This won't surprise the people who know me.

I only answered one question in the negative: whether or not I feel that AIs should be given the same rights as human beings. Since I believe strongly that the Friendly AI problem is a serious problem we face in the next twenty years, that shouldn't be too surprising. In the Journal Entries, AIs and robots do have the same rights as human beings as far as human beings are concerned, but among their own people a different set of rights and responsibilities is at play, one that is harsher and more Darwinian, with an eye to ensuring a pro-human niche. I happen to like human beings, mostly; giving faster, stronger, smarter beings our own instinct patterns is a sure route to our own extinction. Take the quiz yourself. Anyway, on to the meme:

( What kind of Transhumanist are you? )

Mad Digitizer Syndrome Cured!

So, it seems that I've fixed my Palm m500. I was so worried. Omaha was saying that it was six years old and about to die and really, I should think about replacing it, but I like the old warhorse and there's no reason to spend $300 on a new one before I've determined that this one is well and truly dead.

I took the whole thing apart completely, used a can of compressed air on the inside, and then with a microfiber cloth cleaned all of the cruft that had collected under the frame. That seems to have done it. It was stable all weekend and the strange, random jitters from the upper left hand corner (there was a lot of dust and cruft packed under that corner) all seem to have vanished. Huzzah!

Kouryou-chan reads Girl Genius

I bought Kouryou-chan the Girl Genius Omnibus at Norwescon. She gets to this page, turns it to me and says, "Dad, look! It's the mushy part!"

My kids are cool.

Omaha pwns blithering blogger

The wife is cool too, especially when she totally pwns someone talking out of his sphincter about her industry.

Geez, sweetheart, his response to you completely, utterly missed your point.

Expelled from Expelled: The Saga!

I'm completely late to this ball, thanks in part to the Friday strike and to my being overwhelmed for much of the rest of the weekend with Norwescon and watching over Kouryou-chan and all.

There's a new documentary coming out called "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," produced by someone named Mark Mathis. The film apparently claims that there's a vast Darwinian Conspiracy to keep the cool, hip, radical and rebellious idea of intelligent design out of academia, and that this Conspiracy is engaged in vicious slander and ridicule to get its way.

The Expelled crew has been going around the country doing "pre-release screenings." The invite has apparently been going out via church emailing lists, but to get in you just had to sign up at the movie's website.

P.Z. Myers, a biologist specializing in evolutionary development and a leading light of the American atheist movement, is in the film. He was apparently interviewed under false pretenses for a film called "Crossroads: The Intersection of Science and Religion." (Mathis claims that the title was changed later for bankability, but people have pointed out that Mathis owned the "Expelled" website long before he interview Myers, and owns no corresponding DNS addresses for anything called "Crossroads."). Like anyone else, he signed up to see a showing when it came to his home town in Minnesota.

He was expelled from the theater. He was recognized by the producer, who's been going to these "pre-showings" and getting audience reaction and Q&A. But there's a punchline: although he was not allowed in, his wife, his daughter, and his guest were all allowed in. His guest was Richard Dawkins.

( The saga continues! )