Shawna Pandya (shawnapandya) on Twitter

Shawna Pandya Think Twitter is a flood of triviality only? Think again. Here's a wonderful illustration of the connectedness of the next generation.
The usual serindipidous links.
Just listened to a TED lecture by Ray Kurzweil giving his usual the Singularity is coming lecture. He announced the foundation of Singularity University, with Diamondis (of X-prize fame). Checked it out. The first class is underway with 36 young people. Picked a random bio - Shawna Pandya. Currently a med student in Edmonton. Earlier degrees in Neuroscience and in Space. Just joined Twitter this month. Check out her chatter. This girl's play is another person's work! Or her summer project - "Summer vacation'09: aiming to positively impact 1 billion people in 10yrs with 40 people from 14 countries in 9wks. No pressure or anything.". Or visit another of her network places Linked In to see how a CV is done nowadays.

With Ray's new endeavor, the arrival of the Singularity in 2045 won't be such a surprise. Interesting also that Google conditioned their support to this endeavor by requiring that the new university focus not merely on high tech (as is Ray's passion), but on "humanities grand challenges". With people like Shawna they're off to a good start.

YouTube - Energy From Thorium: A Nuclear Waste Burning Liquid Salt Thorium Reactor

Kirk Sorensen's Tech Talk, delivered at Google on July 20, 2009. Nuclear has got a very bad rep. It partly deserves it. Present "peaceful use" depends upon "war material". Sorensen presents historical data to convincingly demonstrate the nearly full development of a safer nuclear power method that cannot be used for war and most of the development work is done. From the 50's and 60's.

Trust Google to sponsor the disclosure. Sad no one knows or cares about the Canadian reactor technology based on non-processed uranium. Maybe Google will discover the Candu also.

Noam Chomsky on “Crisis and Hope: Theirs and Ours”

Noam Chomsky the MIT professor, author and dissident intellectual, just turned eighty years old this past December. He has written over 100 books, but despite being called “the most important intellectual alive” by the New York Times, he is rarely heard in the corporate media. More than 2,000 people packed into Riverside Church in Harlem to hear his address. In his talk, Chomsky discussed the global economic crisis, the environment, wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, resistance to American empire and much more.

This may be one of the most informative messages from "the last dissident", who says "humanity may now be entering its endgame".

Stephen Hawking: "Humans Have Entered a New Stage of Evolution"

When Stephen Hawking "speaks" the world listens. He points out the new directions of our development are now in our control. No longer reacting to environment on Darwinian terms?