Dean's World

Veteran Loch Ness Moster hunter -- gives up search.

He started in 1971. The following year, he watched a 25ft-long hump with the texture of elephant skin gliding through the water.

His original trip was to help another monster hunter with sonar equipment and quickly identified large moving targets.

* * *

Despite having hundreds of sonar contacts over the years, the trail has since gone cold and Rines believes that Nessie may be dead, a victim of global warming.

Same Week -- Nobel Prize Winner says little hope in finding AIDS vaccine

We've been trying to make an HIV vaccine since the day it was discovered," Dr Baltimore told the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston. "We've been working on a vaccine since then and we are no closer to a vaccine now than we were then."

Parallells, I ask?:)

HankB

Anybody out there have any experience with something like this?

https://www.23andme.com/

I signed up with them a few months ago (although it might have been a similar site) after someone here posted about it. So far I have yet to be able to spring for the $100 DNA test to get the ball rolling.

Python Stalked, Then Ate Family Dog ...in Front of Children.

Dogs Attacks Tires: Flattens Three of Them. Owner blamed the attack on a tire toy the dogs had recently been given. I guess it's a good thing that the owner didn't give the dogs doll toys. But chewing through three tires? Toys my ass. That has to take some kind of determination beyond: "I want my toys!"

Singing starlings &boys Who Should have been girls: What is their connection?

Don't Eat the Snow.... Even If It's Not Yellow.

since i'm stuck watching daytime tv on drugs, i've found myself reading too much into commercials.

like the jg wentworth ad, the one where all those people are yelling from their windows [a la network] "its my money and i want it now!"

yeah, so that one. i was watching it thinking, gee this is a service for people trying to get money prior to their claims you know? and all those people in that little town looked perfectly healthy, so what the hell was going on?

then it hit me: they're all on disability for mental illnesses. so shouting out of their windows makes sense, i guess.

Nessie may be dead, a victim of global warming.

We've been trying to make an HIV vaccine since the day it was discovered...we are no closer to a vaccine now than we were then.

Parallels, I ask?:)

HankB

We can't make a HIV vaccine because of global warming?

Guess we'll have to add that to the list
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm

A funny video my mom sent me: Mrs. Hughes.

PSA: This might be too much information for you guy types, but ladies, get your yearly mammogram done. I had my very first one a couple of weeks ago. I'm 46 and should have started getting them at least 6 years ago, but I kept putting it off (I do self-exams, and the doctor examines me every year with no palpable findings). Anyway, they called me back because the radiologist found something "suspicious" in my left breast and wanted me to get a spot compression one for that side. Had that done this week, and it was clear (thank you, Lord). Neither hurt that much--just slightly uncomfortable for a few seconds. The piece of mind was worth it, tho, after that brief worry, and I'll be sure to get one every year from now on.

Now, back to your regular programming....

Jack,

Glad to hear you’re up and about again. Watch out for flirtatious fast food waitresses! (Try saying that three times fast). I married one.

I’m doing a whole lot better myself. Still not 100%, but I’m close. Thanks for asking.

One of my guys had to go to the ER last night with breathing difficulties. They diagnosed him with the flu, and sent him directly to bed, at home. The hospital was full. So maybe that’s what’s been going thru the office the last few weeks. If that’s what I had, I can’t complain too much. Apparently its over now, and I’ve had worse.

Sandy,

That tire biting incident happened here in my neck of the woods. I heard on the 11:00 news tonight that the owner of the dogs took the mail carrier out today and bought her 4 new tires. And the county animal enforcement officer checked out the dogs, and decided they weren’t a threat to society. So all’s well that ends well. Couldn’t find any info on the web about it though. Our local news sites seem to go to internet silence around 4:30 on Fridays…

One of my guys had to go to the ER last night with breathing difficulties.

That's how my pneumonia started.

And the county animal enforcement officer checked out the dogs, and decided they weren’t a threat to society.

