Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: A Swarm of Nano Quadrotors - YouTube
Makes me want to learn to shoot a shotgun. On Mar 1, 2012, at 8:39 PM, Owen Densmore o...@backspaces.net wrote: More on the drone front: The Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 is Now Available to Pre-Order http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=20345 -- 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 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] [sfx: Discuss] Hospice Care
I have a friend who provides in-home hospice care, usually one client at a time. If you are interested in that kind of care, I will put you in contact with her. Peter On Jun 16, 2011, at 8:09 PM, Owen Densmore wrote: We are considering hospice care for a family member here in Santa Fe. Has anyone experience with this? What are the problems? Upsides? Downsides? Pros/Cons? Thanks -- -- Owen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Santa Fe Complex discuss group. To post to this group, send email to disc...@sfcomplex.org To unsubscribe from this group, send email to discuss+unsubscr...@sfcomplex.org For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/a/sfcomplex.org/group/discuss 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] Graphics Class
Hi Ed, Was the meeting today? The note read April 2. Peter On Jan 31, 2011, at 3:10 PM, Edward Angel an...@cs.unm.edu wrote: I've received a lot of positive responses about the class so it looks it's a go. Some of you have asked about scheduling. I'm pretty open as to times and I intend to have a lot of material available on line. Steve Smith has set up a doodle poll so people can put in their preferences. It's at http://www.doodle.com/qw535ewa3ux3zxcw42grre5n/admin I had suggested we meet next week. I noted though that there is a Wedtech scheduled for next week but none for this week so I've put us down to have a roundtable discussion that might include content, possible projects, scheduling and how to register with UNM of you want credit. So if you can make it, we'll meet at the Complex Wednesday April 2 at noon. Ed __ Ed Angel Chair, Board of Directors, Santa Fe Complex Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab) Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico 1017 Sierra Pinon Santa Fe, NM 87501 505-984-0136 (home) an...@cs.unm.edu 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel http://artslab.unm.edu http://sfcomplex.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] Graphics Class at the Complex
Hi Ed, I would like to take this class... SIgn me up. Peter On Jan 30, 2011, at 7:39 PM, Edward Angel wrote: A number of you have shown interest in having a course in Computer Graphics at the Complex. I've been working with UNM on it so that those of you who are interested and what credit for the class can do that. So here is what I'm proposing to do. We'll do the equivalent of UNM's CS/EECE 412 Introduction to Computer Graphics which counts for both undergraduate and graduate credit. I'm hoping we can use the new edition of my textbook Interactive Computer Graphics which should come out around March. If it isn't available, my publisher will get us copies of the first couple of chapters which we can use until the book is available. The course is an introduction to Computer Graphics using OpenGL. The significance of the new edition is that it will be the first textbook that uses the latest versions of OpenGL which are totally shader based. Consequently we should be able to do projects on PCs or Macs with any version of OpenGL from 3.1 up to 4.1 or on cell phones with OpenGL ES 2.0 or through browsers with WebGL. All these versions are almost identical so participants should be able to pick their platform and programming language. The content includes hardware and software, geometry, viewing, modeling, procedural methods, curves and surfaces. An old syllabus from UNM is at www.cs.unm.edu/~angel/CS433. In the modern version that we'll do, everything will be done using shaders on the GPU. I'd like to keep the format where we all do a few startup projects and then each participant picks a project to do. The plan is to start around March 1 and do the class over the next couple of months ending at the close of UNM's spring semester. To make this work for those who want credit and to earn some much needed funds for the Complex, I need seven people to register for UNM credit. Otherwise, I don't really care if others sit in as long as they participate. Not only is the subject of interest to a lot of you, if we can do this course successfully with UNM, it will lead to a long term relationship under which we could offer more courses at the Complex for which credit will be available. I'll also be working on an on line version at the same time which could also be a test case for future offerings through the Complex. Please let me know if you are interested. It would be good to have an organizational meeting sometime next week, perhaps a round table at Wedtech next week if nothing else has been scheduled yet. Ed __ Ed Angel Chair, Board of Directors, Santa Fe Complex Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab) Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico 1017 Sierra Pinon Santa Fe, NM 87501 505-984-0136 (home) an...@cs.unm.edu 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel http://artslab.unm.edu http://sfcomplex.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] [sfx: Discuss] JavaScript Development
I've been using TextMate to edit Javascript most of the time, augmented by a jslint plugin for TextMate. jslint (http://www.jslint.com/) is a javascript syntax checker that makes sure the syntax is correct before you run the code. It is extremely helpful. jsunit, the javascript unit testing framework, is also useful, and it will run outside a browser using rhino. On Jan 15, 2011, at 4:51 PM, Owen Densmore wrote: We're going to start some JavaScript projects, and I'd like to know: How Do You Develop JavaScript apps/libraries? There are IDEs like Eclipse, NetBeans, IntelliJ and so on, all of which have some sort of JS capability. Also a new one, Cloud9 which, believe it or not, is written in JavaScript natively! Generally these aim for a debugger, and for browser related programming, a way to preview your work in a browser within the IDE. Then there are TextEditors, with fewer bells whistles, but with syntax highlighting and keyword completion, and generally a way to run your code in your default browser. Then there is a more do-it-by-hand approach: use a simple text editor, and create a work flow using the the JS engine and debugger in the browser. Firefox and Firebug are quite popular, but Chrome and Safari also have developer tools. Often you'll just build a tiny HTML page with the JS inline, just to see how it all works. Finally, for just experimenting and exploring, there are JS shells, generally the browser JS engines but runnable outside of the browser on the command line. SpiderMonkey, WebKit, and Rhino are examples So the question is: how do you do your JS programming? And good hints/ideas? -- Owen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Santa Fe Complex discuss group. To post to this group, send email to disc...@sfcomplex.org To unsubscribe from this group, send email to discuss+unsubscr...@sfcomplex.org For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/a/sfcomplex.org/group/discuss 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] Can agent based modeling do a better job ( of economic modeling ) ?
http://www.economist.com/node/16636121?story_id=16636121fsrc=rss ( : ( : pete -- -- Peter Baston IDEAS business technology integration www.ideapete.com Cell: 505-690-3627 Mailto:p...@ideapete.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] The death of Telco as we know it !
This from one of the most conservative Telco CEOs in Europe Or should it be called why the Iphone - Pad and Android will rule the world Get out of telco stocks NOW unless they really get it !! - http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/06/lombard-microsoft-apple-google-intelligent-investing-france-telecom.html?boxes=Homepagelight *Alexandra Zendrian, Forbes: *How do you anticipate this year will go for *France Telecom*http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=FTE( FTEhttp://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=FTE- news http://search.forbes.com/search/CompanyNewsSearch?ticker=FTE - people http://people.forbes.com/search?ticker=FTE)? *Lombard:* 2010 is a major year for the telecom sector worldwide. People have made a lot of moves with evolution of Internet and activity of telecoms. What is happening right now is restructuring for the sector. Usually the way it works is the customer selected the telco and he enjoys having the Internet, phone, etc. The ecosystem is organized around the telco, with additional services coming form a lot of players. Now the data traffic in mobile is exploding, which means that all customers worldwide are using the phone as portable PC--not just with the neighbors and friends but also a tool to be fully integrated into the network. The big revolution which is happening now is that in the future the customer will choose first the services they want and the device in which they will receive the services. The secondary requirement will be the network. We've reversed the model. The customer is fully interested by service and device and content and the network is an accessory. They think that they can find the network anywhere. It's a drastic change in business model. There needs to be an investment in these different parts to be sure that the model we have can go on. We have to be sure that each part will get necessary financing to invest at minimum level to ensure services. The networks, where the initial telephone network was installed a long time ago. No one had to pay for new networks for a while. And now fiber optics came along, which cost billions. You have to be sure that someone will pay for the investment. You have to be sure that content provider have to find some part of the revenue. The new model that I described which starts from service provider guarantees that the revenues will reach these areas. The fiber is very expensive because the solution which is very efficient is to use this. We will wire each individual home. This works in comparison to what happened during the last century. We will do something like that in five years. The work wasn't done by our predecessors in *80 years.* So there's an acceleration of the investment period and a lot of additional expense with new technologies. The characteristics of the new digital world is that everything is under the control of powerful software. -- ( : ( : pete -- -- Peter Baston IDEAS business technology integration www.ideapete.com Cell: 505-690-3627 Mailto:p...@ideapete.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] The Mysterious Triangular Truss!
Wot be Cognitive Vertigo But a discussion by people don't know the topic? ANY triangle consisting of three joined members (wood or gold, and not necessarily straight, or pinned) if supported on a base will resist any load through any vertex. It is not particularly good at this and much less rigid than a single member of the truss in direct load . Leonardo used these a lot. Even made stylish cartoons of same. Called a simple triangular truss. The basis of all space frames. 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] The Mysterious Triangular Truss!
