Would you believe it was 1863 when 27-year old novelist  Samuel Butler,  in an essay on Darwin Among the Machines, expressed serious concern that highly advanced machines might pose existential risks to humanity? The upshot is simply a question of time, but that the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly philosophic mind can for a moment question . In 1920, a play,  R.U.R . ( Rossum's Universal Robots ), by Czech author Karel Čapek, coined the term  robot .  They began to replace human workers, leading to a violent revolt against their  Homo sapien  masters.  Fritz Lang's 1927 film,  Metropolis , had humanoid robots fighting the capitalist oligarchy.  Click on that link to watch the entire 2 hour 29 minute production.  Fine quality, silent, of course, but with good audio sounds.  Portions of the original were lost, and only in 2008 found....

Chances are that a lot more people in the world believe that God had some role in the creation of Humanity than the scientific version, which begins with the Big Bang.  As such, then, God is the most popular choice for First Contact, or interaction with an extraterrestrial.  Actually, he has no competition in this vote because no intelligent life form has yet ever made contact, as confirmed by any reliable source. This might well be my shortest posting, for what would be the point of confirming or refuting the title?  Well, this gives me another opportunity to compare religion with science. I start with  Global Religion 2023 , a 26-country Global Advisor survey by Ipsos. These countries were all reasonably developed, with 46% of the respondents believing in some form of Christianity.  Only 7% Buddhist, 6% Muslim, mostly Sunni, and 4% Hindu.  Interestingly enough, 29% with no religion or not religious. India, Turkey, Japan and Thailand were surveyed, but the...

All three wars are of course intertwined.  Many Republicans don't want more Ukraine support, exacerbating their civil war.  The conflicts in and around Israel could well bring order to Congress, which in the House will mean bipartisan cooperation. About that Middle East conflict : The numbers are in flux, with deaths rising past 1000 and hostages in the scores. Then again, there is little being said about two  Afghanistan earthquakes this weekend, killing more than 2000 . While there seems to be no immediate terroristic threat at this time to the continental USA, we are most definitely involved, and Congress will need to quickly add funding for Israel. The Navy's newest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, with a task force of 5,000 personnel, has been deployed to this area.   Carrier cost $17.5 billion . The grave danger is expansion to other parts of the region.   However, this might not happen  because it is more and more appearing that the a...