ROSSSBLOG

Recent Publications

SAP NetWeaver BI Accelerator
SAP Press Essentials 42
(est pub November 2008)

PDF: pages, KB

Reducing Outer Joins
(with Gerhard Hill)
VLDB Journal online
 
PDF: 11 pages, 138 KB

Hitting on Consciousness
Honderich Versus McGinn
JCS 15(1), 109-128 (2008)

PDF: 20 pages, 125 KB

Der Einfluss der Datenverteilung auf die Performanz eines Data Warehouse
(mit T. Legler, W. Lehner)
12. Fachtagung DBS für Business, Technologie und Web (2007)

PDF: 12 pages, 63 KB

Will Robots See Humans
as Dinosaurs?
JCS 13(12), 97-104 (2006)

PDF: 8 pages, 387 KB

J. ANDREW ROSS

WRITER AND PHILOSOPHER

I am British but I live in Germany and work in the global software company SAP.

I hold four degrees in philosophy, three from Oxford and one from London. I wrote theses on the logic of probability theory, truth and provability in arithmetic and set theory, and formal semantic theory for a constructivist epistemology.

From 1976 to 1987, I worked as a tutor in logic and philosophy in Oxford, as an administrator in London, as a teacher of English in Japan, and as a teacher of mathematics and physics in London.

From 1987 to 1998, I worked as an editor at Springer.

BLOG 2008

Baur au Lac Hotel
 

Dubai is building a giant pyramid called Ziggurat. It will be more than a kilometre tall, cover 2.3 square kilometers, and house nearly one million people. It will dwarf the Burj Dubai, currently the tallest tower in the world, by hundreds of meters. Ziggurat will be powered entirely by solar, wind and sustainable energy. Steam generated by solar power will be piped up inside the pyramid and then released as rain for the garden communities inside.
 

The Sahara Forest project would supply huge greenhouses with solar power to make electricity, cool air, and desalinated water. The installations would stretch across the desert and would be used to grow food crops. The designers include a lead architect from the British Eden project. Demonstration plants are running in Tenerife, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.
 
 

2008 September 25
Baur au Lac Club, Zurich, Switzerland
Dinner with old boys from Exeter College Oxford
and College Rector Frances Cairncross
Guest of honour and speaker: John Walsh
"Mrs Irina Ivanova, mother of the lovely Ekaterina, the cocktail waitress and model who has so beguiled Ronnie Wood, isn't happy about how her daughter has been portrayed: 'Jo Wood said that she is a bitch but she is only 20 — she is just a normal girl.' Absolutely. Nothing could be more normal than for a young woman to link up with a 61-year-old legendary booze-hound and shag-monster, pose naked for him and decamp with him to his Irish mansion to live in innocent bliss for ever. What mother would argue with that?"
John Walsh, The Independent, July 19, 2008

2008 September 7
A New York Times analysis of the Georgia conflict

2008 September 6
Rosetta visits Steins
At 18:58 UT last night, the ESA probe Rosetta approached to within 800 km of asteroid 2867 Steins. The success of the encounter was confirmed at 20:14 UT, when ground control at the European Space Operations Centre, Darmstadt, received initial telemetry from the spacecraft. Asteroid Steins has an irregular shape with a width of 4.6 km and is 360 Gm from Earth, so the signal lag was 1.2 ks.
ESA animations

2008 September 5
A new way to concentrate sunlight could make solar power competitive with fossil fuels

2008 September 4
Is Google the enabler for Big Brother? A future history

2008 September 2

Photo: Timelinks Dubai

Photo: Exploration Architecture

2008 September 1
The Russian invasion of Georgia: a strategic analysis

BigDog is a quadruped robot that walks, runs, climbs on rough terrain, and carries a 150 kg load. BigDog is powered by a gasoline engine that drives a hydraulic actuation system. Its legs are articulated like animal legs and it is the size of a large dog. An on-board computer control system keep it balanced and on course. Boston Dynamics is developing the robot in a program funded by DARPA.
See video
 