Wot be Cognitive Vertigo But a discussion by people don't know the topic? ANY triangle consisting of three joined members (wood or gold, and not necessarily straight, or pinned) if supported on a base will resist any load through any vertex. It is not particularly good at this and much less rigid than a single member of the truss in direct load . Leonardo used these a lot. Even made stylish cartoons of same. Called a simple triangular truss. The basis of all space frames. 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] A leetle thermodynamics!
Solar cookers can break your heart, but not the laws of thermodynamics. Consider this elementary fact, my dear Dr. Watson. The insolation on earth near the equator is about 800 W/m2, it is less at the end of the day, and much less after sunset. For an aperture of 0.1 m2, you getting about 80 W black body, ignoring losses. Concentrators have nuttin to do with it! This amounts to about 270 BTU/hr from which you could boil a bit less than 2 pints of water in an hour, assuming no losses. BTW, you can, with care and ceremony, make ice in the Egyptian deserts every cloudless night, by exploiting radiation to the stars from shallow water trays, and careful control of nucleation, convection and vaporization. In fact, the temple priests used to do it on the flat roofs of the temples to impress the unwashed on the bounty of whatever God they were scamming that week. Much hoopla, involving sanctified water brought up from the basement (where it had got pretty cool, mixed with yesterday's ice), throwing holy dust on the surface (to provide nucleation particles) and wafting the surface at just the right time and rate with magic ostrich featherwands to actually control heat transfer due to convection and vapors. It's just thermodynamics, Nefertiti! And if sometimes the ice didn't form, it was because someone's mother-in-law was a witch! It's amazing what them religious guys know!! I usedta teach elementary courses in thermo in CA and the conversion constants are from memory and only roughly correct. 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] A leetle thermodynamics!
Solar cookers can break your heart, but not the laws of thermodynamics. Consider this elementary fact, my dear Dr. Watson. The insolation on earth near the equator is about 800 W/m2, it is less at the end of the day, and much less after sunset. For an aperture of 0.1 m2, you getting about 80 W black body, ignoring losses. Concentrators have nuttin to do with it! This amounts to about 270 BTU/hr from which you could boil a bit less than 2 pints of water in an hour, assuming no losses. BTW, you can, with care and ceremony, make ice in the Egyptian deserts every cloudless night, by exploiting radiation to the stars from shallow water trays, and careful control of nucleation, convection and vaporization. In fact, the temple priests used to do it on the flat roofs of the temples to impress the unwashed on the bounty of whatever God they were scamming that week. Much hoopla, involving sanctified water brought up from the basement (where it had got pretty cool, mixed with yesterday's ice), throwing holy dust on the surface (to provide nucleation particles) and wafting the surface at just the right time and rate with magic ostrich featherwands to actually control heat transfer due to convection and vapors. It's just thermodynamics, Nefertiti! And if sometimes the ice didn't form, it was because someone's mother-in-law was a witch! It's amazing what them religious guys know!! I usedta teach elementary courses in thermo in CA and the conversion constants are from memory and only roughly correct. 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] Google M-Labs: Your Personal Traffic Cop - The Channel Wire - IT Channel News And Views by CRN and VARBusiness
http://www.crn.com/networking/212903447 -- Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.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] Accountability: a rare courage!
The idea is that a published paper should be preceded by the names of the reviewers for and agin said work. That terrifies the profs! Still throws no light on the naysayers if a paper is rejected! Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for. 1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505 TEL: (505) 983-7728FAX: (505) 983-1694 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] Homeostasis by Peer Review
Peer Review is indeed an excellent preserver of status quo. For the AIAA (the main aerospace institution) the standard procedure is that the signed draft paper is submitted by editors to reviewers, who then send anonymous comments to the author. Twenty years ago, as a Fellow of said august Institution, I proposed simply reversing the process: sending the paper anonymously to reviewers and then listing favorable reviewers on the published paper. It was received with deafening silence. Actually, the Royal Society does do something akin to this. Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for. 1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505 TEL: (505) 983-7728FAX: (505) 983-1694 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] Art, Science Vice-versa
I reckon a rather convincing demonstration that, happily, Art is NOT like Science is that artists don't write the sort of stuff appears in Friam on the subject. Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for. 1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505 TEL: (505) 983-7728FAX: (505) 983-1694 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] Get rid of TMI - Information Clarity - Tufte seminar coming
We are all in the business of data and information clarity and if you have never been to a Tufte seminar you should Today we are all feeling the effects of To Much Information, most of it useless It will revolutionize how you and your organization look at and transmit any form of information Those of you who know me know I don't recommend these things lightly but this one is a must do. Albuquerque Jan 30th 2009 http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/courses ( : ( : pete -- Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.com/ 3210 La Paz Lane Santa Fe, NM 87507 /Albuquerque// Office: 505-890-9649/ /Santa Fe// Office: 505-629-4227/ /Cell: 505-690-3627/ /Fax: 866-642-8918/ /_Mailto:p...@ideapete.com mailto:p...@ideapete.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
Re: [FRIAM] Strogatz and Ratti video conversation
Exactly the point that stuck out to me is two experts ( Top Rated ) from different disciplines saying This is scary we really /_don't know_ /and should find out instead of heck lets just build it and see if the humans live ( We don't even do that to amphibians or reptile pets ) this from a senior member of a profession who's egos are bigger than Everest and about as unreachable. The big kicker here will always be You cannot measure or model therefore manage Giant Non linear Complex Systems with simple linear technology not mater how pretty the GUI Phil mentions Jane Jacobs and her work which is full of visually identified rules ( that work and do not ) with feedback loops and I will add Chris Alexander http://www.patternlanguage.com/ ( we are using both in our parametric model designs of education facilities tied to educational excellence ) Jochen's point about Berlin not being the greatest place to live in can be I think covered under What exactly do you call excitement that every psychopath wants to know and as Jane Jacobs and even Ratti points out designs go wrong but in many cases its just left up to the people in the FUBAR to suffer baby suffer. Again from the silliness and partially scary aspect --- model your city or town on Discworld and see how close you can get, thats either good news or bad depending on your Guinness quota or in Jochens case Berliner Weisse ( : ( : pete Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.com/ Phil Henshaw wrote: The idea offered that why cities become such thriving places for humans is because of the intensity of noise in the connections is somewhat fantastic.That's really what Storgatz Ratti are proposing, as traditional science has always proposed to explain what is inexplicable to it's method. To their credit, the one thing they seem to accurately agree on is that science doesn't have a clue how that would work, and that we do indeed observe daily that it somehow really does. They should read Jane Jacobs on the Nature of Economies or the Economy of Cities, who brilliantly describes the actual creative mechanism of the environment. The productive wide open door to recognizing it, that most everyone opts not to walk through, is that it's _the diversity options_, not _the diversity of instructions_ in a creative organism like a city that do it.That sort of messes up the deterministic model, of course, but points to a gap in our rules where things could both exit and enter. Phil Henshaw *From:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *On Behalf Of *peter *Sent:* Saturday, November 15, 2008 2:27 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group *Cc:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Strogatz and Ratti video conversation Nice one indeed , great catch Steve But do we all realize the implications with the words - /Feedback Loops - Giant Non Linear systems/ ( being measured with linear systems ) - /Network theory/ not translating into /Euclidean geometry./ I found the piece on natural laws of cities totally enlightening but fortunately for all of us SaFeans we live in Discworld nirvana where no natural laws apply as Owen can testify from his phenomenal research under Professor Pratchett ( : ( : pete Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.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
Re: [FRIAM] Strogatz and Ratti video conversation
Nice one indeed , great catch Steve But do we all realize the implications with the words - /Feedback Loops - Giant Non Linear systems/ ( being measured with linear systems ) - /Network theory/ not translating into /Euclidean geometry./ I found the piece on natural laws of cities totally enlightening but fortunately for all of us SaFeans we live in Discworld nirvana where no natural laws apply as Owen can testify from his phenomenal research under Professor Pratchett ( : ( : pete Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.com/ Stephen Guerin wrote: Nice video of Steven Strogatz and Carlo Ratti discussing complexity and urban design: http://salon.seedmagazine.com/salon_strogatz_ratti.html Strogatz mathematically describes how natural and sociocultural complexity resolves into vast webs of order. Ratti uses technology as a tool to create interactive urban environments. In this video Salon, Strogatz and Ratti discuss whether building and analyzing human networks can help us overcome our poor mathematical understanding of complexity. -S 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] Re- Art of a Crime ( Graffiti )
