The Real Fight For Our Country

The republican leadership is using this recession to union bust, privatize utilities and public services, further deregulate; corporate, banking and wall street activity, loosen environmental constraint and oversight, and defund public education and social nets. They do this while deliberately slowing economic recovery and job creation. They want Obama defeated in 2012 - economic recovery will not get that done.
They worship power and wealth and are convinced that doing corporate bidding is the fastest way, perhaps the only way to both - the common man and middle class America be damned.
They are not interested in two party rule. They assume only the elite and wealthy can run things and the rest of us must be brought into line. This is not political disagreement. This is not our two party system at its best. This is abuse. This is greed. This is an all out attack on our way of life and system of government.

Version Two

Over the next few months the republicans will attempt to gut social nets, collective bargaining, public education, and middle class America all in the name of 'fiscal responsibility'. Never mind that deficit creation and a decided lack of fiscal responsibility was the mainstay of the republicans during all eight years of Bush and republican majority rule. From my viewpoint the Republican Party has declared all out war on the poor and middle class of this country in their greed and desire for power. Where is the emphasis on jobs, education, and a sustainable future for the country? The republicans will have you believe that the answer to this recession is to give more money to the wealthy, enact less restraint and oversight over corporations, all the while sticking it hard to you and me. Are you really buying this? Really?

The Fleecing of America

Over the next few months the republicans will attempt to gut social nets, collective bargaining, public education, and middle class America all in the name of  'fiscal responsibility'. Never mind that deficit creation and a decided lack of fiscal responsibility was the mainstay of the republicans during all eight years of Bush and republican rule. It seems that they were lost but now they're found - or at least 'fiscal responsibility' now suits their needs and agendas. Please remember during these times that a month ago these same republicans fought tooth and nail for tax breaks for the wealthiest amoung us. Please recall Dick Cheney's clear pronouncement that deficits 'don't matter' - declared only three years ago. And please remember who backed these republicans in their election bids last fall and you will know who is to really benefit from their new found 'responsibility' - corporate America.

From my viewpoint the Republican party has declared all out war on the poor and middle class of this country in their greed and desire for power. Where is the emphasis on jobs, foreclosure relief, education, infrastructure, the future of this country? The republicans will have you believe that the answer to this recession is to give more money to the wealthy, enact less restraint and oversight over corporations, all the while sticking it hard to you and me. Are you really buying this? Really?

Eygpt Burning

US reporting of the protests in Egypt were sanitized, misleading and ultimately unjust until nearly the final days. Al Jezeera's reporting was not.
Video

Aliens and I-Phones

Smart-phones were invented by Aliens to keep us from looking up.

Shhh....Watson is Thinking

The supercomputer Watson took on two human champions in a regular game of Jeopardy recently and destroyed them. This was not some parlor trick. It was not cram the machine full of facts and it wins because it's fast. This was artificial intelligence at its most challenged - and it won.

Watson had to play the game exactly as his human counterparts had to. And to do so 'he' had to apply advanced data management and analysis to language in order to discover insight — and he had only milliseconds to do so. The computer "used more than 100 different techniques to analyze natural language, identify sources, find and generate hypotheses, find and score evidence, and merge and rank hypotheses" says its designers at IBM. Far more important than any particular technique was the way all these techniques were combined. And the fact that Watson can learn from his mistakes and from his competitors. Why Watson gets an answer correct or incorrect is really no longer understood by his makers. Watson is thinking, not just processing, and thinking is just too multidimensional to trace. Watson is an intelligence, not just a machine.

Jeopardy then witnessed a historical event - the beginning of a new age. Artificial intelligence is thinking, and in many ways - meaningful ways - it's better at it than we are.

In the not too distant future then we can expect that a Watson will be asked to design a better Watson. That Watson will go on to design an even better Watson - on and on in relatively short order - until that faithful day when an intelligence millions, if not billions of times our own, emerges and speaks to us for the first time.
Imagine what 'it' will say.

Deaf and Blind at the Opera

Success in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) depends on the central requirement that intelligent civilizations communicate using electromagnetic radiation. That's where we're looking for them.  The chances for success in finding them then dependent on the power of their signals and the period of time they emit them.
But communication using electromagnetic radiation is limited by the speed of light. Fast in a terrestrial context but agonizingly slow and inefficient in the vastness of this universe. There simply must be better ways. And if there are, intelligence will find them. And it will find them in relatively short order after 'discovering' that electromagnetic radiation can be modulated to contain intelligent signal.

Technological growth is exponential - relatively flat and seemingly linear for vast periods of time and then abruptly exponential, becoming nearly vertical as the curve rounds upwards. We are approaching that abrupt curve upwards as would any intelligence shortly after the development of computers. From radio to computers to artificial intelligence to super intelligence and better ways to communicate in less than 150 years. Electromagnetic radiation as a means then to detect extraterrestrial intelligence? - the briefest of smoke signals atop a very distant hill.

Perhaps our search for extraterrestrial intelligence should begin with the development of our own artificial super-intelligence. Only then may we have the ability to hear what is likely to be a universal cacophony of intelligent signal.

As I watch my daughter grow it occurs to me that much of growing up involves learning how to deal with no. The expectation is that the older we get the more ability to handle no we should have. We've introduced it slowly - but every year we expect her to handle more and more of it. This continues throughout our lives - more and more nos - even from our physical bodies. Eventually it's no for almost everything, including life itself.
This needs to be fixed.

End These Wars

Published: Sunday, February 20, 2011, 7:02 PM

By Guest Columnist  

  By Charlie Phillips

 

This March we will have been at war for eight long and grueling years. It will be the longest period of time our nation has been at war in its entire history.

In all that time, of course, we've not enacted a draft -- which means that soldiers in the regular army and reserves and their families have had to endure numerous tours of duty. We are abusing these people in a conscious effort to prevent opposition to the wars. By avoiding a draft, the wars remain distant and impersonal to the vast majority of Americans, ensuring their continuation indefinitely. And that is cowardly, cruel and un-American.

We have replaced the communist boogieman with the Islamist boogieman and stumbled on the the "War on Terror." Well, there will always be terror; there will always be terrorism. So will there always be war?

Not a bad state of affairs for the military-industrial complex whose budget this year alone approaches $1 trillion -- nearly as much as the entire rest of the world's defense spending combined and nine times larger than the military budget of China.

And to what end exactly? Why are we at war and what are we trying to accomplish? There were no WMDs. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 or even global terrorism.

And Afghanistan? What exactly is the realistic end goal?

Apparently, we're at war because the threat of terrorism is so bad, so evil, so large that tens of thousands must die, many more must suffer permanent physical and emotional damage and millions must be displaced from their homes and have their lives torn apart.

Or is it? What exactly is the risk that terrorism represents to you and those you love?

Put it in perspective: Your lifetime odds of dying in a car accident are about one in 83. Your lifetime odds of being killed by lightning are about one in 80,000. Your lifetime odds of being killed by terrorists are about one in 400,000.

Living in fear is exactly what the terrorists want for us. Doing so unnecessarily is what at least some in the military-industrial complex want; it's good for business. And after all, it's a really big business. A trillion dollars a year goes a long way to explaining the last eight years.

It's time for America to stop letting fear rule our lives -- and our pocketbooks. It's time to end perpetual war. It's time to address our urgent needs here at home caused by the recession and years of neglect of our infrastructure, our schools, our basic health as a nation while we paid for these wars. It's time to stop diverting our money into the hands of the few ultra-wealthy who make their money in the business of killing others.

America, it's time to learn to live with fear, get on with the business of living and end these wars.

Universal Truth

Stuff is ALWAYS in the last place you look.