A.M. Links: Turkey Wants NATO Backing In Syria Spat, By the Time You Get to Arizona, God of the Gaps' Gaps Getting Smaller

• Turkey wants to know NATO's got its back. The alliance will meet under its "Article 4" provision for only the second time in its 63 year history after Syria downed a Turkish jet it says violated their air space. Turkey says the "act of aggression" will "not go unpunished," the Dutch say "military intervention is out of the question" and the Syrians say they hope to maintain a "neighborly relationship" with Turkey.

• Don't panic. Benjamin Netanyahu looks forward to working with Egypt's new president and hopes Mohammed Morsi focuses on rebuilding that country's economy even while a former Israeli defense minister says Israel ought to be "prepared for war" and the Iranian news agency FARS quoted Morsi as saying he wanted to strengthen relations with Iran to "rebalance" power in the region.
• President Obama is campaigning in New Hampshire, where he attacked Mitt Romney for outsourcing done by companies involved with Bain Capital decades ago. "You don't need someone trying to explain to you the difference between outsourcing and offshoring," the president said.
• Jan Brewer hailed yesterday's Supreme Court decision to strike three of four provisions of Arizona's immigration law. It upheld the portion of the law authorizing police officers to check immigration status in the course of a legal stop if they suspect the person was not authorized to enter the country, the so-called "papers please" provision, and the governor says law enforcement will be beginning to do so immediately.
• The GOP Chairwoman in the town of Asbury Park on the Jersey Shore wants the town to enforce a seventy-some year old law on the books setting a dress code for the town's Boardwalk. "I don't want to go back to 1940 or 1950 but the bottom line is you have on your books an ordinance — no person clad in bathing attire shall be on the boardwalk or public walks adjacent thereto," Louise Murray said. 
• Researchers argue divine intervention isn't necessary to explain the Big Bang because the laws of physics could've done it on their own. "If you would just, in this room, just twist time and space the right way, you might create an entirely new universe. It's not clear you could get into that universe, but you would create it," a senior SETI astronomer explained. Just like that.

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Reason.TV: "Is Solitary Confinement a Form of Torture? Q&A with journalist James Ridgeway"

Comments

[Lord Humungus]

Paul Krugman's Follies
The Nobel-winning economist embraces fantasy.
http://www.city-journal.org/2012/bc0624gs.html

Paul Krugman's new book should come with a disclaimer: there is no relation whatsoever between the ideological assertions of the New York Times columnist and bestselling author and the other Paul Krugman, who received a well-deserved Nobel Prize in 2008 for his scholarly research on international trade. Winning a Nobel Prize in economics doesn't grant legitimacy to everything an economist writes, and Krugman's book, like most of his newspaper columns, shows little connection with his past academic work.

[invisible furry hand]

What sort of fantasy? Mummy porn like 50 Shades, or dwarf porn like GoT?

[John]

Read this

http://www.amazon.com/Peddling.....0393036022

In 1994, before he went insane, Krugman took down 70s style Keynesian economics.

[sarcasmic]

John pron!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvs.....ikini.html

[John]

She is a fucking disgusting cow. Stop posting pictures of cows you pervert. There was a great pic of Jessica Alba on here yesterday afternoon. Good thing you were not around. You would have never been able to handle that much femininity. You would have gone catatonic or something.

[T]

Uh, Jessica Biel. You're confusing your Jessicas.

[sarcasmic]

sarc pron!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvs.....toffs.html

[Abdul]

I hope you and your horse are very happy together.

[Restoras]

Did she have cheekbone surgery?

[Fluffy]

I bet in person that mouth of hers would look like the Grand Canyon.

Attention media empires: please stop trying to apply the Merv Griffin rule. Chicks with giant heads and mouths too wide for their faces aren't actually attractive. They look like space aliens. Thank you.

[robc]

In what universe does she look like a space alien?

Now, if you want to tell me that she is an alien, I will believe you.

[sarcasmic]

How U.S. Army spent $5BILLION on 'failed' pixel camouflage... because they 'wanted to look cooler than Marines'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....rines.html

[tarran]

Ah yes, I just had a flash-back to a conversation with my last CO in the Navy, where I had to slip into chanting the "I do not know, but I will find out" mantra to escape his tirade demanding to know why *he* wasn't the one who handed out the ball-caps with the ship's patch we wore on our working uniforms.

The fact that we had new guys reporting every day to a ship crewed by thousands, and that him only being available once a week or so to greet them (if that) just didn't compute.

He also spent tens of thousands out of the ship's maintenance budget forcing the ship's navigator to switch staterooms after he figured out that the navigator had a stateroom that was 1.5 square feet larger. We had to move a bunch of commo gear, the safes where he kept the keys to the weapons systems, etc.

When I watched the Lincoln sail away that last day I served aboard her, I was one happy guy.

[sarcasmic]

Jessica Biel is still hot!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvs.....piece.html

[John]

That was on here yesterday. Who are you kidding. Her ass, while a force of nature to the rest of us, is way to big for you. She is clearly a six four or six. And that is morbidly obese in your world.

[Restoras]

Butterface? Otherwise a 10.

[Fluffy]

She looks great in those pics, because you can't see her face.

For some reason Biel's face has always looked really hard, cheap, and used-up to me.

[Suthenboy]

That is truly a beautiful ass. I am proud to say that my wife's easily rivals it, and is infinitely more attractive to me because in addition to having an angelic figure she is a saint. ( She puts up with my bullshit )
I doubt the Biel chic could measure up.

[hamilton]

That sounds like a challeneg requiring evaluation. As it were. Wasn't there some sort of fable about this?

[R C Dean]

Pix or it ain't happening.

[Groovus Maximus]

MEH! I have seen better.

[LibertyWolf]

To quote Woodrow "Gordie Howe" Wilson, truly hers is a butt that won't quit.

[sarcasmic]

Racism is hardwired into the brain, say scientists - and it operates unconsciously.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci.....ng-it.html

[John]

But only on white people.

[Ice Nine]

You don't need a fancy neuroscientist to tell you this; it should be obvious to anyone who watches Animal Planet and understands that humans of different configurations are merely part of that planet. You don't see lions not recognizing the difference between themselves and leopards and acting accordingly and you don't see different ethnic groups of humans doing so either. Humans are just a whole lot better at suppressing the very natural tendency to act on that and they manage to behave civilly around it. The old aphorism that birds of a feather stick together, while simplistic, exists for a reason and these scientists are maybe finding part of the mechanism for why it represents a general truth. We are all inherently racist. Accept it - and don't be mean.

[wareagle]

We are all inherently racist.

take it a step further and find another difference between man and animals: we are also classist. Folks who get out of the ghetto or trailer park and succeed do not go back. They live around and socialize with people of the same social stratus.

[Srynerson]

You don't see lions not recognizing the difference between themselves and leopards

Except that lions and leopards are separate species, so your analogy fails.

[Ice Nine]

It wasn't a scientific thesis. Stretch your imagination just a bit.

