It doesn't "chill the speech" of the young or ignorant -- but it sure scares me out of posting REAL THOUGHTS attached to Facebook.

Anything can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion so anonymous = freedom in the information age.

I couldn't agree more. In an insane world, the sane blogger must appear as a troll!

Huffingtonpost.com forced a policy change that required a Facebook login. I don't want my opinions to tag me, like my credit rating. Eventually, if I've got any opinions that don't follow the "common and popular" I can create a self-reinforcing negative reputation.

Having what you really think follow you isn't good for being employed. And being unemployed isn't good for a credit rating. And a bad credit rating means insurance costs more. It's a really effective way to make dissidents "non persons" over time.

Anonymity on the internet is the last refuge of Democracy. If we cannot protest and voice our complaints anonymously -- then the only people who will get good reputations and jobs will be those that agree with the status quo.

I think the greatest speed limitation now is our "computing dimensions" -- we are still using binary logic in the computer. For instance, if we moved to optical computing -- sure the structures would get larger, and there are density issues, but if you can create a binary logic gate for each color, your "dimension" of computing is limited only by the frequencies you can discern. You add massive parallelism.

Now if we can move from binary logic at the same time, more computing work can get done per cpu cycle. In this case, the main limitation is coming up with a new computer logic to accommodate more than an off/on state.

And for data storage, holographic also is less "dense" than current hard drives, but you can add angles, and so more data can be stored in the same location.

I remember seeing a news story about a train conductor who "took marijuana and caused a deadly crash." They also mentioned, almost as a footnote near the end of the story that there were nearly 24 empty Miller Lite beer cans.

So I think we can't rule out something else that could have caused the malady.

But if this is 1/700,000 -- you are below the danger level of side effects to Aspirin.
Peanuts are legal and they can potentially kill more people.

Now we might put a warning label so people can look for the side effects, but this doesn't seem like a threat above "slipping on rubber ducky". Other than paranoia, this is about the third time I've heard of a person almost destroyed by MJ. There are many legal things that are far more dangerous.

If you have a trillion cameras all operating in sequence such that they are triggered exactly so one activates a trillionth of a second after the other, than you've got exactly the same information via speed of light as just one camera. The only question is how much light each device is sampling. The shorter the time window, the more sensitive the measurement of light.

But I don't see any problem with speed of light; you are just sampling what hits the sensor at a faster rate.

I'm just wondering who would sit around for a few weeks to watch a humming bird beat its wings a few times. We need some hyperbolic metaphors so we can comprehend how fast this is...

But I have to admit that if my intentions were ever good, I wasn't actually marketing anymore. I'm glad that he's apologetic, but he was in marketing. You don't swing a pitchfork in Hell and pretend you don't work there.

The "racial differences" for athletic ability are also incredibly over rated. You take anyone and start them on a program of wind sprints from the age of 4 and they are going to do better than the average couch potato. So if we try and factor out "given the same situation" then there is a minor difference -- we have only factored for the "rate of improvement given certain inputs." We don't know what "peak ability is" because most of us don't ever approach our peak.

If I'd stayed a book worm recluse like I was when I was ten, and I saw the only value in this world as "being smart", I'd be very, very educated as far as books are concerned.

It's not that we can't find a CLEAR difference with tests, but there are so many cultural differences that make the difference on athletic performance and intelligence it makes the other points moot. A few studies with adoption notwithstanding.

The genetics between humans other than a few aboriginal groups, is so minor as to be inconsequential. It's not like we are talking about Poodles and Retrievers. It's exactly like "all humans are poodles" and we are arguing superiority based on hair style.

One day our kids will be learning twice as much as they do today. New techniques and possibly modifications will be employed. Any on of the kids from 200 years in the future would put people today in the dust. So maybe we need to find better educational techniques based on culture, and let kids gravitate towards what works best.

The main problem I have with these IQ debates is; we don't cover all forms of intelligence, and we use the results as excuses to not do our best. I think that's why some people are so "PC" about the issue -- because every group "on top" in human history has tried to make arguments for why the people on top are naturally superior.

For instance; The royalty probably had higher IQ's than the average peasantry in medieval Europe and likely because of diet.
Some poles used to do IQ tests before people could vote, and the questions were entirely designed to be easy for a caucasian.

There is a difference, but I don't think people should be surpassed that others get upset, or that people call make valid points of larger differences in opportunity, and more recent "environmental history." What we think is "genetic IQ" may more likely be adaptive genes which can change one generation to the next. For instance, if your parents were weight lifters -- you might be better at lifting weights as certain genes are turned on. I expect we will see a lot more real science backing up the notion that humans and other animals that have to adapt to wildly changing conditions, can have massive changes in genetics based on recent family history.

For about 20 years I figured (before the anthropologists made it gospel), that we didn't kill off Neanderthals but interbred with them. Much of the superior Neanderthal strength however was bred out. Why? I figure the reason the weaker branch outbreak the genes for strength during an ice age was due to "metabolism." Super strong muscles even if the creature is smart requires more food.

Humans are about the weakest mammal pound for pound, but we also seem to have nearly the lowest metabolism. Only the Armadillo has lower average body temperature and it's barely a proper mammal.

