Cuban man '24' proud of his 4 extra fingers, toes
http://news.yahoo.com/cuban-man-24-proud-4-extra-fingers-toes-202739807.html
They call him "Twenty-Four."
Climate warming accelerates Arctic migration for some species
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/climate-warming-accelerates-arctic-migration-some-species?page=full
"These changes are equivalent to animals and plants shifting away from the Equator at around 20 cm per hour,” added Thomas, Prof of Conservation Biology. “This has been going on for the last 40 years and is set to continue for at least the rest of this century.”
Call it the Goldilocks syndrome. Animals and plants are moving both higher in latitude and elevation much faster than previously thought in response to climate warming. They're chasing that "just right" sweet spot, but it keeps moving.
Rapid Range Shifts of Species Associated with High Levels of Climate Warming
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6045/1024.abstract
The distributions of many terrestrial organisms are currently shifting in latitu...de or elevation in response to changing climate. Using a meta-analysis, we estimated that the distributions of species have recently shifted to higher elevations…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_R7fgo0FLc
robotized organs of speech
人間と同様の音声生成器官を持つ発話ロボット #DigInfo
DigInfo TV - http://jp.diginfo.tv/ 2011/7/13 香川大学 発話ロボット
It’s true: The brain of NASA’s primary vehicle has the computational power of an IBM 5150, that ’80s icon that goes for $20 at yard sales. According to NASA and IBM, the shuttle’s General Purpose Computer (GPC)—which controls, among other things, the entire launch sequence—is an upgrade of the 500-kilobyte computer the shuttle flew with until 1991.http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/2009-02/does-space-shuttle’s-computer-real
The New York Times has a lengthy and interesting article by Rob Walker discussing digital immortality (or whatever you want to call it). Much of the article revolves around the late Mac Tonnies and his Posthuman Blues blog. Maybe you should download the article to your computer; you never know when The New York Times will suddenly disappear completely. The article include links to tribute sites Mac-Bots and Post-Mac Blues. According to one item in the article, the possibility of a real Mac-Bot is getting closer:
Something called Lifenaut.com has a product called a MindFile, “a database of personal reflections captured in video, image, audio and documents about yourself that can be saved, searched, downloaded and shared with friends.” This information is meant to be filtered through an “interactive avatar,” modeled on you, “that becomes more intelligent as you add more information.” The site welcomes you with a sweeping, ominous tone; the company’s tag line is “Eternalize.” VirtualEternity.com, from a company called Intellitar, also claims to convert the personal data you provide into an avatar — sort of like one of those chatbots that some online companies use for automated but more humanish customer service. “We want to give users the gift of immortality,” an Intellitar founder has said.
Mac Tonnies-tagged content continues to be created on the internets despite his physical death. Below are some recent YouTube movies.
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Stephen Hawking (not to be confused with Stephen King) says it may be best to Hide from Extra Terrestrial Intelligence.(You can still search for it, but be vewy vewy quiet.)
More Human Than Human
I learned via the February 4th WNYC Soundcheck podcast about the phenomenon of Microsoft Songsmith. To me, it is the opposite of karaoke. Whereas karaoke is everything but the vocal, and the vocal is the only live part added at the end, Songsmith starts with the vocal (apparently sung synched to a metronome-like set beat) as a start point, and then the software generates what the rest of the song might sound like according to your preferences. As WNYC puts it, "With the release of Microsoft's Songsmith, seasoned songwriters and amateurs alike can generate canned accompaniment to their own voice (or those of others) with the touch of a button." Songsmith compositions seem to have gone viral a few weeks ago, although many of the YouTube videos still only have a few thousand hits. They (at WNYC) put some examples here, and linked to some others at Musicradar. Check out this playlist at YouTube or create one with a search. Microsoft's geeky (anti?-)ad may make you appreciate the production values of real ads. If you have a pc lying around and some audio tracks, you can give it a try for your 6 hour free trial. [download] [screen-shots]
Here are some lesser-known hits of "The Songsmiths":
Tom's Diner (and Glockenspiel Emporium)
Heart of Glass (and Metal!?)
