OpenMind Commonsense

OpenMind Commonsense
And some tools for computerized ontologies.

MiniMind

MiniMind
an ontology/semantic network

ZAP: About Zinfandel: The Zinfandel Aroma Wheel

ZAP: About Zinfandel: The Zinfandel Aroma Wheel
In case you need some help identifying the aromas in your zin.

A Century of Controversy Over the Foundations of Mathematics

A Century of Controversy Over the Foundations of Mathematics
Lecture by Chaitin.

How to Run Algorithmic Information Theory on a Computer

I missed this talk.
Algorithmic Information Theory is recursive function theory plus program complexity.
Chaitin wants to have a real programming language (pure LISP with some enhancements) and a real computer (a particular Universal Turing Machine) and then actually do real stuff, like list out all possible theorems and score them...
LISP is enhanced with a handful of functions. Most importantly, try
(try time-limit expression binary-data).
What this does is evaluate the expression on the data and return at the earlier of when the evaluation is complete or time-limit is exceeded.

Find Music You'll Love - Pandora

Find Music You'll Love - Pandora
Very interesting - developing a metric for music so that you can find "similar" artists/songs.

We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like.

THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER 2006

THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER 2006
In case your brain doesn't have enough to do...

The history of science is replete with discoveries that were considered socially, morally, or emotionally dangerous in their time; the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions are the most obvious. What is your dangerous idea? An idea you think about (not necessarily one you originated) that is dangerous not because it is assumed to be false, but because it might be true?

Song lyrics

So, I needed to know the words to Mott the Hoople's "All the Young Dudes" (it's a long story...). There are a number of sites with song lyrics around for free, but this one seems reasonably complete. Could use a bit more advanced search, but you can find a keyword in the artist, album, song title or lyric contents.

Bot Hixx

Hixx tries to respond to statements about feelings. It doesn't have much insight, but now and then will respond somewhat cleverly.
Chat with Hixx for a few minutes & see what you think.

Damn cool illusion

Very fun optical illusion. The refractory period of receptors creates a negative image over time. Watch as you process a bunch of pink dots and see them disappear and a green dot appear, but there is no green dot...

David Cope

Pretty amazing algorithmically generated music.

Moodle - A Free, Open Source Course Management System for Online Learning

The power of programming and networks are being realized at last! This is a way cool tool to help create online learning communities.

EllaZ - artful intelligence

EllaZ - artful intelligence
A pretty well-done bot site.

Similarity

Similarity
described by Robert Goldstone of Indiana University.

Conscious Entities: leading theories about consciousness, and the mind.

A site with summaries & critiques of theories of consciousness.
Something for me to waste more time on...

Process Information

Process Information
Want to know what all those friggin' process are that are consuming all of your cycles & memory? Are they apps? viruses? spyware?

Here is a resource to identify what they are likely to be.

Moving Ideas Network

Issues, ideas & research in furtherance of "progressive" policy.

WolframTones: An Experiment in a New Kind of Music

Music generated from cellular automata as described in Wolfram's book, "A New Kind of Science". This is cool stuff, but it's not really a "new" kind of science...

RhymeZone rhyming dictionary and thesaurus

All you need to find appropriate rhymes for whatever rhyming challenge you face.

What is Body Burden?

What is Body Burden?
Lots of miscellaneous poisonous stuff out in the world...

The START Natural Language Question Answering System

Pretty cool. Ask questions, get answers, no Jeeves involved...

Konfabulator

In our continuing quest to bring you the absolute best of stuff, we'd like to show you this way cool tool.

Welcome | Science Commons

"Science depends upon the ability to observe, learn from, and test the work of others. Without effective access to data, materials and publications, the scientific enterprise becomes impossible.

Yet recent studies show a disturbing trend; increasing secrecy, cumbersome materials transfer agreements and complex licensing structures have made more difficult the sharing process on which science relies. "Because they were denied access to data, 28% of geneticists reported that they had been unable to confirm published research," a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association reports. And that is published research.

The problem here is not simply the commercialization of science; roadblocks to sharing hurt the development of commercial products too. Nor is it only a matter of expanded intellectual property rights and curtailed "research exemptions." The problem is more complex than that, and the solution must be as well. Our goal is to solve a specific part of the problem: the creation of a larger "Science Commons" built from private agreements, and technical standardization; the same "some rights reserved" approach adopted by Creative Commons, our parent organization."

Creative Commons

Creative Commons
A sensible (IMO) approach to sharing creative work.

MIT OpenCourseWare | OCW Home

MIT OpenCourseWare | OCW Home
MIT (among a few other schools) have published syllabi, course readings & assignments for many of their courses. A great way to learn something new. Of course, having contact with professors and other students, and having assignments evaluated, is not included.

The Onion | Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory

The Onion | Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory
Heh. Science claims to have "laws", but they are "only" theories

General Chemistry Online: Home

General Chemistry Online: Home
Way cool. This is really excellent use of technology. If you want to learn some chemistry (without doing labs...), there is a lot here.

Black Swan

In Rotorua, there were many black swans, though I believe they are native to Australia.
Assertions about swan color have become a canonical example in logic; see, e.g., Falsifiability.
They are cute but have a bit of a nasty temperament.

Buddhabot Blog
Current (?) postings on the project.

The Buddha Bot
Chat with simulated enlightenment.