Androids: Fantasy VS Reality

The fantasy Android:



But what is the reality of Artificial Intelligence? The harsh truth:

Supercomputer Takes 40 Minutes To Model 1 Second of Brain Activity

Despite rumors, the singularity, or point at which artificial intelligence can overtake human smarts, still isn't quite here. One of the world's most powerful supercomputers is still no match for the humble human brain, taking 40 minutes to replicate a single second of brain activity.

Researchers in Germany and Japan used K, the fourth-most powerful supercomputer in the world, to simulate brain activity. With more than 700,000 processor cores and 1.4 million gigabytes of RAM, K simulated the interplay of 1.73 billion nerve cells and more than 10 trillion synapses, or junctions between brain cells. Though that may sound like a lot of brain cells and connections, it represents just 1 percent of the human brain's network.

The long-term goal is to make computing so fast that it can simulate the mind— brain cell by brain cell— in real-time. That may be feasible by the end of the decade, researcher Markus Diesmann, of the University of Freiburg, told the Telegraph.

It "may be" feasible by the end of the decade? To catch up with one second of human brain activity? Even if it does, we're talking about a Super-Computer. It's a long way from the android brain in the video. And yes, computers are advancing very fast. But to catch up with a human brain, much less surpass it... it won't happen tomorrow.

     

Food, Blood Types, Science and Beliefs

The Eat Right for Your Type diet, based on blood types, has been around for years, and surrounded by a lot of controversy. It's been called "unscientific" and "blood astrology" by it's detractors. Yet it has many supporters.

It's detractors claim that people get good results from the diet, because anyone who stops eating junk food and starts to eat healthy, whole foods instead (as the blood type diet instructs) is going to feel better; however, that doesn't justify ALL the ideas advocated in the BT diet.

That makes sense to me. Yet there are some scientific rebuttles to some of the criticisms of the BT diet, that also make sense to me. So what is the truth? How much of it is science, and how much is it just people's beliefs? If some of it is junk science, is ALL of it junk science?

With so many things in life, there isn't always a black and white, yes or no answer. Sometimes the true parts are mixed in with lies or errors, and you have to sort it out. I expect some of the claims of the BT diet may have merit.

I've read advice by some people who have had success with the diet, yet who also agree with some of the criticisms about it. They say, use the diet as a GENERAL guide, but don't follow it religiously; that you must also listen to your body, and what it tells you about how certain foods make you feel.

They point out that even the author of the BT diet, has moderated his opinions, and now claims that one need only follow 70-80% of the advice for one's blood type, to achieve good results.

I can only wonder if at least some of the guidelines for the BT diet are worth considering. This website had some interesting explanations:

What is the blood type diet®?

[...] Fetus germ layer development is the sole important reason that we have blood type.

The five major ways people died in the 20th century were blood type specific.

Different blood types make different enzymes in the liver and pancreas.

It’s been known since the 1950’s that blood type O is more prone to ulcers.

It’s been known since the 1960’s that blood type A is more prone to heart disease.

PubMed contains over 6,000 MEDLINE articles about blood type that are not related to blood transfusions [...]

At the source page, each of those sentences is a hyperlink to the source article making the claim. At the bottom of the page, are three links to a brief tutorial that explains the blood type diet, along with extensive footnotes to back up the claims that are made. It makes for interesting reading.

I've been reading up on the BT diet lately, because of all the trouble I've been having with Uric Acid (Gout, kidney stones). My uric acid levels are on the high side of normal, and my doctor wants me to consider taking Allopurinol for it. I don't want to.

Uric acid is produced from eating meat. Interestingly enough, the BT diet says my blood type should be a vegetarian. I resisted that idea at first, but then I remember for several years, up until 2004, I ate a mostly-vegetarian diet, and I felt pretty good (but of course, I was also YOUNGER back then!). Anyhow, I'm wondering if I should "play" with the BT diet, and see if I get any worthy results? I may do that. Good old fashioned trial and error.
     

Time-traveling bird delivers fateful baguette? TIME magazine "reporting" goes Sci-Fi

Large Hadron Collider: Damaged by a Time-Traveling Bird?

Sometime on Nov. 3, the supercooled magnets in sector 81 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), outside Geneva, began to dangerously overheat. Scientists rushed to diagnose the problem, since the particle accelerator has to maintain a temperature colder than deep space in order to work. The culprit? "A bit of baguette," says Mike Lamont of the control center of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which built and maintains the LHC. Apparently, a passing bird may have dropped the chunk of bread on an electrical substation above the accelerator, causing a power cut. The baguette was removed, power to the cryogenic system was restored and within a few days the magnets returned to their supercool temperatures.