SAP nemesis and Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison's
new America Cup contender:
a $10 million BMW Oracle
ocean racing trimaran,
here leaving its hangar

Vernor Vinge

"A universe containing mathematical physicists will at any assigned date be in the state of maximum disorganization which is not inconsistent with the existence of such creatures."
Arthur Eddington, quoted by
Sean, Cosmic Variance



 

Russian soldier sunbathes
on a tank near Gori

Daniel Dennett

Frankenbot Gordon
 

Paul Grover

Christian de Quincey

2008 August 31
Amis on terror: an update
Who's a Jew?

Photo: Neil Rabinowitz / BMW Oracle Racing

2008 August 28
Rainbows End: Intelligence Amplification
The New York Times
Vernor Vinge is a mathematician and computer scientist in San Diego whose science fiction has won five Hugo Awards. In 1993, Dr. Vinge predicted the Singularity.

In his latest novel, Rainbows End, Robert Gu is an English professor and famous poet in 2025, when the Singularity seems near and technology is working wonders. He's so lost in this new world that he has to go back to high school to learn basic survival skills. In the world of 2025, thanks to special contact lenses, you see a constant stream of text and virtual sights overlaying the real world.

To Robert, a misanthrope who had barely mastered e-mail in his earlier life, this networked world is a multitasking hell. He retreats to a library, where he finds a few others still reading books and using ancient machines like laptops. Together they conspire to save the paper library.

Dr. Vinge, who is 63, sees Intelligence Amplification, where humans get steadily smarter by pooling their knowledge with one another and with computers, as one of the better scenarios for the future.

2008 August 26
John Rawls's theory of justice: a critique

2008 August 24
Interoception can explain spiritual experiences

"NATO's welcome to Georgia and Ukraine, for no good reason but at risk of having to come to their aid, has served only to incite Georgia to realise that risk while also infuriating Moscow."
Simon Jenkins, The Sunday Times

2008 August 23
We will not be next, vows Ukraine
The Times
Viktor Yushchenko, the Ukrainian President urged NATO to respond to the Russian invasion of Georgia by moving quickly to expand the frontiers of the alliance eastwards. Yushchenko asserted that the fundamentals of international politics had changed. Ukraine had to do everything in its power to ensure it was not going to be next on the Kremlin hitlist. "It is the first time in Europe since the Cold War that a foreign army has entered the territory of a sovereign state without any internationally accepted legal basis," he said.

2008 August 20
US says no to planes for Israel
Jerusalem Post
The United States has refused to sell Israel planes out of concern that it might be seen as encouraging an Israeli attack on Iran. During his most recent visit to the US, Defense Minister Ehud Barak requested that America sell the IAF several Boeing 767 refueling planes. The White House refused. Barak said the US was opposed at the present time to military action against Teheran.

2008 August 19
What's NATO for?
Telegraph Blogs
NATO has been conspicuous by its absence from the Georgian conflict. Let's conjecture that Russia tried something similar in a NATO state. Say that, as in Georgia, it agreed to remove its forces but somehow didn't quite get round to pulling them out. Does anyone really believe that this would trigger an all-out NATO counter-offensive? The end of the Cold War removed NATO's foundational rationale. The alliance took to expanding rapidly, but there is a danger that it has made a fiction of Article V: the clause that treats an attack on one member as an attack on all. ... The only direct clash between British armed forces and the Red Army was in Estonia in 1918.
AR: Let's try to solve the Georgia conflict non-violently.

Update on the NATO perspective: Pravda on Condi Rice

2008 August 17
Analyzing the conflict in Georgia: perspectives from the
Observer, Sunday Telegraph, New York Times, Pravda

Do veils improve the behavior of Islamic men?

Daniel Dennett — the best atheist since Charles Darwin?

