A Terrifying Message from Al Gore

Al Gore is apparently a friend of Matt Groening. I always suspected, given his status as a Vice Presidential Action Ranger on Futurama.

The science in his movie is contentious, but it's undoubtedly a big political issue at the moment. I'm planning on watching it, if only to know what's going into popular culture.

online dictionary/thesaurus. This is an interface to the popular WordNet, and has more advanced features than WordNet 2.1.

WordNetASPNet Online WordNet Dictionary Browser

a new hobby?

Microsoft does the Robot

I have played many simulated robotics games, but it looks like Microsoft has actually released a physics simulator as part of a development package for real robots.

If we were still doing animal-level experiments at work, I'd be tempted to try to use this as a new virtual world simulator, as we're already working in C# on VS.NET

very interesting.

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Determined to outsmart the cancer, they turned to genetic testing.

Newsvine - 11 Cousins Give Up Stomachs After Tests

Excellent. It looks like predictive genetic screening is becoming more common (and perhaps most importantly) accepted by insurance as enough cause for preventative measures. These wise men had their stomachs removed, and it was paid for all or in part by insurance! that is sweet.

Probability

evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness

Pierre-Simon Laplace - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In my work, I am often struck by a vast sense of history. Many of the problems I struggle with have a rich and storied history, whereby I succeed merely by having lived after many great scientists.

Today we had a business lunch at the Cheesecake Factory, in partial celebration for Philip Van Eeden and John Burges joining the project.

Aside from work, my life is quite full, with crystal and the new apartment, and all the interesting happenings lately. I plan on taking a break after things slow down some years from now to properly appreciate all the interesting literature being produced, but for the time being, I've had to restrict my reading to things of more immediate interest, academic or professional use, and light and mindless recreation in those few spare and idle moments I have.

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Human Experimentation

Savant-like numerosity skills revealed in normal people by magnetic pulses

Perception abstract

Well, perhaps IA isn't that far away after all.

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Tiger! Tiger!

Gully Foyle is my name
And Terra is my nation
Deep space is my dwelling place
The stars my destination

The Stars My Destination - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This was my favorite book as a teen, and I still think it's a classic of the genre.

Gully Foyle is the classic driven man, who is transformed by the needs of his goal, vengeance. For being passed by a ship, when he was marooned in deep space. He goes from a third-class midshipman to become a dangerous commando, a dandy of high society, and an inmate in the fictional future Super-Max Prison equivalent.

I'd recommend it to anyone looking for classic sci-fi with psychological elements. It predated cyberpunk(my favorite genre) by almost forty years, yet anticipates many of the elements.

This book also shaped my view of capitalism and corporations as fundamentally much stronger forces than governments and councils, an opinion I still hold. It also introduces the concept of a corporation serving the vision of a single person, which I aspire to. The best intro in all of literature is still that of the CEO/Owner of the eponymous Presteign Corporation. "I am Presteign, of Presteign."

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Doom predicted in our time.

http://www.doomsdaycurve.com

An interesting, if misanthropic and misguided, flash presentation.

Wierdly enough, it was put together by a legal advocate of the adult entertainment industry, to argue that there are more pressing concerns that prosecuting his clients.

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space and games

Strangely, few people I know on the transhumanist lists have very large web presences. The most we tend to get up to are a few essays, a blog perhaps, and our affiliated organizations.

Here is a new (relatively) blog to add to that roll, by Peter de Blanc, whose writing on his blog are frankly quite superior some of the discussions he's been involved in on the SL4 list, which is only to be expected, I suppose.

Public Library of Science: Home

An interesting effort towards open science, where authors pay and access is free. They run six journals, all of whom have increasingly high profiles. PLoS Computational Biology in particular is now one of the most cited in the field.