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News

Ray Kurzweil Responds To PZ Myers 238

On Tuesday we discussed a scathing critique of Ray Kurzweil's understanding of the brain written by PZ Myers. Reader Amara notes that Kurzweil has now responded on his blog. Quoting: "Myers, who apparently based his second-hand comments on erroneous press reports (he wasn't at my talk), [claims] that my thesis is that we will reverse-engineer the brain from the genome. This is not at all what I said in my presentation to the Singularity Summit. I explicitly said that our quest to understand the principles of operation of the brain is based on many types of studies — from detailed molecular studies of individual neurons, to scans of neural connection patterns, to studies of the function of neural clusters, and many other approaches. I did not present studying the genome as even part of the strategy for reverse-engineering the brain."

Comment Unfortunately, smug asshole does describe many (Score 1) 945

Unfortunately, many mac user in my experience as accurately described as smug assholes wrt to computers. I've been guilty of creating quite a few of them by recommending Macs to friends and relatives over the years when asked advice about purchasing a computer.

It is ironic and annoying to have someone ask my advice about computers, take that advice, be very happy, and then later proceed to tell me how terrible my choice of computer (Linux) is and how much happier I'd be with a Mac. I've never met a mac user who could be convinced that I actually *prefer* Linux to a mac. They simply think I just don't know any better or am being willfully ignorant. At the very least, they think I should buy a mac just for the hardware.

Education

Ocean-Crossing Dragonflies Discovered 95

grrlscientist writes "While living and working as a marine biologist in Maldives, Charles Anderson noticed sudden explosions of dragonflies at certain times of year. He explains how he carefully tracked the path of a plain, little dragonfly called the Globe Skimmer, Pantala flavescens, only to discover that it had the longest migratory journey of any insect in the world."
Open Source

Linux Kernel 2.6.32 Released 195

diegocg writes "Linus Torvalds has officially released the version 2.6.32 of the Linux kernel. New features include virtualization memory de-duplication, a rewrite of the writeback code faster and more scalable, many important Btrfs improvements and speedups, ATI R600/R700 3D and KMS support and other graphic improvements, a CFQ low latency mode, tracing improvements including a 'perf timechart' tool that tries to be a better bootchart, soft limits in the memory controller, support for the S+Core architecture, support for Intel Moorestown and its new firmware interface, run-time power management support, and many other improvements and new drivers. See the full changelog for more details."
Space

Herschel Spectroscopy of Future Supernova 21

davecl writes "ESA's Herschel Space Telescope has released its first spectroscopic results. These include observations of VYCMa, a star 50 times as massive as the sun and soon to become a supernova, as well as a nearby galaxy, more distant colliding starburst galaxies and a comet in our own solar system. The spectra show more lines than have ever been seen in these objects in the far-infrared and will allow astronomers to work out the detailed chemistry and physics behind star and planet formation as well as the last stages of stellar evolution before VYCMa's eventual collapse into a supernova. More coverage is available at the Herschel Mission Blog, which I run."
Programming

The State of Ruby VMs — Ruby Renaissance 89

igrigorik writes "In the short span of just a couple of years, the Ruby VM space has evolved to more than just a handful of choices: MRI, JRuby, IronRuby, MacRuby, Rubinius, MagLev, REE and BlueRuby. Four of these VMs will hit 1.0 status in the upcoming year and will open up entirely new possibilities for the language — Mac apps via MacRuby, Ruby in the browser via Silverlight, object persistence via Smalltalk VM, and so forth. This article takes a detailed look at the past year, the progress of each project, and where the community is heading. It's an exciting time to be a Rubyist."

Comment Actually, No. (Score 1) 181

A majority of people who voted in the Prop 8 referendum voted for it. That is NOT the same as a majority of voters (e.g., all people who can vote)

Prop 8 was actually passed by ~36% of eligible voters. The CA amendment process is borked. A constitution should *never* be amendable by a minority of possible voters. That's just nuts, regardless of the subject matter.

Note that amendments to the federal constitution must be passed by majorities of all *possible* voters not just ones who bother to actually vote. Not voting = No.

Comment Re:Secular anti-gay marriage explanation (Score 1) 1475

The correct approach is to more narrowly tailor benefits to childbearing heterosexual married couples, rather than extend them to a group that cannot possibly create children without support.

Actually, since it would quite easy to implement, the correct thing would be to tailor benefits to any couple with children. Please explain how the manner in which the children arrive is even relevant. Children are children. Again and again you simply suspend all of your criteria when it would apply equally to heterosexual couples.

Comment Re:Secular anti-gay marriage explanation (Score 1) 1475

So, then, if we're talking about marriage and spousal rights for adoptive parents in a gay couple, that I can understand. But we're not. We're talking about a blanket extension for a group that is categorically unable to reproduce.

This argument is NOT valid unless you apply to *all* couples who are "categorically unable to reproduce" which does, in fact, include some heterosexual couples. When you allow non-fertile heterosexual couples, but deny same-sex ones the rationale is solely gender, not fecundity. You are disingenuous. Your argument is simply non-rational at that point and you've crossed over the bigotry line.

Why can't you just be honest and just say that you don't think that same-sex couples should have such rights instead of hiding behind straw men?

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