La historia de todo el pasado del universo [y de todo su futuro]

Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell

microsiervos

Esta infografía animada es fruto de una colaboración especial de la gente de Kurzgesagt y de Wait but Why. Es una especie de repaso a nuestra historia al completo y a la de la vida en la tierra en general, un poco al estilo calendario cósmico aunque más bien lo hace utilizando incrementos temporales cada vez más grandes, de forma casi exponencial.

El resultado es perfecto porque a nivel gráfico es simple e icónico, con una elegancia sin igual. Además, las explicaciones son breves y precisas – e incluso quienes no dominen el inglés podrán usar la versión subtitulada al castellano. Además, las explicaciones que da son perfectamente fáciles de entender y con un genial toque de humor, como cuando dice que el ser humano más longevo (nacido a finales del XIX) está más cerca del imperio napoleónico que de la era actual, o que el Tiranosaurio Rex está más cerca en el tiempo del último concierto de Miley Cyrus que de su ancestro el Estegosaurio.

Si la gran parte del vídeo está dedicada a los 13.700 millones de años transcurridos desde el Big Bang, la parte final se dedica brevemente al fin de la Tierra, el Sistema Solar, las estrellas, los agujeros negros y con ello todo, la muerte térmica hasta el Fin de los Tiempos. Para siempre.

Estupendo material para pasar un rato embobado con las «distancias temporales» entre todo lo que conocemos, hacer un ejercicio de humildad acerca de nuestra nimia existencia en el Universo y estupendo material para compartir y charlar sobre él en clase, me atrevería a decir.

Fuel of the future produced at Russia’s high-tech underground plant

Follow the money

http://rt.com/news/188332-mox-nuclear-fuel-production/
Russia’s ‘Breakthrough’ energy project enables closed a nuclear fuel cycle and a future without radioactive waste. The first batch of MOX nuclear fuel has been manufactured for the world’s only NPP industrially power generating breeder reactors.
The first ten kilograms of the mixed-oxide fuel (MOX) – a mixture of plutonium and uranium dioxides (UO2 and PuO2), have been industrially produced by Russia’s nuclear monopoly, Rosatom, at the Mining & Chemical Combine (GKhK) in the Krasnoyarsk region.
A world first, tablets of the fuel of the future have been put on serial production and are destined for Russia’s next generation BN-800 breeder reactor (880 megawatts), currently undergoing tests at the Beloyarskaya nuclear power plant.
The production line, now undergoing start-up and adjustment, was assembled in a mine 200 meters underground and will become fully operational by the end of 2014.
Fast fission reactors solve the problem of depleted uranium nuclear fuel on the planet. They can ‘burn’ not only ‘classic’ uranium-235, (scarce and already coming to an end), but also uranium-238, which is abundant, and expands the world’s nuclear fuel capacity by an estimated 50 times.
Fuel for breeder reactors could even be made from nuclear waste, which from an ecological point of view is a priceless advantage.
The GKhK facility will be equipped with a unique dissolvent reactor that will break down nuclear waste containing plutonium and extract plutonium dioxide to be used in MOX-fuel production.
Also, while producing electric energy, breeder reactors actually generate more fissile material, and that one also can be used as nuclear fuel.
The GKhK plant is Russia’s leading full nuclear fuel cycle complex, processing nuclear waste from power generating nuclear reactors to establish future nuclear fuel ring closure.
MOX-fuel for previous versions of fast breeder reactors in the USSR and Russia had limited production at Russia’s oldest Mayak nuclear processing facility.
Starting from 2016, industrial-level MOX-fuel production in Russia will run at full capacity.
“Produced MOX-fuel tablets fully conform to the technical specifications,” Rosatom’s statement said, adding that the fuel will now be thoroughly tested.

Metrópolis II, la película (Arte y Diseño)

microsiervos

HENRYandREL Supermarche

La gente de Supermarché preparó hace tiempo una minipelícula titulada Metrópolis II dedicada al proyecto del mismo nombre que creó Chris Burden y del que ya hablamos por aquí hace un par de años.

El hipnótico y relajante montaje está compuesto en total de 18 carriles para coches, 1.000 cochecitos Hot Wheels, 13 vías de tren y decenas de edificios LEGO. Se necesitaron tres meses para moverlo de la impresionante nave en que se construyó –atención a la última escena– hasta el Museo de Arte de Los Ángeles, donde ahora está expuesto.

