Many still refuse to discover the power of feeds

RGUMENTS that falsify the evolution often rely on the existence of a ‘missing link’, or inexistence thereof. Only a couple days ago, the CNN reported that a
missing link may have been found, which shatters those void arguments as regards the ‘bridge’ between monkey and man.

Scientists in northeastern Ethiopia said Saturday that they have discovered the skull of a small human ancestor that could be a missing link between the extinct Homo erectus and modern man.

would like to take a brief moment and speak about my opinion on religion, atheism, creationism, and evolution. I will do not in a nutshell since elaboration tends drive the readers away.

From what I can gather form real-life situations, pious and devout believers confute the evolutions or try to contradict it. It is a matter of perception, which provides nothing but self satisfaction. A beholder always sees beauty in his/her thoughts, tradition and creation. At worse time, he/she even finds shelter in it.

Technology entails enlightenment. More enlightened people remain mantally bendable, which is the reason why this 21^st century slowly escapes religion (there are exceptions). Such people are not distracted by the hoi polloi and can form their own opinion and use careful judgment. To religious families, refusal to believe in God is not a million miles away from becoming mischievous, to say the very least. So what gives? In some families this can even entail corporal punishment.

Digressing to discuss the interaction between religion and science, have a look at the following recent article:

On February 20th, the infamously pro-intelligent design Discovery Institute released news that over 500 doctoral scientists had signed its statement “publicly expressing their skepticism about the contemporary theory of Darwinian evolution.”

A day earlier, a newly launched coalition of scientists, educators and clergy members called the Alliance for Science revealed a converse document at the annual meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The Clergy Letter Project snagged the signatures of 10,000 clerics on a document that in part states, “We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests.”

In my humble opinion, society as a whole will sooner or later fend off the trite and reach the inevitable vocation, which is science, spirituality aloof. A whole myriad of miracles and legends will no longer have a mental impact on people. They will find ways to feel elated, other than to pray or rely on an entity of supremacy.

ROPOSALS have become Europe’s on-paper solution to America’s economic strength. Another proposal has been unveiled, which aims to help Europe complete with prestigious American institutions such as The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). This is reminiscent of their plan to kick off a European initiative to create a powerful search engine.

The European Commission has unveiled plans for a world-class institute of technology intended to boost the EU’s economic competitiveness.

EARCHING of the Web is no exact science. If it was, its exhaustive exploration would be infeasible. The more formidable search engines amass information from million of Web sites, each containing huge lumps of information — both textual and media. That information, in turn, could be interpreted and/or indexed in a variety of different forms. Rarely is the content truly understood, which is my personal motivating for knowledge engines.

Mathematics and physics could be argued to be inexact sciences as well, at least when a variety of man-made, non-fundamental fields are introduced. Think of computer science, for example. Its fundamentals assimilate to this complex problem, which is searching the World Wide Web. It is associated with ad-hoc solutions. Computational theories which relate to Turing machines are not tractable enough to make a most correct and efficient algorithm ever crop up and stand out.

Don Knuth has written his popular series of books on the issues of correctness and efficiency in common algorithms. It proves an elegant reference to many computer science practitioners. Problems which are simple, such as element or number sorting, are still handled differently by different algorithms and their efficiency is dependent upon the architecture involved, the scale of the problem, and its nature. Search algorithms likewise, which is why they should be engineered differently depending on a number of key factors. Hence, judgement of the quality of search engines cannot be done objectively, but only ever be estimated using test cases and artificial scoring schemes.

Still, everyone wants to discover the perfect recipe to outperforming Google. Others try to reverse-engineer their algorithms and cheat (fame and riches owing to ‘Google juice‘ that is channelled to one’s site/s). Many of us continue favour and recommend Google, which brings the largest number of referrals to most sites in existence. There is a danger here though. Large search engines are the main target for deceit and they are easily confused by spam inasmuch as they are inclined to pick up rare and valuable content.

Quality of search is probably in the mind of the searcher and the result of hearsay — somewhat of a ‘cattle effect’. Even engines that spit out cruft might be defended unconditionally by their innocent users. This may lead the competition to forfeiting the battle and invest fewer resources (e.g. datacentres) in the attempt to catch up. Phrases like “Google it” do not help either as they promote a search monoculture at best.

Related item: Search Engines and Biased Results

O you know the feeling of listening to playlists which contain assorted tracks from various different albums? More familiarly perhaps, have you ever pondered this issue of volume shifts?

The sound becomes louder and quieter as one track bounces onto the next one. Balancing the — shall we call it — ‘cross-song imbalance’ is an unnecessary nuisance. This lead to a lot of manual intervention with the volume control throughout playtime. Should music players not have the capability to adjust this on-the-fly, before playing a track? Equating in one form or another the volume baseline? Would this be done better off-line? The latter option often requires that the entire track is analysed first. One wonders which players incorporate such functionalities already.

Innocent American children are
being taught about God in biology class

N the latest of many arguments on the issue of intelligent design, a high court judge bans it. As a scientist, I find it rather disturbing that religion penetrates scientific education. It ought to be taught among cultural history or theology perhaps.

 
A court in the US has ruled against the teaching of “intelligent design” alongside Darwin’s theory of evolution.
 

Related items: TV budget takes precedent over science

Recommended site: The Edge

A computer-generated face, which the BBC uses in a promotional trailer, has been dropped despite initial arguments in defence of it.

A promotional trailer for digital TV – which some viewers complained was “horrific” and “disturbingly psychotic” – has been dropped by the BBC.

The Faces campaign, which featured a giant animated head made up of smaller heads, generated 1,300 complaints.

Follow the links at the top and judge for yourself. I think the imagery might only be unnerving to children, unless one considers scenes from Silence of the Lambs.