2008 August 15
Reporting Afghanistan
The Independent
Kemp points out that "we did not go to make a so-called traditional documentary. What we tried to show was what the ordinary soldiers are facing, what they are going through. I have seen incredible bravery from very young guys, the young generation that people write off. Look what they are doing in Helmand, and they are doing it for such appallingly low pay." The footage, shot with high-def cameras, is striking and gritty and conveys well the sense of isolation and silence punctured by prolonged bursts of sudden ferocious violence, the fear and excitement, one experiences in the type of combat being undertaken by British forces in Afghanistan. The scenes of ambushes and scrambling under fire, the confusion followed by sheer relief at survival, often expressed by cathartic streams of swearing by Kemp, his crew and the soldiers around them would also be very familiar to anyone who had been there.
AR: I enjoyed the DVD (5 episodes, 3 hours)

Censoring a novel about Aisha, child bride of the Prophet

2008 August 14
Frankenbot has biobrain
Breitbart.com
Stitched together from cultured rat neurons, Gordon's brain was designed at the University of Reading. "The purpose is to figure out how memories are actually stored in a biological brain," said Kevin Warwick, a professor at the University of Reading and one of the robot's principle architects. Gordon has a brain composed of 50,000 to 100,000 active neurons. Removed from rat foetuses and disentangled from each other with an enzyme bath, the specialised nerve cells are laid out in a nutrient-rich medium across an 8x8 cm array of 60 electrodes. This "multi-electrode array" (MEA) serves as the interface between living tissue and machine. The brain is housed in a special temperature-controlled unit and communicates with its "body" via a Bluetooth radio link. Gordon has several MEA "brains" that the scientists can dock into the robot.
AR: This is the Dan Dennett "brain in a vat" scenario!

Edward Luttwak says Bush 43 is a foreign policy success!

2008 August 13
Prince Charles spouts off again
Daily Telegraph
Prince Charles warns that genetically modified crops could cause an environmental disaster. Des Turner, a Labour MP and member of the Commons science committee, said: "Prince Charles has got a way of getting things absolutely wrong." Phil Willis, a Liberal Democrat MP and chairman of the Commons science committee, said the Prince's "lack of scientific understanding" would "condemn millions of people to starvation in areas like sub-Saharan Africa." Ian Gibson, a Labour MP and former lecturer in Biology, said: "Prince Charles should stick to his royal role rather than spout off about something which he has clearly got wrong. Scientists and others who have looked at the problem have found no solid evidence that GM crops affect people's health."

2008 August 11
A series of explosions in a paint factory beside my office caused a fire that took 220 firemen two hours to get under control.

2008 August 8
Reality Bubbles
Christian de Quincey
JCS 15(8), 94-101 (2008)
"Think of reality as made up of countless gazillions of 'bubble moments,' where each bubble is both physical and mental ...
Each bubble exists for a moment, then pops! ...
One of the attractions of Whitehead's panpsychist ontology is that it embraces the core insights of dualism, materialism, and idealism. ... Combining these multiple intuitions in an integrated process is the fundamental insight of panpsychism."
AR: Christian de Quincey is singing from my hymnal.

2008 August 4
First the Globall, now the Sphere
Cnet, July 28 — A group of academics gathered at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington, saw the Sphere, a computer with a spherical touch screen developed by Microsoft Research. The spherical multitouch computer is similar to the tabletop Surface computer that Microsoft announced last year after years in development. The Sphere remains a Microsoft Research project and the company has no current plans to bring it to market.

in 1991/92, I mailed copies of my Globall Hyperatlas article to
Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold — is this the result?

2008 August 3
Richard Dawkins believes that many science teachers are selling our children short by kowtowing to political correctness. "It's fine to teach children about scientific controversies," Dawkins says. "What is not fine is to say, 'There are these two theories. One is called evolution, the other is called Genesis.' If you are going to say that, then you should talk about the Nigerian tribe who believe the world was created from the excrement of ants."

2008 August 2
"Although Nietzsche often described himself (and has been described by others) as an immoralist, his ultimate objection to compassion was an ethical one. The core of humanity was its ambition to greatness, and all greatness depended on suffering. The modern project of compassion, then, taken as the elimination of suffering, was ipso facto a campaign against humanity as such in favor of a descent into the subhuman."
Clifford Orwin, In Character

Sarah Who?
The New York Times
John McCain spent the summer arguing that a 40-something candidate with four years in major office and no significant foreign policy experience was not ready to be president. And then on Friday he picked as his running mate a 40-something candidate with two years in major office and no significant foreign policy experience.

