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.