April 30, 2005

A weekend away

We're going away for a couple of days camping in the Forest of Dean.

To my mind, taking the boys camping in England in April seems somewhat akin to the Spartan practice of exposure, but Mac assures me their both likely to survive the experience.

No 1 Son (or Pseudonymous Bob as he now prefers to be called) won’t be coming with us. Like many sixteen year olds, he’s far too busy with exam preparation - plus the guitar lessons, Parkour, Tai Kwon Do and the circus skills school he’s recently joined. What a life!

Anyway, I’ve got to get back to the cooking - I’m making a jar of pesto to take with us, as well as a whole load of cheese and potato chimichangas. Yummy.

See you Monday.

April 29, 2005

Mind and brain

Alan E Brain has a post today about consciousness, neuroscience and the latest developments in human brain-mapping, with a little futurology thrown in for good measure. Like the man said, it's a post and a half.

It's an interesting and informative piece but I'm sceptical of Ray Kurzweil's prediction that: "We can have confidence of reverse-engineering the brain in twenty years or so."

The reason I'm sceptical is the problem of consciousness. You can reverse-engineer all you like but whatever you end up with is unlikely to be conscious. It's an issue that the quoted article addresses:

Now, it may be that a human brain contains n logic-gates and runs at x cycles per second and stores z petabytes, and that n and x and z are all within reach. It may be that we can take a brain apart and record the position and relationships of all the neurons and sub-neuronal elements that constitute a brain.

But there are also a nearly infinite number of ways of modeling a brain in a computer, and only a finite (or possibly nonexistent) fraction of that space will yield a conscious copy of the original meat-brain. Science fiction writers usually hand-wave this step: in Heinlein’s "Man Who Sold the Moon," the gimmick is that once the computer becomes complex enough, with enough "random numbers," it just wakes up.
Unfortunately, it's not only science fiction writers who "hand-wave this step", neuroscientists are also guilty of a certain sleight of hand when it comes to consciousness. In general, they either ignore it entirely or they believe that consciousness emerges spontaneously as a result of the brain's functional complexity.

Kurzweil, with his dreams of reverse-engineering human personalities, appears to be banking on the latter. I wouldn't bet my life on it but Alan seems game:

It's just possible that if you, the reader, can hang on for another 30 years without snuffing it, you may be able to get an upgrade to better hardware.
After you, mate!

Welcome back

Kelley is back blogging at Suburban Blight and she's older and meaner than before.

April 28, 2005

Police enquiry

How may arrests do you reckon the average British bobby makes in a year?

Take a guess.

Spring cleaning

Time to update the blogroll and maybe spruce things up around here - it's looking kind of dowdy. And, I've recently discovered, it looks even worse if you're browsing with Firefox. Expect some changes.

In the meantime, I've updated the blogroll to include a couple of new links:

Harry's Place One of the top British political blogs; virtual cornerstone of the pro-liberation left and solidly anti-fascist.

Samizdata A group blog by (mostly) British libertarians - usually thoughtful, sometimes playful, always worth reading. Actually, I'm lying. The people who run Samizdata are (by their own admission) "a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property." Read them anyway.

April 21, 2005

Totalitarian tours

Fancy escaping from the terrorist threat this summer?

This magazine piece from the BBC looks at a selection of "relatively risk-free" holiday destinations, including North Korea.

The idea of holidaying in a brutal dictatorship has never appealed to me, but travel writer Claire Boobbyer takes a different view:
"Oh, I so want to go there, I just love communist countries. I like the fact that it's so closed, and I'd love to see all the communist memorials, the memorials to the dear leader. It's just the most closed society on earth, and that appeals to my curiosity."
Curiosity's a funny thing, isn't it? Personally, I'm curious about the thousands of political prisoners held in Kim Jong Il's labor camps. But I guess they're not on the tour.

April 20, 2005

Poetry corner

Anna Denise

A brief visit to A Small Victory reminds me that it's still National Poetry Month over there.

I'll maybe post links to some of my favorite poems later in the week. In the meantime, here's a poem I like from the Library of Congress's poetry for high schools project.

It's called How to Change a Frog into a Prince by Anna Denise.

April 19, 2005

The strangest thing

Monica, blogging at An American in London, keeps a list of strange things she's noticed about England and the English.

This is by far the strangest.

April 15, 2005

African diaspora

PooterGeek highlights the work of Spencer Wells and the Genographic Project.

I'm excited by the project, particularly as it follows on from some of Wells's earlier work which I think deserves wider public attention.

In recent years, the work of Wells and other population geneticists has provided strong evidence in support of the Out of Africa model of human origins. But there are still questions and controversies over both the number and timing of successive migrations and this new research should throw some much needed light on these issues.

In any case, the central message remains the same - to paraphrase Peter Tosh: No matter where you come from, if you're a human, you're an African.

April 12, 2005

String theory

Ever wondered where the phrase "no strings attached" comes from?

Via The Ministry of Information.

April 06, 2005

Roadside dining

Looking for an alternative to Burger King? The Barefoot Chef recommends Steak au Van.