Hi David Great article http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Teen/13-teen-story nice slant Have you ever thought about where some graffiti artists eventually could end up, career wise, and what sort of opportunities are open to them, Check out this guy http://www.ideapete.com/Hundertwasser.html and what a name ( Freedom ( country ) hundred waters ). He started out making simple graffiti designs around windows ( for which he was put in jail ) then made steel and wood plates to make the designs semi permanent fixtures, then he extended his work to cover the whole building and the rest is history. Look what he did with this industrial waste recovery plant its incredible and on the Danube no less, then multi denominational churches, hotels and other fantastic stuff . ( You can do pre design concept work with virtual architecture in school ( software is free )Think of most of the terrible industrial box industrial designs ( Intel Rio Rancho - The Eldorado hotel - Your School Yuck ) that surround us Then you have Graffiti as a math model ( right brain ) in relationship to fractals and I am sure that my dear friend Jonathan Wolfe http://www.fractalfoundation.org/jwolfe.shtm would love to bend your ears on that subject ( think ever changing fractal graffiti projected on the sides of buildings changing with the seasons or in the sky with lasers - surprise competitions with sponsors ) The simple fact is that a huge amount of your fellow students relate to the world in right brain concepts and thats why left brain linear doesn't make much sense to them and its shows in their concept graffiti design. Then you have graffiti projects that can be turned in to web movies http://www.blublu.org/ this is a great demonstration of combination of low tech ( Graffiti ) with high tech ( web ) Then again you could start a funding project for the schools ( or yourself ) with moving graffiti http://yadayadanyc.blogspot.com/2008/04/moving-graffiti.html Last but not least the premier worlds graffiti artist http://www.banksy.co.uk/menu.html who's work now goes in excess of six figure $ ( My favorite piece is the anarchist flower thrower ) Maybe you should put together a whole display of this stuff at one of the Friam complexes call it / Graffiti the next high tech frontier / ( using as you center design ) , you would pack them in and give lots of your friends HOPE ( Steve [EMAIL PROTECTED] is the guy to talk to ) Just as a fun closure I showed the electronic page that your article appears on in the SFNM and asked all to rate the graphics ( There are 5 including the header ) The graffiti shot won by a mile ( I use addblocker and that must give Ginny fits ) Yes I know there are bad uses of graffiti but personally I think it is a huge tsunami of creativity waiting to be unleashed and we can drown in it or surf the big one Agh so much fun so little time and the world is your oyster ( painted or not ) ( : ( : pete -- Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.com/ 3210 La Paz Lane Santa Fe, NM 87507 /Albuquerque// Office: 505-890-9649/ /Santa Fe// Office: 505-629-4227/ /Cell: 505-690-3627/ /Fax: 866-642-8918/ /_Mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]_/ 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] Computing Our Way Into The Collapse - Forbes.com
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/1117/044.html About says it in a nutshell, quants and all ( : ( : pete -- Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.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] A Modest Query
Does anyone know why Excel SOLVER gives unrepeatable (unspeakable) results for a simple variation problem? A high order wave equation. I'll give details if you e-mail me. Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for. 1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505 TEL: (505) 983-7728FAX: (505) 983-1694 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] Ruth Charney on Modeling with Cubes - The readable one
Nice work Ken Its especially interesting when this field breaks into multi dimension ( or hypercube in Ruths words ) start including hologram memory retention and the shifting POVS as you can now change your vector all around the dimension and all sorts of wonderful patterns come into view. Maybe mother nature with her fractal geometry for everything has some real relevance but we just have difficulty laying everything out in 2d and start from the wrong perspective Keep it up and feed more to the group ( : ( : pete Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.com/ Kenneth Lloyd wrote: Pete, First, thanks for the Charney link. For the past several years I have been working with connective Compositional Pattern Producing Networks (CPPNs) in HyperNEAT. http://eplex.cs.ucf.edu/papers/stanley_alife09.pdf Specifically, I have been using CPPN's for pattern discovery in evolving complex systems. Jason Gauci wrote this interesting introduction to unsupervised pattern learning in a simple checkers game using these techniques - an definite improvement on Blondie24: http://eplex.cs.ucf.edu/papers/gauci_aaai08.pdf Ken *From:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *On Behalf Of *peter *Sent:* Monday, November 03, 2008 10:01 AM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; Tom Johnson *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Ruth Charney on Modeling with Cubes - The readable one Here is the actual presentation that was unreadable on Youtube Ruth sent it to me and Steve reposted it at http://www.friam.org/Charney_MAA10-08.pdf She does remarkable work and thanks Tom for the heads up Will do the same with Marty Golibitskys similar presentation Patterns Patterns Everywhere when I get it ( : ( : pete Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.com/ Tom Johnson wrote: From the Internet Scout *Ruth Charney on Modeling with Cubes [Macromedia Flash Player]* http://www.maa.org/news/102308charney.html The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) continues to build on their already solid online presence with the addition of this lecture by noted mathematician and scholar Professor Ruth Charney. This particular lecture was given at the MAA's Carriage House Conference Center in the fall of 2008 and it deals with how cubes can be used to represent a variety of systems. As Charney notes, The geometry of these spaces is strange, complicated, and a lot of fun to study. Visitors to the site can watch several particularly lucid examples from Charney's talk, read her biography, and also read a detailed interview with her conducted by Michael Pearson. [KMG] https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=1view=pagename=gpver=sh3fib53pgpk#11d532fd493691f2_team tj == J. T. Johnson Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA www.analyticjournalism.com http://www.analyticjournalism.com 505.577.6482(c)505.473.9646(h) http://www.jtjohnson.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. -- Buckminster Fuller == 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] Ruth Charney on Modeling with Cubes - The readable one
Here is the actual presentation that was unreadable on Youtube Ruth sent it to me and Steve reposted it at http://www.friam.org/Charney_MAA10-08.pdf She does remarkable work and thanks Tom for the heads up Will do the same with Marty Golibitskys similar presentation Patterns Patterns Everywhere when I get it ( : ( : pete Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.com/ Tom Johnson wrote: From the Internet Scout *Ruth Charney on Modeling with Cubes [Macromedia Flash Player]* http://www.maa.org/news/102308charney.html The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) continues to build on their already solid online presence with the addition of this lecture by noted mathematician and scholar Professor Ruth Charney. This particular lecture was given at the MAA's Carriage House Conference Center in the fall of 2008 and it deals with how cubes can be used to represent a variety of systems. As Charney notes, The geometry of these spaces is strange, complicated, and a lot of fun to study. Visitors to the site can watch several particularly lucid examples from Charney's talk, read her biography, and also read a detailed interview with her conducted by Michael Pearson. [KMG] https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=1view=pagename=gpver=sh3fib53pgpk#11d532fd493691f2_team tj == J. T. Johnson Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA www.analyticjournalism.com http://www.analyticjournalism.com 505.577.6482(c)505.473.9646(h) http://www.jtjohnson.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. -- Buckminster Fuller == 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] Why Model? Exactly so and vote for the best model or image of 1 of all time
I cannot help thinking that there is a huge oxymoron when a defense of modeling is made with TEXT When modeling can demonstrate its causality and need ( TOTALLY explain itself ) using its functions ( Right Brain ) Demonstrate your technology with your technology then we are moving along the right track until then we are pontificating or a possible delusion. Still pondering the implications of Marty Golubitsky who quoted Rene Thom statement / When you build a model its really just a theory and may have nothing whatsoever to do with the real world except in the opinion of the modelers / As for phenomenal models and I will include images of potential models that SPEAK for themselves with awesome potential http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/posters Minards 1812 poster and go to Tufte's seminar it will blow your mind ( Figuratively speaking or not depending on who you are with ) Next challenge for Steve and Owen How do we use cloud technology illustrate and investigate model technology in its full multi dimensional glory Heck Monty Python did in more ways than wun. ( : ( : pete Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.com/ Robert Holmes wrote: Hmmm anyone else troubled by the fact that both definitions of indoctrination seem to be wholly applicable to the Epstein piece? Robert On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 10:02 PM, Douglas Roberts [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I prefer the dictionary definition: Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) http://dictionary.reference.com/help/luna.html - Cite This Source http://dictionary.reference.com/cite.html?qh=indoctrinationia=luna - Share This http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/indoctrination#sharethis in·doc·tri·nate http://dictionary.reference.com/audio.html/lunaWAV/I01/I0137800 /?n?d?ktr??ne?t/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[in-*dok*-tr/uh/-neyt] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation --verb (used with object), -nat·ed, -nat·ing. 1. to instruct in a doctrine, principle, ideology, etc., esp. to imbue with a specific partisan or biased belief or point of view. On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 9:55 PM, Marcus G. Daniels [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Douglas Roberts wrote: Why think, when there is dogma to save you the bother? A quick check of Wikipedia might suggest an explanation.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indoctrination Indoctrination is the process of inculcating ideas, attitudes, cognitive strategies or a professional methodology. 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] EMOTICONS at TED
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYyN_6GmzWI I just had to post this -- Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.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] The first article on the cloud
http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12411882 A survey of corporate IT: IT's global cloud | Let it rise | The Economist ( The one previous post and the others come after ) -- Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.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
Re: [FRIAM] Ruth Charney on Modeling with Cubes
