Ever played F.E.A.R.? AI doesn't just have aim on it's side, those bastards use legit tactics and coordinate against you.

Why not model it on the Judge/Jury arrangement? a core of trained individuals with the ability to remain cool while responding to a 911 call leading a posse of lesser-trained recruited citizens who couldn't give a care about the "fraternal brotherhood" or the "thin blue line" or whatever... makes cover-ups a pain and generally defuses situations like this. If the situation truly calls for a paramilitary force, call in the nat guard... That's keep M-16s out of my face at the World Series and generally calms the public's distrust for those in uniform.

That said, my brother is a cop and not all of them are this way. He doesn't think citizens should be allowed to "interfere" with police actions while they happen (and I somewhat agree), but I have yet to hear a sound explanation for the police's distrust for video surveillance. Anyone else heard something that makes sense and still lets the cops be the good guys?

I like how you didn't address the need for evidence, just changed the topic to the Randi Challenge. Moraelin has you on this one BAG, the concept you are trying to describe requires a verified EFFECT to be measured before any speculation can be made as to CAUSE.

We need to see the psychic that can read a mood through wall or read the mood of trained actors who can manage their subtle body language to remove the know effect of "reading" things like posture and eye movement. Once know causes have been removed, and effects can be demonstrated, then you can posit this "aura" or whatever...

I believe in symmetry, so the last digit MUST be 3.

And THAT's how you do theoretical physics folks... (at least the easy first bit)

Leonard Susskind was the guy and the problem wasn't originally an "information" problem, but instead an entropy problem. The information questions came in after they sorted out the holographic principals of information representation along the surface area of the event horizon.

Sean M Carroll has a good book about what that means for time if you are interested...

Dude, Meetup.com
Find something you ARE into and goto the meetups. Atheist? Tons of atheist meetups on there. Star Trek fan? They have monthly viewing parties in my area. Do you like to cook/eat? They have a million dinner clubs... Seriously there is something for everyone.

I've never fully understood this point-of-view. I am a capitalist and generally a moderate with regard to politics, so I don't stand on the platform of one or the other established parties. That said, both sides seem to be "anti-intellectual" in their policy making. They directly remove educational/research funding in order to inflate the pork budgets of projects in their region. That's a problem of serious proportions. How do you justify ANYTHING within this POV that leads to equal gain for all parties on a global scale (cancer research, space exploration, subatomic physics...)? These are no one's "pork" but at the same time, they are everyone's.

Engineers are contributing to the farce that is the "human rated" badge. Take a look at Richard Feynman's assessment of the process used to calculate the risk. Tell me if that looks like a problem created by engineers or by bureaucrats.

"Human Rated" has no engineering meaning. It's a badge for bureaucrats to pin on a project they don't understand so they can call it "safe". Their use of broken statistics and ignorant assessments means that things are far more difficult than required and generally not much safer. All I'm suggesting is that there are far better ways than using NASA-jargon to label risk, such as a strictly engineering decision (I think they'd make the best possible decision), not a bureaucratic rating.

What the heck is "human-rated spacecraft" other than a bureaucratic term for "rigorously tested until all innovation has been expelled". The statistical improvements in avoiding failure have been small, very small in fact, over a simple engineering consensus. It turns out that engineers realize they are working with human lives and avoid all but the most necessary risks. Everything beyond that is mandated by some paper pusher that read an ISO9000 book and thought that NASA didn't have enough meetings. They then lead NASA into the mess it's in now, going from political gem in Washington to pariah. Funding is nearly impossible and even successful projects are seen as limited and irrelevant (Hubble, Spirit/Opportunity anyone?).

I can't imagine why anyone would NOT look to corporate innovation to lead this program. We just need to give a profit motive and allow competition to do the rest.

on behalf of those who love liberty and refuse to acknowledge a line in the dirt as a marker for who should be considered human and who not, i have to say that you are at least uninformed and at worst a ignorant worthless coward. You may chose to organize the murder of a mentally handicapped person and file that under "the right thing" but the rest of us, we don't. if you chose to be a ego-maniacal asshat and get your picture taken instead of doing what the rest of the sheriffs in your great state are doing (law enforcement), then you can expect a PR problem.

If it weren't for better people than "Sheriff Joe" and his band of racists, our nation would be a terrible, backwards, dying hulk... it's too bad that it seems the NeoCons and "Patriots" are winning. maybe we have hope, but we'll have to wait and see on that one.

Now American Airlines will be able to do something with all those crappy planes.... They can be like the mega-tankers of the sky, what with all those snakes on them...

Because it is the right thing to do. (objectively, morally "right", not "right" as-in "correct")

Correct me if i'm wrong, but don't the "human-rated" flights of the space shuttle have similar failure ratios to the "non-human rated"... I know that a lot more satellites have gone up than people, and I think Richard Feynman called NASA on this fallacy back during his research after Challenger.

NASA mitigates risk with about the same degree of effect in both human and non-human flights. The added engineering and checks are simply due to the antiquated and flawed design of the shuttle (I'm a fan of the shuttle, but it's a bad idea). If they used something like their satellite launch rockets to lift men, they could gain efficiency by not having to work in multiple directions at once... Seems logical to me.

Um, "freedom-loving" must mean something different to you. I personally like the freedom to sleep with whoever i want, to watch whatever movies I want, and to buy liquor on Sundays (aka the "Lord's Day"). I'm sure that both administrations are corrupt, but the idea that Palin was somehow outside of that vile ignorant corruption is absurd.

As for freedom, you may have to look to another party.