Those of you who also follow my posts at FriendlyAtheist know I’m a huge fan of Neil deGrasse Tyson. I think he’s an excellent science communicator and role model. He’s so enthusiastic about science and he makes others interested through his exuberance.

Back story (taken from the youtube info):

TIME recently went to interview Neil deGrasse Tyson and we noticed a huge crate had been delivered to his office. He was then kind enough to open it on-camera. The back story of this gift is that Neil was adamant that ABC News include the Saturn V Rocket on its list of The 7 Wonders of America. The folks at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama were so grateful, they sent Neil a replica.

I’ve watched this several times and I still find myself compelled to smile each time.  Learning things is fun, but Tyson manages to have fun while inspiring a sense of awe and wonder.

[Holding his new model of the Saturn V] This and only this is the only piece of hardware to ever take humans to another world.   The space shuttle… is cool, but it goes into Earth orbit -- you’re still attached to the earth.  This thing gets you off of Earth into space… to another world.

…

I submit to you that this is the crowning achievement of human ingenuity and the fulfillment of dreams in the history of what it is to be human.

Wonderful.

According to Kwabena Boahen, a computer scientist at Stanford University, a robot with a processor as smart as the human brain would require at least 10 megawatts to operate. That’s the amount of energy produced by a small hydroelectric plant. But a small group of computer scientists may have hit on a new neural supercomputer that could someday emulate the human brain’s low energy requirements of just 20 watts–barely enough to run a dim light bulb….

[The new idea] trades the extreme precision of digital transistors for the brain’s chaos of many neurons firing, with misfires 30 percent to 90 percent of the time. Yet the brain works with this messy system by relying on crowds of neurons to shout over the noise of misfires and competing signals.

That willingness to give up precision for chaos could lead to a new era of creative computing that simulates the unpredictable patterns of brain activity. It could also represent a far more energy-efficient era — the Neurogrid fits in a briefcase and runs on what amounts to a few D batteries, or less than a watt. Rather than transistors, it uses capacitors that get the same voltage of neurons.

Let me be the first to welcome our new neurogrid overlords.

(For a fuller writeup on this, see this discovery article.)

There has been some publicity lately about the Dictator and his Czars taking over the control of the Internet…and believe it people, if he could, he would! One of the main reasons [Obama] would like to control the Internet would be to stifle the truth about him and his henchman. The other objective is that which is not too highly publicized, and that is the United Nations.

Another blogger said, “Yet another unconstitutional assault on our liberty is being passed around the senate” and tagged his post under communism, corruption and socialism.

This is a pretty typical response from these kinds of conservatives. Notice the loaded language they use — “Dictator,” “Czars,” “henchman” — they aren’t really talking about issues, but using an issue superficially understood to make their constant point about how evil Obama is. The more radical liberals used the same kind of tactics when referring to Bush, which was equally ineffective at promoting intelligent discourse.

So what is this internet kill switch? Let’s get the facts from a fair and balanced news source, FOX News (did I hear snickering?):

A Senate bill would offer President Obama emergency control of the Internet and may give him a “kill switch” to shut down online traffic by seizing private networks — a move cybersecurity experts worry will choke off industry and civil liberties.

That’s the first sentence, and the first thing I notice is they use the phrase “seizing private networks” which sounds pretty bad and that “experts” are afraid it will hurt civil liberties. Yikes!

The new legislation allows the president to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” relating to “non-governmental” computer networks and make a plan to respond to the danger, according to an excerpt published online — a broad license that rights experts worry would give the president “amorphous powers” over private users….

A Senate source familiar with the bill likened the new power to take control of portions of the Internet to what President Bush did when he grounded all aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001, CNET News reported….

But Rockefeller, who introduced the bill in April with bipartisan support, said the legislation was critical to protecting everything from water and electricity to banking, traffic lights and electronic health records.

“I know the threats we face,” Rockefeller said in a prepared statement when the legislation was introduced. “Our enemies are real. They are sophisticated, they are determined and they will not rest.”

