Most of us at some point had to learn the names of the nine planets, but for some reason few of us know anything about the geography of our immediate galactic neighborhood. You're probably aware that the Alpha-Centauri system is the closest to our sun, but can you name any other close stars?

I couldn't. Since we geeks have been dreaming of traveling the stars at least since the golden age of sci-fi, you'd think we'd know more about where we'd like to travel.

Here are the closest 10 star systems (from closest on out):

1. Alpha Centauri is a triple star system located about 4.3 light years away. The closest of the three stars is the tiny red dwarf, Proxima Centauri. The other two stars rotate around each other at the distance Saturn is from our Sun. They are both close to our sun in size and temperature.

   ...most astronomers believe that stars of spectral types from about F5 to K5 are hot enough, but long-lived and stable enough, to support potential Earthlike worlds.

   Both Alpha Centauri A and B fall within this range. Alpha Centauri A is a G star like our Sun, Alpha Centauri B is a K1 star. The star types, from hottest to coolest are O, B, A, F, G, K, M.

   According to Wikipedia, Alpha Centauri A and B rotate at a sufficient distance to allow rocky earth-like worlds with liquid water to rotate either star. Such worlds rotating either star would have a secondary sun at night for half of its year - a prolonged twilight.

   Outer gas giants like Jupiter could not exist in this binary system, and that could be a problem because gas giants are thought to be responsible for bringing comets in to seed inner planets with water and other biological building blocks. But if the twin stars served the same purpose for each other, this might not be a problem at all.

   Viewed from near Alpha Centauri, the sky (other than the Alpha Centauri stars) would appear very much as it does to observers on Earth, with most of the constellations such as Ursa Major and Orion being almost unchanged. However, Centaurus would be missing its brightest star and our Sun would appear as a 0.5-magnitude star in Cassiopeia. Roughly speaking, the \/\/ of Cassiopeia would become a /\/\/, with the Sun at the leftmost end...

   You know...in case you ever find yourself in the Alpha Centauri system and need to find your way back home. It's only "news you can use" around here my friends.

2. Barnard's Star is a red dwarf located 5.96 light years away. A red dwarf is a class M star - a star that is too cool to be considered a good candidate for life-bearing worlds.

3. Wolf 359 is a red dwarf 7.78 light years away.

4. Lalande 21185 is a red dwarf 8.29 light years away. It is known to have two gas giant planets. A third large planet is suspected.

5. Sirius is a binary system containing one star that's thought to be too hot for life (Sirius A) and a white dwarf (Sirius B) that's far too cool. White dwarves are even cooler than red dwarves. This binary system is 8.58 light years away.

6. Luyten 726-8 is a binary system of two red dwarves.

7. Ross 154 - a red dwarf.

8. Ross 248 is another red dwarf.

9. Epsilon Eridani is a K1 star, so it falls within the class of stars thought to be capable of supporting life. It is not thought to be a good candidate for complex life though because the star is young, it has an extremely variable spectrum (burning hot then cold), and is orbited by a Jupiter-like gas giant called Epsilon Eridani B in a highly eccentric orbit.

   This star is 10.52 light years away.

10. Lacaille 9352 is yet another red dwarf 10.74 light years away.

This large number of red dwarves is not unusual. Four out of five stars in the universe are red dwarves. In fact, the only other stars within 13 light years that fall within the F5 to K5 range are Epsilon Indi and Tau Ceti.

Epsilon Indi is orbited at a great distance by a pair of brown dwarves that orbit each other. It is on the cool side of stars capable of supporting Earth-like planets.

Since Epsilon Indi is sort of like a distant cousin to Sol, some speculate whether it might just be bright enough to support Earth-type life on a planet lucky enough to orbit in its water zone. The distance from Epsilon Indi where an Earth-type planet could possibly have liquid water on its surface is centered around only 0.38 AU -- around Mercury's orbital distance in the Solar System.

[an AU, or Astronomical Unit, is the distance between the Earth and the Sun]

Tidal lock might begin to be a problem that close to a star. A planet within the liquid water zone might tend to keep one side toward it's star like the Moon to the Earth. Such a planet would be burned on one side, rare on the other.

Tau Ceti has a different set of problems. Because it is a metal deficient star it is thought to be unlikely to harbor rocky planets. Tau Ceti is surrounded by a dusty disk filled with comets.

Though the star Tau Ceti is similar to the Sun, any planets it has are unlikely to be havens for life, say a team of UK astronomers. Using submillimeter images of the disk of material surrounding Tau Ceti, they found that it must contain more than ten times as many comets and asteroids than there are in the Solar System.

Bottom line: our best bet for a close Earth-like neighbor lies within the Alpha Centauri system.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 04:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Per Ray Kurzweil, it's a question of when, not whether. And probably sooner rather than later:

A U.K. government think tank has forecast RFID-tagged driverless cars on roads by 2056.

"Given the ability of several cars to navigate a complex route in the recent DARPA competition completely autonomously and a General Motors project to demonstrate driverless cars traveling at 60 miles per hour by 2008, the projection of RFID-controlled cars by the year 2056 is a good example of linear thinking," says Ray Kurzweil. "I believe we can anticipate cars to be doing much of our driving for us in the 2020s if not sooner."

No word on flying cars. Personally, I think anybody who says we won't have them by 2010 is engaged in linear thinking. But then, I'm no Kurzweil.

UPDATE FROM STEPHEN: "Beyond Tomorrow" had a segment recently about an anti-collision radar system for passenger cars. Such a system could really cut down on distracted driver-type accidents. It also looked to be ready to market in Europe.

The Mercedes test vehicle has long range and short range radar systems that surround the car. The car is programmed to stop rather than rearend somebody if the driver is distracted.

There are a couple of practical reasons why we'll have driver assist systems for awhile before we'll see complete automation. First, these initial driver assist systems won't have to be anywhere near as sophisticated as those systems that competed in the DARPA Grand Challenge.

Second, there's the issue of products liability. This Mercedes is equipped with a "driver assist" system, not full automation. It's a little like a driver's ed car. There's a safety brake, but you are still the driver in command. If you have an accident, then (arguably) you couldn't blame the manufacturer unless a system malfunction directly caused the accident.

But if the car is doing it's own driving, then obviously the car manufacturer would have a difficult time avoiding responsibility in the event of an accident.

So, we'll see a slow march toward full automation via various "driver assist" systems. At first it will be simple collision avoidance by braking, then collision avoidance by steering out of the way of a crash.

Eventually these systems will take on all the tasks associated with driving. Then you'll just give it a destination and sit back and enjoy the ride.

UPDATE AGAIN: Well, that didn't take long. Apparently Honda UK is offering a driver's assist sytem that amounts to a full freeway autopilot.

I'll be taking a wait-and-see approach.

H/T to eisendorn.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Dispatches from a rapidly changing, rapidly improving world

#28 01/28/06

Welcome to the first edition of Better All the Time for 2006. Our somewhat belated new year's resolution is to bring you more good news than ever before. So beginning with this edition, we will be featuring 12 -- that's right, 12! -- good news stories with each and every edition. So let's get started!

Today's Good Stuff:

Quote of the Day Berries for Better Brains You Can Do What You Want  Where Do Little Leopards Come From? Make 'Em Laugh I Can't Believe They Invented It! Penguins on the Nest An Even Better Use Than Corndogs Faster Downloads Aren't the Only Benefit But Are They Cuddly? Exponential DNA    The Memory of Love's Refrain Space Warp, Time Warp

Quote of the Day

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

-- Albert Einstein

Item 1
Black Currants to Thwart Alzheimer's

Compounds in black currants may help protect against Alzheimer's disease, according to a study in the current issue of Chemistry & Industry magazine.

Researchers found that these compounds -- anthocyanins and polyphenolics -- had a strong protective effect in cultured neuronal cells. Darker black currants contain more anthocyanins and are likely to be more potent.

The good news:

Black currants have already been shown to be powerful antioxidants. This new evidence indicates that they have a direct beneficial effect on the brain.

Additional resources:

Here's a list that might prove helpful for those looking to take advantage of both the antioxidant and brain protecting qualities of black currants.

Item 2
How to do what you love

Essayist Paul Graham outlines a path for finding work that you love to do and, well, doing it:

To do something well you have to like it. That idea is not exactly novel. We've got it down to four words: "Do what you love." But it's not enough just to tell people that. Doing what you love is complicated.

The very idea is foreign to what most of us learn as kids. When I was a kid, it seemed as if work and fun were opposites by definition. Life had two states: some of the time adults were making you do things, and that was called work; the rest of the time you could do what you wanted, and that was called playing. Occasionally the things adults made you do were fun, just as, occasionally, playing wasn't-- for example, if you fell and hurt yourself. But except for these few anomalous cases, work was pretty much defined as not-fun.

Graham believes that it's long past time those boundaries were re-drawn, and he outlines a plan for doing exactly that. Along the way, he makes a number of shocking proposals, such as:

I'm not saying we should let little kids do whatever they want. They may have to be made to work on certain things. But if we make kids work on dull stuff, it might be wise to tell them that tediousness is not the defining quality of work, and indeed that the reason they have to work on dull stuff now is so they can work on more interesting stuff later.

He raises important questions, such as:

Why is it conventional to pretend to like what you do? The first sentence of this essay explains that. If you have to like something to do it well, then the most successful people will all like what they do.

Ans he provides a number of wonderful insights, such as:

Prestige is just fossilized inspiration. If you do anything well enough, you'll make it prestigious. Plenty of things we now consider prestigious were anything but at first. Jazz comes to mind-- though almost any established art form would do. So just do what you like, and let prestige take care of itself.

All told, the essay is a great read -- highly recommended for those who might not be as completely satisfied with what they do as they would like to be.

Item 3
Leopards Mate Successfully

Our first of three animal-related good news stories is a touching demonstration of love conquering all:

...Zoe, who lives at the Smithsonian National Zoo's Conservation and Research Center in Front Royal, Virginia, is no kitty cat; she's a rare clouded leopard. And the specialists at the center are among the few animal experts in the world who have been able to get clouded leopards to breed without literally killing one another.

Since the zoo started its captive breeding program in 1978, 75 clouded leopard cubs have been born.

The Good News:

For years the incredibly rare cats had frustrated zookeepers hoping to breed them. The males killed the females, sometimes almost instantly. Even if they could tolerate one another in a cage, they refused to breed.

The zookeepers at the Smithsonian worked tirelessly to remedy that untenable situation, tweaking both the environment and the diet of the leopards to make them more compatible. Keeping the leopards well clear of other big cats, especially tigers, made the males more relaxed and less likely to attack. Socializing the cats with people also had a surprisingly beneficial effect.

Objections?

