Well if you find youself short you may soon be able to just print some new ones.

NIH whistleblower Dr. Jonathan Fishbein discusses how profit and politics rule the day in science and medicine.


In one of the studies 1998 in Uganda of 645 expectant mothers on either AZT or Nevirapine.

80 percent of mothers exhibited abnormalities.
20 percent rate of "serious adverse events" in newborns.
38 babies died, 16 on Nevirapine and 22 on AZT.

Two weeks after filing his complaint Fishbein was demoted, then fired five days later. After a long battle he was reinstated last December.

This is just the tip of the iceberg in a growing problem with politics and profit in public funding of any area of scientific research.

Please read the whole story. Thanks to Dean's World
for the link.

It's dirt cheap to register a domain name on the Internet. Apparently this has led to a growing number of so-called "cybersquatters." I have heard of this before where people register big names or brands, then demand a lot of money to sell them, but didn't realize that it was this a big problem. Over 8,000 complaints already, with about half from the US.


With the growth of the internet it is natural to assume an increase in Cybersquatters as well. I am a little supprised that while ramsomee can now receive less expensive relief but there is still no risk to the one who does the intentional ramsom.

Recently I started reading the book "The Singlularity Is Near" (When humans transcend biology) by Ray Kurzweil. While doing some googling on reverse brain engineering which he talks about I came across the site longbets.org.

Mitchell Kapor, founder of Lotus Development Corporation and the designer of Lotus 1-2-3 issued a challenge at longbets saying that: By 2029 no computer - or "machine intelligence" - will have passed the Turing Test. If you have read much of Kurzweil's writings or books you won't be supprised to see that he has taken Kapor up on the challenge, and disagrees with him.

At stake is $20,000 to their named charities. The test is to be administered by the Long Now Foundation under conditions agreed to by Kurzweil and Kapor.

Because most people intuitively tend to view technological growth in the linear rather than exponential, I was Supprised that voting is running slightly in favor of Ray Kurzweil (presently 177-174). Follow the link above and read the arguements for both sides and leave some comments on your views. There are also many other interesting longshot bets there about future technology that you might find interesting.

Mitchell Kapor's finds it difficult to imagine a computer that can "perform a successful impersonation" of a human (required to pass the Turning Test). His belief is that because we are conscious beings, capable of reflection. That we have cognition and emotion.

Ray Kurzweil concedes that emotional response is the hardest challenge but contends that a "Turing-capable" machine will be possible by reverse engineering the human brain. Or in other words if it is a capability of the human brain, it is a complexity we can master.

Well I hate to be this way but I am going to wuss out on taking sides yet, although my guess is that Dean is solidly behind Kurzweil. It is partially because I haven't finished Kurzweil's book, and partially because I think quallities like cognition, reflection, introspection, emotions like love and fear may be beyond the results of reverse engineering the brain, but that doesn't mean a computer (with enough speed, power and the wealth of most human information) cannot emulate them well enough to fool most humans.

Sure emotions are chemically based and with out a doubt bio-chemicals cause feelings. But I think our consciousness is more than just chemical-neuron reactions. I'm not confident that reverse engineering will allow us to look into whatever the essence of our (maybe hidden) sentient core that gives us conscious perceptions and emotions is.

Also computers process data bit by bit. Humans process data holistically or as Kurzweil says digitally controlled analog "transactions." There is the "Informality of Behaviour" arguement which states that any system governed by laws will be predictable and therefore not truly intelligent. Turing replies by stating that this is confusing laws of behaviour with general rules of conduct. Maybe so as computers are already capable of originality producing music that sounds like Bach.

If we have a pleasant thought chemicals cause us to physically feel good. The physical "feel good" comes from chemicals, but as a result of the thought, not the cause of the thought. But all that aside I think the Turing Test may be passed by a computer by 2029. The unimaginable power and speed of future computing alone may be enough without consciousness to fool the testers. Of course the computer will have to be programed to give false information so as to not divulge that it is a machine.

This is similar to legislation passed last year by the Georgia legislature and signed by the governor. Unfortunately however it was block a federal judge, saying that it amounted to a poll tax because voters who didn't already have approved identification would have to pay a $35 fee.


How it will effect the poor, elderly and minorities is unclear especially if as last year they have a mobile office that travels the state to help them sign up.

Still critics find straws to grab like this one that has me scratching my head. "Our civil rights also dictate that we have a right to have our vote count, not disqualified by someone else who votes illegally." So leaving the process wide open for voter fraud to insure that nobody's vote is disqualified is a good thing?

We are having a similar problem in Wisconsin with a voter ID being repeatedly passed, but here the governor Jim Doyle has used his veto to bock the bill. However this year the congress may have the votes to override the veto.

