Max Tegmark remains one of the most interesting scientists alive. His book, Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (2017), is must reading for those wanting a quick and accessible survey of how artificial intelligence is changing, and will challenge, the way we live.[br] Tegmark was interviewed today on the Lex Fridman Podcast. For those of you who do not know Fridman, I say check him out. He is an MIT researcher in machine learning with a wide range of interests. Today marked his 153rd interview; in fact, the very first interview he did was also with...
January 18, 2021
My cell phone blew up mid-afternoon yesterday. Was I watching what was going on in Washington, D.C.? The Capit0l was being stormed! There was a coup taking place!
I never turned on the television, or did more than scan a few Internet accounts of the events. I even asked that the television be kept off at home, the better to avoid the breathless hysteria of cable news.
Yesterday, protestors stormed the Capitol. They drove Congress into a bunker and, for a short time, disrupted the people's business. They were eventually ousted from the building, with...
January 7, 2021
My wife and I exchange books on Christmas. I've finished the first, Lulu Miller's, Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life.
It's rare I wish a book were longer. But I wish that of this book. It is actually three books in one -- at twice the length it would still have been pure pleasure.
I'm not going to say a whole lot about this book; I don't want to spoil it for anyone, even by suggestion. Suffice it to say that somewhere about mid-point, my jaw dropped, and I was transfixed. By the book's end, I had made a new friend....
December 27, 2020
At the mid-point of the tenth month of the Covid-19 pandemic, one thing has become self-evidently clear: Our republic is not well-equipped to deal with a widespread public health emergency. Whether that is a good or bad thing depends in large part on your politics: the left calls for more effective governance and a centralized response to the crisis; the right worries about public-health authoritarianism.[br] There is something superficially paradoxical about the fact that the United States, one of the wealthiest nations in world history, leads the world in the gross...
December 23, 2020
November 13, 2020
Social media censorship is a red-hot topic now. Conservatives are outraged by a perceived bias against their content by the likes of...
October 28, 2020
Viktor Frankenstein had a vision, a dream, really. Could he create life? He left his hometown of Geneva, Switzerland for a local...
December 15, 2020
I am not sure why anyone with a choice in the matter would choose to serve as a police officer in the City of Hartford. It’s not...
November 13, 2019
UNITED STATED STATES DISTRICT COURT DISTRICT OF CONNECTICUT
CAMERON L. ATKINSON, Plaintiff, :
v.
FACEBOOK, INC., : MARK...
November 30, 2020
The thing that most terrifies me about the Covid-19 pandemic is not the prospect of death or physical illness. No one gets out of here...
December 8, 2020
Am I guilty of professional misconduct worthy of forfeiture of my law license if I publicly question whether we really need Juneteenth...