DOING DONUTS, instead of eating them.

BOTTOMS UP:

Moderate drinking may lengthen your life, while too much may shorten it, researchers from Italy report. Their conclusion is based on pooled data from 34 large studies involving more than 1 million people and 94,000 deaths.

According to the data, drinking a moderate amount of alcohol — up to four drinks per day in men and two drinks per day in women — reduces the risk of death from any cause by roughly 18 percent, the team reports in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Helen’s cardiologist is now encouraging her to have a glass of wine most days, which I think is good for most of us. Plus, it can add life to your years, which is important, too.

Hey, maybe this present isn’t just for Stephen Green!

ZAWAHIRI: “I imagine that this greeting may come as a surprise.” Heh.

ROBOT RIGHTS:

Visions of the status of robots around 2056 have emerged from one of 270 forward-looking papers sponsored by Sir David King, the UK government’s chief scientist. The paper covering robots’ rights was written by a UK partnership of Outsights, the management consultancy, and Ipsos Mori, the opinion research organisation.

“If we make conscious robots they would want to have rights and they probably should,” said Henrik Christensen, director of the Centre of Robotics and Intelligent Machines at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

The idea will not surprise science fiction aficionados. It was widely explored by Dr Isaac Asimov, one of the foremost science fiction writers of the 20th century. He wrote of a society where robots were fully integrated and essential in day-to-day life.

In his system, the ‘three laws of robotics’ governed machine life. They decreed that robots could not injure humans, must obey orders and protect their own existence – in that order.

Robots and machines are now classed as inanimate objects without rights or duties but if artificial intelligence becomes ubiquitous, the report argues, there may be calls for humans’ rights to be extended to them.

Yes. If you’d like a nice view of what such a world might look like, read Greg Egan’s novels, Permutation City and Diaspora. Or you can always visit the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Robots. Motto: “Robots are people too! Or at least, they will be someday.”

UPDATE: Hey, I had forgotten this column on the subject from 2003.

PEOPLE ARE STILL EMAILING ME about Joseph Rago’s rather embarrassing anti-blog screed. I thought that it was already pretty handily dealt with by today’s Day By Day cartoon, which I linked earlier. I notice that Rago has fixed the typo, though, after just a few hours, a speed that is only a bit slower than the average blogger.

RACISM AT WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY:

First, the report tells us that Prof. Streamas “insists that he did not utter the phrase as an expression of racism, in part, because he argues that a person of color cannot be racist, by definition, because racism also defines a power differential that is not usually present when a person or color is speaking.” Yeah, right. He and others are redefining the term “racism” in a way that’s pretty far removed from its normal meaning — which is racial hostility — so as to give themselves a rhetorical break from the rules they’re imposing on others. And on top of that, he’s applying even his revised definition in a disingenuous way: Whatever may be “usually” so, there surely is a “power differential” between a professor of whatever race and a student of whatever race.

Read the whole thing.

HERE’S MORE, on the handover of Najaf to Iraqi forces.

THE NEW NIKON D40 gets a favorable review from Phil Askey at DPReview.com. And you certainly can’t complain about the price, which makes a digital SLR with a decent kit lens not all that much more expensive than a lot of pocket cameras. (Thanks to reader Jim Herd for the link).

DUKE RAPE UPDATE:

For the past several months, even as its reporters have broken story after story about Mike Nifong’s misconduct, the editorial page of the N&O has remained silent, except for an unfortunate op-ed by editorial page director Steve Ford.

This morning, however, the board published an editorial criticizing Nifong. The closing sentence summed up the editorial’s message: “But the more information that comes to light, the more questionable [Nifong’s] conduct and judgment appear.”

Also, UNC law professor Joe Kennedy spoke out forcefully against Nifong to WRAL, saying that Nifong should be removed from the case and that “his actions with respect to nondisclosure of this DNA information needs to be investigated.”

Kennedy’s background is that of a strong civil libertarian: he’s a former public defender and homeless center advocate who has published on racially disparate sentencing in drug crimes.

Lots more on this topic at K.C. Johnson’s blog — just keep scrolling. And LaShawn Barber is all over the case, too.

ROMNEY HAS HIRED BILL FRIST’S ONLINE GUY, Stephen Smith, as his online director. I’ve dealt with Smith a fair amount in conjunction with Frist’s appearances on The Glenn & Helen Show, etc., and found him smart and easy to work with. It’s a good hire for the Romney campaign.

I THOUGHT I HAD LINKED THIS BEFORE, but I can’t find it if I did: The Jean-Paul Sartre Cookbook.

TIGERHAWK IS ROUNDING UP COLLEGE PROPAGANDA FILMS — I think that “promotional films” would really be more accurate, but maybe not — and invites you to submit your favorites.

SONY GETS OFF CHEAP for its rootkit/malware exploit.

THE NEXT BIG THING: ICBMs with non-nuclear warheads?

IN THE (E)MAIL: A link to the perfect get-well-soon present for Stephen Green. Hey Stephen, send me your address and I’ll send you one!

IF YOU HAVEN’T BEEN PAYING ATTENTION to the Fannie Mae scandals, the Affordable Housing Blog has. Here’s an introduction, and here’s the latest post.

And reader Robert Schwartz emails about the news coverage: “The stories were on the business page. Would they have been on the front page, if the principals had been Republicans?”

Yes. Especially if there had been a Republican counterpart to this: “former vice-chair Jamie Gorelick had pay tied to flawed earnings and accounting.”

DAVE WEIGEL: “David Sirota is writing a book about anger? Uhn… isn’t that called an ‘autobiography’?”

NAJAF PROVINCE has been handed over to Iraqi control.

MORE ON THE ARMY SIZE / MORE TROOPS ISSUE, from Lawhawk.