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News Briefs 22-02-2011

Study shows Welsh sheep more clever than thought – on those long and lonely nights they are charging the shepherds by the minute.

  • Biggest ever solar storm could cause power cuts which last for months.
  • Refuting a myth about human origins.
  • Helpful mutations didn’t sweep through early humans.
  • Earth’s core rotating faster than rest of the planet but slower than previously believed.
  • Thousands flee homes as Philippine volcano erupts.
  • Middle-earth according to Mordor.
  • Hawking contra Philosophy.
  • The case for play.
  • Printing out new ears and skin.
  • Major role played by plankton in Earth’s first breathable atmosphere.
  • British government approved sale of crowd control equipment to Libya.
  • In classical antiquity, philosophers thought the sun did not generate its own heat and light.
  • Why isn’t Wall Street in jail?
  • Oldest fossils ever found may not be fossils after all.

Quote of the Day:

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

John F. Kennedy

  1. Hawking hawking Hawking
    This may be the final nail in the coffin of Hawking’s reputation in general. There was the last embarassing scientific paper which was greeted with a resounding silence, and now this missive fired over the transom in disgust at a world that has passed him by. Hawking was once a giant, but the tragic circumstances of his disease have finally come to bear upon him and so debilitate him that only his past reputation and stature allow him any access at all to the mainstream.

    1. There’s drugs in your brain too, they’re called memories.
      Every form of thought or emotion can be taken as if it’s a drug; thoughts(ideologies, beliefs, religions, etc) and emotions(obvious). Repeating the same process over and over creates an addiction or dependecy or even adaption. Hmm sounds familiar… anyways, isn’t thinking the same thing about one thing for too long a bad thing? For example: believing the US is still a democracy. Is there a list of things science can explain 100% of? Remember, stupidity is relative XD or is that ignorance… or both. Eitherway I agree with Emlong. Hawking is merely an eventual outcome for today’s celebrity world, no true wisdom, just intelligence, greed and money. But I will say that he at least has his intelligence; that one ups him just above conservative zealots.

      1. Philoshophers strike back
        An interesting rebuke to Hawking’s arrogant statement, although a bit long and pompous for my taste.

        And I don’t think I’m able to agree with this philosopher in his assertion that the current counter-intuitive theories that abound in cutting-edge science are evidence of poor logical skills on the part of the scientists proposing them. Granted, quantum physics is highly counter-intuitive, and yet is the most successful scientific theory of the modern age, and the fact that I’m typing this using a laptop is a very solid proof that the laws of physics do not need to agree with the logic tools of the human mind.

        Einstein wouldn’t be the giant he is today if all his witty mental experiments hadn’t been eventually confirmed by observations or experimentation.

        1. This is the end, my only friend, the end.
          Indeed, the article itself was a little to self-serving(like most things), regardless, 1+1=2 breaks down in the quantum world. They said so in that TV show! It must be real! Nope just a fragment of information concurrent with circumstances; just made that up, sounds pretty good though, must be true… Nope just another part of my comments equation. Or is it?

        2. target audience
          [quote]
          …although a bit long and pompous for my taste.
          [/quote]
          You have to consider the target audience. The article is written for philosophers and their disciples, with the purpose of reassuring them. It is not intended to convince the general public.

  2. What about scientists, Dr. Hawking?
    Hawking may be correct about (some) philosophers not keeping up with theoretical science … Chris Carter, in his book “Science and the Near Death Experience” makes the same point about Daniel Dennett (renowned materialist philosopher). He quotes from Dennett’s book, “Consciousness Explained” where the author maintains that there is only one stuff – material stuff – and that this view is supported by “standard physics”. However, the physicist Henry Stapp points out the Dennett’s argument depends upon equating standard physics with classical physics (the billiard ball physics dating back at least to Newton). In effect then, Dennett is ignoring the importance and implications of quantum physics.

    Nevertheless, scientists themselves are little better at keeping up with science than their philosophical cousins. Carter also quotes Harold Morowitz, professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale, who states that biologists are “relentlessly” moving toward the hard-core materialism of the 19th century while many physicists are moving in the opposite direction.

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