HAL9000

We can agree on that. I tend to favour interpretations supported by evidence over those supported by Judaeo-religious scriptures. My hypothesis is just an alternative interpretation that is supported by the available evidence. Welcome back, BTW.

According to Jewish history the Law regarding the proscription against pork was revealed about 2470 years after the Creation, i.e. in or around 1470-80 BCE. The Romans occupied Judea in 63 BCE. Pig bones have been found throughout the entire alleged Jewish presence in Palestine. What does Occam's razor make of that?

Touch?! I hate you, Hugo and the other musketeer for making me come back to deny posting under another name after having successfully broken the EDF habit for almost six months :) So, how do you guys explain how ancient Israel, Judah and especially Masada became an archaeological bone yard for butchered pigs? I guess neither of you have read Josephus?

That hypothesis doesn't explain why almost all ancient peoples ate pork with virtually no evidence of ill effects? The Judaeo-religious (i.e. halal/kosher) prohibition may have been introduced as a reaction to the fact that the Roman legion that sacked Jerusalem in 70 CE featured a pig or hog on its standard and because a later Emperor raised a marble statue of a pig in the Temple precincts to commemorate the event. This hypothesis neatly explains why pig bones are found throughout the archaeological strata associated with ancient Palestine and at sites like Masada where fanatically observant Jews are supposed to have committed mass suicide rather than surrender to the Romans in 76 CE.

In its original form, it was supposed to curb anti-social speculation: read all about it: Financial transaction tax Is it just me or can any one else hear the sound of fiddling while Rome burns?

Technological advance: Scientists at MIT replicate brain activity with chip

Burls

Regular tyre damage might raise suspicions against those who benefit from new tyre sales or repairs in the area? Does anyone know if there is a pattern to the make and model of car or the type, make or size of tyres or the geographical locations of such incidents?

For a brain to understand the brain, it would have to be more complex than the brain. I'm not sure that is a logical deduction. The brain appears to be composed of many small, self-similar structures such as neurons, which themselves resolve into even simpler synapses. So, functionally a brain appears to be a synaptic network. The 'complexity' you perceive could be merely an emergent property of a relatively simple substrate configuration. Leaving aside Hameroff-Penrose Orch-OR, G?del's theorem and other Quantum Mind/Consciousness hypotheses, I am not aware of any classical physical reason that would prevent a human mind from understanding the biological function of its own brain. Autonomous robot labourers won't have to compose poetry or appreciate art or beauty or contemplate love or justice. All they?ll need to do is locate, identify and pickup objects and insert round ends into round holes: fixed instructions and simple manoeuvres within controlled environments. We are almost there!

The human brain could never design anything as complex as the human brain. That is a very bold assertion: to limit human ingenuity and technological progress for all time henceforth in a field that you (and everyone else) know so little about. I suggest we cannot even speculate meaningfully on that question until we learn whether we are dealing with a substrate-dependent or non-computable property - in the first instance. As an aside, you've obviously not considered machines equipped with artificial biological brains grown in vitro, for example?

My original post refers to comments made by 'various British politicians' and a doomsday scenario posited by 'several observers'. Perhaps you are too far away to be aware of the media reports this issue has generated? My post is insignificant compared with what has been disseminated by the press hereabouts. My question is: why are Gold and the Euro relatively calm in circumstances that should have unleashed a maelstrom of volatility? In other words, can those of us outside the loop deduce anything noteworthy from this apparently anomalous behaviour? What is the market telling us, if it is capable of telling us anything? (I've got your response down as, ?All?s well. Nothing to see here, move along.?)

... computers and machines need to be manufactured, programmed, and maintained by people. People only need to manufacture and program one self-replicating and self-maintaining machine, ever. ... the complexity of the machines/software we can build is limited by the capacity of the human brain Software programmes are almost always capable of exceeding the capacity of their authors? brains in terms of memory, accuracy and computational speed. We wouldn?t bother to write them otherwise. In any event, machine learning could eliminate any limitations imposed by the human brain. Machines are rapidly acquiring more and more human-like mechanical abilities, a trend that continues to advance without any physical limits in sight. ... mankind will never allow the construction a machine which has the slightest possibility of becoming a threat to us. The history of technological progress contradicts you here. The risk/reward ratio is so great; I doubt we could resist exploiting such a technology.

