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Some background: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity Some better background: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/singularity.html Vernor Vinge argues there's two ways the Singularity could happen (which aren't mutually exclusive): Artificial Intelligence (AI): computers become smarter than humans Intelligence Amplification (IA): Technologies emerge which make humans who use them much smarter than present day humans I think hardware is the limiting factor in either of these. It will take a good 20 years until Moore's Law will make it reasonable for a large scientific organization to purchase a supercomputer powerful enough to simulate the entire human brain, even slower than realtime (but at speeds which are fast enough to be useful) I think software will *become* the limiting factor, after the hardware is fast enough, but right now for all intents and purposes AI researchers are waiting on faster hardware that's a few orders of magnitude faster than what we have today. As far as Intelligence Amplification goes, Brain/Computer Interfaces, another hardware device, seem to be the main form this will take, and those are actually progressing much faster than I thought: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17009-innovation-mindreading-headsets-will-change-your-brain.html

I think the powers (and limits thereof) of the President are explicitly defined in Article II, which further states that the President should be removed from office if convicted of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. The Constitution certainly doesn't paint a picture of a person who is above the law. It says if the President breaks the law they should be removed from office.

Most certainly not. If you don't want to be offended, stop being so uptight. It'd bad form to be offensive, and there's certainly words (e.g. the n-word) that just shouldn't be used. But even so, it shouldn't be a crime.

Dr. Michael Weiner (pronounced "whiner") a.k.a. Michael Savage, is a PhD nutritional enthomedicine radio commentator, who, well, apparently decided being a well-educated person isn't a good thing and decided to fashion himself after a redneck. Anyway, the UK has deemed him a persona non grata. What do you think? Personally I'd like to talk to him about his motivations, specifically whether he ever had gay sex with Allen Ginsberg.

Obama's main argument has been that he wants a non-partisan Congressional investigation

This was a pretty interesting article on why C and C++ are terrible languages for scientific/numerical computing: http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2006/11/the_c_is_efficient_language_fa.php? Data parallel arrays were certainly one example... you can do this on an architecture like CUDA, if you code for CUDA. With a language like Haskell you can get data parallelism which abstractly compiles to a GPU through a package like Obsidian. And therein lies yet another argument for functional programming: when new technology like CUDA comes along, scientists whose code is written in C/C++ will need to put forth tons of effort to get it to leverage the CUDA architecture, and then their code will be bound to the CUDA architecture. With a language like Haskell, your code is independent from whatever crazy data parallel execution environments hardware designers can dream up. The compiler can figure it out automagically, whereas with a language like C/C++ you're left to your own devices.

No, according to an interesting thought experiment, based on one particular interpretation of quantum mechanics, there might exist for each person at least one path through Everett's "many worlds" for which they are immortal. This certainly does not mean "according to quantum mechanics we are all immortal" That said, death is a far more macroscale sort of thing than a quantum event. Death happens on a level which can be understood by classical mechanics. If someone chainsaws your head off, short of a "quantum miracle" where your head miraculously reattaches to your neck you're probably going to die. The scenario posed by the "quantum suicide" thought experiment involves using a quantum event to trigger death.

No, my problem is the junk science graph is deceptively cropped/scaled, and omitting a multi-year average from the graph is just sleazy. There's so much noise in the graphs, especially at that scale, that it makes it difficult to see the trend without a trend line or multi-year average. But then again his background isn't in atmospheric science, even though that's all he blogs about, so it isn't too surprising. It looks like he's gotten a lot of awards for his blog, great! But he's still a non-scientist and it certainly shows in how he presents the data. I think these are the sorts of comments about data presentation which would normally come about through the peer review process, but when you're a nonscientist blogging about a scientific topic that sort of thing doesn't tend to happen. Scale doesn't matter with the "hockey stick" graph unless you try to compress it down until the data is unreadable. No matter what the scale, it's still easy to see that the most recent century demonstrates a marked change over the temperature record for the past 1000 years.

It depends on the music... some music is most certainly entertainment. Look at someone like Alice Cooper who does elaborate stage shows as part of his songs.

Yes, American Democracy is not in a good way.

Short answer: no

Yes, but that decision is their free will. If they didn't make the same decision in the same situation how would that really be "their" decision?

Mac users have total control through the Unix shell. Cap'n didn't quite get it right... the resolution is 1280x800. That said, I remember rocking 320x200 on a 15" monitor... those were the days.

Haha, as a total outsider American-type person, that list cracks me up. Europe really is filled with hippies!

Yes, the resolution of the 13" MacBook display feels nice and high res to me.

Mine's made of plastic, which is slowly chipping apart, but apparently if I go complain to the dinguses at the "Genius Bar" they'll fix it even though mine's out of warranty. The "Genius Bar" cracks me up... I had the cord of my power supply fray, apparently it was a common manufacturing defect, and Apple had issued a recall because it's a fire hazard. I walk in the door and the dingus at the front of the store is all "you have to buy a new one, sorry". I'm like, "uhh, there's a product recall out for these because they're a fire hazard"... and finally get him to take me to the "Genius Bar" where the guy handed me a new one on the spot for free. Apparently all it takes to be a "Genius Bar" genius is to have something of a clue about what's going on. Apple as a company kind of sucks.