I very concerned with civil liberties, but it’s absurd to point to this as evidence Obama is trying to silence freedom of speech. Obama has been very vocal in his support of all kinds of freedom — which is one reason why conservatives hate him so, because he even supports reproductive freedom. This isn’t about squelching presidential criticism — it’s about protecting ourselves in a crisis.

The government uses the internet for a lot of things. During a crisis, if traffic was sabotaged and/or overloaded, and the government couldn’t communicate effectively, they would need something like this — and without systems in place, it would be too late. Hopefully that will never happen, but let’s face it — it’s more important for the government to use the internet if a large disaster strikes, than for your Uncle Ted to be streaming HD porn videos.

The bill was introduced in April, and is just now getting attention. It has been reworked and will continue to be. I agree it’s a bill that needs to be carefully worded so that the government cannot turn off private networks unless there was a real crisis, and only for a short period of time.

But seriously folks, don’t make this into a free speech issue or about Obama’s supposed corruption. It’s a bill designed to protect people by keeping government communication open during a crisis. By all means, let’s protect civil liberties and keep government restrictions off the internet as much as possible. But let’s also not jump to conclusions and bray fanatically about corruption and communism. It just makes you look like a jackass.

I have a business account with paypal that I use for a business of mine. In general, things have been fine — until about a month ago, when I logged in and couldn’t access any of my account history. Nothing recent and nothing old. I had a customer who wanted to cancel a subscription, and I didn’t have access to it.

I emailed paypal and explained the problem. They answered my question by ignoring my email and saying I could access my account history by going to the “history” section — like I was an idiot who couldn’t find the right section.

I looked around on the web and saw I wasn’t the only one affected, and that Paypal had confirmed the problem. Finally my paypal service rep admitted and said it would be fixed soon. Yet it’s been weeks and I still can’t access my account history. Which means I’m really screwed when it comes to managing refunds or cancellations, or seeing anything about what’s going on with my account.

I also emailed Paypal and asked to cancel the customer’s subscription since I couldn’t, but they just ignored my question. So the customer had to do a dispute which was the only way I could give a refund — which is bad experience for the customer and not good for my reputation.

This is unacceptable. Paypal is owned by eBay, a huge company. Do they really not have the resources to fix a major bug like this that is affecting many businesses and customers?

“It is not impossible to build a human brain and we can do it in 10 years,” he said.

“And if we do succeed, we will send a hologram to TED to talk.”

They’ve already simulated elements of a rat brain and are working their way up to humans. They’re using supercomputers with 10,000 processors to simulate and reverse engineer the brain.

I highly doubt an artificial brain will be created in 10 years. It would be great if they can, but it doesn’t seem feasible — the human brain is far more complicated than a rat brain, and they don’t even have that simulated yet. My guess would be at least 20 years. More realistically, 50-100 years.

Hopefully I’m wrong though and it’ll be quicker.

It’ll be interesting when we can download/duplicate all the information in our brains to an artificial one. We could live in a virtual environment when we die… until someone pulls the plug.

Do you think the prospects for this are exciting or frightening (or both)?

Take a look at the plugs in your house. I live in a two year old house — and yet, there are receptacles sticking out of the wall with large faceplates. They seem like an afterthought.

Worse, the plugs are freaking huge and clumsy. Three monstrous metal pins which only allow two plugs per unit. Not surprising since they were designed in an era when computers with the power to calculate 2+2 took up the size of a room.

But we’re so used to it, we hardly think about improving them.

This is what I would like to see: a new standard plug similar to Apple’s MagSafe technology. If you have an Apple laptop, you know the beauty of this technology.

The plug is tiny — about the size of your index fingernail. It’s magnetic, so it clips right on and comes off with a slight tug. It has a small light on the plug to tell you if there’s power and if it’s charging. And as far as I can tell, you can’t be electrocuted with it.

You could fit 18 of these plugs on a wall receptacle in the same amount of space as we use for two. Not that you’d need that many — 6 would be sufficient.

