If the technology existed to put your brain in a robotic body (which of course could be upgraded and repaired much easier than a biological body), would you do it? On the one hand, it would allow you to live almost indefinitely (at least until your brain decays, though it could be that your brain could be uploaded to a robotic “brain”) since you can just replace any broken parts. On the other hand, you would be a robot, not a person.
Would you do it?
Why is it that the law in the phrase “law and order” refers to the police and the order refers to the lawyers? They’re called lawyers, not orderers; and they practice the profession of law. Also, the the police may enforce the law, but their purpose is to keep order. 🙄
Today, I ended up using a most roundabout way to extract some files.
The files were in an ISO disc image on a flash drive. Unfortunately, the Windows 7 laptop I was using had no software on it that could extract files from an ISO and I did not feel like downloading and installing some. What the laptop did have available was a copy of XPMode (a Windows XP virtual machine).
My solution was to mount the ISO in the VM, then to share the VM’s CD drive. Then I opened the shared CD in the Windows 7 network location and copied the files.
I ended up creating an “intranet” on a single computer to extract files in a bizarrely circuitous manner. Not surprisingly, the network connections dialog of both the XP and 7 systems indicated up/downloading a pile of data even though no actual network activity took place.
It was an odd, yet interesting experience, but also a fun challenge in resourcefulness and problem-solving.
Speaking of sampling (and/or ripping-off), a while back I saw—to not much surprise—that Google did return pages in which people pointed out the remarkable similarity of John William’s theme music for the movie Jaws to the fourth movement (“Allegro con fuoco”) from Antonín Dvořák’s classical suite Symphony No. 9 .
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There has been a familiar tune in some television commercials recently that I could not place, though I was sure it was either Nightwish, E Nomine, or Eminem (yes, you read that correct). I spent the past hour scouring their respective discographies. I made my way through Nightwish without any success. I got about half-way through Eminem’s when I found Music Box which is ~90% correct. I then worked my way through E Nomine’s albums, feeling like I was getting closer and closer until I hit Das Rad des Schicksals which was what I was looking for.
What is surprising is that it seems like Eminem sampled E Nomine’s song:
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I suppose it’s no surprise that Google finds no pages where other people have mentioned noticing this since the demographics of the two groups tend not to overlap too much.
The 1980’s was the single best decade in the history of the world to grow up in (at least in North America). It had the best
I’ll admit though that the fashion was atrocious; the late 90’s finally started getting that right.
I was scribbling in MSPaint (with the mouse) for reason and I ended up drawing a perfect ‘L’ with perfectly straight lines and a perfectly aligned 90° angle.
I’m reminded of an episode of a show in which a character drew a perfect freehand circle on a napkin (I think it was George on Seinfeld).
To be fair, if you look at the rest of the canvas, you see I scribbled a bunch of lines. This is just the law-of-big-numbers. If there is enough of something, then anything eventually becomes possible. You may also know it as the infinite-monkeys-shakespere trope.
Taken to the extreme, if the universe is infinite and has infinite atoms, then every combination and permutation of anything and everything (that is possible) would eventually exist. “Possible” being the operative word, even the infinite is bound by the laws of physics and the butterfly-effect.
Some people (including senators) have the audacity to claim that climate change is not true, even a fraud despite repeated evidence to the contrary. The problem is that they see the word “warming” and then look at the thermometer and see that it is low and say, Hey, if global warming was real, how comes it’s so cold? That’s why scientists no longer use the term global warming, because too many people are not smart enough to understand what it is and how it works and repeat the same line. The fact is that an increase in temperature causes all kinds of changes to the environment, some of which result in cold. It seems counterintuitive until you bother to research how the weather and environment interact. Admittedly it is an extremely complex and intricate interaction (which is why even today, weather forecasting is still not very accurate), which is beyond the ken of (too) many people. To simplify things for people, scientists now use the term climate change instead to reflect more accurately the actual, observable weather patterns that occur when the Earth as whole warms up. That way, it includes not only heat, but also cold, flooding, hurricanes, and so on.
This winter has been an exemplary one when it comes to climate change. Some places have had an unbelievably mild (even warm) winter, while other places have been blasted by hereunto not seen levels of snow.
A lot of Europe has been all but crippled recently by the extreme frigidity of this winter. Some parts like Bosnia have had numerous people die and entire towns declare a state of emergency and are effectively shut down altogether.
Other places like (believe it or not) Canada, like here in London Ontario, have had almost no snow at all and even green grass, making it feel like spring for weeks now. It may seem nice (believe me, I am looking forward to spring), but it is actually quite harmful. Without a layer of snow, the grass will be under-watered this spring, basically resulting in a dry soil and dead crops.
What’s worse than just unusual weather is inconsistent weather. The temperature keeps going up and down like a yo-yo. There have been times this winter when the temperature alternated high and low quite literally every other day! This inconsistency has extremely deleterious effects. Not only does it damage the soil and buildings, it wreaks havoc on migratory animals. Hibernators wake up early and freeze or starve and birds can’t decide when it is time to fly south, stay too long and freeze, and/or come back early and freeze.
Climate change is a very real thing and is definitely due to the irrefutably drastic changes that have occurred in the world since electricity and the industrial revolution. Even “cow flatulence” which some people like to blame it on is still the fault of humans. Without humans, cow populations would remain normal (ie, natural), so they can “fart” all they like (’till the cows come home as it were), and not affect the climate. The reason that their gases have any effect is because humans farm them for food and grow their populations to unnaturally high numbers. So even if “cow farts cause global warming”, it’s still because of humans.
London Ontario in the dead of winter (February 6, 2012):
Some pictures from around Europe:
