“What kind of doctors will they be, these students who have never experienced human dissection?”
contemplates the effect of a plan to stop medical students dissecting human cadavers
“The Turing test still has not been passed, though there is apparently a human being somewhere who failed it”
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Susan Greenfield in Wired UK, on attempts to build a conscious machine
“Guy walks into a shrink’s office. Says he’s gay and wants to be straight. Shrink says, ‘OK, I’ll help.’ Don’t wait for the punch line. There isn’t one, because this isn’t a joke”
, commenting on reports that 1 in 6 British psychiatrists admitted to having helped at least one patient attempt to alter their homosexual feelings
“It’s a warning about the pitfalls of our unshakeable belief in the limitless promise of our endeavors, regardless of reality’s constraints. It is a lesson about the dangers of our love affair with progress”
reflects on the 20th anniversary of claims for cold fusion
Good week for…
Irrawaddy dolphins The Wildlife Conservation Society of around 6000 of the freshwater cetaceans in Bangladesh. Previous estimates put the entire population at a few hundred.
Bad week for…
The afterglow of the big bang A pair of radio telescopes designed to pick out exquisite details in the cosmic microwave background have been axed.
Horizon scanner
Watch out for acres of coverage about Earth being hit by a slate-wiping space impact. Scientists gather in Granada, Spain, at the end of this month to discuss what could be done if they discovered an asteroid or comet on a collision course with the Earth