It certainly depends on what you're doing. I love Macs. They are expensive, but they don't skimp on hardware. But then again, I'm a software developer. I love being able to have a Unix-based OS and a large selection of brand name commercial software in the same environment. That isn't possible with either Windows or Linux. There have been some pretty hilarious Microsoft commercials lately (the "You Find It, You Keep It" ones) where consumers lay out their requirements. One of them asked for a fast CPU, a big screen, and good battery life. He went and checked out the Macs, then (being a Microsoft ad) dissed them as "paying for the brand". He ended up buying a crappy laptop with terrible battery life, a large screen with pathetically low resolution, and a memory architecture which ensured the CPU would constantly be starved, but hey, it fit the artificially imposed budget of the commercial. Oh, and it ran this crappy OS called Windows. In the end, he didn't get anything he wanted based on the requirements he put forth, except a large screen with a crappy resolution. If you're buying a notebook, a PC with similar specs will run you slightly cheaper than a Mac, but not much. There are PC notebooks which are substantially cheaper than Macs, but I'd suggest a comprehensive evaluation of the hardware as manufacturers of cheap notebooks will tend to skimp on the sort of parts that users won't notice when making a cursory evaluation of the specs (chipset, RAM, etc) The memory controllers and RAM of Macs are actually fast enough to keep the CPU from getting starved.

This whole thread kind of dumbfounds me. It seems like many people are getting stuck on a rather myopic view of the word "stimulus" The goal of the bill is to rebuild the American economy, regardless of whether particular measures are "stimulus" measures or not. Improving the economy is the overall goal. Preventing highly probable regressions in economic growth is a no brainer for the stimulus bill. Several other items (that ParanoiA mentioned facetiously) were included in stimulus. Republicans argued that preparation for flu pandemics (i.e. money that'd go to government agencies) was not "stimulus" under this myopic definition. Now, in 20/20 hindsight, no matter where that money is coming from it would've been good to have. We also have arguments that it will negatively impact the economy, which seem sound. With all that said, people are still arguing against the pandemic prevention measures as "stimulus" and I can't for the life of me figure out why...

Evolution came up with all sorts of novel strategies for enlarging the neocortex. Most notably, our craniums are made of plates which at birth overlap, allowing our large heads to pass through the birth canal of a woman which was also limited by constraints like "can I still run fast enough to escape predators?" After birth, our skulls fuse, giving our brains more room to grow. The neocortex has a comparatively lower neuron density than structures like the cerebellum because large parts of its volume are eaten up by the connections between neurons. The neurons (e.g. "pyramidal cells") of the neocortex are quite physically large themselves, but in terms of overall neuron count parts of the brain like the cerebellum have it beaten. So it really depends on what you want to make "bigger": you could add more fat and have more volume, but that's not going to count. More neurons and more connections between them could have interesting benefits, but right now those are hard things to "adjust" and the variability between individual humans isn't terribly large.

Vernor Vinge, who popularized the whole "Singulary" concept, predicts strong AI by 2030. Ray Kurzweil, the johnny-come-lately to the party, predicts it by 2045. Sadly flying cars will still be a few years away... One thing I should add: A "science of morality" is one of the more mundane things you could do with strong AI. If you believe the Singularity hubbub the creation of strong AI will be one of the most transformational events in human history. It will certainly transform cognitive science, which is in something of a nascent state at the moment. Cognitive science will finally be able to answer rather abstract questions about human nature scientifically. A "science of morality" is just the tip of the iceberg.

So far, yes. I have some minor complaints, but overall I am very happy with the change. Regarding spending: I am not too concerned until after we're out of the recession/depression. Then it will be time to be concerned. I haven't heard about Arlen Specter wanting to make the stimulus permanent but that sounds like a bad idea.

Quite a bit... looks like billions of dollars: http://www.dhs.gov/xopnbiz/recovery.shtm Yes those are also in the stimulus bill: http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/us-to-boost-quake-detection-with-stimulus-plan What is the probability of a near-term asteroid impact? Any events which have a high probability of negatively impacting the economy in the near future seem like responsible items to include in the stimulus bill. The money was originally included because there was a high probability we'd see a widespread influenza outbreak. The WHO is saying this could be a pandemic (maybe). That would be very bad for the economy. As it turns out, it's starting to happen. And it's predicted to have a negative impact on the economy. I guess we'll see how this plays out, but I'm kind of surprised how vehemently people are defending what was in 20/20 hindsight a terrible decision. I can understand a little "I can see the Republicans point of view at the time" but in 20/20 hindsight there's no excuse.

Well, to reiterate why pandemic preparedness belongs in the stimulus bill: Swine flu casts shadow over global economy Yes, it would seem there is a direct connection between influenza pandemics and the economy: when an influenza pandemic is happening, the economy slows down. Shouldn't the stimulus bill include things to prevent or help abate anticipated economic downturns?

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/senate/specter-to-switch-parties.html ...and as soon as Al Franken is sworn in, this means Democrats will have a 60 seat filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. I'd certainly hoped for the 60 seat thing but didn't really think it was actually going to happen. I certainly never thought it would happen this way. Wonder what his constituents make of this.

Looks like they're only giving out early access to certain people today. The site will launch officially to the public in May.