Sister blog of Physicists of the Caribbean in which I babble about non-astronomy stuff, because everyone needs a hobby

Thursday 30 April 2015

Circles of bigotry

"To claim that you are being discriminated against because you have lost your right to discriminate against others shows a gross lack of understanding of history and oppression, as well as a disturbingly narrow understanding of Christianity."

Originally shared by Scott Elyard
http://www.adn.com/article/20150429/discrimination-simply-not-way-christ

Tuesday 28 April 2015

The internet makes the world scarier

"Most of the chief protagonists in my book I met online first, and offline second. I always liked them more in the real world. By removing the face-to-face aspect of human interaction, the internet dehumanises people, and our imagination often turns them into inflated monsters, more terrifying because they are in the shadows."
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32446711

Sunday 26 April 2015

Wednesday 22 April 2015

There be whales here !

Partially very interesting, but would be about ten times shorter and a hundred times better without the vitriolic diatribe against science and technology.

Also it's completely lacking any discussion of evidence in behaviour to support superior whale intelligence (besides the human tendency towards being self-destructive and lack of similar behaviour in whales). If the whale brain is so great, what problem-solving behaviour do they show to demonstrate this ?

Originally shared by David Stroe

An essay worthy of your time
„Apart from our collective ego as a species, the idea of an Earthling species more intelligent than ourselves is difficult to swallow. We measure intelligence in strictly human terms, based on those abilities that we as a species excel at.”
https://knowledgeutopia.wordpress.com/2014/08/28/the-cetacean-brain-and-hominid-perceptions-of-cetacean-intelligence/

Tuesday 14 April 2015

Robot butlers

I'd prefer the five tonne version that comes with a gatling gun.

My mother would prefer one that does the ironing. My solution to that is simply not to do any ironing.

I would quite like a robot chef since my solution to cooking is to find something which is frozen and heat it in the oven until it's done. I'm not willing to spend £10,000 on a robot that prepares more interesting food though.

A general-purpose robot butler that takes the rubbish out, washes the dishes (or puts them in a dishwasher), mows the lawn, mops and/or sweeps the floor and does the laundry... that'd be something, but I'd still plump for the gatling gun robot suit version given equal costs. A robot butler that says, "Get away from her YOU BITCH !" just isn't the same. :P
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32282131

Thursday 2 April 2015

The best ideas...

"Another idea is simplicity, or theoretical frugality, sometimes referred to as Ockham’s Razor. But given the enormous successes of string theory, it becomes clear that the best scientific theories should be as complicated as possible."
http://arxiv.org/abs/1504.00108

Dune part two : first impressions

I covered Dune : Part One when it came out, so it seems only fair I should cover the "concluding" part as well. I'm gonna do ...