Some would argue (no doubt correctly) that it is captivity itself that makes it so difficult for the clouded leopards to breed. If they were set free, rather than kept in a zoo, the problem would disappear. That's an appealing argument, but it flies in the face of a sad reality:

Fewer than 10,000 clouded leopards are believed to survive in the wild. The breeding program may hold the key to the future of a species vanishing fast as its forest homes disappear and as poachers learn how to capture them.

We should look for a day when clouded leopards can live safely in a natural environment. But until that day comes, here's hoping that Smithsonian Zoo continues to find ways to keep them going.

Item 4
Funny People Are Attractive

While we're on the subject of love, here's some an interesting development:

If love is blind, then maybe humour is the attention-grabber.

That's the conclusion of two recent studies that confirm a long-standing stereotype of flirting: that women like joky men, while men like women who laugh at their jokes.

Good News:

The good news here for anyone looking to get into (or sustain) a relationship is pretty straightforward: a little humor (or appreciation thereof) goes a long way.

Recommended reading:

Item 5
50 Inventions

Popular Mechanics has a round-up of the 50 most important inventions of the past 50 years. Here are the top picks from the years 1955-1960:

1955--TV REMOTE CONTROL

1955--MICROWAVE OVEN

1957--BIRTH-CONTROL PILL

1958--JET AIRLINER

1959--FLOAT GLASS

Good News:

Inventions such as these do good both for the world and for the inventors. Each of the inventions chosen for the article did more than improve our lives. Each became profitable in its own right, and gave rise to other profitable products and services as well.

Bonus:

While you're visiting the Popular Mechanics web site, be sure to check out the thorough debunking of the bogus piece the magazine has recently been reported to have run in 1954 on the subject of the Home Computer of the Future.

A Quibble:

The Popular Mechanics article dates the introduction of the home computer to 1977 and the Apple / Commodore / Tandy models of the era. At the Speculist, we much prefer the mid-century modern elegance of the Honeywell 316 "Kitchen Computer" sold in the 1969 Neiman-Marcus Catalog ($10,000, equivalent to $53,215.26 in 2005) and date accordingly.

Item 6
Penguin Parents Lay New Egg

The second of our animal good news stories also has to do with captive animals reproducing. This story is a happy follow-up to a very unfortunate turn of events that unfolded right around the end of last year:

The parents of a baby penguin, whose theft from a zoo just before Christmas attracted worldwide attention, have produced a new egg.

Toga, a three-month-old Jackass penguin, was snatched from Amazon World zoo on the Isle of Wight, off the south coast of England, after thieves broke in one night last month.

Pictures of his crestfallen parents Kyala and Oscar made the front page of many newspapers while donations and messages of support flooded in from all over the world.

Despite a number of reported sightings, Toga, who could only survive a matter of days without his parents, was never found.

"There's some good news at last," zoo manager Kath Bright told Reuters on Monday after staff discovered Kyala and Oscar were expecting their second offspring.

Here's hoping...

For a successful hatching and that the staff of the Amazon World Zoo have remedied their security problems.

Item 7

Corn to Heat Homes

It turns out that corn is more than just a good source of food fiber and vitamin A :

Corn is the new king when it comes to heating stoves.

It appears that every manufacturer of corn-fueled stoves in the United States and Canada is facing a backlog of orders because of the huge demand. Both manufacturers and dealers seem to have been caught by surprise by the wave of consumer interest.

Why all the sudden hullabaloo? Simple – nothing costs less to burn at this point than corn, which sells for about $2 per bushel. According to figures provided by Even Temp, maker of the St. Croix line of stoves, the cost per therm for 100,000 British thermal units is 42 cents. The same per therm cost for natural gas is $1.40 and $2.60 for propane (LP). Wood is 64 cents per therm.

Good News:

This information is confirmed (in the short-run case) by this from the University of Minnesota and, while there is room in the accounting and thermodynamic calculations for adjustment to take into account other, indirect, costs (for instance, costs associated with transportation, storage, and distribution of proposed alternatives) and 'subsidies' applicable to 'conventional' and 'alternative' fuels (for instance, military and diplomatic costs of obtaining fuels from overseas suppliers vs. costs of energy and chemical inputs to 'modern' agriculture that may, or may not, accurately reflect their true long-term cost), the fact remains that at this time and within the current economic and legal frameworks shelled corn enjoys considerable advantage (over 3x !) over the next least costly 'conventional' fuel.

Even Better News:

This development provides yet another market for a crop grown within the United States, tending both to support bottom end of the commodity price, which is good for farmers, and tends to make economic subsidies less attractive, which is good for taxpayers. Finally, an additional source of less-costly energy, under secure control within the U.S., tends to reduce the motivation to secure resources overseas.

Addressing Likely Objections:

Of course, it isn't possible to completely replace imported, or even domestically produced, fossil fuels with this sort of 'biomass' energy, but it replaces a fraction and thus improves the situation. Likewise, using corn for fuel in the US won't contribute to worldwide food shortages in an appreciable way. The largest current applications of zea mays in the North American market are as animal feed and the making of sweeteners [High Fructose Corn Syrup], neither of which contribute directly to subsistence. Even if the relatively small fraction of the crop that will be diverted to heating from all other uses could be, instead, given to those, domestically and overseas, that would benefit most from the additional food, transportation costs for the bulk grain would outweigh much of the benefit and all parties would gain more if the cash equivalent could be transferred instead.

Related Late-Breaking News:

In the January 27th, 2006 issue of Science, researchers from U.C. Berkeley reveal that ethanol from corn and other biomass may be the economical way to leverage existing stores of fossil petroleum to provide transportation fuel in the future (see an overview of the research at LiveScience, the abstract, featuring the money quote "Farrell et al. (p. 506) rigorously analyzed a variety of relevant investigations, and found that the studies reporting negative net energy values are flawed," at Science and the researchers' website, for additional information. We certainly will.)

Item 8
Broadband Brings Jobs

A new study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon and MIT provides strong empirical evidence for the claim that broadband Internet access drives economic growth. The report looks at data from 1998 through the end of 2002 and finds that there is a strong correlation between residential and small business broadband access (cable, DSL, and satellite) in any particular ZIP code and that area's job growth, IT growth, and rise in rates for rental housing (which are used as a proxy for property values).

Good News:

As we noted in Item 5, above, positive developments often seem to beget more positive developments. The final entry in the list of the Top 50 inventions indicates that broadband access may soon be easier to establish than a cellular network. Bring it on!

Item 9
Robot Pets Provide Health Benefits

Our third and final bit of animal-relate good news:

Sure, pets are cute and seem to improve human health. But there are some places where they can't live, such as nursing homes. So can a robot pet provoke the same reactions?

Yes, according to a few preliminary studies -- but not to the same degree.

The good news:

We're in the early days of robot pets. Future generations will not only provide more of the same emotional benefits that real pets provide, they will be able to perform many of the functions that service animals currently perform. A few generations beyond that, they'll be able to do even more -- like maybe carry on conversations with their owners.

A setback?

As of its latest quarterly-earnings announcement, Sony has stated its intention to no longer manufacture their Aibo robot dog. No doubt others will pick up where Sony is leaving off.

Item 10
DNA Database Growing Exponentially

FuturePundit Randall Parker writes:

One reason why I am optimistic that rejuvenation therapies using Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence can reverse the aging process within the lifetimes of most people reading this is that the rate of advance of biotechnology is increasing resembling the rate of advance of electronic technology. The rate of accumulation of DNA sequence information in a public database is doubling every 10 months.

The Archive is 22 Terabytes in size and doubling every ten months - perhaps the largest single scientific database in Europe, if not the world.

The database is large even compared to major non-DNA computer databases.

Martin Widlake, Database Services Manager at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute said: "At 22 000 GB the Trace Archive is in the Top Ten UNIX databases in the world. That's not bad for a research organisation of 850 employees in the countryside just outside Cambridge."

"It is possibly the biggest single (acknowledged) scientific RDBMS database in Europe, if not the world."

All the data are freely available to the world scientific community (http://trace.ensembl.org/), as a resource to geneticists all over the globe. When a researcher is studying a disease or gene, they can download the genetic information known about the area they are studying.

A question:

Will exponential growth in our knowledge of human DNA lead to exponential growth in the health benefits we derive from this knowledge?

Stranger things have happened.

Item 11
Stardust Comes Home

Fresh from its fall to Earth last weekend, the Stardust sample return capsule has been opened in a cleanroom at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

It exceeds all expectations, said Donald Brownlee, Stardust's lead scientist from the University of Washington. Its a huge success, he said in a university statement released Wednesday.

Good News:

Brownlee reports that the capsule may contain as many as a million specs of space dust. That's a million data points about our solar system that we didn't have before. Our knowledge of our local neighborhood in space may be about to experience a growth surge similar to what's happening with our DNA knowledge.

Item 12
Star Trek Watch: Disruptions in the Space-Time Continuum

A spinning black hole in the constellation Scorpius has created a stable dent in the fabric of spacetime, scientists say.

The dent is the sort of thing predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. It affects the movement of matter falling into the black hole

The good news:

As many of you know, we at Better All The Time are dedicated to tracking and reporting developments that show how our world is merging with the world of Star Trek.

Apparently the sensors that were used to detect these disruptions have been subjected to a Level 1 Diagnostic and tested at a distance. We should now be able to detect any negative spacetime curvature, natural or artificial. Those who know…know.

Better All The Time is compiled by Phil Bowermaster, Stephen Gordon, and Michael Sargent. For more news on how our world is rapidly changing and improving, check out the latest FastForward Radio and the Carnival of Tomorrow.

Live to see it!

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 06:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Weighed in this morning at 278 pounds. That's 19 pounds lost in my first four weeks!

It's a New Phil, Week 1

It's a New Phil, Week 2

It's a New Phil, Week 3.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 07:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Russia wants in on "the energy race" too.

We are planning to build a permanent base on the moon by 2015 and by 2020 we can begin the industrial-scale delivery... of the rare isotope Helium-3," Nikolai Sevastyanov, head of the Energia space corporation, was quoted by ITAR-TASS news agency as saying at an academic conference.

The International Space Station (ISS) would play a key role in the project and a regular transport relay to the moon would be established with the help of the planned Clipper spaceship and the Parom, a space capsule intended to tug heavy cargo containers around space, Sevastyanov said.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 01:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This is what you get when you cross an Imperial Walker from Star Wars with the Oliphants from The Lord of the Rings - a 30-foot tall robotic elephant!

The 30 foot tall robot elephant was built especially as a part of a Jules Verne centennial celebration. Verne, the author of classics like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Journey to the Centre of the Earth, would have been absolutely delighted.

The robot not only walked through the streets amazing the crowds, it actually sprayed water on them from its trunk!

Don't miss the video.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 07:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is pretty cool:

An international team of astronomers reportedly has discovered the smallest, Earth-like planet outside our Solar System.