Collapsing Consciously

Pawel Kuczyński

Carolyn Baker's CollapsingConsciously: Transformative Truths for Turbulent Times is perhaps the most approachable book on collapse you are likely to find. Compared to Jarred Diamond's Collapse, which weighs in at just over 600 pages, Baker's is well under 200. And yet in these few pages Baker manages to tackle a topic which Diamond studiously avoids: Whatever shall we do about the fact that collapse is happening all around us right now?

The reason Diamond avoids it is obvious: collapse is an unacceptable topic of discussion if it relates to us. It is perfectly fine to talk about past collapses, and perhaps even muse about future collapses, provided they happen to someone else. That's because we are exceptional and will go on forever. Here's a memorable example: I once gave a talk for the Long Now Foundation in San Francisco, and during the Q&A afterwards someone asked me about Russia's demographic crisis. Stewart Brand, who was reading off the questions from cards, chimed in to say that it looks like the Russians will be extinct in just a couple of generations (they aren't). So, Stewart, in how many generations are Americans going to be extinct? I need a number; what's the Long Now Foundation's estimate on that? Crickets...

And the reason collapse is an unacceptable topic of discussion if it relates to us, in the present or the foreseeable future, is that the moment you mention it, the topic stops being it, or us; the topic becomes you. What is wrong with you, why are you collapsing, and is it contagious? (Actually, just go away anyway, because you are probably bad luck.) This society operates on a combination of conformism and one-upmanship. Collapse as reality is nonconformist—in a society that worships success it is seen as defeatist and unpatriotic. It is also noncompetitive—because who on earth would want to buy it? “After all, who wants to hear that their very identity—the industrially civilized ego they have built throughout their entire lives, the ego that defines who they are—is, well, dying?” (p. 89) (By the way, this explains why my last book hasn't sold all that well.) In any case, if you keep at it, you come to be seen as a loser. Then you start feeling like an unlucky outcast, and before too long you end up with a psychological problem, and start asking yourself questions such as : “What's wrong with me?” “Have I gone mad?” and “Should I kill myself?”

Keep reading on ClubOrlov >>

2019: The Future of Doctors Under Obama Universal Coverage for Health (O.U.C.H.)

By William Kevin Stoos

The year was 2019, in the third term of the Reign of Obama the Secular. Owing to an extreme left wing Supreme Court stacked with four Obama appointees, who managed to declare the United States Constitution itself unconstitutional to the extent that it limited the ability of the Great One to serve no more than two terms, Obama was well on his way to becoming the first President since Roosevelt to be elected to four terms.

Keep reading on  canadafreepress >>

Huge foreheads, flat faces and saucer-like eyes: How the human face might look in 100,000 years

Mail Online

Just as the human face has evolved considerably since stone age times so it is expected to keep changing in the future.

Today the human brain is three times the size of our primate ancestors. As our brains grew so did our heads get bigger, our skulls expanded and our features became flatter.

Now with the advent of wearable technology, such as Google Glass, how will our heads and faces evolve in 20,000 years, 60,000 years and even 100,000 years from now?

100,000 years: The human face will have evolved to be proportioned to the 'golden ratio,' with unnervingly large eyes featuring a sideways blink

2013: A typical man and woman

This was the question posed by artist and researcher Nickolay Lamm from MyVoucherCodes.co.uk when he quizzed Dr Alan Kwan, who holds a PhD in computational genomics from Washington University in St Louis. 

Based on their discussions Lamm has created a stunning series of images which display one possible evolution for the human race over the next 100,000 years.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2337804/Huge-foreheads-flat-faces-saucer-like-eyes-How-human-face-look-100-000-years.html#ixzz2cRGpATb0

Friedrich Kittler: The Modern World

egsvideo

Friedrich Kittler, German historian and theorist, lecturing on the history of writing. In this lecture he talks about manuscript culture vs printed culture rising out of Gutenberg's innovation, the copyleft culture of the Gutenberg technologies, how the scientific revolution really started with these texts that were printed after the discovery of woodcuts copper plates and paper mills, how the printing press facilitated the transmission of technical knowledge, how the Jesuits entered the Chinese empire of Peking; typecutters, fonts and cryptography, and Leon Battista Alberti, the development of capital letters, the development of common mathematical symbols by Johannes Widmann (the +/- sign), Raphael Bombolli and Gerolamo Cardano (equations), Simon Stevin and the Dutch zero, and François Viète, the harmony of the fifth in tuning systems, how innovations in common mathematical notation and intercultural participation made possible musical innovations, how the end of notation in Latin was the beginning of open-source knowledge, algebraic notation, the need for symbols, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and binary arithmetic, 18th century mathematicians and algorithms, Jacques du Vaucanson's digesting duck, Leonard Euler and mechanical sytheses of voices, the 18th century German school system, changes in paper production in material media history, Canadian lumber, semaphores as optical system of signs, optical telegraphy speeding up military communications, invention of the typewriter by Remington, Etienne-Jules Marey's chronophotography, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville's first sound recording of Au Claire de la Lune, the effect of these changes on literature of the 19th century, Sir Flinders Petrie, Alan Turing's Turing machine, cryptography, Pearl Harbor, closing remarks on the need to learn program languages to see the limits of language, Assembler programming language, Q&A.
Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School (EGS), Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland, Europe. Friedrich Kittler. 2011.

