Tecnopolis.eu

Enjoy the speech (especially the final part) of one of the most visionary mind of the past century about problems which we wrongly consider as belonging to the past (cold war, self-distruction, etc..).  Ladies and gentlemen: Isaac Asimov !

I think this video, particularly the final part, very well fits the spirit of Tecnopolis. It is curious that Asimov, the father of robotics and an advocate of technocracy, has been wrongly perceived as representative of cold “iperrationalism”, while as you can see he was endorsing “humanism” and he was himself “humanist” like true technocrats are.

Take one of his most famous sentence (I put it on my master thesis and I am going to do it again for the phd..)

“I do not fear computer, I fear the lack of them”"

You may be surprised or disagree, but I think, this sentence has a profound sense of humanity.

AZ

Popularity: 13% [?]

at least for me .. and for at least 2 reasons:

1.  number of medals pro population (weighting gold > silver > bronze). Here the table

2.  number of world records pro million of inhabitants (ok, I didn’t calculate it for each country, but I am pretty sure no country performed better then Jamaica: 3 world records and 2.8 Mil people - for comparison Australia: 7 WR and 21 Mil people)

One should also consider the kind of gold medals and world records Jamaica scored. (Athletics 100m+200m+4*100m, which are among the top competitive discipline at the olympic games)

Ok, Athletics is only a part of the Olympic Games, and I don’t want to say Athletics is more important than other sports, but how to say.. I am so happy for Jamaica!

AZ

Popularity: 22% [?]

Bolt belongs to an exotic group of  high energy human particles, the so called BU -”Black Ãœbermenschen”. There are some in the Universe, but they are very difficult to find, of course.

video via Faniq.com

full coverage by ZDF (better quality, german commentary)

Popularity: 18% [?]

This guy really knows what counts in life: his “pasta & pizza” based diet seems to be the secret behind the 8 gold medals in Beijing…

from the Wall Street Journal Health Blog:

Lunch: One pound of enriched pasta. Two large ham and cheese sandwiches with mayo on white bread. Energy drinks packing 1,000 calories.

Dinner: One pound of pasta. An entire pizza. More energy drinks.

PS: 1 pound ~ 0.5 Kg

Then he should devote at least one medal to Italy .. or pay some royalties to italian pasta manufactures (I suppose he only eat original pasta) or make some donations to the city of Naples.. (–> history of pizza )

[thanks to Ed for the tip]

Popularity: 15% [?]

We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being. The notion that one can begin anything at all from scratch, free from the past, or unindebted to others, could not conceivably be more wrong.

K.Popper, 1973

Popularity: 7% [?]

here is the video (audio is crap)

AZ

Popularity: 10% [?]

This Saturday we are especting a tremendously exciting 100m final at the Olympic Games in Beijing. [if you already look suspicious and wanna discuss about doping, please refer to the previous thread]. Look at this video, it’s stirring.

Read the Rest of ‘fastest than ever ?’

Popularity: 12% [?]

I know, this could hurt some of you.

Olympic games are started, plenty of records have been scored (especially in the swimming pool) and most of the discussions I have now with people are about doping and “technologization” of performance.

Should we enjoy a world record or should we blame it?

please read this article from NYT, entitled “Let the Games Be Doped”.

Read the Rest of ‘changing perspective’

Popularity: 8% [?]

the opening ceremony of the olympics games in Beijing  was really beautiful. It radiated the image of a highly developed and refined civilization, with a high sense of beauty, history and progress.

Here: remembering the discovery of mobile-type printing

(Photo credit: Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)

Hopefully China will develop soon a comparable level of  human rights too.

Popularity: 9% [?]

a collection of amazing pictures of the LHC has been put on the web from The Big Picture - Boston.com

Accelerating hadrons never looked so beautiful..

src: (Maximilien Brice, © CERN)

LHC: info from WIkipedia

A cool video explaining LHC in a “rap” way (tip from Dorigo’s blog)

about “the end of the world” LHC related issue you can google plenty of posts, I found this (in italian) from Leonardo’s blog.

Popularity: 10% [?]