The planet, known as OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb, orbits a star one-fifth the mass of the Sun, and has an estimated surface temperature of minus 364 Fahrenheit (minus 200 Celsius), astronomers Michael Albrow and Karen Pollard of Canterbury University told Television New Zealand. They said the discovery might one day lead to finding a twin Earth.

The planet is located about 20,000 light years from Earth; it orbits a star in the constellation Sagittarius. The astronomers who discovered it did so via a technique called gravitational microlensing, which enables distant objects to be detected through the light intensification caused by their gravity. This technique seems a little counter-intuitive. I would have though that a planet passing between us and a distant star would obscure the star somewhat and reduce the amount of light that reaches us. And in fact, maybe it does -- but apparently we'll never find any planets looking for that. Instead, we go looking for the tiny light spike that the planet's gravity causes, and voila! Now we're locating Earth-like planets.

I reiterate: pretty cool.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 02:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A couple of days ago China announced plans to complete its tokamak fusion reactor by April of this year. China will start experimenting with the reactor - designated HT-7 - this summer with the hope of hitting a magic breakeven point that has, to date, never been reached in fusion research anywhere. They hope to produce more power than is required to contain the reaction.

Tokamak is a Russian acronym meaning "toroidal chamber in magnetic coils." A tokamak reactor contains a giant donut-shaped magnet used to contain plasma within the reactor.

The United States has been betting on the success of a different tokamak project: the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). The ITER has been in the design and planning phase so long (since 1985!) that China may have already leap-frogged the rest of the world with its cheaper reactor.

...Construction [on ITER] is expected to begin in 2008 and finish in 2016. ITER is designed to generate 500 MW (about 10 times the record held by JET) and will hopefully produce more energy than is required to keep the plasma heated and confined...

Which will mean little if China has already accomplished this with a reactor that cost 1/20th the price of the ITER.

Tokamak reactors are powered by deuterium harvested from seawater.

After nuclear fusion, the deuterium extracted from one liter of sea water will produce energy equivalent to 300 liters of gasoline.

This would be a practically inexhaustible supply of power, and China probably has the lead in deuterium fusion research at the moment. Maybe the U.S. will compete with a different form of fusion.

[Deuterium fusion critics] have noted that the neutrons released in the deuterium-tritium fusion would create secondary radiation within the metallic parts of the reactor chamber. This secondary radiation would create radiological waste disposal problem, and would also shorten the life of the components in the reactor through radiative metal fatigue...

If China gets their reactor working, it won't be easy to operate or maintain. Fortunately, there is the possibility of a cleaner, easier to manage fusion fuel.

[Twenty years ago fusion expert Gerald Kulcinski] and a group of scientists met at a retreat south of Madison, Wisconsin to discuss the problems with the deuterium-tritium fuel cycle for fusion. They talked over what the options are for a better fuel. Helium-3 is what they came up with.

In fact, helium-3 is the perfect fusion fuel. It can produce an incredible amount of power with absolutely no radioactivity. And a helium-3 fusion reactor won't have the same containment issues either.

Professor Kulcinski's lab is running the only helium-3 fusion reactor in the world. He has an annual research budget that is barely into six figures and allows him to have five graduate research assistants working on the project. Compared to what has been spent on other fusion projects around the world, the team's accomplishments are impressive. Helium-3 would not require a tokomak reactor like the multibillion-dollar one being developed for the international ITER project. Instead, his design uses an electrostatic field to contain the plasma instead of an electromagnetic field.

There's a catch. Unlike the deuterium, which can be obtained from the ocean probably forever, there are only a few hundred kilograms of helium-3 on Earth. You have to go to the Moon to find helium-3 in useful quantities.

In January of 1986 Professor Kulcinski and his group contacted the Lunar and Planetary Institute at the Johnson Space Center. The soil samples from the Apollo missions are stored there. Every sample from the Moon had helium-3 in it. It didn't matter if the sample was collected from right on the surface or from a core sample a meter deep...

Theoretical calculations of helium-3 abundances on the Moon suggest that it may have enough to supply current world energy demand for thousands of years. Even further out, the gas giant planets contain enough helium-3 to power human civilization for millions of years.

In the short run deuterium will be seen as the miracle fuel. We certainly have plenty of it right here at home. But it will wear out reactors and leave us with some nasty radioactive waste. Ultimately we will turn to helium-3 because it is abundant (if you look in the right places), safe, and manageable.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

We're living in the final days of humanity's homogenuous era. Some predict that all of humanity is converging into a single type, and that the wonderful diversity of the past -- as represented by things like culture and language -- is going to be lost forever, that all of human civilization will be reduced to some bland, globalized, lowest common denominator.

These folks have it exactly wrong. Not only is technology going to allow us to preserve languages and cultures, it's going to allow us to create whole new cultures much faster than we were able to evolve them in the past. Look at World of Warcraft and Second Life. Are these games, or are they newly emerging civilizations? Take a stroll around Second Life when you get the chance. You'll see some people there who look like everyday people, while others have a few basic "enhancements" -- like wings or flourescent skin. Still others assume the form of giant robots made of flame or mixed-breed dinosaurs or just about anything you can imagine (not to mention any number of things you probably can't.)

Sure, people might choose to change virtual form for entertainment purposes, but would there ever be an incentive for people really to change their basic structure? In the real world?

Well, putting aside the question of whether the distinction between the real and virtual worlds is going to matter that much over the long term, perhaps we can take a hint from nature. Chris Twyman writes:

In Washington state there is a bountiful supply of Salmon. They fall into two distinct types - Rainbow and Steelheads. It seems that new born salmon make a decision about what species they want to be at hatching. Either they turn up stream and become a Rainbow and grow to about 5 lb's maximum or they turn downstream and head out to sea where they grow upto 20lbs and become Steelheads. Here is the amazing part. Two rainbows mating can produce a Steelhead and in turn (as a thank you) two Steelheads can produce a Rainbow.

This natural division of salmon varietals, developed to allow a single species to thrive in two wildly different environments, gives us maybe the smallest of hints as to what's in store for humanity as we begin to take control of the processes and basic building blocks that make us...us. Humans will choose new forms to accomodate new environments, to achieve new goals, and to fulfill aesthetic desires. With these new forms will come an explosion of new ways of expressing what it means to be human -- or, in other words, an explosion of new cultures unlike anything that humanity has seen to date.

Will the Cambrian Explosion turn out to be just a preview of the coming Technological Explosion? Maybe.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 02:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Via GeekPress, check out this intelligence test that probably is not that great a measure of intelligence, but that must be a good test for something. There's no time limit. The object is to get the best possible score out of 33. I managed 31 after dazzling myself with my own brilliance on several of them and pulling a couple of them out of the clear blue sky. (I'm still working on the other two...they're driving me crazy.)

By way of a hint, I will only say that Americans are more likely to know the answers to some of these and less likely to know the answers to others. Hope that helps!

UPDATE: Got the other two thanks to help from the SpecuWife and El Jefe. Muchos gracias, amigos. They were two of the easiest ones. For some reason, the hard ones are easier than the easy ones...which are really hard!

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I caught a "Beyond Tomorrow" rerun over the weekend. One of the segments was about Dr. Charlotte Simark's discovery that there are some oral bacteria that are beneficial.

Dr. Simark studied the bacteria of patients with no history of cavities and found that they tended to harbor lactobacilli (link here - go to the bottom of the document - page 82).

...strains of lactobacilli from patients lacking own MS [mutans streptococci, a cavity causing bacteria] had over 3 times more pronounced capacity to suppress the growth of the test panel bacteria than lactobacilli from patients colonized with MS.

In other words, the best bacteria for defeating the bad bacteria was found in the mouths of patients with no bad bacteria.

Heh. This reminds me of the old joke about the elephant.

The good news is that this good bacteria can be cultured and distributed. The Beyond Tomorrow people suggested that it should be sent to dentists as an aerosol spray to be used as a cavity treatment and preventative.

I'd go farther than that. Let's get this on the store shelves so it could be used regularly. This cure would be far better than just prescribing an antibiotic for the mutans streptococci.

Why? Carl Zimmer in his book Evolution gives us the example of the fungus farming ants. Some fungus farming ant species protect their fungus crop with a natural pesticide – a bacteria which is carried on the ant's legs.

These ants have used this bacterial pesticide so long that they've split into different fungal farming ant species that all continue to use the same bacteria. This bacterial pesticide is still providing crop protection after all these years while we humans are having problems with pesticide resistance after a single human generation.

Unlike our pesticides - which are inert toxins - bacteria are alive. The bacterial pesticide is evolving along with the pest. If the pest adapts to the bacteria, the bacteria adapts to the pest. Around and around it goes.

The same principle could work with our own agriculture and in medicine / dentistry.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 05:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

From the Wall Street Journal (via Kurzweil):

Arizona resort operator David Pizer has made arrangements to have his body frozen in liquid nitrogen after he dies and has also created legal arrangements for a financial trust that will manage his roughly $10 million in land and stock holdings until he is re-animated.

Mr. Pizer says that with his money earning interest while he is frozen, he could wake up in 100 years the "richest man in the world."

Well, as we explored a while back, he may well wake up rich, but not quite as rich as he thinks.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 09:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Engadget has the scoop on prototype stackable cars:

The Smart Cities team at MIT is tackling the problem of city traffic congestion -- still left untouched by the Segway -- with a "stackable" car to be used as part of a public transportation program, much like those bicycle-sharing programs in Europe, and stowed like a shopping cart. The wheels turn 360 degrees and contain the suspension and motor, so, along with providing a level of mobility fit for a city, they allow a new type of passenger compartment, replete with customizable displays and seats with "fingers" to catch you in a crash. It all sounds well and good, but we'll have to see see how much of this tech makes it into the final prototype, which is to be built by GM upon the MIT group's completion of the design.

It's not clear to me how this are going to help the traffic situation all that much. But, again, they're cute. So that's got to be worth something.

Via GeekPress.

STEPHEN CHIMES IN: They're smaller, so they would take up less room on the road when driving, but the real space savings is when they are parked / stacked.

I don't think this is the sort of thing that a city could or should implement until it's been demonstrated as popular and useful on a smaller scale.

Here's an private-sector approach: a NY luxury apartment complex looking to distinguish itself from the competition could buy (probably they'd lease them) a bunch of these and provide them for their tenants. Ground floor apartments aren't popular anyway, so use that space to stack cars.

It wouldn't be like a regular parking garage with wasted space needed for driving, the whole floor space could essentially be taken up with stacked cars. You'd need an entrance to add a car to the back of the stack and an exit to take a car from the front of the stack.

This would mean that the stack would have to be movable. You take a car from the front of the stack and the whole stack moves forward to make room for a returning car at the back of the stack.

