Month: January 2014

Ancient Rome Infanticide Practices Did Not Favor Boys After All, DNA Study Suggests

"Now that we can use DNA to tell whether the babies were male or female, we're starting to revise the commonly held assumptions about infanticide in the Roman world," said Kristina Killgrove, a bioarchaeologist at the University of West Florida, who was not involved in the research. As horrifying as the killing of newborns seems … Continue reading Ancient Rome Infanticide Practices Did Not Favor Boys After All, DNA Study Suggests →

After human extinction, a robot civilization?

This is a review of Charlie Stross's science fiction novel 'Saturn's Children'.  It's been out for a few years, but I wanted to read his latest, 'Neptune's Brood', which is a sequel (of sorts), so I started with this one. Stross describes a universe where humans have gone extinct, but where the sentient machines that … Continue reading After human extinction, a robot civilization? →

For interstellar travel, transmission is much cheaper

It will always be a lot cheaper to send a radio signal to an interstellar destination than any kind of physical presence.  Our discussion the other day on the difficulties of interstellar travel left me pondering this, something that is well known to astronomers and other thinkers in this area. Given sufficiently advanced technology, the … Continue reading For interstellar travel, transmission is much cheaper →

Daniel Dennett on free will

Daniel Dennett has written a long paper on free will, specifically taking on Sam Harris' book on the subject.  Dennett is a compatiblist and uses arguments similar to the ones I used in describing this position and in the limitations of determinism. Harris is aware of Dennett's paper... https://twitter.com/SamHarrisOrg/status/427472770025283585 ...so I'd think we'll see a … Continue reading Daniel Dennett on free will →

Psychologists document the age our earliest memories fade — ScienceDaily

Although infants use their memories to learn new information, few adults can remember events in their lives that happened prior to the age of three. Psychologists have now documented that age seven is when these earliest memories tend to fade into oblivion, a phenomenon known as "childhood amnesia." The study is the first empirical demonstration … Continue reading Psychologists document the age our earliest memories fade — ScienceDaily →

Rationally Speaking: Is information physical? And what does that mean?

I’ve been reading for a while now Jim Baggott’s Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth, a fascinating tour through cutting edge theoretical physics, led by someone with a physics background and a healthy (I think) dose of skepticism about the latest declarations from string theorists and the like. … Continue reading Rationally Speaking: Is information physical? And what does that mean? →