Great. People arguing on the intahweb about a cup of fckng coffee. Th rtrd-rl mst dfntly ppls hr:

http://crcn.gn.nz/mgs/ndx.php/00b9680/463c5922

A lot of misunderstanding of what the Singularity is here in this thread. Fortunately there seem to be a few informed voices as well.

#22 nails it on the head, and I'm in the camp of #26. The 'computronium' idea is indeed somewhat silly, but it's not what the Singularity is about.

Congrats!

When I was in Shanghai in February of this year I took a picture of the barge from the Oriental pearl tower: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mwinyd/410794838

I spent two weeks in Lagos in January 07, and this short film manages to capture a lot of the chaos and vibrancy of the city, as well as the juxtaposition of western and tribal lifestyles. Despite the living conditions, the pollution, the poverty and corruption, I found that the natives of Lagos were generally cheerful, hospitable and friendly.

Having said that, we didn't go anywhere without a bodyguard who was born and raised in Lagos, and we had to pay many bribes along the way.

One little anecdote about the street vendors: some of the traffic jams are artificial - the roads are often broken up on purpose by these roadside entrepreneurs so that the traffic has to slow down, which gives opportunity to sell stuff. Whenever the roads are fixed, they don't stay fixed for long.

Anyone who calls science 'dogmatic' and 'fundamentalist' obviously doesn't get it.

Too bad I have to fly to the US twice next month for work. Additionally, as an EU citizen, I now have to fill in an extensive APIS form with all my personal information before I can even check in for the flight.

It's really getting ridiculous. Makes me glad the company's adopting a travel restriction (for budget reasons actually) so that I have a good excuse to do more over video conferencing.