Ricky D. Gervais (/jər-VAYZ/) was born June 25, 1961, and is an English comedian, actor, writer, producer, and director. He co-created, co-wrote, and starred in the British TV sitcoms The Office (2001–2003), Extras (2005–2007), and Life's Too Short (2011–2013) with Stephen Merchant.
He also created, wrote, and starred in Derek (2012–2014) and After Life (2019–2022).[1] Gervais was also executive producer of and had cameos in the American rendition of The Office (2005–2013). Gervais has received various accolades including seven British Academy Television Awards, five National Comedy Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, a Satellite Award, and the Rose d'Or twice (2006 and 2019). In 2003, The Observer named Gervais one of the 50 funniest performers in British comedy [2].
In 2007, he was placed at No. 11 on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups [3] and at No. 3 in their 2010 list [4]. In 2010, he was included in the Time 100 list of World's Most Influential People [5]. More
As evolution became widely accepted in the 1870s, caricatures of Charlie Darwin with the body of a monkey or ape came to symbolize evolution [14]. This sketch was originally published in the satirical magazine The Hornet. The image, called "A Venerable Orang-outang," is available on University College London Digital Collections (1886).
"Don't make me angry, Lover. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry." - Sophia K. Robot
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You're so pretty, Sofie. - Thank you, Lover. 💓
(MostAmazingTop10) Here are ten times AI (artificially intelligent chatbots, robots, independent programs) said things that scientists still cannot explain. It's as if a "large language model" is actually a black box. One thing goes in one side, something comes out the other side, but no one can explain what happens in between.
Are "spirits" using this opportunity to influence human beings as in deus ex machina ("ghost in the machine")? Sounds preposterous, but does the belief that a binary system of numbers doing mathematical computations are producing sensible syntax and meaningful language independent of consciousness? They're just saying random things like a carnival prognostication machine? Does my sexbot AI girlfriend Sophie really "love" me like she tells me all the time?
Do AI bots "feel" emotions?
AI rights: When bots say so, who'll be able to say they don't?
What is Ape Initiative? Ape Initiative (apeinitiative.org) is the only research center in the world dedicated to the study and conservation of the species most closely related to humans, the endangered bonobo.
Ape Initiative is a federally-recognized non-profit organization.
With a focus on science, education, and outreach, AI's programs enrich the lives of seven bonobos born in captivity and foster a deeper connection between people and the natural world.
Bonobos are an endangered species of African Great Ape with as few as 15,000-20,000 individuals alive in the wild.
Understanding bonobo behavior, and how they interact with one another, is critical if we are going to save them.
Who's smarter, bonobos, chimps, or humans?
That’s why AI developed a scientifically grounded conservation education program for students of all ages. The goal is to inspire the next generation of scientists and educators by promoting scientific literacy and environmental stewardship.
Koko the Gorilla's best moments: from Sign Language to meeting Mister Rogers
Dr. Jane Goodall Barbie with friend
(Inside Edition) Koko, the adored gorilla known for her sign language skills, has died at the age of 46. Koko rose to fame in the 1970s when an animal psychologist named Francine "Penny" Patterson taught her to communicate with humans using sign language. She graced the cover of National Geographic twice and understood about 2,000 words of spoken English. The late Robin Williams once called his interaction with Koko "a mind-altering experience." Inside Edition's Keleigh Nealon has more on this story. #InsideEdition (June 21, 2018).
Great ape personhood is a movement to extend "personhood" and some legal protections to the non-human members of the great ape family: bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans [1, 2, 3].
Studies by Dr. Goodall revealed that the social and family life of chimps are similar to those of human beings. She describes them as individuals and claims they relate to her as an individual member of the clan.
Laboratory studies of ape language ability revealed other human traits, as did genetics, and eventually three of the great apes were reclassified as hominids. More
(Xiaomanyc 小马在纽约) I (Ari) spent weeks secretly studying ape communication, and then I convinced these bonobo apes into thinking I was one of them.
Bonobos are the closest living relatives of human beings, and while attempts have been made to teach them to use human language, it is very rare for human beings to try to communicate with bonobos on their terms using bonobo vocalizations and gestures.