[Groovus Maximus]

Except that lions and leopards are separate species, so your analogy fails.

Only if they cannot interbreed successfully.

The analogy is sound.

[Tulpa the White]

I agree with you; a good analogy would be among apes, who are extremely aggressive toward members of other groups of their own species.

To a chimp, that different-furred chimp that wants to peacefully co-exist does not mean the opportunity to celebrate diversity, it means less water in the watering hole.

[Lord Humungus]

Government wants more people on food stamps
http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/2.....tamps-ads/

More than one in seven Americans are on food stamps, but the federal government wants even more people to sign up for the safety net program.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been running radio ads for the past four months encouraging those eligible to enroll. The campaign is targeted at the elderly, working poor, the unemployed and Hispanics.

[VG Zaytsev]

But don't worry, they'll never give food stamps or section 8 housing to illegal aliens.

[ant1sthenes]

When your vision of the future is "What happened in Detroit can happen everywhere, if we try", that's not a shock.

[Loki]

The next time some lib-tard claims that they don't want more people on wellfare programs, I'm throwing this their smug little hipster beardo faces.

[Loki]

*in their smug little hipster beardo faces.

typing fail

[Fist of Etiquette]

"You don't need someone trying to explain to you the difference between outsourcing and offshoring," the president said.

Does that mean this is not going to be on the test, Professor?

[Joe R.]

The casual acceptance of xenophobia astounds me.

[Rich]

OK, Professor. But would you *kindly* explain to me the difference between executive privilege and coverup?

[hamilton]

win

[sarcasmic]

Daily Fails are complete.

[invisible furry hand]

2009: Norway bans the purchase of sex.

2012:

Higher percentage of Oslo prostitutes report violence

Significant jump in number of prostitutes

[db]

Intentions over outcomes. Learn it, live it, love it!

[Raston Bot]

The 2009 prostitution law prohibits the purchase but not the sale of sexual services

This does not really jibe w/ this next quote:

"It's heartbreaking to see the violence they are subjected too, only to then learn that many of them don't report (the crimes). That means the aggressors walk away and are free to endanger others."

Why not report the assault/rape if the prostitutes themselves face no criminal penalty?

And from the article it sounds like assaults went up b/c the law chased away law-abiding clientele so the pros had to reduce rates and cater more to low lifes.

[Loki]

When you outlaw guns paying for sex, only criminals will have guns pay for sex.

[Lord Humungus]

Lawmakers reworked financial portfolios after talks with Fed, Treasury officials
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....story.html

Boehner is one of 34 members of Congress who took steps to recast their financial portfolios during the financial crisis after phone calls or meetings with Paulson; his successor, Timothy F. Geithner; or Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, according to a Washington Post examination of appointment calendars and congressional disclosure forms.

The lawmakers, many of whom held leadership positions and committee chairmanships in the House and Senate, changed portions of their portfolios a total of 166 times within two business days of speaking or meeting with the administration officials. The party affiliation of the lawmakers was about evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, 19 to 15.

[John]

String them up, every last one of the rat bastards.

[Pro Libertate]

It's insane that they're allowed to do this while they write laws to lock up others who do the same thing. That alone should kill the insider trading laws.

[VG Zaytsev]

It's actually worse than that.

The run of the mill inside trader benefits from information which will become public in short order about specific firms.

Congressional insiders create exogenous events that change a company's valuation.

[Pro Libertate]

It's good to be the king.

[R C Dean]

I recall seeing awhile ago that, on average, members of Congress get investment returns around three times greater than other people.

A lot of it, I suspect, isn't necessarily from insider knowledge on legislation. I think its flat out insider trading on tips passed on by lobbyists.

[Pro Libertate]

Agreed. Another form of payola.

[Spoonman.]

Not just on a federal level, either. City Councilmembers always seem to end up rich. Almost like they can influence investments or something.

[Pro Libertate]

It's good to be a lord.

[Groovus Maximus]

Unless you are Jack Lord. He's resting now. He was so cool.

[Pro Libertate]

Doesn't get much cooler than that.

[Fatty Bolger]

That, and sweetheart deals they are given on anything from real estate to investment returns. Hillary's futures trading is just one of the more outrageous examples, but it can be done much more subtly than that.

[EDG reppin' LBC]

I need to rework my portfolio, too. The last couple of weeks have just been brutal. But, I'm in it for the long term... Serenity now. Serenity now!

[DJF]

"If you would just, in this room, just twist time and space the right way, you might create an entirely new universe."

But who is doing the twisting and could he call himself god of that universe?

[Whiterun Guard]

No, because manipulating something smaller than the planck length, and then tracking and/or adjusting everything that's generated once inflation kicks in are two very different things.

[Rasilio]

No because manipulating the quantity of money and then tracking and/or adjusting everything that happens once inflation kicks in are two very different things.

Damn I guess that argument works in multiple fields.

[Lord Humungus]

The euro should now be put to the sword
The 19th crisis summit won't achieve anything until it faces up to the EU's economic deceit, writes Jeff Randall.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fin.....sword.html

Given Rome's history of staging grotesque spectacles, it's appropriate that the Eternal City was hosting last week's gathering of leaders in the never-ending circus of European Union summitry. Spectators looking for a demonstration of gladiatorial courage will have been disappointed. Never mind fighting lions, the main players in the arena seem not to know what form the beast takes, much less how to kill it.

Since Greece went into meltdown, triggering a crisis of confidence in the euro, there have been 18 EU summits. The format is wearyingly familiar: after 36 hours of unproductive haggling, a communiqu? is issued, promising a united effort to boost growth, promote jobs and curb "speculators".

[Fist of Etiquette]

It's not clear you could get into that universe...

But why did you just let that group of hot girls in line in front of me in?

[T]

Need to stock up on the goddesses before we let the likes of you in.

[generic Brand]

If this Olympic weightlifter has ever had a boyfriend, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be too comfortable with her clean-and-jerk... they may not have even survived it.

P.S. It looks like I have access to HnR again at my work! Let's see how long until I get busted for officially not doing anything, as opposed to before where I was just reading HnR on my phone all day.

[invisible furry hand]

"I get a lot of Creepy McCreepersons interested in me because I'm so big it's not normal, it's like a fetish"

He used to post around here, didn't he?

[generic Brand]

Used to? I think he still is. See the posts at multiple Daily Mail posts at 8:59.

[Whiterun Guard]

What's that line that Barfman always uses?

[Groovus Maximus]

*BARF*

I believe that's the one.

And folks, for the love of SOD! It's The Daily FAIL!

[generic Brand]

Sorry, I don't usually have access to the Commentariat's take on AM or PM Links, so I missed the memo. I for one, though, welcome our new British tabloid overlords.

[Groovus Maximus]

The smut they peddle really is second to none, and welcome back, gB. It's been a while.

[John]

She had to have taken so many roids to get that big, her dick is probably porn star length by now.

