Evolution – The Mind’s Big Bang

How and when the human mind emerged is the most profound question facing science today. The appearance of human sentience has transformed the landscape of our planet and has propelled evolution into realms which transcend the very limitations of genetics. What forces contributed to this breakthrough? Where might the power of the human mind and intellect ultimately lead humanity?

The human mind has allowed the human species to transcend its physical limitations and has made humankind pioneers of a whole new form of evolution which is distinctly non-biological. This new realm of evolution is Cultural Evolution. It is this new dominion of evolution that has made us the most dominant life form on this planet and has set us on a trajectory that will one day take us out amongst the stars. What then? How will the human intellect continue to evolve amyst the starry ferment?

Today join us Discovery Enterprise as we continue our year long celebration of the life and work of Charles Darwin and explore the origins of the human mind and human consciousness with the sixth installment of the landmark PBS television series “Evolution” – The Mind’s Big Bang. 

Evolution – The Mind’s Big Bang

Medicare running out of money

The story from today’s paper:

THE Australian system of free universal healthcare is set to disappear in as little as five years, prompting a radical plan for a new federal-state partnership to take control of hospitals and patient care.

It comes amid a push by the Australian Medical Association for hospital specialists to treat patients only four days a week, potentially placing further pressure on a system already hamstrung by work restrictions among emergency physicians.

In a startling warning, NSW Health director-general Debora Piccone has told The Daily Telegraph that Australia is hurtling towards a US-style user-pays system due to an ageing population and out of control costs.

“We are really on the edge of losing the universal healthcare system that this country has,” she said.

“I would have (previously) said we’d had 10 years to run. It’s now looking like we’ve got five years to run because the cost escalations are so significant and we haven’t prepared ourselves.”…

And the proposed solution? Centralised control to “reduce cost”:

Professor Piccone and Health Minister John Della Bosca are now working on a plan to pool all state and federal health funding and have it redistributed by a joint partnership between the two governments.

The $13.2 billion state hospital budget – set to grow into almost $50 billion by 2025 – would be integrated with Commonwealth funding towards Medicare, the pharmaceutical benefits scheme and aged care and jointly administered so as to slash red tape and eliminate overlap.

The NSW Labor government centralized management and amalgamated the old Area Health Services into a smaller number of much larger ones. The result more bureaucracy and poorer services. Now they want to do that on a national scale.

Moon – The New Upcoming Sci-Fi Thriller Film

Here is an exclusive clip from the upcoming sci-fi thriller film – Moon starring Sam Rockwell.

The Duncan Jones-directed film centers on a solitary astronaut stationed on the moon to mine the precious gas that holds the key to reversing the Earth’s energy crisis. He slowly begins to lose his grasp on reality as his assignment nears an end. The film also stars Kevin Spacey, who provides the voice of a robot companion, and Kaya Scodelario as Rockwell’s wife, Eve.

Sony Pictures Classics will release Moon in theaters on June 12.

The Moon will one day play a major role in our energy future by providing humanity with a rich supply of Helium – 3 for Nuclear Fusion and also a rich abundance of Solar Energy. My hope is that by that time we will have adequate measures in place to safeguard the mental and physical well being of our future lunar miners.

The Passion! The Passion!

The agreement between the Libs and the Nats is certainly a cause for passion:

Liberal MP Alby Schultz has just got into a physical fight with one his colleagues, frontbencher Chris Pearce, during a heated exchange in this morning’s Liberal Party Room meeting in Canberra.

Schultz, whose hatred of the National Party knows no bounds and once said that he’d “slaughtered better animals” than Barnaby Joyce, was at the centre of a fiery argument among MPs about three-cornered contests where Libs and National candidates run against each other.

Schultz became so angry during this morning’s debate that he stormed out of the meeting and, as he left, fellow Liberal Chris Pearce quipped “have a nice day” – at which point Schultz turned and shirt-fronted him. Apparently three MPs had to restrain Mr Schultz. …

Don’t be surprised to read of more passionate outbursts.

Where’s My Robot

Nothing highlights the stupendous marvels of the human brain and mind then when we try to replicate them in computers and robots. In today’s video feature “Where’s My Robot” we follow British filmmaker, comedian, writer and presenter Danny Wallace in his quest to find a robot that walks and talks like him. But, the question remains – will it think like him and be self aware?

Where’s My Robot

Watch Where’s My Robot in Technology  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

The Bionic Eye

At the dawn of the 21st century many thousands of people worldwide have cause for hope Science has already started to provide the first advanced prosthetic devices to replace those that were lost in tragic accidents or were defective or missing since birth. Today we explore one such organ –The Bionic eye.

This is an incredible clip from the discovery Channel’s documentary – The Human Body: Pushing the Limits documenting the development of a bionic eye. A blind woman has been implanted with devices inside the visual cortex. Electrodes transmit information from a video camera directly to her brain allowing her to see images.

