PASADENA, Calif., April 17 (UPI) — Renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, speaking in California, said the next breakthrough in cosmology will come from the universe's dark side.
“The missing link in cosmology is the nature of dark matter and dark energy,” Hawking said Tuesday while delivering a lecture on the origin of the universe at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
He cited data from telescope observations indicating “normal matter is only 5 percent of the energy density of the known universe; 27 percent is dark matter, 68 percent is dark energy,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
Inequality has been rising in most countries around the world, but it has played out in different ways across countries and regions. The United States, it is increasingly recognized, has the sad distinction of being the most unequal advanced country, though the income gap has also widened to a lesser extent, in Britain, Japan, Canada and Germany. Of course, the situation is even worse in Russia, and some developing countries in Latin America and Africa. But this is a club of which we should not be proud to be a member.
Some big countries — Brazil, Indonesia and Argentina — have become more equal in recent years, and other countries, like Spain, were on that trajectory until the economic crisis of 2007-8.
“Stop The Cyborgs” is a new site that attempts to bring a balanced trepidation to the unbalanced idea that we'll all be walking round with Google's outer brain strapped to our faces.
The opposition will congregate in dark corners.
They will whisper with their mouths, while their eyes will scan the room for spies wearing strange spectacles.
The spies will likely be men. How many women would really like to waft down the street wearing Google Glass?
It won't be easy. Once you've been cybernated, there's no turning back. Which is why the refuseniks are already meeting in shaded corners of the Web.
One site is called “Stop The Cyborgs.” It claims to be “fighting the algorithmic future one bit at a time.”
It's going to take a lot of bitty fighting, but the people behind this site — they're naturally anonymous, in an attempt to stop Google spying on them — say they're fighting Google Glass in particular.
They say that it will herald a world in which “privacy is impossible and corporate control total.”
Some would say that, thanks to Googlies and other bright, deluded sparks, we're there already. The Lord and Master Zuckerberg explained to us a long time ago that he knows us better than we do and that we don't actually want privacy at all.
Still, the people behind this anti-cyborg movement claim that there's no way you'll ever know that someone wearing Google Glass is recording your every word and movement.
There's no way of even knowing if someone else is recording you through their glasses from somewhere in the cloud.
And how are we, whose egos are already more fragile than a porcelain potty, supposed to feel when we know that a glasses-wearer has one eye on us and another on our Klout score or teenage sexting pictures?
The site explains: “Gradually people will stop acting as autonomous individuals, when making decisions and interacting with others, and instead become mere sensor/effector nodes of a global network.”
The new Pope is the oldest of the seven cardinals identified by Phi Beta Iota as being of interest in relation to the educational table prepared by Anthony Judge. Argentine, trained in philosophy and psychology as well as theology, he is, as with the others selected by Phi Beta Iota, NOT DOGMATIC.
Latinos have always been the heart of the Catholic Church, and one of the greatest misteps of prior Popes was the rejection — the condemnation — of liberation theology. The Most Holy Father is the first Latino and the first Jesuit to be appointed leader of the Catholic Church.
It will be most interesting to see if the new Most Holy Father elevates the other six cardinals Phi Beta Iota studied, particularly Cardinals Fernando Filoni of Italy, now Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples; Cardinal George Alencherry of India; and Cardinal John Njue of Kenya.