Prosthetic Conscience

India is going forward with producing (and exporting) Thorium-fuel-cycle fission reactors. Compared to Uranium-fuel-cycle reactors, the Thorium fuel cycle:

offers several potential advantages over a uranium fuel cycle, including greater resource abundance, superior physical and nuclear properties of fuel, enhanced proliferation resistance, and reduced plutonium and actinide production.

The criticism by commentator heteromeles is relevant, of course.

Source: 2009-09-22 Tue, Charlie’s Diary: The future, Indian-style

From Jamais Cascio:

With their unwavering focus on computing power and digital technology, leading Singularity proponents increasingly define the future in language devoid of politics and culture—thereby missing two of the factors most likely to shape the possibility the direction of any technology-driven intelligence explosion. Even if the final result is a “post-human” era, leaving out human elements when describing what leads up to a Singularity isn’t just mistaken, it’s potentially quite dangerous. It’s time to set aside algorithms and avatars, and talk about the truly important issues surrounding the possibility of a Singularity: political power, social responsibility, and the role of human agency.

Source: 2009-09-23 Wed, Singularity Salon: Putting the Human Back in the Post-Human Condition - NYC Future Salon (New York, NY) - Meetup.com

A Child’s Machiavelli began as a series of paintings, imaginary pages from what I envisioned as a first-grade primer instructing the uninitiated on how to seize and hold power.

Source: 2009-09-23 Wed, Claudia Hart

Geek Feminism Blog writes:

Yonmei over at Feminist SF writes a heartbreaking post about Alan Turing (who was convicted of gross indecency for homosexual acts) and Orson Scott Card (who supports such criminalisation).

Source: 2009-09-23 Wed, Orson Scott Card, meet Alan Turing at Feminist SF – The Blog!

A “special edition” of the New York Post cooked up by the Yes Men.

Source: 2009-09-24 Thu, New York Post

“And if I were a ridiculous researcher, I’d say, ‘A dead salmon perceiving humans can tell their emotional state.’”

Source: 2009-09-24 Thu, Scanning Dead Salmon in fMRI Machine Highlights Risk of Red Herrings | Wired Science | Wired.com

It’s one thing to believe, as I and the author of this article do, that the 9/11 Truthers have not made their case, and that the “blowback” hypothesis is much more likely. It’s quite another to believe them crazy because “it is simply inconceivable that federal officials would ever do such a dastardly thing.”

Source: 2009-09-24 Thu, Operation Northwoods and the 9/11 Truthers