Yes great stuff BUT sad that the you tube postings of the presentations suck and are un-viewable due to poor camera work ( I have emailed Ruth for a copy of her power point presentation and will post it when I get it ) There is also a fascinating guy on a similar program called Martin Golubitsky http://www.maa.org/news/090508mg.html and http://www.math.uh.edu/~mg/ discussing Patterns Patterns Everywhere which will blow your socks of ( Sadly same problem as Ruth's with the camera work and ditto with the powerpoint posting if he will send it to me.) I heard a lecture or interview of his once in which he says / Its especially important to realize that most models are just theories which may have no connection to anything in real life except in the mind of the modeler / Just about says it all. ( : ( : pete Peter Baston *IDEA-* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.com/ Tom Johnson wrote: From the Internet Scout *Ruth Charney on Modeling with Cubes [Macromedia Flash Player]* http://www.maa.org/news/102308charney.html The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) continues to build on their already solid online presence with the addition of this lecture by noted mathematician and scholar Professor Ruth Charney. This particular lecture was given at the MAA's Carriage House Conference Center in the fall of 2008 and it deals with how cubes can be used to represent a variety of systems. As Charney notes, The geometry of these spaces is strange, complicated, and a lot of fun to study. Visitors to the site can watch several particularly lucid examples from Charney's talk, read her biography, and also read a detailed interview with her conducted by Michael Pearson. [KMG] https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=1view=pagename=gpver=sh3fib53pgpk#11d532fd493691f2_team tj == J. T. Johnson Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA www.analyticjournalism.com http://www.analyticjournalism.com 505.577.6482(c)505.473.9646(h) http://www.jtjohnson.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. -- Buckminster Fuller == 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] Subject:Grappa Wireless Internet
or Cable come available, I think they are a better answer. Robert On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 4:10 PM, peter [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://grappawireless.com/about.html Anyone in the group have any experience or comments on these guys ( : ( : pete -- Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.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] Greenspan - Bad data hurt Wall Street computer models - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/external/idg/2008/10/23/23idg-Greenspan-Bad.html?scp=2sq=greenspan%20tsunami%20modelsst=cse The two most fascinating paragraphs are below / its also fun to note the federal sentencing guidelines now take into account the financial impact amount of fraud which means our merry Quants could be doing multi lifetimes in the pokey / / /But at a hearing http://www.idg.com/www/rd.nsf/rd?readformu=http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=2256 held today by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Greenspan acknowledged that the data fed into financial systems was often a case of garbage-in, garbage-out. Business decisions by financial services firms were based on the best insights of mathematicians and finance experts, supported by major advances in computer and communications technology, Greenspan told the committee. The whole intellectual edifice, however, collapsed in the summer of last year because the data inputted into the risk management models generally covered only the past two decades a period of euphoria. He added that if the risk models also had been built to include historic periods of stress, capital requirements would have been much higher and the financial world would be in far better shape today, in my judgment. / /It was unclear from Cox's testimony just what sort of regulatory changes he was suggesting. But he said that the SEC is now engaged in aggressive law enforcement/ -- Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.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] Grappa Wireless Internet
http://grappawireless.com/about.html Anyone in the group have any experience or comments on these guys ( : ( : pete -- Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.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
Re: [FRIAM] Blinded By Science - When models FAIL taking all the humans
Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.com/ glen e. p. ropella wrote: Thus spake peggy miller circa 10/17/2008 09:32 AM: Translation -- statistics and common sense verified that the larger the operation becomes, with noticeably poorer decisions happening at the size of business over $1 billion in profits, matched by replacement of ownership/manager with non-owner managers, judgment fails. Caring appears to be a part of ownership. Somethings counter this problem, like profit sharing -- giving workers part of profits -- but ownership of business and smaller size seems to be almost irreplaceable. Small banks and credit unions, owned locally, rarely fail. The owner's name, reputation and thus decisions are on the line. Why is it that we are (and continue to be) so myopic to the flaws to such large-scale abstraction (aggregation and accumulation)? It seems (to me) that we should have learned this lesson thoroughly when we demonstrated that many contexts call for distributed as opposed to centralized solutions. We had to learn that lesson over and over in various disciplines. Why hasn't that knowledge translated to corporate governance? (Or government even?) Centralization, abstraction, aggregation, and accumulation seem to be the dominant tendency. My undefended conjecture is that such abstraction is the only way an individual can _both_ multiply their money _and_ keep the consequences at arm's length. I.e. it's the only way one can both make butt-loads of money and retain a clear conscience. (Gee, do I sound like a socialist? or what? ;-) But it's also quite possible that the only way to maintain a survival by growth method is to engage in such accumulation. For corporations, it's obvious. For the federal government, it's less so because it's reasonable to assume that the management of 3.5 million square miles and 350 million people requires a centralized solution. How many names of the managers of these large failed institutions do we know? a couple? and they get paid handsomely either way .. This reminds me of: Thus spake peter circa 10/01/2008 09:50 AM: Sure I will dig out some names ... [...] glen e. p. ropella wrote: But can you help me reduce my ignorance? Which complexity science geniuses created these credit models? And which ones do you think might go to jail? Peter? Did you ever get a chance to dig up some names of these complexity science geniuses? Lets see how accurate these names are and when they get their subpoenas Rothman / Kearns / Goldberg / Cushing / Jessop / Mouicci 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] Can Math Cure Cancer? - Forbes.com
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/1027/074.html Now this is MATH with a purpose ( : ( : pete -- Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.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] Blinded By Science - When models FAIL taking all the humans with them
The best piece in this entire article ( Posted in full because its subscribers only ) is " How could so many smart people have got it so wrong? One reason is that their faith in their models' predictive powers led them to ignore what was happening in the real world." What does that say about our entire approach to modeling especially when our clients believe in the model, thinking it reflects the real world as most of these poor ( pun ) bankers and financial geniuses did Ill post the master text from the main article " The Blunders that lead to the catastrophe " - How the brightest and the best mathematical modelers fail at their task of keeping disaster at bay in the next post To be fair the main quant defense is we didn't have enough related data but when the result is a financial loss to the financial world equal to all the sums made in the systems lifetime that excuse frankly sucks ( :: ( : pete Peter Baston IDEAS www.ideapete.com Editorial: When the numbers don't add up Blinded by science - Financial regulators have allowed themselves to be bamboozled ( Ably assisted by quants and techies on huge bonuses - my insert ( : ( : pete ) 24 September 2008 From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues. ONE of the most alarming things about the crisis in the global financial system is that the warning signs have been out there for some time, yet no one heeded them. Exactly 10 years ago a hedge fund called Long-Term Capital Management failed to convince investors that it could repay its debts, thereby bringing the world to the brink of a similar "liquidity crisis" to the one we now see. Disaster was averted then only because regulators managed to put together a multibillion-dollar bailout package. LTCM's collapse was particularly notable because its founders had set great store by their use of statistical models designed to keep tabs on the risks inherent in their investments. Its fall should have been a wake-up call to banks and their regulatory supervisors that the models were not working as well as hoped - in particular that they were ignoring the risks of extreme events and the connections that send such events reverberating around the financial system. Instead, they carried on using them. Now that disaster has struck again, some financial risk modellers - the "quants" who have wielded so much influence over modern banking - are saying they know where the gaps in their knowledge are and are promising to fill them (see "How the risk models failed the world's banks"). Should we trust them? Their track record does not inspire confidence. Statistical models have proved almost useless at predicting the killer risks for individual banks, and worse than useless when it comes to risks to the financial system as a whole. The models encouraged bankers to think they were playing a high-stakes card game, when what they were actually doing was more akin to lining up a row of dominoes. How could so many smart people have got it so wrong? One reason is that their faith in their models' predictive powers led them to ignore what was happening in the real world. Finance offers enormous scope for dissembling: almost any failure can be explained away by a judicious choice of language and data. When investors don't behave like the self-interested Homo economicus that economists suppose them to be, they are described as being "irrationally exuberant" or blinded by panic. An alternative view - that investors are reacting logically in the face of uncertainty - is rarely considered. Similarly, extreme events are described as happening only "once in a century" - even though there is insufficient data on which to base such an assessment. Bankers' faith in their models' predictive powers led them to ignore what was happening in the real world The quants' models might successfully predict the movement of markets most of the time, but the bankers who rely on them have failed to realise that the occasions on which the markets deviate from normality are much more important than those when they comply. The events of the past year have driven this home in spectacular fashion: by some estimates, the banking industry has lost more money in the current crisis than it has made in its entire history. Can modellers do better? There are alternatives to the standard approach: models based on people's real-world behaviour (New Scientist, 30 August, p 16) and on "virtual agents" (New Scientist, 19 July, p 32) have shown promise, though these are still fringe fields in economics. Most quants, while acknowledging the shortcomings of their models, tend to argue that approximations are necessary, given the difficulty of modelling extreme events, which are in any case rare. That may be true, but it is dangerous to assume that the approximations are sound. Sometimes even small modelling deficiencies can have huge