Reggae-o-head's "Reckoner"
PussyCat Dolls (Don't Cha)
Billie Jean (is not my robot?)
Slim Shady (pleeease sit down?)
Just as with real musicians, it's hard for the virtual band to have a hit, but perhaps someday the robo-musicians WILL be better.
Tunes generated by economic data allow the depression to generate its own soundtrack! Any data will do.
I wonder how this cyber-muzak will wash back and influence human musicmaking, like songbirds imitating cellphone ringtones. Will musicians imitate famous bad Songsmith compositions in their live shows? Will machine translations of random wikipedia pages be the most popular lyrics?
We got the beat
Beat it
Heard it thru the grapevine
Just what i need, ed. (the cars)
The Doobie(us) Bros: Long Train Running
Buddy Holly (weezer)
What's goin on?
God only knows (bleach-boyz)
I am running Mac OS 10.5.6 again on my 21-inch iLamp. Last year at this time, it froze whenever the screensaver ran, driving me back to 10.4 (and closer to Ubuntu). In keeping with Apple's corporate philosophy of "Less is More," the newsreader RSS screensaver in 10.5 now only shows 3 news stories, instead of 10. (Thanks, Steve.) Yesterday, as the screensaver cycled through the top 3 stories from Yahoo News, I saw "Huge Chimp Shot Dead After Mauling Woman in Conn." and clicked on 3 as instructed to pop open the story in a browser page. To my surprise, I saw this:
The picture was a little surprising. Look at the powerful jaws on that thing. The vacant, staring eyes. The face, almost human, but not quite. It just doesn't seem right that people are allowed to keep 200-pound monsters like this as pets. Funny thing, though, the story didn't seem to mention the animal mauling a woman or being shot. So I looked around the news and found the promised and elusive story:
The story goes on to describe the chimp's lifestyle, how, raised as a human, he's quietly living the American dream in the suburbs, wearing clothes, surfing the internet, using a remote to channel-surf TV, riding in a truck, doing a little acting, working hard, paying taxes, and drinking a little wine. The article goes on to say that "Chimpanzees are unpredictable and dangerous even after living among humans for many years." That goes without saying. It seems like a species-ist statement considering that HUMANS are unpredictable and dangerous even after living among humans for many years.
Colleen McCann, a primatologist at the Bronx Zoo, said Tuesday that chimpanzees are unpredictable and dangerous even after living among humans for years.They inexplicably seem to be at a loss for reasons for the attack. Let's go over a few:
"It's deceiving to think that if any animal is ... well-behaved around humans, that means there is no risk involved to humans for potential outbursts of behavior," she said. "They are unpredictable, and in instances like this you cannot control that behavior or prevent it from happening if it is in a private home."
After the initial attack, Travis ran away and started roaming Herold's property until police arrived, setting up security so medics could reach the critically injured woman, Conklin said.
But the chimpanzee returned and went after several of the officers, who retreated into their cars, Conklin said. Travis knocked the mirror off a cruiser before opening its door and starting to get in, trapping the officer.
That officer shot the chimpanzee several times, Conklin said.
The wounded chimpanzee fled the scene, but Conklin said police were able to follow the trail of his blood: down the driveway, into the open door of the home, through the house and to his living quarters, where he had retreated and died of his wounds.
Herold and two officers also received minor injuries, police said.
A woman answering the door at Herold's house Tuesday morning declined to comment.
Conklin told reporters the chimp was acting so agitated earlier that afternoon that Herold gave him the anti-anxiety drug Xanax in some tea. Conklin also suggested the animal may have attacked Nash because she was wearing her hair differently and perhaps wasn't recognized.
The chimpanzee was well-known around Stamford because he rode around in trucks belonging to the towing company operated by his owners.