Could someone please make this happen?

Update: Looks like someone is working on a better universal plug called Green Plug. Seems like a step in the right direction.

To the chronicles of the bizarre abstinence-only crowd, we can now add a “purity ring” app for the iPhone:

For just 59p, consumers can download an application that allows them to take a purity pledge and then display a silver ring on their phone to prove their commitment to abstinence.

Oddly, this application was produced in England. Apparently the “purity pledge” idea has found fertile (pardon) soil across the pond:

In the US, around 8 million people have taken a purity pledge; in the UK, the figure is around 250,000. The country is regularly described as the teenage pregnancy capital of Europe, and last week it was revealed that a £6m campaign to cut teenage pregnancies had failed, leading to an increase, rather than a drop, in the number of girls getting pregnant.

My favorite part of the article comes at the very end:

Asked whether the virtual nature of the ring might lead people to forget their vow of abstinence in the heat of the moment, Bennett replied: “If you’ve taken the pledge, you’re likely to follow it through.”

Then what’s the point of the ring?

Anyway, this guy is clearly naive, but he’s given me an idea. If this crowd will pay for a silly set of silver pixels, imagine what they’d pay for a Virgin Alarm. Remember, it goes off before you do.

(via)

1. Google is the closest thing to an Omniscient (all-knowing) entity in existence, which can be scientifically verified.
2. Google is everywhere at once (Omnipresent).
3. Google answers prayers.
4. Google is potentially immortal.
5. Google is infinite.
6. Google remembers all.
7. Google can “do no evil” (Omnibenevolent).
8. “Google” is searched for more than the terms “God”, “Jesus”, “Allah”, “Buddha”, “Christianity”, “Islam”, “Buddhism” and “Judaism” combined.
9. Evidence of Google’s existence is abundant.

Well, I must say there is more evidence that Google is God than the Judeo-Christian God…

What must I do to be saved? Well it just so happens there are the 10 Commandments of Google:

1. Thou shalt have no other Search Engine before me.
2. Thou shalt not build thy own commercial-free Search Engine, for I am a jealous Engine, bringing law suits and plagues against the fathers of the children unto the third and fourth generations.
3. Thou shalt not use Google as a verb to mean the use of any lesser Search Engine.
4. Thou shalt remember each passing day and use thy time as an opportunity to gain knowledge of the unknown.
5. Thou shalt honor thy fellow humans, regardless of gender, sexual orientation or race, for each has invaluable experience and knowledge to contribute toward humankind.
6. Thou shalt not misspell whilst praying to me.
7. Thou shalt not hotlink.
8. Thou shalt not plagiarise or take undue credit for other’s work.
9. Thou shalt not use reciprocal links nor link farms, for I am a vengeful but fair engine and will diminish thy PageRank. The Google Dance shall cometh.
10. Thou shalt not manipulate Search Results.

(via McBloggenstein)

Now I know better. I just starting reading Kurzwiel’s The Age of Spiritual Machines, and now it seems inevitable that by the end of the century we will create at least some kind of simple AI.

What do you think? Is true AI possible?

[polldaddy poll=1003091]

For those who don’t know, feeds are the best way to keep up on your favorite blogs. Using a feed reader will show you the posts you haven’t read all in one place. I read about 100 blogs a day, and I can do it in 30 minutes because I use a feed reader. Without one, well, the only thing I’d be doing would be reading blogs.

It’s really simple:

1. Get a free feed reader. You can use a web-based one like Google Reader, or a desktop application like NetNewsWire (Mac) or FeedDemon (Windows). If you use iGoogle, you can add a feed right to your homepage.
    
2. Subscribe to your favorite blogs. Feeds are often located on the right side with a bright orange icon. Copy the url (also called “location”) of the feed (here’s mine) and subscribe to it in your feed reader.

Then you’re all set. Every time you open your feed reader, it will grab the latest posts from your favorite blogs.

Isn’t technology wonderful?

What’s the difference? Either way they don’t make money.