[FRIAM] The Blunders that lead to the catastrophe - Humpty Dumpty's modeling school
The main article ( : ( : pete Peter Baston IDEAS www.ideapete.com The blunders that led to the banking crisis 25 September 2008 From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues. Rob Jameson WHAT'S the quickest way to kill a bank? As recent events in the financial world have shown, the answer is to deny them access to ready cash. Over the past year, a string of banking institutions have found themselves in such a "liquidity crisis": unable to convince the market they can honour their promises to pay back money they owe. The result has been a series of high-profile failures, from Northern Rock in the UK last year to Lehman Brothers last week. The crisis did not come without warning. Ten years ago this month, a giant hedge fund called Long-Term Capital Management collapsed when it too suffered a liquidity crisis. Yet banks and regulators seem not to have heeded the lessons from this wake-up call by improving the mathematical models that they use to manage their risk. That raises two key questions. How did the risk modellers get it so wrong? And what can they do to prevent similar crises in future? Banks are vulnerable to liquidity crises because they borrow money that may have to be repaid in the short term, and use it to back up more lucrative longer-term investments. If depositors withdraw their money and other lenders refuse to lend the bank the funds they need to replace it, the bank ends up in trouble because it can't easily turn its long-term assets into cash to make up the shortfall. Banks pay enormous sums to lure researchers away from other areas of science and set them to work building complex statistical models that supposedly tell the bankers about the risks they are running. So why didn't they see what was coming? The answer lies partly in the nature of liquidity crises. "By definition they are rare, extreme events, so all the models you rely on in normal times don't work any more," says Michel Crouhy head of research and development at the French investment bank Natixis, and author of a standard text on financial risk management. What's more, each liquidity crisis is inevitably different from its predecessors, not least because major crises provoke changes in the shape of markets, regulations and the behaviour of players. Liquidity crises are rare, extreme events, so all the models you rely on in normal times don't work any more On top of this, banks wrongly assumed that two areas of vulnerability could be treated in isolation, each with its own risk model. When the two areas began to affect each other and drive up banks' liquidity risk there was no unifying framework to predict what would happen, explains William Perraudin, director of the Risk Management Laboratory at Imperial College London. False assumption The first set of models covers the bank's day-to-day trading. These models typically assume that market prices will continue to behave much as they have in the past, and that they are reasonably predictable. Unfortunately, while this assumption may hold for straightforward financial instruments such as shares and bonds, it doesn't apply to the complicated financial instruments which bundle up different kinds of assets such as high-risk mortgages. What's more, information about the market prices of these products usually goes back only a few years, if it is available at all. "Statistical models based on short time series of data are a terrible way to understand [these kinds of] risks," says Perraudin. The models also assumed that the bank would be able to sell "problematic" assets, such as high-risk sub-prime mortgages, and this too turned out not to be true. "It's the combination of poor price risk modelling and being unable to sell out of the position that has produced the nightmare scenario," Perraudin says. The second set of risk models is intended to estimate the risk from borrowers failing to repay money they owe the bank. Because it's harder to sell off loans than bonds or stock, these models assume that the banks may have to bear the risks for longer. Such models were often regarded as the cutting edge of risk modelling, using sophisticated mathematics to predict how different debtors might be affected by economic conditions. However, Perraudin says these models mostly overlook how bad news can affect banks' ability to raise funds. "The real risk," he says, "turns out to be a cycle of drops." It plays out like this: word gets around that banks have got something on their hands that has dramatically lost value; this makes other institutions reluctant to lend them money to help them out, which in turn makes the value of their assets shrink further. The overall effect is to suck liquidity out of the market. Perraudin is working on a model for a hedge fund that takes account of this feedback, but he says it's a fiendishly difficult problem, partly because the models ha
[FRIAM] SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO what is data anyway
On the quest of how truth / morality and honesty drive data ( or not ) I came across this priceless quotation which I though I would share. Call me nuts but it makes so much sense QUOTATION: There is a tendency to mistake data for wisdom, just as there has always been a tendency to confuse logic with values, intelligence with insight. Unobstructed access to facts can produce unlimited good only if it is matched by the desire and ability to find out what they mean and where they lead. Facts are terrible things if left sprawling and unattended. They are too easily regarded as evaluated certainties rather than as the rawest of raw materials crying to be processed into the texture of logic. It requires a very unusual mind, Whitehead said, to undertake the analysis of a fact. The computer can provide a correct number, but it may be an irrelevant number until judgment is pronounced. ATTRIBUTION: Norman Cousins (1912--1990), U.S. editor, author. Freedom as Teacher, Human Options: An Autobiographical Notebook, Norton (1981) ( : ( : pete -- Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.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] Good, Evil and the Persistence and Treatment of Fools
It is certainly unreasonable to expect people to behave rationally, especially when most of them claim to believe in a God who somehow judges and punishes! Well, one must admit that in the END there is retribution for most BAD acts - the clever thing is that it is usually the innocent who are punished. Indeed, He doth move in mysterious ways!!!But, but, but, all is not hopeless, it is for inspired leaders to fool the fools into doing good things; as exemplified by Augustus, Churchill, Roosevelt (III) and Kennedy. Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for. 1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505 TEL: (505) 983-7728 FAX: (505) 983-1694 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] This Economy Does Not Compute
Right on Ken Thats the major issue --- we inside of the industry understand that the non dynamic non world related models are SIMULATIONS but to most people these are wizard visions of actuality and bluntly our marketing to them fudges this whenever a contract or money comes up. For example: At a recent seminar for the city of santa fe economic vision each department ( Some 8 in all ) had created there own silo viewpoint on a pdf and associated power point with very little consideration of interaction.and absolutely no multi dimensional viewable interaction, forget about the real world it was not invited.. In my usual smooth understated way I pointed that the last three visions were now gathering dust on someones shelf as a result of the word pdf workflow used and unless they could bring this alive connect it to the real world in a constant way that adapted dynamically to reality it was DOA. Now what looks like to be occurring is a non dynamic political correct sim city YUCK but what they need is dynamic SysBIM on steroids but god love them I guess fiction is more comfortable and no one on our side of the table is telling them the REAL truth As a similar metaphor its worth noticing that the success of the abacus had nothing to do with technology or ease of use it was so that anyone could watch EXACTLY what the bean counters did, as no one trusted them. I submit we have a similar problem and need an equivalent example hence the thought on do no evil etc and for that we need to come out of our specialist academic ( It ain't my problem OH is that what you wanted ) silos ( : ( : pete Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.com/ Kenneth Lloyd wrote: Excellent article! As complexity wonks, most of us understand that static models are woefully incomplete, and that dynamical systems modeling is one of the precursors to understanding complexity. This implies the study of systems at some distance from equilibrium. Hopefully, we can encourage people to join us in the 21st century and adopt these methodologies. Just got a FRIAM post: This economy does not compute. Perhaps a move from the deterministic to the stochastic is in order. Our economy computes, but in non-analytical ways. It's complex ... Doh! Ken -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Matthew Francisco Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2008 9:43 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] This Economy Does Not Compute from Rob Axtell: http://krasnow.blogspot.com/2008/09/goldilocks-on-wall-street. html#links On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 8:29 AM, glen e. p. ropella [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/01/opinion/01buchanan.html?_r=3ref=opi nionoref=sloginoref=sloginoref=slogin -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.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 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] Vote Obama or McCain: Global Electoral College | The Economist
WOW trust the Brits that means Bob Mugabe from Zimbabwe will be a dead cert for our next president ( : ( : pete Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.com/ Owen Densmore wrote: div class=moz-text-flowed style=font-family: -moz-fixedKinda nifty: http://www.economist.com/vote2008/ .. a world wide vote, even using an electoral college model. Such a huge landslide for Obama .. but then its quite a select audience! Interesting use of GIS as well. I wonder how hard it is for their IT department to cons up such a critter?! -- Owen /div 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] Slashdot | Stallman Says Cloud Computing Is a Trap