[KDN]

She's Nick Mangold's sister, so you know elite strength athlete genes are already there, and she started at OG on a varsity football team that does a pretty good job supplying recruits to D-1 schools (ESPN did a piece on her a few years ago). I think she's just a freak. It happens.

[Apatheist ?_??]

Yeah she's just a natural talent and obviously motivated. Playing varsity football as a woman can't be easy. I say more power to her.

[Lord Humungus]

Plane Tows Swastika Banner, Startles New Jersey Beachgoers
http://philadelphia.cbslocal.c.....eachgoers/

The group behind the flight says it wasn't meant as a representation of hate. The International Raelian Movement says the swastika is actually a symbol of peace and beauty that was corrupted by Nazis in 20th century Germany.

On its website, the group writes that the flight was part of its third swastika rehabilitation day.

[sloopyinca]

The swastika is like "porch monkey." You can't take it back.

[rac3rx]

"Porch Monkey 4 Life!"

/Clerks

[LTC John]

Hey, its OK, I'm takin' the word back!

BTW - didn't all the Raelians kill themselves to jump on Comet Hale-Bopp or somesuch?

[Loki]

Nah, different group of space alien worshiping morons.

[Restoras]

Dutch Defense Minister: Who the hell let Turkey into NATO?? It isn't even European, or white, or anything!!!

[DJF]

Its not even near the North Atlantic.

The US needs to get out of NATO before one of these countries pull the US into another war, we have more then enough wars already.

[LTC John]

"The US needs to get out of NATO before one of these countries pull the US into another war, we have more then enough wars already."

Another? We are the only ones who have invoked Article 4 - for Afghanistan.

[ant1sthenes]

Well, it's not on the North Atlantic.

[Restoras]

Iknowright? Neither is Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, or Slovenia!! WTF??

[ant1sthenes]

They should either rename it or kick them all out.

[robc]

Isnt the Mediterranean part of the north atlantic?

This is one of those definitional things, but IMO, the caribbean and mediterranean and baltic and etc are all parts of the north atlantic ocean.

[Tulpa the White]

If the Baltic Sea is part of the Atlantic, so is Lake Superior.

[Ice Nine]

Who the hell let Turkey into NATO?? It isn't even European

A piece of it is. That's apparently all it takes.

[robc]

Israel is a member of UEFA and no one thinks it is even partly in Europe.

[Ice Nine]

Not sure of your point. If you are contesting my first sentence above, don't.

[robc]

Im contesting your second sentence. Apparently you can be european without even a part of your country in europe.

[Ice Nine]

OK, got ya.

[invisible furry hand]

Well UEFA/Israel is a special case, because of the problems of having Israel play Middle Eastern teams in the Asian Football Confederation. FIFA bends the rules in Australia's case too - we are too strong for the other teams in Oceana, so we play in AFC

[KDN]

Yeah, but Israelis are white. Mostly.

I have no doubt that UEFA and FIFA would put Israel back in the AFC if they could, but the constant death threats and refusal by their opponents' governments to allow the team into the country for matches is a bit of a problem.

[NoTalentAssclown]

Also a member of UEFA... Russia

[Tulpa the White]

Same reason Toronto has an American League baseball team.

[Spoonman.]

Turks are definitely white.

[Ice Nine]

Not all of them. There are plenty of distinctly "Asian"-looking Turks in Eastern Turkey.

[John]

http://news.investors.com/arti.....src=IBDDAE

The progressive vampire doing to Chicago what it did to Detroit. Progressives devour everything they touch.

[WTF]

Progressives devour everything they touch.

And then blame the results on republicans and libertarians. Because they couldn't possibly have been wrong.

[Bee Tagger]

Your daily Morning Joe update: Al Sharpton quickly mentioned access to guns as one of the problems with the rapid rise in homicides in the city lately. I turned the channel so I don't know if anyone ever disagreed with him.

[wareagle]

seeing as how it was MSNBC, disagreement with the right rev Al is not an option.

[Fist of Etiquette]

The GOP Chairwoman in the town of Asbury Park on the Jersey Shore wants the town to enforce a seventy-some year old law on the books setting a dress code for the town's Boardwalk.

Blue laws, they're faaaaaantastic.

[John]

Have you seen most of the people who go to the Jersey shore? If blue means making those people put clothes on, they might not be such a bad thing after all.

[Fist of Etiquette]

For all I know, there's a law on the books somewhere requiring me to go to the Jersey Shore and look at those people.

[Restoras]

Have you seen most of the people who go to the Jersey shore beach? If blue means making those people put clothes on, they might not be such a bad thing after all.

Fixed.

[WTF]

Yeah, I've never seen any young hot women at the Jersey shore..oh, wait...

[Bee Tagger]

Blame the bennies.

[WTF]

Brilliant - let's keep people who are spending the day at the beach from patronizing the businesses on the boardwalk if they are in bathing suits.

[rac3rx]

Because nobody ever heard of taking along a pair of shorts and a shirt to cover up when not on the beach.

Not saying there oughta be a law by any stretch of the imagination, but damn people...you're not that attractive. Cover up your shit!

[Suthenboy]

I predict a huge increase in tourists and beach-goers in Asbury once they start enforcing this. I mean, who doesnt love going to a beach town where the cops hassle people about how they are dressed?

How long before we see this headline; 'Ten year old girl ticketed by Asbury police for buying ice-cream in bathing suit' ? yeah, that will bring the people in.

I am sure Louise Murry is a laugh a minute.

[KDN]

GOP Chairwoman in the town of Asbury Park.

How the hell is that even possible? 97% of the city is either gay or black.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Is she the chairwoman of the local republican party? If that's the case, then who cares what she thinks.

[KDN]

That would make a lot more sense; maybe one of us should RTFA.

I don't think anyone really cares what she thinks anyway, especially in that town. It's one of the few places on the shore where cops have better things to do than harassing bennies.

[Rasilio]

Ok, so massive irony alert.

I work in the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston, apparently today someone is holding a symposium here on "Protecting Civil Liberties"

Anyone care to guess who is giving the keynote address?

[T]

For maximum lulz, Janet Reno.

[Rasilio]

Very close but no cigar.

Nope it is our very own torture loving gun walking dope hating Attorney General Eric Holder.

[Rich]

Wee, to be fair, Holder's keynote address is titled "Protecting Civil Liberties: A Dangerous Idea Whose Time Has Passed".

[Rich]

*Well*

[Bobarian]

Wee was good too. Needed an exclamation point, though.

[Auric Demonocles]

I drove by there Saturday. Whiskey Priest sucks.

Well I know Obama was in town for a fundraiser...

[Rasilio]

Yeah I've only been there once and I wasn't terribly impressed course I don't drink and was only going in to get lunch so I may have loved the place if I was getting smashed at Happy Hour

[Auric Demonocles]

I would actually imagine lunch would be a lot better (though a happy hour might be good too). I went early Saturday evening.