"The things you
 need to know about Joe Biden are:

1 He has been a Senator forever (half of his life).
2 He is a smart guy, not a stuffed suit.
3 He has formidable expertise in foreign policy.
4 He is somewhat prone to gaffes.
5 He is feisty, and effective in attack-dog mode.
6 He can be a bit of an asshole.

Nevertheless, I can live with the pick."
Sean, Cosmic Variance

Rice and Bush

Press photo of the mushroom cloud that loomed over my office for two hours Monday morning

Microsoft researcher Andy Wilson with the Sphere

The Microsoft Sphere is based on the Magic Planet, a product from Global Imagination (Los Gatos, California, founded 2002)

See the Magic Planet in action




 

Da LHC is Superduper Fly

"I sincerely hope I'm not the only one who's at least slightly worried about this mad scientist Peter Higgs and his 'Genesis machine'"
Worried, Norfolk






 

Duffy: another good British musician

2008 July 31

"The Large Hadron Collider at CERN will smash particles together to recreate the moments after the big bang." — Stephen Hawking

2008 July 30
Religions may protect people against disease
Roger Highfield, Daily Telegraph
In a study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, researchers Corey Fincher and Randy Thornhill conclude:
— Religions are far more numerous in the tropics than in temperate areas.
— A society that increased its cultural isolation by adopting a religion was less likely to pick up diseases from its neighbors.
— Societies where infectious diseases are more common are less mobile.
— Religion diversity correlates positively with infectious disease diversity.
— The range of traditional societies is lower in areas with more disease agents.
— Religion diversity is positively related to two measures of stress caused by infection with parasites.
— Religion richness is significantly related to disease richness.
— Religion diversity is highest where disease diversity is highest.

2008 July 27
In January, Bush will be history. Radical Islam will still authorise murder without limit, Iran will still want the bomb, and the autocracies of China and Russia will still be growing in wealth and confidence. Whatever his disagreements with Bush on detail, the new President will have to stop radical Islamist movements and regimes gaining nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons, because he will know that they will use them.
The Observer

The Universe from Scratch — another wonderful arXiv paper

2008 July 26
Last year J.K. Rowling earned 300 million dollars and the top place in the Forbes world list of billionaires. Her Harry Potter books have sold 375 million copies worldwide.

2008 July 23
Almost forgot: my vacation reading was
The Origin of Species
by Charles Darwin

From my latest Panpsychism post:
The interdependence of all things finds its expression in physics in the theoretical framework, such as quantum field theory, with its path integrals and boundary conditions and so on. Within the picture, parts can achieve conditional freedom by incorporating internal mechanisms. For example, my car has the freedom to change gears by itself and hold a constant speed by itself, conditional upon my willed preparation of the appropriate prior state of free motion on a highway under engine power, with gas in the tank and so on. My freedom to do this is conditional on my good health, desire to go from A to B, possession of the relevant papers and so on. That overall state in turn is a free realization of the continuing smooth functioning of the global economic machine, proteosynthesis from my DNA, terrestrial plate tectonics, solar thermonuclear fusion, and doubtless much more besides.

My thread currently has 526 replies and 8792 views. That's a lot. The Sam Harris forum thread with the top stats seems to be Evolution takes a beating, live coast to coast! which starts:
"Boy oh boy, you should have heard the word today! ... The theory of evolution cannot be reconciled with science. To do so is folly. You should know this in your hearts. That great and wonderful will come eventually: every knee shall bow and tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord." Posted 2005-03-15, this pitiful effluvium has attracted 942 replies and 21067 views.