Police have dealt with him in the past, including an incident in 2003 when he escaped from his owners' vehicle in downtown Stamford for two hours. Officers used cookies, macadamia treats and ice cream in an attempt to lure him, but subdued him only after he became too tired to resist.
At the time of the 2003 incident, police said the Herolds told them the chimpanzee was toilet trained, dressed himself, took his own bath, ate at the table and drank wine from a stemmed glass. He also brushed his teeth using a Water Pik, logged onto the computer to look at pictures, and watched television using the remote control, police said.
When he was younger, Travis appeared on TV commercials for Old Navy and Coca-Cola, made an appearance on the "Maury Povich Show" and took part in a television pilot, according to a 2003 story in The Advocate newspaper of Stamford.
"He's been raised almost like a child by this family," Conklin said Monday. "He rides in a car every day, he opens doors, he's a very unique animal in that aspect. We have no indication of what provoked this behavior at all."
Science Friday last week was a great one, with Ray Kurzweil and Richard Preston (Panic in Level 4) appearing. Kurzweil is low-key but persuasive. Preston had some amazing stories told with humanity. The fuel-cell piece and the piece about the climate change bill were good, too. It looks like today, June 13, they will have a segment about Mars.
feed://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=510221
Richard Preston 'Journeys to the Edge of Science' Best-selling author Richard Preston, known for his New Yorker profiles of science and scientists, talks about his latest project, Panic in Level 4: Cannibals, Killer Viruses, and Other Journeys to the Edge of Science. Preston talks with host Ira Flatow about his craft, and about the stories and people he has covered over the years.
Will We Recognize the Future? Futurist Ray Kurzweil explains the idea of the "singularity" — what happens when technology advances so much that it's impossible to predict what happens next. Will artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and biotechnology be able to completely reshape what it means to be human?
Greener Cars Change U.S. Auto Landscape Honda plans to lease at least 200 fuel cell vehicles in the U.S. over the next three years. And automaker General Motors announced it will shift production away from large SUVs toward smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles — and close four factories in the process.
Climate Change Legislation Fails in Senate The U.S. Senate debated proposed climate change legislation on Tuesday — but the bill failed to win the needed number of votes to avoid a filibuster and was pulled from the floor. The bill would have cut greenhouse gas emissions by two-thirds by the year 2050.
I recently watched a re-broadcast of th
e 1972 film Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. This may have sensitized me to the news story (which came to my attention via Posthuman Blues) of orang-utans using spears to attempt to catch fish as well as learning to swim. This, in turn, is reminiscent of recent reports of chimpanzees in Senegal using spears to catch and kill bush babies, their own primate brethren and preferred lunch, which they eat in a sashimi-like raw form, un-barbecued, having not yet played SimEarth or Civilization to the point where they realize the importance of acquiring the Fire technology.
But it is not just spear technology that our primate brothers are excelling in these days. Another recent report found that rhesus monkeys had the ability to estimate arithmetic sums visually only a little worse than university students. Before you hire a rhesus monkey to do your taxes, consider the fact that human intelligence (at least as measured by IQ tests) has been rising for decades, in a mystery known as the Flynn Effect. The accelerating pace of human evolution, 100 times above baseline levels, is probably not sufficient to account for changes in IQ observed over time frames as short as 10 years or less (unless a whole lot of people at the very bottom of the IQ scale are winning the Darwin Award, and the death rates are not high enough for that).
It strikes me that the documented rise in human IQs and the anecdotal rise in animal IQs are related. Some of the proposed explanations for the rise in human IQs are the increasing complexity of the environment, which surely applies to the novel use of tools by chimps and orang-utans. It may also be a case of them acquiring tool use by observing human use of similar tools. Alternatively, the explanation could be some kind of environmental toxin or virus which causes runaway growth of brain cells. It's better than the inverse!
(I've sometimes wondered what the affects would be of an epidemic outbreak of Information Thirst Virus, which would cause painful sensations if a person were not continually consuming information and learning. As far as I know this premise has not appeared much in science fiction as has, say, the perhaps overexploited premise of Flowers for Algernon.)
