Thomas Szasz writes, "Before 1907, all drugs could be sold and bought like any other consumer good. The manufacturer did not even have to disclose the contents of his concoction. Hence the name patent medicine, the adjective alluding to the fact that the composition was a trade secret, protected by a patented name."
Mark Changizi et al write, "Just as advanced mammalian brains require a robust neural network to achieve richer and more complex thought, large cities require advanced highways and transportation systems to allow larger and more productive populations. The new study unearthed a striking similarity in how larger brains and cities deal with the difficult problem of maintaining sufficient interconnectedness."
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-09/rpi-ecc090309.php
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/economicHistory/pdf/FACTSPDF/HowWellDoFactsTravelWP.htm
“Memes” are the units of selection in culture as genes are the units of selection in evolution. When we talk of traits (height, hairiness, colour-blindness, and so on) being passed down through generations, we are also talking about genes being passed down. Likewise, when we talk of ideas being passed from person to person, we are also talking about memes. Richard Dawkins introduced the idea of memes towards the end of The Selfish Gene, where they were a means of demonstrating the wider applicability of the Darwinian algorithm of descent with modification. Memes seem to offer a new vocabulary for discussing travelling facts. They seem to be precisely the type of things that might enable us to gain insight into the transmission and reception of facts across time and between disciplines. Added to which, they are apparently a scientific way to talk about this.
Quite possibly the most entertaining informative video I've ever seen!
See it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFoC-uxRqCg
In early March 2009, 100 intellectual adventurers journeyed from various corners of Europe, Asia, America and Australasia to the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Arlington Virginia, to take part in the Second Conference on Artificial General Intelligence, AGI-09: a conference aimed explicitly at the grand goal of the AI field, the creation of thinking machines with general intelligence at the human level and ultimately beyond.