On projects - Especially all the google apps are great at solving the dilemma - You cannot manage what you do not measure and you cannot measure what you do not see but what happens when it sees something the client does not like ? We are using several of the toolsets from the google world in the realm of project information can know be gathered from multiple sources with the APIs in the cloud and the biggest impediment we have run across is not the technology thats very effective but the clients desire to make the models or attached SysBIM SCADA info sets say something that the cloud data disproves ie: We have contracts that involve construction due diligence and so we have great terrain models with structures and suitable attributes of issues attached which showed very clearly that the data repositories of the City Santa Fe and the State CID have huge error problems that taken together with to be polite ancient work practices on one project alone have cost $5m which state wide would rate in multi million even billion dollar waste issues. Both CID and CSF have very large investments in problematical flat word technology and do not take kindly to any of their problems being spotlighted and will immediately hide behind lawyers and try and pass the buck or worse imitate the ostrich. Like so many practices its a business logic people approach that will take time to resolve but sadly we have created a GIGO world where the O bit in the bureaucratic system will be defended to the death Its commonly thought that SCADA - BIM is some kind of gigantic complex parametric model ( Think the boasting about the supercomputer ) but its not its multiple of SIMPLE systems such as the wikis / basecamp / Google earth maps apps feeding a multidimensional model as the display piece all verified in real time Google is doing a great job as you have noted as most of there connectors work fairly seamlessly but in some cases require tweaking to upscale. The issue of GIS interface to the real world is a bit more complex as the GIS flat data is still really only accurate to 60ft +- which become problematical when related to a sphere. In the most recent major satellite maps of NM when incorporated with the aerial photos and maps it was found that error rates where as high as 42% which involves mathematical tweaking which has its own verification issues non of which would pass QA either ISO or 6sig. When ESRI moves it flat data to multidimensional its using a impropriety system moving from flat to multidimensional when todays world we are diving straight in the higher dimensions. Th big kicker for all this is it need fast web usage for every participant at all levels and very simple field accuracy verification and thats a major major problem for GIS currently ( Just overlay some of the SFC GIS output data on building blobs for the city onto a real G earth or Nasa sat shots and you will see what I mean ) I think the best analogy for all the issues is to understand that APIs used to live in a box ( small or big networked or not ) now they live in the cloud and its up to you to sort out the hows and the whys and its the last bit I think has Stallman upset. If your interested here is what we use in the overview construction / systems engineering industry for the API and protocol requirements http://www.ideapete.com/workinglogic.html and http://www.ideapete.com/introparametricmodeling.htm none require the sole use Revit or Pro E or Catia but all the systems can integrate at that level if needed and all are web usable ( : ( : pete Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.com/ Owen Densmore wrote: div class=moz-text-flowed style=font-family: -moz-fixedInteresting discussion on /. http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/30/2146250 When we started thinking about the sys admin issues for sfx (http://sfcomplex.org/), we had to decide on how to address free web services. One example we had used earlier was PBWiki, a very nice wiki engine. Another was http://www.airset.com/ .. a very nice web community site. The principle we evolved was simply this: we can use any SaaS (Software as a Service) system as long as any data we put into the system was easily available in a standard format. This means, for example, use of Google Calendar was fine: it is an iCal system with easily downloadable calendar data in a standard format. Note that GMail similarly passes the test: the mail data can easily be captured via the IMAP or POP protocols. PBWiki failed: there was no easy way to capture the format in a standard format .. i.e. in a wiki markup language. Ditto for airset, the system was too difficult to extract and place into any of the usual CMS systems (Joomla, Drupal etc) On the other hand, one of our projects is looking hard at deploying web applications on Google Maps and Google App Engine. This looks fairly safe
Re: [FRIAM] This Economy Does Not Compute ( Re Democrap is wusnt us )
Actually there is a version of truth in the democrap diatribe but not where the article points The Glass Siegel act forbade most of the business activities that are the root of many of todays financial issues outside of the modeling muckup. The man who was instrumental in getting Glass Siegle abolished was Robert Ruben http://www.ustreas.gov/education/history/secretaries/rerubin.shtml under Bill Clinton. Rubin was Co Chair of Goldman Sachs coincidentally our current secretary Henry Paulson was also a past Chairman. Now of course we are playing pass the hand grenade blame everyone but moi. Goldman Sachs will come of of this gangbusters, WOW what a coincidence Watching how the market is doing its own song and dance today has anyone noticed how the repeal of a simple equation called Mark to Market has changed the whole equation and there must be multiple people in the AIG boardroom saying What the fuck banging there heads on the wall The economist did a wonder skit on this http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12305786 with Henry becoming the first King Henry of the USA due to the fubar we have ( : ( : pete Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.com/ Matthew Francisco wrote: Doug, I think it's a poor move to use a model--did the Officers use a model for their article in Time?--to fix blame with such confidence especially when the thing to blame is a vague collective identity. Granted, sometimes it seems that such fixing is needed because we need to reaffirm our own group identifications especially if they are under attack or ignored and more so if we are in political season. The point of Buchanan's article, I think, is that models are good at generating alternative narratives about causation in systems where no single person or group of people can ever know 'the system' and the experts and stakeholders all see the system in different ways, with different stories about how the system works. I think a more ambitious goal for modeling these systems is bringing together or overlaying (integrating?) these local stories into a sort of meta-narrative. Matt On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 8:44 AM, Douglas Roberts [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On another mailing list that I frequent, there is a small core of Republicans who *insist* that is was the DemoCRAPS[sic] who caused our current economic crisis. I sent the following message to them yesterday, after finding the nice, short informative article in Time (link below). I find that it is sometime necessary to use small words when dealing with political zealots. Astonishingly, it was not the DemoCRAPS[sic] who were the cause of our current financial fuck-up. Read this short article to discover who is really to blame. Can you say, Risky derivatives trading? Can you say, Irresponsible hedge fund management? I knew you could. http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1845209,00.html?cnn=yes Me, I'm an independent. --Doug -- Doug Roberts, RTI International [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] 505-455-7333 - Office 505-670-8195 - Cell On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 9:29 AM, glen e. p. ropella [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/01/opinion/01buchanan.html?_r=3ref=opinionoref=sloginoref=sloginoref=slogin -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.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 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] Economic Disequilibrium or How Complexity Science nearly killed America
http://www.make-digital.com/make/vol15/?pg=173 Here is a beautiful article by George Dyson that is truly one of the clearest examples of the current problems with complexity theory especially its relationship to economics , what it is trying to do and what it actually did with the mess created on wall street it should make every every CTO and CEO sit up and shudder. Basically the credit models created by complexity science geniuses, that are the foundation of most high flying arbitrage financial houses, created there own version of reality that had very little relevance to the real world. These same geniuses made enormous amounts of money by designing this fake world and convincing there neophyte non tech masters they should be paid millions for its discovery conveniently forgetting that its roots were firmly built in fiction Someone shouts the Emperor has no clothes and presto the whole house comes tumbling down The FBI is also apparently digging into this cesspool so expect to see a large number of these bright software phds entering federal prison in the not to distant future It also has relevance to the scary statement by Janet Wing at the institute when she said that future computer models need not be grounded in reality but could create there own. Think also on the connection that not only are these complex models non verifiable but so are most databases and agent modeling systems. Without easy verifiability I would submit they are worse than useless As Dyson points out the tally sticks stocks that where used in the 13th century are far superior to the billions of dollars of hardware and software used today. A stick Stock lived in the real world and was verifiable at the lowest level of inspection. Sadly today our complex system have proved to be totally non verifiable with the associated collapse of trust. Its also a stark example to our 1st mile friends about the higher relevance of what goes into the pipe rather than the pipe itself and why hi speed verification of what is happening in the real world is so much more important The quicker we realize that the raison d'etre of the digital world is to improve the quality of life and include some moral directives in our work based in reality the more we will be able to sleep at night ( : ( : pete -- Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.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] law and order
Right on Peggy / Ray glad you got the point For your power users conversion project the model is 1. What are the Base - Peaking targets for replacement energy taking all factors into account and that includes usage 2. How does this affect the location transmission targets and how can this altered to match 1 3. Communicate between systems and put the rubber on the road I have spent years in the power industry and the deep dark secret is that operation efficiency for the entire industry is Production at power plant - 25 / 40 % Transmission Line efficiency = 15 / 45% Power distribution use off of main transmission to user = 10 / 30 % Each one percent improvement nationwide relates to about $25B So if the plants, the transmission lines and the distribution system were smart like law and orders outlines ( which is already possible with todays technology ) think of the humongous possibilities especially if tax and financial incentives are included in the targets. Here is a fun future outline http://www.ideapete.com/AATG.html that we are making into a promo movie to illustrate all the above, maybe we should talk ( : ( : pete -- Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.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] Law and Order - Enough fun stuff here to keep Owen and Steve awake at night
