I’ve often wondered what the future would look like if someone did create a true artificial intelligence, and it was simple enough that anyone could do it once they knew how. I’ve often thought that most of today’s intellectual jobs would just vanish, the way that so many blue-collar jobs did when automation started replacing …
Continue reading ‘“I, for one, welcome our robotic communist jobless future”’ »
While roaming the Internet, I stumbled across this article. It’s from 2007, but its contents are still very relevant: […] Through much of the 20th century, lead in U.S. paint and gasoline fumes poisoned toddlers as they put contaminated hands in their mouths. The consequences on crime, Nevin found, occurred when poisoning victims became adolescents. …
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This is possibly the most interesting article I’ve seen on a site that regularly carries interesting pieces. It’s not hurt by the fact that it implies a comparison between Steve Jobs and Snow White’s evil stepmother either. 😉
Remember that one? It came from an episode of Lost in Space that I saw when I was maybe seven or eight, and it has stuck with me all these years. I even looked it up a little while back… apparently I’m not the only one it has stuck with.
“US, UK research: Thick kids more likely to become bigots“. Ouch. I’ve often thought that today’s conservatives weren’t the brightest bulbs on the whole, and wondered whether there was some causal link there, but to have it bluntly spelled out like that is pretty damning. Maybe these studies should be publicized a lot more. Nobody …
Continue reading ‘“Study links dim wits to conservative ideology”’ »
As my US readers may remember from their mandatory high-school civics class, presidential elections in the US are kind of odd. Presidents aren’t elected by the people. Instead, their elected through the Electoral College — the people’s votes tell the Electoral College what candidate the state votes for, and each state has a certain number …
Considering the poor accuracy of professional science fiction authors even in “near-future” SF, this guy‘s track record is nothing short of amazing. Too bad he can’t be around to enjoy his success, but when you’re making predictions for a century hence, that’s a bit problematic. 🙂
Wow… it seems that hacking, and hacker pranks, got their start well before the first computers were created. I can’t imagine how Marconi could have thought any clear-text wireless signal was secure against eavesdroppers. Even if his patented tuning system worked to keep the signal on a very narrow band, all it would take to …
Continue reading ‘“Dot-dash-diss: The gentleman hacker’s 1903 lulz”’ »
A “National Day of Prayer”? “One Nation Under God”? “In God We Trust”? I’ve heard people claim that they’re proof that America was founded on Christian principles. If the speaker acknowledges freedom of religion at all, he invariably means that everyone must be free to practice his religion. Thing is, all three of those were …
Continue reading ‘“Religious Expressions Are Rooted in Fear-Based Politics”’ »
In the small mid-western hick community where my family spent the early- to mid-eighties, you didn’t dare let people know you were different in any way. Fifties McCarthyism was still alive and well, but no communists presented themselves, so it was turned on anyone who was different in any way. Kids who couldn’t fit in …
Continue reading ‘“Kids, the Internet, and the End of Privacy”’ »