By Michelle Thaller (BigThink.com)

If there are intelligent alien civilizations out there, would they look like us? To answer that question, we first have to ask another: Is our species about to take an evolutionary leap? “I think that the definition of being human is about to change a lot in the next century,” says Michelle Thaller, astronomer and Assistant Director for Science Communication at NASA. Over the next few decades, Thaller speculates that humanity’s augmented evolution will begin as we start to merge with A.I.s. Our biological bodies might just be a first step in human evolution, says Thaller, and high-tech implants and neural interfaces may make it possible for us to design our own bodies. “When you design your own body to suit any environment you want, why look like a human? Maybe you want to—[or] maybe you want to be a piece of foil that spreads itself across square kilometers to fly on solar winds and actually move around through solar systems. Maybe you look nothing like a human. Maybe you have nothing like a human life.” So what does this have to do with aliens? Thaller posits that any advanced civilization that is more evolved than us would also have left its biological evolution behind. Expecting humanoid extraterrestrials might be too narrow minded. Maybe aliens are algorithms. Maybe we shouldn’t even be looking for DNA and microbial life. Perhaps ET is a flat sheet of foil cruising through the universe on solar winds.

• January 23, 2018

A highlight of Your Beginning is the return of Prenatal Development, the Museum’s timeless collection of 24 real human embryos and fetuses. Ranging from 28 days to 38 weeks, this timeline vividly captures the amazing stages of growth and development before birth. Originally donated to the Museum in 1939, the collection has been newly interpreted in a darkened gallery to allow for quiet reflection upon Your Beginning.

(msichicago.org)

Published on Apr 16, 2012

45 seconds in….you will see the fetus exhibit. This has been on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, IL since I was child (circa 1970’s) and I believe my father stated this exhibit was around when he was younger. These are bodies of human fetuses which were stillborn or once living, died of natural causes, and donated to science. I am not certain how they are preserved, but this has to be one of the most fascinating things I have ever seen. I often wonder if they had lived, who they would be today.

January 23, 2018 (theonion.com)

THE HEAVENS—Acknowledging that He had been behaving recklessly that night, God, Our Holy Father, recalled Monday the speedboat accident in 1983 that originally sent Him to heaven. “The last thing I remember was tearing across Lake Winnepesaukah in a Jr. Executive 21 JRV with my buddy Dave and suddenly slamming right into an outcropping of rocks,” said the Almighty, admitting that He was to blame for not wearing a life jacket and having “a few too many wine coolers.” “Well, next thing I know, I’m in eternal paradise, and I’ve been here ever since. It’s pretty cool, and there’s enough stuff going on that I hardly ever think about getting back on a speedboat.” God went on to say that adjusting to heaven had been relatively easy since his good friend Dave had arrived mere seconds after He did.

‘How Democracies Die’ Authors Say Trump Is A Symptom Of ‘Deeper Problem’

January 22, 20181:25 PM ET
Heard on Fresh Air
DAVE DAVIES

Fresh Air

Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt are experts in what makes democracies healthy — and what leads to their collapse. They warn that American democracy is in trouble.

How Democracies Die
by Steve Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt

Hardcover, 312 pages purchase

DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I’m Dave Davies in for Terry Gross, who’s off today. If watching President Trump and listening to American political discourse these days makes you feel something’s gone wrong, our guests today will tell you it’s not your imagination. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent years studying what makes democracies healthy and what leads to their collapse. And they see signs that American democracy is in trouble.

In a new book, they argue that Trump has shown authoritarian tendencies and that many players in American politics are discarding long-held norms that have kept our political rivalries in balance and prevented the kind of bitter conflict that can lead to a repressive state. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt are both professors of government at Harvard University. Levitsky’s research focuses on Latin America and the developing world. Ziblatt studies Europe from the 19th century to the present. Their new book is called “How Democracies Die.”

Well, Stephen Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt, welcome to FRESH AIR. You know, you write that some democracies die in a hail of gunfire. There’s a military coup. The existing leaders are imprisoned or sometimes shot. Not – this is not the kind of death of a democracy that you think is most relevant to our purposes. What’s a more typical or meaningful scenario?

STEVEN LEVITSKY: Well, the kind of democratic breakdown that you mentioned was more typical of the Cold War era, of a good part of the 20th century. But military coups, although they occur occasionally today in the world, are much, much less common than they used to be. And, in fact, the primary way in which democracies have died since the end of the Cold War, over the last 30 years or so, is at the hands of elected leaders, at the hands of governments that were often freely or close to freely elected, who then use democratic institutions to weaken or destroy democracy. And we’re very hopeful that America’s democratic institutions will survive this process. But if we were to fall into some kind of crisis, surely it would take that form.

DAVIES: And it doesn’t typically happen the week or month after the elected leader takes power, right? It unfolds gradually.

DANIEL ZIBLATT: Yeah, that’s right. I mean, that’s one of the things that makes it so difficult, both to study and also as a citizen to recognize what’s happening. You know, military coups happen overnight. I mean, they’re sudden instances – sudden events. Electoral authoritarians come to power democratically. They often have democratic legitimacy as a result of being elected. And there’s a kind of gradual chipping away at democratic institutions, kind of tilting of the playing field to the advantage of the incumbent, so it becomes harder and harder to dislodge the incumbent through democratic means.