2008 July 19
Enjoyed final hours of my vacation with the family at the Tippling Philosopher pub and the Four and Twenty Blackbirds restaurant
Took Brittany Ferries ship Barfleur from Poole to Cherbourg

2008 July 18
Greatly enjoyed WALL-E at Empire Cinema, Tower Park, Poole

2008 July 10
Visited the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum in Kensington, London

2008 July 9
Went shopping for books on physics and philosophy in London
Overnight stay at Carleton Mitre Hotel, Hampton Court, London

2008 July 7
Copied lots of old family photos from my sister's collection
> small selection

2008 July 5
Attended Yeovilton International Air Day, RNAS Yeovilton

2008 July 3
Took Brittany Ferries ship Barfleur from Cherbourg to Poole

2008 July 1
On vacation — a sweltering hot day here
WSJ — Global warming as mass neurosis

Ended my evenings for a week with this glorious BBC TV series: a panoramic history of India in six one-hour episodes

Senator Barack Obama in London on the final leg of his world tour
He ventured forth to bring light to the world

Sad to say, I had to pass on the Farnborough Airshow 2008:
I wanted to see the F-22
 

Jean-Francois Podevin




 

Photo: AP
 

Image: Bryan Christie Design

French M-4 nuclear-armed ballistic missile

University of Oslo, May 20: Norwegian King Harald (right) presents the Abel Prize for 2008 to John Thompson (left) and Jacques Tits (center) for their work in group theory

NASA moontruck concept

June 7: Hillary Clinton suspended her bid to become America's first woman president and vowed to help Barack Obama in his fight to win the White House for the Democrats

British actress Keira Knightley
stars in the movie Atonement
(here a still from the movie)

Paris Hilton reads philosophy:
a rather risqué parody of a
brainy blonde beauty

2008 June 30
My article with TREX colleague Gerhard Hill:
Reducing Outer Joins
has been accepted for the VLDB Journal

SAP NetWeaver BI Accelerator
By J. Andrew Ross
SAP PRESS Essentials 42
ISBN 978-1-59229-192-2
Est pub date: November 2008

2008 June 29
WALL-E
The Wall Street Journal
A stunning tour de force. The director has described it as his love letter to the golden era of sci-fi films that enchanted him as a kid in the 1970s. It is certainly that, as well as a love letter to the possibilities of the movie medium, and a dazzling display of how computers can create a photorealistic world.

My Singularity page is now populated >

2008 June 28
Haynes experiment on free will: my report now in English

2008 June 26
Using Causality to Solve the Puzzle of Quantum Spacetime
Physicists have long tried to reconcile quantum theory and Einstein's general theory of relativity in a theory of quantum gravity. A new approach shows how to apply existing laws to individual motes of spacetime and how 4D spacetime as we know it can emerge dynamically from more basic ingredients.

2008 June 23
Quantum Computing with Diamonds
ABC Science
Quantum computers made using diamonds are a practical way to achieve a massive boost in computing power without generating more heat, says Dr Steven Prawer of the University of Melbourne. The current generation of computers are very power hungry and inefficient. Quantum computers provide a new paradigm for computing that utilises exponential processing power, in a reversible process that doesn't dissipate heat, whereas classical computing uses millions of transistors that generate heat. Many quantum computer designs rely on very low temperatures and complex infrastructure, but diamonds can offer a unique platform for building quantum computers that operate at room temperature. Tiny manufactured diamonds with a nitrogen atom at their centre can store single qubits. The spin of the electrons in the diamond can be manipulated using microwaves or laser pulses. Full blown quantum computing is many years away.

The Guardian: In his first presidential visit to Israel, French president Nicolas Sarkozy said Israeli-Palestinian peace is immediately attainable, talked tough against Iran's nuclear program and delivered an address to parliament. But most of Israel's attention was showered on his wife Carla.

2008 June 22
Rosenfield and Ziff on how the mind works
Charles Darwin presented evolution in 1858

IEEE Special Report on the Singularity

The singularity has also been called the rapture of the geeks. It is supposed to begin shortly after engineers build the first computer with greater-than-human intelligence. That achievement will trigger a series of cycles in which superintelligent machines beget even smarter machine progeny.

Singularity or not, in the coming years, as computers become stupendously powerful and as electronics and other technologies begin to enhance and fuse with biology, life really is going to get more interesting.

