Tag: intelligence

Posted on

GOP Senator Breaks With Trump: I Have More Faith In U.S. Intelligence Officers Than Julian Assange

This morning, President-elect Donald Trump sent out this tweet which many interpreted as Trump believing in fugitive Julian Assange than the U.S. intelligence analysts:

And yesterday, Trump seemed to ding the intelligence community for “needing more time to build a case” regarding the Russian cyber-hacking during the presidential election. Note how Trump puts “Intelligence” in quotes…

Today, Sen. Tom Cotton appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” saying he had more trust in the country’s intelligence community than in WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange. “I have a lot more faith in our intelligence officers serving around the world, very smart and experienced analysts that we have here in the nation’s capital, than I do in people like Julian Assange. I can tell you that much.”

Additionally, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan called Assange a “sycophant for Russia” today on the conservative Hugh Hewitt radio show.

It seems so very odd for an American president-elect to choose the word of a fugitive on the run like Assange who trades in stealing information in a covert manner over the unanimous position of all 17 intelligence organizations of the United States.

Posted on

Elephants recognize themselves in a mirror showing “self-awareness”

This segment from “Through The Wormhole” takes us to a research program that studies how elephants behave in front of a giant mirror.

Many of the elephants quickly recognize that they are seeing themselves and they move on to examining themselves and looking at body parts they can’t normally see.

This suggests that they are self-aware in a manner similar to humans. They have the capacity for understanding the concept of the behavior of other elephants is separate from their own.

The point of all this is to explore if other species, elephants in this case, might have a sense of spirituality or “recognize the mind of God.” To be able to acknowledge a higher power, beings first must show “theory of mind,” or the concept that we are separate from others.

Really fascinating five minutes. You can watch this or a rerun of some old sitcom. I choose this. Watch below.