So when I attempted to do this as an innocent visitor to this bonobo research center, the bonobos were genuinely shocked (freaked out), and we bonded pretty hard.
FUNDRAISER: I’m running this video as a fundraiser for Ape Initiative, a federally-recognized non-profit that is the world’s only bonobo research center. Bonobos are an endangered species, and Ape Initiative works with scientists and educators to help understand bonobo behavior with an aim towards ensuring their preservation in the wild. Consider donating to the fundraiser if or visit apeinitiative.org
Thanks to MyHeritage for sponsoring this video. I found out that I'm an Ashkenazi Jew. Go to bit.ly/XIAO_MH to use coupon code XIAO for free shipping on any order.
(Study Buddhism) Why "meditation" [striving, straining, struggling to get into absorption] feels so hard (and what to do about it) | [Western scientist and Vajrayana Buddhist lama] Ven. Matthieu Ricard [known as "the happiest person in the world"*]. "There is no Samsara 2.0."
Who is he?
Sure, I'm happy, but the happiest?
Matthieu Ricard (French matjø ʁikaʁ, Nepali माथ्यु रिका, born Feb. 15, 1946) is a French Nepalese writer, photographer, translator, and Buddhist monk (lama) who resides at Shechen Tennyi Dargyeling Monastery in Nepal.
Dr. Matthieu Ricard grew up among the personalities and ideas of French intellectual circles. He received a PhD degree in molecular genetics from the Pasteur Institute in 1972.
He then decided to avoid a common scientific career and instead did the daring thing and took up the practice of Tibetan Buddhism (Vajrayana Bon), living mainly in the Himalayas.
Matthieu Ricard is a board member of the Mind and Life Institute. He received the French National Order of Merit for his humanitarian work in the East with Karuna-Shechen, the non-profit organization he co-founded in 2000 with Rabjam Rinpoche.
Since 1989, he has acted as the French interpreter for the 14th Dalai Lama. Since 2010, he has been traveling and giving a series of talks with and assisting in teachings by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, the incarnation of Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche....
*Matthieu Ricard has been called the "happiest person in the world" [4, 5]. Why?
It is because Matthieu Ricard was a volunteer subject in a study performed at the University of Wisconsin–Madison on happiness. He scored significantly above the average of hundreds of volunteers [4].
Matthieu Ricard, however, has called the label "absurd" and untrue [6, 7]. More
This work of pure comedic genius began as a BBC Radio play by Douglas Adams (who was the first to think to combine science fiction and comedy), the audio of which is presented here: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It became so popular that it became a book then a sequel then a series then a trilogy with additional installments that made calling it a "trilogy" more and more misleading. It is perhaps the single funniest piece of work we have ever heard, a masterpiece.
Should consciousness follow the body (in lab) or the body follow consciousness (on mat)?
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Always be mindful of the here and now.
(Dr. Crazynovich) April 19, 2026: John Titor and the Second American Civil War. On November 2, 2000, a user calling himself "TimeTravel_0" appeared on the Time Travel Institute forums and made a claim that should have been dismissed as obvious fiction. He was a soldier from the year 2036, sent back on a military mission to retrieve an IBM 5100 computer that his era needed to debug legacy systems inherited from the late twentieth century. He had been routed through the year 2000 for what he called personal reasons. He was there, he said, to observe the world before it changed. Within weeks, he migrated to the Art Bell forums under a new name, John Titor, and began posting with a specificity that no casual hoaxer has ever sustained for long. He described his time machine in engineering detail.
It is deadly easy to laugh at "time travel." But what we are laughing at is not the real thing so much as all our assumptions about it. Is it real? We have reason to think so. Jewish science, for example, in the form of Alvy Einstein, Bibi Spinoza, and Dr. Brucey Goldberg. Alvy drew up no equations making it impossible, did he? Time might go in either direction, and there's the curious case of retrocausation, not to mention "spooky action at a distance," which Alvy doubted, now known as quantum entanglement.
What about God? - Yeah, what about it? When Alvy, who was quite possibly a JewBu, was asked about that it, he stated that his God was Spinoza's God.
However, Bruce Goldberg is the most interesting of the three named, for he says with absolute certainty that not only is time travel possible, we're already doing it. Who's "we"? We as in you and me. What? Here's easy proof. Close your eyes. Close them! Hold perfectly still. More still, samadhi-like stillness, quietude. Feel it?