Interestingly, rising primate IQs (as measured by scientists at APE CONTROL) was part of the story in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, too. One report has Ape IQs rising by 3% a month, which alarms some officials, who have pre-knowledge of the coming fate of man (from Zira and Cornelius), but which is brushed off by another as "Productivity has also improved by 3%!"
(Pssst! Notice the orange jumpsuits apes were forced to wear, a motif appropriated by the Bush administration for their large-scale violation of human rights.)
I myself have seen many examples of animal intelligence. Just this last week, I watched a cat quickly scurry across the four lanes of traffic in Bunkyo-ku's Hongo-doori after carefully waiting for the rush of passing traffic to quiet down to nothing and pause in the pulse of changing lights. It wouldn't take many years or generations of (dead) cats to evolve that ability. I remember being similarly impressed at stray dogs in Taipei obediently sitting and waiting for the traffic lights to change before trotting across the street, mingling with pedestrians and scavenging around for food. Crows here in Japan seem to know which days are garbage days and wait for it to be put out, then using their visual abilities to identify tasty-looking bits of trash (through the transparent bags we need to use here for easier waste sorting) and then tearing strategic holes to pull out what they want. But my most indelible memory is of a zoo in Sumatra (or possibly Java). I came across a not-very-big old-style concrete cage about the size of a living room with iron bars around the outside and bars (the iron kind) inside for the orang-utans to swing on. Adult orang-utans are very large, shaggy, and intimidating, especially when they swing forcefully. I think they may be basically gentle, however. They have very amazing long fingers and very human eyes --more human than human, perhaps. A man was reaching out across a little fence which kept us back, and offering an orangutan 
a lit kretek cigarette. The orang-utan accepted the lit cigarette gracefully, and several of the orang-utans were offered and accepted kreteks. I was also a smoker at that time and offered a kretek and a Marlboro, as I recall, and the Marlboro was briefly drawn on and then thrown to the ground in an interspecies gesture of disgust. Kreteks have more tar and nicotine and are also sweeter, of course. It seemed appropriate to me that, if the orang-utans (Man (orang) of the Forest (utan)) were to be kept as prisoners, they at least deserved the simple pleasure of a cigarette accorded to most POWs. Anyway, the appreciation of smoking was somewhat amazing in itself, as you generally do not get that in your cat, dog, or typical barnyard, zoo, or wild animal. However, what really impressed me was the way the orang-utans carefully pressed the kreteks against the cold steel bars of their cage, and gently rolled them to cool all sides of the smoldering tip to prevent it from burning too quickly and being wasted between drags! It reminded me of similar techniques practiced by connoisseurs of other valuable smoked herbs. Ever since, orang-utans have been my favorite animal, and one I respect and consider very nearly human..png)
Before coming to the conclusion that the rising tide of human saturation of the earth's environments is lifting all boats of human and animal IQs universally, consider the dialectically opposite proposition. Aren't humans reducing biodiversity, clearing and simplifying habitat, and driving species like the Baiji dolphin and other intelligent species to extinction, thereby dumbing down the entire planet? (not to mention the effects of television) 
Or do these two effects (smart-up and dumb-down/extinction) cancel out and just add up to some kind of rotation of dominant species, e.g. reptile, cetacean. mammal, insect, etc.?
I don't know, Dave. There is not enough information.
This is a book I want to read. It's a popular cosmology book written by Paul Davies. It's been out since last spring, before I heard of it. It's called Cosmic Jackpot in the US and The Goldilocks Enigma in the UK, --marketing to national stereotypes, perhaps?
Although the US version is subtitled The Mind of God, I don't think he really believes in "God", although it may be one way of referring to mind which arises from the universe and through a temporally symmetrical quantum causality creates a maximally mindfulness-friendly universe from the set of all possible multiverses.