These cars are EVs - less pollution for the city - I bet there would be a way to charge them while they are in the stack.

These could serve as rolling billboards for the apartment complex.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 10:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Weighed in this morning at 283, bringing the total weight loss to 14 pounds.

One thing I've learned -- when you're counting calories, calories really count. Go figure.

Meat is just way to dense to eat more than once a day -- if that. (And by "meat, I mean meat, poultry, or fish.) I'm getting a lot more mileage out rice and beans with a little salsa thrown in. Plus, I've discovered a wonderful thing called baked tortilla chips. Not bad.

Whole grains are good. I've discovered these little Swedish crackers called Kavli. The packages says that they're "flatbread," but I'm 43 years old and I guess I know a flipping cracker when I see one. Still, they're pretty good. Plus, of course, lots of fresh fruit and vegetables. All that sensible stuff. It works!

Also, Weight Watchers makes some pretty good ice cream novelties for those moments where it seems like some chocolate is required, but you'd rather not just blow the whole thing. Turns out you don't have to actually be on the WW program to eat their stuff. Who knew?

It's a New Phil, Week 1

It's a New Phil, Week 2

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 05:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Thanks for your patience, folks. Feel free to resume commenting any time you like!

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 04:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Tony Long at Wired apologized as he offered up the 100,000th opinion piece on cell phone etiquette. I'm worse, because I'm the blogger that's commenting on the 100,000th column.

Long offers some helpful advice, but I think he goes a bit overboard. Yeah, PLEASE don't take a cell call in a movie! The people around you didn't spend $9.00 a ticket to hear half a conversation between you and whoever. Take that call in the lobby.

But is it really rude to use your phone in a restaurant, on public transit, or in the park? These phones are far too useful for people to be so easily offended. Long makes my case for me:

More than the personal computer and, now, the iPod, this is the technology that even the most technophobic of cats is likeliest to possess. In other words, they're all over the place.

Precisely. And if we all have them, then we all can be a little understanding when somebody else uses one. It's the Golden Rule for the cellular age, "Ask not for whom the jerk rings, he rings for thee."

And here's a rule Long suggested that I completely disagree with:

Don't have emotional phone conversations in my face. In other words, don't break up with your boyfriend publicly. (Besides, we can't see him and being able to see his reaction is half the fun.) Wait until you get home and then toss his sorry ass out the door.

NO! If you wait until you get home then I won't even hear your half of the fight. Your tragic love life can be my entertainment. Go ahead and make that call in public - just not in a movie, or a concert, or some other venue where others have paid to hear something else.

Long's opening example is instructive. Long describes the scene in a line at his coffeehouse:

She had already irritated everyone within earshot by conducting a very animated cell-phone conversation in her singsong, Valley girl, yuppie voice. But now it was her turn to order and the cafe's irritation turned to cold fury as she impatiently waved off the barista to complete her thought...

Now, I wasn't there...maybe her voice was like nails on a chalkboard...but on a good day I wouldn't have begun to get irritated until she waved off the guy trying to take her order. Talk if you like, but don't inconvenience the rest of the world.

Its possible for any of us to disappear into a phone call and ignore the surrounding world completely. This is just rude at a coffeeshop, but it can be tragic on the highway.

By the way, if you have an appointment with your lawyer, don't take five cell phone calls during your meeting with him or her. Now that is irritating.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Comments are not working; I'm looking into what the problem is. Will let you all know when they're back up.

UPDATE: My hosting service confirms that they have disabled comments in defense against a spam attack. I'm making some configuration settings that will solve the problem, but I'm waiting until I get the *exact* procedure from Movable Type. Anyone who remembers the painful transition from Speculist.com to blog.Speculist.com will understand why.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 09:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In 1772, James Cook set out on his second voyage looking for the mythical Terra Autralis, the great southern continent which had been described originally by Ptolemy. Before the Portugeuse successfully rounded the tip of Africa, it was believed that this enormous continent wrapped around the end of the world, connecting Africa with Asia and making the Indian Ocean an inland sea. Throughout the period of discovery that followed the opening up the eastern passage to Asia, explorers such as Balboa, Magellan, Drake, and others contributed to the overall scaling down of hypothetical continent. Cook's voyage put to rest once and for all the idea that there was a vast habitable continent to the south. He came within 75 miles of the coast of Antarctica -- the much smaller, ice-covered continent that really was there -- but left discovery of it to a pair of Russians, Mikhail Lazarev and Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, in the 1820's.

I wonder whether the mission to Pluto just launched might serve to provide a final answer to the question of whether Pluto is, indeed, the ninth planet? In a decade or so, thanks to what this spacecraft shows us, Pluto may be vindicated as a planet or reclassified an asteroid or trans-Neptunian object. In the latter case, the Ninth Planet will join the great southern continent, the realm of Prester John, and myriad other fanciful notions of what lies beyond the horizon that have had to be abandoned in the harsh light of discovery.

Personally, I'm rooting for Pluto to keep it's status. But if it is reclassified, it had a pretty good run as a planet. Not as long a run as the southern continent, perhaps, but then things happen faster nowadays.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 06:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wow, check out these traffic numbers.

For the first time ever, we have broken the 50,000 mark for unique visitors in a month...and the month is only two-thirds over.

Thanks for dropping by, everybody!

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 06:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Tuesday KurzweilAI republished an article by Cory Doctorow entitled "Thought Experiments: When the Singularity Is More than a Literary Device."

Quotes from Doctorow are indented, Kathy's thoughts are in bold, my thoughts are in italics.

"Turing had the right insight: base the test for intelligence on written language. Turing Tests really work. A novel is based on language: with language you can conjure up any reality, much more so than with images. Turing almost lived to see computers doing a good job of performing in fields like math, medical diagnosis and so on, but those tasks were easier for a machine than demonstrating even a child’s mastery of language. Language is the true embodiment of human intelligence."

This is my favorite part of the article--if one can have a favorite part of something one is fisking!

Sure you can! And this is friendly fisking anyway.

We take for granted the miracle of language--that it informs and evokes emotion--and it's so beautiful. Perhaps mastery of language nuances presupposes emotional intelligence--and if AI reaches that threshhold it will acquire emotional intelligence as well. Emotional intelligence is a very important component of human intelligence.

But it’s a cheat. Evolutionary algorithms depend on the same mechanisms as real-world evolution: herit-able variation of candidates and a system that culls the least-suitable candidates. This latter—the fitness-factor that determines which individuals in a cohort breed and which vanish—is the key to a successful evolutionary system. Without it, there’s no pressure for the system to achieve the desired goal: merely mutation and more mutation.

I always find these evolutionary algorithm arguments a little ironic--when we're talking about AI, there's human intelligence involved, not merely blind survival of the fittest. If humans set up the fitness factor and tweak the process from time to time, that's not the same as real world evolutionary systems unless we believe that some intelligence originally set up the fitness factor and tweaks it from time to time in nature as well.

"Biology would be a lot more stable if we moved away from regulation—which is extremely irrational and onerous and doesn’t appropriately balance risks. Many medications are not available today even though they should be. The FDA always wants to know what happens if we approve this and will it turn into a thalidomide situation that embarrasses us on CNN?

And I always get miffed when very intelligent and informed people suddenly lapse into ascribing such cartoonish motives to other intelligent people who are dealing with complex issues. Yes, we need to balance risks and benefits, and yes our regulations are heavy on the risk avoidance side of the equation. I'm reacting to Doctorov's style--thalidomide was a tragic mistake not to be trivialized. The real issue is not fear of embarrassment on CNN, but fear of catastrophic financial loss including protracted legal battles, and of incurring the wrath of stockholders.

I blame the lawyers. Just kidding. I'm with Doctorow on this. At some point we are going to have to deregulate or, at least, completely overhaul the FDA to make it faster and more responsive. This could come in response to continual bio-terrorist attacks.

I'm reacting to his trivialization of it--sigh

After all, this is a system of belief that dictates a means by which we can care for our bodies virtuously and live long enough to transcend them. It is a system of belief that concerns itself with the meddling of non-believers, who work to undermine its goals through irrational systems predicated on their disbelief. It is a system of belief that asks and answers the question of what it means to be human.

Can we assume from this paragraph that:

I happen to be a Singulartarian, but I believe it is one possibility for the future. It is not where I place my faith, it is a scenario where faith will be acted out.

I don't think Doctorow is being prescriptive as much as descriptive. "A path" not "THE path" to virtue.

Tobias handled this problem in Crystal Rain by having a pre-Singularity civilization spawned by a mysterious post-Singularity civilization.

Throughout history, humans have used literary devices to bridge the gap between what they can understand and express and what they're trying to grasp. This goes along with the what we said earlier about the nuances of language that make it difficult for AI to grasp, in fact. However, I don't think Doctorow was giving literary devices their due credit--I think he was using the term to attempt to dimenish the Singularity in the science fiction genre as an unsubstantiated figment of the imagination.

I think science fiction as a genre is an important literary device for predicting--or if that isn't possible--imagining, the potential for the human race and civilization. The Singularity is only a sci-fi killer if we stop trying to imagine the future for fear of being wrong.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 02:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Our friend Tobias Buckell has a sci-fi novel, Crystal Rain, coming out next month.

Yesterday I received an advanced copy and I'm impressed. Had I not just put in a long day I would have read through the night. It's a fun novel.

I'll get a full review up this weekend.

UPDATE FROM TOBIAS: "By the way, your readers might be interested in reading samples of the novel free over at www.crystal-rain.com (just click on 'excerpt.')

Tor has given me permission to post the first 1/3 of the novel up free as a teaser. I've been putting up a chapter every day or so, and I'm about ready to put up chapter 5."

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 07:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Charlie Kam has written and performed a brilliant and funny spoof of "I Am The Very Model of a Modern Major General" that you have to hear.

You'll find yourself needing the lyrics sheet.

No offense Charlie, but somebody page Kelsey Grammar!

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 08:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

KurzweilAI pointed this morning to Popular Mechanics list of "15 Tech Concepts You'll Need To Know In 2006."

Don't miss it.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's amazing how tied up in knots a researcher can get proclaiming to everyone that he's not trying to find a cure for aging. In an effort at "damage control," mitochondrial researcher Rafal Smigrodzki had this to say after a New Scientist article was a little too enthusiastic about his work.

The [New Scientist] article might give the impression that the applications of protofection as a treatment of aging might be imminent - but, as I was at pains to explain to the reporter [Bob Holmes], Gencia corporation is going to use the technique first in classical mitochondrial diseases, and we are definitely not in the business of making a cure for aging. A "gleam in our eye" means that if (and that's a big if) things work out well with classical mitochondrial disease, then maybe in ten or fifteen years it could lead to wider applications, in the treatment of the mitochondrial aspects of some age-related conditions.