My girlfriend's friend was getting drinks there for her birthday, so we stopped by before heading to another party. It's inconvenient to get to, we had to pay 35 dollars to get in between parking and the cover (a cover at 9 PM in the middle of freaking nowhere?), it was full of the crowd that goes to clubs even though it's set up like a decent bar and isn't downtown, and then after we were already inside we had to wait in line for about 40 minutes to get up to the deck where her friends were.

We ended up spending about $50 and 2 hours to get one round with her friends, while being crammed in with a bunch of Jersey Shore-like characters.

[EDG reppin' LBC]

... while being crammed in with a bunch of Jersey Shore-like characters.

You'll never be able to wash the smell of Axe body spray and garlic out of your clothes.

[Auric Demonocles]

I just tore them off and threw them into the sea as an act of defiance when I left.

[invisible furry hand]

Where's the irony? If you're going to trash civil liberties you do have to know something about how your opponents are trying to protect them

[Longtorso]

ATF leader's email could be Fast and Furious smoking gun and Holder admitted Obama can't shield it

[Suthenboy]

Yeah, and Obama said he couldnt change immigration law by fiat.

[Longtorso]

Lawmakers reworked financial portfolios after talks with Fed, Treasury officials

[Whiterun Guard]

Researchers argue divine intervention isn't necessary to explain the Big Bang because the laws of physics could've done it on their own. "If you would just, in this room, just twist time and space the right way, you might create an entirely new universe. It's not clear you could get into that universe, but you would create it," a senior SETI astronomer explained. Just like that.

Yes, just like that. What's the problem? Anyone with even a modicum of understanding of quantum mechanics can see this. And why is that new, they've been saying that for decades?

I can't click on foxnews to see why or if it's something new.

[John]

Call me when there is empirical evidence for parallel universes, otherwise that is just as faith based as God.

[Whiterun Guard]

Yep, and any physicist worth his salt will admit as much.

Then again, they've been wrong MUCH less than religious doctrine, so...

And there may be evidence soon, I mean there's a few petabits of data from CERN to get through.

[John]

It is all bunk. I read one of Brian Greene's books a few years ago and he admitted up front much of what he had to say could never be verified empirically. But he believed it to be true because it was the most "elegant solution". Like nature owes us "elegance" whatever that is.

[Whiterun Guard]

I've read all of Greene's books and he does admit that it can't be verified empirically RIGHT NOW (which was actually a few years ago). Same way Einstein's theories couldn't be validated when he made them.

Other theorists think they might be able to prove parts of string theory and see evidence of parallel universes (or at least super-dimensional branes) with CERN data.

Whereas all the god type people got is: HEY THERE'S A GOD, AND HE HATES IT WHEN YOU TOUCH YOURSELF.

[John]

Again, call me when you do it. Otherwise, there is no difference. And I highly recommend you read "What is the Matter with Physics". It is a wonderful explanation of how faith based physics has become String theory is the monster that is killing science.

[Whiterun Guard]

I've read it, and it's an opinion. M-theory (string theory has been abandoned and is pretty much a vestigial term) is the best and most consistent predictive theory we have right now. Standard model is fine for real world stuff, but doesn't work for cosmology.

And M-theory and string theory before that have pushed mathematics, cosmology and physics farther and faster than anything else in the history of science. We can solve matrices that were considered unsolveable as few as 3 years ago now.

There's plenty of people out there working on cars and BE foods, I hardly think string theory is "killing" anything.

Except maybe god.

[John]

They can solve lots of wonderful equations. Actually predicting events in the real world not so much.

And it is funny how obsessed you people are with God. You talk about God more than I do. Maybe you people were less religious and worried less about God and more about experiment and results, things would go better.

[Whiterun Guard]

What? M-theory is absolutely the most consistent and predictive model that there is right now. It acurately predicts events in the real world better than anything else out there.

[Groovus Maximus]

It acurately predicts events in the real world better than anything else out there.

What are you going to do exactly 1 week, 1 hour, 53 minutes and 29 seconds from now?

[Whiterun Guard]

I don't need M-theory for that. I'll be drinking and being lonely.

[Groovus Maximus]

I don't need M-theory for that. I'll be drinking and being lonely.

Can you conclusive, reproducibly prove that with complex proofs and statistical matrices? Or are you basing this on assumption? Or,...wait for it...faith?

[Whiterun Guard]

Doh, I violated my own first rule: don't argue with the faithful.

[Fluffy]

What are you going to do exactly 1 week, 1 hour, 53 minutes and 29 seconds from now?

Change my mind.

It's not a big deal to change your mind, you know.

[Groovus Maximus]

It's not a big deal to change your mind, you know.

Many a neurosurgeon and neurologist would disagree with that notion, as would, on a slightly silly note, Gene Wilder.

[robc]

Except maybe god.

Im not sure how string theory is contradictory to God.

[Azathoth!!]

Not 'killing god'. CREATING them...

Researchers argue divine intervention isn't necessary to explain the Big Bang because the laws of physics could've done it on their own. "If you would just, in this room, just twist time and space the right way, You might create an entirely new universe. It's not clear You could get into that universe, but You would create it," a senior SETI astronomer explained. Just like that.

And they're too stupid to even see that they're doing it.

They are saying that anyone could be god given the right tools.

I had thought I would have to wait for the Singularity, now it looks as if things may be coming to a head more quickly.

[Suthenboy]

Uh...John....if they are no different why would you choose one over the other instead of rejecting both?

[Groovus Maximus]

That wasn't the type of First Tapper to whom I was referring, WG. Solve that little conundrum for me and, as John says, we'll talk.

[Groovus Maximus]

Indeed John; I am still seeing the noted lack of a Prime Mover here from the SETI people.

Think of it this way: If you have a circle of people and they all place their right hands on the left shoulder of the person to their right, with no breaks in the circuit and forming a circle, and can only tap the person's shoulder when their own has been tapped first, who is the First Tapper if tapping commences?

[T]

Larry Craig?

Oh, wait, that's feet. Never mind.

[John]

I am still seeing the noted lack of a Prime Mover here from the SETI people.

What they can't do is explain why the universe developed as it did, which they will never be able to do. The existence of an infinite number of parallel universes is just another attempt at answering the unanswerable.

[Whiterun Guard]

The prime mover is quantum fluctuations.

Or a wizard did it *rolleyes*

[Groovus Maximus]

The prime mover is quantum fluctuations.

Got some tangible, reproducible evidence for that? Or just some exceptionally complex theory?

Or a wizard did it *rolleyes*

There is a Trope for that...

[Whiterun Guard]

Oh, ok, I guess the Straw Man tapped first.

[Groovus Maximus]

No Straw Man and they are totally congruent; besides, snark may indeed be a Prime Mover for all you know and certainly has as much validity as any other theory. 🙂

[T]

Certainly snark is the Prime Mover around here.

[invisible furry hand]

the only prime mover worth caring about

[Groovus Maximus]

Has anyone told you how awesome you are, O Spunkiest of Spunkies?

[invisible furry hand]

Not in such a charming fashion, Doc!

