Category Archives: Transhuman News

David Houle| Sarasota Herald-Tribune

My previous column titledDark Winterwas my suggestion that we will have a dark winter ahead primarily due to the COVID-19 pandemic.The only thing I got wrong was thinking that America might top out at 135,000 new cases a day.Well, I am writing this on Dec. 7 and we have already hit 200,000 as a daily new case load, so I was off by 40%.This, of course, only makes the winter darker.

Americas Vision Deficit was about how, until recently, Americans came together to face common enemies, whether it was the Axis Powers in WWII or the Soviet Union in the race to the moon and the Cold War.

Remember 9/11/01?Of course you do!That was when 3,000 died in one day at the hands of Islamic terrorists, when several days later President Bush climbed the rubble of the World Trade Center, grabbed a megaphone and in just a matter of minutes united us against those that had attacked us and killed our fellow Americans.

If you were like me, you bought and proudly wore an FDNY hat for several years after that.We honored our heroes who went toward the towers.Today we honor our front-line heroes who are overwhelmed at all the hospitals dealing with virus deaths every day, often every hour.Close to 2,000 of them have died from the virus, often working with less than adequate PPE. We honor them by saying they are heroes.

Many of us, however, do not honor them. Every single front line health worker I have heard interviewed have all said the same thing: please help us, wear a mask and follow health guidelines.With these pleas from weeping, exhausted heroes, I just cant understand why so many people will not wear masks.

In one day, there were 3,000 deaths of Americans and we all were changed by it, and our sense of being Americans under attack seemed to unite us.Last week, three days had almost the same number of dead Americans as 9/11: 2,777, 2,802 and 2,669. In the first five days of December, 13,289 Americans died from the COVID-19 virus, or more than four times the death toll of 9/11.

After 9/11, and up to this day, we have tolerated hours of waiting to go through TSA security lines.We unpack our liquids, take off our shoes and belts, empty our pockets and walk through a scanner.Often, we have to be frisked.This is much more personally intrusive, much more time consuming and yet we do it.The obvious reason for this difference is that none of us could fly if we didnt go through TSA security, so we tolerate it.Yet many chose to not wear masks as it is an invasion of freedom.Well, for those of you who dont wear masks, think about TSA lines.If you accept the government rule that you cant fly without going through security, why would you resist a government mandate to wear masks?None of us want a terrorist on our plane.None of us want to get COVID-19.

We are under attack and yet we argue about masks.While our front-line workers are crying and pleading with us to wear masks and follow the health scientists, we argue amongst ourselves about mask wearing.What has happened to us these last few years?Yes, you can say President Trump as he doesnt wear a mask and actually has ridiculed those that wear them.But that is an easy cop-out as we all have the freedom of choice, unless of course you need a politician to control how you act.How we as Americans stay divided andignore those front-line workersis simply beyond me.The only real conclusion is that millions of Americans have chosen to be selfish and opinionated to a degree that we no longer can come together to fight the enemy.

Back to todays date of Dec. 7, the 79th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.That day changed history.Within days we were in a declared war and within weeks tensof thousands had signed up to fight the enemy.Any idea how many Americans died that day? 2,403.That means that three days last week more people died in a day thandied at Pearl Harbor.

We are all caught up in our opinions.We dont honor our health and front-line workers. We moan about our freedom to not wear a mask.If we had been so selfish, we wouldnt have won WWII, as the home front, the factory floors of Detroit, and unprecedented rationing were big parts of being the victor.

So here is what we know to be true as of this writing:

Back to the premise at the top of the column:A unique opportunity to shape our future. If we want to have fewer deaths than we sustained in WWII 420,000, over four years we can wear masks, social distanceand havea commitment to our neighbors, the elderly, the infirm and our frontline health care workers.If we want to keep Florida as a place where people can feel safe to visit during season, we can all do what is needed and what is right,and do it now.

Or we can decide to act selfishly and dismiss science, in ways that the Greatest Generation should find appalling.We can bond and come together in a singular way to lessen death, suffering and economic loss … and feel good about it.Or we can refuse to fight with the tools we know can help us win this battle against an invisible and deathly enemy.

What our collective future for the next six months will be is up to us. We can jointogether for the common good, for saving lives, for a faster economic recovery, or we can actselfishly and make the road ahead longer and more deadly.

What are you going to do?

Sarasota resident David Houle is a globally recognized futurist. He has given speeches on six continents, written seven books and is futurist in residence at the Ringling College of Art + Design. His website is davidhoule.com. Email him at david@davidhoule.com.

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FUTURIST: Our choices can save lives over the next six months

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.

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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.

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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]

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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

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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

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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.

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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."

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Creator of Twin Peaks and Velvet Taco gets new CEO, new identity, new focus - Restaurant Business Online