And, you know, when this goes through the whole process, you know, at the end of the process – this may take years, it may take a decade. You know, in some countries around the world, this has taken as long as a decade to happen. At the end of that process, the incumbent is firmly entrenched in power.

DAVIES: And just to define what we’re talking about, we’re talking – when we say a democracy dies, we mean there is a circumstance in which there are relatively freely elected leaders and, at the end, what?

ZIBLATT: Yeah, so at the end of this process, it’s hard – it becomes harder and harder – it takes different forms in different countries. I mean, so what’s happened in Turkey over the last 10 years, essentially President Erdogan has entrenched himself in power, weakened the opposition, and so it’s become harder and harder to dislodge him. So there may continue to be elections, but the elections are tilted in favor of the incumbent. The elections are no longer fair.

Through a variety of mechanisms, the president’s able to stay in power and to withstand criticism, although public support may not fully be there. Media is – you know, there’s kind of a clampdown on media and sort of a variety of institutional mechanisms that an incumbent can use to kind of keep himself in power.

LEVISKY: Right. As Daniel said, very often these days, the kind of formal or constitutional architecture of democracy remains in place, but the actual substance of it is eviscerated.

DAVIES: And does that describe Russia today? Is its democracy essentially dead?

LEVISKY: Yeah, well, I…

ZIBLATT: Yes.

LEVISKY: Russia was never really much of a democracy. If it was a democracy, it was one very, very briefly, so Russia’s really at the other end of the spectrum in terms of the strength of its democratic institutions. But yes, Russia has the trappings of democracy. They still hold elections. They’ve got a Parliament. But in practice, it’s an outright autocracy.

DAVIES: You have a chapter called “Fateful Alliances,” and it’s about circumstances – cases where a populist demagogue, who turns out to be an authoritarian, got help along the way from mainstream political figures or political parties. Do you want to give us an example of that?

ZIBLATT: Yeah, so in our book, we recount a couple of these kinds of scenarios. And it turns out that often the way elected authorities get into power is not just through elections and appealing to the public but by allying themselves with establishment politicians. The most kind of recent example of this that we – and we have this – describe this in greater detail in the book – is the case of Venezuela where Hugo Chavez, kind of with the aid of President Caldera, who was a longstanding politician and establishment politician in Venezuela, was kind of aided along the way in some sense by being freed from jail by President Caldera and his – he kind of gained in legitimacy and then eventually was able to come into power.

A similar story can be told about the interwar years, as well – and interwar years in Europe. So these are the most prominent cases of Democratic collapse, really, in the 20th century – Italy, Germany in the – Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the 1930s. In both of these cases, you have Mussolini coming along, who didn’t really – you know, he had some support. But he was able to kind of increase his profile by being put on a party list by a leading liberal statesman Giovanni Giolitti, who included him on his party’s list. And he gained in legitimacy. And suddenly, you know, here he was, a leading statesman, Mussolini himself.

And a similar story – this – you know, Hitler came to power in a similar alliance with mainstream conservative politicians at the end of the 1920s and into the 1930s – was famously placed as chancellor of Germany by leading statesmen in Germany. In each instance, there’s a kind of Faustian bargain that’s being struck where the statesmen think that they’re going to tap into this popular appeal of the demagogue and think that they can control them. I mean, this is this incredible miscalculation. And this miscalculation happens over and over. And in each instance, the establishment statesmen are not able to control the demagogue.

DAVIES: And you note that there have been figures in American political history that could be regarded as dangerous demagogues and that they’ve been kept out of major positions of power because we’ve had gatekeepers – people who somehow controlled who got access to the top positions of power – presidential nominations, for example. You want to give us some examples of this?

LEVISKY: Sure. Henry Ford was an extremist, somebody who was actually written about favorably in “Mein Kampf.” He flirted with a presidential bid in 1923, thinking about the 1924 race, and had a lot of support, particularly in the Midwest. Huey Long obviously never had the chance to run for president. He was assassinated before that.

DAVIES: He was the governor of Louisiana, right?

Continue reading ‘How Democracies Die’ Authors Say Trump Is A Symptom Of ‘Deeper Problems’ →

And comes up with an interpretation rather different from what we’re all used to from RHS:

But that’s the beauty of scripture. It is so full of meaning, and meanings, that one can discover therein a myriad of lessons and ideas, and still constantly find more the longer one’s study continues.

Well worth a listen…

By Maria Popova (brainpickings.org)

Intense 5
Published on Jul 10, 2017

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Credit: https://jordanbpeterson.com/

Thanks for watching!

To quote Mike Zonta, H.W., M., “Translation is ‘magical thinking’  based on self-evident axioms and syllogistic reasoning (which is to say that Translation is not magical thinking at all).”  And to quote Heather Williams, H.W., M., “Translation is the creative process of re-engineering the outdated software of your mind.” Translation  is a 5-step process using words and their meanings and histories to transform the testimony of the senses and uncover  the underlying timeless reality of the Universe.

Sense testimony:

Abuse of power by others forces us to conform and neglect our own satisfaction.

“People don’t have ideas. Ideas have people.”