[FRIAM] Fwd: Tips Tricks: More options for mobile editing on the the iPad
Kinda cool: apparently the latest google docs can switch between mobile and desktop view for the iPad .. and I'm sure all tablets in the near future. http://goo.gl/lLOzM -- Owen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Privacy, Individual vs. Collective
Vladimyr Ivan Burachynsky wrote circa 10-12-08 10:29 AM: It seems conclusive to me that most conspiracy theories can be attributed to Gross Stupidity and the Secrecy imparts an air of reasoning where none exists. ( We refuse to believe some affairs are complete and utter nonsense, hence all the sightings of Jesus in concrete stains. Our brains impart patterns where none exists) How much effort is expended to reveal that some agency was incompetent or stupid (Air India, Lockerbie Bombing). Although this perspective on 6 sigma thoughts (e.g. conspiracy theories) is reasonable and practical, it's also dangerous. We, as a population depend fundamentally on the thinkers in the tails of the distributions. Those people do the due diligence none of us practical, reasonable people are willing to do. Sure, it's true that most of what those (us) wackos spend their (our) time on ends up being rat holes and dead ends. But the benefit is worth the cost. Without wackos like Penrose speculating about quantum decoherence in the brain or astrobiologists _wanting_ to demonstrate the functional equivalence of chemical constituents in compounds like DNA, we'd be lost. Our progress, if we made any at all, would be made by blunt thinkers whose best contributions enslave us to machines like assembly lines or standard accounting practices. Even more to your overall point, the wackos, albeit in the tails of some distributions, can be thought of as the _most_ human, the grounding points for other distributions. What's more human than the plight of a paranoid schizophrenic? What's more human than strapping on a diaper so you can make good time stalking the object of your affection? _These_ are the people who save us from becoming _objects_. They must be cherished and treasured for their humanity. Don't be too hard on the wackos. And don't resist becoming a wacko yourself. Let your freak flag fly, man. ;-) -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Support Wikileaks
Don't support the current Wikileaks, and don't turn Assange into a hero. Julian Assange is not the hero the media wants to see in him. The problem is that the media does not report objective or independent in the case of Wikileaks. Whenever the media is involved in a case itself, it comes to a big buzz caused by a positive feedback loop. Assange suspended the German hacker Daniel Schmidt (alias Daniel Domscheit-Berg), when the platform turned from a whistleblower site to a biased site for the fight against a superpower - the US. Daniel reports about it here (in German) http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,719604,00.html http://www.freitag.de/wochenthema/1041-im-prinzip-gut What he says makes sense, the original Wikileaks he had in mind is a much better thing than the current Wikileaks, which has turned into a biased site for a Don Quichotte fight against windmills. -J. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
[FRIAM] Tinbergen on mathematics, mathematical model, and novels
[Note to Nick: This is Jakob, the economist, brother of your Tinbergen.] There are also a number of misunderstandings about mathematics. Sometimes it is believed that only certain very simple and therefore rigid relations are representative by mathematics and that reality is more flexible, or however it may be expressed. This is to underestimate the power of mathematics: more advanced mathematics is able to express also much more complicated and flexible relations and partly to handle them. On the other hand it is sometimes forgotten that arguments against the most general types of mathematics are just arguments against science in general, i.e., against the assumption that we can understand connections between phenomena - in this case economic phenomena - in some general way. If determinacy - in whatever loose form - is not accepted at all, there is no economics: no mathematical economics and no literary economics. Perhaps there would remain economic novels; personally I would prefer other novels then. (from The Functions of Mathematical Treatment, J. Tinbergen, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 36, No. 4 (Nov., 1954), pp. 365-369) FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Privacy, Individual vs. Collective
Well, GEEZ, Roger. Have YOU ever seen an elephant in a cherry tree? Nick Ps: if you are too young to know what an elephant joke is, you won't get this. In fact, if you're old enough to know what an elephant joke is, you still may not get it. From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow Sent: Friday, December 10, 2010 2:15 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Privacy, Individual vs. Collective I'd say that the original conspiracy theory was the suspicion that one was being stalked by a group of very stealthy predators. Usually a false positive, but one false negative and you were lunch. -- rec -- On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 11:14 AM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote: Vladimyr Ivan Burachynsky wrote circa 10-12-08 10:29 AM: It seems conclusive to me that most conspiracy theories can be attributed to Gross Stupidity and the Secrecy imparts an air of reasoning where none exists. ( We refuse to believe some affairs are complete and utter nonsense, hence all the sightings of Jesus in concrete stains. Our brains impart patterns where none exists) How much effort is expended to reveal that some agency was incompetent or stupid (Air India, Lockerbie Bombing). Although this perspective on 6 sigma thoughts (e.g. conspiracy theories) is reasonable and practical, it's also dangerous. We, as a population depend fundamentally on the thinkers in the tails of the distributions. Those people do the due diligence none of us practical, reasonable people are willing to do. Sure, it's true that most of what those (us) wackos spend their (our) time on ends up being rat holes and dead ends. But the benefit is worth the cost. Without wackos like Penrose speculating about quantum decoherence in the brain or astrobiologists _wanting_ to demonstrate the functional equivalence of chemical constituents in compounds like DNA, we'd be lost. Our progress, if we made any at all, would be made by blunt thinkers whose best contributions enslave us to machines like assembly lines or standard accounting practices. Even more to your overall point, the wackos, albeit in the tails of some distributions, can be thought of as the _most_ human, the grounding points for other distributions. What's more human than the plight of a paranoid schizophrenic? What's more human than strapping on a diaper so you can make good time stalking the object of your affection? _These_ are the people who save us from becoming _objects_. They must be cherished and treasured for their humanity. Don't be too hard on the wackos. And don't resist becoming a wacko yourself. Let your freak flag fly, man. ;-) -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Privacy, Individual vs. Collective
No, and I didn't remember the joke, but google tells me if I haven't seen one then their strategy for hiding there must be working. -- rec -- On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 2:40 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Well, GEEZ, Roger. Have YOU ever seen an elephant in a cherry tree? Nick Ps: if you are too young to know what an elephant joke is, you won’t get this. In fact, if you’re old enough to know what an elephant joke is, you still may not get it. *From:* friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Roger Critchlow *Sent:* Friday, December 10, 2010 2:15 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Privacy, Individual vs. Collective I'd say that the original conspiracy theory was the suspicion that one was being stalked by a group of very stealthy predators. Usually a false positive, but one false negative and you were lunch. -- rec -- On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 11:14 AM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote: Vladimyr Ivan Burachynsky wrote circa 10-12-08 10:29 AM: It seems conclusive to me that most conspiracy theories can be attributed to Gross Stupidity and the Secrecy imparts an air of reasoning where none exists. ( We refuse to believe some affairs are complete and utter nonsense, hence all the sightings of Jesus in concrete stains. Our brains impart patterns where none exists) How much effort is expended to reveal that some agency was incompetent or stupid (Air India, Lockerbie Bombing). Although this perspective on 6 sigma thoughts (e.g. conspiracy theories) is reasonable and practical, it's also dangerous. We, as a population depend fundamentally on the thinkers in the tails of the distributions. Those people do the due diligence none of us practical, reasonable people are willing to do. Sure, it's true that most of what those (us) wackos spend their (our) time on ends up being rat holes and dead ends. But the benefit is worth the cost. Without wackos like Penrose speculating about quantum decoherence in the brain or astrobiologists _wanting_ to demonstrate the functional equivalence of chemical constituents in compounds like DNA, we'd be lost. Our progress, if we made any at all, would be made by blunt thinkers whose best contributions enslave us to machines like assembly lines or standard accounting practices. Even more to your overall point, the wackos, albeit in the tails of some distributions, can be thought of as the _most_ human, the grounding points for other distributions. What's more human than the plight of a paranoid schizophrenic? What's more human than strapping on a diaper so you can make good time stalking the object of your affection? _These_ are the people who save us from becoming _objects_. They must be cherished and treasured for their humanity. Don't be too hard on the wackos. And don't resist becoming a wacko yourself. Let your freak flag fly, man. ;-) -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Privacy, Individual vs. Collective
Has to do with the efficacy of painting their toes red. N From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow Sent: Friday, December 10, 2010 2:52 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Privacy, Individual vs. Collective No, and I didn't remember the joke, but google tells me if I haven't seen one then their strategy for hiding there must be working. -- rec -- On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 2:40 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Well, GEEZ, Roger. Have YOU ever seen an elephant in a cherry tree? Nick Ps: if you are too young to know what an elephant joke is, you won't get this. In fact, if you're old enough to know what an elephant joke is, you still may not get it. From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow Sent: Friday, December 10, 2010 2:15 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Privacy, Individual vs. Collective I'd say that the original conspiracy theory was the suspicion that one was being stalked by a group of very stealthy predators. Usually a false positive, but one false negative and you were lunch. -- rec -- On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 11:14 AM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote: Vladimyr Ivan Burachynsky wrote circa 10-12-08 10:29 AM: It seems conclusive to me that most conspiracy theories can be attributed to Gross Stupidity and the Secrecy imparts an air of