This Article from 1978 about computers and artificial intelligence has a chart in it which compares the computational power of a pocket calculator, a sponge (alive), a Cray and a sperm whale. Apart from that, I have to admit, it’s a bit dense. But the chart is worth the trouble.
Today’s Computers, Intelligent Machines and Our Future, Hans Moravec, Stanford AI Lab, 1978
I was reading the very excellent magazine “Cabinet” and came across a link to something that I can only describe as marvy. It’s An Illustrated Timeline of Desktop Computer Icons. There, I’ve said it, now you know.
And here’s a great example. The oppressive, torturing, murdering regime in Uzbekistan has some very powerful supporters. What’s particularly ironic is that those same supporters very recently killed thousands of civilians while removing a similarly obnoxious regime in Iraq.
BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Tough regime finds unlikely allies
The attitudes that people in the US have towards ‘terrorism’ at the moment wouldn’t seem out of place in an episode of Star Trek. Ask most Americans about their enemy in the ‘war on terror’ and they will have at best a very vague idea and in most cases no idea at all about who that enemy is, where they come from and what they want. They will bluster and talk about ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ although their freedom is being sacrificed to their fear and their democracy is based on such a lack of information that it is meaningless. The fact that none of the US networks is prepared to show Adam Curtis’ film “The Power of Nightmares” illustrates just how hard the media in the US is prepared to work to avoid carrying real information to the American people. It’s a reminder to those of us enjoying a free(ish) media that any American influence in that media can only be a malign one.
Guardian Unlimited Film | Features | The film US TV networks dare not show
So, British headteachers think that it’s acceptable to boo and hiss at anyone who says something they don’t like.
An education minister has been booed and hissed by head teachers as he tried to defend school league tables.
Delegates at the National Association of Head Teachers conference also talked across Derek Twigg as he said tables gave parents like himself information.
I hope they will have the good grace to apply these same standards if their pupils behave with similar rudeness when they return to school next week.
I find some parts of the old Testament very alarming; those descriptions of mass murder, ethnic cleansing and the cold hearted destruction of entire cities remind me of Nazi crimes during the second world war. One of the most horrifying stories is the description of the killing of every first born child in Egypt. I think that such a sad, awful event should be commemorated, like September the 11th. It surprises me that some people treat the occasion as a celebration. I suppose Easter is a similarly odd cause for celebration - Christians tend to focus on the resurrection rather than the death of Christ but they still use the symbol of the cross rather than a picture of the cave. Even so, it’s those murdered Egyptian children I’ll be thinking about during Passover.
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