My son just started at University of Chicago last month, so we are now empty nesters.  A sudden change which emphasizes that this is an opportunity, even a requirement, to redesign our lives.  I feel particularly lucky in having for a model my son Stefan, who taught himself while in high school how to continuously […]

The recent disclosure by Edward Snowden of some of  the extent of the NSA’s information collection system has drawn unwelcome attention to the scope of governmental disinformation policy. I think a case can be made for the notion that this outrage is an example of society evolving in a healthy direction, away from secrets and […]

As we get closer to creating a true thinking machine, with projects like OpenCog, it seems expedient to re-examine what protections, like Asimov’s Laws of Robotics, we ought to contemplate. What has gone somewhat unnoticed in previous considerations of superintelligences, including gods, is their entirely different motivational context.  Gods were imagined as interbreeding with us, […]

My son mentioned a talk he heard by Marcel Molina about applying Thomas Aquinas’ characterization of beauty (Clarity, Proportion and Integrity) to computer programming. Which got me thinking about code integrity, which according to Geodel’s Incompleteness Theorems, is not possible to prove. But, nature does it anyway, or something close, with DNA. Species too far […]

I sent my son an article recommending a good habit: starting your day half and hour earlier, on the theory that the extra time used well and regularly in the most effective and productive segment of the day would pay off like coumpounding dividends over the course of a lifetime. Actually, he had already adopted […]

Corporations don’t have natural citizen rights, like free speech. Congress shall make no law excepting itself or its members. No member of congress shall serve more than 14 years. Change the electoral system to a more rational and fair voting system.

Could life be described as simply as: structures or patterns capable of diverting energy flows from their normal entropy destinations into replications of their patterns (including copying error mutations)? Under this definition we should expect to see life in many more circumstances than ones whose chemistry resembles our own, maybe even as cloud formations in […]

Reading about using rust as a solar energy collector started me thinking about some of the ways we have of transforming energy. It might be possible to transform radiation to the right frequency to match photon energy to electron energy as needed for any given solar energy conversion chemistry. Somewhere in here the image of […]

While pondering the failures and opportunities to reinvent our political systems, it occurred to me that we could make some substantive moves towards a more democratic and less representative society.  One of the main problems with representative government is that every time you hire someone to manage your money, a good bit of it usually […]

It seems to me all momentum is angular momentum.  An ice skater pulling in her arms will rotate faster, and conversely, extending her arms will slow her rotation.  If her arms are extended to the radius of the planet, her rate of spin will slow to unnoticeable (to us), seeming instead to go in a […]