When the mainstream media inputs enough garbage into the American mind, garbage comes out?
I can't be the only person in the U.S. who was directed to foreign web sites like the Guardian, Telegraph and Independent during the drumbeat to war. Only a few days after Powell was waving his pencil around about the killer bioweapons at the UN, the Guardian had photos of the poultry plant the White House was calling the bioweapons factory. Same with the roving bioweapons labs aka weather balloons. A rational person, who I guess would have great difficulty relating to the American people, might think Colin "I vus only followin' mein orderz" Powell's honor and integrity would be hovering around Benedict Arnold territory.
Are topics like intelligent design and global warming, or for that matter astrology and palm reading, good topics to teach critical thinking? Of course. Topics like astrology and creationism have appeared in various editions of Fogelin's Understanding Arguments: An Introduction to Informal Logic. The problems are two-fold:
1. With local school board control, there is little incentive to teach children informal logic. Informal logic needs topics to dissect. Sure as hell, if the course shreds astrology, some child will have an astrologer parent who threatens to sue the school board. So why take the chance of teaching children to think critically about any social topic?
2. Obviously, the intention is not to introduce the opportunity to dissect intelligent design or global warming. The teacher who values his paycheck will know which way the wind blows. (See #1 above).
And that's democracy in the most vulgar sense. Teach them what the lowest common denominator demands they be taught.
Darn glad I'm not blind because this would be a frustrating theme. It seems like a difficult technology scientists have been diddling with in the lab for several decades now. The really significant tidbit of this story is that they are hoping to submit the results of the generation _after_ this second generation for actual FDA approval. Finally, we can start to guesstimate a time line for this technology to make it to the patient population.
Re:Trains don't have to take time
on
Terminal Chaos
·
· Score: 1
You ain't from around these parts, is you? The U.S. rail infrastructure has degenerated to strictly third world condition. I've ridden Amtrak at 25 mph for an hour or so on more than one occasion because they didn't think the stretch of track was safe for higher speed. 25 mph on other occasions because Amtrak is only a renter of the rails and freight trains weren't out of their way when they were supposed to be. You have to understand that "Amtrak" is mostly a few locomotives, cars and a ticketing/scheduling structure. And another occasion of going around flooded tracks that had us switching in the middle of nowhere to continue on in the right direction. The locals were out taking pictures of our train. As of today, Amtrak hasn't run the c. 500 miles of St. Paul/Chicago for two weeks because of flooding and is busing people between that stretch.
And when you are talking considerable time, that can multiply into considerable cost. At a certain vertical angle, I just don't sleep so coach isn't an option. I've done California to the Midwest and two round-trips to the East Coast but it's true that an Amtrak sleeper is far from the cheapest way to travel.
That said, there is something to be said for the experience of passing through America's back yard. And the stations are downtown, often beautiful and they haven't ground down the staff yet to be as surly as airport staff. And it is really only a question of working through one's own stressed hyperactivity in order to understand that you _can_ get work done on a train and done pleasantly.
"understanding biological brains, creating AI systems, and investigating the fundamental nature of intelligence."
Maybe begin with a bit of background on the complexity of shotgunning the task: some Hofstadter, maybe some Dennett, maybe something like John Pollock's "How to Build a Person: A Prolegomenon".
Then define, in the sense of a formal systems analysis, the #1 task DARPA would have an AI system perform in 5-10 years and then specialize and concentrate and specialize and concentrate some more in research and funding on how that task gets performed in biological systems and could be simulated in artificial systems. Perhaps both directions working toward each other.
I have the suspicion "AI" will be christened when we decide the interconnections of subsystems we are barely beginning to create add up to complex adaptive performances that make us say, "Hey, that's pretty intelligent". But, for now, I'd really concentrate on the subsystems.
So what subsystem would most enhance DARPA's intelligence?
At least you got the tickets. I decided at the last minute that 500+ miles round trip was too much for Jimi Hendrix in '69. Ditto when my parents said, "You've been working all summer without a break. Why don't you take the car this weekend and see this Janis Joplin singer?" Can't be that many double losers. Gotta see 'em when they're still here.
