Biblical Miracles.

Consider any Biblical miracle you care to, from the walls of Jericho to the Resurrection of Christ.
Each and every one of them could be accomplished by selective temporal manipulation.
The Christian God does time magic.

Contentious Thought For The Day

What is the first thing G-D does according to the Bible?
"Let there be Light"
Who do we know of who may bring light?
Samael, the Light Bringer.
Later Romanized to Lucifer.

oooo spooky.

Fight SOPA and PIPA

I've censored the following, in protest of a bill that gives any corporation and the US government the power to censor the internet. To see the uncensored text, and to stop internet censorship, visit:
http://americancensorship.org/posts/21306/uncensor


████ ████████ you can █████ ████, if the ██████ ███████ ███████ the ████████ how ████ █████ the ████ of the █████ ███████ ████?
█████ for ████ ███████.
█████ for the ███████ of ████████.

Grades of Sentience

I recently got into discussion about qualifying and quantifying sentience, especially as it applies to Artificial Intelligence.
These are my thoughts on the subject.
Credit to Zach Schindler, who helped crystallize my thoughts and broaden the definitions of some Grades, and who added some Grades I didn't even think of.

Grade # (Summary) - Minimum requirements, if previous levels are fufilled. (Examples)
0 (Non-sentient) - inanimate objects, with absolutely no reaction to their environment. (Rocks etc)
0.5 (Basic Reactive)- unconscious reaction. (Aspects of plants)
1 (Reactive) - semi-conscious reaction to simple external stimuli. (Microscopic animals, Roomba vacuum cleaner)
2 (Proactive) - awareness of their environment, and proactive interaction for survival. (Insects and birds)
3 (Endeavoring) - solves simple problems in the environment through trial and error. (Small mammals, human infants)
4 (Predictive)- uses past experience to predict an outcome to an action, rather than trying each action in turn. (Primates, human children, Deep Thought)
4.5 (Advanced Predictive)- Learns by watching others as well as through personal experience, can think of multiple possible outcomes and plan for them.
5 (Empathetic) - Understands that other intelligent beings exist, and is capable of inferring emotions. (Social mammals, basic Artificial Intelligence)
6 (Sympathetic) - Expresses concern for the well-being of other creatures. (Human adults, great apes, dolphins, true Synthetic Intelligence)
7 (Enlightened) - Can apply ethical rules and guidelines in order to determine action based on morality. (Humans, advanced Synthetic Intelligence)
7.5 (Advanced Enlightened) - Applies multiple ethical systems to moral issues.
8 (Independent) - Applies original thought to morality.
9 (Interdependent) - Collective thought is the norm, ranging from committee to total integration of a group consciousness. Individuals are Grade 8 but share thoughts freely.
10 (Ascended) - Transcendent intelligence, hyper-longevity or immortal.
X (Deity or equivalent) - Omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent, transcends dimensions.

I'm not certain I'm happy with these, I can imagine some grades could be melded with the grades above or below them, or new grades I haven't thought of slotted in.
I'd be pleased to hear your thoughts on the subject, so as always, comment or message me.

Social networking

I'm slightly worried by the trend among game advertisers to see addiction as desirable to the player. I understand that all designers want you to keep coming back (Zynga being the prime example, every one of their games is a masterclass in luring you back) but when did players shift to wanting all their waking hours ruled by 1s and 0s?

Kids these days.

According to the BBC, Alien abduction is one of the top excuses for missing school.
Why are kids so dumb?
Oh yeah, they're skipping school to visit aliens.

Assassins Online

A while back I wrote a post explaining the rules for a little game I found called Assassins, (you can read it here 20-something-nothing.blogspot.com/2010/10/assasins-revised), and even more recently I stumbled across an online version.
Essentially, whenever you and another player are on the same website you can have a shootout, and the winner gets points to level up or "buy" turf, which is a particular website which people pay you game money every time they visit.
If Assassins sounds like fun to you check out metaassassins.com and get your hitman on.