Friedrich Adolf Kittler (1943 -2011) was a post-Structuralist philosopher, as well as historian and theorist of media communications and technology. Kittler studied German Studies, Romance Languages and Philosophy at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg/Breisgau. In 1976, he earned his Ph.D. with a dissertation on Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. His work was heavily influenced by both Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan. Kittler became a Professor of German at Freiburg in the early eighties. During the decade he held positions as a visiting lecturer and professor at the University of California, in Berkeley and Santa Barbara, and later at the University of Stanford and the University of Basel. In 1984, he completed his Habilitation at the University of Freiburg/Breisgau, and from 1986-1990 headed the DFG's Literature and Media Analysis project in Kassel. Kittler was a Membre associé of the Collège international de philosophie, Paris from 1983-1986. In 1987, Kittler was appointed Professor of Modern German Studies, at Ruhr University and began working as Professor of German at the University of Bochum.

In 1993, he received the media arts prize for theory from the ZKM Karlsruhe (Zentrums für Kunst und Medientechnologie); from 1995 to 1997, he headed a Federal Research Group on Theory and History of Media. Kittler was also a member of the Hermann von Helmholtz Centre for Culture and the Bild Schrift Zahl research group.

In 1996, Friedrich Kittler was recognized as a Distinguished Scholar by Yale University, and in 1997 as Distinguished Visiting Professor by Columbia University.

Letra del Año [oficialista]: "Acatar las orientaciones de los orichas"

Letra del Año 2013 de los babalawos de la oficialista Asociación Cultural Yoruba de Cuba  (ACYC):

es.paperblog.com

Signo: Obara Ika.
Profecía: Ire ariku yale tesi timbelaye lese orichas ( un bien de salud escrito, firme en la tierra, que lo proporcionaran todos los orichas.)

Gobierna: Orichaoko
Acompaña: Ochun
Bandera: Rosada y azul (horizontal)

EBBO: 1 chivito, 1 gallo, 2 palomas, pan, tierra de la puerta de la casa, bandera, harina, tierra del camino, tierra arada, tierra de los zapatos, 1 flecha, 1 trampa, tierra del trabajo, 2 cocos, 2 velas, manteca de cacao, manteca de corojo, aguardiente, miel, pescado ahumado, jutia, maíz tostado, cascarilla, 1 bandera rosada y azul. Opolopowo.

REFRANES DEL SIGNO.
1- Las apariencias engañan
2- En la tierra no hay justicia divina
3- Todo lo que figura no es y lo que no figura es.

OBRAS DEL SIGNO.
Darle de comer al techo.

PLANTAS DEL SIGNO:
Yagruma y Flor de agua.

RECOMENDACIONES.

Dice Ifa: Que en sus predicciones Egun juega un papel importantísimo e incluso acompaña a Orichaoko y a Ochun, para el vencimiento de las dificultades durante este año, por lo que se hace necesario prestar especial atención a todo lo relacionado con Egun.
Dice Ifa: Que debemos atender a Elegua.
Dice Ifa: Que debemos cultivar el buen carácter para evitar el estrés y así mismo cuidamos la salud.
Dice Ifa: Que debemos evitar los problemas entre parejas.
Dice Ifa: Que los sacerdotes de ifa, deben ser humildes, respetuosos, y ejemplo ante los ahijados y la sociedad.
Dice Ifa: Que debemos ser cuidadosos y muy respetuosos con las mujeres.
Dice Ifa: Que hay que sembrar para recoger, tanto en la vida social, en la familia y en el trabajo.
Dice Ifa: Que habrá dificultad y escases en la alimentación, sobre todo agrícola, que debemos tomar las medidas necesarias para prevenirlo.
Dice Ifa: Que todo ritual que tengamos pendiente, debemos solventarlo.
Dice Ifa: Que hay que actuar de forma clara y precisa, para evitar bochorno, falta de respeto y malos entendidos.
Dice Ifa: Que en este Odu, predomina, las envidias y las traiciones, por lo que se recomienda, estar alerta.
Dice Ifa: Que en cuanto a la salud, debemos atender la higiene, tener cuidado con la ingestión de medicamentos vencidos o que no hayan sido prescriptos por el médico.
Dice Ifa: Que en este Odun, predomina las afecciones de; Hígado, recto, complicaciones de partos, enfermedades de la piel, y la presión arterial, por lo que se recomienda, acudir al médico.
Dice Ifa: Que deben evitarse los rencores entre familias, tanto social como religiosa.
Dice Ifa: Que se deben analizar bien todos los documentos que lleguen a nuestras manos y tener sumo cuidado con firmar si no estamos seguro de lo que hacemos.
Dice Ifa: Que debemos estar pendientes de acontecimientos: climatológicos, económicos, sociales, familiares y de cualquier tipo que puedan cambiar sustancialmente nuestra forma de vida.
Dice Ifa: Que los cambios climáticos que vienen aconteciendo desde hace varios años seguirán ocurriendo y en algunos casos se agudizarán.
Dice ifa: Que en este Odu, Orunmila fue preso por una desobediencia, por lo que debemos tener sumo cuidado, con actitudes que conlleven a problemas judiciales, como uso de estupefacientes, bebidas, estafas, uso de armas, etc. .
Dice Ifa: Que de la forma que seamos capaces de acatar las orientaciones de los orichas, dependerá nuestra mejoría en general.

