Brains: Now, This Is Science!

[elfs]

Cool: Scientists design triple-helix molecule for storage and "life-like" techonologies

Just too cool. Scientific American brings us an article by researcher Peter Nielsen in which he describes his search for a sturdy, biologically neutral molecule that could be used to deliver influential drugs right to the nucleus. What he got was a molecule so useful it could be the basis of an artificial biology.

The Secret Signals in Human Sweat

The New Scientist brings us a rather broad and shallow article about human pheremone response. Now, I'm convinced that we have some smell-mediated responses, mostly due to my own experiences with hte way some people just smell good to me and others don't, and it's purely subjective, and I've had others disagree with me for similar reasons. But you can just hear the ad machines warming up already.

Universe's Dark Matter Mix 'Just Right For Life'

At least the article goes out of its way up front to say that in an infinite multiverse, if our universe is just one occurence among many, we should not be surprised to find ourselves alive in a universe that supports our kind of life.

Python 3.0 Released

This falls under "Oh, heck."

PASWO: William Murchison says we should suspend the Constitution until those damn Muslims stop trying to tread on us

Murchison paraphrases "the left" as saying:

We needed to close the Guantanamo holding pen for terrorists, tighten the rules against spying on Americans, renounce disgusting forms of interrogational persuasion (usually labeled torture), and broaden the judicial rights of suspected or accused terrorists.

"Usually labeled torture?" Look, waterboarding is torture. US Army Interrogators are now saying that it doesn't work. It's not "usually labeled" torture, it is torture, and we need to cut it out or lose any moral backing we have.

Murchison argues that the attack happened in Mumbai and not, say, Atlanta, is proof that all of these anti-Constitutional measure work, and dammit, our safety and security is worth these little indignities, aren't they?

No, they're not.

Comments

[nbarnes.livejournal.com]

I really, really, really don't get what is supposed to be so interesting about the Anthropic Principle. Of course the universe seems 'just right' for our sort of life; if the universe were otherwise, we would be otherwise. The universe wasn't designed for us, we were designed for the universe (well, evolved to be well-adapted to the universe)! This is not hard to grok, so I'm always puzzled when some otherwise intelligent scientist finds some new aspect of the universe that seems 'just right' for us and feels to need to tell us all about it as if it were something unusual or unexpected.

Also, what is 'oh heck' about Python 3?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

As they've been warning us for the past year, Python 3 is incompatible with Python 2. There are a huge number of structural and parser-oriented changes meant to make Python better, but Python 2 is about as far from Python 3 as it is from Icon, Boo, or Groovy.

I'm not opposed to learning a new language, but I need to be sold on this one.

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

Does this help at all?

A fun-but-probably-illegitimate application (I think by Robin Hanson?): the LHC keeps running into trouble. Maybe:

(1) when run full blast for a little while, it always immediately ends the world by creating a miniature black hole

(2) per the anthropic principle, none of the many-worlds sheaves in which that happens include our consciousness

(3) therefore, in our experience, it will never run successfully, and we will eventually give up.

(Furthermore, you can't die by any means, because you would never experience those branches of possibility. Ever died? No? Then I'm right.)

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I could swear that was something I read at Overcoming Bias (http://www.overcomingbias.com/), but it defies my Google-fu.

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

{site:overcomingbias.com lhc anthropic} turns up a few things. Apparently it was Yudkowsky replying to other people's comments. (And of course Wikipedians have already gone into it in more detail.)

[(Anonymous)]

You know, there was a great science fiction story based on that premise: "Divided By Infinity" by Robert Charles Wilson.

Malthus

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

If they get rid of syntactic-whitespace, I may even consider learning it.

I am utterly baffled and bemused at Python's use of syntactic-whitespace, which I thought went out of style after the 70's along with bell-bottoms, fake-sideburns-haircuts on little boys, Disco, and all of the other Bad Ideas of that decade. ;)

Seriously though, syntactic-whitespace smacks of Fortran77 to me.