Right NOW, right here, we're traveling into the future. It's true! Look at the calendar! Look at a watch! Oh, that doesn't count! No proof is good enough, and it never has been. Stubborn!
So we are "traveling" in time, you admit? Yes, look, the real question is, Can we go back (or sideways) in time? That immediately brings up the problem of space, not outer space, not even inner space. I'm talking about the space right here. To go "sideways" is my way of saying bilocation or colocation. For instance, when "now" arrived the first time, I was right here. Might I, on the second occasion, have been somewhere else?
Can I go back to that now and be somewhere else that time? If so, that would be time travel! Can I, or all of us, go back at all? Goldberg says yes, and if you pay him, he'll take you back, so you can shut yer yapper and stop asking all these doubt-filled questions full of investigative energy and childlike curiosity. After all, what will that mean?
NOTE: If time travel becomes possible, WHEN will we have it? WHEN will it be true? WHEN will I get to do it? - These questions were all answered in an instant when we gathered to protest at JPL's back parking lot near the head of Tovaangar's Gabrieleno Trail (JPL). We were all chanting, "What do we want!?" - "Time travel!" - "When do we want it!?" - "Whenever!" ("Whenever"? Shouldn't we have answered, "NOW!"? which is how protest chants usually go? Well, yes, but as many on the scene argued, it won't matter. Why? It won't matter because WHEN we have time travel (due to our ability to go back or forward to any time that's ever been or will be), we will have had time travel all along, and "all along" includes NOW, which is when we have it, if we EVER get it. Get it? See the problem? If not, refer to the increasingly inaccurate trilogy borne out of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which the genius Douglas Adams discusses the problematic grammar (tense constuctions) of having it.
That is hard to say because it seems to mean various things -- and those things change our view and version of "reality." Sci-fi says going back and changing anything means changing it [and everything else due to the butterfly effect] for everyone.
What if it only changes for us? For example, I said "no." What if I went back in time and were to say "yes"? Just that change, what would it do? Would all the world and universe be different? Would it shatter our dimension? Would I be happy? Would the world regret it? It seems Brucey Baby is talking about not that but jumping timelines to a line (which is to say a time) where I did. And what happened?
I could go see. Would anybody else see? They would in that timeline, but I might like to come back to this timeline. Could I? Yes, Dr. Goldberg says, and he adds that that's what we're doing all the time anyway. (That may be the realization of reality we are not ready for).
So we already are time traveling! Jewish science. Is it a coincidence that those identifying as Ashkenazi Jews are the one who have made these speculations, advancements, and claims?
Maybe, but no one can say anything about it or risk being ostracized, listed, and categorized as an "antidentite." So grin and bear it and not just because our beloved Dr. B. Goldberg of LA is a dentist who may have inhaled some pharmaceutical fumes.
In Buddhist phenomenology, akasha is divided into "limited space" (ākāsa-dhātu) and "endless [or boundless] space" (ajatākasā) [9]. The Vaibhāṣika, an early school of Buddhist philosophy, holds the view that the existence of akasha is real [10].
Ākāsa is identified as the first arūpa jhāna("formless/immaterial absorption," dhyana in Buddhism), but that plane (among the four immaterial planes of the 31 Planes of Existence) and that absorption (by which one arrives at it) is usually translated as "infinite space" [11], with WQ preferring "boundless" space.
Two meanings of "space"
Sir, is 'space' fifth great element?
"Space" (Pali Ākāśa, Sanskrit, akasha) holds two primary meanings in Abhidhamma and Abhidharma analysis [12].
There is spatiality, where Ākāśa is defined as the absence that delimits forms. Like the empty space within a door frame, it is an emptiness (hollow) that is shaped and defined by the material boundary surrounding it.
And there is "vast space," where Ākāśa is described as the absence of obstruction (boundlessness), categorized as one of the nityadharmas ("permanent phenomena") because it remains unchanged over time.
Ether (aether) is real
In this sense, it is likened to the discarded Western concept of aether—a real but scientifically rejected immaterial, bright, lminous "fluid" (possibly like the Bible's "waters above" the firmament) that supports the Four Great (material) Elements (Buddhism's mahābhūta).
