Economist Donald Boudreaux showed the students a department store catalog from 1958 to underscore how the free market, while contributing to income inequality, also dramatically improved the lives of the poor: "The typical American worker back then had to work 30 hours to buy this vacuum cleaner. Today, a worker has to work only six hours to buy a much better vacuum cleaner. And that's true for clothing, food, all sorts of things."

That's how free markets work: quietly, gradually improving things. That doesn't always appeal to impatient young people or to radical old people who fancy themselves social engineers who should shape the world.

Such social engineering is revered on campuses. A student from Quebec complained that economists about whom his fellow students learn are "Keynesians, who believe that breaking windows is good for the economy, or neoclassicals, who believe in unrealistic assumptions like perfect competition and perfect information."

If there were a part of America for which the American students at this conference felt a special pride, it was the Constitution. "The Constitution of the United States is a promise about how government power will be used," Timothy Sandefur, author of The Conscience of the Constitution, told them. "A promise was left to us by a generation who lived under tyrannical government and decided they needed a framework that would preserve the blessings of liberty."

These students appreciated that inheritance, although they said the Constitution is rarely discussed at their schools. They surprised me by knowing the correct answer to my question: How often is the word "democracy" used in the Constitution?

Answer: never. The founders understood that democracy may bring mob rule tyranny of a majority. So the Constitution focuses on restricting government to secure individual liberty.

If anything, these students were stauncher in their defense of liberty than the Founders.

Kelly Kidwell, a sophomore from Tulane University, said, "Regardless of what its intent was, we still have the [big] government that we have now so the Constitution has either provided for that government, or failed to prevent it."

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Students for Liberty conference shows a young approach to libertarianism

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Crysis 2 Let`s Play-Post Human Warrior difficulty-Without using Armor and Cloak-#7 – Video

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Crysis 2 Let`s Play-Post Human Warrior difficulty-Without using Armor and Cloak-#7
Crysis 2 von Crytek -- Herausgeber : Electronic Arts -- Musik : Hans Zimmer.

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Sierra Leone: Mining Boom Brings Rights Abuses

Posted: at 7:43 pm

Photo: Human Rights Watch

Children play on plots of land to house families who were relocated to make room for mining.

Freetown The government of Sierra Leone and a mining company that is the country's largest private employer have undermined villagers' access to food and prevented workers from challenging abusive practices, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The government should ensure that economic development projects in the booming post conflict nation do not come at the expense of the human rights of local populations.

The 96-page report, "Whose Development?: Human Rights Abuses in Sierra Leone's Mining Boom," documents how the government and London-based African Minerals Limited forcibly relocated hundreds of families from verdant slopes to a flat, arid area in Tonkolili District. As a result, residents lost their ability to cultivate crops and engage in income generating activities that once sustained them. Police carried out a bloody crackdown in the town of Bumbuna in April 2012 to quell a protest by workers who went on strike after being barred from forming a union of their own choosing.

"With investors flocking to Sierra Leone, the government has an opportunity to promote development for its desperately poor population," said Rona Peligal, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. "But the African Minerals Limited case shows that, unless the government puts a stop to mining operation abuses, the people who most need to benefit from development will be excluded from it."

Human Rights Watch interviewed close to 100 people in Sierra Leone for the report, and researched the operations of African Minerals Limited over an 18-month period, beginning in July 2012. Human Rights Watch met with the company's leadership in February 2013, and corresponded with these directors until their departure from the firm in August. In January 2014, Human Rights Watch wrote to the company's new management to update findings and request information, but has received no reply.

Sierra Leone is an impoverished West African country still recovering from a catastrophic civil war that ended in 2002. African Minerals Limited, which began mining diamonds in Sierra Leone in 1996, built its Tonkolili mine on what is regarded as one of the largest deposits of magnetite in Africa, a type of iron ore. The company exports the ore to steelmakers in China.

The Sierra Leonean government, while promoting the company's operations as essential to Sierra Leone's economic development, permitted corporate actions that violated the rights of Tonkolili's residents, Human Rights Watch found. For example, the government failed to provide adequate oversight of the company's consultations with local communities or respond to repeated complaints about the forced relocation of residents. Both the government and the company misled villagers about what would happen once they were moved to the new site.

"The company went to the paramount chief, and the paramount chief told us what to do. We asked so many questions. What they told us they would do, they have not done.... It was a trap," one village elder told Human Rights Watch. "They said, 'It will be paradise for you,' but it's completely different."

The government also did not take action in response to apparent African Minerals Limited violations of Sierra Leone labor laws concerning employment, termination, and benefits for its workers. The government's narrow reading of national labor law as well as political wrangling denied the company's workers the ability to form a union of their choosing, rather than belong to an established union that the workers regarded as ineffectual.

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RETRO FUTURIST avec Mr LIBERTY au CLUB 40 – Video

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RETRO FUTURIST avec Mr LIBERTY au CLUB 40

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Business as usual is dead: a short summary by Futurist Speaker Gerd Leonhard – Video

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Business as usual is dead: a short summary by Futurist Speaker Gerd Leonhard
Thanks for stopping by! Gerd Leonhard Futurist, Author and Keynote Speaker Basel / Switzerland http://www.futuristgerd.com Please note: audio-only versions o...

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Futurist Ray Kurzweil Believes Spike Jonzes Her Could Be a Reality by 2029

Posted: at 7:43 pm

Posted on Wednesday, February 19th, 2014 by Angie Han

If Spike Jonzes Her left you yearning for a virtual Scarlett Johansson of your very own, we have some good news. According to futurist Ray Kurzweil, who spends a lot of time pondering such things, a Samantha-like A.I. could be available as early as 2029.Other aspects of the movie, like the foul-mouthed video game character, could be available even sooner, around 2020.

