Tuesday, February 28, 2017
Monday, February 27, 2017
the guardian: Just who are these 300 'scientists' telling Trump to burn the climate?
Just who are these 300 'scientists' telling Trump to burn the climate?
the guardian
John Abraham: As with all such lists, the 300 'scientists' badly lack climate expertise Read the full story
Shared from Apple News
_- Steve
Sunday, February 26, 2017
Art is a waste of time – or so Effective Altruism claims | Aeon Essays
In 1972, the Australian moral philosopher Peter Singer published an essay called 'Famine, Affluence, and Morality', which contained the following thought experiment. Suppose you saw a child drowning in a pond: would you jump in and rescue her, even if you hadn't pushed her in? Even if it meant ruining your clothes? It would be highly controversial to say 'no' – and yet most of us manage to ignore those dying of poverty and preventable disease all over the world, though we could easily help them. Singer argues that this inconsistency is unjustifiable. The EAs agree, and have dedicated their lives to living out the radical implications of this philosophy. If distance is morally irrelevant, then devastating poverty and preventable disease surround us. Any break we take from working to reduce suffering throughout the world is like having a leisurely nap beside a lake where thousands of children are screaming for our help.
_- Steve
Saturday, February 25, 2017
Friday, February 24, 2017
Thursday, February 23, 2017
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Tuesday, February 21, 2017
Monday, February 20, 2017
Sunday, February 19, 2017
Friday, February 17, 2017
Thursday, February 16, 2017
Seattle judge demands an explanation after undocumented 'dreamer' arrested
Seattle judge demands an explanation after undocumented 'dreamer' arrested
From US News, a Flipboard magazine by The Guardian
Arrest of a 23-year-old Daca recipient, apparently the first case of its kind under Trump, has raised fears of a massive…
Read it on Flipboard
Read it on theguardian.com
_- Steve
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
PCWorld: Intel ships latest Itanium chip called Kittson, but grim future looms
Intel ships latest Itanium chip called Kittson, but grim future looms
PCWorld
Intel's Itanium chip is hanging by a thread, and after more than three years, the company is now shipping the next and possibly final version of the processor, which is code-named Kittson. The chip is now shipping to test customers, and volume shipments will commence later this year, a company spokesman said. Itanium chips have been used in mainframes and mission-critical servers. Hewlett Packard Enterprise will ship servers with Kittson later this year. Itanium has been dying a slow and painful Read the full story
Shared from Apple News
_- Steve
Vox: Doctors finally admit drugs can’t fix most cases of back pain
Doctors finally admit drugs can't fix most cases of back pain
Vox
The American College of Physicians now recommends heat therapy and yoga ahead of pain meds for lower back pain. Read the full story
Shared from Apple News
_- Steve
Monday, February 13, 2017
Sunday, February 12, 2017
Systems biology of cancer: entropy, disorder, and selection-driven evolution to independence, invasion and “swarm intelligence”
"Besides the minority of cancers arising from direct exogenous causes such as radiation, carcinogens, viruses, or inflammation, the majority of cancers do not originate from single obvious events but rather from multiple chance events in the normal life of our 3 × 1013cells. We link these events to the increasing entropy in the cell physiology and to the noise in our cell metabolism, which may initiate the process in some cells. This can lead to the major reverse biological transition from cells in pluricellular organisms, which obey constrains of the whole, to unicellular organisms, which independently strive to survive and multiply. After this transition to independence, the same causal mechanisms coupled to a Darwinian selection will cause the evolution to progression, invasion, metastasis, and in a few cases immortality as infectious agents. '
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3843370/
_- Steve
Saturday, February 11, 2017
Friday, February 10, 2017
What Is The Average Lifespan Of A Commercial Jet? - Airliners.net
Navy strike fighter jets: Two-thirds currently can't fly
Today, jets are being stretched to fly between 8,000 and 9,000 hours to fulfill mission expectations as a result of fewer operational aircraft, budget restrictions and delays to the fifth-generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
_- Steve
Congress's Role in the Debate over Trump's Executive Order - Lawfare
Even those (myself included) who think the Order should probably be overturned in court given the evidence of discriminatory intent, acknowledge that the most persuasive arguments against it are not legal, but rather moral and practical.
_- Steve
8 U.S. Code § 1182 - Inadmissible aliens | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute
Any immigrant who is or has been a member of or affiliated with the Communist or any other totalitarian party (or subdivision or affiliate thereof), domestic or foreign, is inadmissible.
_- Steve
Thursday, February 09, 2017
Wednesday, February 08, 2017
Tuesday, February 07, 2017
Monday, February 06, 2017
This Pulitzer Prize winning scientist thinks technology is responsible for ‘the most dangerous problem facing Americans today’ | Caroline Fairchild | Pulse | LinkedIn
So what's the cause of all the increased animosity at the root of these issues? The rise of technology is decreasing modes of face-to-face communication making it easier for Americans to compromise less and argue more, Diamond argues.
"This is the most dangerous problem facing Americans today," he said. "It is much easier to be rude to words on a screen than rude to a face... That's the best sense I can make of the deterioration of American society."
_- SteveSunday, February 05, 2017
Saturday, February 04, 2017
Federal Court Basically Says It's Okay To Copyright Parts Of Our Laws | Techdirt
_- Steve
Friday, February 03, 2017
Atheism
Good use of the Penn Gillette "if you destroyed every book" argument
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P5ZOwNK6n9U&feature=youtu.be
Sent from my iPhone
Thursday, February 02, 2017
Interesting quote from "Insane Clown President: Dispatches from the 2016 Circus"
"It's an Alice in Wonderland story, in which a billionaire hedonist jumps down the rabbit hole of American politics and discovers a surreal world where each successive barrier to power collapses before him like magic. From a literary standpoint it makes perfect sense that Trump would be the grotesque and charmless protagonist that he is. His bellicose pussy-grabbing vulgarity and defiant lack of self-awareness make him, unfortunately, the perfect foil for reflecting the rot and neglect of the corrupted political system he conquers. A system unable to stop this must be very sick indeed."
Start reading it for free: http://a.co/9MNExUY
--------
Download Kindle for Android, iOS, PC, Mac and more
http://amzn.to/1r0LubW
---Steve
WIRED: Inside Libratus, the Poker AI That Out-Bluffed the Best Humans
Inside Libratus, the Poker AI That Out-Bluffed the Best Humans
WIRED
For almost three weeks, Dong Kim sat at a casino and played poker against a machine. But Kim wasn't just any poker player. And this wasn't just any machine. Read the full story
Shared from Apple News
_- Steve
Futurism: Poker Pros Were No Match For An Artificial Intelligence
Poker Pros Were No Match For An Artificial Intelligence
Futurism
AI system Libratus has beat four of the world's best professional human poker players by $1.8 million in a three-week-long tournament. Innovations in artificial intelligence are leading to machines that perform better than people in everything from healthcare to cybersecurity. Read the full story
Shared from Apple News
_- Steve
Wednesday, February 01, 2017
CNN: Obama WH photographer throws shade at Trump
Obama WH photographer throws shade at Trump
CNN
President Barack Obama's former photographer, Pete Souza, is taking to Instagram to show frustration with the new administration. Read the full story
Shared from Apple News
Sent from my iPhone
How Donald Trump Could Build an Autocracy in the U.S. - The Atlantic
The basic idea is simple: to delegitimize accountability journalism by framing it as partisan."
_- Steve