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It has one very obvious thing to do with the turing test: failing to distinguish software from another human being.

I regularly fail to distinguish Daily Mail headlines from their automatically generated counterparts. Come to think of it, I've never met a real, breathing Daily Mail headline writer... http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/toys/d...

I'll just leave this here: the Daily Mail-o-matic headline genrator

IS THE BBC GIVING HOUSE PRICES DIABETES?
WILL THE INTERNET HAVE SEX WITH HARD-WORKING FAMILIES?

inquiring minds want to know!

I'll just leave this here: the Daily Mail-o-matic headline genrator

[Shrug] The Daily Flail and the Royal College of Arts aren't very high on my list of reliable sources ; though I'd expect one of the Royal Colleges to hold to reasonable standards of scholarship, but I wouldn't expect the Flail to honour that.

Ah I can see this is going to be a genuine and rational argument when your first salvo is attacking the messenger.

But more importantly, you've carefully (or accidentally ; I don't know how much you actually know about Stonehenge) shifted from referring to "the stones" being "bell stones", to citing information about the bluestones.

This doesn't even make any sense. The bluestones are bellstones or ringing rocks. There is a video where a guy hits them with a hammer and makes all sorts of musical notes. Initially they went back to the quarry where the stones originated and did the same thing, finding the same property. There are many other videos of people doing the same thing with other such rocks. Are you trying to say that this and all other such videos, some made by professional geologists, are fraudulent?

While the bluestones are a part of Stonehenge, they're far from the dominant structures. They may be the second or third oldest structures on the site though. Most of the bluestones (which originally (probably) formed an outer ring around the site, before the Sarsen trilithons were excavated, hauled to the site, hammered to shape, and erected) are under a metre high, and some of them are completely buried and were only discovered by excavation in the 1920s. Also, the bluestones have been moved at least twice - each time having their keels re-shaped (hammered and chipped) to fit into the sockets cut into the Chalk for them (the chips are still found in the sockets when excavated, often along with hammer stones). They also had some centuries residing in a stone store away from the main site, before being substantially re-shaped at this "dump" (or store-room ; look at a church which was being re-built after the War and see if you can tell the difference from a dump) and moved back to the Stonehenge site.

All that this this citationless grab bag of what may or may not have any connection to reality does is tell us that you're trying to insinuate the rocks have somehow picked up their acoustic properties in the process of being stored and re-shaped, yet again completely ignoring the links showing other such natural rock formations which produce musical notes regardless of their shape. This phenomenon, as the links indicate, is not really understood, mostly because it hasn't been studied much by scientists.

Whatever the original purpose of the bluestones was, they've had multiple uses, and multiple re-shapings over the millennium-plus of their major use. Regardless of the opinions of the RCA guy, re-shaping a brittle object is going to change it's acoustic properties nearly as much as burying it (partly) in a compliant medium is going to change it's properties. But I'm sure the music producer could put him straight on that.

Maybe you didn't read... anything I've posted or linked to. Or watched the video where the guy actually makes the sounds, including by hitting stones set in concrete and in soil. The fact that the rocks produce musical sounds aren't features of their shape. That the sounds may have changed a bit doesn't alter their basic ability to produce a note of some sort, which seems very likely the reason they were moved so far originally.

Now as to what cultural purpose the sounds may have served, that's a different question entirely. Maybe they just liked to party.

Anyway, you're not starting from a position of skepticism and potential interest, you're starting like most pseudoscientific types from a position of "lololol invisible pink unicorns". Needless to say this is about as far from a scientific mindset as any

While the bluestones are a part of Stonehenge, they're far from the dominant structures. They may be the second or third oldest structures on the site though. Most of the bluestones (which originally (probably) formed an outer ring around the site, before the Sarsen trilithons were excavated, hauled to the site, hammered to shape, and erected) are under a metre high, and some of them are completely buried and were only discovered by excavation in the 1920s. Also, the bluestones have been moved at least twice - each time having their keels re-shaped (hammered and chipped) to fit into the sockets cut into the Chalk for them (the chips are still found in the sockets when excavated, often along with hammer stones). They also had some centuries residing in a stone store away from the main site, before being substantially re-shaped at this "dump" (or store-room ; look at a church which was being re-built after the War and see if you can tell the difference from a dump) and moved back to the Stonehenge site.

Whatever the original purpose of the bluestones was, they've had multiple uses, and multiple re-shapings over the millennium-plus of their major use. Regardless of the opinions of the RCA guy, re-shaping a brittle object is going to change it's acoustic properties nearly as much as burying it (partly) in a compliant medium is going to change it's properties. But I'm sure the music producer could put him straight on that.

Daily Mail should be ashamed of the way they spin Foxconn as an "Apple supplier" without mentioning all the other companies like Intel, Nokia, HP, Acer, etc. and not bothering to find out if the plants they are complaining about are the ones Apple audited and required changes at, or service some other company entirely. And they can't even plead ignorance because they mention Apple's audits as one of their sources.

In the UK they campaigned for the government to provide free HPV jabs, while in Ireland they printed scare stories in response to the Irish government's decision to freely provide HPV vaccinations. If they have no shame for their role in the feeding the MMR vaccine scare then I doubt they can be ashamed of anything. The complain when prisoners are released at the of their sentence, and companies offer them jobs to help them rejoin society. Of course if these ex-cons end up on benefits or committing further crimes due to having no such employment then they'll simply be asking for harsher sentences. Hanging's too good for them, and prison is a holiday camp.

The Mail is the most dishonest and scariest newspaper in the UK. I can't read the thing without coming away wondering how anyone can possibly read it regularly while remaining well-balanced and upbeat about anything in this "veil of tears"? I'm presuming that their readership of angry middle-aged people are incapable of surviving a day that doesn't include large doses of outrage, superstition and pseudoscience. It also helps if one has an odd impression that Britain is currently a depraved hell-hole of gay lefties bent on dismantling the remaining vestiges of British society that existed in the 50s and 60s, which pretty much consisted of village cricket, women and immigrants knowing their place, and a smart and well-groomed military that would be ever ready to remind those foreigners of the inherent superiority of Britishness.

On a lighter note, the Daily Mail-o-matic headline generator is both accurate and amusing:
http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/toys/dailymail/

One-click Daily Mail headlines - I just got ARE WORKING MOTHERS GIVING MIDDLE BRITAIN CANCER?. But apparently that's too many caps, /. just doesn't get good journalism.

Unbelievably the Daily Mail has published this today as well:

Mercury in flu vaccine is linked to autism.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-153722/Mercury-flu-vaccine-linked-autism.html

You couldn't make it up.... unless you were the Daily Mail.

Actually, you could:

Daily Mail O Matic

And for American readers, you might like this:

Fox O Matic

Further to the parent's point, here's the Daily Mail-O-Matic:

http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/toys/dailymail/

Will also give you a good start in creating spoof headlines for Fox. Bonus points to those who recognise the domain name.

Possibly slightly bewildering for US readers, who may not be aware of the existence of the Outraged of Tunbridge Wells types that inhabit the Mail, but the page here should give an idea of the Mail mentality.

Yes, Slashdot editors have a bad habit of linking to this shit-rag every so often. Check out the Daily Mail-o-matic for shits and giggles :)

Here's the same story on the BBC - there's a video too...

The Daily Mail is about as reliable as Fox.

Sample headline:
DO THE UNEMPLOYED INFECT ENGLAND WITH AIDS?
http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/toys/dailymail/

Have a look at the daily mail headline generator : http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/toys/dailymail/

You need the random security policy generator/predictor

While it's near-impossible for an encyclopedia to be completely objective, i really do believe that the people editing Encarta are still far more objective than many of those "editing" Wikipedia -- ie less likely to use it to express their own political views, etc. For more information on Wikipedia bias, see here, here, or here. The list goes on, but i'm not going to list any more links -- that's what Google (or MSN search, for that matter) is for.

In the UK, all foreign students from countries deemed "a bit dodgy" are required to register with their local police station. For this pleasure, they are charged are 34 pounds and are required to notify the police of any change of address, otherwise face a 5000 pound fine. One wonders why the police are doing the duties of the immigration service.
Maybe the Automatic Immigration and Crime Policy Generator is becoming a little too bit realistic.

Oh come on this is such a joke. Im not scared for a second that this would ever happen. There are always wackos around who come up with totally fundamentalist/totalitarian/insane ideas that you never hear about again. This country isnt as big-brother as you think, we might not have a bill of rights (but we do have the data protection act and drinking at 18), but the people here have a common sense (usually) attitude, and its always ok to dislike the government (ive yet to see a patriotic flag-waving person who thinks Blair is the greatest and we should back him all the way). One thing we do have allot of is mad scientists: Professor David Nutt, speaks for itself really.