I found some audio originally at Science Friday. There was also a piece on NPRnews and the SETI Institute's AWA (Are We Alone?) podcast.
The US Amazon had some reviews I thought were well-worth reading. I'll probably order it from amazon.co.jp but I like the UK Penguin cover, too. 
A reviewer quotes with disappointment from the end of the book:
So, how come existence? At the end of the day, all the approaches I have discussed are likely to prove unsatisfactory. In fact, in reviewing them they all seem to me to be either ridiculous or hopelessly inadequate: a unique universe that just happens to permit life by a fluke; a stupendous number of alternative parallel universes that exist for no reason; a preexisting God who is somehow self-explanatory; or a self-creating, self-explaining, self-understanding universe-with observers, entailing backward causation and teleology. Perhaps we have reached a fundamental impasse dictated by the limitations of the human intellect. The whole paraphernalia of gods and laws, of space, time, and matter, of purpose and design, rationality and absurdity, meaning and mystery, may yet be swept away and replaced by revelations as yet undreamt of.That quote -- especially the "limitations of the human intellect"-- just makes me want to read it more. I would have said it differently: "You have to doubt that the universe is really so simple that it can be successfully modeled in fire-monkey's brain -- but keep working on it!"
Since I was a child, I have thought that evolution must have accelerated, due to deaths from alcohol, drugs, firearms, automobiles, obesity, other modern hazards and their combinations (armed fat people on meth driving drunk, for example). However, I would occasionally hear or read some educated person going on about how evolution had now stopped, since nearsighted people could wear glasses and wouldn't be eaten by tigers or fail as hunters (I guess the idea was). I didn't want to reject that idea out of hand, however wrong it sounded. After all, if the infant mortality rate were 50% or higher back in the day, then maybe they were being selected for something like "fitness" whereas in modern times most babies that are born can reach maturity.
It seems like I have waited a few decades for someone to clear up this question. Finally I have some strong new evidence on the accelerated side of the argument. A study published earlier this month (Dec 10) by actual geneticists and anthropologists, not the armchair variety, determined that human evolution has accelerated by up to a hundred times as human populations increase and move into new environments with new diets and new conditions. Authors are John Hawks, Eric T. Wang, Gregory Cochran, Henry C. Harpending, and Robert K. Moyzis. The article mainly refers to changes in human evolution since the beginning of agriculture, not the industrial age, but the same rules should hold true for recent centuries. Math is involved here as well as actual gene frequencies. Recommended reading: The original article at PNAS. John Hawks weblog. BBC. SciAm. U of Utah Press release. Utah pdf. ScienceDaily. LAT. SMH.
Some time ago I had opportunities to go to the Edo-Tokyo Museum, the National Science Museum in Ueno, and to take a day trip to Choshi. I had never been to the National Science Museum here before, figuring Japan had more local history and culture to offer than universal science, but realize now that I was taking science for granted until an anti-science government came to power in the United States.
Here is a scene at B2 - the best floor of the National Science Museum. There is Lucy, some black guy strolling out of Africa to kick Lucy's australopithecine ass, looks like a homo sapiens to me, and a classic European caveman, maybe a Cro-Mag before he got dressed up for the ice age? Cellphone photography was very bad in the spotlight-lit exhibits of the museum. Halfway through touring exciting B2 I realized that this would be controversial in at least some parts of the United States. Like maybe Kansas, but let's not pin everything on them. Some prudish North American communities might not even allow the freely exhibited genitalia if the local Jesus militia outnumbers or outguns the museum supporters.
Since their beginnings some four billion years ago, life forms have become increasingly diverse due to the ongoing process of environmental adaptation. Evolution involves an endless cycle of emergence and extinction of different species. Human beings, part of the mammal group which flourished following the demise of the dinosaurs, have acquired highly developed adaptive capabilities, thanks to superior dexterity and powers of reasoning. This adaptive capacity has enabled humans to extend their reach to all corners of the Earth. In this exhibit, you can trace the evolutionary path and learn how plants and animals have adapted to the changing environment.Yup, them there's fightin' words.
