Reader Ted introduced me to Randy Newman and I really enjoy what I’ve heard so far. Not only are the lyrics insightful, witty, and well thought, but the music is well produced. The piano, and sometimes instrumentals, behind the lyrics are themselves enough to listen to without any lyrics.
Somebody else apparently likes Randy too as the video below was created a fan using the song “God’s Song”. enjoy!
Below the fold are the lyrics…
There is a discussion going on at ***Dave’s blog about morality and technology. Originally the topic was about a study asking respondents about their opinions on nanotechnology; the study was written in Science Daily. From the article:
In a sample of 1,015 adult Americans, only 29.5 percent of respondents agreed that nanotechnology was morally acceptable.
To me this seems like a completely silly response. But even more so, it seems like an udder nonsensical question. Now I don’t know what question was asked for sure, I can’t find the original study, but I am assuming the question was along the lines of, “Do you find nanotechnology to be morally acceptable?” Which to me, and ***Dave, seems akin to asking, “Do you find metallurgy morally acceptable?” How can you get a true result from such a question?
I also found this odd from the article:
The moral qualms people of faith express about nanotechnology is not a question of ignorance of the technology, says Scheufele, explaining that survey respondents are well-informed about nanotechnology and its potential benefits.
“They still oppose it,” he says. “They are rejecting it based on religious beliefs. The issue isn’t about informing these people. They are informed.”
I’m not sure I buy that conclusion at all. People in general do not seem to have a full grasp of technology, what it is, where it’s going, etc. If they did, stem cells wouldn’t be an issue of morality and neither would nanotechnology. Below is a clip of a comment I left on ***Dave’s blog about this very subject:
If we stick to dictionary definitions of morality we are dealing with ethical decisions of right or wrong essentially, goodness based on a code of conduct, and/or human ethical decisions. Basically to be moral or immoral you or something has to make a conscious decision based on some kind of code.
So in the extreme case of cannibalism, for example, most people in the industrialized world would come to the conclusion that eating another person is immoral. Our codes of conduct or (un)written rules condone such action. In more remote places of the world it is acceptable and likely considered moral by their code or (un)written rules.
In the case of technology that goes into building a PMFRD machine, each piece of technology is an inanimate object. It cannot make a decision based on (un)written rules. Now maybe the machine on a whole could make such decisions with the right amount of AI. But the machine on a whole is not considered technology, rather a machine or AI robot. And different pieces of technology went into creating this machine. And furthermore, the machine was still programmed to make such decisions based on some kind of code. It still had a creator that decided how to give the robot the ability to make decisions.
You may need to go to the link above for the discussion on ***Dave’s blog for context, but basically technology can’t really be good or evil, people are based on pre-defined standards.
So what do you think? Is technology moral or immoral? Are people good or evil? Do people kill people or do PMFRD machines kill people?
Interesting take on the other side of things.
Excitement is growing in the Northern England town of Huddlesfield following the news that a local man saw an image of the Big-Bang in a piece of toast. Atheist Donald Chapman, 36, told local newspaper, “The Huddlesfield Express” that he was sitting down to eat breakfast when an unusual toast pattern caught his eye.
“I was just about to spread the butter when I noticed a fairly typical small hole in the bread surrounded by a burnt black ring. However the direction and splatter patterns of the crumbs as well as the changing shades emanating outwards from this black hole were very clearly similar to the chaotic-dynamic non-linear patterns that one would expect following the Big Bang”. “It’s the beginning of the world” he added excitedly.
Many people may jump to say this is a hoax, or a farce. But what makes seeing a religious image in toast more credible than an image of scientific theory?
Here are the links:
Original site (down due to being dugg): Satire and Comment
Mirror of site above: Toast site mirror
Scientology protests… You don’t have to be anonymous to protest, just identify yourself as a non-anon. Your help will be gladly accepted. Also, watch this video first, before you come out…
[UPDATES]:
Well… likely nothing. I just think it’s kinda funny that for all day Sunday, except about 60 comments I received at once around 10:30, I had zero spam. Weird considering for a straight 2 weeks I was getting in the neighborhood of 300 comments throughout the day.
