Links, and Technorati search...

A couple of links which I've found quite interesting:

- A blog called "Reality Apologetics": written by Jon Lawhead (a recent philosophy graduate), it covers a wide wide of subjects, though focusing primarily on philosophy of mind. I've only just found it, but there appears to be some interesting stuff.
- A post entitled "Robot thoughts" at Saint Gasoline: a quick review of limitations in artificial consciousness, although the concepts of consciousness and thought seem to be confused, followed by a link to the widely reported story on Floreano's evolving robotic colonies (and the emergence of liars and altruists) - actually, I found the resulting comments more interesting than the post itself...
- A post called "Nature inspires creepy robot swarms" at Environmental Graffiti which seems to indicate that most robotics work is aimed at producing agents capable of world domination. While I feel it was over-the-top (although maybe I missed the well hidden sarcasm), it does raise some interesting issues over the public perception of the research field in which I find myself - 'intelligent' robotics. Having said that, the post was a good read :-)

And now for a short rant... As some may have noticed, I have a Technorati search chart on the right hand side of my blog. When I first put it in, it provided me with a quick and easy way to keep track of some very interesting blog posts. I even had the pleasure of watching the number of "cognitive robotics" posts linking here increase after my posts on the definition of cognitive robotics. However, in recent months (since last November), the system has let me down. It no longer updates the graph (an annoyance since I quite like the visual aspect), and most importantly, the search seems to be flooded with posts from dud/porn blogs. I suppose that's not Technorati's fault - no, wait, it is: my search term is "cognitive robotics", and I'd expect a search engine to work moderately well at finding relevant posts (the occasional dud may slip through the net, but this is just silly). So, I'm about to remove the once mighty keyword chart. Apologies, rant over...

UPDATE 01/02/08: I've tried to remove the keyword chart, but Blogger won't let me. Grr...