Worth it? Hard to say. There definitely is business quality and home quality but the sweat equity was high. You expect the battery to be very weak and cost you if you want portability. But the fact that the "M" key could be said to work only if you hit the upper-right corner _just_ right was annoying and not so cheap a component even do-it-yourself. Needed an updated wireless card, and, ideally, removing the old on-board one. Reverts you to the original XP SP1 so you can imagine the updating. 8-10 pixels out -- although I can't say I notice them in practice.
So it depends on your money/free time ratio. It could be called "green" to keep something that meets your needs out of the landfill though.
Money for special ed. The "gifted" are already doing just fine so screw 'em.
I'm not sure the conclusion is that it's the "fault" of No Child Left Behind. Maybe what we need now is a _second_ program: No Gifted Child Ignored.
I'm not generally a government basher but I get the feeling education could be more efficient with resources. The word "linux" comes to mind for a start.
Ran Windows 98 with Win4Lin until about '05. XP runs adequately under qemu/kvm. When compelling app upgrades are Vista+ only, I'll have to care. Undoubtedly, that will be several years from now. Will there be adequate and compelling Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash alternatives by then?
"The Roadrunner has been up only for about a week, and researchers from Los Alamos National Lab are already reporting inaugural simulations of the human visual system, aiming to produce a machine that can see and interpret as well as a human."
Nonsense. I'm all for working out the algorithms of the senses. The more world input robotics can have the better it will perform tasks. It's hard and necessary foundational work toward building the core of an artificial gestalt. But nowhere in the article did my Firefox find the word "interpret". If Roadrunner was "interpreting" the visual data "as well as a human" then I guess it _was_ an artificial human for that brief time, right?
See how easily the blind slide from "see" to "interpret" can be made? Exactly the point Hofstadter was making in the interview posted yesterday.
Have to agree. Russert may have been the paragon of 21st century journalism, but the definition of journalism has certainly been degraded. Frankly, I haven't watched American network news for years and years. My opinion of the guy was third hand from analyses of his work dissected after the fact on various web sites like Buzzflash and Crooks and Liars and there seemed to have been a multitude of "Have you stopped beating your wife" innuendo in his work. Fitting that his death should have been announced by Tom Brokow, the protean "pretty boy" announcer who replaced the old guard of the sixties and seventies who really did consider themselves journalists.
Wouldn't it be more productive to lobby congress to change the culture of border customs than to challenge Custom's right to go where their instincts lead them? Obviously, there will always be instances where searching a laptop will be reasonable.
What's to add? But since I'm always ready with a slap at Kurzweil, I feel that Hofstadter has him pinned:
1. "Ray Kurzweil is terrified by his own mortality", and
2. "Rather ironically, [Kurzweil's] vision totally bypasses the need for cognitive science or AI"
It is exactly this complex and elusive puzzle of "I" and "consciousness" Hofstadter explores that Kurzweil hopes we can conquer without having to think about it at all. Which I scorn as "magic science".
I have to say I find the cyberpunk vision more appealing than Hofstadter. It would be "the end of humanity as we know it." I'm not sure it would be "the end of human life." It might be evolution. I just think it is many hundred years in the future at the most "optimistic" (depending on your viewpoint).
P2P has incredible potential for the new Thomas Paines to distribute their media. Besides the obvious lobbyist money, there is plenty of motivation for politicians to hate and fear P2P themselves.
I can testify that cast iron is brittle from experience. I had a summer job many, many years ago drilling and tapping cast iron foot pedals for industrial equipment. We weren't allowed to toss them into the finished bin. They had to be _laid_ in the bin (a very significant fraction of the time of a unit cycle) because it was quite common for them to shatter if you tossed them four or five feet. Nonetheless, there would be many uses for this product. Perhaps cast iron wasn't the best comparison the PR guy/reporter could have used.
Oil companies? Auto industry! That's the sunny underbelly of the American auto industry going belly up. Maybe they'll lose the stranglehold on congress that's prevented infrastructure maintenance and modernization of our rail system.
P2P webcasting has incredible potential for motivating social and political change. All the more reason for government to get behind business in outlawing it.
Slashdot Mirror
When the mainstream media inputs enough garbage into the American mind, garbage comes out?
I can't be the only person in the U.S. who was directed to foreign web sites like the Guardian, Telegraph and Independent during the drumbeat to war. Only a few days after Powell was waving his pencil around about the killer bioweapons at the UN, the Guardian had photos of the poultry plant the White House was calling the bioweapons factory. Same with the roving bioweapons labs aka weather balloons. A rational person, who I guess would have great difficulty relating to the American people, might think Colin "I vus only followin' mein orderz" Powell's honor and integrity would be hovering around Benedict Arnold territory.
Authorities have confirmed that the dirty masses are being priced out of _my_ experience.
[Um. Which is to say, when has Apple _not_ been all about paying premium boutique prices for the warm glow of paying premium boutique prices?]
At what point does centralizing and/or delegating operational authority over so much of our lives become a dangerous practice of its own?"
When they put kill switches in _us_?
Are topics like intelligent design and global warming, or for that matter astrology and palm reading, good topics to teach critical thinking? Of course. Topics like astrology and creationism have appeared in various editions of Fogelin's Understanding Arguments: An Introduction to Informal Logic. The problems are two-fold:
1. With local school board control, there is little incentive to teach children informal logic. Informal logic needs topics to dissect. Sure as hell, if the course shreds astrology, some child will have an astrologer parent who threatens to sue the school board. So why take the chance of teaching children to think critically about any social topic?
2. Obviously, the intention is not to introduce the opportunity to dissect intelligent design or global warming. The teacher who values his paycheck will know which way the wind blows. (See #1 above).
And that's democracy in the most vulgar sense. Teach them what the lowest common denominator demands they be taught.
Darn glad I'm not blind because this would be a frustrating theme. It seems like a difficult technology scientists have been diddling with in the lab for several decades now. The really significant tidbit of this story is that they are hoping to submit the results of the generation _after_ this second generation for actual FDA approval. Finally, we can start to guesstimate a time line for this technology to make it to the patient population.
You ain't from around these parts, is you? The U.S. rail infrastructure has degenerated to strictly third world condition. I've ridden Amtrak at 25 mph for an hour or so on more than one occasion because they didn't think the stretch of track was safe for higher speed. 25 mph on other occasions because Amtrak is only a renter of the rails and freight trains weren't out of their way when they were supposed to be. You have to understand that "Amtrak" is mostly a few locomotives, cars and a ticketing/scheduling structure. And another occasion of going around flooded tracks that had us switching in the middle of nowhere to continue on in the right direction. The locals were out taking pictures of our train. As of today, Amtrak hasn't run the c. 500 miles of St. Paul/Chicago for two weeks because of flooding and is busing people between that stretch.
And when you are talking considerable time, that can multiply into considerable cost. At a certain vertical angle, I just don't sleep so coach isn't an option. I've done California to the Midwest and two round-trips to the East Coast but it's true that an Amtrak sleeper is far from the cheapest way to travel.
That said, there is something to be said for the experience of passing through America's back yard. And the stations are downtown, often beautiful and they haven't ground down the staff yet to be as surly as airport staff. And it is really only a question of working through one's own stressed hyperactivity in order to understand that you _can_ get work done on a train and done pleasantly.
When does SP1 appear? That's the date that matters. You figure 2011 and it starts to seem like a decade with XP.
"understanding biological brains, creating AI systems, and investigating the fundamental nature of intelligence."
Maybe begin with a bit of background on the complexity of shotgunning the task: some Hofstadter, maybe some Dennett, maybe something like John Pollock's "How to Build a Person: A Prolegomenon".
Then define, in the sense of a formal systems analysis, the #1 task DARPA would have an AI system perform in 5-10 years and then specialize and concentrate and specialize and concentrate some more in research and funding on how that task gets performed in biological systems and could be simulated in artificial systems. Perhaps both directions working toward each other.
I have the suspicion "AI" will be christened when we decide the interconnections of subsystems we are barely beginning to create add up to complex adaptive performances that make us say, "Hey, that's pretty intelligent". But, for now, I'd really concentrate on the subsystems.
So what subsystem would most enhance DARPA's intelligence?
At least you got the tickets. I decided at the last minute that 500+ miles round trip was too much for Jimi Hendrix in '69. Ditto when my parents said, "You've been working all summer without a break. Why don't you take the car this weekend and see this Janis Joplin singer?" Can't be that many double losers. Gotta see 'em when they're still here.
Must have taken some real testicles to feel they could justify that much for "mere" science.
