Lifeboat Foundation

My last twenty-five years as a futurist have conditioned me to search for weak signals of what may be emerging in all areas of society that will impact our Communities of the Future work seeding transformational ideas and methods in local communities to help leaders and citizens prepare themselves for a future that will be increasingly fast paced, interdependent and complex. I always look for some gem of a new idea that is hidden in the context of an article, novel or web journal that causes me to go hmmm? and think about how this new idea connects with our COTF approach to community transformation.

Recently I have read Zoltan Istvan’s novel, The Transhumanist Wager, and found myself often stopping and going hmmm? Although an oversimplification (with apologies to Zoltan), the central theme of the novel is the coming existential crash of science and radical technologies and religion at some point after my life that now registers 71 years on the ageometer.

Although I could present my thoughts about whether humanity should attempt god-like actions to evolve life extending discoveries leading to downloading consciousness into machines to live forever, I would not be objective…feeling the increasing need of a long rest from overactivity during 71 years (-:

There are so many “access” points in Zoltan’s book for thought provoking ideas, that I found myself moving from thinking about the impact of emerging radical technologies on our society and communities to wondering how society was going to be able to develop the resiliency required to be able to adapt to whatever emerges.…whether the mysteries of religion and our existence become encased within a deeper understanding of quantum theory as time moves exponentially, or whether we reach the point of singularity and beyond and become transhuman.

Continue reading “Moving Beyond Ubiquitous Sheepishness” »

Is there an error in the following 6-point result?

When looking from the height of a GPS satellite down onto earth, you will notice six Einstein effects:
E1: The clocks worn by the people down there tick slower by Einstein’s gravitational redshift factor
E2: The photons arriving up here from down there have correspondingly less energy
E3: These photons had their lower energy on departure already, despite appearing normal locally down there
E4: All masses down there are reduced in their mass-energy content by the redshift factor, despite appearing normal locally down there
E5: All charges down there are reduced in their charge by the redshift factor, despite appearing normal locally down there
E6: All objects down there are linearly increased in their size by the reciprocal redshift factor, despite appearing normal locally down there

Background: Points E1, E2 are accepted since Einstein first proposed them in 1907. E3 was described by Julian Schwinger in his book “Einstein’s Legacy” of 1986 (on page 142). E4 follows from quantum-electrodynamics (“creation-annihilation operator”). E5 follows from the universal rest mass-to-charge ratio; it is in the literature since 2008 (see http://www.academicjournals.org/ajmcsr/PDF/pdf2012/Feb/9%20Feb/Rossler.pdf ). E6 follows from the “Bohr radius formula” of quantum mechanics; it was first mentioned in a PhD thesis submitted in 2005 (quoted in http://www.nonlinearscience.com/paper.php?pid=0000000148 ).
So far, no specialist in general relativity agrees publicly to the three new Einstein effects E4,E5,E6, but no one objects publicly, either. One reason for the silence is that E4,E5,E6 have yet to be incorporated into general relativity (a mammoth task). The main reason, however, is that E5 and E6 affect the safety of the LHC experiment at CERN. This is why your help is vitally needed to either smash or confirm points E4-E6.

News this past week on Fukushima has not been exactly reassuring has it. Meanwhile the pro-Nuclear lobby keep counting bananas. Here I’ve gathered together some of the recent news articles on the unfolding crisis. Interested to hear some comments on this one.

Fukushima leak is ‘much worse than we were led to believe’ / Aug 22, 2013, BBC NEWS http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23779561
Serious: Japan hikes Fukushima radiation danger level / August 21, 2013 RT NEWS http://rt.com/news/japan-fukushima-level-three-762/
Japan’s nuclear crisis deepens, China expresses ‘shock’ / Aug 21, 2013/ reuters http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/21/us-japan-fukushima…2B20130821
Worse than Chernobyl: The inner threat of Fukushima crisis / Aug 20, 2013/ RT http://rt.com/op-edge/chernobyl-fukushima-crisis-catastrophe-715/
Japan nuclear agency upgrades Fukushima alert level / Aug 21, 2013 / BBC NEWS http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23776345
Fukushima apocalypse: Years of ‘duct tape fixes’ could result in ‘millions of deaths’ / Aug 18 2013 / RT http://rt.com/news/fukushima-apocalypse-fuel-removal-598/
Fukushima’s Radioactive Water Leak: What You Should Know / National Geographic, Aug 2013 http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2013/08/13080…ater-leak/

As a member of the Ethics board, I wanted to cross-post here a blog that has been posted on the MindBody Medicine Network where I will be conducting a webinar on Sunday on the topic of integral ethics. The webinar is specifically focused on ethical dilemmas faced by healthcare professionals. However, the integral ethics model that I developed in conjunction with Dr. Tim Black from University of Victoria, and under supervision from Ken Wilber, founder of Integral Institute, is a general decision-making process that can be more broadly applied.

