Fingernail on 13/2/2007 at 00:35
Quote Posted by st.patrick
damn you Cabernet Shiraz why do you have to taste so great
with a name like that she must have been expensive
Strangeblue on 13/2/2007 at 02:18
Quote Posted by Shayde
or an AMERICAN.
Yup, apparently that is a crime these days. Even in America.
st.patrick on 13/2/2007 at 02:26
Quote Posted by Fingernail
with a name like that she must have been expensive
not that bad
~ €4,50 for a night full of adventure
dude who stole my memories
Shayde on 13/2/2007 at 06:37
Quote Posted by Strangeblue
Yup, apparently that is a crime these days. Even in America.
You don't understand me anymore, the magic is gone.
:(
Rogue Keeper on 13/2/2007 at 07:02
Quote Posted by Turtle
Wait, so if we install an MRI machine in BR40928495842935924490282509's ass we'll be able to predict when he's going to post an ill advised, alarmist thread?
I'll give you something ill-advised. :sly:
Quote:
Exploding Remote-Control Camera TurtlesAn intrepid inventor from Russia named Alexei Burikov is pioneering a new front in weapons development: remote-controlled, camera-toting death turtles.
Alexei is the head of the biology department at Rostov-on-Don State Pedagogical University, and his turtle contraption uses devices fitted onto the turtle's shell to cause vibrations, which a properly trained turtle will respond to. He suggests several uses for the bionic reptiles, including remote-controlled bombs, spy cameras, planting surveillance devices, and even non-sleuthy uses, such as wildlife monitoring.
Mr. Burikov did not address the practicality of such a slow-moving delivery system, but perhaps this new direction is in response to the rumors of new hare-based bomb-interception technology.
(
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=191)
demagogue on 13/2/2007 at 09:47
Quote Posted by "GBM"
but as of yet no way to operationally define [conscious] processes. And therefore no way to know if you're even LOOKING at one.
I remember one visiting lecturer to my CogSci class writing a speculative equation to operationalize conscious processes as a derivative of relative Hebbian dynamics, lol. My professor laughed that it was the first
mathmatical theory he'd ever seen for consciousness. Good luck on testing it, though! But to it's merit, at least it's theoretically testable at all. I wrote it down somewhere to pull out when I needed inspiration/a good laugh.
As long as we're spouting out wacky theories, the most interesting thing I've run into recently is (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_natural_selection) cosmological natural selection
.
Quote Posted by paraphrasing here
Cosmological natural selection is an alternative to the anthropic argument to why the parameters in the universe (giving us the basic properties of particles, time and space that we know) are what they are, even though it is incredibly unlikely they would be selected by chance.
Instead of "because we wouldn't be here otherwise", the idea is that mother universes give birth to baby universes through blackhole singularities bouncing and becoming their own self-contained universes, with the daughter universes able to slightly change their parameters. Logically, daughter universes that can make more blackholes actually do make more blackholes of their own, so the parameters supporting blackhole-making are naturally selected over many generations. But as it turns out, those same parameters are the one's generally friendly to star creation, carbon chemistry, and so life. The fact that the parameters of our universe seem to be optimized for black-hole creation supports the theory; and ideally the theory will become testable as we learn more about blackholes. (In contrast, the anthropic argument can never be falsified, so in that sense it's not a true scientific hypothesis.) It's also more satisfying than the anthropic argument in the sense that it gives a real explanation for why the universe is the way it is.
Whether the theory is true depends, among other things, on the hypothesis of mutliple or fecund universes, that is, whether and how singularities bounce and can form new universes, and on certain properties of quantum gravity that we may be able to confirm/deny in the near future.
If it is true, I can already guess they're not going to be teaching *that* in Kansas.
Scots Taffer on 13/2/2007 at 09:57
Quote Posted by demagogue
I remember one visiting lecturer to my CogSci class writing a speculative equation to operationalize conscious processes as a derivative of relative Hebbian dynamics, lol.
Hebbian dynamics, more like plebian mathematics, am i rite?
seriously though, now I'm very intrigued about all this and you've made me get my math geek on - after I read (
http://www.alife.org/alife8/proceedings/sub894.pdf) this result from a google search of "hebbian dynamics" - this shit hasn't happened since I got into the arena of complex algebra in second year which sort of petered out when we got into groups, rings and fields as the algebraic theory just got a bit too convoluted, and lastly I had a brief burst of excitement at the idea of biological mathematics in my final honours year, which turned out to be a crock.
Strangeblue on 14/2/2007 at 00:59
Quote Posted by Shayde
You don't understand me anymore, the magic is gone. :(
Awww... baby, does this mean we gotta split up?
(it's not you... it's me....)
Gestalt on 14/2/2007 at 01:17
Quote Posted by Taffer_Boy_Elvis
you are mom? wtf?
PLOT TWIST.
Scots Taffer on 14/2/2007 at 02:04
I can't kill you! You're... my daughter.
I'm not your daughter.
Oh, but you are, and the most important daughter of all.
I'm older than you.
I had a mission that involved time travel.
I'm a man!
A mission that went horribly wrong.