reasoning where none exists. ( We refuse to believe some affairs are complete and utter nonsense, hence all the sightings of Jesus in concrete stains. Our brains impart patterns where none exists) How much effort is expended to reveal that some agency was incompetent or stupid (Air India, Lockerbie Bombing). Although this perspective on 6 sigma thoughts (e.g. conspiracy theories) is reasonable and practical, it's also dangerous. We, as a population depend fundamentally on the thinkers in the tails of the distributions. Those people do the due diligence none of us practical, reasonable people are willing to do. Sure, it's true that most of what those (us) wackos spend their (our) time on ends up being rat holes and dead ends. But the benefit is worth the cost. Without wackos like Penrose speculating about quantum decoherence in the brain or astrobiologists _wanting_ to demonstrate the functional equivalence of chemical constituents in compounds like DNA, we'd be lost. Our progress, if we made any at all, would be made by blunt thinkers whose best contributions enslave us to machines like assembly lines or standard accounting practices. Even more to your overall point, the wackos, albeit in the tails of some distributions, can be thought of as the _most_ human, the grounding points for other distributions. What's more human than the plight of a paranoid schizophrenic? What's more human than strapping on a diaper so you can make good time stalking the object of your affection? _These_ are the people who save us from becoming _objects_. They must be cherished and treasured for their humanity. Don't be too hard on the wackos. And don't resist becoming a wacko yourself. Let your freak flag fly, man. ;-) -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Privacy, Individual vs. Collective
I can just see it now... a whole horde of FRIAMers with their freakin' flags flyin'! it's an appalling thought... even in line at TSA waitin for their turn at the backscatters! Don't be too hard on the wackos. And don't resist becoming a wacko yourself. Let your freak flag fly, man. ;-) -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Privacy, Individual vs. Collective
At least they got my good side. On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 6:57 PM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote: I got backscattered at Albq last Wednesday, is my picture on the internets yet? I see you wore the spike heels and Tiara Guerin and Nick loaned you from their collections... --Doug On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 3:22 PM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote: I can just see it now... a whole horde of FRIAMers with their freakin' flags flyin'! it's an appalling thought... even in line at TSA waitin for their turn at the backscatters! -- Doug Roberts drobe...@rti.org d...@parrot-farm.net 505-455-7333 - Office 505-670-8195 - Cell FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Privacy, Individual vs. Collective
IN the national security game, it works just the opposite... if you get a false positive, YOU are lunch to the machine... Drug tests. Polygraphs. Investigators with attitude. On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 4:15 PM, Roger Critchlow r...@elf.org mailto:r...@elf.org wrote: I'd say that the original conspiracy theory was the suspicion that one was being stalked by a group of very stealthy predators. Usually a false positive, but one false negative and you were lunch. That's the most brilliant thing I've read all week. ~~J www.turtlezero.com http://www.turtlezero.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] hi friam - how do I calculate the fractal dimension of repetitive text?
Hi Giles, Copy and Paste is not something only unexperienced programmers do. Let us admit it, programmers do it all the time. It is a basic tool which is applied on many scales, from the highest level of the application to the lowest level of the individual function. Similar or duplicated code is not completely bad, it can even be faster than entirely unique code (for instance if you code a loop directly in Assembly language, the branching command can be eliminated). If repetitive code is good or bad depends on the judgement of the programmer - whether he wants performance or elegance. There is a Harvard Business Review article named When Should a Process Be Art which says that some creative processes naturally resist definition and standardization. Programming is such a creative process. The programmer adjusts the raw material until it matches the desired requiremewnts. It is an artistic process where the quality can not be measured by counting the lines of code, see http://4loc.wordpress.com/2010/11/22/progress-in-the-software-world/ I doubt that refactoring can be automated. The book from Martin Fowler is useful: Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code A list of patterns from this book can be found here http://www.refactoring.com/catalog/ I am not sure if it makes sense to define a fractal dimension for text or code. The box counting method is a common method to determine the fractal dimension of images and graphics. We divide the space up into a grid of boxes of size x, and count the number of boxes of that scale that would contain a part of the attractor. If we divide the code into lines, and count the number of lines which repeat themselves, we would get a number between 0% and 100% (only repetition: 100%, no repetition: 0%). This is not a fractal dimension. And if we are honest, we must consider the whole stack, which begins on the deepest level of machine code. Ruby for example is written in C, and C in Assembly language. Many programs which look elegant just hide the messy part under the hood. They are based on large frameworks which contain all the messy and ugly code. -J. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
