in the effort to create machines that accurately simulate human behavior, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University said Monday they had built the first robot with the capacity to suppress its emotions. "This is the holy grail of artificial intelligence," said project director Kate Tillman [...] "We felt we were on the right track when we brought up a personal shortcoming and it paced around the lab muttering, but when it started breaking eye contact and changing the subject, we knew we had accomplished something revolutionary."

Any bets that it will clap, cheer, vote for the lesser of two evils in a hearbeat, and believe that democrats have emptied the swamp of congressional corruption, without using any cpu cycles at all?

Ex and I are both relieved, and now I have official rights to my son.

Ex and I have decided to remain friendly, even friends. Her brother and I are thick as thieves, so it's kind of necessary.

Now time to look for a novia chula colombiana!

Two recent articles from/re: intellectual conservatives support my argument.

First, the LA Times from Sunday, entitled "From Neocons to Crazycons" by David Klinghoffer, who was the Literary Edito of Buckley's National Review in teh 1990s.  So, Klinghoffer has impeccaable credentials as a conservative intellectual.  And the title of his article is promising--about all those grubby nuts taking over the GOP.  

But look at a couple of points he makes:

When I was a college student in the late 1980s interviewing for an internship at National Review, Managing Editor Richard Brookhiser fixed me with a look and posed a question that might seem more natural in a religious than in a political context. "How did you become a conservative?" he asked.

Evangelical Christians, curious about their fellow believers, will sometimes ask something similar: "How did you become a Christian?" Among conservatives, most of us too had "born again" stories, but they were political rather than religious. (Though sometimes our philosophical paths led to new religious paths as well: The first step on my own journey to Orthodox Judaism was to become a conservative.)

Thus, this conservative intellectual describes the common nexus between relgious conversion--to a traditional religion, of the rulemonger and authoritarian stripe, I would submit.

Also, look at Klinghoffers definition of conservatism:

The idea of purpose in the cosmos was central to the conservative vision. Another icon on the right, Whittaker Chambers, described in his 1952 memoir, "Witness," the moment he awoke from his earlier communism: It was upon looking closely one day at his young daughter's ear. Noting the exquisite beauty, the evidence of "immense design" shook him. He could never again subscribe to the secular, materialist dream.

When I became a conservative, that is what I signed up for: a profound vision granting transcendent significance to public life and hope in private life. The goal wasn't to defeat Democratic officeholders or humiliate left-wing activists. It was, and still is, with those who remember, to save civilization.

See, Chambers became a conservative when he gave up being secular.  And, Klinhoffer's conservatism is a "transcendent vision."  Could it be put any stronger that conservative value abstract principle over real people?  

The "dream" is more important than anything else.  This explains Reagan.  He descrbied the dream well--for this he was loved.  No  matter that the dreams wasn't true--he did negotiate with terrorists and trade arms for hostages,a nd he di raise taxes significantly at least twice.  the truth does not matter.  The dream does.

Hence, Joe the Plumber who had no current chance or even the liklelihhod of ever being subject ot Obama's tax hike on the wealthy.  But Joe the Plumber had the dream, and that dream, as detached from reality as it was, is what matters--and one can hear any number of conservative thinkers nod in agreement that having the dream is more important than getting actual tax relief.

This emphasis on the abstract and religious dream of transcendence leads to very different methods of thought.  It is inductive v. deductive reasoning.  Conservatives have the dream--the base assumption which they arrive at through mystical/religious sexperiences--and then they deduce how the rest of the world should be run.

Progressives generally more often make an effort to use inductive reasoning.  They review the real world they see and try to make logical connections between related set of facts, as jondee put it here.  The scientific method.

Conservatives fight very hard to protect their base assumptions from which they deduce how the world should be run.  Thus, Darwin and Climate Change are existential/religious threats that must be extinguished.

And, here is the second quote from the prominent NeoCon thinker, Norman Podhoretz:

Jeffers accepts this account but adds a surprising theological twist, telling us that in February 1970, Podhoretz experienced a mystical vision in the woods of upstate New York that convinced him "Judaism was true." Jeffers has difficulty explaining precisely what this revelation meant,

Conservatives become conservative via a religious conversion.  Not just for the Christians, but for those Jewish Neocons as well.

But I do not believe all religious belief and spiritual orientation leads to the conservative epiphany.  Just those who like Winston Smith see the beauty in authoritarianism, the rulemongers who need and crave certainty.

So, it is not about politics with the conservatives, but defending their vision of the meaning of life.  Thus, validation from the government, and beating the progressives, and winning a cosmic battle against their own doubts, is all important.

Our expectations? Do your own laundry, pick up your own dishes and food waste and get a job.  He got upset and called us effing a-holes, effing nags, he doesn't want to grow up you effers, stfu.  So how did I get my bundle of joy to get a job?  Well, I kicked his patootie out.  He was to go to work and left a 11:00 pm the night before and came home at 1:00 on a Monday afternoon to chained doors.  He called yesterday asking if he could come home... yes, if you do your laundry and go to work.  Tada!

When it came to schools forcing everyone and anyone into college prep curricula. He never understood why the trades weren't taught in high schools. I mean, what is it with the notion that simply because a student has a decent aptitude he/she must go to college.

Doesn't the drop out rate register with these  administrators? How many happy, fulfilled, and well prepared kids would we have if future machinists, tool makers, electricians, etc. were graduated alongside future engineers, teachers, and dentists?

Certainly if the economy is still in the doldrums by this time in 2012, it would have to be a major option as team Obama nervously surveys the political terrain and contemplates needing a game changer.  Hillary could firm up the Dem base, bring back some women, and help with indies.

Embarrassing then, but kind of funny now - as if it was a premonition of things to come. ;)

And Saxo Bank is not a new sponsor. They just decided to continue one more year, together with Sungard, a software and IT services company. (Why they call themselves something that sounds like a sunprotection formula, I'll never know.)

wow
just wow

Even forgetting the diabetes angle for a sec...30 hours cage time for a foot on a seat?  Seriously?  

I have not read it yet but I am told the complaint is rather stunning.

Add the Center for Constitutional Rights to Glen Beck's $hitlist of ACLU, Tides Foundation, et al. They and the ACLU are suing the US government for limiting their ability to represent the American citizen who is on the government's assassination list.

The eight-day race, scheduled for next August, will be announced at a Wednesday morning news conference on the state capitol steps. And the event will get a celebrity push from seven-time Tour De France champion Lance Armstrong. He announced on Twitter this morning that he will join Ritter for the announcement.

Immediately after Proposition 8 passed, many who supported same-sex marriage tried to make sense of the results. A set of assumptions gained wide acceptance. Some are correct. Most, however, are just plain wrong. And it's crucial that we know what happened in the last election before launching another attempt to legalize marriage for all.

SNIP

After the election, a misleading finding from exit polls led many to blame African Americans for the loss. But in our new analysis, it appears that African Americans' views were relatively stable. True, a majority of African Americans opposed same-sex marriage, but that was true at the beginning and at the end of the campaign; few changed their minds in the closing weeks.

The shift, it turns out, was greatest among parents with children under 18 living at home -- many of them white Democrats.

The numbers are staggering. In the last six weeks, when both sides saturated the airwaves with television ads, more than 687,000 voters changed their minds and decided to oppose same-sex marriage. More than 500,000 of those, the data suggest, were parents with children under 18 living at home. Because the proposition passed by 600,000 votes, this shift alone more than handed victory to proponents.

SNIP

Another misconception was that those who voted for Proposition 8 were motivated by hate. This does not describe most of the 687,000 who changed their minds in the closing weeks. After all, they supported same-sex marriage before the opposition peeled them away. Yes, they turned out to be susceptible to an appeal based on anti-gay prejudice. But they were frightened by misinformation. No on 8's one TV ad that directly responded to the fear-mongering helped assuage some of the fear, but it was too little, too late.

SNIP

Polling suggests that half a million people who opposed same-sex marriage mistakenly voted against the proposition. They were confused by the idea that a "no" vote was actually a vote for gay marriage. This "wrong-way voting" affected both sides, but overwhelmingly it helped the "no" side. Our analysis suggests that the division among California voters on same-sex marriage at the time of Proposition 8 was actually 54% to 46% -- not so close. We are actually 1 million votes away from being able to reverse Proposition 8.

Despite past statements by federal agencies such as the TSA that images from body scanners were not and could not be saved or recorded, a government agency has admitted to storing approximately 35,000 body scan images, CNET reports.

According to CNET, "U.S. Marshals Service admitted this week that it had surreptitiously saved tens of thousands of images recorded with a millimeter wave system at the security checkpoint of a single Florida courthouse."

Hip-hop, more than most pop genres, is something of a pulpit, urban fire and brimstone garbed in baggy pants and backward caps. So it's little wonder that one of the music form's icons, Haitian-American superstar Wyclef Jean, is the son of a Nazarene preacher -- or that he likens himself, as a child of the Haitian diaspora, to a modern-day Moses, destined to return and lead his people out of bondage.