So another day. Started at 9 this morning and had stuff on all the way to 5. Had some interesting discussions though. It was the Artificial Life seminar where a question was thrown open to us all - If you got off a spaceship on Mars and saw a pink blobby thing on the surface, what would you do to see if it was a form of life. After all the usual ho hums of respiration, metabolism and such like all prejudices we seem to hold about life come forth. I mean we can't really recognise any form of life except by our narrow biological definitions can we.

So at the end of that, to tip us further into our own ambiguities, was this question: after concluding that by our definition of life, the blob is life, if on turning it over we find it says Made by Sony, would that change our opinion. To my surprise all of the class bar a couple said it wouldn't. This does seem odd to me because I think we would all do a double flip and want to re-evaluate everything at this point. More than anything else it would seem very weird to me if we needed to 'create' life and then tie it down to the confines of our earthly biological bases of life - like breathing. Why not create life that is able to evolve and all the rest of it without our own human limitations. Actually I would be quite suspicious as to why all the bodily functions that arent necessary being programmed just to make something appear lifelike. (Cloning, etc aside)

Then we had another interesting class on Intelligence in Animals and Machines. One interesting aspect was the bot that the lecturer got to class. It was a very simple jig with a couple of light sensors connected to circuits connected to wheels. So this bot would go in whichever direction there was light. The interesting thing was that if there was an obstruction in it's path it would seek to go around it. Now you'd assume that this was intelligence, said the lecturer gleefully. But really it isn't because it's just that because of the shadow cast by the obstruction the bot follows the light and finds it's way around it and on to the light again.

We also had Formal Computational Skills, a very complicated name for Math, something that I think I should remember and all the terms are familiar but from another life really. So it's back to the world of functions and polynomials and differential equations.... shucks!

Anyway, so tomorrow we have the department party. Hope to make some friends so the year becomes more FUN! :) Not many classes on a Wednesday so hope to relax and read the reading list that's already out of control and the Blind Watchmaker for the next seminar. Things already seem to be getting busy ....