24 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Turing's Two Great Insights
Alan Turing, the father of the modern computer, began by thinking about the highly conscious and deliberate step-by-step calculations performed by human “computers” like the women decoding German ciphers at Bletchley Park. His first great insight was that the same processes could be instantiated in an entirely unconscious machine, with the same results. A machine could rationally decode the German ciphers using the same steps that the conscious “computers” went through. And the uncons...
1 Alison Gopnik on how the father of the computer realized machines could do the work of women "computers," and how much of hte human brain was like a computer.
03 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
"Net of a Million Lies"
And so it went. Tens of thousands of messages, hundreds of points of view. It was not called the Net of a Million Lies for nothing. 1 
notes
notesVinge's galactic internet is a rumor mill, predicting the emotionally-charged falsehoods and tribalism that would appear on today's internet.
09 DEC 2011 by ideonexus
Newt Gingrich is Like King David
A number of years ago, I gave a series of messages on the life of King David of old. I entitled the series, "A Portrait of a Champion." One of the messages in that series was called, "Champions Know How to Repent." Even a great champion for God such as King David messed up "royally" and had to repent ... This brings me to Newt Gingrich. While many people have, and will continue to throw stones at the former Speaker's past marriage failures, I am glad that Newt is a man who knows how to repent...
2 Twisted Logic of Scripture: His past indiscretions should be forgiven because King David was a great ruler despite sleeping with his servant's wife and having the servant murdered so he could marry her.