"The cure for aging" is the instant-death third rail of grantsmanship and we stay away from it.

There are some points to take away from Smigrodzki's defensiveness and his admission that "grantsmanship" is involved:

• Reporters (and, let's be fair, bloggers like us) tend to be more enthusiastic about scientific/medical advances than the scientist(s) responsible. This doesn't necessarily make the reporter wrong.

  The career of a print journalist depends on readership. Had Bob Holmes written a dry article about incremental advances in the treatment of mitochondrial disease, few readers would have waded through it. If he did that often enough he'd probably find himself looking for a new job.

• But scientists have to constantly guard their reputations. Any hint of flakiness affects a scientist's ability to get all-important grant money or be published in the best journals. Aubrey de Grey is in the awkward position of having to offer prizes to get gerontologists to try to prove him wrong. Clearly he'd have an easier time finding peer review if he was describing a new species of slime mold.

  The truth about whether Smigrodzki's work could ultimately result in a life extension treatment is probably somewhere between what he'll admit to and what the reporter has hyped. Aubrey de Grey (and others) have identified mitochondrial mutations as one of the problems that cause aging. Any advancement in methods to address mitochondrial mutations could advance our ability to treat aging on down the road.

• In one way it doesn't matter that "Gencia corporation is...not in the business of making a cure for aging." History is full of scientists and inventors who contributed more than they realized (or admitted to) at the time.

  This idea - that progress in life extension science continues regardless of its description - is part of the reasoning behind my prediction that we will have some form of life extension by 2014. Perhaps I should modify this prediction to say that it will be an off-label treatment - something gerontologists know extends life, but won't publicly admit extends life.

• But acceptance of life extension as a real science does matter. Imagine a world where, after the Wright brothers flew, scientists announced that the data from Kitty Hawk was just an interesting anomaly - that heavier-than-air flight was still considered impossible.

  Of course air shows would quickly make those scientists look foolish. But consider how long we'd have to wait to get the equivalent of an air show for life extension. For years there would be nothing as dramatic as a barrel roll. Just some test subjects that seem to be staying healthy - with millions of the rest of us dying in the interim.

  This is part of the thinking behind the Methuseleh Mouse Prize. A mouse is not a human, but its more than the C. Elegans worm. If we get conclusive proof that some aspects of aging can be cured in a mouse (and mice with their short lifespans would give us this proof relatively quickly), people - including scientists - would "get it." The implication for humans will be too strong to ignore.

  Then we'll see researchers go to great lengths explaining how their research is related to a cure for aging.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 02:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Will blogs lose their credibility if they get overly entangled with mainstream media and political money folks? Possibly. But what I'm trying to work out, here, is how I can get some kind of "courting" angle to score me a free pass to the AFC Championship next Sunday.

Come to think of it, sending me would be the perfect solution. The Speculist is neither a political blog nor a sports blog. There could be no possible suggestion of undue bias or influence peddling. Plus, since Invesco Field at Mile High is just a short light rail ride from where I live, no one even needs to worry about how my "expenses" are being covered. I can handle the light rail fare, and I can't eat any nachos, anyway. All I need is that all-important ticket.

So please, anyone reading this who represents big media or big blogging or, you know, anybody who cares about the future of the blogosphere -- not to mention, I daresay, the future of humanity -- won't you act now?

Thank you.

UPDATE: I just remembered. I have my daughter this coming weekend. So it's actually going to take two passes to the game to save the blogosphere. But that's still a heckuva bargain!

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the future...

...all clothing will be designed with digital media players in mind

Futurist: Robert Hinkley, who reports that his "prolonged recent silence" due to another one of those "pesky time wormholes." (A common occupational hazard for folks in our line of work.)

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 08:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the future...

...luminous pigs will be cheap and plentiful.

Futurist: Robert Hinkley, head of the Speculist UK office and noted authority on flourescent livestock.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 08:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

2. The Question of Hubris

Last time, I asked whether those who are looking for the soft-takeoff version of the Singularity should focus on trying to instill a notion of goodness, in particular the idea of an ultimate good, into the conceptual framework of the emerging intelligences. Irrespective of whether it would be a good idea to try to do so, I don't think we can make machines that "believe in God" in a meaningful sense. But a notion of the good, a good that is transcendent, a good that should always be strived for -- could we make such a notion axiomatic for an emerging intelligence?

From a strictly practical standpoint, an AI hard-coded with a combination of the golden rule and Kant's categorical imperative would be about as unlikely to go hard-takeoff on us as any being that can be imagined -- assuming, of course, that it considers us to be among the "others" unto which it must reciprocally "do," and that it doesn't immediately begin formulating Universal Ethical Precepts that involve removing all the "organic infestation" from the planet. Failing a hard-code option, we can attempt to communicate these ideas to the new intelligence. If the ethical cure doesn't take, getting the AI tangled up reading Kant might at least buy us a little time. Although with the AI's million-to-one mental speed advantage, the operative word there is "little."

However, instilling the emerging intelligence with a beneficial ethical sense is not the only moral consideration that we have to look at when exploring the relationship between God and the Singularity. The over-arching issue is the moral character of the Singularity itself. Is the Singularity a moral event?

There are many possible answers to that question -- yes, no, don't know, can't know, the question is irrelevant -- just as there are adherents to many different philosophical schools among those who are watching for the Singularity. Most would agree that the soft takeoff, in which humanity participates in and benefits from this next stage of evolution, is an optimum, a best case scenario; the hard takeoff is a worst case scenario; and the missed flight is hard to classify in a tree-falling-in-the-wilderness kind of way. But there will probably be fewer takers if the best case, worst case, and hard-to-classify categories are relabeled moral, immoral, and amoral, respectively. We can discuss AI ethics from a strictly utilitarian, human-centric perspective, but to give the Singularity itself a moral dimension is to posit a broader moral context.

Of course, this is precisely the perspective from which religious believers approach the question. Which is not to suggest that they are alone -- clearly, one need not believe in God in order to believe in a broader moral context. For example, a Singularitarian could define that which adheres to John Smart's developmental spiral as moral and that which diverges from it as immoral. So those actions that tend to lead towards the Singularity would be moral. The distinction between hard takeoff and the soft takeoff would not be an important consideration from this perspective. We don't know whether our participation in the Singularity (or its benefiting us) will represent a developmental optimum. So we could only evaluate the morality of a hard-takeoff or soft-takeoff Singularity after the fact. Only post-Singularity beings will have the perspective to make that determination.

For the religious believer, the question is not whether we have achieved a developmental optimum, but whether what has occurred is in accordance with God's will. As I mentioned previously, there is a presumption among many believers that the Singularity, by definition, could not be a moral event. In response to the earlier piece, blogger Randy Kulver wrote:

If there was a question, which i doubt there is, I would definitely fall in the camp who argue that the ideal or aspiration to the singularity is indeed hubristic, even Babel-like...

This is a good summary of what I would characterize as the mainstream religious response to the idea of the Singularity. There is (apparently) a strong prima facie case against the Singularity. If the subject is worth talking about at all, it is in order to dismiss it. The idea of the Singularity does, indeed, resonate with the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel. If building that tower was regarded by God as sinful hubris, why would he look at the Singularity in any other way?

Before we attempt to answer that question, let's ask a more fundamental question: what does God want human beings to be? What does he want them to become? I think most believers would agree that the short answer to that question is that God wants human beings to be capable, even powerful, beings; but that capability and power must be subject to goodness. If it comes down to a choice, goodness always has to win out.

In the Biblical creation story in Genesis, God forbids that Adam and Eve eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Why? Did God not want human beings to have a moral sense? Some would argue that God intended for Adam and Eve to disobey, so that they might understand their free will and learn to enter into a relationship with him of their own volition, but the mainstream view is that God's intention was not for humanity to come to moral knowledge and understanding of free will via disobedience. However, that is not to say that God never wanted human beings to know these things. Rather, I think most believers would agree that God wanted them to come to knowledge of these things by a different route, a route of obedience.

The Serpent, generally associated with Satan, tempted Adam and Eve into taking a shortcut to this knowledge by way of sinful disobedience. By gaining knowledge via these means, they were also subjected to a curse of mortality, struggle, and pain. Had they not taken that shortcut, wouldn't another route to this knowledge have been opened up to them -- one in accordance with the divine will? I think most believers would agree that this is true.

Contrast the Serpent with Prometheus in the Greek creation myth. Prometheus is very fond of the new human creatures. As a boon to them, he brings fire from heaven and gives it to them. This is technological knowledge. Human beings are made more capable by this gift. There is no notion of moral knowledge or free will. Zeus is angry because he sees the humans as a potential threat now that they have so much power. He punishes Prometheus accordingly.

Unlike the Serpent, who in conventional interpretations is seen as a malevolent figure, hoping to bring about the downfall of humanity, Prometheus is sympathetic to humanity. He gives us fire to help us. The Serpent isn't trying to increase humanity's standing in the world; quite the contrary. The Serpent is not a Singularitarian. But maybe Prometheus is.

Now let's take a look at the idea of hubris. Who in these two similar (yet very different) stories is guilty of hubris? If Kulver is correct in stating that belief in and promotion of the Singularity amounts to hubris, that question could be rephrased as this: who in these stories are the Singularitarians? I would suggest that Adam & Eve are misguided Singularitarians, trying to bring themselves to a new level of existence via the wrong path. (The Serpent is apparently not a Singularitarian; he wants humanity destroyed. One could argue that he is a proponent of a hard takeoff, but his end is not to usher in a new developmental level, merely to destroy his enemy.) Prometheus, on the other hand, is a Singularitarian hero, insisting on the developmental optimum of humanity's adoption of fire at great personal cost.

Both Prometheus and Adam & Eve commit what we might describe as spiritual hubris -- arrogance that usurps divine authority. The extent to which we think that Prometheus was justified in his hubris and that Adam & Eve were rightly punished for theirs is the extent to which we accept moral authority (i.e., God's authority) as valid and brute force (i.e., Zeus's authority) as invalid. The difference is that the Greek myth has no notion of an alternative developmental path (or at least blissful state of existence) intended for humanity which has been thwarted by the act of disobedience. The Serpent brings the apple to destroy; Prometheus brings fire to save.

However, there is another kind of Hubris -- what we might call practical hubris -- which is often overlooked or confused with the spiritual variety. When the resting place of the Titanic was discovered, many commentators described it as a great monument to "man's hubris." More recently, some have suggested that the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center was a demonstration of the consequences of hubris. I think one of those two is a pretty good example of practical hubris, but neither is an example of spiritual hubris. After all, few would seriously suggest that the Titanic or the twin towers somehow violated God's will just by their existence. If God is opposed to the construction of large ships or tall buildings, we have to ask why. Is he like Zeus on Olympus, threatened by the power that humanity displays through these inventions? It would take a very petty and small God to be so threatened.

