Just 2 Years - Futurism

Making Moves

SpaceX may be getting ready to push its next Starship prototype onto the launch pad.

According to the latest highway closures in Cameron County, Texas, where SpaceXs test facility is located, the companys SN9 prototype could be headed to the pad as early as Thursday, as spotted by Ars Technica senior space editor Eric Berger.

The new road closures are set for December 17 and 18 from 8 am to 5 pm Texas time. Starship SN9 and the large crane could head to the launch site during these windows, suggested NASASpaceFlight reporter Michael Baylor in a tweet.

The news comes after the Elon Musk-led company pulled off a dramatic first high-altitude test flight involving the prototypes predecessor SN8,back on December 9. While most of the flight seemed to have gone off without a hitch, the 165-foot structure made a harder-than-planned landing, exploding in a massive fireball.

While SpaceX has made great progress on its next prototype, called SN9, the updated rocket did experience a small setback, seemingly slouching against the interior walls of the assembly hall where it was stored late last week.

The resulting damage appears to be minimal. SN9 was promptly picked back up again by a giant crane over the weekend.

More on SN9: SpaceXs Next Starship Prototype Appears to Have Fallen Over

Continued here:
SpaceX's Next Starship Prototype Could be Headed to Launch Pad on Thursday - Futurism

Collab?

NASA just struck a historic deal with the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) that will entail, for the first time in history, a non-US astronaut orbiting the Moon.

The agreement says that the CSA will help NASA with its upcoming Artemis Moon missions in exchange for a seat on some of the flights, according to Space.com. Not only is the CSAs support good news for the Artemis missions specifically, but its a major international development in the future of crewed space exploration.

The CSA agreed to provide robots and technical support for upcoming Artemis missions. In exchange, Space.com reports that a Canadian astronaut will be added to the crew of the Artemis 2 mission, which will test NASAs Orion spacecraft while it orbits the Earth, as well as a later mission to NASAs upcoming lunar space station, Gateway.

This will make Canada only the second country after the U.S. to have an astronaut in deep space and send the first Canadian around the Moon, Navdeep Bains, Canadas government minister of innovation, science and industry said at a Wednesday press conference, according to Space.com.

At the same press event, CSA astronaut David Saint-Jacques compared the upcoming Artemis 2 mission to 1968s Apollo 8, which served as a similar test run prior to the Moon landing in 1969.

Its a mission to test the [spacecraft] equipment and the navigation; as you can imagine, navigation from the planet will be one of the biggest challenges, he said, according to Space.com.

READ MORE: Canadian astronauts will start flying to the moon in 2023 with NASAs Artemis missions [Space.com]

More on Artemis: NASAs Moon-Bound Orion Spacecraft is Officially Fit for Flight

Read the original post:
NASA Says It Will Fly a Canadian to the Moon - Futurism

If youre scheduling a surgery and you somehow find out that the operation will land on your surgeons birthday, perhaps consider postponing.

Thats because theres a noticeable increase in patient deaths after surgeons perform an operation on their birthday, according to research published last week in the British Medical Journal. Whether its because theyre distracted by upcoming evening celebrations or just mad they have to work on their birthday, doctors lost significantly more patients after a birthday surgery than average, even more so than on holidays.

That may sound worrying as a patient, but as PsychNewsToday notes, the scientists behind the work hope that their findings will spur hospitals to give additional support to doctors working on personally-charged days now that theyve revealed what seems to be a glaring statistical oversight in healthcare.

The scientists, who hail from institutes including Harvard Medical School and the University of California, Los Angeles, studied the birthday effect by tracking how many Medicare beneficiaries died within 30 days of an emergency surgery. Of the 980,876 operations included in the study, about 2,064 happened on the doctors birthday. When the surgery was on any other day, only 5.6 percent of patients died but that number climbed to 6.9 percent, a 23 percent relative increase, for birthday surgeries.

Its possible, the scientists concede in their paper, that the birthday effect may diminish when accounting for non-emergency procedures or a larger patient demographic, but they chose to look at emergency operations because it would be less likely that the procedure was planned in advance or that a patient would have taken the time to select their doctor, factors that would have skewed the results.

Hospitals and care providers may re-evaluate how they schedule operations and support doctors during a procedure, but its not really clear what patients can do about the new finding. Still, if you do see surgeons finishing up a slice of cake, it couldnt hurt to ask a few extra questions.

See the original post:
Surgeons Who Operate on Their Birthday Appear to Kill Way More Patients - Futurism

Longtime concept creator and operations specialist Jack Gibbons has succeeded Randy DeWitt as CEO of what was formerly known as Front Burner Restaurants, part of a recast of the Texas-based multi-brand operation into a next-generation venture, FB Society.

DeWitt, the founder of Front Burner, moves up to chairman.

As part of the companys makeover, industry veteran Rae Phillips-Luther was retained to serve as CMO under a contractual arrangement.