[BakedPenguin]

Which is similar to argument John is using, and you appear to be agreeing with.

[Groovus Maximus]

I am in agreement with John, and the converse appears to be a derivative of this.

[BakedPenguin]

Well, since we're not going to agree on this, why not.

[Groovus Maximus]

KOSHKA!!!! Thanks, Fried Aquatic Avian! Do know I hold in you in the highest regards, regardless. No snark.

[Kant feel Pietzsche]

My favorite God of the Gaps is Pete Rose.

[BigT]

It was Wee Willie Keeler: "Hit 'em where they ain't"

[ant1sthenes]

Prime Mover assumes that time has a starting point, rather than just being a cycle.

[Groovus Maximus]

The circle is infinite, no?

[Whiterun Guard]

Well, that's one theory.

[Fluffy]

That's not really true, you know.

The big problem with positivism is this:

If Honda makes a new model car - let's say they call it the Accordistan or something, it's designed for sale in Central Asia - and it's a car that has never appeared anywhere on Earth before, I can look at the first model rolling off the production line and say, "If that car hit me on the highway, it would hurt. It might even kill me."

Positivism says I can't say that. Until at least one Accordistan has run someone over, there's no empirical support for the statement, "Accordistans hurt you when they run you over on the highway."

But we know that statement is true, because it can be verified by reference to other facts we know that have been empirically tested.

So if physicists develop an overall model that explains the universe, and is verified by empirical data, and which includes as a logical extension of the model the notion of parallel universes, that constitutes "proof" of parallel universes in the only important and reasonable sense of the word.

[John]

nd which includes as a logical extension of the model the notion of parallel universes, that constitutes "proof" of parallel universes in the only important and reasonable sense of the word.

That is almost as much nonsense as you put out on the Zimmerman case. All that proves is that there could be an accordion. It does nothing to prove that there is an accordion. The only way to prove that is either by empirical evidence or some kind of proof that, given the known facts, the car must exists, which is just another way of describing empirical proof. Otherwise, you are just speculating on what might exist. And that is speculation not proof.

[Fluffy]

So basically you're saying that in your philosophy until the Accordistan actually hits someone we can't "know" that if it hits us it will hurt.

[John]

No. You misunderstand me. I can describe what an accordistan would look like if it exists all day. But that does nothing to prove that it does exist. Yes, we can all imagine parallel universes. But absent empirical proof or logical necessity that such actually exists, it is just speculation. It is no different than speculating that the are unicorns or anything else.

[Fluffy]

No, I am not doing the Anselmian thing here.

I am saying that once the first car was actually built, we could "know" that getting run over by it would hurt, even though no car of its type had even run anyone over.

We would "know" this because other cars have run people over and hurt them, and therefore it is a logical necessity that this type of car would also hurt you if it hit you, and that the lack of an empirical operational history for this exact model of car doesn't matter.

If I can know "A" and "B" to be true, and if "A" and "B" being true require "C" to be true, I can "know" that "C" is true even if I never see it.

[John]

All true fluffy. But that says nothing about the existence of parallel universes. You are describing the necessary characteristics of the accordistan. But you are still not establishing its existence.

[Fluffy]

All true fluffy. But that says nothing about the existence of parallel universes.

Sure it does.

If I can "know" a third fact that I haven't directly perceived because it's a necessary complement of a different set of facts I have confirmed empirically, then the existence of parallel universes is at least potentially confirmable by proving other facts.

If I hear a gunshot and you fall over dead, and I extract a bullet from your brain, I can "know" that a sniper shot you even if I didn't see the sniper. So proving the existence of parallel universes would become a function of establishing a set of facts in this universe that would make a parallel universe logically necessary, and then proving that set of facts. Just like we can prove you were shot by a hidden sniper by examining the facts we can see.

[VG Zaytsev]

No, he's saying that the Accordistan is a figment of your imagination.

[Abdul]

Can God make an accordion so annoying that he couldn't play it?

[Groovus Maximus]

Never been to a bris, have you?

[invisible furry hand]

accordions are awesome!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LwYIel5yCQ

[Loki]

But what if the Accordistan is made entirely from Nerf foam? /snark

[Matrix]

until they start jailing people or killing them for not believing in it, then I'm not too worried about it.

[Apostate Jew]

"...just as faith based as G-d."

Except that the number of people murdered in the name of G-d is several orders of magnitude greater than the number of people murdered in the name of physics.

[Longtorso]

It's Really Getting to be Silly Season
Stephen Spaulding, Staff Counsel at liberal pressure group Common Cause, says that Republicans, unlike Democrats, understand that the court is a partisan body: "I think that progressives have approached the court as a place of justice, whereas the right wing has approached the court as a place of pure power."

[Pro Libertate]

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most full of shit, of them all?

[Groovus Maximus]

Is there a time limit consideration here? This could take a few moons...

[Pro Libertate]

No, no, take your time.

[NoVAHockey]

Thursday can't get here fast enough.

[ant1sthenes]

Aww, poor widdle guy, does someone need a binky?

[BakedPenguin]

"My opponents act exactly like my own projected feelings."

[Doctor Whom]

So me managed to be staff counsel without ever having taken first-year constitutional law? I'm impressed.

[NotSure]

Turkey needs reminding that when you fly a spy plane over a country, that you openly have proclaimed hostile intentions against, then getting that plane shot down is not something you have much to complain about. The Soviets also once shot down a US plane, and the Americans could hardly call that an act of aggression.

[Pro Libertate]

Should've used drones.

[Whiterun Guard]

First world problems...

[LTC John]

No way, all the cool countries on the block fly F-16s.

[LTC John]

Spy plane? An F-4?! The Turks should have thanked the Syrians for riding their inventory of that relic.

[Loki]

I didn't realize that anyone still flew F-4s. I suspect the pilot was actually trying to commit "suicide by SAM" just so he wouldn't have to fly an F-4 anymore.

[#]

i believe f-4's, being quite small, are still used by a lot of countries for localized bombing missions near or directed at SAM sites

[John]

"Democrats are considering canceling their political convention's kick-off event at the Charlotte Motor Speedway, as party planners grapple with a roughly $27 million fundraising deficit, according to two people familiar with matter."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/.....ntion.html

They can't even manage the money they steal.

[db]

True to form, they claim it's a revenue problem, not a spending problem. But when they find they can't just steal the money, they think about cutting spending. The real world lesson this offers will be lost on them, I'm sure.

[Rich]

The ordinance specifically states, "No person clad in bathing attire shall be on the boardwalk or the public walks adjacent thereto." It also prohibits holes deeper than 12 inches to be dug in the beachfront.

Obviously the solution is to have Attire Police collecting $5 in cash from every person clad in bathing attire on the boardwalk.

[Brian D]

Who wears attire when they bathe? Are people running around in shower caps?

[invisible furry hand]

Or make the use of bathing machines mandatory, and the city monopolise their hiring

[Groovus Maximus]

Who is going to steward the impending union of bathing attendants? Folks: Unionized. Bathers. Think about that...