Kurzweil made his predictions in his review of the sci-fi romance, which he regarded as more realistic than other cinematic depictions of A.I. Still, he had a few bones to pick with Jonzes movie, including its ending. Find out why after the jump.

The scientist was quite taken withHer as a movie, praising its well-crafted script, excellent directing, and outstanding performances. But any film critic couldve told you that.Where Kurzweils writeup gets interesting is when he delves into the science of it all, and puts it alongsideThe Matrix andBeing John Malkovich as a realistic vision of a future technology.

I would place some of the elements in Jonzes depiction at around 2020, give or take a couple of years, such as the diffident and insulting videogame character he interacts with, and the pin-sized cameras that one can place like a freckle on ones face. Other elements seem more like 2014, such as the flat-panel displays, notebooks and mobile devices.

He continues, Samantha herself I would place at 2029, when the leap to human-level AI would be reasonably believable. But he didnt find everything about Jonzes movie to be completely believable.

As I mentioned, a lot of the dramatic tension is provided by the fact that Theodores love interest does not have a body. But this is an unrealistic notion. It would be technically trivial in the future to provide her a virtual visual presence to match her virtual auditory presence, using, lens-mounted displays, for example, that display images onto Theodores retinas.

Additionally, in Kurzweils view, the ending doesnt make much sense. (Spoilers follow from here on out.) Not only does Samantha evolve much more quickly than Kurzweil thinks is plausible, theres really no need for her and the other A.I.s to leave the humans behind.

If they are progressing in this way, it means that they can continue their relationships with the unenhanced humans using an increasingly small portion of their cognitive ability, he points out.

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Futurist Ray Kurzweil Believes Spike Jonzes Her Could Be a Reality by 2029

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SAE International Announces Wednesday and Thursday Keynote Speakers for 2014 World Congress

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Warrendale, PA (PRWEB) February 19, 2014

An industry futurist and a trend-setting publisher will serve as keynote speakers during the SAE 2014 World Congress & Exhibition, which will be held April 8-10 at Cobo Center in Detroit, Mich.

Hyundai will serve as Host Company, and Tier One Strategic Partner for the event is Delphi. With a theme of Creating New Possibilities, the SAE 2014 World Congress assembles the best talent in the automotive industry; experts, management teams, engineers, and executives alike gather to collaborate and address these current challenges, celebrate evolution and achievement over the last 100+ years, and promote the multitude of opportunities fundamental for a successful future.

Wed., April 9, 2014 AVL Technology Leadership Center 9:00- 9:45 a.m.

Dr. Peter Phelps, Senior Research/Futurist with the Institute for Mobility Research, BMW Group, will present "Mobility: Future Market, or End of Growth?"

For more than a century, intercity rail, public transport and the mass production of cars has strongly supported economic growth and continuously rising sub-urbanization. Transportation has pushed industrial development all around the world. Mobility has become a necessity to handle everyday life. Yet, while developing countries have just recently entered the period of fast mobility growth, in many industrialized countries one can find evidence for stagnating passenger travel, especially driven by changing car usage. Next to economic factors, explanations point to demographic development or increasing multi-modal mobility patterns of young adults.

What does this mean for the future? Must industrialized countries like the US or Germany cope with stagnating mobility development? Which mobility path will subsequent developing countries (such as BRIC - Brazil, Russia, India, China) follow in the future? Based on international research initiated by the Institute for Mobility Research (ifmo), this keynote address will answer the above questions and conclude new possibilities for the future mobility market.

Thursday, April 10, 2014 AVL Technology Leadership Center 9:00 a.m. - 9:45 a.m. Myles Kovacs, President/Co-Founder, DUB Magazine

Kovacs is a leading voice of the influential, trend-setting youth segment. He connects with young consumers through America's influencers-entertainers, media, hot- product designers and mainstream corporations-and through his cornerstone asset, DUB magazine.

Kovacs has propelled DUB Publishing Inc. and its family of companies into an annual $50 million-plus business. He has partnered with such organizations as Best Buy, Chrysler, Energizer, General Motors, Ford, Microsoft, Mobil 1, NASCAR, Procter & Gamble and Wal-Mart, targeting the youth market, and is now the executive producer of two new TV series "The DUB Magazine Project" on MTV2 and "DUB Latino" on mun2. Newsweek named Kovacs one of the nation's "10 Big Thinkers for Big Business in the 21st Century."

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2001: A Space Odyssey [1968] scene — Dr. Heywood Floyd Aboard the International Space Station – Video

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2001: A Space Odyssey [1968] scene -- Dr. Heywood Floyd Aboard the International Space Station
En route to TMA-1, Dr. Heywood Floyd meets Dr. Andre Smyslov, a Russian scientist who wishes to discover the real goings-on in the vicinity of US-occupied Cl...

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Category Archives: Transhuman News

Ron Paul Transparency Is The First Step Towards Reforming – Video

Libertarianism and liberation, part 2 – Video

Students for Liberty conference shows a young approach to libertarianism

Crysis 2 Let`s Play-Post Human Warrior difficulty-Without using Armor and Cloak-#7 – Video

Sierra Leone: Mining Boom Brings Rights Abuses

RETRO FUTURIST avec Mr LIBERTY au CLUB 40 – Video

Business as usual is dead: a short summary by Futurist Speaker Gerd Leonhard – Video

Futurist Ray Kurzweil Believes Spike Jonzes Her Could Be a Reality by 2029

SAE International Announces Wednesday and Thursday Keynote Speakers for 2014 World Congress

2001: A Space Odyssey [1968] scene — Dr. Heywood Floyd Aboard the International Space Station – Video

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