These were pit bulls and Rottweilers but my dogs will attacks tires too, but only if they are moving. Great Danes (my dogs are Danes or Dane-Saint Bernard hybrids) were originally bred as boar hunters and I suspect the ties in motion somehow remind them of a boar running (it's about the right height and size) and if the car is moving slow enough they will try to get over the tire (like they will try to wrestle me down playing to get height over me to bite me in play on the back or neck, they never hurt me but I have trained them as security and guard dogs and we play rough sometimes and they always seek height advantage by trying to use their jaws to take me off my feet) and bite it. But if a tire is just sitting there and no motion, they ignore it. I suspect it is breed memory.

I suspect at least something like that with these two dogs.
The tires they used as toys somehow reminded them of a class of prey.



I was listening to the Requiem in D minor by Mozart tonight while reading Steve Pinker's new book and the case Jesses Stone had worked (in the film I watched earlier this evening) was running through my mind. I was sitting in the living room and since I live so far out and everyone was gone I had cranked the music up really loud. I was drinking a cup of coffee and realized that the music was causing the coffee to agitate in the cup, forming concentric rings of vibration. That got me started to thinking and I looked over at the mirror on the far side of the room and suddenly the answer to a problem I had been working on for awhile hit me. (The creation of a hard-drive which far truly resembled a mind than a book. A hard-drive is really nothing more than a book, the CPU nothing more than a very primitive switch for data collation and progression/retrieval. I simplify for effect of course.)

But a mind is nothing like that at all. What Pinker said about words struck me and I suddenly knew why scientists will never create a thinking machine. Because almost all computing languages are merely mathematical, linear, symbolic, and progressive (in the matter of data I mean). But a mind isn't linear at all, nor does it ever employ a single language (unless badly damaged and I doubt even then, it probably just employs multiple languages inefficiently.)

For instance when I looked at the mirror I saw the object, but at the same instance it conjured the idea of reflection, both my own image and the sound waves, I also thought of how the music was probably making the structure vibrate or resonate (even though I couldn't see it happening), and I thought of a looking glass (and all that implies, both metaphorically and psychologically.)

I understood that my mind was employing several different language structures simultaneously and was deriving understanding of the environment as well as my own perceptions about it, but it wasn't just doing that by use of a single language. I also understood why so many people in computing sciences just can't understand why their machines can't think (aside from the fact that inanimate matter has never possessed or demonstrated anything even resembling microcelluar instinct, much less self-reflective thought). They keep trying to write just one language and to just pass data from point to point.

But I realized too that as I looked at the mirror I was also seeing the curtains and the windowsill, and that I was perceiving these things sub-consciously, and that they were real to me but that I didn't put a word or description to them until I turned my mind away form the mirror to concentrate upon them. That is to say I could notice the curtains but did not name or describe them, nevertheless I knew they were there and found them real, but "background" to my immediate purposes.

But I couldn't have done that without a sort of "non-language language" which was devoid of words but was rooted directly in sensory experience and yet could be instantaneously attached to words whenever needed. I could see and recognize the curtains, their color, texture, substance, and reality without needing to name them or describe them at all, just merely perceive them.

So it gave me two distinct insights. Any artificial intelligence is going to need very complex sensory inputs, it is going to be necessary for that AI to have a non-language perception of reality which can nevertheless be instantly associated with linguistic forms when necessary (or no communication, intelligence without communication is like intelligence without perception, non-sequitor - data without perception will always be merely data, never information, much less true intelligence), and it is going to be necessary that such an intelligence be able to employ multiple languages at once. (By that I don't mean English and Spanish and calculus) I mean rather like with the mirror. I saw the mirror but it did not just attach itself to the word or letters which comprise the word, but rather to a complex set of meanings of which words are merely an expression, but not the sum total of possible expressions or attached meanings. I saw it and thought mirror, looking glass, reflector, compressor (of the sound and light waves), and so forth and so on. So any artificial intelligence will need far more than a meaning or description or picture of a mirror. It is going to need to know what the mirror is, what it does, how it is used, why, and what it implies. All of those things are basically separate, yet inter-related languages. For most things any AI is going to have to have perceptual capabilities, is going to need separate languages for who, what, when, where, and to the extent it is possible for it to truly think and function as a thinking organism - why?

Anywho all qualitative and methodical computing languages are primarily useless as a measure of either gauging or instilling real intelligence. The vast majority of any population rarely uses mathematical symbolism to convey any real meaning, only a small percentage of any given population does. And of that small population only an extreme subset ever uses math most of the time, thinks in mathematical symbolism consistently, or ever conveys real meaning in that way for any kind of real communication with their fellows (and most math has the distinct disadvantage of linear progression of factors, symbolism, and meaning, whereas other languages need not formulate factors and especially not meaning in that way. Meaning can be comprehended intuitively with many other languages, but math discourages intuition and non-linear comprehension in favor of verifiable precision and replication calculation, but extremely few minds or intelligences function in that way.) And without communications intelligence is useless. So math, and therefore computing systems so derived are absolutely useless as the basis of any real AI. It is good only for computing, but because people have built complex communications media over a veneer of mathematical and computational technologies they have become deluded into the idea that these things are related or necessary to one another. That AI is somehow related to math rather than that math is just a tool, and a just language (though only one, and a very primitive and limited one symbiotically and intelligently speaking)which AI can employ, or upon which AI will be only partially and ineffectively built. It will not be built upon math at all (certainly not exclusively or primarily), anymore than human language is built upon math. As a matter of fact to work AI must be built upon a number of different languages all working in concord and concert to one degree or another and all in resonance one with the other, though not always simultaneously in any given case.

So AI is gonna hav'ta employ multiple languages, and sometimes concurrently, and hav'ta have multiple points of sensory input in order to perceive (though it could have more and different frequency ranges of perception than men if it has the ability to comprehend the various sources and ranges of those capabilities, a capability without a corresponding ability is useless) and it is gonna hav'ta to have non-language languages as well tied directly to sensory perception. And it will have to be organic of course because inanimate matter lacks all of these qualities and capabilities.

Anywho I've been thinking for awhile about how to build an inanimate computer in which the processor and the hard-drive were the same material object, and which unlike present hard drives would not move, but rather the calculational and computational capabilities arise from the complex of pathways of which it is composed. Data would be stored along various pathways and computing would not be a linear retrieval of data but rather an overlap of circuited stimulation through networked associations. Because I don't like current Operating systems and see no need to have an Operating system which is separate from the material design of the memory and data systems, and because I see no reason for Operating systems to be static (or for hard-drives to be mere rapidly spinning books) but rather fluid (based on an Operating system I call HUMAN) and able to adapt to the need of the task. Non-linear pathways associations could accomplish that. Of course you'd probably have to grow such a computer, rather than manufacture it. And it would have to be more brain shaped, or ideally, spherical, than built like current computers. But you could also grow it sectionally or in interfitted components which could be traded out or regrown. For instance you could grow duplicate computers with such a system or grown duplicate "brain or sphere" sections which could be removed as they fail or upgraded as they improve, or altered as they are used. Also You could simply pare such a computer by degrees or continue adding data sections onto it as you grew more sections and each new section would either add new OS capabilities, or modify existing ones (possibly even speeding performance). Such a system would be inanimate and far from anything like a real AI, but it would be a vast improvement both in hardware and in function.

And then you could use what you learn from such systems to start the construction of a true organic AI. Of course the real difficulty with real AI will be those I described above and any real AI will need output capabilities consistent with intelligent creatures because if any intelligence lacks the capabilities not only to perceive it's environment but also to comment upon it/interact with it at will, then such intelligence is useless. It is comatose and trapped in it's own lack of influence and dearth of interactivity.

Well, I got some more ruminating to do on these matters and right now I'm tired and need to get the dogs down for bed.
And I want to listen to the Chieftains before I hit the sheets.

I like the Chieftains. They sometimes help me sleep, depending on the album.

Umm for those it hasn't dawned on yet, I should have added that she was born on a leap year. Technically she would only have had a birthday every 4 years.