Click here to support the Daily Grail for as little as $US1 per month on Patreon

News Briefs 29-07-04

By Cernigon

Global warming, strange creatures, UFO fragments and Vikings with complexes. It’s all in today’s News Briefs.

  • In the wake of the i robot movie, a realistic look at what it would really take to stop robots from hurting humans
  • The earliest Chinese culture dates back 8,500 years.
  • Will global warming create a malaria epidemic?
  • The UK produces a leaflet on how to prepare for terrorist attacks. Going by past efforts, the advice will be “hide under the table”.
  • Even the Vikings were troubled by the thought that size matters
  • Excavations reveal a busy Iron Age nerve centre in Scotland.
  • Melting of the Greenland Ice Shelf is speeding up and has the potential to affect the Gulf Stream.
  • China launches a hunt for it’s first space woman.
  • The development of synthetic fuels in the US is being blocked by national policy.
  • ’Cool’ fuel cells could revolutionize Earth’s energy resources
  • Van Alllen questions the virtues of spaceflight. If it had’nt been for spaceflight he would not be famous for his “belt” in the first place.
  • A metallic fragment alleged to come from the debris from the Roswell UFO Crash seems to exhibit strange properties
  • Legends of Dragons : real creatures or paranormal manefestations?
  • Will machines make humans smarter or just more dependent on our calculators, car navigators, and kitchen conveniences?
  • A Congressional Panel reports on America’s vulnerability to EMP attack. I suppose that applies to everyone else too.
  • The latest data show that the Amazon is still the “Lungs of the World”.
  • And with all this talk of pollution, global warming and species extinctions, maybe its time to look again at nuclear power?
  • The Legend of Hogzilla. ‘Nuff Said.
  • The Center for Inquiry, those nice people behind both CSICOP and the Council for Secular Humanism, are expanding.
  • A Jamaican psychologist says there is no basis to the practice of “obeah” on the island, suggesting any effects are simply a placebo effect. You still end up just as dead, though.
  • The UK’s military is now its biggest drug dealer after a bulk supply of stimulants for soldiers is purchased. Just what we need more of – wired, sleep-depived paranoids with heavy weapons…
  • A profile of probably the most intelligent man I ever met: Richard Dawkins, who was just voted Britain’s top intellectual.
  • The myths and the realities of nanotech futures.

Quote of the Day:


The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously



Hubert H. Humphrey

Cernig

5 Comments

  2. I, Robot
    Azimov’s three laws of robotics were predicated on the invention of the “positronic brain”, which theoretically simulated the function of a human brain, although to a lesser? degree. In that context, the fictional robots equipped with that device and appropriate programming behaved in concert with the three laws, having the ncessary discriminatory powers of observation and judgement. Azimov knew, however, that programming is not the same as having good values. There are always traps and dilemmas, and even as humans, we don’t handle them well a good portion of the time, despite our cognitive abilities and value systems. Given the circumstances in Azimov’s fiction, I think the robots are likely to do a more effective job of behaving peacefully than today’s humans.

    Regards,
    khefre

    “You see, it’s all so very clear to me now. It’s wonderful.” Dave Bowman

  3. Man in Space (not?)
    I think Mr. Van Allen has lost his faith. Ever since I was old enough to know my way around the night sky, I’ve felt the tug of that apparently limitless void. I read much science fiction in my youth, dreaming of the day when a manned space station would orbit the Earth, a stepping-off place for other worlds. I watched during the early rocket years, the Vanguard failures, Sputnik, Laika and Gagarin; I stood in the gymnasium as John Glenn’s craft rose on a column of flame, and my teachers yelled “Go, baby, Go!”. I watched the Saturn V fling us at the Moon, and bring us back again, and held my breath as Crippen and Young rode that flying brick of a Space Shuttle to a safe landing at Edwards. I choked back tears when Apollo 1 burned in testing; when Christa McAuliffe’s parents watched the culmination of their parenthood evaporate in a cluster of smoking debris; and when Columbia turned into meteor-like fragments on its way home. Return on investment be damned; when I go outside at night to look at the moon, I still feel a tug incommensurrate with its gravity; I still gaze at Orion with a sense of wonder; I still look deeply into the river of stars that is our Milky Way with a desire to see what’s out there, even though at my age, I will probably never go. We are far-voyagers, we humans. Perhaps because we are made of star stuff, we feel the pull like Salmon going home to spawn. It will take much more than we can imagine to bridge the gap between the stars, but we will – maybe not on this trip up the ladder, but someday. Meanwhile, the hunter with the upraised arm will beckon, irresistably.

    Regards,
    khefre

    “You see, it’s all so very clear to me now. It’s wonderful.” Dave Bowman

  4. Loosen up the belt Van Allen
    What Van Allen fails to mention: There IS a tremendous amount of science to be learned by having a manned space program . . . namely HOW TO LIVE IN SPACE! . I’m sure Van Allen will have solved all the problems of how to live in space, long before anyone actually has to go there . . . or maybe not.

    Space is dangerous, that’s certain. It’s dangerous to do deep sea exploration too, but should that stop us? Only by doing do we learn what works and what doesn’t. Human life is precious indeed, but is it not up to the individual to decide what’s the best use for his or her life? If you were to die advancing the whole human race, that’s not such a bad way to go in my mind. I can think of much worse. . .

    Like an American Boy Scout, the Human Race needs to ‘Be Prepared’ for anything. We need to master all environments, including space. I can imagine a dozen scenarios where it would be in humanities best interest to go to space . . . in person. I’m sure most grailers can too.

    I understand that there is death and suffering, in Africa, Asia, the Middle East . . but the truth of the matter is that there has always been such suffering, non-stop, for all recorded history, in greater or lesser degrees. Should we take all that “space money” and feed the poor? Should we stop progress while we expend all of our resources trying to help everyone catch up? That’s like saying we should not spend billions on medical research, because there are so many people suffering in daily misery, they should get the money instead to live out their lives comfortably. . . Perhaps that’s a better way to spend the money, but I do not believe so. There will always be haves and have nots, and while we owe it to our brothers in humanity to do our best to uplift them, sometimes the bitter pill is the one that works best. One example: If there were to be a meteor that were to wipe out the Earth’s biosphere, perhaps a Space Station aloft for five to ten years would be our only “Noah’s Ark”.

    All astronauts that I’ve read about or met in person have talked about the spiritual transformation that comes from seeing our Earth as a pale blue ball. Once one of us transforms, so too do all of us. . . that’s worth the whole lot in my book.

    Looking to the stars uplifts us all. The transformative power of turning fantasy into reality should not be underestimated. . .

    Up Up and Away!

    AncientSkyman

    The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

    George Bernard Shaw

  5. Cool Fuel
    I love stories like this – they really seem to offer hope for a more environmentally friendly future.

    However, they never seem to talk about the environmental cost of producing the cells, nor whether they will ever be cost effective enough to use in the home … let alone whether they’ll get anything like governmental or corporate backing to produce such things in great enough numbers to replace our current methods of power generation.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Mobile menu - fractal