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Lotta Smart People Think It’s Going to Get Dangerous Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Stephan Hawkings, among the Earth’s smartest people, are warning that A.I. has the potential to eat its creators. Sci-fi types (I admit guilt there) have been saying it for decades. Remember HAL-9000’s, “I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t let you do that.”  Then give the A.I. weapons and we have SkyNet, killing off the vermin humans in all the Terminator movies. Grandmaster Isaac Asimov was the center of a cluster of sci-fi authors who recognized the threat back in the ‘40s and before. (Ahead of our time, we are.) Back here in reality, we are already on (or over!) the cusp of giving weapons to A.I.s.  HAROP DRONE AT THE 2013 PARIS AIR SHOW The Harop Drone is a "loitering munition," drone that flies until it finds a specific kind of target, and then turns into a kamikaze missile. Julian Herzog, via Wikimedia Commons,  CC BY 4.0 So what’s a wetware (human) to do???? S

Science Might Save Us Again Killing more Americans than guns or auto accidents, the opioid epidemic is a  monster in our midst. * As I noted below , there are promising scientific advances in pain killers (and if you've experienced serious pain, you surely want to kill it!) that might help, big time. This article in Science News covers research in this vital matter in clear, layman-readable prose, as usual.  It also summarizes what's happening in pain research on the controversial substances, kratom and cannabis, which certainly ought to be in the discussion. I'm encouraged.  ** My pessimistic side fears Prez Trump will cut research money or tighten the regulatory screws and make research on weed and kratom even more difficult.  * pix credit ** pix credit

I See the Kinship, Me and Mark Mark Twain has been one of my heroes forever.  Now I discover he felt about Teddy Roosevelt the way I feel about Donald Trump.  Roosevelt felt the same way about Twain.  (I like them both.) They worked it out by not speaking publicly about their mutual disdain. Avoided a national embarrassment, they did. * ** "Acutely aware of each other's popularity, neither [Roosevelt nor Twain] publicly denounced the other. Among friends, though, both were free with their feelings. Roo­sevelt said he would like to 'skin Mark Twain alive.' Twain considered Roosevelt 'clearly insane' and 'the most formidable disaster that has befallen the country since the Civil War.' Sound familiar? Especially after Trump pulled us out of the Paris Accords. Too bad we can't contain our hostilities more like they did.   Of course neither of them tweeted. Much. * MT credit ** TR credit

British Airways' Incredible Screw Up * "No sign of a cyber attack." Well, gee, we are all encouraged by that news. So just how did your whole IT system fail, causing great pain and huge inconvenience for so many people (not just Brits, BTW)?  OHHH, it was a "power surge."  I see. So B.A. had its back-ups on the same power system? For a smart outfit, that's just plain dumb...          ...Or MAYBE it's the outsourcing plague? Union blames British Airways computer crash on outsourcing to India, as fresh disruptions hit Heathrow The GMB union, however, said the disruption “could have all been avoided” if BA had not cut hundreds of IT jobs in Britain and transferred the work to India. * Indian IT drones plotting against BA Could it be a regulations problem in these days of Trumpian deregulation?  Even a columnist in the quite conservative Aviation Week said, " For many fliers and lawmakers, the BA meltdown will only confirm their b

Food Chainers Make Better Fighters [[ This is a recent post from my book blog . It has been proclaimed as "fun,"  so I insert it here in my unending quest to bring fun to all.]] "Food" as an Alien Concept * In this excerpt, the sixth Emperor of the Empire of Earth ("E VI") is being briefed for the first time by the alien ally "Tay" and Bobby.  Tay's race evolved on a gas giant planet not unlike Jupiter. Bobby is the human "Reluctant God" of book title fame. N'Gai Toledo is E VI's genius toady. “Perhaps I should continue the briefing,” said Bobby. “I don’t think so,” said the emperor. Every eye in the room snapped into focus on his face. Bobby raised one eyebrow but said nothing. “I need to know a few things first. I need to know a bit more about our allies. I need to know why – as I understand it – the more senior civilizations we are associating with are apparently leaving the scene of the i

Where Have All the Insects Gone...? I'm already having a hard time accepting that the world is losing glaciers. (Same magazine - see below) NOW I'm supposed to accept placidly and like a good little Olde Fart that we are losing insects by the giga-ton. Deserves way more discussion. But first..... * ...this REALLY worries me. Big news in Science Magazine, May 12 edition (we get ours kinda slow out here in the mountains)! NextGen entomologists in Germany present the stunning news that just since 1989 insect population - most species - are down about 80%! Think starting with 10 dogs you love, and you've got 2 left. HUGE decline, and not a one-off, a continuing, terrifying trend. [SciMag] I've been ranting about the mass extinction we are in for a while. "Moving fast enough for us to actually see" has been my evidence that this is moving really, really fast, geologically speaking. What didn't occur to me was how dramatically some extinctions

Not OK Google Ok, I know "OK Google"is just an Android app to voice control some "assistance."  That's not what I'm sayin' here. *   I'm predicting here. [I just got into making predictions on this hoary blog last December. No results yet on that one.] This is just my second prediction.  Ready? Harken unto this : I predict that it will be discovered in a Functional MRI (FMRI) study one of these days that different brain parts are used in these two mental activities:      1. Trying to "find" just the word you are looking for in your brain.      2. Searching for that word on Google (or Bing, et al).  Example: Today I was trying to get past a block on a simple word and I couldn't get it.                   I knew it was associated with the word "conditions," but I just couldn't find it.     The two mental activities   1. I persisted, thinking of "conditions and....," finally flipping it and thi