[ABC News: Cost of the Iraq War Hits $12B/Month]
Worth it? Hard to say. There definitely is business quality and home quality but the sweat equity was high. You expect the battery to be very weak and cost you if you want portability. But the fact that the "M" key could be said to work only if you hit the upper-right corner _just_ right was annoying and not so cheap a component even do-it-yourself. Needed an updated wireless card, and, ideally, removing the old on-board one. Reverts you to the original XP SP1 so you can imagine the updating. 8-10 pixels out -- although I can't say I notice them in practice.
So it depends on your money/free time ratio. It could be called "green" to keep something that meets your needs out of the landfill though.
Money for special ed. The "gifted" are already doing just fine so screw 'em.
I'm not sure the conclusion is that it's the "fault" of No Child Left Behind. Maybe what we need now is a _second_ program: No Gifted Child Ignored.
I'm not generally a government basher but I get the feeling education could be more efficient with resources. The word "linux" comes to mind for a start.
No kidding. That website itself is a crime. Makes it difficult for a person to want to read and screams "crank".
-- for the pirated crack.
Brilliant.
Ran Windows 98 with Win4Lin until about '05. XP runs adequately under qemu/kvm. When compelling app upgrades are Vista+ only, I'll have to care. Undoubtedly, that will be several years from now. Will there be adequate and compelling Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash alternatives by then?
Corporations have so little power and support from the government in the U.S.
"The Roadrunner has been up only for about a week, and researchers from Los Alamos National Lab are already reporting inaugural simulations of the human visual system, aiming to produce a machine that can see and interpret as well as a human."
Nonsense. I'm all for working out the algorithms of the senses. The more world input robotics can have the better it will perform tasks. It's hard and necessary foundational work toward building the core of an artificial gestalt. But nowhere in the article did my Firefox find the word "interpret". If Roadrunner was "interpreting" the visual data "as well as a human" then I guess it _was_ an artificial human for that brief time, right?
See how easily the blind slide from "see" to "interpret" can be made? Exactly the point Hofstadter was making in the interview posted yesterday.
Have to agree. Russert may have been the paragon of 21st century journalism, but the definition of journalism has certainly been degraded. Frankly, I haven't watched American network news for years and years. My opinion of the guy was third hand from analyses of his work dissected after the fact on various web sites like Buzzflash and Crooks and Liars and there seemed to have been a multitude of "Have you stopped beating your wife" innuendo in his work. Fitting that his death should have been announced by Tom Brokow, the protean "pretty boy" announcer who replaced the old guard of the sixties and seventies who really did consider themselves journalists.
Wouldn't it be more productive to lobby congress to change the culture of border customs than to challenge Custom's right to go where their instincts lead them? Obviously, there will always be instances where searching a laptop will be reasonable.
What's to add? But since I'm always ready with a slap at Kurzweil, I feel that Hofstadter has him pinned:
1. "Ray Kurzweil is terrified by his own mortality", and
2. "Rather ironically, [Kurzweil's] vision totally bypasses the need for cognitive science or AI"
It is exactly this complex and elusive puzzle of "I" and "consciousness" Hofstadter explores that Kurzweil hopes we can conquer without having to think about it at all. Which I scorn as "magic science".
I have to say I find the cyberpunk vision more appealing than Hofstadter. It would be "the end of humanity as we know it." I'm not sure it would be "the end of human life." It might be evolution. I just think it is many hundred years in the future at the most "optimistic" (depending on your viewpoint).
Which would you rather be in: a train where the locomotive has a kill switch or a jet that has a kill switch?
Teamwork.
P2P has incredible potential for the new Thomas Paines to distribute their media. Besides the obvious lobbyist money, there is plenty of motivation for politicians to hate and fear P2P themselves.
I can testify that cast iron is brittle from experience. I had a summer job many, many years ago drilling and tapping cast iron foot pedals for industrial equipment. We weren't allowed to toss them into the finished bin. They had to be _laid_ in the bin (a very significant fraction of the time of a unit cycle) because it was quite common for them to shatter if you tossed them four or five feet. Nonetheless, there would be many uses for this product. Perhaps cast iron wasn't the best comparison the PR guy/reporter could have used.
Oil companies? Auto industry! That's the sunny underbelly of the American auto industry going belly up. Maybe they'll lose the stranglehold on congress that's prevented infrastructure maintenance and modernization of our rail system.
P2P webcasting has incredible potential for motivating social and political change. All the more reason for government to get behind business in outlawing it.