The personnel moves are part of a shift in the companys focus, Gibbons said in an interview with Restaurant Business. Front Burner has concentrated on polished-casual concepts such as Whiskey Cake, Sixty Vines and Mexican Sugar. Our next few concepts are going to be fast casuals, said Gibbons. Plus, we see ourselves as franchising futurists. We think theres still a gaping hole in the franchise space.

The only concept that Front Burner has ever franchised is Twin Peaks, a brand it sold years ago. It now has a potential growth vehicle in Son of a Butcher, the fast-casual slider concept that it launched as a 1,500-square-foot freestanding restaurant that Front Burner opened a few weeks ago.

Another fast-casual venture, Buttercup Love Me Tenders, is scheduled to be launched in January, Gibbons said. Like Son of a Butcher, Buttercup started as a station in Front Burners Dallas food hall, Legacy Hall. That operation sports a number of other concepts that could be parlayed into a fast-casual chain, including a pasta and pizza place called The Italian Job.

Its kind of almost my playground, Gibbons said of Legacy Hall. We take chances there, we try things there.

The plan is to hatch concepts, often using Legacy Hall as the incubator, and then nurture them into something with scale. The company can then expand the brands itself or seek out partners such as private-equity firms to fuel growth, as Front Burner did with its New Age taco concept, Velvet Taco. That brand is now owned by L Catterton, with a minority stake retained by FB Society.

Gibbons and DeWitt, whove been partners since the former left Pappas Restaurants almost 13 years ago, decided to form FB Society as the result of brainstorming during the pandemic. While so many brands were forced to retract, or even shut down during the current crisis, we made a decision that Front Burner would not only survive, but emerge smarter, stronger and more cohesive, DeWitt said in a statement.

We really dreamed a little about the industry would look like, while assessing our teams, our strategy, our aspirations, said Gibbons.

The re-think yielded a plan for growth under a fresh corporate entity, FB Society. There are going to be more opportunities, Gibbons continued. There are going to be more brands.

We almost have a process today where its super creative, he continued. Randy is the futurist who tends to think about whats next. I ve always been the operational person. Weve always created concepts together.

The recast was possible, he explained, because of Front Burners strategy of bringing in proven talent to run its brands. Jeff Carcara, a veteran of casual-dining operations big (Bloomin Brands) and small (Barcelona and BarTaco), was hired at the start of the pandemic as president of Sixty Vines. Ray Risley was given responsibility for Whiskey Cake. Velvet Taco is run by longtime casual-dining and fast-casual veteran Clay Dover.

Whats really brining us success is putting leadership behind the brands, said Gibbons. Doing that gives us more freedom.

Among the ways that found time is being used is in checking out the potential of virtual concepts, he noted. Right now, a launch isnt a priority, Gibbons indicatedwe are creators of experiences. But . I never say never. Were looking at that, were studying it, were talking to our colleagues who have experience with it.

But the market and the opportunities it affords will be the driver of RBs strategy, even during an extraordinary period such as the pandemic, he says.

We really used this crisis, commented Gibbons. I dont have an incredible amount of worries."

Go here to read the rest:
Creator of Twin Peaks and Velvet Taco gets new CEO, new identity, new focus - Restaurant Business Online

With rising geopolitical concerns, record unemployment and technology advancing faster than ever, it has never been more crucial for working professionals to stay ahead of the curve.

As a futurist who has helped more than 1,000 organizations adapt to change and uncertainty, I've found that, while hard skills remain important, there are five forward-thinking and often ignored soft skills that are crucial for staying relevant and equipped for a rapidly changing workforce.

Here are the skills to master before 2021, along with free online courses that can help you build upon them:

Futurist thinking is the ability to predict events and trends, and how they might impact your industry and professional development.

While this is a skill that remarkably few people have developed, it's important to note that futuristic thinking doesn't require a Ph.D. At the very least, it's about staying abreast of potential changes and thinking outside the box.

Recommended free course: Ready, Set, Future! Introduction to Futures Thinking,Highlights: Build your understanding of what futurist thinking is, how to collect and analyze signals of change, and identify historical shifts in the past to predict new changes in the future.

(Another course I highly recommend is The Future After Covid, which has received great reviews. Please note that it does charge a $495 fee.)

Even if you're not in a managerial role, developing leadership skills has never been more important. In fact, studies show that those with such skills are more likely to get a raise, promoted, or selected to take on additional responsibilities.

It's important to note that leadership isn't just about managing a team. It's also about having the courage to do things like:

Recommended free course: What Great Leaders DoCost: FreeHighlights: In this lecture that parallels his book, "Good Boss, Bad Boss," Stanford professor Bob Sutton unpacks the best habits of beloved and effective managers, and details the worst practices of those who fail to lead.

With the emergence of artificial intelligence and machine learning, the ability to recognize, understand and manage not just your own emotions, but also those of others, has become one of the top skills employers look for.

Strong emotional intelligence skills allow us to understand and interact with our feelings in a way that helps us build quality relationships and make decisions effectively.

