During the first presidential debate, John McCain once again made reference to the Northern Divide Grizzly Bear Project, a five-year study to which USGS has allocated $3 million to “study the DNA of bears.”
The Scientific American article linked above compares that $3 million, and its relative merits, to the $233 million “Bridge to Nowhere.” I [...]
Archive for September, 2008
Bear CSI
Posted in Current Events, Politics, Science on 29 September 2008 | Leave a Comment »
McCain wins debate before it happens!
Posted in Current Events, Politics on 26 September 2008 | Leave a Comment »
As of 7:10 pm EDT on Friday night (the time of this writing), it is apparent that John McCain has won the debate. See the back story.
Paul Krugman…
Posted in Current Events on 21 September 2008 | Leave a Comment »
“You’ve heard there are no atheists in foxholes. There are no libertarians in financial crises, either.”
6,200 Chinese babies ill from tainted formula
Posted in Current Events, Economics on 17 September 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Three have died already. This is yet another failure of unregulated markets. Considering all the tainted pet food and lead-filled toys that caused a scare last year, maybe the Chinese are finally going to realize that they’ll have to regulate their products better. You can’t just let the private sector “police itself.”
And the Dow has [...]
Obama on the financial crisis
Posted in Current Events, Economics, Politics on 16 September 2008 | Leave a Comment »
“What we’ve seen the last few days is nothing less than the final verdict on an economic philosophy that has completely failed. And I am running for president of the United States because the dreams of the American people must not be endangered any more.
“It’s time for a government that is fighting for you — [...]
Approximating analog with digital
Posted in Science, Technology on 16 September 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Future technological advances may allow us to instantiate high-resolution models of our mindbrains on machine substrate, or even create de novo persons. Critics point out, quite rightly, that machines are digital while mindbrains are analog. From this insight, they conclude that machines won’t be able to recreate the detailed processing of neural wetware.
However, the critics [...]
Putting things in perspective
Posted in Culture, Environment, Science, Technology on 8 September 2008 | Leave a Comment »
“If climate change is a hoax, it’s the greatest hoax ever perpetrated, because everything we do to respond will make us more efficient, more productive, more entrepreneurial, more competitive, [and] more respected [in the world].”
– David Friedman, author of The World is Flat, and Hot, Flat and Crowded.
Google Chrome running on Linux
Posted in Internet, Linux on 7 September 2008 | Leave a Comment »
So, Google released it’s web browser, Chrome, to much fanfare last week. Right now, only a Windows version is available, but the WINE developers worked quickly to release a patch that allows Linux users to run Chrome. Here’s the proof:
The directions are available from Ubuntu Geek.
I already used Chrome on my Windows XP computer at [...]
39% chance that Sarah Palin would become president
Posted in Politics on 7 September 2008 | 3 Comments »
If John McCain wins this election, he will be the oldest person to ever become president. He chose Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate. Many have suggested that she is vastly underqualified for the job. They ask, “If, god forbid, something happened to McCain, is Palin ready for the job?” Others counter that [...]
Aaronson on technology
Posted in Environment, Philosophy, Science, Technology on 7 September 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Robin Hanson on the Overcoming Bias blog links to Scott Aaronson’s review of The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil (which I’ve read, and whom I watched deliver a speech at the first Singularity Summit).
There’s a lot I could say about that review, and I will, but right now I just want to point out [...]