One of the results of the World Values Survey has been the creation of a map showing how the national attitudes are part of larger civilizational clusters of values. The Inglehart Values Map, also known as the Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map of the World, tends to show how the values of people in each nation are similar to countries with a shared history.
The World Values Surveys were designed to provide a comprehensive measurement of all major areas of human concern, from religion to politics to economic and social life and two dimensions dominate the picture: (1) Traditional/ Secular-rational and (2) Survival/Self-expression values. These two dimensions explain more than 70 percent of the cross-national variance in a factor analysis of ten indicators-and each of these dimensions is strongly correlated with scores of other important orientations.I see some validation of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs on the horizontal axis. I was pleased to see that Welzel refers to "Maslowian Value Change" in a (downloadable) PowerPoint presentation at Istanbul in November 2006. [Technical note: Apple iWork's Keynote software chokes on the charts in the ppt, claiming they have too many data points, and substituting an image -- just a background gradient. NeoOffice is better but broke some arrows, substituting little empty boxes. (Sorry Steve Jobs, Al Gore.)] Basically, once you have secured oxygen, water, food, clothing, shelter, sex, physical and emotional needs, you can begin to turn your attention to higher-level needs.
The Traditional/Secular-rational values dimension reflects the contrast between societies in which religion is very important and those in which it is not. A wide range of other orientations are closely linked with this dimension. Societies near the traditional pole emphasize the importance of parent-child ties and deference to authority, along with absolute standards and traditional family values, and reject divorce, abortion, euthanasia, and suicide. These societies have high levels of national pride, and a nationalistic outlook. Societies with secular-rational values have the opposite preferences on all of these topics.
The second major dimension of cross-cultural variation is linked with the transition from industrial society to post-industrial societies-which brings a polarization between Survival and Self-expression values. The unprecedented wealth that has accumulated in advanced societies during the past generation means that an increasing share of the population has grown up taking survival for granted. Thus, priorities have shifted from an overwhelming emphasis on economic and physical security toward an increasing emphasis on subjective well-being, self-expression and quality of life. Inglehart and Baker (2000) find evidence that orientations have shifted from Traditional toward Secular-rational values, in almost all industrial societies. But modernization, is not linear-when a society has completed industrialization and starts becoming a knowledge society, it moves in a new direction, from Survival values toward increasing emphasis on Self-expression values.
A central component of this emerging dimension involves the polarization between Materialist and Postmaterialist values, reflecting a cultural shift that is emerging among generations who have grown up taking survival for granted. Self-expression values give high priority to environmental protection, tolerance of diversity and rising demands for participation in decision making in economic and political life. These values also reflect mass polarization over tolerance of outgroups, including foreigners, gays and lesbians and gender equality. The shift from survival values to self-expression values also includes a shift in child-rearing values, from emphasis on hard work toward emphasis on imagination and tolerance as important values to teach a child. And it goes with a rising sense of subjective well-being that is conducive to an atmosphere of tolerance, trust and political moderation. Finally, societies that rank high on self-expression values also tend to rank high on interpersonal trust.
This produces a culture of trust and tolerance, in which people place a relatively high value on individual freedom and self-expression, and have activist political orientations. These are precisely the attributes that the political culture literature defines as crucial to democracy.
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Researchers in Switzerland have done an interesting experiment in language evolution. Part of the experiment involved evolving virtual robots in a kind of genetic algorithm, with the final stage consisting of physical-ized robots using the pre-evolved genome from the virtual genetic hothouse. The story is reported at the Telegraph,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2007/02/22/nrobot22.xml
while the original research abstract can be found at
http://www.current-biology.com/content/article/abstract?uid=PIIS0960982207009281
A summary of the findings is also reported at bitsofnews,
http://www.bitsofnews.com/content/view/5263/2/
where they have an embedded video of the bots , the file is swf
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-8821717259555472646&hl=en