Humans learned to cook to improve digestion and concentrate energy in food, and we also turned into omnivorous wimps to survive on what an animal a third our size requires -- and meanwhile manage to carry around a large brain. Something had to go. If this is accepted theory or not today, I haven't checked.

I think he was trying to make complex points. Yes he could have provided clip notes.

However I notice that you didn't add enough jokes to your comment. More jokes would make me WANT to read an english critique.

I also disagreed with about 50% of what he said, but I think we need to argue what he said and not how he said it.

TL;DR More funny stuff make me read. ;-)

As a person who is actually Caucasian and was found to have genius IQ -- I'm going to dispute the way racial intelligence is computed. For one thing, I experienced a lot of ADD and ADHD as a child -- and later it seemed I "grew out of it" but the real reason was my allergy load reduced. It appears I should not be getting gluten in my diet and mold in my air. So in the wrong environment -- I seem to be an air head.

The other issue is that these IQ tests are from a Caucasian mindset. Sure, cold weather led to "planning ahead" but I don't seem to have the auditory memory, rhythm and linguistic acumen of other people. So there is a lot of "intelligence" that is not measured. If it was just bench press and not jumping that made an athlete, Caucasians would win -- so we've rigged the tests for the ability to spit back what we've read (memorization) and a few mathematical abilities that are good to have.

I just don't see how this IQ correlation matches anything in the real world of success, because I've seen more comprehensive studies that prove your parents income has much more influence on your success in life than your grades in school. That's about networking and influence -- not intelligence.

And GDP correlating to IQ? GDP is a measure of economic activity. If a hurricane ruins houses, GDP goes up. The difference between the Dutch and Mexico is more about Socialism vs. Kleptocracy -- is that something to do with genetics? I doubt it. The US has a strong GDP because we've got a strong military and any market not open to exploitation gets "a visit." I was just born in this country, and my greater intelligence in finding connections and invention isn't tested by IQ tests and is not used by my job.

We can say that relative to a given test -- there are differences genetically. But I think we also need to say; "not all intelligence is measured." A lot of us high IQ guys are socially inept -- and social intelligence is as important or more important than book learnin'.

I think that; yes, there are PC issues that stop the science on this question, but the MOST IMPORTANT THING, is that humans have not really understood human intelligence. We don't get that Elephants are more social than we are because we cannot speak their language -- it may be richer than ours. We don't know, because we aren't smart enough yet to know what we don't know.

So IQ won't be settled until we can figure out all aspects of what it means to make something intelligent, and by that time, we will all be in the short bus compared to an artificial intelligence that helped us solve it.

I'm afraid we may see a rehash of the DMCA being used to protect profit margins on the Printer Toner cartridges. Already it's about $200 to get a spare key because they have a chip in it. There's a whole host of problems that occur where you just go in and they reinstall software or replace some CPU chip worth $5 -- but they are the sole source. So as the car gets more reliable, they build in "must get dealer to fix" and it's just a quick software patch -- it just costs a few hundred and the money goes directly to manufacturer.

YES they need security, but you know their first instinct will be "pay us big bucks to solve simple problem because SECURITY." Then we'll see more software patents keep improvements locked up because "car + computer". Any obvious thing will be patented and we are back to $100 in equipment, $1,000 in FRAND patents.

I think we can develop a theory for "why chaotic systems develop equilibrium" and I think it would start with concentrations of energy sources. If there is a lot of sediment with nutrients and energy being buried on the sea floor -- it's LIKELY that some organism will exploit it eventually.

It's interesting to look at (if I remember correctly) the Pleistocene epoch, where for about 50 million years there was no bacteria that broke up and digested falling trees. So we have a lot of coal from this epoch for this very reason.

EVENTUALLY, bacteria that converted wood pulp evolved and we are not a planet layered in fallen trees.

But there's also no guarantee -- hence the runaway "Oxygen pollution" that almost lead to the earth freezing over. The worms churning the see floor were LIKELY but not necessarily inevitable.

There also seems to be a need for a dynamic environment without too many drastic swings for life to keep evolving.

I'm with you to a point. But there's a lot of "parallel" evolution and discovery going on. Two different groups of mammals became bats for instance, and there are numerous examples of nature creating similar creatures to "fill a niche". It was likely any untapped energy source of sufficient quantity and quality will inevitably produce an organism that uses that product. It's almost like predicting the weather by just charting blocks of heat -- a high pressure area of heat will move air masses, you only need to know the temperature differences and the locations of the heat.

So animals and plants move from high concentrations of energy first, to low concentrations with fewer competitors.
High birth rate means less energy spent rearing children and eventually means (in most cases) less intelligent creatures, while the inverse is also true (not to be confused with social pressure).

The Radio was developed by more than two different inventors at nearly the same time.

I could imagine that two cave men, Og and Zog were sitting on a log, when they saw lightning hit a tree, and Og says; "That bright thing may be useful". Time traveler accidentally lands on Og before he discovers useful bright stuff, and Zog is on the log alone when he sees lightning hit a tree; "That could be used to cook food and concentrate the energy for easier digestion... dang, I'm talking to myself again."

By the way, I'm keeping this algorithm -- not for the wisdom, but because it's so much more efficient than a bunch of CASE statements. Wow, vectored decision trees -- seems so much more civilized.