[Bardas Phocas]

My crack will never get cleaned.

[Fist of Etiquette]

"Under the Supreme Court decision, police departments in Arizona must enforce Section 2(B), and no one respects the authority of the courts more than police chiefs, so we will do our best to enforce the law. But we are in uncharted territory on this issue."

Uncharted territory. Law enforcement works best in a restraint vacuum. Leaving decisions on who to hassle and how long to hassle them up to police discretion is good for nobody, not even the officers themselves.

[SugarFree]

The GOP Chairwoman in the town of Asbury Park on the Jersey Shore wants the town to enforce a seventy-some year old law on the books setting a dress code for the town's Boardwalk. "I don't want to go back to 1940 or 1950 but the bottom line is you have on your books an ordinance ? no person clad in bathing attire shall be on the boardwalk or public walks adjacent thereto," Louise Murray said.

Yet another draconian anti-obesity law.

[Groovus Maximus]

OH YOU! Just be gald (ha!) that KY isn't coming after you for you penchant for banana hammocks and butt floss, AKA your "Alleged" Swimsuit!

[SugarFree]

Extra small Speedo Jr.

[Rich]

How do they know the grossly obese are wearing *anything*?

[invisible furry hand]

They're like crazy people, at some point the clothes come off and stay off.

Some bathing beauties for your consideration

[BakedPenguin]

Let me return the favor.

[invisible furry hand]

Many thanks BP. The look of surprise and delight on the face of the chap in green is particularly pleasing

[BakedPenguin]

I was just bitter because your Zodiac Mindwarp link above took the piss out of my "1000 Aristotles" joke below.

[Groovus Maximus]

Garbage, FAA, I was impressed you got my reference sans italics...

[John]

So much for the Roberts court being "radical". Facts are such a stubborn thing

The Warren, Burger and Rehnquist Courts overturned precedents at an average rate of 2.7, 2.8 and 2.4 per term, respectively. The Roberts Court, on the other hand, has only overturned an average of 1.6 precedents per term.

- The Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist Courts struck down an average of 7.9, 12.5, and 8.2 laws per term, whereas the Roberts Court has only invalidated an average of 3 laws per term.

http://www.outsidethebeltway.c.....rts-court/

[Restoras]

It isn't "activism" when decisions support/confirm thier statist agenda.

[John]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2.....t_melting/

Antarctic ice shelves not melting at all.

[Auric Demonocles]

Saw a portion of CNN this morning during breakfast, with some demonizing of deregulation. There was an author talking about what was wrong with the airline industry. He kept making references like "170 airlines have gone out of business since deregulation" and "hundreds of thousands of airline jobs have been lost since deregulation", without explaining why those are bad things. He also claimed that consolidation was bad for consumers because it lead to higher prices, but that outsourcing of maintenance was bad because FAA regulators have trouble getting to overseas repair locations. "The next time you get a $99 fare, think about where those savings are coming from".... The last I knew, air travel was still the safest way to travel.

Also, Obama picks on fan favorite player being traded, surprised when Bostonians boo him.

[wareagle]

saw the same interview and still wondering, what is this guy's agenda?

[Eduard van Haalen]

Remember when Reason celebrated the great libertarian triumph of New York's SSM law?

Now there's a lawsuit against a Catholic hospital, claiming that New York employers must provide the same benefits to same-sex partners as to opposite-sex spouses:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06......html?_r=1

[John]

That would never happen.

[o3]

civil rights are funny that way

[Groovus Maximus]

There is a right to benefits from a private employer at the point of a gun?

[Eduard van Haalen]

"Since same-sex marriage became legal in New York last July, most companies in the state have extended spousal health benefits to same-sex couples. But self-insured employers, which include St. Joseph's and other large institutions, are primarily governed by federal, not state regulations. As a result, they may deny health coverage to same-sex couples under the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. In the lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, the employee argued that it was illegal to use the Defense of Marriage Act to justify denial of coverage, because the law is discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional."

[Randian]

Feel free to e-mail or otherwise contact any member of reason and ask them how they feel about this lawsuit.

Go on, I dare you.

[T]

Use video! Post the results on your semi-coherent blog! Or simply bitch in every thread by that particular staffer how they never answered your HardQuestion!

[Randian]

Eduaard is approaching those levels, isn't he?

[BakedPenguin]

The MoneyedInterests of BigHomo are pushing their UnAmericanAgenda!

[invisible furry hand]

Big Homo? That was one of Breitbart's sites wasn't it

[Groovus Maximus]

What you did there, I see it. And with two-way mirrors, too.

[LTC John]

ifh FTW!

[Groovus Maximus]

Any response with Ad Hominems...

[T]

Childish, Groovus, just childish. I should know better than to expect adult replies from libertarians.

[Eduard van Haalen]

"Feel free to e-mail or otherwise contact any member of reason and ask them how they feel about this lawsuit"

I know they're against it; that's not the point. Reason has made clear it's against the coercion of private businesses/individuals. The point I'm making is that this coercion isn't simply a regrettable byproduct of the SSM movement, it is absolutely inseparable from the movement.

So if you want to say, "New York established SSM, what a glorious victory for gay rights!" that's one thing. But to say "yay, libertarianism wins again as SSM is established in New York" is simply in error.

[Randian]

Eduard, just for clarification, do you support the forceful imposition of benefits that The State requires with respect to Opposite Sex Marriages? Just curious.

[Eduard van Haalen]

Depends on what you mean by "forceful" and "benefits."

[Fluffy]

I posted this on the PM links but I was really late to that party so I imagine not many saw it. It may be of some interest to the Randroids here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06.....wanted=all

Google AI researchers accidentally discovered Objectivist epistemology.

Rand said that rational consciousness works by having the brain accumulate a vast number of perceptions, and then you abstract from those perceptions to form concepts. IOW if you see a thousand pictures of a table, your consciousness forms the concept "table" which can then be validly applied to future instances of the same percept.

This is one of the things that academic philosophers find most outrageous about Rand. "Nuh-uh! That's not where concepts come from! [Insert asinine derivative of Platonism here] is where concepts come from!"

But Google's mega-computer-brain apparently never heard of Plato.

[T]

Well, it's hard to come up with a thousand Platos. We've been arguing about the one for millenia, imagine what would happen if we had a thousand.

[invisible furry hand]

They'd produce the works of Shakespeare?

[T]

Executed as shadow puppetry, naturally.

[Groovus Maximus]

Hardly, they would have produced nothing since they would have been arguing, "I'm really you!" till they keeled over. Which may have been a blessing in disguise as the Plato's Republic may never have been authored.

On the downside, we would not have had Aristotle, though a 1000 Aristotles may not have been a good thing either.

[BakedPenguin]

Yeah, I saw 1000 Aristotles back in 1996, and they sucked. Their first two albums were good, but Prime Mover Fuck Machine did nothing for me.

