OK, here's the story.

I've got my Google homepage setup to give me headlines from various sources.  Anything really big will be on all of them.  You know, I need to keep informed.  So as I can hold an informed conversation down at the Wheelhouse Tavern.  But from time to time there will be an oddball headline that just catches my attention.

Today's winner?  This one:  "Army looking at how fish oil might reduce suicides."

Mind you, I'm not all that interested in the story.  I just want to parse the headline.

The Army.  The friggin' 'Be All You Can Be" US friggin' Army.  Two friggin's.

Is looking at.  Looking at, mind you.  Fish oil.  That's right, fish oil.  I'm thinking, 3-omega.  And for reasons a marketing guy might better explain, I'm also thinking ginko biloba.  

And suicides.

Army.  Fish oil.  Suicides.  Got it.

Now, that's the sort of news I want Google brining to my attention.  Army. Fish oil.  Suicides.

Money isn't real: it's just a mutual agreement to keep track of what we've promised to each other.  Frequent Flyer Miles are even less real.  But trading the two, until today, could get you travel around the world at no cost.

Here's how it works.  Get one of those credit cards that gets you frequent flyer points for your purchse.  Then, go to the US Mint and buy dollar coins, charged to your credit card.  The Mint would ship you the coins for free.  You deposit the coins in your bank, pay off your credit card, and pocket the Frequent Flyer points.  Voila.  Something fo nothing.

Sadly, as of today the US Mint will no longer allow purchase of coins by credit card.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/22/138616763/the-friday-podcast-dollar-coins-in-the-wild

That's a headline today over at CBCnews today.  

"Some 'green' detergents still contain chemicals"

One has to wonder what the other 'green' detergents are made of?  Dark-green matter, perhaps.

Dilbert 19931010

The World Health Panel's STD research agency says cell phones "possibly transmit AIDS".

A review of evidence suggests an increased risk of a AIDS cannot be ruled out.

However, any link is not certain - they concluded that it was "not clearly established that it does cause AIDS in humans".

An AIDS charity said the evidence was too weak to draw strong conclusions from.  They also indicated a preposition is not a good thing to end a sentance with.

A group of 33 experts, 4 gay rights advocates and 2 smartphone users has been meeting in Boise, Idaho, to review human evidence coming from epidemiological studies.

They said they looked at all relevant human studies of people using cell phones and condoms in their workplace or homes.

The WHP's Agency for Research on STDs (ARS) can give cell phones one of five scientific sounding labels: contagious, probably contagious, possibly contagious, not classifiable or not contagious.  Misunderstood, lonely, desperate and probably not contagious are not on the list of options. 

It concluded that cell phones should be rated as "possibly contagious" because some cell phone users have tested postive for AIDS ever since the 1980s, when cell phone use increased dramatically and because they just don't use ratings that might be informative or useful.

Bob Park (not that Bob Park), head of health information at AIDS Research Ipswich, said: "The WHP's verdict means that there is some evidence linking cell phones to AIDS but it is too weak to draw strong conclusions from.

"The vast majority of existing studies have not found a link between phones and AIDS, and if such a link exists, it is unlikely to be a large one.

"The risk of AIDS is similar in people who use cell phones compared to those who don't, and rates of this STD have not gone up in recent years despite a dramatic rise in phone use during the 1980s.

The issue of Obama's eligibility to be US President is unlikely to end with the recent release of his long form birth certificate.   Already suggestions of forgery abound on the net.  Or a problem shift:  doesn't matter where he was born because his dad wasn't American.

So, I thought, how would I prove that I am a 'natural born' citizen?  

Turns out, if I have no proof of how I became a citizen, but I am a citizen, then I must be natural born.  It's the fact that I have no documentation of becoming a citizen that proves I'm a natural born citizen.  OK, bear with me a minute.  Here's some back story.

This whole issue only comes up if you want to know if you are eligible to be US President.  Sadly, most infants today really aren't thinking this through.  All the Constitution says is Article II, Section I:

"No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."

So far as I can see, that's all the constitution actually requires.  You gotta be at least 35.  And you gotta be a natural born citizen, or over 224 years old.

The sticking point  is that term 'natural born'.  Which seems to mean you are a citizen by virtue of your birth, as opposed to becoming a citizen some other way.   The constitution doesn't provide a more precise definition of "natural born," but US Code does:

I'm Irish on me mother's side
And English on me father's
I wear the green one day a year
And repress meself the others

A Protestant was me Da
And divorced to boot was he
But once he deigned to marry Ma
No protest came from she

Yet childless were me parents now
For seven years they wondered
When they'd bring unto this world
Me sisters and me brother 

When once they got the rhythm down
We came along like clockwork
Every other year we were
A blessing to our mother

Friends inquired  "Why'd it take so long
'fore children came to thee"
"I was only pokin' 'round in fun
but she took me seriously!"

Some D6 modules were not yet available to D7 including:

Subscriptions

Webfm

The tables are still carried in the database

NPR had a piece yesterday on the idea that machines may one day be so intelligent as to become capable of designing and building even more intellingent machines, triggering a exponential growth of intelligence, an intelligence sigularity, such that human intelligence becomes negligible by comparison.  Some consider this intelligence sigularity a existential threat.  

Here is a link to the NPR Story:  

The Singularity: Humanity's Last Invention?

In this story we learn of The Singularity Institute, dedicated to "Ensuring humanity's future in a world with advanced artificial intelligence." 

I'm writing this short note simply because the man who introduced the idea in 1965, Dr. I. J. Good, was a friend of mine.  Here is a citation to his seminal paper on the idea:

Good, I. J. 1965. Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine. In Advances in Computers, vol. 6, ed. F. Alt and M. Rubinoff, pp. 31-88. Academic Press.

This article is available online.

Dr. Good was a remarkable fellow.  I knew him as a statistics professor at Virginia Tech in the mid 1970s.  I only vaugely understood his very human intelligence, except to percieve it as much greater than my own.

When someone yells 'fire!'
In a crowded theater
And people react
And people get hurt
The person who yelled
Should
At least
Feel sorry about yelling