It has been a long time since I last read Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, but I remember that he thought that there was an offset between our perception of art and our state of consciousness. This article seems to build on this. Good read… What can art tell us about the nature of consciousness? […]
Wanderings
Resources for Science Fiction: Anything you dream is fiction, and anything you accomplish is science, the whole history of mankind is nothing but science fiction. – Ray Bradbury
Monthly Archives: July 2016
Friendship and natural selection
Tuesday, July 12, 2016
It turns out that your friends can be genetically so similar to you that they are about the same as fourth cousins. I hate to think of the awful cross breeding that has created both my friends and myself. From: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. More than any other species, humans form social […]
Where is my Flying Car?
Tuesday, July 12, 2016
A repeating theme in SF from the Golden Age and even before is cars that fly. Unfortunately, unlike driving, being a pilot is hard. It is not like anyone can just take off and fly. (I don’t believe that just anyone should get in a car and drive, but that’s another story.) Flying cars never […]
Skynet Awakens?
Saturday, July 9, 2016
For the first time (not counting drones) a robot has been used to kill a human. This is the beginning of the robot wars. Dallas police turned to a robot rather than putting officers in harm’s way. Source: Robot’s role in killing Dallas shooter is a first – Jul. 8, 2016
Bee Bread — Nordic Food Lab
Thursday, July 7, 2016
by Josh EvansHoneybees (Apis mellifera) have mastered feats of chemical engineering as various as they are alchemical. Their most well-known substances are of course honey, their concentrated, stable, hive-warming energy source, and wax, their pliable, moisture-proof structural material. Yet there are others which nowadays are known primarily only to beekeepers and practitioners of traditional medicines. […]
Brian Eno: WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT MACHINES THAT THINK?
Monday, July 4, 2016
Now here’s the funny thing. I won’t be in the least troubled by my vast ignorance about almost everything I’ll be doing this morning. I’m used to it: I’ve been getting more and more ignorant all my life. I have a huge amount of experience in being ignorant and not worrying about it. In fact, […]
Garrison Keillor Turns Out the Lights on Lake Wobegon – The New York Times
Monday, July 4, 2016
“You get old and you realize there are no answers, just stories.” Source: Garrison Keillor Turns Out the Lights on Lake Wobegon – The New York Times
Heavy Metal and Natural Language Processing – Part 1
Sunday, July 3, 2016
What is accomplished by this? I don’t know, but be sure to check out the Haikus at the end of the article. This the kind of thing that computers are good for. The article is about an analysis of Heavy Metal lyrics and how words compare to a baseline of standard English documents. Source: Heavy […]