Title: Peter Baston printed in full because the site is subscriber only but very pertinent to what we are all trying ( Or not ) to do Why complex systems do better without us 06 August 2008 From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues. Mark Buchanan Enlarge image Enlarge image Smart traffic lights lt;script language="_javascript_" type="text/_javascript_" src="" class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://adserver.adtech.de/?addyn|2.0|289|113656|1|170|ADTECH;target=nsad;loc=700;grp=200047450;">"http://adserver.adtech.de/?addyn|2.0|289|113656|1|170|ADTECH;target=nsad;loc=700;grp=200047450;"gt; lt;/scriptgt; lt;noscriptgt; lt;a href="" class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://adserver.adtech.de/?adlink|2.0|289|113656|1|170|ADTECH;grp=200047450;loc=300;">"http://adserver.adtech.de/?adlink|2.0|289|113656|1|170|ADTECH;grp=200047450;loc=300;" target="nsad"gt; lt;img src="" class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://adserver.adtech.de/?adserv|2.0|289|113656|1|170|ADTECH;grp=200047450;loc=300;">"http://adserver.adtech.de/?adserv|2.0|289|113656|1|170|ADTECH;grp=200047450;loc=300;" border="0" width="300" height="250" alt="Advertising" /gt; lt;/agt; lt;/noscriptgt; WE HUMANS prefer the tidy to the untidy, the ordered to the disordered. We like pristine geometrical regularity, and eschew what is erratic and irregular. We want predictability and, more than anything, we want control. In these confusing times, it might seem as if we have little power over anything. Instead of letting it get us down, though, perhaps we should take comfort from the work of Dirk Helbing, a physicist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. Helbing has been studying the movement of tens of thousands of cars on road networks; the workings of vast webs of interacting machines on factory floors; and other systems, where the complexity of what happens and why routinely defeats the human mind. What Helbing and others are finding is that our penchant for regularity and control is seriously misguided. In many situations they are discovering that it is better to give up some of our control and let systems find their own solutions. Often the answers turn out to be unlike anything our minds would imagine, yet the outcomes are far more efficient. The findings come as something of a relief to today's engineers, who are increasingly dealing with problems too complicated for them to solve. Take one of the earliest successes chalked up by machines allowed to take control. Back in 1992, General Motors were having trouble managing the automated painting of trucks at an assembly plant in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Machines in 10 different paint booths could paint trucks as they came off the line, but because the trucks came off in an unpredictable order and the painting machines needed sporadic maintenance and repair, finding an efficient assignment of trucks to booths seemed impossible. General Motors' visionary engineer Dick Morley suggested letting the painting machines find a schedule themselves. He set out some simple rules by which the various machines would "bid" for newly available paint jobs, trying their best to stay busy while taking account of the need for maintenance and so on. The results were remarkable, if a little weird. The system saved General Motors more than $1 million each year in paint alone. Yet the line ran to a schedule that no one could predict, made up on the fly by the machines themselves as they responded to emerging needs. Production processes generally depend on so many inputs, parameters and factors that even small changes in the set-up can lead to wildly different and unpredictable consequences. That is why it is almost impossible to predict what will happen in a new production line based on previous experience. "Managers sometimes take performance in past set-ups and try to estimate what will happen in a new setting by interpolation," says Helbing. "This often gives very bad results." To cope, he says, engineers need a healthy respect for the complex unpredictability of these systems and how natural human inclinations often lead to undesirable outcomes. "You can't steer these things like you can a bus," says Helbing. "You have to learn to use the system's own self-organising tendencies to your advantage." Helbing has come to this view by an unusual path. Though he trained as a physicist, he became fascinated in the early 1990s by parallels between physics and human movements. "I was inspired by the similarity between fluid flows and how people walk around obstacles," he recalls. For nearly two decades, he and colleagues have been studying the mathematics of collective human motion, which explains why He
Re: [FRIAM] A talk of possible interest to FRIAMers
Interesting Talk by Jeanette Wing who's online handle is Dragonlady ( wonderfull mythical pun ) that would make it DLCT So we have computational thinking CT, What fears that arises to develop into PCCT Politically Correct CT or the only right way to think CTCT Correct Thinking CT ( Guided by suitably well minded intelligentsia just like CCCP ) especially targeting young manipulatable minds of children in education. What consideration that we are already ignoring reality of human thought and type with indicators such as MBTI creating a vision of a cuddly universal world through the distorted lens of computer hardware and APIs ( Now MBTICT I could handle especially how it sounds ) . Maybe Bill and Larrys world IS the future. We already have to much of Bill Gates Windows Computational Thinking BGWCT ( It that why SFI uses Macs, me to ) Siting in the midst of a group of biologists, some of whom are studying biomimicry potential, you could hear the unease and it the case of my neighbo who kicked out ( feel ) in frustration over the statement CT could enables you to target what you need without visualizing and understanding what is George Orwell here we come To emphasize here is an article on how a computer was able to predict which death row inmates would be executed /www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-06/ns-ccp062508.php does CT mean it could do a better job if it was in charge ouch visions of minority report Philip K Dicks world . Maybe its time to change homo sapiens to homo mimicus Nice to attend a lecture that gets the blood flowing ( Terrible pun ) ( : ( : pete Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.com/ Pamela McCorduck wrote: Jeanette Wing, the President's Professor of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, and Associate Director, Computer and Information Science Engineering, U.S. National Science Foundation, will give a talk on Computational Thinking and Thinking about Computing. Place: Santa Fe Institute, Robert N. Noyce Conference Room When: Friday, July 11, 2008, at 3:30 p.m. Abstract: My vision for the 21st Century: Computational thinking will be the fundamental skill used by everyone in the world. To reading, writing, and arithmetic, let's add computational thinking to every child's analytical ability. Computational thinking has already influenced other disciplines, from the sciences to the arts. The new NSF Cyber-enabled Discovery and Innovation initiative in a nutshell is computational thinking for science and engineering. Realizing this vision gives the field of computing both exciting research opportunities and novel educational challenges. The field of computing is driven by technology innovation, societal demands, and scientific questions. We are often too easily swept u with the rapid progress in technology and the surprising uses by society of our technology, that we forget about the science that underlies our field. In thinking about computing, I have started a list of Deep Questions in Computing, with the hope of encouraging the community to think about the scientific drivers of our field. Host: Joe Traub He has van Gogh's ear for music. Billy Wilder 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] TerraSAR-X Hot New
How about this to solve all our first mile data problems in Santa Fe http://www.dlr.de/tsx/start_en.htm TerraSAR-X laser -- Speed its moving at = 15,000 mph -- Distance its transmitting = 3000 miles ---Symmetrical Data Rate average - 5,5gig ( Thats only on its first iteration it has exchanged 50gig signals with USMD and Cheyenne Mountain) I want one but I cannot find it on amazon ( : ( : pete -- Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.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] CALCULUS, POINTS AND OTHER MYSTERIES (TO SOME)
Why can't a point have a position, speed, acceleration and any other derivative? Can't one judge calculus by results? Or by its fruits as the Good Book hath it! In the 50' and 60's I and others got folks to the moon and back using these abstract calculus concepts of old Isaac. At least they went to the moon according to the press, our earthbased Newtonian commo systems, and to two astronaut students of mine who called me afterwards and SAID they'd been there. Mebbe they weren't thinking it through carefully enough! Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for. 1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505 TEL: (505) 983-7728FAX: (505) 983-1694 [Original Message] From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: friam@redfish.com Date: 7/9/2008 10:00:32 AM Subject: Friam Digest, Vol 61, Issue 7 Send Friam mailing list submissions to friam@redfish.com To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can reach the person managing the list at [EMAIL PROTECTED] When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than Re: Contents of Friam digest... Today's Topics: 1. Fwd: [OS X TeX] gmane archives out of date. (Owen Densmore) 2. Re: Fwd: [OS X TeX] gmane archives out of date. (Marcus G. Daniels) 3. Sun's MPK20 (Mikhail Gorelkin) 4. Announcing the Complexity Noodlers Corner (Nicholas Thompson) 5. Mentalism and Calculus (Nicholas Thompson) 6. Re: Announcing the Complexity Noodlers Corner (Steve Smith) 7. Re: Mentalism and Calculus (Marcus G. Daniels) 8. Re: Mentalism and Calculus (Robert Holmes) -- Message: 1 Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 11:20:40 -0600 From: Owen Densmore [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [FRIAM] Fwd: [OS X TeX] gmane archives out of date. To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group friam@redfish.com Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed; delsp=yes Well, one can always learn! And Nick, note that I too can screw up a mail list! Here's the story: I joined the OS X TeX list. My first email to them was simply that their gmane archive was broken. But the way I did this was to view the first email I received on the list (on an entirely different topic), hit Reply, deleted the body of the email and changed to a new Subject. Basically a way to get a fresh email with the correct To: address. In other words, I used an existing email for a template for a new email to the list. Turns out this is a no-no. It confuses modern email clients into thinking this is the same thread even though the subject has changed. It certainly occurs all the time in my client (Mail.app), but I just presumed Mail.app was struggling to identify same thread-ness via context and failing. Nope. The headers keep a In-reply-to field to help in threading. So when I cloned a new email, deleting all but the to: field, I inadvertently kept the In-reply-to header field, thus screwing up everyone's email threading. (BTW: This never happens with Nabble and Forum software due to the explicit new-post/reply buttons, thus completely isolating a thread. There the etiquette is simply search before a new post to see if there is already a similar thread underway.) Sigh! But Nick, I now know what you mean by that calm, stern, reply- to-an-idiot tone of voice. -- Owen Begin forwarded message: From: Bruno Voisin [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: July 8, 2008 12:28:21 AM MDT To: TeX on Mac OS X Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [OS X TeX] gmane archives out of date. Reply-To: TeX on Mac OS X Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Le 8 juil. 08 ? 01:49, Owen Densmore a ?crit : On Jul 7, 2008, at 5:27 PM, Gary L. Gray wrote: Please don't hijack existing threads -- see the List Reminders and Etiquette link in the footer of this message. Yikes! Not sure how I hijacked an existing thread. Is there a os x tex gmane thread? Anyway, sorry! You hijack an existing thread by replying to a message from this thread to create a new message with different subject. Symptom: in emailers which support threading (such as Apple's Mail, Mozilla's Thunderbird), your new message and the various answers it will get will be classified within the same thread as the original message you replied to. Cause: by replying to an existing message, whatever new subject you enter manually for the reply, this reply will keep in its hidden headers an In-reply-to header such as (in your case) In-reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cure: always use Address Book to create a new message
