Hello, Friday: The Fiercest Nerds on the Block May 22 – May 28
TGIF. I don’t know about you, but this week has been super-exhausting. Lots of work, lots of worry, and lots of sadness about the court’s decision not to overturn Prop 8. But at least we had great comments to keep us warm at night.
HELLO FRIDAY
- Photo by Ariel Boston
re: Fierce Antipation: May 22-24 (Robot Edition), in which Ryan Dixon says that he’s looking forward to a (near) future shared with sentient robots.
KyleB: I think that you are underestimating the potential and complexities of the human body and the human mind. Why do you and so many others think that we can create in 5000(giving the benefit of the doubt) years of improvement what nature made in millions of years of improvement? Our mind keeps track of an almost infinite amount of cells/neurons/movements/actions/thoughts in an incredibly complex mechanism that we barely understand. My body can actually defend and recover and replace many vital parts without my conscious work. And when i take medication to supplement what my body does, there are lists of problems that it causes at the same time. My computer breaks down and needs serious and expensive repairs in a 3-5 year window. I keep my information spread out across many computers in case I lose it to a bad hard drive or something brakes down. Do you believe that in only 41 years robots will be able to do all of that? Don’t get me wrong, I want to have a house robot to help me clean, garden, cook, and serve guests intelligently and smoothly. But I expect that I will have to have a repair man over to fix it, and I expect that I have it sell itself on craigslist and order a replacement every 3-5 years. And it is a good reason to get rich now.
PHILOSOPHICAL MONDAY
We were dark for memorial day, but I did have some philosophical thoughts like, “Mmm, BBQ.“
OH, IT’S TUESDAY
- Photo by Jurgen Fauth
re: Pregnant Women Are Smug, in which I defended myself and fellow pregnant woman against the YouTube viral video sensation, “Pregnant Women Are Smug.” A few commenters pointed out that one of the song’s complaint about pregnant women who keep the name of their unborn babies secret might be unfair.
BabySmiling: I know several people who told their baby’s name beforehand and got so much crap from people that they ended up changing it. Once the baby is born people are much less likely to speak up, but beforehand people seem to think their opinion is welcome. We have too many opinionated and tactless family members. For me, this is the biggest factor. [Also,] sometimes people change the name once they see the baby. Better not to get too attached if that’s a possibility. Finally, you know I don’t believe in jinxes, but for me there is an element of not wanting to use the name before the baby is really there. Esp. given that mine is high-risk pregnancy. If, heaven forbid, a baby did not make it, I probably wouldn’t keep the same name for the deceased baby as I’d planned to use for a live baby.
WOW! IT’S WEDNESDAY
re: Technically Geeking: New Touch Phones Coming Soon, in which Justin Time previews upcoming touch phones and basically made us all want to upgrade or get something else all together.
MMKV: I love my iPhone and probably will not be upgrading since it is relatively new, but [I] am dying for copy and paste! I am also waiting (since they are late) for Dataviz to release Documents to Go for the iPhone as promised (ETA was supposed to be mid-May)! As a business/fun user I need copy and paste and DTG yesterday! Oh and tethering would be awesome! I had an old Pocket PC a while back on Sprint tat I used for tethering all of the time. Across Sprint made some change and it went from free to super expensive. So if the iPhone could be used for tethering the question is would it be free?
DEAR THURSDAY
re: Baby’s First Sport, in which I ask for advice on how and when to nudge your children towards sports.
Justin_Time: I think that as soon as the baby starts moving you should toss it in a pool and make it learn to swim. Get that out of the way. People actually do that: http://www.infantswim.com