It basically lamented the lack of communication between the "two cultures" – Science and Humanities.

I see the same split continuing today.

On the one hand we have the Internet and a Communication Revolution more powerful in its global impact than the "Industrial Revolution" of the 19th century.

We are busy like bumblebees configuring our smart phones and wi-fi networks, setting up our web sites, and leaving behind us as many electronic breadcrumbs as we can.

Making more money tomorrow than we did yesterday is a dream we all share and think possible – hopefully through keeping up with the techno avalanche.

Guilty as charged here… Once I even sat down and started to teach myself how to program in Java – not the humble Javascript but THE Java, that mother of all Object Oriented Programming Languages. (But three months into the project, the learning curve got so steep that I quit. I could be separated from my novels, magazines, movies, concerts, and TV shows for only so long.)

On the other end of the Science-Humanities spectrum, there are those Aesthetic Warriors who spend many lonely nights in front of their lap tops, trying to nail down that ground-breaking Novel, Poem or Screenplay.

The fellow students in all the writing seminars I took in the past… I remember all of you fondly for sharing my perilous journey into an artistic future unknown at considerable financial risk to myself and my family.

No matter which side of the divide I opted for, I've felt a sense of loss; a sense that I was perhaps missing something that I shouldn't have.

What did it matter to have the cultural depth to enjoy Antonioni's Trilogy if I did not have the money to add a new room to our house, a room that we needed so badly?

And what did it matter if I were making good money selling "information products" on ClickBank and had affiliates lined up from here to San Diego if I never had the time to listen to Andre Watts play Rachmaninoff Concerto No. 2, or bury myself into a Scott Fitzgerald novel over a weekend?

I still have not completely resolved the tension between these two halves of my inner landscape.

On the one hand, I'm as excited as anybody else with every new gadget I see and with every new hi-tech platform promising a more connected life and higher income.

But after a while, when I find myself spending all my days and nights learning one techno trick after another to squeeze a few more precious dollars out of Google's stingy claws, I stop and ask what I'm doing with my life.

So I go back to the "other country" which is very familiar to me with all its breathtaking mountains and infinite skies.

Until, that is, science and technology call me back, to examine, learn and marvel at the non-stop advances, new toys, and possibilities never dreamt before.

And so it goes this endless tennis match between the two halves of my mind.

I don't think I'm close to a resolution any time soon. There are no winners in sight. But, hey, "hope springs eternal." And I believe it wasn't a Java programmer who said that.

Once a year, 50 speakers share with more than 1,000 visitors in Monterey, California. Topics cover business, science, the arts, music, and global issues. The best TEDTalks are provided online via streaming video at TED.com.

Granted, the majority of speakers appear to be atheistic proponents of evolution. This is somewhat disappointing, though not entirely surprising. Past speakers have included the likes of Billy Graham, so it's fair to say that the organization is open to most ideas as long as they are presented in the proper fashion.

The recorded TEDTalks are worth watching. Some are more mentally stimulating than others (check out the talks on memes and, surprisingly, Tony Robbins). 137 presentations are currently available online. Additional talks will be released on an ongoing basis. 

TEDGlobal is a conference held every other year at various locations worldwide. The basic format is the same, but these conferences tend to focus more on development.

The TEDPrize is an annual prize awarded to three individuals who receive $100K and the granting of "One Wish to Change the World". The winners unveil their wishes at the annual conference, and the TED community comes together, pooling their resources, to grant each wish. Visit TED.com to learn more about past wishes granted. 

For those of you accustomed to the collegiate Pew / Paideia society or other philosophical and sociological communities, these talks will resonate along the lines of cultural examination of what is, what has been, and what could be.  

The only question remaining is, how does one get invited to TED? Send me an invitation. I'm in. 

You know that the only reason the picky Boston Marathon approved Commander Williams is because of the unbelievable publicity it would generate. It’s not like she can win when facing completely different terrain than the 24,000 other runners.

We all love a good space story. Whether it’s the woman running in space or water discovered on another planet, we just seem to eat up anything extraterrestrial.

Some people might say that’s pathetic. I consider it a sign of our continued childhood sense of awe and wonder at the universe.

According to a recent article in The Independent, the ideal female body shape can be best represented by Naomi Campbell. Some researchers from Poland studied the body types of beauty contestants and compared them with other women to discern what body part sizes are considered most attractive. They looked at bust to height, thigh to height, and waist to hip ratios to help determine what the ideal attractive person would look like.

A little surprising that they chose Naomi Campbell, since she hasn’t been the most popular fashion model in the last few years. I didn’t know that models were really so different that she would be singled out. Bale’s an obvious choice, though. As long as you can keep images of American Psycho out of your mind, you should be able to see why he’s tops (sorry Brad).

These experiments are phase one. Let’s be real. Whatever is made will be abused. Imagine the implications. Accurately predicting a person’s decisions before they are made or before the outcomes have been announced could shape world events.

But scientists are making enough progress to make ethicists nervous, since the research has already progressed from identifying the regions of the brain where certain thoughts occur to identifying the very content of those thoughts.

“These technologies, for the first time, give us a real possibility of going straight to the source to see what somebody is thinking or feeling, without them having any ability to stop us,” said Dr. Hank Greely, director of Stanford University’s Center for Law and the Biosciences.

“The concept of keeping your thoughts private could be profoundly altered in the future,” he said.

Security is the excuse for most major poor ethical decisions these days. Sad as I am to say it, George W. Bush has participated in paving the way for the future of legal privacy invasion. I cannot fathom what would be his or any other president’s ulterior motive for the advancement of privacy invading technologies, but that doesn’t mean the motives don’t exist or even abound.

It’s interesting how we’ve allowed ethics committees to exist, yet we rarely pay them more than lip service. As a species, humans do not stop to consider the consequences of industrial and technological development. We appear to be driven to pursue the furthest reaches of possibility regardless of the consequences.

When do we ever stop? When will enough be enough?