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Website Problems

admin — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 06:29:22 +0000

I’m not sure why, but at the moment site navigation is down. When you click on categories or “older entries” and “newer entries” it just refreshes the main page. This will be fixed soon. For now, if you want to look at older posts you can use http://www.boldlygo.org/archives

Sustainable Energy Articles

J. Alden Page — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 15:15:32 +0000

If you’re curious about current energy consumption, production, and the ins and outs of alternative solutions then this is the website for you. This site is an online version of the textbook, Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air. The author, David JC MacKay, tries to arrive at all conclusions based on cited calculations rather than just stating opinions, and he does a very good job of walking you through these calculations. The articles are organized, fun to read, and are aimed at a level that your average highschooler could understand. The book is geared towards British readers, but tends to apply to any nationality.

Some Highlights:

Table of Contents
Motivations
Nuclear Energy
Energy plans for Europe, America, and the World

Robot Teacher is Here

J. Alden Page — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 02:39:14 +0000

Robots have come a long way. Your kid’s kindergarten teacher might be replaced by a multilingual bot. I have no idea how well the robot functions, but it’s amazing this is being done to any extent. It’s also being used for Secretary/Receptionist positions.

Read it: Saya the Japanese Robot

Shifting Gears

J. Alden Page — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 04:15:03 +0000

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve redone the site’s layout. If anything isn’t working, please let me know. Since I’m still fiddling with it, this is also a good time to throw in any suggestions you might have about what you would like to see in the layout. I’ve moved the blog from boldlygo.org/blog to boldlygo.org. This was done because having my main page be at a subdomain was causing the page rank to be split between both urls.

I’m going to be shifting the focus of my posts. From now on, most of my posts are going to be both based around and reference science fiction stories. My first post is an example of this. I originally intended for this site to be focused on science fiction rather than items in the news. I think the former is a better idea. Pulling ideas from science fiction stories and discussing them should make it easier to find ideas to post about, and also should make my posts more unique. Although, I’m still withholding the right to write the occasional rant about current events.

Write! I would love for this to be a community blog. Posts need to be on topic, but they do not need to specifically reference science fiction literature. On that note, I know I haven’t been posting very often. I’m going to be trying very hard to return to posting at least once a week.

Grains of Consciousness

J. Alden Page — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:41:36 +0000

We could not possibly be conscious of these things and remember all of them because our mind would be so full of useless details we would be unable to think. From all this awareness we must select, and what we select and call consciousness is never the same as the awareness because the process of selection mutates it. We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.

Robert M. Prisig

Frank Herbert-Helpless Societies Create Kings

J. Alden Page — Thu, 08 May 2008 05:04:46 +0000

If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.

Frank Herbert

Carl Sagan-Science Ignorance Will Lead to Destruction

J. Alden Page — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:18:40 +0000

We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

Carl Sagan

Gene Roddenberry- Scifi is a Method for Thinking

J. Alden Page — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:59:18 +0000

For me science fiction is a way of thinking, a way of logic that bypasses a lot of nonsense. It allows people to look directly at important subjects.

Gene Roddenberry

Pro Blog Review

J. Alden Page — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 05:55:18 +0000

I want to thank pro-blog reviews for giving boldygo.org a positive review. Your aide in helping people find this fledgling site is appreciated.

The review can be viewed here: http://pro-blogreviews.blogspot.com/2008/03/boldly-go.html

Military Creating Artificial Intelligence

J. Alden Page — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 02:35:56 +0000

The U.S. military is working on creating a chip that mimics the human brain.

The key to achieving the vision of the SyNAPSE program will be an unprecedented multidisciplinary approach that coordinates aggressive technology development in the following technical areas: 1) Hardware; 2) Architecture; 3) Simulation; and 4) Environment. Hardware includes neuromorphic electronics with novel, high density, plastic, synaptic components; Architecture includes neuromorphic design from microcircuits to complete system; Simulation includes large-scale digital simulation of neuromorphic circuits and functional neuromorphic systems; and Environment includes virtual training, testing and benchmarking for neuromorphic systems.

-DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency)

It will be interesting to see how this research develops. One potential problem is that the human brain is very much built to function in a human body. A chip modeled after the human brain might need a human-like environment to manifest its intelligence. DARPA mentions virtual reality, while I’m sure we’ll get there, virtual reality still falls very short of replicating the human-body experience.

I found out about this through brain stimulant, and I have practically plagiarized the article. Brain Stimulant is a little known but very interesting blog.