Blogs

I just found a book called "It's not the big that eat the small...it's the big that eat the slow". Although, this is sort of about the business aspect of it. In such an event, business competition will be very fast.

Individualism is a ying meme. Altruism is a yang meme. Altruism leads to a collective sense of self, whereas individualism leads to divisional sense of self.

Is an atom an individual, or a molecule, or the collective of the molecules making up the grain, or the collection of grains making up the material an individual?

According to the article "Scientists find more oil fissures in Lake Baikal's bedrock"

...several Russian scientists going back as far as Dmitry Mendeleyev have suggested an 'abiogenic hypothesis,' according to which petroleum was formed from carbon deposits originating deep in the Earth's mantle...

Scientists find more oil fissures in Lake Baikal's bedrock

Heck yeah Machines Like Us is worth a dollar! You guys run this site quite nicely, you always write spectacular scientific and atheist news articles, and in my opinion you could get away with charging a small membership fee with some more popularizing or advertising of your website if you needed or wanted to.

At a website called Apperceptual I came across a list of 21 open problems facing Artificial Intelligence research.

Good afternoon,

I recently saw (again) a movie I very much like called The 13th Floor, in which the characters are faced with the question: what is real? Turns out that there's a whole lot of virtual reality going on.

I pose a question before the group at MLU: Is there no room at the table of the devout theist or the devout atheist for conviviality around the conversational marketplace of ideas?

I've seen people spout off about how "if you like religion so much, there are tons of other places for people like you. Why don't you go somewhere else?" and nonsense like that.

Check out this article:

http://tinyurl.com/yqeevn

This article reports on the anticipated creation of artificial
life from the ground up. All information needed
to create this new life would be artificially (i.e., human)
created.

I emphasize the word information.

Just read this entry by Mano Singham. Very well done and highly recommended. I'm not sure I'm sold, but it does give food for thought.

There is only one piece of it that I have a problem with.

Let me start off acknowledging that I write as a layman. I have no august titles to augment respect. I have no vast accomplishments. I just have gall. Deal with it.

There seems to be a great prejudice against all things religion on this site. I think that this is misguided at best and more likely arrogance of a kind most unbecoming a scientist.

I'm not a religious person. The only time I ever go to a church is when I'm obliged by social convention to attend a baptism, funeral, or wedding. I feel a bit like a wolf in sheep's skin when I go, and fight the urge, often unsuccessfully, to answer with silly or snide comments when asked as part of the audience if I accept Jesus into my heart, or if I reject Satan and sin. (As an aside, I consider it the mark of an enlightened being to accept all parts of oneself, even the parts that are considered immoral. Of which I have none, of course, but you know, hypothetically.)

Norm tells me a few people have commented on the bit in his interview with me, where I say that simulations are not yet a substitute for the real world. The general opinion seems to be that this is close to not being true, mostly thanks to better physics engines.

I just want to publicly state my appreciation to Mano Singham for the consistent high quality of his writing here on Machines Like Us. Being an atheist myself, I am truly grateful for his remarkable, in-depth analysis of not only the subject of atheism but religion, evolution, and a variety of scientific topics. We need more like him!

Hi all. I'm the world's laziest blogger, but I promised Norm I'd try to post here sometimes. First of all I'd like to thank Norm for a wonderful site. He puts a huge amount of effort into it and it really shows. Norm and I met physically for the first time a couple of weeks ago (after being email buddies for several years) and it was a real pleasure.

A news article today shows why exercise boosts brainpower. Apparently, physical activity helps build new brain cells in the dentate gyrus, a region of the hippocampus linked with memory and memory loss. Here's an excerpt: