Category Archives: random

Around 420 million years ago, during the Silurian, the ground was only colonized by non-vascular shrubs and tiny insects, except for one exception: Prototaxites. These primitive, fungus-like spires reached up to 8 m (26 ft) in height, by far the largest organisms on land at the time. For decades, paleontologists have wondered what the hell these things really were.

Now, a small group of scientists think they have the answer. Their results were recently published in the American Journal of Botany. Their article, “Structural, physiological, and stable carbon isotopic evidence that the enigmatic Paleozoic fossil Prototaxites formed from rolled liverwort mats”, is available for free for the next 30 days only.

Coming on the heels of a discovery that Ediacaran organisms had musculature, this year has been a good start for paleontology. That Ediacaran finding contradicts the doubtful paper from 2008 that asserts that giant protists may be responsible for pre-Cambrian ichnofossils attributed to early bilaterians, and another paper that argues that the

Neuroscientists making computers smart enough to see connections between brain’s neurons At Davos, MIT faculty discuss the nature of intelligence Rotifers avoid sex for millions of years by blowing away Insectlike ‘microids’ might walk, run, work in colonies The Physical Basis of High-Throughput Atomically Precise Manufacturing Chris Phoenix: Basic Survival Package Air Force to use artificial intelligence and other advanced data processing to hit the enemy where it hurts Robin Hanson: AI In Far And Near View The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting MIT’s Mind-Machine Project: Student Position Paper Law of probabilities backs hopes for E.T., conference hears (what a banal claim.) NEC’s Facial Recognition Technology Achieves First Place in the Still-Face Dataset Cube Spawn — Open Source, Flexible Manufacturing System Mondo 1995: Up and Down With the Next Millennium’s First Magazine Dale Carrico: Futurological Brickbats The Onion: God’s Wrath According to Pat Robinson

Thanks to everyone who …

Here are some quick links I’ve been meaning to post.

Video: Julian Savulescu: “Genetically Enhance Humanity or Face Extinction” Nanowerk: A nanocomposite for electronic skin Nanowerk: Bacteria make the artificial blood vessels of the future LiveScience: New Device Prints Human Tissue Alan Darwst: The Importance of Wild Animal Suffering Science Daily: CR: Scientists Take Important Step Toward ‘Fountain of Youth’ Call for Papers: Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference on Consciousness UK Telegraph: Alcohol substitute that avoids hangovers in development UK Telegraph: Toby Ord’s philosophy is one we all could learn from Technology Review: The Year in Biomedicine Michael Crichton: Complexity Theory and Environmental Management Mark Gubrud: Nanotechnology in Warfare Fabbaloo: O’Reilly Names 3D Printing Best Tech of The Decade, Sorta Weird Things: Taking Brain Mapping to the Next Level East Bay Express: Berkeley High May Cut Science Labs The New Republic takes apart Malcolm Gladwell: Mr. Lucky Eliezer …

Robin Hanson on how students are too obsessed with GPA and should instead focus on original, independent research:

Students seem overly obsessed with grades and organized activities, both relative to standardized tests and to what I’d most recommend: doing something original. You don’t have to step very far outside scheduled classes and clubs to start to see how very different the world is when you have to organize it yourself.

For example, if you try to study a subject in depth without following a textbook or review, you’ll have to decide for yourself which sources seem how relevant to your topic. If you try to add something to the subject you’ll have to decide what changes are how feasible and interesting. Doing these may feel awkward at first, but they will be very useful skills later in life. Similar skills come from writing your own game or starting your own business or composing your own album.

Along with many other things that Prof. Hanson says, this sort of thing should be obvious, but neglecting it is nearly universal. …

When popular science writers actually reference scientific literature, good things can happen, like this article by Mark Peters: “A Happy Writer Is a Lousy Writer?”

Transhumanists tremendously shocked and dissatisfied with the current state of the world relative to other possibilities can tap into this to improve their writing. Twinkly-eyed techno-utopian transhumanists can continue to produce poor writing.

Rolf Nelson, a friend of mine who is working on a Silicon Valley startup, recently began writing The Rational Entrepreneur, a new blog that applies knowledge of heuristics and biases to entrepreneurship. If the first ten or so posts are any indication, he is producing quite a bit of interesting, valuable content, with daily posting.

This looks like an interesting game, at least from an artistic/ambient/immersive point of view. There is also a cool gallery, a demo, and an extremely positive review at Destructoid. Myself, I tend to like games with a little more insanity, like RPGs where my party gets summarily murdered if it takes two steps in the wrong direction, but this looks like a nice game to play if one wants to calm down and enjoy some frustrating puzzles.

Check out the website for the brand-new Thiel Foundation:

The spotlight effort right now is the Oslo Freedom Forum, which looks interesting. Here’s a quote from the 33-year old founder, Thor Halvorssen:

“We all should want freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom from torture, freedom to travel, due process and freedom to keep what belongs to you.” Unfortunately, he explains, “the human-rights establishment at the United Nations is limited to pretty words because so many member countries kill or imprison or torture their opponents.”

Ambient pressure like this can help encourage the UN to better advance human rights.

The projects of the Thiel Foundation can be broken down into 3 general areas — anti-violence, freedom, and science and technology. Anti-violence projects include Imitatio and the Oslo Freedom Forum. Freedom projects include the Committee to Protect Journalists, The Human Rights Foundation, and the Seasteading Institute. The science and technology projects include funding Cynthia Kenyon (who studies the biology of aging), Aubrey de Grey (SENS Foundation), and the Singularity Institute for Artificial …

Major history tonight. Obama has acquired enough delegates to clinch the Democratic nomation, becoming the first African-American to head the ticket of a major political party in the United States.

He said, “Tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States.”

Next stop: the White House.

Robin Hanson is one of those people you just have to follow, or you aren’t cool.

Check out his Memorial Day podcast with Econtalk on the topic of signaling.

Signaling is one of those amazing concepts, that, when you start to get it, you see everywhere, and witness how it directs huge quadrants of human behavior. As Marshall McLuhan said, the medium is the message. That was him trying to say that signaling matters a shitload.

We automatically signal all the time without even knowing it. Below the threshold of active consciousness our subconscious is making calculations about our signaling all the time. In our active consciousness too, of course. Some people are consumed by the whole thing 24 hours a day. It’s human nature.

Back to Hanson, here’s his tenure statement (pdf). Yes, the man is clearly a genius, but as I like to say, “how genius?” It’s difficult to say, because all human “geniuses” are a lot dumber than what I can vaguely imagine as being just to the right of the Gaussian, …