Recommended free course: Develop Your Emotional IntelligenceHighlights: Taking a single online course won't make you an EQ whiz overnight; it takes patience, practice and commitment. But this introductory program, which explores the components of emotional intelligence and how it can be applied at work, is a great place to start.

In a world where communication is mostly taking place on digital platforms such as Slack or Zoom, knowing how to speak clearly and interact with others is key to maintaining interpersonal relationships, successful problem-solving and managing conversations.

Keep in mind that this skill isn't just about what you say or type to one another, but it's also about active listening and being attuned to feelings.

Recommended free course: Improving Communication SkillsHighlights: Taught by award-winning Wharton professor Maurice Schweitzer, you'll build on key communication skills such as how to develop trust, be persuasive, ask thoughtful questions, engage in active listening, and choose the right medium (e.g., videoconferences, phone calls, or emails) for your messages.

According to a reportfrom the World Economic Forum that looked at the future of jobs across nine different industries in 15 of the world's largest economies, employers will soon be placing more emphasis on cognitive abilities like creativity and adaptability.

Those withcognitive flexibility skills are energized by change and adapt quickly and readily to the unknown. They enjoy experimenting with new things and are able to consider multiple concepts simultaneously.

Recommended free course: Introduction to Cognitive Psychology: An Experimental ScienceHighlights: Knowledge cannot be fully digested if the information is presented out of context. The exercises in this course will not only teach you how to understand complex concepts, but also how to apply them in different settings.

Scott Steinberg is a futurist, keynote speaker on business trends, and bestselling author of "Fast >> Forward," "Think Like a Futurist," "Make Change Work for You" and "Becoming Essential." He is also an award-winning strategic consultant and has been named by Fortune magazine as a leading expert on innovation.

Correction: This article has been updated to show that the Future After Covid course charges a $495 fee.

Don't miss:

Read this article:
These are the 5 most valuable skills to learn right now, says futuristand where to find free online courses - CNBC

Gotcha!

Scientists have long assumed that about 40 percent of the universes visible matter the kind makes up everything we can see and touch was missing, never having been detected.

Now, a team of researchers from Frances National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS) says its finally found it hidden away in the diffuse filaments ofthe gigantic, galaxy-connecting cosmic web. The research, published Friday in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, revealed the missing matter after scientists took a new look at a pile of 20-year-old data.

The filaments of gas that make upthe cosmic web are thought to connect networks of galaxies across vast voids of nothingness in the universe, according to a CNRS press release. Sometimes they also serve as a source of fresh material for nearby galaxies or black holes, making the web itself even more threadbare and faint.

The French researchers suggest that its because these cosmic web filaments are so diffuse, and the signals they give off are so weak, that they went undetected for 20 years even though all the data was in plain sight.

To find the 40 percent of all the visible matter in the universe that they contain, the CNRS researchers took a look at the filaments x-ray emissions coupled with information on 15,000 filaments physical arrangement.

Through that x-ray analysis, the team was able to confirm that the filaments contained vast amounts of previously-overlooked hot gases a huge fraction of the universes matter hiding in plain sight.

READ MORE: Has the hidden matter of the universe been discovered? [CNRS]

More on the cosmic web: Heres the First-Ever Pic of Cosmic Web Connecting All Galaxies

View original post here:
Scientists Say They've Found the Missing 40 Percent of the Universe's Matter - Futurism

According to team of scientists at the Carnegie Institution for Science, an additional planet located between Saturn and Uranus got flung out of the solar system while it was still in its infancy.

The theory goes that the Sun was once surrounded by a disk of gas and dust. Through countless collisions, planets started to form, orbiting our star at a relatively short distance.

The more massive planets then kicked off a series of gravitational interactions, causing the planets to reshuffle into their current arrangement.

To get a clearer picture of what that arrangement looked like before these interactions, the team conducted some 6,000 computer simulations.

We now know that there are thousands of planetary systems in our Milky Way galaxy alone, Carnegie postdoctoral fellow Matt Clement, lead author of a paper about the simulations published in the journal Icarus, said. But it turns out that the arrangement of planets in our own Solar System is highly unusual, so we are using models to reverse engineer and replicate its formative processes.

This is a bit like trying to figure out what happened in a car crash after the fact how fast were the cars going, in what directions, and so on, he added.

They found that the final arrangement of Uranus and Neptune, two icy planets furthest away from the Sun, was determined by both the mass of the Kuiper belt, a region of dwarf planets and planetoids in the far reaches of the solar system, and an ejected ice giant that was kicked out when the planetary system was still young.

This indicates that while our Solar System is a bit of an oddball, it wasnt always the case, Clement explained. Whats more, now that weve established the effectiveness of this model, we can use it to help us look at the formation of the terrestrial planets, including our own, and to perhaps inform our ability to look for similar systems elsewhere that could have the potential to host life.

READ MORE: Where were Jupiter and Saturn born? [Carnegie Institute for Science]

More on the solar system: Astronomers Want to Figure Out What the Hell Planet Nine Is Once and For All

Original post:
New Evidence: There Was Another Planet in the Solar System That Escaped - Futurism