A new variation of poetry, with constraints similar to haiku has cropped up – Fibonacci poetry. The number of syllables in each line follows the Fibonacci sequence – where each number is the sum of the preceding two numbers 0-1-1-2-3-5-8-13-21-34….

My contribution to this art is:Fibonacci Spiral

I

Think

Yes, Think

Really Think

I Am Self Aware

Hal – A Sentient Computer

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do, I’m half Cray

Ray Kurzweil says I’m alive and free; Dave Bowman was frightened by Me, He killed Me.

Cray I Supercomputer—————————–

Cray I Supercomputer

Since the discovery in the 1920s that all types of radiation can cause gene mutations, scientists have wondered what role high energy cosmic rays might play in human evolution. Yet it was an idea destined never to find favour among geneticists, who could determine no hard evidence that the background flux of cosmic rays might have had any noticeable effect on human cell mutation.

All this is about to change, as an examination of ice cores extracted from sites in Antarctica and Greenland provides new information on the level of cosmic rays reaching Earth in past ages.

When so-called “primary” cosmic rays hit the upper atmosphere they generally break up to produce a plethora of “secondary” particles that form isotopes, which fall to Earth and are preserved each year in layers of ice. One such isotope is beryllium 10, found within the ice cores, which provides clear evidence that on three occasions over the past 100,000 years � around (more…)

“Lets make English America’s Official Language” is the clarion call for many activists resisting America’s apparent polyglot tendencies. My recent post on what makes America special as a country showed how it is important that each generation of immigrants succeed and also speak English. Over the years politicians and guardians of American heritage have bemoaned that immigrants are not fluent in English. President Teddy Roosevelt said, “Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.”

Well, a recent study by Douglas Massey at Princeton University and Ruben Rumbaut along with Frank Bean at the University of California, Irvine have found that this goal may take care of itself! In Southern California, their study shows that the children of Mexican Immigrants have lower Spanish fluency and better English, and their grandchildren mostly speak English as their first language. (more…)

Antonio Damasio has written two books in one: A tour of his field of active brain imaging science which provide new insights into the dynamic working of emotions and feelings, and a biography of Benedictus Spinoza who three hundred and fifty years ago published exquisite, but very disruptive insights into the nature of man.

The important thing is that Looking for Spinoza, in the end, brings its multiple theses together in a gratifying view of the human condition. It shows not only how much we now know about the function of feelings and emotions, and how they regulate the body. Damasio shows how exquisitely accurate Spinoza’s insights were.
At first, Looking for Spinoza seems a little disjointed – what do brain scans and symptomatic analysis of people with brain lesions have to do with seventeenth century philosophical writings? Well, it turns out, quite a bit. It seems that Spinoza, intuited the functional relationships between emotionally competitent stimuli, emotions and feelings that are only now are being rediscovered by neuroscience. (more…)

Remember the story about the Siberian breeder who bred tame Silver Foxes? Over just a few generations Dmitri Belyaev selected only the most tame foxes to breed, and ended up with a dog-like fox – as tame as you please, thank you. The foxes also had a number of other characteristics that came along with the tameness – similar to the changes between dogs and wolves – droopy ears, and patchy color, etc.

rat A - Photo by Socar MylesWell, this same fellow also did a similar experiment with rats! He developed two colonies; one about as friendly as you can imagine, and the other colony a clan of uber-rodents that are more vicious than those in Willard. The New York Times reported that Frank Albert of the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionalry Anthropology has convinced Dr. Belyaev to loan him a few rats from each of his strains to look for the genetic differences between the two closely bred colonies. (more…)

Michael Shermer, the editor of Skeptic Magazine and a frequent contributor to Scientific American has produced a work that explains the basis of morality and ethics on a scientific basis. The system of ethics and definition of what is good and what is evil has usually been assigned to the realm of religion. In ancient times, the likes of Aristotle and Socraties wrestled with this subject with only provisional results.

Religious folk tell us that God establishes right and wrong, and assigns punishment to those who break God’s Law. The premise is that without God establishing the rules, humanity would fall into disarray with everyone making up their own rules. Under this view, the rules are rigid and established under the authority and pronouncements of God as interpreted by the leaders of the religion.
Shermer soundly refutes this viewpoint, and makes an excellent case for his Provisional Ethics and Provisional Morality. These ideas are founded on several insights: Moral Naturalism, an Evolved Moral Society, the Nature of Moral Nature, Provisional Morality, Provisional Right and Wrong, Provisional Justice, and Ennobling Evolutionary Ethics. (more…)

Svante PaaboDecoding genomes is getting cheaper. Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology is busy decoding the genome for the Neanderthal. Decoding the genetic makeup of Neanderthals will allow us to see just where this human relative falls in our family tree. By comparing the makeup of this genome with that of the varous races of modern humans, and with bonobos and chimpanzees we can see a little more clearly where they fall. (more…)


blocked
Originally uploaded by dario.agosta.

National governments have chosen to block internet content using tools blunt and sophisticated. China has been working with Google and other companies to restrict access to content that it does not like. The UAE has blocked flickr.com and other general interest sites as well as all VOIP services such as Skype. India has blocked *.blogspot.com, *.typepad.com and geocities.com/* . This action caused a storm of protest among Indian internet users. Will this protest be blocked?
The United States government, “the land of the free”,has collected international phone records of millions of Americans. Will snooping and control of our internet use follow?
All this is done in the name of fighting terrorism. There is no protection from bombers in blocking access to websites. Anyone wanting to send secret terrorist messages would use encryption or steganography. Web based communications is used to reach the masses – to put together demonstrations or strikes. These are not the tools of terrorists – these are the tools of legitimate political participation. (more…)

Prison Cell from http://www.flickr.com/photos/stillburning/Civil societies have a duty to protect themselves from the actions of members of the society who fail to abide by the rules of the society. In modern society, these rules are established by representative bodies (Congress) and enforced by the executive. Infractions of the rules are called crimes. A police force is often the agency that identifies the commission of a crime, a prosecutor specifies the charges and makes the case before a tribunal or court, and a corrections department carries out the actions prescribed by the court. Often, the actions consist of confinement to prisons for some period of time, financial penalties or probation.

Why do societies do this? There are several purposes, some practical, some with unintended consequences, and some to assuage anger and pique. Lets look at some of these effects. (more…)

Creative commons from http://www.flickr.com/photos/coulsey/181979168/ The United States is facing a big economic problem, along with Europe, who has it worse. The problem is simply that as the [tag]population[/tag] grows older there are fewer young people to work and support the economy. There are two separate causes: Americans now have few children, just equal to the replacement rate, and [tag]life expectancy[/tag] for Americans has increased – to 77.6 years up from 66.2 years in 1950. A third factor is the “baby boom” after World War II whose members are reaching retirement age.

This economic problem is substantially one of policy and the expectations of Americans. The policies established in the ’50s assumed that one would retire at 60 or 65 years and have 5 or ten years of retirement. We now have an average life expectancy of 11.6 years after a 65 year retirement instead of the 1.2 year expectancy in 1950. (more…)

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