While most scientists would write off the event as a freak accident, two esteemed physicists have formulated a theory that suggests an alternative explanation: perhaps a time-traveling bird was sent from the future to sabotage the experiment. Bech Nielsen of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, have published several papers over the past year arguing that the CERN experiment may be the latest in a series of physics research projects whose purposes are so unacceptable to the universe that they are doomed to fail, subverted by the future.

[...]

In a series of audacious papers, Nielsen and Ninomiya have suggested that setbacks to the LHC occur because of "reverse chronological causation," which is to say, sabotage from the future. The papers suggest that the Higgs boson may be "abhorrent to nature" and the LHC's creation of the Higgs sometime in the future sends ripples backward through time to scupper its own creation. Each time scientists are on the verge of capturing the Higgs, the theory holds, the future intercedes. The theory as to why the universe rejects the creation of Higgs bosons is based on complex mathematics, but, Nielsen tells TIME, "you could explain it [simply] by saying that God, in inverted commas, or nature, hates the Higgs and tries to avoid them."

Many physicists say that Nielsen and Ninomiya's theory, while intellectually interesting, cannot be accurate because the event that the LHC is trying to recreate already happens in nature. Particle collisions of an energy equivalent to those planned in the LHC occur when high-energy cosmic rays collide with the earth's atmosphere. What's more, some scientists believe that the Tevatron accelerator at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (or Fermilab) near Chicago has already created Higgs bosons without incident; the Fermilab scientists are now refining data from their collisions to prove the Higgs' existence.

Nielsen counters that nature might allow a small number of Higgs to be produced by the Tevatron, but would prevent the production of the large number of particles the LHC is anticipated to produce. He also acknowledges that Higgs particles are probably produced in cosmic collisions, but says it's impossible to know whether nature has stopped a great deal of these collisions from happening. "It's possible that God avoids Higgs [particles] only when there are very many of them, but if there are a few, maybe He let's them go," he says. [...]

Um... um. Time-traveling bird saboteurs armed with stale baguettes. Geez, what can I say? There's even more, if you care to read it. News or entertainment? You decide.

To be fair to TIME, I suppose it IS newsworthy that this debate is occurring. I have to wonder, how much researchers like Nielsen and Ninomiya get paid to write such theories. Nice work if you can get it.

     

Was 2008 the year that Global Warming was finally debunked as Unscientific Nonsense?

Ask one of those polar bears that have failed to drown like they should have.


Or better still, read this article by Christopher Booker from the Telegraph:

2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved

[...] Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.

First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.

Ever shriller and more frantic has become the insistence of the warmists, cheered on by their army of media groupies such as the BBC, that the last 10 years have been the "hottest in history" and that the North Pole would soon be ice-free – as the poles remain defiantly icebound and those polar bears fail to drown. All those hysterical predictions that we are seeing more droughts and hurricanes than ever before have infuriatingly failed to materialise.

Even the more cautious scientific acolytes of the official orthodoxy now admit that, thanks to "natural factors" such as ocean currents, temperatures have failed to rise as predicted (although they plaintively assure us that this cooling effect is merely "masking the underlying warming trend", and that the temperature rise will resume worse than ever by the middle of the next decade).

Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a "scientific consensus" in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world's most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that "consensus" which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.

Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world. As we saw in this month's Poznan conference, when 10,000 politicians, officials and "environmentalists" gathered to plan next year's "son of Kyoto" treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic schemes for "combating climate change" with which they were so happy to indulge themselves in more comfortable times.

Suddenly it has become rather less appealing that we should divert trillions of dollars, pounds and euros into the fantasy that we could reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 80 per cent. All those grandiose projects for "emissions trading", "carbon capture", building tens of thousands more useless wind turbines, switching vast areas of farmland from producing food to "biofuels", are being exposed as no more than enormously damaging and futile gestures, costing astronomic sums we no longer possess.

As 2009 dawns, it is time we in Britain faced up to the genuine crisis now fast approaching from the fact that – unless we get on very soon with building enough proper power stations to fill our looming "energy gap" - within a few years our lights will go out and what remains of our economy will judder to a halt. After years of infantile displacement activity, it is high time our politicians – along with those of the EU and President Obama's US – were brought back with a mighty jolt into contact with the real world. [...]

We can only hope. But fantasies don't always die easily. I expect that just like Holocaust deniers, the hard core of the Global Warming Chicken Littles will always be with us.

And of course, since global warming has failed to materialize, it's adherents now claim that, no matter what the weather does, it's all proof that their theory is true anyway:

"Global warming" is a pseudo-science like astrology

A theory that can't be disproved, because no matter what happens, it's true anyway? What's science got to do with it? Nothing that's demonstrably true.
     

Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs use Mercury; is it bad science, an environmental scam, or both?

These bulbs are becoming increasingly common. Yet they contain mercury, a toxic element that environmentalists warn us about continually. If you break one of these bulbs, how dangerous do you think it is? Is a $2,000 "toxic cleanup" really required? And if so, according to whose standards?

Steven Milloy, publisher of JunkScience.com and CSRWatch.com, has the following article in Canada's Financial Post. Some excerpts:

The CFL mercury nightmare

How much money does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent light bulb? About US$4.28 for the bulb and labour -- unless you break the bulb. Then you, like Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, could be looking at a cost of about US$2,004.28, which doesn't include the costs of frayed nerves and risks to health.

Sound crazy? Perhaps no more than the stampede to ban the incandescent light bulb in favor of compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). [...]

It goes on to tell the nightmare story of what happened when a Maine housewife broke one of the bulbs in her daughters bedroom, and ended up dealing with her state's Department of Environmental Protection.

These bulbs are being pushed on consumers, and are also advocated by environmentalists. Yet, how safe are they? If they are really that toxic, why aren't we being warned? Is there some hypocrisy at work here?

[...] It's quite odd that environmentalists have embraced the CFL, which cannot now and will not in the foreseeable future be made without mercury. Given that there are about five billion light bulb sockets in North American households, we're looking at the possibility of creating billions of hazardous waste sites such as the Bridges' bedroom.

Usually, environmentalists want hazardous materials out of, not in, our homes. These are the same people who go berserk at the thought of mercury being emitted from power plants and the presence of mercury in seafood. Environmentalists have whipped up so much fear of mercury among the public that many local governments have even launched mercury thermometer exchange programs.

As the activist group Environmental Defense urges us to buy CFLs, it defines mercury on a separate part of its Web site as a "highly toxic heavy metal that can cause brain damage and learning disabilities in fetuses and children" and as "one of the most poisonous forms of pollution."

Greenpeace also recommends CFLs while simultaneously bemoaning contamination caused by a mercury-thermometer factory in India. But where are mercury-containing CFLs made? Not in the United States, under strict environmental regulation. CFLs are made in India and China, where environmental standards are virtually non-existent.

And let's not forget about the regulatory nightmare in the U.S. known as the Superfund law, the EPA regulatory program best known for requiring expensive but often needless cleanup of toxic waste sites, along with endless litigation over such cleanups. [...]

It sounds like some folks want to have it both ways. Is there an Inconvenient Truth we're missing here? Wouldn't some GOOD science, and truthfulness and honesty be preferable?




The only warning on the packaging of the bulbs I have is to keep the bulbs away from radios, TVs, wireless phones and remote controls, as they may cause interference. It also says to keep them away from maritime safety equipment or other critical navigation or communication equipment operating between 0.45-35 MHz.

There is also a caution that it's not intended for use with emergency exit fixtures or lights, electronic timers, photocells or dimmers.

It also warns that the lamp may shatter and cause injury if broken, but it doesn't say anything about how you should clean it up if the bulb breaks. For disposal, it refers you to a website: www.lamprecycle.org. Since recycling is voluntary, I'm sure most of the bulbs just end up in the trash, getting crushed in land-fill dumps.

It makes me long for the good old days, when a light bulb was a light bulb.

I expect the DEP, with their $2,000 plan to clean up one CFL bulb, was doing what government bureaucrats are so good at doing; creating jobs for themselves. But it's still true that mercury is toxic. I find it ironic that environmentalist who are pushing to have mercury no longer used in thermometers, gleefully push CFL bulbs. How many thermometers do you throw away per year, compared to light bulbs?

But surely there is hardly any mercury in the bulb? Good question. The article continues:

[...] We'll eventually be disposing billions and billions of CFL mercury bombs. Much of the mercury from discarded and/or broken CFLs is bound to make its way into the environment and give rise to Superfund liability, which in the past has needlessly disrupted many lives, cost tens of billions of dollars and sent many businesses into bankruptcy.

As each CFL contains five milligrams of mercury, at the Maine "safety" standard of 300 nanograms per cubic meter, it would take 16,667 cubic meters of soil to "safely" contain all the mercury in a single CFL. While CFL vendors and environmentalists tout the energy cost savings of CFLs, they conveniently omit the personal and societal costs of CFL disposal. [...]

Milloy maintains that Environmentalists and vendors like Walmart are working together to push CFLs on us, without acknowledging the true long term consequences and costs. It would seem that "feel-goodism" trumps good science once again. And government bureaucrats get to create a problem and then offer themselves later as the solution to cleaning it up, insuring they will always have government jobs. How nice for them; how expensive for us. I recommend reading the whole article.