[John]

You only see those thousand pictures of a "table" as a "table" because you are able to understand what a table is. I could look at a table and see something else. I could see it as an extension of the floor. To even perceive it in three dimensions my mind has to do a lot of work. Indeed, people with certain kinds of brain injuries loose the ability to see and perceive depth or changes from one surface to the next.

If our understanding of reality were based completely on our interpretations of our perceptions, we would never agree that a table is a table. There is nothing to say my mind would interpret the perception the same way yours would. Yet, we all agree that a table is a table.

[Fluffy]

Well of course you need valid perception first.

But a huge section of philosophy is hung up on the "problem of universals" - how we move from perceiving temperature to coming up with the concept of Hot, for example.

Google appears to have inadvertently demonstrated that if you perceive a sufficient number of cats you can move to the concept of Cat.

[Randian]

This may sound rather more an assertion than an argument, but I never understood why Rand's epistemology is so despised. It seems to be, for lack of a better term, so obviously right.

[John]

Only if you know what a cat is to begin with. I am told that platonism is on the run in the field of mathematics. But I am not quite competent enough at it to fully understand or explain why.

[Fluffy]

Only if you know what a cat is to begin with.

The Google experiment may have inadvertently demonstrated that's not true.

And that's one of the big, big hangups involved in the problem of universals. "Before we can perceive cats, don't we need the concept of a cat? And wouldn't that mean that the concepts pre-exist the percepts, and therefore are coming from somewhere?"

Rand said that your consciousness spots the related objects because of their shared characteristics, and flags them as 'related objects that need a name', and eventually someone says, "Why don't we call these things 'cats'?"

And academic philosophers hear that and scream, "BURN THE WITCH!"

[John]

because of their shared characteristics,

How do you know what a characteristic is if you don't have a universal to start with?

[Randian]

How do you know what a characteristic is if you don't have a universal to start with?

What? Perception is still operative.

As a child, I saw these things that were generally cylindrical that are vessels for liquids. They are in the general class called "glasses" or "cups". Later you see ones with a little thing on the side, and you learn that in the class of "glasses" you have things called "mugs".

I fail to see how I needed a universal to identify the cylindrical-ness of a "glass" and then later note the characteristic of the subcategory "mug"

[Fluffy]

What? Perception is still operative.

Randian, I think John is raising the Humean objection, namely that undifferentiated perception wouldn't let you know that something was a cylinder unless that category was somehow available to your mind from somewhere else beforehand.

It's precisely the fact that this computer study appears to rebut Hume that makes it so interesting.

[Fluffy]

How do you know what a characteristic is if you don't have a universal to start with?

Reality has the characteristics. All we have to add are words for those characteristics. But we perceive the characteristics whether we have the words yet or not.

These researchers didn't teach their computer what a cat was.

The most interesting part of the article to me is the picture. It's not a real cat. It's an abstraction from a vast number of individual pictures of cats. But it is definitely recognizably a cat.

[John]

Reality has the characteristics.

No reality has the characteristics because you put them there. You only recognize them as characteristics because you know what you are looking at. If you don't know what you are looking at, you don't know what a characteristic is.

Academics laugh at Rand because she is simple minded and wrong.

[Randian]

No reality has the characteristics because you put them there.

The characteristics were already there. A cat is furry regardless of whether I perceive it as furry. A characteristic is, essentially, a named percept of a higher-level concept. The sum of the percepts equals the concept.

[Fluffy]

No reality has the characteristics because you put them there. You only recognize them as characteristics because you know what you are looking at. If you don't know what you are looking at, you don't know what a characteristic is.

John, did you RTFA?

[Randian]

Only if you know what a cat is to begin with.

This is not true.

As a child, you perceive "furry things with four legs". As you acquire more specifics about the furry things, you realize that a "dog" is different from a "cat", without necessarily knowing the accepted name for either. You differentiate based on certain criteria, and then mom tells you "see that thing with whiskers and ears and X-like facial features? That's a cat!" And the little child goes "oh, I knew that thing was different, I just didn't know what to call it"

[Groovus Maximus]

Not quite, TAO. What's a koshka?

[Randian]

The Russian word for "cat".

[Groovus Maximus]

But, unless exposed to English, do Russian children know that, even though it is still a feline? In fact, why not call it a "Snarf"?

[Randian]

But, unless exposed to English, do Russian children know that, even though it is still a feline? In fact, why not call it a "Snarf"?

They know it has the essential characteristics of a "cat", even if they do not know that it is called as such in English. These are two different things.

A languages is basically the organic emergence of a system to categorize percepts and concepts. The fact that both the Russians and the English recognize that something is a "cat" means we are perceiving the same individual cat and/or creating the same "cat concept", even if we name is something different.

[db]

The article states that the neural net was not given any concept of a cat. What's not clear is if it "chose" to identify cats itself based on their frequency in the images it was presented or if it was nudged in that dimension somehow.

[Fluffy]

Right. I don't know enough about computer science to know.

I'm taking the researchers' statement that they just told it to look for patterns, and that the computer conceptualized this image on its own, at face value.

[T]

We all agree there's an object there. It moves, so it's not an extension of the floor. We all agreed the object which we perceive is called a table. What you perceive is somewhat irrelevant to the discussion, since we're all in agreement that the object in question is a table. You may perceive it completely differently than I do, but your perceptions have enough permamanence that the next similar object we both perceive we can generalize back to the first one and recognize the new object is of the same class.

A problem arises when perceptions do not have enough permanence or memory is not retained. Then, you're kind of screwed.

[Suthenboy]

"If our understanding of reality were based completely on our interpretations of our perceptions, we would never agree that a table is a table. There is nothing to say my mind would interpret the perception the same way yours would."

Huh? Yes, there is. Nearly identical sensory apparatus perceives nearly identically. Nearly identical interpreting apparatus interprets nearly identically.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

You don't have to perceive it the same way, you just need to know that what you perceive is called a table.

A stop sign looks red to me. It may look like what I call purple to you but what I call purple you call red. All that would really matter is that we both call that color red, even if it doesn't look the same to both of us.

If you learn to call what you perceive to be an extension of the floor a table and I call a piece of furniture a table, as long as our individual perceptions allow us both to call that thing over there a table we can communicate about tableness just fine.

[SugarFree]

We have slipped fully into stoned undergrad 2am conversation.

"You see the salt on this pretzel? Look at the stars. Some people, they say the stars are billions and billions of tons of hot gas. But I think maybe, maybe it's just God's salt...

And God's just waiting to eat us."

[Groovus Maximus]

Sorry, Saccharin Man, but at least it is entertaining and Ad Hom free. LoneWacko would approve...(no, I did not type that with a straight face)

It's been a while since I have had one of those artisan pretzels, however. Now I'm hungry, ya jerk!

[James Anderson Merritt]

Check out http://www.numenta.com. The guy who gave you the Palm Pilot is now developing software systems that create perceptual representations from streaming information, and use these representations to predict what it will perceive in those data streams in the future. Only the Good Doctor and Susan Calvin know what such software REALLY "perceives," but it is possible for that software and humans to share words, for, say, "cat" or "table," respectively, as well as agree on the identification of various objects as instances of "cat" or "table" in the real world. It's pretty trippy stuff, even if you aren't a stoned college sophomore arguing cosmic truth at 3am in a dorm room.