Practical hubris is the hubris of Icarus, son of Daedalus. In Greek myth, Daedalus, imprisoned on an island, devises a novel means of escape -- he crafts wings which enable him (and his son) to fly. Before they make their departure, Daedalus warns Icarus of the dangers of flying too high or too low. However, once they are underway, Icarus gets carried away with the joy of flying and ascends to a great height up near the sun. The heat from sun melts the wax that holds the wings together, and Icarus plunges to his death.

I have never heard this story told in such a way that Icarus violates an edict from the gods or that he is struck down by their wrath. Falling is just the natural, tragic result of his playing fast and loose with the new power that his father's invention has given him. If one wants to apply the word "hubris" to the sinking of the Titanic, this is kind of hubris that applies. I doubt there are many who seriously believe that a divine hand shoved the ship into the iceberg in retribution for the haughtiness of the ship's builders. Hitting the iceberg was simply the natural, foreseeable result of steaming full-speed into iceberg-laced waters on a moonless night.

So if we accept this distinction, we now face two questions: Is it hubris to work towards the Singularity? If so, what kind of hubris is it? All of which leads us, at last, to the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, found in the book of Genesis. Here's the story:

A fellow named Nimrod establishes what sounds like the world's first empire in the land of Shinar, which includes Babel, where the tower is built. Nimrod is described as a "mighty hunter," a powerful and charismatic leader. People begin to settle in Shinar, which is something of a prototypical silicon valley, with a charismatic entrepreneur at the helm and a booming technology (brick making) driving a whole new culture (based on progress and unhindered communication; this story occurs at a time when all people speak the same language.) The people of Shinar declare that they're going to build a city with a tower reaching to heavens and "make a name for themselves." God looks at what they're doing and comments as follows:

"If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."

So he confounds their language and scatters them out over the world.

Why does he do it? The traditional interpretation is that God acts primarily out of retribution for the arrogance and blasphemy of the people building the tower. There is no question that their self-aggrandizing behavior would be displeasing to him. So is his action here comparable to that of Zeus smiting the disobedient Prometheus?

Personally, I had always read it that way. But recently, a friend offered me a different interpretation -- drawing attention to what it is that God specifically says before acting. He does not refer to the pride or arrogance of the people of Babel. He expresses concern about allowing their upward spiral of progress to continue unabated.

"Nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them."

So what? Nothing they do represents a threat to him. It is much more likely that their actions may represent a threat to the people themselves. And note that these sinners are not killed as the people were in the story of the Flood. They are merely scattered.

In the story of the Tower of Babel, God does not seem primarily interested in punishing spiritual hubris, but rather in preventing the devastating consequences of practical hubris. He is not Zeus chaining Prometheus to a rock, he is a very forceful Bill Joy protecting people from the unforeseen consequences of their actions.

So the Tower of Babel is, indeed, a cautionary tale for Singularitarians, believers and non-believers alike. We would all be well advised to pay close attention to it. But it is not primarily a story about the consequences of violating the divine order; that's what the story of Adam & Eve is all about. It is about the need to tread lightly when setting out on a path of rapid development of knowledge and power, especially when so many of the consequences of that path must be unforeseen. The safest path forward surely lies in the avoidance of hubris of both varieties. Non-believing Singularitarians might not immediately resonate with the idea of spiritual hubris, but all can agree that we should proceed with humility, nurturing a respect for the potential dangers that is at least as great as our hope and longing for the wonders to come.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I weighed in this morning at 285 pounds, representing a total weight loss of 12 pounds.

All I have to do is lose 12 pounds 7 more times and I'll be just over the 200 pound mark. I have decided to put off deciding what my final target weight should be until I'm in that neighborhood. Reader "Ross the Heartless Conservative" suggested that I should have fudged my starting weight up to 300 so that when I hit the target of 150, I can brag that I lost 150 pounds. That's a great idea, but I'm not sure that I will want to go quite as low as 150.

The goal is to come out of this thing looking more like this than, say, this.

It's a New Phil, Week 1

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

• Medical Fab, Part 1

• Medical Fab, Part 2

Scientists in London have developed a new way to print biological structures smaller than the ink jet needles they use in the printer.

The problem was that the smallest ink jet needles are currently 500 microns - larger than what is needed to lay down cells with the kind of precision necessary to make the smallest biological structures with fine features. But by using a new technique they are calling "electrohydrodynamic jetting" they can do much better. They send living cells at a controlled flow rate into the ink jet needle, but then add an electric charge.

The advantage of this method compared to conventional ink-jet technology is that it can create droplets as small as just a few microns across from needles with diameters as large as hundreds of microns. Until now, however, researchers were unsure if the high voltages required for this technique would damage living cells. Jayasinghe and co-workers have demonstrated that cells can be processed at electric fields as high as 30 kilovolts without being harmed.

Imagine microsurgery where the surgeon (or, more likely, a computer under supervision), literally rebuilds a damaged or worn out organ.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last month we reported on efforts to check whether the cosmological constant is really constant. We have a preliminary report:

Schaefer decided to test this [cosmological constant] idea by probing deeper back in time, to see if the constant was the same way back then. He did this by studying objects called gamma-ray bursts...

Early results from Schaefer's study of the movements of gamma-ray bursts suggest that dark energy is different far out in space, and therefore way back in time.

This could explain why the expansion of the universe is speeding up. Maybe it's not dark energy or vacuum energy. Maybe the nature of space is changing.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 09:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A few days ago Phil asked for suggestions on how to get more daylight. Forget daylight-savings-time trickery, how do we get an actual increase in hours of daylight?

Light up Jupiter?

Jupiter is probably too small to ignite like a star - it doesn't have the mass. In his book 2010, Clarke had his mysterious aliens increase the mass of Jupiter in some fashion to allow it to ignite. Perhaps by seeding the planet with neutron matter. This is just a little out of the realm of possibility for now. Which is a good thing. Converting our solar system into a binary system strikes me as just a bit dangerous for our planet.

Back to the drawing board!

What if you placed a giant mirror in an orbit that was stationary relative to the day-night terminator? Instead of geosynchronous orbit, it would be a terminatorsynchronous orbit. You could reflect light from the dayside to whatever points on the nightside that you want.

You could choose different cities to keep lit at night by continually adjusting the angle of the mirror. And wouldn't this be great in an emergency? If a community is hit by disaster you could keep the daylight on during the rescue.

Because the mirror would have to be so large, this project wouldn't really be feasible until we get a space elevator.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 08:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

My good friend Chris Twyman and some of his colleagues have just launched a blog dedicated to the subject of Strategic Marketing. Be sure to stop by and wish them well.

Also, can anybody help me out with this entry? I have no idea who they're talking about.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 09:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Engineer Poet has pointed out on several occasions that ethanol is not really a useful fuel. It's produced at a net energy loss - more energy goes into making the stuff than we get out of it.

One MIT scientist has an idea that might make the fuel worthwhile anyway.

About three years ago, while working on an experiment for growing algae on the International Space Station, [Dr. Berzin] came up with the idea for using it to clean up power-plant exhaust.

If he could find the right strain of algae, he figured he could turn the nation's greenhouse-gas-belching power plants into clean-green generators with an attached algae farm next door.

After considerable trial and error, Berzin has demonstrated that the idea works.

Fed a generous helping of CO2-laden emissions, courtesy of the power plant's exhaust stack, the algae grow quickly even in the wan rays of a New England sun. The cleansed exhaust bubbles skyward, but with 40% less CO2 (a larger cut than the Kyoto treaty mandates) and another bonus: 86% less nitrous oxide.

The algae is harvested daily for biodiesel. The pulpy substance that remains can be refined further into ethanol. Ethanol harvested in this fashion might be just as inefficient as that from corn, but since it's part of a process that makes the air cleaner, reduces greenhouse gases, and produces biodiesel, maybe it's worth a second look.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 03:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

A great big enthusiastic "Hola!" from Juan Valdez, welcoming you all to the 17th edition of the Carnival of Tomorrow. Each little glimpse into the future in this edition is like one of those ripe, red, perfect coffee beans that Juan picks at exactly the right time. So pour yourselves a steaming hot cup of whatever suits you, sit back, and join us as we drink in all the wonders in store.

We want to start the first Carnival of the year 2006 with a bold (and somewhat self-fulfilling) predicition. So here it is:

In the future, words of wisdom and hot beverages will not be at odds with one another. What a wonderful world that will be!

UPDATE (01/06/06 at 9:02 PM): The future has arrived. I just got a tall Americano from my neighborhood Starbuck's, and on the cup were the following words, not blocked by any kind of sleeve or other impediment:

The most successful innovations are the ones we stop noticing almost immediately. We often don't appreciate the things we'd least like to give up.

-- Virginia Postrel

Author of The Substance of Style and a columnist for The New York Times.

The future is wonderful indeed.

Reason at Fight Aging! provides some inspirational words for starting a new year:

The future is what we make of it, and there's nothing special or reserved in the act of making a difference....[N]othing stops any one of us from taking a single step towards a better future. Those steps will add up. If you don't like the present state of affairs insofar as the future of your health and lifespan is concerned, there's a simple solution: stand up and join those who are doing something about it!

Hear, hear! And taking his own advice to heart, Reason then proceeds to outline a by-the-bootstraps approach to funding aging research.

What color is the future? James Waterton of the Daily Constitutational says that it may well be saffron, and that India is perhaps the player to watch in the East. This is an older post recently linked by James Bennett at Albion's Seedlings.

Waterton also has a more recent post at Samizdata explaining his skepticism of the Chinese economy - at least in its "current nominally Communist incarnation."

If you enjoy Waterton's analysis as much as we did, keep an eye on Samizdata, where word has it he will be doing all his blogging from now on.

While we're picking up interesting materials from the archives, check out this Classical Values entry from last June in which Justin introduces us to the Ray Kurzweil of 1627 (and of 1733.)

Mark at Curmugeons Corner pointed us to this article about how the U.S. Marines are developing a low-cost space vehicle.

[T]he Small Unit Space Transport and Insertion (SUSTAIN) concept that, if successful, will give the US a "...heretofore unimaginable assault support speed, range, altitude and strategic surprise" capability. SUSTAIN is an RLV that will carry a squad (13 men) into space and land it anywhere on Earth within two hours with, among other requirements, "flexible launch on demand… to any orbital inclination."

The fuzzy dice of the future, available today. GeekPress has details.

Mike Treder at Responsible Nanotechnology has a neat piece on the house of the future. Yes, it pretty much is a nanohouse. How did you guess?

Jack William Bell says that golf may be on the decline as the in-game for business executives and would-be executive ladder-climbers. So what's the back nine of the future? You may be surprised.

