New podcast available [31-Jan-06]

The latest Sentient Developments podcast is now available.
Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/PodcastSentDev

Tags: Podcast, Audiocast, Transhumanism, Emerging Technology, Futurism, utopia, seti, quantum communication, disaster prevention, environmentalism, gaianism.

BBC: analytic couples produce autistic children

The BBC is reporting on a report by Simon Baron-Cohen who claims that analytical couples, namely scientific types, may be more likely to produce children with autism.

Baron-Cohen, a prof at the University of Cambridge, said the phenomenon might help explain the recent rise in diagnoses.

This is similar to the claim made by Steve Silberman in Wired a few years ago in his article The Geek Syndrome in which he argued that the high prevalency of Asperger's Syndrome (a high-funtioning form of autism) in Silicon Valley was due to the pairing off of couples with "tech" and "math" genes.

Baron-Cohen labels people such as scientists, mathematicians and engineers as "systemizers" (ie. people skilled at analysing systems). He argues that systemizers are often attracted to each other - and thus more likely to pass "autism" genes to their offspring. On a related note, other researchers have found that both mothers and fathers of children with autism score highly on a questionnaire measuring autistic traits.

This shouldn't really come as a surprise; it's simple genetics. What he's really saying is that nerds give birth to more nerds. What's unique, I suppose, is that in today's society more systemizers are able to hook-up with other sytemizers. Revenge of the nerds, I guess (check out my column on that exact topic: "Once outcasts, some autistics now see their condition as a cognitive gift and even the next stage in human evolution—at the dawn of the transhuman age, who's to say they're wrong?".

Tags: neuroscience, autism, asperger syndrome, genetics.

People are eating better -- just ask Kraft

Kraft Foods -- the largest U.S. food manufacturer and the maker of Kraft cheese, Nabisco crackers, Oscar Mayer meats and Post cereals -- announced today that it would eliminate 8,000 jobs, or about 8% of its work force, and close up to 20 production plants as it broadens an ongoing restructuring effort.

This restructuring comes less than 2 years after their most recent shake-up when in 2004 there had just been a re-jigging of top management that followed more than a year of disappointing sales and earnings. At the time, Kraft executives blamed the poor results on "American consumers' increased health concerns, which had put the entire packaged food industry under severe pressure to change quickly."

Yes, obesity and other food issues are a problem in N. America, but I have to think that people are starting to get the message about healthy eating and the importance of avoiding processed foods.

Tags: health.

The malevolence and gross negligence of the Bush Administration

NYT: Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him:

The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

The scientist, James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.

And in other news re: global warming:

BBC: Stark warning over climate change -- Rising concentrations of greenhouse gases may have more serious impacts than previously believed, a major scientific report has said.

Tags: global warming, environmentalism.

Guardian: There is no stop button in the race for human re-engineering

Madeleine Bunting has written a piece for the Guardian in which she describes the inexorable tendency towards transhumanism.

Bunting notes how transhumanists believe that humanity is on the point of being liberated from its biology. "In their advocacy of our 'technological rights'," she says, "they believe that human beings are on the brink of a huge leap in development, leaving behind the sick, quarrelsome, weak, fallible creatures we have been up to now. We will be, as their slogan goes, 'better than well'."

She feels that North America has had a head start in the human enhancement debate and that Europeans need to get their heads around the issues soon so that they can influence what technologies are developed, rather than leaving it to the scientists and the pharmaceutical and military interests who sponsors research into human enhancement.

Much of the research that could be ultimately used for human enhancement, she argues, is urgently needed to counter such neuro-degenerative diseases as Alzheimer's. Consequently, Bunting writes with cautious optimism and concern, but also with a reserved sense of defeat. Transhumanism is coming, she argues, whether we like it or not -- so we'd better start managing the process now.

At the same time, however, she says it's possible to "envisage how fast, in a competitive, unequal world, we could hurtle towards some horrible futures."

Ultimately, however, Bunting believes that there's no point in sci-fi style panic. "The best hope lies in the strength and quality of public debate and democratic institutions to regulate and direct the use of these powerful technologies," she says.

Tags: health technology, transhumanism, futurism, human enhancement.