Vampire Bats are Deadly

Alex

There may be no such things as vampires, but there are vampire bats. And they're deadly:

At least 38 Warao Indians have died in remote villages in Venezuela, and medical experts suspect an outbreak of rabies spread by bites from vampire bats. [...]

Outbreaks of rabies spread by vampire bats are a problem in various tropical areas of South America, including Brazil and Peru, Rupprecht said.

He said researchers suspect that in some cases environmental degradation — including mining, logging or dam construction projects — may also be contributing to rabies outbreaks.

"Vampire bats are very adaptable," Rupprecht said. And when their roosts are disrupted or their normal prey grow scarce, "Homo sapiens is a pretty easy meal."

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ge0jd_aFOR3NleqOfs00jLCASLRQD92EH3J80 - via Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine


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Martin Cruz Smith wrote a book called 'Nightwing' which told the story of a plague outbreak carried by vampire bats. He then went on to write 'Gorky Park'.
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That's rather misleading to say that. Vampire bats on their own are not deadly, and they are far from being the only carriers of rabies. In fact, bats in general are dangerous as carriers of rabies.

Which is sad because I love bats =(
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Artificial Intelligence is a complex illusion. As one who studied and practiced it, I know this. Trust me, we have a long way to go before machines actually 'think'. As of now, human engineers and programmers are just very good at making machines that *appear* to think (even to other scientists).

The process in which AI works is different than normal progammed behavior, but they they are still only capeable of operating within the designed parameters. (and in cases like this one, those parameters are designed to have the machine come up with a hypothesis on a give problem, and experiment with it, etc.. Basically, it seems to run a simulation of the scientific method).

Knowing what I do, I'm not too concerned about AI going crazy. What may *actually* go awry are the organic computers, which utilize biological cells as their processors. Granted, I dont know much about these computers, but... any living stucture has a chance to adapt, evolve, mutuate.
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machines cannot preform the scientific method.

they cannot determine the diference between what is not a problem and what is.

give a robot 3 perceptions:
vision
hearing
touch

and then connect those to:
a speaker and biotic movement devices

no programing, thats it

also give it a hardrive of like 3k terabytes or something
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