CNN – Rescuers are scrambling to rescue about 1,300 passengers and crew from a cruise ship off Norway that suffered an engine failure, emergency officials said Saturday.
The Viking Sky ship sent a distress signal Saturday due to “engine problems in bad weather,” said Borghild Eldoen, a spokeswoman for the Joint Rescue Centre for Southern Norway.
The vessel is in rough seas in the Hustadvika area on the western coast of Norway and rescuers are facing waves of about 6-8 meters (roughly 19-26 feet) high, she said.
Helicopters airlifted passengers and crew members one by one Saturday and the process could continue overnight and through Sunday.
Gizdomo – “A January 2019 poll conducted by the Center for the Governance of Change at Spain’s IE University has found considerable anxiety throughout Europe about the pace of automation and technological change, Quartz reported—though it also found that about a quarter of respondents believed that maybe artificial intelligence should be in charge, rather than political leaders. “
A minority of respondents, however, are more than ready for the robots to give up the pretense of serving man and just take over: 25 percent of Europeans said they would like an artificial intelligence to “make important decisions about the running of their country.” In some countries, this was even higher; those in Germany, Ireland, Italy, and the UK were all within one percent of 30 percent, while 43 percent of respondents in the Netherlands said yes as well.
The report did not indicate if the poll questioned respondents on who they would trust to program the robots making those important decisions about running their country. //
If we listen to this guy, maybe that 25% couldn’t do much worse?
WARNING: EXTREME LANGUAGE.
[ht to Brown_Skin_Girl]
Here is one you don’t see everyday.
A trove of Ice-Age Fossils Found in LA Subway Dig
According to Courthouse News earlier this month, paleontologists found “more than 500 fossils of Ice Age beasts, including saber-toothed cats, giant ground sloths and huge mammoths, have been discovered in recent months by crews tunneling a new Los Angeles subway branch.”
The photo below shows a “largely-complete skull of a juvenile Columbian [sic] mammoth” that was discovered while California-based paleontologists were “working with Metro crews who were excavating the future site of the La Brea subway station on Purple Line. The mammoth, which was nicknamed “Hayden,” is believed to have been 6 to 8 years at death.”
The trove of fossils, which date back to the Pleistocene Epoch, have also challenged beliefs previously held by paleontologists who study the beasts that called the LA basin home millions of years before the region was covered by a vast ocean.
Under the watchful eyes of paleontologists, tunneling crews with the LA Metropolitan Transportation Authority, or Metro, have been carving out three underground train stations – La Brea Avenue, Fairfax Avenue and La Cienega Boulevard – for a new branch of the Purple Line subway.
While Metro’s giant excavator is carving out the tunnel, paleontologists with Cogstone – a Riverside, California-based company guiding Metro’s paleontological work – diligently examine the mix of clay and sands in the soil looking for any signs of fossils.
“We’re the ones who say, ‘Stop, that doesn’t look like dirt anymore’ and then go investigate if it’s fossil,” Cogstone paleontologist Cassidy Sharp said in an interview.
According to Sharp, fossils can start showing up about 15 feet below the surface.
“Isn’t is crazy that you’re driving over Wilshire and you have no idea there’s this mammoth below you.”