Eventually, I believe, current attempts to understand the mind by analogy with man-made computers that can perform superbly some of the same external tasks as conscious beings will be recognized as a gigantic waste of time.
The Internet has made some phenomenal breakthroughs that are still only poorly understood in terms of changing people's ideas of us and them. If mass media, social isolation in the suburbs, alienating workplaces and long car commutes create a bunker ...
I didn't come from a trailer park. I grew up middle class and my dad had money and my mom made my lunch. I got a car when I was sixteen. I'm proud of that.
It's super important that people use their significant buying power to pull companies like Ferrari and show them there is a market for sustainable fuel. So many other car companies would take notice if Ferrari made headway on this measure.
My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost.
All families had their special Christmas food. Ours was called Dutch Bread, made from a dough halfway between bread and cake, stuffed with citron and every sort of nut from the farm - hazel, black walnut, hickory, butternut.
My dad didn't graduate from high school, ended up being a printing salesman, probably never made more than $8,000 a year. My mom sold real estate and did it part time.
If I didn't already sense that I was different, I certainly was reminded, whether by my parents or by the other school kids. Not just reminded. Told... I was made to believe it wasn't right. If I went a little bit too off - slap! It was Dad's upbring...
Everyone at school knew who my dad was. It made me a little self-conscious a little introverted because I had a lot of attention drawn towards me, but in a way I guess it gives you a little bit of a celebrity skin, even though I wasn't a celebrity.
My dad told me when I went into high school, 'It's not what you do when you walk in the door that matters. It's what you do when you walk out.' That's when you've made a lasting impression.
I made a very concerted decision to go to drama school in the United States. But I did have the opportunity to go to Britain's Central School of Speech and Drama, and my dad and I had a few tense words about that. He wanted me to go to British drama ...
They made it to the middle class, my dad working as a bartender and my mother as a cashier and a maid. I didn't inherit any money from them. But I inherited something far better - the real opportunity to accomplish my dreams.
At 18, I guarded the parking lot at the Catholic Church bingos. Now, my dad made sure I could take care of myself. I carried a Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum - that gun weighed more than I did!
The world reacts very strangely to people they see on TV, and I can begin to understand how anchor monsters are made. If you're not careful, you can become used to being treated as though you're special and begin to expect it. For a reporter, that's ...
Well when I made my first record I thought it would be a good joke to have me on one side, have the lable say John Fahey on one side, and this guy Blind Joe Death on the other side.
Ever since Obama's election team and media thugs made me famous for asking a simple question in 2008, I've had more than my share of death threats by people who are by definition at least a little crazy.
So we had life, death, illness, everything - every emotional involvement we had, we experienced. And I think that made what we had to do on stage, stronger. We got very much involved in what we were doing.
The more I read and watched about the meat industry, the more determined I became to keep meat out of my diet. The things I saw in slaughterhouse exposes made me feel sick and I refused to just ignore what I now knew.
Like all young reporters - brilliant or hopelessly incompetent - I dreamed of the glamorous life of the foreign correspondent: prowling Vienna in a Burberry trench coat, speaking a dozen languages to dangerous women, narrowly escaping Sardinian bandi...
For all the drama we all have with our families and all the tension and hostility, I couldn't have done this without my family. Being the people that they are - they're crazy - made it possible for me to be crazy and to live a lifestyle of my own des...
I'm a bit of a romantic, to a fault. It's led me to some great things and also some sad things. It's made me a better person, to keep a good spirit about dating.
