- Mystery solved: This is the monster that ate that great white shark – “According to the researchers who investigated the puzzling case, it was a ‘colossal cannibal great white shark.’ ” Ahhh!
- Secular Group, on Eve of Big Meeting, Fires Top Official Who Elevated Its Profile – The SCA has fired Edwina Rogers, “an experienced Republican lobbyist whose conservative pedigree elevated the profile of the secular movement when she was hired just over two years ago.” From Amy.
- The Power in ‘Choosing to Be Gay’ – “It is a big leap from thinking that homosexuality is a deep part of one’s sense of self to asserting that particular sexual formations and desires are biologically predetermined.” From Will.
- Zombie Repellent and Other Awesome Uses for Chemistry – This month’s Inquiring Minds podcast features our own Dr. Rubidium! (Warning: Autoplay sound.)
- A Chatbot Has ‘Passed’ The Turing Test For The First Time – “A Russian chatterbot named “Eugene Goostman” has become the first to pass the Turing Test – an assessment of machine intelligence first proposed in 1950 by visionary mathematician, logician and codebreaker Alan Turing – by convincing 1 in 3 judges that it was a 13-year-old non-native-English-speaking Ukrainian boy.”
Just how was a right wing Republican supposed to ‘elevate the profile’ of the secular movement? About the way a flat earther would ‘elevate the profile’ of your college geology department.
“Republican” and “conservative Christian” aren’t actually the same thing.
You don’t have to believe in oppressive christianity to be a Republican activist, but you do have to effectively support the imposition of oppressive christian theocracy. The Republican party is an evangelical group preaching christian prosperity theology as the only legitimate basis for the law of the land. Anything else about the party is incidental. No one who actually cares about secularism can possibly be a Republican.
I would guess it’s because there are so few Republicans in the organized atheist movement, so something like that gets noticed.
Mary
Here’s something else on the Turing test that was posted on Io9 today. George Dvorsky says its utter nonsense.
Why The Turing Test Is Bullshit
http://io9.com/why-the-turing-test-is-bullshit-1588051412
Theoretical computer scientist Scott Aaronson had a conversation with the chatbot which “passed” the Turing Test. It went…entertainingly.
Blake, that link is hilarious.
Sorry, I can’t read “SCA” as anything but the Society for Creatitive Anachronisms which made that headline extremely confusing.