Para conocimiento general

El primero de Diciembre del 2012, con la presencia de un número significativo de Babalawos cubanos y de otros países y los miembros del consejo Cubano de Sacerdotes Mayores de Ifa, se realizaron las ceremonias correspondientes a la Pre- apertura de la Letra del año 2013 en la Asociación Cultural Yoruba de Cuba.

Las recomendaciones fueron las siguientes:
Se dio lo que pidieron las 25 posiciones fundamentales. En todos los casos la respuesta de las deidades, fueron muy satisfactorias.

El día 30 de Diciembre del 2012, se hicieron los sacrificios correspondientes a las deidades que se determinó en la Pre- Apertura.

Cuba's Energy Future

Published by: Brookings Institution Press 

Strategic Approaches to Cooperation

Foreword by Vicki Huddleston. edited by Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado

Publication Year: 2010

Approaching an uncertain future without Fidel Castro, and still reeling from a downturn at the end of the cold war, Cuba must act decisively to improve its economy and living conditions. One of the major challenges facing the impoverished island nation is securing access to energy resources that are sufficient to meet the needs of its revitalization and development goals. What steps can Cuba take to achieve both short- and long-term energy sustainability and self-sufficiency? In this timely analysis, Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado and his colleagues answer that question.
Cuba's Energy Future sets the geostrategic context within which . . . Show more >>

"Corazon Azul": Futurismo y manipulación genética

roadkill12

latercera.com/

Una Cuba apocalíptica habitada por individuos alterados genéticamente para afianzar el paradigma del socialismo, es la premisa de "Corazón Azul", la nueva película de ciencia ficción que prepara el cineasta independiente cubano Miguel Coyula y que debe estar terminada en 2014. 

La sinopsis arranca cuando a raíz de la explosión mundial de la ingeniería genética, el líder cubano Fidel Castro se lanza a cumplimentar su sueño de crear "el hombre nuevo" para convertir el socialismo cubano en el paradigma a seguir, según adelantó a Efe Coyula, que se encarga del guión, la dirección y edición del filme. 

El realizador de 35 años ubicará la historia en una futura sociedad distópica "que ha heredado lo peor del comunismo y del capitalismo" y donde esos individuos "superiores" pero con trastornos psicológicos terminan siendo rechazados y buscan destruir el orden social y político de la isla. 

"Me interesa explorar la idea de la perfección, la mediocridad, la monotonía y la idea de lo que puede ser una revolución según el que mira. Vivimos en un momento con todo el movimiento de protestas mundiales, en que se ha repensado la idea de una revolución", afirmó Coyula en una entrevista con Efe vía email. 

Graduado de la Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión de Cuba y del Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute de Nueva York, Coyula escribió el guión en esa ciudad norteamericana en 2004 con la idea de rodar allí, pero finalmente decidió trasladar la historia a su país. 

La cinta de bajo presupuesto tendrá locaciones en La Habana y después pasará un largo proceso de postproducción y montaje mediante la manipulación digital de imágenes, la misma técnica que Coyula utilizó con su computadora para crear su anterior "Memorias del Desarrollo", estrenada en el Festival de Sundance 2010. 

En los primeros minutos del tráiler disponible, aparecen imágenes documentales "dramatizadas" y "sacadas de contexto" que incluyen un discurso del expresidente Fidel Castro afirmando que el orden actual establecido en el mundo no podrá perdurar y la especie humana puede ser regulada. 

Coyula indica que Fidel Castro solo aparecerá al inicio "como detonante de lo que será el origen de varios de los personajes" que han sido alterados genéticamente, ya que después la historia salta a un futuro donde Cuba está contaminada por la lluvia ácida y la economía se sustenta en inversiones chinas en pozos petroleros.   Mas >>

What Will the Top Ten Companies Be in 2050?

ForaTv

Why we can't use machine learning to predict presidential elections

Off The Broiler

  The UNIVAC 1 is a machine with important historical significance to the computer industry because it was the first mass-produced computer to be sold to corporations. It's also the computer that has the distinction of being the one that Walter Cronkite used to correctly predict the outcome of the 1952 Presidential Election. 

By Chris Wilson/

Slate ran an article outlining why you can’t build a model to predict presidential elections. The logic there still holds: You can predict any outcome you like depending which data you choose to use. One of the most powerful aspects of the algorithms we studied in this class was their ability to compute tremendous amounts of data and scale it down to the most important factors. Researchers also have ways of preventing their models from “overfitting” the data. In other words, one could probably create an algorithm that predicted past elections with great accuracy, but it might be so finely tuned to the quirks and turns of that historical data that it would be meaningless in 2012. It may seem preposterous to think that any mountainous pile of polls, unemployment rates, approval ratings, the stock markets, and a million other factors could, if correctly parsed by a smart machine, predict human behavior. But by and large, people behave rationally, and machines, if we learned anything, can model rational systems very well. And they’re getting better every day.  

Wired.com

Añadir leyendaRemington Rand's Univac computer was big and expensive. But it built its reputation quickly as a predictor of presidential elections.
Photo: U.S. Army

Full story >>

Mitsubishi: Futuristic Dashboard

Lockheed Martin presents airship of the future

Aug. 18 - Inflatable aircrafts have been around since the Gondolfier brothers developed the first untethered hot-air balloon in 1782, but 200 years later, they are making a high-tech resurgence for both civilian and military use. U.S. aerospace company Lockheed Martin's version is called the P-791 airship, which it hopes is about to take off. Rob Muir reports.

Más de 10 inventos insólitos en los próximos 40 años

Científicos pronostican que en el 2046 se habrá consolidado la energía nuclear de fusión; en el 2041, existirá una pequeña ciudad en la Luna; en el 2036, tendremos el primer ascensor espacial.
Continuar leyendo  AQUI

Top Cuba scholars gather at FIU to discuss Cuba’s future

The nation’s top Cuba scholars will gather at Florida International University to discuss what lies ahead for Cuba as part of the commemoration of the 20^th anniversary of FIU’s Cuban Research Institute.

The panel discussion, “Cuba Today and Tomorrow: Reform and Expectations,” will take place on Friday, April 15, at 3:45 p.m. in the MARC International Pavilion on FIU’s Modesto A. Maidique Campus, 11200 SW 8^th St., Miami. The discussion is part of a day-long seminar marking two decades since the Cuban Research Institute was founded. The seminar also will feature a luncheon with noted Cuba scholar Jorge Dominguez of Harvard University. For a complete schedule please click here.

The Anti-Predictor/ Scientific American

Early in his new book,  Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer (Crown Business, 2011), Duncan Watts tells a story about the late sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld, who once described an intriguing research result: Soldiers from a rural background were happier during World War II than their urban comrades. Lazarsfeld imagined that on reflection people would find the result so self-evident that it didn't merit an elaborate study, because everyone knew that rural men were more used to grueling labor and harsh living standards. But there was a twist: the study he described showed the opposite pattern; it was urban conscripts who had adjusted better to wartime conditions. The rural effect was a pedagogical hoax designed to expose our uncanny ability to make up retrospective explanations for what we already believed to be true.

More
The Anti-Predictor: A Chat with Mathematical Sociologist Duncan Watts

"Physics of the Future"/ Michio Kaku

In his new book, "Physics of the Future", Michio Kaku predicts how technology will revolutionise life in the 22nd century.

WikiLeaks, Whistleblowing and the Future of Journalism?

Sang Tan, AP

WikiLeaks, Whistleblowing and the Future of Journalism

By Delia Lloyd

As Julian Assange's extradition hearing nears, questions about his fate are shadowed by another issue: Have WikiLeaks and its ilk forever altered modern journalism -- and even negated the need for journalists?

Full Story »

Living Earth Simulator Predicts The Future

Living Earth Simulator Predicts The Future