The singularity movement has evolved into an array of competing hypotheses and scenarios. But central to them all is the paradoxical yet weirdly compelling idea of a conscious machine. ...

2008 June 21
Chris Hitchens on Pat Buchanan on Churchill

2008 June 20
Israel news part 6: Israeli exercise directed at Iran?

2008 June 18
Israel news part 5: Is Britain good for the Jews?

2008 June 17
Israel news part 4: Truce "triumph"

Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete crude oil
The Times
LS9 claims that "Oil 2.0" will not only be renewable but also carbon negative. The company is funded by $20 million of start-up capital and its bugs are industrial yeast or E. coli with redesigned DNA. The bugs excrete a substance that is almost pump-ready. Any feedstock will do as long as it can be broken down into sugars, with the byproduct ideally burnt to produce electricity to run the plant. The company will use wheat straw in California, for example, or woodchips in southern USA. They hope to open a commercial-scale facility in 2011. Using Brazilian sugar cane as feedstock, the fuel would probably cost about $50 a barrel.

New French Defense Policy
The New York Times
President Nicolas Sarkozy has decided that France is best served by participating fully with Washington and NATO. The new military and security strategy calls for a smaller, more mobile French Army, with savings spent on better intelligence and modern equipment. The doctrine seeks to prepare France and Europe for a post-Soviet world in which conventional military threats are downgraded compared with risks from epidemics, terrorism and cyberwarfare. France will preserve its independent nuclear deterrent outside of any alliance structure.

SAP Defender of Discipline
Financial Times
Léo Apotheker was born in Aachen in 1953. He studied in Jerusalem, moved to Brussels in 1980, and settled in Paris. This spring, he was made SAP co-CEO alongside Henning Kagermann, who will retire next May. Apotheker joined the SAP executive board as head of sales in 2002. He combines a serious manner with a deadpan delivery. He says his family history has had "a huge influence" on him. "For one, it always fascinated me that my parents did not hate anyone," he says in a sombre voice. He says that his parents taught their children to question, and they always drew a clear line between responsibility and guilt: "Be sceptical. Never trust someone blindly. Be responsible for your actions."

2008 June 15
Adam Kirsch debunks Pat Buchanan on Churchill

2008 June 12
Symmetry and the Abel Prize 2008  by Marcus de Sautoy

Symmetry is a central concept in both science and the arts. Symmetry has unlocked the secrets of the fundamental particles that make up the material world.

The saga begins with the extraordinary revelation of Galois in 1832 that just as numbers can be built out of the indivisible primes, symmetrical objects too can be decomposed into indivisible objects called simple groups.

John Thompson and Jacques Tits have their names attached to some of the sporadic groups of symmetries that have appeared since 1965. The culmination was the discovery of an object that sits in a space of 196,883 dimensions and is called the Monster.

Thanks to the work of mathematicians like Thompson and Tits, we believe we now have a complete list of the building blocks of symmetry. This is one of the greatest achievement in the history of mathematics.

Israel news part 3: Hamas defiant

2008 June 11
NASA finds a way to build big telescopes on the moon

2008 June 9
Israel news part 2: Taking out Hamas

How the Mind Works: Revelations
By Israel Rosenfield and Edward Ziff
The New York Review of Books, June 26, 2008

SAP India: Jewel in the Crown
SAP Summit 2008: SAP India, the subsidiary of SAP, has been named the "Jewel in the Crown" of SAP worldwide. In Q1, 2008,
SAP India posted growth of 67% in software license revenue, 43%
in small and midsize revenue, 34% in consulting, and 100% in education. "I am extremely proud to announce that with holistic growth and strong continued momentum, SAP India has emerged as the 'Jewel in the Crown' for SAP worldwide. We at SAP pledge to strengthen our commitment to the Indian market and continue to be the catalyzing force behind this unprecedented growth story," said Bill McDermott, President and CEO of SAP Americas and
Asia Pacific Japan.
 
