Richard Eskow Richard (RJ) Eskow is a consultant and writer who has worked as a Fortune 500 executive, a software designer, a professional rock musician. He’s been a consultant in health policy, technology, and medical issues for public and private clients, domestically and in over 20 foreign countries. Richard has conducted interviews with politicians such as John Kerry and Russ Feingold, musicians like Richard Thompson and Billy Joe Shaver, and figures in the worlds of religion and science. He is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and is an occasional co-host for “The Young Turks” radio show, despite being neither Turkish nor particularly young. Email: [email protected]
This chart's been making the rounds lately everywhere, from top political bloggers to financial gadflies to music industry maven Bob Lefsetz. It's gone viral, crossed over, become a smash … in other words, it's done everything that records don't do anymore. (Except maybe Cee Lo's, which is retro in every good possible way.) This chart's…
Can nonexistence be a saleable commodity? Can the free market establish its price? Two stories for your consideration: A public bid to dismantle a rock and roll band, and a Beverly Hills company that will invest in your divorce. Breakup checks An annoyed guy in Seattle tried to raise $10 million, to be given to…
I saw this on Twitter a while back, posted by someone who was attending the Wolfram Data Summit: “Data future vision: you're at a red light and can pay for it to go green.” Like a fragment from some lost Sumerian tablet, this cryptic comment is all we have. But it's enough. Paying for a…
Let's get this one out of the way first: Why is Sarah Palin upset about anything that happens in New York City? She’s already made it clear that she doesn’t consider New York part of the “real America.” So why does she care what happens there? Sensitivity question #1 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was…
I've been named an “Affiliate Scholar” at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, so I thought I'd think about where I fit in the Humanist/Transhumanist matrix. Then I thought I'd draw a Venn diagram or two. Somewhere along the line we've developed the habit of announcing that, thanks to new technology, we're forever on…
1 The format: David Shields’ Reality Hunger is written as a series of short, numbered paragraphs. The content: Reality Hunger, according to the flyleaf, “is a rigorous and radical attempt to reframe how we think about ‘truthiness,’ literary license, quotation, appropriation.’ That means mashups, sampling, the whole ‘meta’ thing. Get it? 2 The book's numbered-paragraph…
The present is where the future comes to die, or more accurately, where an infinite array of possible futures all collapse into one. We live in a present where artificial intelligence hasn't been invented, despite a quarter century of optimistic predictions. John Horgan in Scientific American suggests we're a long way from developing it, despite…
15And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. 16And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive…
Google recently introduced Google Voice, which routes calls among different lines, performs other screening and call handling tasks, and automatically generates a written record of each phone message using voice transcription software. I've had it for months. I'm not going to complain about the transcription software's high error rates, although lots of people do. It's…
Occasionally an idea will come to mind that's claimed quickly and eloquently by someone else before you have a chance to execute it. When Michael Jackson died I began dabbling with the subject of Jackson as Transhumanist, but my piece was only half-written when RU Sirius pretty much nailed the topic. Nick Gillespie at Reason…
“Funny how naughty dentists always make that one mistake, isn't it?” A recent article and broadcast on National Public Radio (US) described the proliferation of specialized police forces in the state of Texas, including one that was operated by the State Board of Dental Examiners. No true Monty Python fan could read that report without…
Jim Carroll's recent death inspired as many eulogies and elegies as might be expected from the passing of a poet, rocker, and memorist, especially one whose reputation is so bound to a specific place (New York City) and time (the late 1970's and early 1980's). My friend Michael Lally, also an urban Catholic poet of…
Is the Baroness right? Susan Greenfield, the Baroness in question, says that “happy people” are “not the people who build civilizations.” Dr. Greenfield is Fullerian Professor of Physiology and Comparative Anatomy at Oxford University, and she made the remarks in response to questions posed by Discover Magazine. Here's the context: Isn't it desirable to bioengineer…
When it comes to “memetics,” which some say is the new science of studying “memes,” consider me a skeptic. Doesn't a science need to have a clearly defined subject and verifiable findings? At this point the “meme” concept seems more or less to be where the “artificial intelligence” idea was twenty years ago: That is,…
H. G. Wells lobbied widely in the 1920's and 30's for something he called a “World Brain,” a continuously updated Global Encyclopedia containing the sum total of human knowledge. He described it with terms we might call “cybernetic” now, although Norbert Wiener wouldn't write a book with that name for more than a decade. Did…
From the indispensable psychology and neuroscience blog Mind Hacks, some information on Christian Nold and his “emotional cartography.” Writes Nold: Bio Mapping is a community mapping project … In the context of regular, local workshops and consulltations (s9c), participants are wired up with an innovative device which records the wearer's Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), which…
Heidi Newfield's been getting a lot of press lately as the result of her five nominations for the Country Music Association awards. She's the former singer in a successful country band, Trick Pony. Now she's getting a lot of airplay for her new single “Johnny and June” (referring to Cash and Carter, respectively). She's a…
You know, I don't like asteroids. I don't know why. I just don't like them. The International Commission On Planetary Dangers was formed in the year 2011 to protect Earth from asteroids, comets, and other space objects. One such object created a 15 megaton explosion when it hit the remote Tunguska region of Russia in…
Writers at this site have discussed the “Uncanny Valley” before. Put simply, it's that point along the curve from “clearly artificial” to “almost lifelike” at which most people get … well, creeped out. While the term is new (a Japanese roboticist coined it in 1970), the idea may be as old as myth: Ugly things…
Nothing kills the enjoyment of music for some people faster than trying to analyze it. But I’m obsessed with solving the mystery of Arthur Alexander. His body of work is small. His songs are musically and lyrically simple, even simplistic. Almost nobody but the most dedicated music lovers remember his name today. Yet he was…