I could use one.

Who says todays teens aren't smart.

On abortion:



On gay marriage:



On handgun control:


I wish they would have asked about concealed carry. My guess is that they would allow that too.

This is in the UK but a supermarket chain plans to have cheap formal wedding wear for both bride and groom by Valentine's Day.




From a supermarket? I think I'm going to be ill.

James Lovelock thinks that most of the human race going to be killed off by global warming, leaving only a few breeding pair to survive in the Arctic.


Forget it doc, we will take an asprin and call you in the next century.

What most people don't realize is that our technology is growing at an expotential rate (and then some) and we will have the energy and global warming issued solved long before this century is over.

Lovelock's original Independent Online article.

This just isn't going to fly in a redneck state.


Baloney. Beer would also need to be cold if you were having a picnic a short distance away. Or if you have houseguests and find yourself out of beer you do not want to make them wait until it is chilled. I'm sure there are any number of other ligitimate reasons.

Sen Bill Alter is Stooopid!

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (note the mix of science and politics in the name), said on Wednesday it would sue Kellogg cereal company if they don't change marketing aimed at children.


Last I heard it was the parents job to determine what children eat and are exposed to, not this so-called "Science in the Public Interest" group, but I digress.

Update: Also a group of consumer advocates are also threatening to sue Pepsi for selling sugary soft drinks in schools. Ah what would we do without the pleasure police to keep us wholesome.

You can stop looking for the fountain of youth. There may be a gene inside of us that prolongs our lifespan.

Strep throat with the fever, headache and the aches that go with it may soon be preventable with a vaccine. Great news for northern state parents were it is one of the most common reasons that children see their pediatricians.

How do outstanding and respected scientists get to the point where they are compelled to do research with claims so fraudulent that they end up trashing their reputations and careers? This is at least the fourth one in the last month that I am aware of, but undoubtly the worst. Or at least the most blatent unfounded.

This time it is respected cancer scientist Jon Sudboe at the Norwegian Radium Hospital who faked an entire oral cancer study.


For someone well educated he wasn't even careful because 250 of 908 people in the supposed study had the same birthday. But that wasn't what caught him (although it probably would have eventually). It was noticed that Dr Sudboe claimed to have gathered some of his information from a national database that wasn't even opened until after the time he claimed his study was carried out.

This is just too horrific. I cannot recall ever hearing about anything so senseless as beating several homeless people with a baseball bat or club just for kicks. One of them was beaten to death.

Townhall has the story.

It's obvious from the discusting video that has been shown on TV several times that these sleazy idiots were enjoying themselves.

This is one of those times that the death penalty definately applies and I don't give a rats ass if they are under 18.

Computer technology in the future will move forward in such a way that will make todays desktop PCs by comparison look inferior to the TRS-80 of the 70s. Behind this leap is quantum technology. Google up "quantum dots," "quantum wells," or quantum computing" but be prepared to do some deep technical reading. Quantum gates are measured on the nanoscale. A nanometer being .000001 of a millimeter, or about 50 atoms thick.

A quantum dot (or well) confines its electrons in all three dimensions causing them to act as though they were part of an atom. What is really wild about this artificial atom is that by affecting it with an external charge it can be made to resemble any atom on the periodic table (and I think some that are not), but that is a subject for another post. It was just too wild a scientific claim not to mention it here.

Nano size isn't the only thing that will make this sort of computing faster. In understanding quantum computing you will have to learn about something called the qbit (not cubit). Unlike binary computing where we can only have two states represented as a 0 or a 1, a qbit can be either a 0, a 1 or both. And while a qbit can only decohere into one of two states (0 or 1), 5 qbits together can colapse into 32 different states. But before the colapse these 5 qbits can literally store and perform computations on all 32 states. That would take a binary computer 32 sets of 5, or 160 total bits.

Anyway the first quantum microchip has been created by University of Michigan scientists.


Each time a qbit is added the power doubles. Remember the classic penney a day wage doubled every day for a month? Yeah over $10,000,000 after working a 31 day month. Well that puts more into perspective the power of just adding 32qbits of computing power.

Here is another example from "Hacking Matter" (downloadable) by Wil McCarthy.


Don't run out next week or even next year looking for a quantum computer, but the fact that UM scientists have created a quantum chip moves us from theory to reality. It will be many years before we see a quantum desktop PC. It is more realistic to believe that when quantum technology does come to the PC it will be a silicon binary - quantum hybrid.

To learn more about quantum components and programable atoms see the Hacking Matter link above. Computing is only one of the many feasable applications for this seemingly magical new technology on the nano scale.

Wow. This is awesome.


Via KurzweilAI.net