Luckily I have Akismet plugin for Wordpress running. In the last maybe 2000 spam comments, it has only let through 1 comment that was spam. I love that plugin! But the plugin I don’t love is my Captcha plugin. I love how it is fully configurable, but it is letting through way too many spam comments. If my Captcha plugin was doing its’ job I would be receiving hardly any spam comments at all in Akismet.
Oh well, just another item to add to my list of things to make changes to.
Well, this sums things up for me on both sides, an article by Greta, please go check it out…
Found via DOF…
A little late, but better late than never…
War has always been a part of our culture. But why? Why do we shrug our shoulders? Does it not matter to us that hundred of thousands of people die in wars nowadays? Does it not matter that the cost gets filtered down to our children? That before my child is even born, assuming I have one in the next year (which I don’t plan on doing… this is purely hypothetical!), he/she will already have over $30,000 in debt. That to me seems pretty significant.
Psychology of War from World War 2… It’s interesting to note how it took so long for the US and British to do anything. But as my father told me, World War 2 for the US, wasn’t about what was happening to the Jews. Something we are thought to believe in school.
Don’t get me wrong, everything that happened to the Jews was horrible, but it’s important to learn as part of history, that no one really cared at the time. Why is this? What separates genocide from murder in terms of how people generally react to it?
The answer may lie in human psychology. Specifically, it is our inability to comprehend numbers and relate them to mass human tragedy that stifles our ability to act. It’s not that we are insensitive to the suffering of our fellow human beings. In fact, the opposite is true. Just look at the extraordinary efforts people expend to rescue someone in distress, such as an injured mountain climber. It’s not that we only care about victims we identify with–those of similar skin color, or those who live near us: Witness the outpouring of aid to victims of the December 2004 tsunami. Yet, despite many brief episodes of generosity and compassion, the catalogue of genocide–the Holocaust, Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur–continues to grow. The repeated failure to respond to such atrocities raises the question of whether there is a fundamental deficiency in our humanity: a deficiency that–once identified–could be overcome.
So we can’t really comprehend a number of deaths that large. Because we certainly understand human emotions and the pains of a single death. Hmmm… I think that simple idea may explain more than our reaction to genocide. Comprehending large numbers is not an easy task, especially when those numbers are representing human life.
I always bought into this theory without realizing it. How many times have you looked at the way people drive and just think, “Wow, it’s like people get behind the wheel and are a completely different person!” Well this is the monkeysphere friends.
“Okay… Webs is off his rocker! No we’re talking about monkeys.” Yup! That’s right. Not only are monkeys cute, but they can explain genocide. Read up!
Moving to more recent topics, New poll puts death toll of Iraqi civilians over one million.
I am sure there will be plenty of folks that brush this off as BS. Which I would find quite odd because this is the third study now on deaths of Iraqi civilians and all three have one thing in common. The number is rising, and quickly. The first was around 2004 and stated the numbers were around 150,000. Then the Lancet journal came out with their numbers in the 600,000 range.
Apparently this form of genocide is also outside our monkeysphere…
This is another writer on the same topic as the link above. Again, it looks pretty credible and should really be an eye opener to people. This war has caused nothing but death and has not made us safer.
Fellow blogger Paul wrote on this as well and gives a little more detail than the other writers.
My thoughts:
We need to stop electing officials that are unwilling to find diplomatic solutions. War is never good for either side and should be an absolute last resort. I fully support the creation of a Department of Peace to work along side the presidential cabinet and the President to find better solutions to International problems.
Welcome to my blog! Topics tend to focus on Science and Technology, but I throw in personal stuff too. I hope you enjoy!
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Spikey Mace of Patience. Get yours.
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