Why do we keep building things like this?

For some reason the human race has an obsession with inventing things that will eventually (insert robot voice over) "KILL-ALL-HUMANS". The military is currently leading the way in kill-bot technology with the Predator drone planes and the deceptively housebroken sounding iRobot line of pre-Cambrianesque prototerminators. USA... USA.... USA!! (fyi I'm for some of these as they kill generic "evil doers" and save the lives of US troops)

But recently we have started to build robots that apparently want to "KILL-ALL-HUMANS AND MAKE THEM FUCKING SUFFER FOR NO REASON". Case in point is this super cute little baby robot. (read the original story here.)

Someone took a great deal of time to develop the mechanics and software required to bring this little guy to life. Once that was completed I imagine the engineers sat back and thought, "You know what this is missing?  The ability to shoot our ass with a damn bow and arrow!" Genius.  First they invent the Stabatron 3000 and now this.

 

Seriously..... why do we keep building these damn things?

Stephen Hawkings is Smart

Physicist, author, genius and all around smooth playa Stephen Hawkins has written a new book, The Grand Design, in which he states that "the universe can and will create itself from nothing", "Spontaneous creation is the reason why there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist", "It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper [fuse] and set the universe going,"

This is pretty significant.  Arguably the worlds greatest mind is coming out on the side of cold brutal logic. Mr. Hawkins new stance could open the eyes of millions and I am all for it. We need more people of his ilk to essentially "come out of the closet" and give weight to a line of reasoning that the majority hush because it is either unpleasant or to difficult for them to grasp.

Unfortunately even with the great scientific fame of Stephen Hawkings this message may be derailed. Denis Alexander, one of Hawkings' Cambridge colleagues seems to shoo away the uncomfortable/icky things that Hawkings said by watering them down. "The 'god' that Stephen Hawking is trying to debunk is not the creator God of the Abrahamic faiths who really is the ultimate explanation for why there is something rather than nothing", Hawkings' god is a god-of-the-gaps used to plug present gaps in our scientific knowledge."

I disagree. Hawkings statements seem pretty clear. I understand Mr. Alexanders desire to try to step back from comments like "God isn't real" (I just said that not Hawkings). People will demonize anyone that hints at such a notion but this attempt to make some room for god in Hawkings statements will only damage them. This is not clarification, this is cowardly.

Hopefully Dr. Hawkings will clarify/reinforce his statements. Otherwise the apologists will be around forever.

What the hell is going on?

So I step away for one short month (moving btw) and holy crapstick.... how many interesting things can possibly try to sneak by me in the mean time.

There was a super hot gay priest scandal at the Vatican.

 The oil well was sealed (don't uncross your fingers just yet).

Blagojevich gets off scott free?!

And now all this craziness about the "Ground Zero Mosque". First off  I'd like to see less religious construction all around. I would greatly prefer a new university or science lab go up. Beyond that personal bias I don't know what everyone is arguing about.  This isn't even a mosque, its a community center. Even if it were a mosque what the hell are we arguing about? Isn't this is America? The center is being built on private land soooooo that should be the end of the story.  And what the hell is the deal with calling this the "Ground Zero Mosque"?  It is not a mosque. It is a community center with a prayer room and it is not at nor directly adjacent to ground zero. Suddenly we are implying that anything built on Manhattan Island = GZ?  GZ is not and should not be treated as holy ground (that kind of thinking is what got us into this mess in the first place.)  With that said how close to GZ would it be OK to build according to the people protesting this?  10 blocks? A mile?  New Jersey?  Now wer are even trying to demonize anyone involved with the mosque. The funny thing about the guy trying to build it is that apparently he is as patriotic, pro-American as an Muslim can get. Bush regularly sent him to the Islamic world as an envoy.
Unfortunately there are some in this country that seem to continuously reinforce that we (America) is no longer the shining light of goodness and freedom that it used to be.  We used to have the highest standards. We didn't torture, everyone got a fair-ish trial, we followed the Geneva convention, we were generally a live and let live kind of place. Even when we do make mistakes (see Native Americans and Japanese internment camps) we try make it up for it (see casinos and Nintendo sales figures). Unfortunately it seems like the collective stupid is really taking off. Its cool to be uneducated, hyper religious and violently angry about everything you don't understand. Hopefully we can turn things around but even if we do we are going to be making up for this mess of shit forever.......

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