SAP eyes Russian market with confidence
Managing director for the EMEA region and designated COO, Erwin Gunst, expects a 50 percent increase in revenues in Russia, with SAP continuing its fast growth in the market. After 51 percent growth in 2007, Russia is now SAP's fourth largest single market after the US, Germany and the UK. Gunst, who will become COO on July 1, also said that while competition in the enterprise software market was getting fiercer, the company still had potential to grow in all markets.

Egypt to open region's first SAP Academy
Egypt will soon inaugurate the region's first SAP Academy, as part of a program between SAP and the Egyptian Government to build skills in the country and to support SAP's role as strategic ERP partner for the government. The SAP Academy will provide training for 500 students. Léo Apotheker, deputy CEO, SAP AG said: "The SAP Academy in Cairo's Smart Village will play a crucial role in driving Egypt's modernization efforts, and we intend to partner with Egypt every step of the way."

2008 June 6
Israel news part 1: F-22 Raptors

2008 June 4
Barack seems to have learned his lines well ...

Obama Urges Unity
CNN, June 4, 18:32 GMT

Barack Obama says he can unify his party after a hard-fought battle against Hillary Clinton that divided Democrats but helped teach America's children that the Oval Office was within anyone's reach. He said it was "an enormous honor" and "very humbling" to be the first African-American to lead a major party ticket for president.

Obama: Jerusalem must remain the undivided capital of Israel
Jerusalem Post, June 4, 2008, 20:13

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama assured the AIPAC Policy Conference Wednesday that he will be a staunch ally of Israel and will not negotiate with terrorist groups.

"Now is the time to stand by Israel," he said, "now is the time to join together in the work of repairing this world."

"As president I will never compromise when it comes to Israel's security," Obama told the annual gathering.

"We must isolate Hamas unless and until they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel's right to exist, and abide by past agreements," he said of the Palestinian opposed to Israel.

"I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel," he said.

Meanwhile, Britain muddles through as usual ...

Chinooks Sitting in Shelters
The Times, June 4, 2008

The UK Ministry of Defence has spent more than £500 million on eight Chinook helicopters that have never been flown as a result of "one of the most incompetent procurements of all time", an audit has concluded. The helicopters have been sitting in a special air-conditioned shelter since 2001 because of a "cockup" that meant the machines' software could not be accessed.

2008 June 2
So what's new?

Monkey's Brain Signals Control Third Arm
NewScientist, October 13, 2003

Monkeys can control a robot arm as naturally as their own limbs using only brain signals, a pioneering experiment has shown. The macaque monkeys could reach and grasp with the same precision as their own hand.

Monkeys Think, Moving Artificial Arm as Own
New York Times, May 29, 2008

Two monkeys with tiny sensors in their brains have learned to control a mechanical arm with just their thoughts, using it to reach for and grab food and even to adjust for the size and stickiness of morsels when necessary, scientists reported on Wednesday. In the experiment, two macaques first used a joystick to gain a feel for the arm, which had shoulder joints, an elbow and a grasping claw with two mechanical fingers. Then, just beneath the monkeys’ skulls, the scientists implanted a grid about the size of a large freckle. It sat on the motor cortex, over a patch of cells known to signal arm and hand movements. The grid held 100 tiny electrodes, each connecting to a single neuron, its wires running out of the brain and to a computer.

Crystal imperfections known as nitrogen–vacancy defects might be manipulated to store qubits
in a quantum computer.
P. Kok, B.W. Lovett,
Nature 444, 49

Charles Darwin

Pretty British, and Jewish too.
But more to the point, imho,
is that Amy Winehouse
makes good music

Churchill as bumptious young cavalry officer
 

June 5: Queen Eizabeth II
at an event in England

German supermodel Claudia
Schiffer stars in a photoshoot by
Mario Testino in the June 2008
issue of Vogue Germany
 

Carla Bruni Sarkozy was a big hit
on her state visit to Britain:
the British press drooled

Blog 2008 first half
Blog 2007
Blog 2006
Blog 2005
Blog 2004
Blog 2003
Blog 2002
Blog 2001
Blog 2000

My Publications

My Biography

Association for Computing Machinery

Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness