Use whatever you want to describe Capn Shanty, because I am completely amazed at the moment, and euphoric beyond belief [a bit of an overstatement on second thought, but you get the idea]. They finally did it; they made a program for discovering the hidden mathematical relationships amongst sets of data! Do any of you know how amazing that is? How completely epic? How revolutionizing? No? Well, for an example of how mind-blowingly epic this thing is, it discovered the equations for pendulum oscillation in only a few hours! It took us 100 years to do that!

If you haven’t heard of the singularity, while that it extremely far off, (in essence, its when computers become smart enough to create machines smarter than themselves; the results of which are too obvious to be stated) this program is a step closer to it! Its called Eureqa (hence the shoddy pun in the title of this post), for those of you who are interested. As for me, I already downloaded it and used it once or twice. Completely amazing.

Ok, I’m not a fan of posting a ton of pictures (yeah, right Capn), but I believe you’ll understand.

‘amn straight.

The picture honestly says it all.

That there, David, is proof that Germany has an army today. Its a German Bundeswehr armed forces armored howitzer Panzerhaubitze 2000 [which would be the reason it resembles the jagdpanther of WW2] (boarding a Russian transport plane). I don’t think we (being the UN) would let Germany have mechanized artillery if they couldn’t have an army. Nor would we let them deploy said weaponry in the fight against terrorism.

Gotta love stumbleupon!

FALLS

Can be very serious apparently.

EXAMPLE OF IRREDUCIBLE COMPLEXITY

Many bacteria, such as Salmonella, Escherichia coli, and some Streptococci, propel themselves with miniature motors at up to 15 body-lengths per second, equivalent to a car traveling 150 miles per hour—in a liquid. These extremely efficient, reversible motors rotate at up to 100,000 revolutions per minute. Each shaft rotates a bundle of whiplike flagella that acts as a propeller. The motors, having rotors and stators, are similar in many respects to electrical motors. However, their electrical charges come from a flow of protons, not electrons. The bacteria can stop, start, and change speed, direction, and even the “propeller’s” shape. They also have intricate sensors, switches, control mechanisms, and a short-term memory. All this is highly miniaturized. Eight million of these bacterial motors would fit inside the circular cross section of a human hair.

Evolutionary theory teaches that bacteria were one of the first forms of life to evolve, and, therefore, they are simple. While bacteria are small, they are not simple. They can even communicate among themselves using chemicals.

The point is that if the bacteria evolved, then the flagella and all of its working parts could NOT have, as the machinery cannot work without all of its parts being perfectly in place from the start (hence, they are irreducibly complex).

The conclusions that are drawn from such a topic are quite obvious.

Foolproof.

This one is great.

The Pepsi Challenge was a blind taste test/Pepsi marketing campaign in which people decided they liked the taste of Pepsi better than Coke. But despite all this Pepsi love, people kept buying Coke. This bugged neuroscientist Read Montague for years and inspired him to set up his own Pepsi Challenge. He monitored the neural activity of his taste testers with a functional MRI machine.

“Without knowing what they were drinking, about half of them said they preferred Pepsi. But once Montague told them which samples were Coke, three-fourths said that drink tasted better, and their brain activity changed too. Coke ‘lit up’ the medial prefrontal cortex - a part of the brain that controls higher thinking.”

You’re not just drinking cola, the study seems to imply. You’re drinking memories.

Montague isn’t the only person bothered by the results of the Pepsi Challenge. In Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, he ascribed Pepsi’s taste test success to its sweetness. He quotes Carol Dollard, who used to work in product development for Pepsi: “If you only test in a sip test, consumers will like the sweeter product [Pepsi]. But when they have to drink a whole bottle or can, that sweetness can get really overpowering or cloying.”

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Well now. There is a difference; Pepsi puts sugar in theirs, and coke puts fond memories. Or cocaine. Either way.