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_________________________ ________________ 3/3/2005 10:55AM 42nd Mersenne prime 225,964,951 - 1 7,816,230 digits. by a Dr Nowak in the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (Gimps) _________________________ _______________ 2/3/2005 SBS TV Dateline John Martinkus interview with GAM Commander Muharram "They attacked us with all their war machinery, their huge fighting force, their warplanes and ships, their Scorpion tanks and so on. They also conducted brutal operations against the people. The slightest suspicion, such as giving a cigarette to a GAM member, could get you shot. Because they conducted such brutal operations, they banned the international community from coming to Aceh. They don't want them to come to Aceh to report what they see. Why don't they want them here? Because they don't want the world to witness their brutality."
Aceh: Nusa: 20Jan05 "We are still waiting for the elephants to come and pull out all the trucks,"
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Ray Kurzweil and the Spike. Lets be clear. The Spike is real and immanent. But its foolish to believe in: 1) Computers smarter than people: Lots of GFlops do NOT a super intelligent being make, merely a faster computer intelligence requires a body, a care. fast switches do not intelligence make. We care because we die, and because we have chemical emotions. Machines dont care. Even if we try to make them care, say by adding a "care" accumulator, a 'smart'; machine would simply set the accumulator to 'full', bingo, care no more! Something like a junkie machine.
2) self replicating nanobots. Before a tiny machine can replicate, show me a normal size factory that needs no people supervision at all. It takes an entire economy to make a gadget like a DVD player. No nanobot can do it alone.
3) immortality We have no idea how the inside of a cell works, nor how neurons grow. There is NO possibility of replacing my right sciatic nerve. Absent that, 'immortality' is an absurdly hopeless proposition.
4) Scanning nd downloading minds. This is an absurdity. It is just not possible to scan at the Molecular level. It is probably impossible in principle. There is certainly no inkling of a method. Even if a scan was possible, the reconstruction is not. It is by no means clear that a molecular-accurate scan would constitute a mind.
5) Teleportation is meaningless Even granted scanning & transmission, what would be constituted at the far end would be my twin, not me. At this end I am supposed to agree to be destroyed so my twin can walk free at the far end? Not on your Nellie.
Despite these caveats, it seems clear that exponential growth in machine complexity will lead to a social complexity beyond current comprehension. BUT EcoCrash may subsume the Spike.
Ecocrash: Soil depletion. Water contamination. PeakOil [PO] no cheap oil will gut this culture. 2 Billion township souls with no gardens, no water tanks, will trash the towns. Cheap weapons and sensors will render security obsolete. Car culture, having trashed village level interactions, will stall with PO, leaving us within walking distance of precisely nothing. Global Warming imposed on an unstable system - aka agriculture - will cause instability, wide swings, aka crash. Nothing to eat, no trucks to truck it, no pumps, no water.
Human rights, habeas corpus, due process have already gone - did you notice? Torture, disappearance, assassination, character assassination, have arrived - did you notice? Forgery has replaced elections - did you notice? Forever war has arrived - did you notice? Concentration camps are in use - have you noticed?
There is a nice irony in car bombs: oil troopers pulverised by cars packed with explosives. Car culture brought these troops to this town, Cars smash them down
We made the trek down to a base near the ruins of ancient Babylon. I stayed right next to the Euphrates River, which is significantly smaller than the Tigris. The camp was dotted with hundreds of date palms, olive and pomegranate trees, and thick reeds next to the river.
The next morning I birded in the ruins of Babylon proper. An Iraq babbler sat obligingly on a fence for a few minutes before diving into the reeds. In the same area I saw a few young white-cheeked bulbuls that were just fledging. A pond near an amphitheater from Alexander the Great's time had a black-crowned night heron, a few little egrets, pied kingfishers, and black-winged stilts.
Near the ruins I saw my first laughing dove. It was walking around near the base of a date tree. I really enjoyed the combination of the lush surroundings, the birds, and the history of Babylon, not to mention that this base is much safer than mine -- it almost never gets attacked.
I returned to Baghdad and took another walk to the scrubby area near the lake. I was treated to a great view of an immature isabelline shrike hunting insects along a dirt berm. I also saw two male black francolins -- large chicken-sized game birds -- chasing each other around in the scrub. When I got too close to them they flew a short distance on their broad, short wings and scurried away into the brush. The birds were spectacular, with their black bellies, deep chestnut collars, and white cheek patches.
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even though they kill
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