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Comment by Dallas the Phallus on March 8, 2013 at 4:27pm

Thanks Rocky, that is it.

Comment by RockyTIJ on March 7, 2013 at 11:21pm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locard%27s_exchange_principle

Comment by Dallas the Phallus on March 7, 2013 at 8:57pm

Any physics people here? I posted something ages ago and I can't remember the name of the principle or law or whatever you call it. 

The principle was that when two object come in contact with one another they cannot separate without leaving something of themselves behind. So when your oily hand touches a dirty surface, your hand leaves behind oil and skin cells but it has also picked up dirt from the surface. 

It was named after the man who defined it. 

Can anyone here help me with this? What is it called?

Comment by Pope OoO (Out of Order) on November 27, 2012 at 1:17pm

Humanity’s last invention and our uncertain future

A philosopher, a scientist and a software engineer have come together to propose a new centre at Cambridge to address developments in human technologies that might pose “extinction-level” risks to our species, from biotechnology to artificial intelligence.

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In 1965, Irving John ‘Jack’ Good sat down and wrote a paper for New Scientist called Speculations concerning the first ultra-intelligent machine. Good, a Cambridge-trained mathematician, Bletchley Park cryptographer, pioneering computer scientist and friend of Alan Turing, wrote that in the near future an ultra-intelligent machine would be built.

This machine, he continued, would be the “last invention” that mankind will ever make, leading to an “intelligence explosion” – an exponential increase in self-generating machine intelligence. For Good, who went on to advise Stanley Kubrick on 2001: a Space Odyssey, the “survival of man” depended on the construction of this ultra-intelligent machine.

Fast forward almost 50 years and the world looks very different. Computers dominate modern life across vast swathes of the planet, underpinning key functions of global governance and economics, increasing precision in healthcare, monitoring identity and facilitating most forms of communication – from the paradigm shifting to the most personally intimate. Technology advances for the most part unchecked and unabated.

While few would deny the benefits humanity has received as a result of its engineering genius – from longer life to global networks – some are starting to question whether the acceleration of human technologies will result in the survival of man, as Good contended, or if in fact this is the very thing that will end us.

Now a philosopher, a scientist and a software engineer have come together to propose a new centre at Cambridge, the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER), to address these cases – from developments in bio and nanotechnology to extreme climate change and even artificial intelligence – in which technology might pose “extinction-level” risks to our species.

Read rest of article here.

With so much at stake, we need to do a better job of understanding the risks of potentially catastrophic technologies."

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—Huw Price

Comment by Pope OoO (Out of Order) on September 16, 2011 at 2:01am

Bioethicists Offer Reward For Proof On HPV Vaccine Claim

Even as Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann backs off some from an inflammatory claim that a vaccine to prevent cervical cancer led to mental retardation in a young girl, two bioethicists are turning up the heat.

...

...Dr. Steven Miles, a bioethicist at the University of Minnesota, has ponied up $1,000 if the mother Bachmann talked about can produce medical proof that her daughter suffered mental retardation from the HPV vaccine, the Star Tribune reports. "These types of messages in this climate have the capacity to do enormous public health harm," Miles told the paper. "It's an extremely serious claim and it deserves to be analyzed."

And Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania has placed what amounts to a $10,000 bet on the issue. He, too, wants proof of the claim and described his wager with Bachmann on Twitter...

Read and/or listen to whole story here.

 

Comment by Dallas the Phallus on July 15, 2011 at 9:49am

Hey, this rock looks like a human face. I mean, what are the chances of that just happening? It must have been created that way. Why else would it exist? If this isn't proof that an omnipotent invisible god created the world, impregenated a virgin who had a son who died and then came back to life, then I don't know what is.

 

Comment by Jaume on July 15, 2011 at 5:51am

When we find an arrow head we can see that something created it. The chances of an arrow head being created by some rocks falling down a cliff and hitting each other just right are just astronomical so we assume that it was created by man an intelligent designer.

 

When we find Jesus' face on a dog's butt we can see that something created it. The chances of Jesus' face on a dog's butt being created by some hair growing around its ass and being colored just right are just astronomical so we assume that it was created by man an intelligent designer.

Comment by RockyTIJ on July 14, 2011 at 5:40pm

Dallas,

Mind-boggling, ain't it?

Six words:

    Blinded by the veil of faith.

Take care,

Rocky

Comment by Dallas the Phallus on July 14, 2011 at 3:47pm

Tee hee, look what I found online:

 

How some can look at the complexities of nature and say there is not an intelligent designer is baffling to me.

Did the bees and flowers get together and decide to both evolve so that they could help each other out not now but in millions of years from that time? What about the time frame? If it takes millions of years for a change then if the change was necessary the species would die out before the change was accomplished. No change was needed for survival because they survived for millions of generations before any change could be noticed. When people say everything we see was created by pure chance I really do question their intelligence and/or their ability to think logically.

When we find an arrow head we can see that something created it. The chances of an arrow head being created by some rocks falling down a cliff and hitting each other just right are just astronomical so we assume that it was created by man an intelligent designer. At the same time we look at the universe, the human body and the incredibly ways plants and animals interact and the "intelligent" say it just happened. Which of these two would be more likely to believe that they happened by chance? The rock falling off a cliff and on the way down it just so happens that the several times it hits another rock everything is aligned just right and an arrow head shaped rock lands at the bottom of a cliff. Or is there more of a chance that the human body is created by pure chance? If we look at this logically and someone says it is impossible for a rock to be shaped like an arrow head by pure natural forces and chance but yet all of creation must have been created by chance we have to look at them and conclude they are wrong.

Comment by Dallas the Phallus on July 9, 2011 at 9:35pm

How Science Will Shape Human Destiny

From the archives – How will the fields of medicine, computers, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, energy production and astronautics change our lives in the not-too-distant future? We talked in April with Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York and author of the new book “Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100″ (Doubleday, 2011).

Listen here.

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