Why Brain Uploading and Telepathy Are Impossible
By Tamara Wilhite
One of the tenets of the Singularity is that we’ll be able to upload our brains to a digital afterlife, escaping the confines of our current bodies. This is also one of the key drivers of the desire to create human-level awareness in AI; it has to be as intelligent, aware, and soulful as us if we’re going to digitize our souls. You even see lesser versions of this, such as the “Black Mirror” episode where a woman underwent surgery to create a digital copy of herself to act as her assistant.
Name That Australian Celebrity
By Tom Weiss
The first time Kevin called after I moved to Australia, I had to explain how to use the World Clock feature on his phone. “I understand it’s the middle of the day there,” I said before throwing my phone on the floor, “But, it’s the next morning here. I’m still in bed.”
Uncharacteristically, Kevin learned from that mistake and has called at more appropriate times ever since. Until this week.
Joni Mitchell Plays The Circle Game
By Josh Lieblein
Now that we have established where Canadian music came from, and we have a rough idea of what it is and what it isn’t, it is now time to consider each of the three great Canadian solo artists of the mid and late twentieth century in turn. All three are still living. All three are massively influential inside and outside Canada. All three are deeply flawed in addition to being brilliant, and all three set a standard that seemed impossible to overcome. This is well covered ground, and entire bookshelves couldn’t contain the endless biographies and the analyses of their art, but hopefully I can give some sense of how they shaped Canadian culture and music.
Why Does Nearly Everyone in Scifi Pay in Credits?
By Tamara Wilhite
Whether you’re reading a near future dystopia or science fiction adventure far in the future and equally far from Earth, odds are that you’re going to read about someone paying in credits. Why?
First, credits are universal. It plays on the word “credit card” and “line of credit”, so everyone knows it represents money or value. You can simply call the alien currency “Alien empire’s credits”. And the human Federation can have their own credits. You don’t have to invent currency names people have to remember. You don’t have to explain its meaning to the reader like gold-pressed latinum in Star Trek. It is simple shorthand that works in any work of fiction. Then you have more grace for inventing new words to refer to places, technologies and people.
Where Does Matt Damon Live?
By Tom Weiss
If it’s not on social media, Kevin doesn’t know about it. And if it is on social media, he probably knows the wrong thing.
This is how I came to learn that, early last year, the US entertainment media got all worked up over a rumor Matt Damon was moving to Byron Bay, New South Wales, in an effort to escape Donald Trump. The rumor turned out to be wrong, (those rumors are always wrong) but Kevin hadn’t heard. That part of the story didn’t make it to social media.
Oscar Peterson Sticks To The Classics
By Josh Lieblein
As far as I know, Oscar Peterson never attributed his lack of name recognition in Canada to racism. Even when a CBC interviewer claimed she understood his nickname “Osc The Gorilla” a lot better than his other nickname, “The Maharaja Of The Keyboard”, Peterson kept his cool.
Oh, sure, there are jazz festivals in his name up here, and scholarships too. But the main concert hall and recording studio at the CBC is named after Glenn Gould, not him. Peterson’s statue stands in Ottawa, not in Montreal where he was born. He doesn’t have a “historical society” like Guy Lombardo, who is mostly known for playing New Year’s Eve ditties and the version of “Auld Lang Syne” you usually hear when watching the ball drop in Times Square.
The Pro-Life Message of ‘Avengers: Endgame’
By Alec Ott
To be pro-life means to uphold the dignity of human life and promote life, not death, in our answers to the problem of human suffering. When we promote life, we in turn battle the “culture of death” in this world, a world-view that promotes death as a solution to problems. This ongoing battle for life and death is played out countless times in our traditional stories and legends. In such stories, the archetype hero fights for life and saves the people from the villain who wants death, destruction and power.
[Warning: Spoilers follow.]
Lessons Learned from ‘Game of Thrones’
By Robert Arrington
Two or three years ago, David French, the National Review columnist, blogger, and civil rights lawyer, wrote a lengthy piece on Game of Thrones entitled, “A Game for Our Time.” In it, French posited that the TV series, if not quite an allegory of modern times, at least contains interesting lessons for 21st Century Americans.
At the time, I thought French’s essay was interesting, but I was pretty sure Martin just wanted to write an entertaining story.
Now, after watching the very final episode of GOT a week or so ago, I’m not so sure. I’ve decided that there really are lessons to be learned from GOT.
The Teens of Star Trek: Jake Sisko Vs. Wesley Crusher
By Tamara Wilhite
The characters of Jake Sisko in “Deep Space Nine” and Wesley Crusher in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” served similar purposes, but they were different from each other in subtle ways.
The Washington Times Reviews Scott Smith’s ‘Red Line Blues’
By Liberty Island Links & Excerpts
From a thoughtful review by Aram Bakshian Jr.:
Washington is not a town that lends itself to love stories. Scandals and divorces, yes. But romances? Forget about it, particularly in the case of driven young singles pursuing careers in politics, lobbying and public policy. There’s no shortage of lust in the nation’s capital, as even a cursory glance at the daily papers reveals; there just isn’t a whole lot of love out there. This is especially true of love affairs across party lines. In the over-the-top era of zealous Trumpophiles and paranoid Trumpophobes, left is left, right is right, and ne’er the twain shall meet. But it didn’t all start in 2016 with The Donald and Hillary Dearest.