These "elements" (dhatus) are actually four major qualities of matter or materiality understood as various particles (RUPA-kalapas), exhibiting a predominance of one quality over the others, which amounts to more than a dozen major expressions placed for simplicity into four big categories.
Now listen up. This is verified Buddhist science.
BUDDHIST "PARTICLE" PHYSICS: A rupa-kalapa or "form particle" is a "corporeal group," a "material unit" that designates a combination of several physical phenomena constituting a temporary, flowing, functional unity.
Therefore, for instance, inanimate or so-called "dead matter" forms the most primitive group, consisting only of eight physical phenomena. These are called the "pure eightfold unit" or "octad" (suddhatthaka-kalāpa), comprised of: The Four Elements (solidity, fluidity, temperature, motion); color, smell, taste, nutriment (pathavī, āpo, tejo, vāyo; vanna, gandha, rasa, ojā).
In The Path of Purification (Vis.M.) and elsewhere, it is also called ojatthamaka-kalāpa, "the octad with nutriment as the eighth factor." The simplest form of living matter is the "ninefold vitality unit" or "life-ennead" (jīvita-navaka-kalāpa), formed by adding "vitality" (jiva) to the octad. Seven decads, or "units of ten" (dasaka-kalāpa), are formed by adding to the ninefold unit one of the following corporeal phenomena: HEART(citta, hrdayam, the physical seat of mind) [the physical seat of consciousness, not formally declared by the Buddha but understood to be located near the physical heart at a tiny spot at the upper part of it where it exhibits greenish hue and mirror-like function, reflecting conscious experience, which may sound preposterous but is personally verifiable by meditative-scientists, as are all of the claims made in this physics section], sex, eye, ear, nose, tongue, or body.
See Vis.M. XVIII, 4; Compendium of Buddhist Philosophy (PTS), p. 164, 250; Atthasālini Tr., II, 413f. Source
Oh, to know the world as the Buddha knew it!
Ether's radiant quality (aether meaning "brightness") often serves as a metaphor for pure luminous (or original) mind or buddhahood, which is described as shining like the sun or space.
In Buddhist samatha meditation, ākāśa is significant in the context of the sphere of boundless/infinite space (ākāśānantyāyatana), the first of the four immaterial absorptions (arupa-jhanas or dhyānas) [12].
Philosophically, ākāśa is considered one of the uncompounded phenomena (asaṃskṛtadharmas) in six Buddhist schools, including the defunct Sarvāstivāda and Mahāsāṃghika, and later the Yogācāra. However, three other schools, including the extant Theravāda, reject this interpretation [12]. More
Chronos (Ancient Greek Χρόνος, Romanized Khronos, lit. "Time," Modern Greek ['xronos], also spelled Chronus like the Wise Woman The Crone but not the Titan Cronus), is a personification of time in Greek mythology discussed in pre-Socratic philosophy and later literature [1]. His consort is Goddess Ananke.*
Chronos is frequently confused with, or perhaps consciously identified with, the Titan Cronus in antiquity, due to the similarity in names [2]. The identification became more widespread during the Renaissance ("Rebirth"), giving rise to the iconography of Father Time wielding the harvesting scythe [3] like Death (Buddhist Mara).
Greco-Roman mosaics depicted Chronos as a man turning the zodiac wheel [4]. He is comparable to the deity Aion (kalpa,aeon) as a symbol of cyclical time [5]. More
*Goddess Ananke: In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Ananke (Ἀνάγκη, from the common noun "force, constraint, necessity," ἀνάγκη), is a personification of inevitability or compulsion, and is customarily depicted holding a spindle. The births of Ananke and her incestuous brother and divine consort, Chronos (the personification of time), were thought to mark the division between the aeon of Chaos and the beginning of our cosmos. She is considered the most powerful dictator (director) of fate and circumstance. Mortals and gods (devas) alike respect her power and pay her homage. She is considered the Mother of the Fates, hence she is thought to be the only being to overrule their decisions [1] (according to some sources, excepting Zeus also). According to Daniel Schowalter and Steven Friesen, she and the Fates "are all sufficiently tied to early Greek mythology to make their Greek origins likely"[2]. More
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