The Singularity Summit that happened a few weekends ago in New York City was quite the blast, and I had a great time covering it for h+ Magazine.

My brain is still recovering from the influx of strange and bizarre information -- combined with a cast of characters, some with goals straight out of a science fiction movie.

Anders Sandberg and Randal Keone discussed Whole Brain Emulation.

Itamar Arel covered Artificial General Intelligence.

Ben Goertzel covered AGI and Bioinformatics and Virtual Worlds.

Gary Marcus talked about How the Brain Thinks (whether we want it to that way or not :-)

Peter Thiel has something keeping him awake at night, and it's not what you might think: Peter Thiel's greatest fear.

Ray Kurzweil on Quantum Computing in the Brain and Consciousness.

Michael Nielsen gave us Quantum Computing 101 Course.

Anna Salamon kicked things off discussing how we might shape the intelligence explosion.

Here's a radio edit of Boots' acapella performance, minus the speech before and an extra long pause in the middle. (So you can listen to it in your ipod without missing a beat - if you like it that way :)

Thanks for letting me know at lisa@lisarein.com if anything doesn't work. I'll fix it.

After he performed, he said this on his twitter account:

"Just finished performing@an anti-war protest in SF.Very low turn-out.With Obama in, more people r willin2ignore mass murder."

(Above) Boots Riley of the Coup, who's been on tour w/Tom Morello opening for NIN as "Street Sweeper Social Club," is here singing with Trent Reznor doing MC5's kick out the jams.

Boots in the crowd after his performance.

OCTOBER 17, 2009 - A National Day of Local & Regional Actions Against the Wars in Afghanistan & Iraq

More info here: at this website.

When: Saturday, October 17, 2009

Where: San Francisco, CA

March Time: Noon

Rally Time: 1pm

Speakers include: Normon Solomon, Cindy Sheehan, Cynthia McKinney, Antonia Juhaz and many more!

Musical performances by: Boots Riley (of the Coup) and other special guests

Take BART! Don't drive. Get off at CIVIC CENTER

You could also get off at POWELL and walk south pretty easily :-)

The plan is to meet at UN Plaza - Civic Center basically - by Civic Center Bart - at Noon. Then the march will go in a circle around the UN Plaza and end up back where it started for the rally.

Sponsored by the October 17 Antiwar Coalition- 415-641-1997 or 510-268-9429

Note time change to 3-5 pm!

A little lunchtime music :)

Parking info:

There is parking on San Pablo Avenue, Central Avenue, and on Kearney Street, which is one block over from San Pablo.

BART info:

Get off at the El Cerrito Plaza Station. Walk two blocks to San Pablo Avenue and Central. They are short blocks too!

What a strange world we live in...

Nobel Prize For Promises
By Howard Zinn for t r u t h o u t.

"I was dismayed when I heard Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize. A shock, really, to think that a president carrying on wars in two countries and launching military action in a third country (Pakistan), would be given a peace prize. But then I recalled that Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Kissinger had all received Nobel Peace Prizes. The Nobel Committee is famous for its superficial estimates and for its susceptibility to rhetoric and empty gestures, while ignoring blatant violations of world peace."

I will have a lot more coming on this.

For now, here's the EFF's Deep Links page on this, and the YouTube video below will paint the scene a bit.

Ok here are four songs!

Performing with George Kelly:
Wind Cries Mary
Billy Jean
Shake All Over

On my ownsome lonesome:
I want u 4 myself

More coming soon, but I'm off to cover the Singularity Summit in New York City for h+ magazine.

See ya when I get back :-)