Sure, wind power is great, but what about all those defenseless birds? Genetically engineering birds to be smarter and not fly into windmills is one possible solution. Al Fin presents another.

Speaking of alternate energy sources, (one of our favorite subjects at the Carnival of Tomorrow, right up there with brains) Jay Manifold at A Voyage to Arcturus" directs us to speculation about a truly alternative energy source.

Last month, Jay directed us to an explanation for the baffling lack of flying cars here in the 21st century.

Anemaat said cars had not flown yet because "in the past there has always been a compromise made, and they built a bad plane and a bad car. But now, with new materials, technology and electronics, we think we can build a better vehicle that is a good car and a good plane."

Don't miss the computer animation of their proposed model.

Getting back to beverages (Remember? We started this thing talking about beverages), Øyvind Arnesen details what must be the most useful Geek Project to date. (Hat-tip: Triticale.)

It's kind of like tying a string to your finger, only more...emphatic. Randall Parker reports on the (extreme?) new solution for those who are sometimes forgetful with their personal belongings.

Rand Simberg explains that regulation of space tourism is not necessarily something to get all worked up about.

Tony Arcieri at Singularity Now has issued a challenge for Singularitarians: let's start planning how we want to make this thing happen right. Coincidentally, The Speculist has started a series on God and the Singularity which commences with some thoughts on how we convey an idea of goodness to the coming new intelligences. Dean Esmay has also had some interesting recent thoughts on the subject.

Finally, is it the end of the world, or not? Chris Hall has thoughts. But Josh Cohen at Multiple Mentality is pretty sure that he's on to an answer to the question.

If you would like to contribute to or host an upcoming Carnival, please write:

mrstg87 {@ symbol} yahoo {dot} com

or

bowermaster {@ symbol} gmail {dot} com

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 03:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Back in 2004 we reported on a UK study that showed dogs were able to positively detect bladder and kidney cancer from urine samples.

One sample that was thought to be disease-free kept testing positive with the dogs. The researchers went back and reexamined the volunteer. The volunteer had kidney cancer.

But their success rate was only 41%. In a new study in San Alselmo, Californian, researchers got better results testing different forms of cancer.

The dogs correctly detected 99% of the lung cancer samples, and made a mistake with only 1% of the healthy controls. With breast cancer, they correctly detected 88% of the positive samples, and made a mistake on only 2% of the controls.

These trained dogs do as well as the current state-of-the-art testing. Perhaps false-positives and false-negatives could be reduced by employing both dogs and standard lab tests.

If a lab doesn't want to keep actual dogs on hand, perhaps they could employ dog-on-a-chip technology to get similar results.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 09:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Consumers want electronics that work, are intuitive, have an attractive design, and have all the functions they care about and none they don't.

These desires often conflict. Sure I'd like a phone - mp3 player - wifi capable internet device the size of my current cell phone. But getting all that and elegance too is a trick.

This year's Consumer Electronics Show demonstrated that the competing visions of "iPod elegance" and "knee-jerk function creep" are still at war, but elegance is gaining ground.

Listen here for David Pogue's report from this weekend's Consumer Electronic Show, "Will Design Elegance Win the Gadget War?"

UPDATE: Here's a roundup of reviews of the CES keynote addresses.

UPDATE 2: SFist was there and he covers his favorite gadgets which include the new Lego Mindstorms, the Sony eBoook Reader (which, reportedly, offers digital books with print quality), and portable video from almost everybody.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 07:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In my last post, "Robots: The Next Generation" I presented three options to help with the depopulation problem Europe and Japan are facing. Option 1: encourage your population to have more kids (nothing draconian - use tax credits). Option 2: open up the gates to immigration hoping for a melting pot effect (this is not going smoothly in France right now). And option 3: do what Japan seems set to do - build robots.

There's a fourth option that appeals to many of us alive today - avoid death. If Aubrey de Grey and those he inspires successfully deliver life extension, we'd have longer productive lives. People who would have been satisfied to bide their last work days in do-nothing jobs would, if their youth were restored, retrain for more productive jobs. People who are presently discriminated against because of their age would come to be valued for their experience.

Even if people had to retrain every few years, such a society would be vastly more productive because they wouldn't have to start from scratch as with children. The basic skills would already be mastered.

Those who are concerned that this could mean fewer children (it would) should take a closer look at much of the developed world. Children are already rare in much of Europe and Japan. Since that is the case, don't these countries have a great incentive to keep their older population healthy longer?

It wouldn't have to be an anti-child world. With scarcity comes added value. More resources could be devoted to each child to insure them the best education possible.

Also, the demographics in Europe and Japan answer those life extension critics who fear over-population. It's not logical to worry about overpopulation when your country is losing a third of its population every generation.

So perhaps we have four options for dealing with depopulation. And none of them are mutually exclusive.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 07:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

It makes sense that the new year begins in January -- a little ray of hope in the dead of winter. One thing I'm sure most of us in the Northern Hemisphere are looking forward to is the days getting longer over the next few months. Then in springtime for those of us in the US (and many other countries) comes the annual setting of the clocks ahead to squeeze even more daylight into our waking hours.

Well Diana Mertz Hsieh at Noodlefood is seconding a motion raised by Eugene Volokh late last year that we stop tinkering with the clock and figure out a way to get more actual daylight.

I would note that this has been done already (sort of) in one locale on a limited scale. Now how do we all get our fair share of extra daylight?

Suggestions are welcome.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 09:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

...if they found something, and it was Morse Code to the effect of "The Lutherans got it right, but only the Missouri Synod Lutherans. Everyone else, thanks for playing."

Carl Sagan had a similar idea in his novel Contact, where the signature was left (I believe) in...

SPOILERS AHEAD

...the digits of Pi.

While you're at New Scientist, check out these 13 things that don't make sense. There is a lot more to be learned, folks.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Mark Steyn paints a very pessimistic picture of the developed world's future in his recent article, "It's the Demography, Stupid." Steyn points out that the replacement fertility rate is an average of 2.1 live births per woman. The United States' birth rate is practically equal to this replacement value at about 2.08 live births per woman.

I'm doing my part.

The population of most of the rest of the developed world is not holding up as well. Japan's birth rate is 1.39. The European average is very close at about 1.40. This means that both Japan and Europe are losing about a third of their population every generation.

Steyn points out that this is a problem because the typical modern democracy tends to be a welfare state. The only demographic that's growing - old people - depend on the diminishing young population to pay for their pensions, medicine, and health care.

So Europe has found that it must open its gates to immigration. The problem, for anyone who's watched what's going on in France, is that some of these immigrants don't share a belief in "liberal pluralist democracy."

I would guess that Japan, with it's comparably low birthrate, will fare much better in the coming years than Europe. Japan has a stronger tradition of accepting personal sacrifice for the sake of the greater good than socialized Europe. If the population is told that certain welfare programs will have to be cut back, they are likely to accept this quicker and respond faster than Europe.

Also, there's the issue of robots. The Economist had an interesting article late last month about how the Japanese are very accepting of robots.

[T]he consensus among Japanese is that visions of a future in which immigrant workers live harmoniously and unobtrusively in Japan are pure fancy. Making humanoid robots is clearly the simple and practical way to go...

In western popular culture, robots are often a threat, either because they are manipulated by sinister forces or because something goes horribly wrong with them. By contrast, most Japanese view robots as friendly and benign.

As robots and other AI's become smarter and more capable every year, this cultural acceptance of robots will become more and more important to Japan. Perhaps Europe will see Japan's success and adopt robots as well.

How will this affect the United States? We don't have the same depopulation problem that Europe and Japan have, but we do have the Western distrust for robots. So we don't need them like Europe or want them like Japan. This probably means we'll be late adopters, and that could become a major problem for our country. We might learn to upgrade humans to compete with super-efficient robots, but robots will be easier to upgrade or replace as new technology becomes available.

Time will tell.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 01:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (17)

I've just had my first official weigh-in after beginning a weight loss program recommended (and supervised by) my primary care physician. I had my annual physical a couple of weeks ago and the scales showed an alarming 297 lbs.

Now please note that this was not alarming because of any specific health risks (the general risks associated with lugging that kind of baggage around being more than sufficient), but more because it put me three pounds shy of the big three-oh-oh, which is just not a respectable weight for somebody who isn't starting for the NFL or who isn't a Sumo wrestler and I must come clean -- neither of those apply to me.

The plan the doc has me on is one of those moderate and super-sensible deals. I count calories, fat, and fiber (the latter being something of a mitigator.) I don't currently count carbs, although the tools I have could do the math that way. I personally don't want to go down that road again. As far as I'm concerned, low carb is a mirage in a desert of getting nowhere with diets. (Of course, your mileage may vary.)

One of the interesting features of the program is that I will be cutting my caloric intake further as I lose, so this could potentially begin a foray into the world of CR life extension, although right now -- at 1500 calories a day -- I think I'm still well north of any CR plan.

Still, you have to crawl before you can walk. And my first week of crawling has resulted in a 7 pound loss. At two-nine-oh, the big three-oh-oh seems a lot less menacing and I plan to see it quickly receding in the old rearview mirror.

More next week.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 08:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Welcome, blonde joke enthusiasts. Say, before you follow the link below, why not take a look around The Speculist? Are you interested in the subject of life extension or alternate energy sources? We've got it! How about some really deep ponderings (part two here) about what's happening with the universe? We have that, too.

Or maybe you'd like a quick summary of recent news related to the future? We've got it.

How about a round-up of 50 good news stories to brighten up your day? No need to be a stranger.

Paul Hsieh provides a link to what is reputed to be the funniest blonde joke ever. I'll let you all be the judge.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 04:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Or possibly just pseudoscientific rubbish which has somehow managed to attract government funding, perhaps via powerful magnetic fields:

The theoretical engine works by creating an intense magnetic field that, according to ideas first developed by the late scientist Burkhard Heim in the 1950s, would produce a gravitational field and result in thrust for a spacecraft.

Also, if a large enough magnetic field was created, the craft would slip into a different dimension, where the speed of light is faster, allowing incredible speeds to be reached. Switching off the magnetic field would result in the engine reappearing in our current dimension.

Don't get me wrong. Nobody is more eager to see three-hour trips to Mars and 80-day trips to Alpha Centauri than yours truly. I'm just not holding my breath, is all.

UPDATE FROM STEPHEN: Here's a New Scientist article on the same subject.

[Dröscher] and Häuser have suggested an experiment to prove it.