[James Anderson Merritt]

xxx should be, "to predict what THEY will perceive..."

[James Anderson Merritt]

Also, I should point out that numenta's sytem simulates the operation of cerebral neocortex, and apparently is technically not the same kind of neural-net system as recently reported in connection with Google. Both, however, seem to be able to perceive objects out of streams of changing visual data. They may not assign specific meaning or significance to the objects, however, and need to be told, for example, that the abstract idea they isolated has the label "cat." Or they may not have a notion of "mom's face" or "hands," but when shown pictures of a mom playing peek-a-boo, at least the numenta system can be expected to predict a sequence of images that we would recognize as "peek-a-boo" when shown a human face and/or hands later in a video stream. In modeling and simulating the operation of neocortex, they're chosen a really fascinating and effective approach.

[Randian]

The Google brain assembled a dreamlike digital image of a cat by employing a hierarchy of memory locations to successively cull out general features after being exposed to millions of images.

So awesome! This is where Platonists get confused: they think now that this "dreamlike" visage of a cat is the "ideal form", instead of recognizing that the computer is dropping the particularities of X Cat and Y Cat.

[Tulpa the White]

This is Machine Learning 101. Nothing new except that they have a shit-ton of processing power.

The NYT story (as expected) is very short on details, but it seems that all they're doing is feeding in images/video for the neural net to train on. Not sure how they're concluding that "it invented the concept of a cat"; are they feeding in unrelated cat images and it's identifying them as "similar to that giant pile of cat images you trained me on"? If so, this is REALLY old hat. People have been doing that since the 1990s (albeit on much smaller data collections due to less processing power available).

[Tulpa the White]

Also, there is no reason to believe that what artificial neural networks do is in any way related to how the human brain works. Any more than we would expect a lamprey brain to work the same way a human brain works.

[SugarFree]

SugarFree|6.5.12 @ 9:57AM|#|?|filternamelinkcustom
...
A perfectly rendered pander isn't recognizable by the people being pandered to.

Hey, did you know the next Disney princess is going to fight with a bow and arrow AND have curly hair! Wow!

Ahem.

Merida From Brave Isn't a Lesbian, But She Could Be

[T]

The fact that you spend so much time over there as to be able to predict the results should bother you.

Unless you're getting a thesis out of it, of course.

[invisible furry hand]

Or a kickback. Imagine the traffic Mr Free drives Jezebel's way

[Groovus Maximus]

Now that's some payola!

[SugarFree]

They do that for everything. Did you hear about how AWESOME Bridesmaids is? A hugely fat shit in a sink. COMEDY GOLD! But, gosh I really do hate Judd Apatow.

Their comments are closed. I assume that they are switching over to fuckwit system that Gawker beta tested.

[Groovus Maximus]

I suggest you christen it with pure, concentrated, undiluted, Saccharin Man SLASH FIC! It may just break the Intertoobz!

Kinda like rupturing a hymen or taking that first drunk shit in the yard or...well, enough about you and your cousin's prom night.

[Fluffy]

The point is: Kids will notice that her happily ever after isn't dependent on a wedding. And that feels like a step in the right direction.

You know how we could take some MORE steps in that direction?

Stop posting articles at Jezebel complaining that men aren't attracted to Jezebelian women.

After all, if marriage doesn't define you and heteronormative images of romantic love should be discouraged, then maybe the Jezebelians who are whining about not having dates should shut the fuck up to demonstrate their revolutionary solidarity.

[T]

There's half the site gone in one fell swoop.

[Bardas Phocas]

If you are going to steal the beloved Tor Tor dance, just expect a riot. People won't stand for this.
Hey we could make a movie about that.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/.....tacks.html

[Auric Demonocles]

I can haz brickbatz?

[0x90]

Always nice to be present for the birth of a new meme:

"The tax cuts passed under President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003, aimed especially at the rich, were a particularly ineffective way of filling the gap; they put the burden of attaining full employment on the Fed, which filled the gap by creating a bubble, through lax regulations and loose monetary policy. And the bubble induced the bottom 80% of Americans to consume beyond their means. The policy worked, but it was a temporary and unsustainable palliative."

Stiglitz: http://news.investors.com/arti.....uality.htm

[NotSure]

Not really a bad one, if the central bank did create such catastrophic bubble, even though it was because Bush was the ultimate cause, it still does mean that central banks can cause catastrophic bubbles, which is not a good argument in support of central banking.

[Rasilio]

I think Mr Stiglitz needs to go and look up historical Fed interest rates. If he did that he might realize that the Fed's bubble causing inflationary policies began in 1989, not 2001. Further he might want to look at the actual Bush tax cuts that were enacted where in theory it was $300 billion a year cut for low/middle income earners and $70 billion a year cut for the rich.

Then maybe he can come back and see if he still has an argument left.

[R C Dean]

So, if I'm following, the premise is that tax cuts, by leaving more money in the private economy, actually prevent the private economy from creating jobs, which can only be remedied by the Fed actually pumping more money into the private economy with a liquidity bubble.

[R C Dean]

Clicked too soon. To summarize: Retained earnings = bad for employment. Debt = good for employment (in the short run). Money, it turns out, isn't fungible after all.

[0x90]

You're this close to being a fake-Nobel laureate.

[DEG]

An unusual piece of good news:

http://www.pottsmerc.com/artic.....r-homicide

[invisible furry hand]

On May 18, prosecutors allege Barry Searfoss Jr., 40, was drinking all day at a golf outing ? a fundraiser for youth scholarships honoring a girl who was killed by a drunken driver in 1997.

Rimshot!

[Whiterun Guard]

Somewhere, right now, a hipster is smirking.

[Groovus Maximus]

It's the tangy taste of artisan mayo and free range honey.

[Suthenboy]

Just to throw one more in.....

Human experience is that all things have a cause, that stories have a beginning and end, birth and death, start and finish and all that. Thus we try to 'find' the beginning of the universe and seek a prime mover, explanations consistent with our conceptual system.

There is no reason for any of that to hold true when explaining phenomena completely outside the realm of human experience.

[ant1sthenes]

"Ignorance is strength"

Every day brings a new low for the progs. I hope for their sake that Obama loses, so they can avoid going full-on fascist. Though I guess letting the blackshirts out themselves wouldn't be so bad if it came with appropriately harsh consequences for them, but less so for the country.

[Gindjurra]

For certain values of neighborly. After all, HAMAS and Israel enjoy a neighborly relationship, technically speaking.

[JD]

TSA agent spills grandfather's ashes at OIA: http://goo.gl/8snOq

[James Anderson Merritt]

""If you would just, in this room, just twist time and space the right way, you might create an entirely new universe..."

That is indeed the trick of it, is it not? Show us how!