Any comments or questions could be sent directly to me at [email protected].

Here is the article:

A Brief Introduction to the Practice of Integral Ethics for Healthcare Professionals: Honoring the Ken Wilber Model

(The author, Durwin Foster, M.A. is a Canadian Certified Counselor, Researcher and Professional Presenter who has worked directly with Ken Wilber, a pioneer of integral theory)

Continue reading “Integral Ethics” »

Science depends on lonely pebble-searching as Newton said and Einstein practiced. Close to a pebble found, there always lie equally shiny others according to Maxwell. I look forward to the reader kindly searching around one or the other of the 25

1) Cryodynamics – sister discipline to thermodynamics – exists, being valid for attractive inter-particle potentials

2) Concentric electron beams will cool hot spots in the ITER via cryodynamics (with A. Sanayei and I. Zelinka)

3) Spiral chaos (stimulated by Art Winfree)

Continue reading “My smoothest Pebbles” »

Recent discussions on the properties of micro-black-holes threw open sufficient question to reignite some interest in the subject (pardon to those exhausted of reading on the subject here at the Lifeboat Foundation). A claim made by physicists at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, that a new attractive force arises from black-body radiation [1] makes one speculate if a similar effect could result from hawking radiation theorized to be emitted from micro-black-holes. An unlikely scenario due to the very different nature supposed on hawking radiation and black-body radiation, but a curious thought none-the-less. If a light component of hawking radiation could replicate this net attractive force, accepted accretion and radiation rates could be revised to consider such new additional forces hypothesized.

Not so fast — Even if such a new force did take effect in these scenarios, one would expect such to have negligible impact on safety assurances. Official estimated accretion rates are many many orders of magnitude lower than estimated radiation rates — and are estimates which concur with observational evidence in the longevity of white-dwarf stars.

That is not to conclude such new forces are necessary to continue debate. Certain old disputed parameter ranges suggest different accretion rates relative to radiative rates which could bridge that vast breadth between such estimates, theorizing catastrophic outcomes [3] are not necessarily refuted by safety assurances — least on white-dwarf longevity.

Indeed a more pertinent point, that if equilibrium could manifest between radiation and accretion rates, micro-black-holes trapped in Earth’s gravitation could become persistent heat engines with considerable flux [2] to cause environmental concern in planetary heating.

Continue reading “Micro Black Holes in the Taillights — Another Glance Back” »

Paradise comes from the Greek paradeisos, “surrounded by walls”. In Madonna Laboris Mary labors in seclusion at the borders of Paradise, providing her scarf for souls to ascend behind its walls. “All day long I watch the gates of Paradise; I do not let anyone in, yet in the morning there are newcomers in Paradise,” Saint Peter complains to the Lord. The Lord and Peter make night rounds and see Mary with her scarf and the Lord bids Peter to “let (Mary) be”.

Attribution: Bonhams
Nikolai Konstantinovich Roerich (Russian, 1874–1947)
Madonna Laboris
signed with monogram and dated ‘1931’ (lower left)
tempera on canvas
84 × 124cm (33 1/16 × 48 13/16in)

That paradise means surrounded by walls rather than walls being something that surround paradise is particular. Paradise as adjective instead of paradise as noun. You can go to a place that is paradise, but you cannot go to paradise.

Many things in today’s world are surrounded by walls and we would not call them paradise. But if we were good students of etymology we would.

Continue reading “Paradise” »

I recently announced a new protocol layer being built on top of bitcoin. You can read the details here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=265488.0

I’m pleased that I have already raised over $200k worth of bitcoins from investors, including myself. Investments will continue to be accepted through the end of this month (August 2013).

By Avi Roy, University of Buckingham

In his essay “Fifty Years Hence”, Winston Churchill speculated, “We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.”

At an event in London today, the first hamburger made entirely from meat grown through cell culture will be cooked and consumed before a live audience. In June at the TED Global conference in Edinburgh, Andras Forgacs took a step even beyond Churchill’s hopes. He unveiled the world’s first leather made from cells grown in the lab.

These are historic events. Ones that will change the discussion about lab-grown meat from blue-skies science to a potential consumer product which may soon be found on supermarket shelves and retail stores. And while some may perceive this development as a drastic shake-up in the world of agriculture, it really is part of the trajectory that agricultural technology is already following.

Continue reading “Meat grown in labs is the next logical step for food production” »