Just a quick programming note: I'll be speaking at the National Academy of Sciences tomorrow evening, in Washington D.C. The event is free.
I also wanted to apologize to all those whose comments have been eaten by the spam filter in the last two days. Due to an attack of Viagra bots, I had to temporarily tighten the restrictions.
More like this
Two years ago, I wrote about a study that demonstrated how the antivaccine movement had learned to use Twitter to amplify their antiscience message.
Chat bots are one of the coolest computing challenges. They're computer programs that are designed to simulate an intelligent conversation as if they're people. The ultimate goal is to pass what is called the Turing Test, where the chat bot fools human users into believing its a person, too.
At Cracked.com I came across a fantasticly irreverent article about the five most horrifying insects in nature, including the bullet ant, the Japanese giant hornet, and of course, the botfly.
Reposted from the old TfK in honor of this story at BoingBoing.