This will require a huge rotating ring placed above a superconducting coil to create an intense magnetic field. With a large enough current in the coil, and a large enough magnetic field, Dröscher claims the electromagnetic force can reduce the gravitational pull on the ring to the point where it floats free. Dröscher and Häuser say that to completely counter Earth's pull on a 150-tonne spacecraft a magnetic field of around 25 tesla would be needed. While that's 500,000 times the strength of Earth's magnetic field, pulsed magnets briefly reach field strengths up to 80 tesla. And Dröscher and Häuser go further. With a faster-spinning ring and an even stronger magnetic field, gravitophotons would interact with conventional gravity to produce a repulsive anti-gravity force...

Why not try it?

And here's the Wikipedia article on Burkhard Heim. He's the eccentric scientist who came up with the theory behind these proposed experiments. This theory is weirdly accurate at predicting particle masses.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 04:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Specifically, he describes how it relates to the Better All the Time view of the world:

People who suggest that it's all fleeting and going to come crashing to a halt remind me of the people that Gregg Easterbrook identified in The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse. By any measurable--I said measurable--standard, the human condition is improving in the vast majority of the world. You name it--health, lifespan, clean water, clean air, abundant food, leisure time, health, safety, security, mobility, education, it's all getting better. Yet as this happens, people are convinced that things are getting worse anyway.

Methinks most of Kurzweil's critics are guilty of a similar type of thinking: we can't possibly be on such an amazing technological cusp can we? Surely something must make it all come crashing to a halt soon, right?

Need I say it? Read the whole thing.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 01:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yeah, well, the odds are definitely against the guy. But if he does win, will they shut down the Vatican? On the other hand, if he loses, will it be like the end of Miracle on 34th Street?

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Texas 41, USC 38. Vince young clinched it with a cakewalk 4th down touchdown leaving 19 seconds on the clock and USC unable to organize an effective response. The Trojans' amazing winning streak, which started in 2003, comes to an end.

(I know, we don't really cover this stuff here. But we've been a little one-note the past couple of days and I just wanted to mix things up.)

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 10:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Frank Tipler has responded to Glenn's post linking to my post about God and the Singularity. He writes:

I beg to differ with:

"PHIL BOWERMASTER writes on God and the Singularity. They're not the same thing, he notes."

The word "singularity" has several distinct meanings. P.B. is referring to a sudden and radical change in technology. But "singularity" also has a precise mathematical meaning" "points" where quantities diverge to infinity (or are otherwise not defined). The laws of physics tell us that the universe began in a singularity in this precise mathematical sense 13.7 billion years ago. This initial singularity is the Uncaused First Cause. Maimonides and Aquinas defined "God" to be the Uncaused First Cause. Hence, by definition, the Cosmological Singularity is God!

Several of those who responded to the original entry made similar comments, although without referencing Maimonides and Aquinas. Professor Tipler is correct to point out the referring to the predicted upcoming Technological Singularity as "The Singularity" is a subjective and arbitrary choice. However, at the risk of bandying cosmological ideas about with one of the authors of The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, I would assert that it may be just as arbitrary to identify the singularity of 13.7 billion years ago as the Uncaused First Cause. If those who are now applying evo/devo concepts to cosmology are correct, the singularity that began this particular universe is just one of many in a developmental multiverse. As John Smart explains it:

In the simplest and most biological of these cosmological models, our universe’s genes self-organized, through many successive cycles in the multiverse, to produce the life-friendly and intelligence-friendly universe we live in today. This theory of intelligent self-organized design proposes that, analogous to living ecosystems, our universe's "genes, organisms, and environment" encode deep developmental intelligence on a macroscopic scale, while they use primarily evolutionary and chaotic mechanisms to unfold that intelligence on the scale that we normally observe it.

So our particular universe need not be the (direct) result of an Uncaused First Cause, and that singularity of 13.7 billion years ago may or may not be correctly identified with God. However, if there is a larger universe that evolves increasingly intelligence-supporting universes, we do face the question of how that ever came into being. The first and perhaps greatest singularity, maybe the one that really deserves to be called "the singularity" is at heart a conceptual one, having to do with the discontinuity between nothing existing and something existing. Stephen has called this singularity The Miracle, and about it he writes:

There's a central question that science cannot address. For all of us, believers and secularists alike, it's "turtles all the way down."

Whether you believe in God, believe there is no god, or remain undecided - there is an undeniable miracle. Why does anything exist at all? Believers say "God made it." Yeah, well who or what made God? Secularists like to talk about the Singularity that caused the Big Bang. Okay, but where did that come from? If you say "Multiverse," or even that intelligent universes spawn other intelligent universes (as discussed James Gardner's book Biocosm) then that's just another turtle.

So here, then, is that Uncaused First Cause of Maimonides and Aquinas. Or maybe it would be better to say where, then, is that Uncaused First Cause?

On an almost completely unrelated note, does anyone agree with me that Glenn ought to make an MP3 of his song about the Singularity available to a waiting world?

UPDATE: Upon closer reading, it looks like Glenn's song isn't so much about the Singularity as it is about Clarke's Three Laws. Well, Criminy...nobody wants to hear that.

Never mind.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

The God and The Singularity post has generated some interesting discussion in the comments. I would like to address a few of the points raised by a shift-key-challenged reader named eisendorn. His issues provide a good opportunity for clarification and amplification on some of what I wrote in the initial entry.

Eisendorn writes:

i view the topic of this discussion with suspicion, and i see a fundamental problem in your reasoning, namely that you seem to automatically equate moral goodness with christian values and belief systems.

Actually, it's more the other way around. I assert that Christian values and belief systems are predicated on an idea of goodness. I don't think that a belief or value is good because it's Christian. I think that if a belief or value is Christian (or Jewish, or Muslim, or for that matter Hindu or Buddhist -- where the idea of "God" might be very different from what's found in those first three, or altogether absent in the case of many Buddhists) then it is an attempt to reflect or to conform with an ultimate good.

Eisendorn continues:

while this may seem to be sound reasoning from a US citizen's point of view, it certainly doesn't seem all that appropriate thinking on an more global scale. after all, a solid part of the world population will not agree with that assumption to start with.

So making an association between Christian thought and some notion of the good reflects a narrow, US-centric worldview? This will no doubt come as a shock to all those Catholics in places like Poland or Mexico. Who would have guessed that they're all just pawns of the American agenda?

Here are a couple of quotes which I think are relevant to the discussion at hand. They come from one of the great leaders of the 20th century:

Infinite striving to be the best is man's duty; it is its own reward. Everything else is in God's hands.

I saw that nations like individuals could only be made through the agony of the Cross and in no other way. Joy comes not out of infliction of pain on others but out of pain voluntarily borne by oneself.

Sheesh, why couldn't this guy keep his bigoted, fundamentalist, US-authored opinions to himself? Oh, that's right. He wasn't remotely American and he wasn't a Christian. In fact, he had a pretty low opinion of many (if not most) Christians. The idea that there is an ultimate good, that this good emanates from God, and that Christianity attempts to manifest or reflect this good through its beliefs and practices is not a strictly American, nor indeed even Christian, idea.

Eisendorn continues:

futhermore, i think you will have quite a hard time instilling the notion of an all-powerful, all-mercyful god into a piece of software (especially one written in java as singinst suggests :P), and without it, christian ethics necessarily crumble. it may well be that there is a common denominator in christian morality and a supposed "perfect" ethic system for a benevolent ai; however, a humanitarian approach to safe ai design would certainly offer better possibilities (without being chained by a belief system), and this is a different vector of thought entirely.

I'm certainly not suggesting that we should try to program a computer to "believe" in God or to subscribe to any set of religious beliefs. I'm from the school that says these things are only worthwhile if one comes to them freely and of one's own (or God's) volition. But I think it would be equally problematic to attempt to introduce a purely relativistic moral scheme from whole cloth. Even Asimov's Three Laws represent some kind of moral postulates to proceed from. What would this alternative "humanitarian approach" entail? Telling the AI that while we think it's bad to kill people, and we hope that it comes to the same conclusion, we recognize that it would be judgmental of us to insist that killing people is wrong in any absolute sense? From a strictly practical standpoint, that leaves more wiggle room than I'm comfortable with.

Moreover, I would humbly suggest that anyone who pits "Christian" and "humanitarian" as stark alternatives, exclusive of each other, is proceeding from at least as strong a set of biases as he has inferred from reading my blog entry.

Here's why I should never bother attempting humor:

i also have a remark about the debate itself, namely that it is obvious where the participants hail from. in hardly any other (western) country would you find anyone being afraid of getting into trouble at a church camp or having struggles with their mothers over their, well, wider points of view.

Yes, it is unbelievably repressive here in the US. If my mother reads any of this, she will probably have my face removed from all the family photos. Then the Thought Police will come pounding on my door. It's a shame, but it's how things are. You've got us there.

this, paired with the earlier notion of you guys suggesting a soft takeoff to best happen within the US gives me the creeps, to be honest. do you really consider yourself and your nation to be the paragon of ethics in the world? neither your governments nor your major companies ethical policies suggest so, at least not from a european (actually, rest-of-the-world) view. to be honest, having a recursively evolving ai instilled with american/christian ethical values around on this planet looks no different to me than hard takeoff. but bear with me, i may be prejudiced by impartial news coverage.

One of the principles I've tried to enforce (not always successfully) at The Speculist is that we don't "do" politics or religion. Obviously, by initiating a series of entries on God and the Singularity, I have decided to put the second restriction aside. But I'm not giving up on the first! Anybody who wants to get into an argument about whether America is paragon of virtue or an evil opressor is welcome to find one of the half a zillion or so blogs where these things are discussed endlessly and have at it. *

But to clarify -- I think a soft takeoff is more likely to occur in a setting where people are working on building a friendly AI. Right now, that's the US. If Japan were one-tenth as interested in the Singularity as they are in robotics, they would probably be the prime contender. (And I still wouldn't count them out.) Where I have written about the importance of where the Singularity occurs, the choice presented has been the US vs. China. Could a soft takeoff occur in China? Yes. Could a hard takeoff occur in the US? Sure. A US corporation or defense contractor could stumble upon strong AI and launch a hard takeoff while trying to corner a market or build the ultimate weapon (to give just a couple of far-fetched examples). So, then, does it ultimately matter where the Singularity occurs?

Yes.

I maintain that we have a better chance of a soft takeoff if the Singularity takes place where people are purposefully working to create friendly AI. I know of folks in the US working to do this. I don't know of any in China.

* Which is not to say that I don't have an opinion on the subject, or that I don't think it's important. I do and I do.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I caught only the last few minutes of Aubrey de Grey on 60 minutes last night, with the "opposing view" guy making the case that since some phony-baloney life extension elixir sold to celebrities 50 years ago didn't work, blah blah blah. Actually, he wasn't so bad. His defense of Aubrey's approach was right on the money.

For those who missed it, Glenn has a link to a transcript of the show, while Reason has a blog roundup of responses.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 08:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since, of course, you all wanted more.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 11:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)