Perhaps Huguenot is right, we shouldn?t mention the devil in case he appears ? far too scary! *buries head in sand and thinks nice warm fuzzy thoughts*

Your paranoia about my paranoia knows no bounds :)

Statements made by various UK politicians on Friday strongly suggest that they think the Eurozone is circling the drain and may 'go down' quite soon. If, and depending on how, it happens - a domino-like collapse of EU and UK banks could be triggered in which millions of people lose most, if not all, of their savings (according to several observers ? it?s not just me being negative). I doubt there'll be any recourse to deposit guarantees or bailouts in the event of an EU-wide financial collapse. I'm surprised how steady Euro FX rates and precious metal prices have been as the crisis has escalated during these last few weeks. What?s happening: government intervention, public resignation to the inevitable or simply stunned helplessness?

Self-replicating, fully autonomous robots mining moons, asteroids and captive comet nuclei could create a new economic paradigm in which virtually unlimited quantities of raw materials and manufactured products are produced without capital investment, energy costs or human intervention beyond building and launching the initial 'bootstrap' robot into orbit. The ultimate "easy life," although I don't think it will happen anytime soon. Certainly not in my present lifetime. The subject has been explored academically and philosophically under the subject heading self-replicating (aka Von Neumann) machines.

May be worth watching these as the Eurozone struggles to survive: International Government Bond Rates

I thought that was Adam Smith's definition? Yes, but...you were describing an asset price bubble. According to Smith, free market forces are socially beneficial only when the necessary conditions include appropriate incentives, effective competition, safeguards against exploitation, regulation, honest participants, protection against malfeasance and so on. I not sure there is anything in Smith's Wealth of Nations that presages recent economic developments, though.

Huguenot Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The housing disaster was empowered by bezerk > humans engorging themselves in in an unregulated > market. That's the free market for you. There is a huge difference between a market governed by true market forces and a market that is an unregulated free-for-all. Just to amplify what I wrote in an earlier post, after 911, US house prices were no longer subject to free market forces because interest rates were set by government policy regardless of supply and demand considerations. So, the US housing market was not a true free market in the run up to the GFC of 2008. In that sense, 911 could be identified as the principal catalyst that precipitated our present financial predicament.

Actually, the only markets that 'collapsed' during the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 were those dealing in unregulated, private, inter-bank and OTC debt-based securities. The problem there was no transparent price discovery mechanism ? there were no true free market forces in play.

'Liar' is a serious slur - one would normally expect a Head of State to sue on an allegation of that magnitude, but in this case Netanyahu may just have to swallow. In theory, Obama and Sarkozy could claim that they have been libelled - a 'lost in translation'-type argument, perhaps? That would be funny.

It is not clear but the journalists reporting this story may not have heard the actual conversation. The story may be based on a real-time French-language translation overheard on headsets provided to journalists who were not in the same room as Obama and Sarkozy at the time. The story was suppressed by French journalists but widely published by the Israelis. As far as I can tell, neither of the subjects has commented on the allegations. ETA: If the facts are as above, this may be a rare case where a published libel is based on hearsay evidence.

I think the cause of the initial volatility was a systemic problem with our economic model, not the free market system itself.

Free markets usually provide an efficient 'price discovery' mechanism. During periods of QE and/or massive government and regulatory intervention, those markets can no longer be considered 'free'. Hence the wild volatility and whipsawing gyrations we are presently experiencing. Today's markets are not rational. Most naked traders and speculators are being slaughtered out there at the moment. Interesting times.

silverfox Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > white poppy - Do they exist in nature? I've seen many different coloured poppy flowers - including white - in and around Afghanistan. Some species have blue pollen.