{"id":623,"date":"2015-12-14T21:39:22","date_gmt":"2015-12-15T05:39:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/?p=623"},"modified":"2015-12-14T21:39:50","modified_gmt":"2015-12-15T05:39:50","slug":"lists-expeditions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/2015\/12\/14\/lists-expeditions\/","title":{"rendered":"Lists &#038; Expeditions"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul class=\"ul1\">\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s2\">This is cool, the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/1SUzt12\"><span class=\"s3\">Bionic Bird<\/span><\/a>\u00a0&#8211; a super light\u00a0drone that you could almost mistake for a bird. I&#8217;m not sure how long you could expect it to last with such thin wings, but it&#8217;s the first reasonably priced robotic bird I&#8217;ve ever seen.<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s2\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Scoville_scale\"><span class=\"s3\">Scoville Scale<\/span><\/a> measures the\u00a0hotness of chili peppers. I ate a ghost chili this week so this scale was especially relevant to me for about 15 minutes. At ~1 million Scoville units, it\u00a0was very, very hot \ud83d\ude42<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s4\"><a href=\"https:\/\/openai.com\/blog\/introducing-openai\/\"><span class=\"s5\">OpenAI<\/span><\/a><\/span><span class=\"s2\">\u00a0 is a new nonprofit with a billion dollars pledged to it from big names like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel to help direct the future of artificial intelligence.<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s2\">Also relevant to AI is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2015\/11\/16\/the-gene-hackers\"><span class=\"s3\">Crispr<\/span><\/a>, a relatively new\u00a0way of editing genes. This powerful technology could be used to alter the human genetic code. It obviously comes with many ethical implications. As far as how it relates to AI, it could plausibly be used to enable us to create\u00a0exceptionally high intelligence humans who would accelerate the path to human level general artificial\u00a0intelligence which could then lead to a super intelligence along with everything that implies.<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s2\">Noam Chomsky\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nyu.edu\/about\/news-publications\/news\/2015\/12\/07\/chomsky-was-right-nyu-researchers-find-we-do-have-a-grammar-in-our-head.html\"><span class=\"s3\">gets some more evidence<\/span><\/a> to back up his highly controversial linguistic theory that says that we come with a genetically built in grammar that\u00a0<i>all<\/i>\u00a0human languages adhere to. The best argument <i>against<\/i> his theory comes from Daniel Everett and can be found in the very enjoyable, very accessible book <a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/1O2rcKl\"><span class=\"s3\"><i>Don&#8217;t Sleep, There are Snakes<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s4\"><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Michel_Houellebecq\"><span class=\"s5\">Michel Houellebecq<\/span><\/a><\/span><span class=\"s2\">\u00a0is an interesting guy. I found him in a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/infoproc.blogspot.com\/2015\/11\/houellebecq-on-tocqueville-democracy.html\"><span class=\"s3\">blog<\/span><\/a>\u00a0post\u00a0where containing a video where Houellebecq\u00a0talks rather eloquently\u00a0about the famous French critic of American culture, Alexis de Tocqueville. Houellebecq&#8217;s book <a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/1QchfKH\"><span class=\"s3\"><i>Submission<\/i><\/span><\/a> is now available in English and is said to be a good critique of the situation with Islam in the West. I&#8217;m looking forward to reading it.<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s2\">There&#8217;s a <a href=\"http:\/\/shackletonsolo.org\/\"><span class=\"s3\">solo expedition across Antarctica<\/span><\/a> going on right now. If Henry Worsley completes his trek, he&#8217;ll be the first to do a solo trek across the Southern continent. His short daily audio updates are fun to listen to from the warm comfort of my couch.<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s2\">In a different type of expedition,\u00a0Ann Morgan read a book from every country in the world and <a href=\"http:\/\/ayearofreadingtheworld.com\/thelist\/\"><span class=\"s3\">made a list<\/span><\/a> for us to follow along with her. Pretty awesome.<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s2\">And while we&#8217;re talking about lists, ever thought of writing sci-fi? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfwa.org\/2009\/06\/turkey-city-lexicon-a-primer-for-sf-workshops\/\"><span class=\"s3\">Here&#8217;s a list<\/span><\/a> of things\u00a0<i>not<\/i>\u00a0to do.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is cool, the\u00a0Bionic Bird\u00a0&#8211; a super light\u00a0drone that you could almost mistake for a bird. I&#8217;m not sure how long you could expect it to last with such thin wings, but it&#8217;s the first reasonably priced robotic bird I&#8217;ve ever seen. The Scoville Scale measures the\u00a0hotness of chili peppers. I ate a ghost chili [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-m"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ppj2P-a3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":625,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623\/revisions\/625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}