Yet, we still have a long way to go before science and technology can match the awesome handiwork of evolution and perfect or surpass the ones that most of us are fortunate to possess.

You can find this and many other fascinating news stories at 2100 Science.Com

Bionic Eye interfaced with the Visual Cortex of the Brain

Ohh dear, Prince Charles is going to be our king?

I’m a proud monarchist, but if Charles keeps this up I might jump ship. Have a read of his lefty rant. Here are a few highlights:

The first is urgency. There is now only a mercifully small (if vociferous) number of people who do not accept the science of climate change and who should know better, but there are still a great many who fail to recognise the urgency of the situation……..

In our human-centred world, with its emphasis on economics, and following decades of apparently unending material “progress”, it has become all too easy for us to believe that we can continue to take what we wish from natural systems on the assumption they will indefinitely replenish themselves. As we are discovering, in the real world it doesn’t quite work like that…..

Thanks to twitter James Patterson for the news.

Wise Latina woman

President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor had this to say in 2001: : “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Which is a good excuse as any for me to post a picture of famous Latina woman, Salma Hayek:

Destination Mars – The Next Logical Step?

The Mars Underground is a documentary that I came across yesterday. It is wonderfully concise and outlines the arguments within the space advocacy community concerning the next logical step in humanity’s quest to explore and eventually settle the high frontier of space. But, is a mission to Mars really the next logical step as we enter the second phase of the Space Age?

At the dawn of the 21st century, space agencies in Europe and America are making plans to land the first humans on Mars. But manned missions to the red planet have been proposed before. For some Mars holds the answers to mankind’s future in space. Others say Mars is too far, too dangerous and too expensive for humans to explore. And in a world torn by troubles, some say there’s no need or will for mankind to reach into space anymore.

Thirty seven years after the last Apollo astronaut walked on the moon, American manned space program seems to have lost its way, unable to reach beyond even low-earth orbit. With the tragic loss of the crew aboard the space shuttle Columbia, a debate has begun. Astronautical engineer Dr. Robert Zubrin has been arguing for years that sending humans to Mars is the mission the space program needs.

I have tremendous respect for Bob Zubrin but, I must respectively disagree. I firmly believe humankind must and will eventually settle the red planet and transform it to a blue and green oasis for life. But, as I have argued elsewhere in these pages the next logical step in humanity’s settlement of the high frontier of space is to return to the Moon – this time to stay. Returning to the Moon with the aim of eventually harnessing its vast mineral and energy resources will be the essential first step in ensuring humanity’s permanent presence in space and demonstrating the vast economic potential that space holds for humankind’s future. Only after we build the vitally important infrastructure necessary to achieve this aim closer to home can we then press onward and outward to Mars, the rest of the solar system and to the stars. If we truly want to become a spacefaring civilization we must first develop and settle our remarkable natural space station –The Moon.

The space program must prove itself to be “economical sustainable and politically justifiable”. A return to the Moon with the aim of developing its vast mineral and energy wealth will provide the corner stone in creating a space program fully geared to help the United States and the World confront and meet the challenges of the political, economic, environmental and strategic realities of the 21st century.

As NASA and the new administration in Washington review the current state of America’s space program and the way ahead it is vital that all concerned send their own input and air their views concerning the road that must be taken. I already did this last July prior to the presidential election and welcome your comments and suggestions.

The Mars Underground

Evolution – The Sexual Revolution

The sexual revolution did not begin in the 1960s with flower power or with the slogan “make love and not war”. The vanguard of the sexual revolution weren’t the hippies who “wore flowers in their hair” that Scott McKenzie immortalized in his generational anthem, “San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)”. Rather sex can trace its humble beginnings to the true pioneers of the Sexual Revolution – the cyanobacteria and other eukaryotes at the dawn of evolutionary history.

The advent of sex may not have begun with the first micro orgasm but, it was no less earth moving.

With advent of sexual reproduction, some one and half billion years ago, life on Earth took a major evolutionary leap. Until then evolution was agonizingly slow. Before life stumbled on sex as a reproductive strategy new varieties of organisms could only arise from the accumulation of random mutations – the selection of a few typographical errors, letter by letter, in life’s genetic code. With the invention of sex, two organisms could now exchange whole paragraphs, pages and books of their DNA code, and thus evolution could proceed at a faster pace.

In evolutionary terms, sex is more important than life itself. Sex fuels evolutionary change by adding variation to the gene pool. The powerful urge to pass our genes on to the next generation has likely changed the face of human culture in ways we are only now beginning to fully understand.

Today on Discovery Enterprise we continue our year long celebration of the life and work of the naturalist Charles Darwin and the epic story of life on Earth with the fifth installment of the landmark PBS television series “Evolution” – Why Sex.