Re: [FRIAM] Friam Digest, Vol 61, Issue 2
Re: Complexity Science movie? (Parks, Raymond) I may be a simple right brainer but the scenes which resonate for me are in what the Bleep ( : ( : pete Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Send Friam mailing list submissions to friam@redfish.com To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can reach the person managing the list at [EMAIL PROTECTED] When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than Re: Contents of Friam digest... Today's Topics: 1. Re: Complexity Science movie? (Parks, Raymond) 2. Re: Complexity Science movie? (Alfredo Covaleda) 3. Statistical Mechanics: Algorithms and Computations, by Werner Krauth (Owen Densmore) 4. Re: Statistical Mechanics: Algorithms and Computations, by Werner Krauth (G?nther Greindl) 5. Re: Statistical Mechanics: Algorithms and Computations, by Werner Krauth (Ken Lloyd) Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Complexity Science movie? From: Parks, Raymond [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:24:38 -0600 To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group friam@redfish.com To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group friam@redfish.com Joshua Thorp wrote: Can anyone think of a movie or scene in a movie that exemplifies complexity science themes, such as many interacting parts with emergent patterns, non-linear behaviors, self organizing, etc. I think the scenes in Yellowbeard where Madeline Kahn's and Graham Chapman's characters are remembering the sequence of movements to find the treasure show something of non-linear behaviors, possibly self organizing. Stagger, stagger, crawl, crawl, jump... Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Complexity Science movie? From: Alfredo Covaleda [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2008 13:51:33 -0500 To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group friam@redfish.com To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group friam@redfish.com Hola Maybe A Sound of Thunder movie is the film you are looking for. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sound_of_Thunder Hasta pronto y exitos Alfredo C. 2008/6/30 Joshua Thorp [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]: Can anyone think of a movie or scene in a movie that exemplifies complexity science themes, such as many interacting parts with emergent patterns, non-linear behaviors, self organizing, etc. Any thoughts? --joshua 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 Subject: [FRIAM] Statistical Mechanics: Algorithms and Computations, by Werner Krauth From: Owen Densmore [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2008 22:45:13 -0600 To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group friam@redfish.com To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group friam@redfish.com Has anyone read this critter? Looks fascinating. http://www.phys.ens.fr/doc/SMAC/ http://www.smac.lps.ens.fr/index.php/Main_Page -- Owen Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Statistical Mechanics: Algorithms and Computations, by Werner Krauth From: Günther Greindl [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:20:42 +0200 To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group friam@redfish.com To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group friam@redfish.com Hey, the book has already crossed my radar but I have not had the occasion to read it, as I'm drowning in books already. But I would like to queue in with Owen as to interest in FRIAMer comments if some of you have already read it? Cheers, Günther Owen Densmore wrote: Has anyone read this critter? Looks fascinating. http://www.phys.ens.fr/doc/SMAC/ http://www.smac.lps.ens.fr/index.php/Main_Page -- 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 Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Statistical Mechanics: Algorithms and Computations, by Werner Krauth From: Ken Lloyd [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 07:27:53 -0600 To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' friam@redfish.com
[FRIAM] Canadian Uni hot under the collar over Wi-Fi safety | The Register
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/02/22/canada_uni_wifi_ban/ -- Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.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] Dirty Power Linked to Cancers in California School in Milham-Morgan Study
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24957072/ This is re the comments posted recently on power magnetic field health causes, there are a few PDFs also on line which seem to make sense Again I think these are ways that we can model and demonstrate in the real world at the center to prove validity and I just cannot wait for Steve to sponsor a summer race with the kids in santa fe, for the following Redfish's great cell phone popcorn popping completion the first one to pop a full cup of popcorn with their cell phones wins xxx for life --- No LANL or Sandia modifications allowed and no cell phones the size of a pickup truck.. The banner alone should prove awesome ( : ( : pete -- Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.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] Men who use mobile phones face increased risk of infertility | Mail Online
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-412179/Men-use-mobile-phones-face-increased-risk-infertility.html ( : ( : pete -- Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.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] Mixing Incredible Modeling tools
Three of the most powerful modeling tools we have experimented with are http://www.antics3d.com/ http://sketchup.google.com/ http://earth.google.com/ Antics does POWERFUL animation ( Go ok you will not believe the results ) and the power of sketchup mixed with the goggle tool set, earth, gears and other attributes is awesome All interact well One of SKPs biggest secrets is the use of Ruby on Rails running in the background so that almost any attribute can be manipulated Such as Physics and for the more adventurous you can role your own. API access and registration for the truly creative also available Go look at some of the demos and turn these loose with your kids this summer and you will not hear a peep outa them. You can build or download complex infrastructure models in SKP and download them into the antics modeling programs and ready made humans scenes and actions and even produce a full animation production files The icing on the cake is that all have free versions that produce beyond professional results I think Owen is researching some summer camp ideas for the complex and these should be high on our list ( : ( : pete -- Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.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] A band that uses only IPODS !!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwoPgnvpPQgfeature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6qKPUB3troNR=1 ( : ( : pete -- Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.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] Libraries in France switch off wi-fi internet @ popping popcorn with a cell phone
Just wait and see what happens when the Wiops get hold of stuff like this http://www.connexionfrance.com/news_articles.php?id=173 http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=kAd0aWxs7kQ ( : ( pete -- Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.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] Why have municipal Wi-Fi networks been such a flop? - By Tim Wu - Slate Magazine
http://www.slate.com/id/2174858/ -- Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.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] Why Free Internet Won't Happen Soon: FCC Owned By Wireless Industry - Silicon Alley Insider
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/6/why_free_internet_wont_happen_soon_fcc_owned_by_wireless_industry -- Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.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] Don't buy any download accelerator -Inquirer
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/05/31/download-accelerator-for-linux -- Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.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] re power lines
There is also an artist that does shows by planting a couple of hundred florescent tubes in the ground under high voltage lines and they all light up, its quite a sight, no wires. I will go find the photos I have also got some nice shots taken at Crystal River Florida Power plant on a really humid day just before a rainstorm and you can see the arcs jumping 150' outside of the containment area Maybe we can get Steve to do some Tesla demos at the complex be really great for July 4th and we wouldn't need any fireworks ( : ( : pete -- Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.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] The Fractal Foundation
For all of you who have never been this is a truly great show that is held regularly at the planetarium in Abq http://www.fractalfoundation.org/ Want to see kids of all ages give a STANDING ovation to MATH Go see you will have fun but get there early as the shows are always sold out Jonathan Wolfe who runs this is a deep brain type immersed in cognitive and complexity theory Friam should have one of his shows at the complex for W21 and First mile think how this could be blasted to schools everywhere Owen also mentioned yesterday at the ad hoc friam that he is trying to get the Institute to give a similar summer show at the Complex - GREAT Idea how do we make it happen ? ( : ( : pete -- Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.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
Re: [FRIAM] Max (Stephen Guerin) Headroom!
Actually, it's fun to make him follow the cursor, someone should tweak this have him pant and bark occasionally too... but seriously, I like this tech a lot, good job! On Monday, May 05, 2008, at 10:27AM, Steve Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Good trick... A nice complement to the computational photography work... http://www.sandtable.org/structuredLight/ Rotating the hollow shell of Steve Guerin around gives me the eerie feeling that he's going to start talking all Max Headroom style at any moment! Wait... I get that feeling when I'm talking to him in person too! grin - Steve 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] It aint all Elitist BS!
The remarks about the Apex of the Vee as religious cant supporting the Old Guard are all well made. But, but, but we must remember that in the geese migration case the older birds have better navigational and weather prediction skills, so are indeed useful leaders. In the case of HMS Bounty, only Bligh and Christian had the essential skill of celestial navigation so were functional leaders by superior knowledge, and in this case, clearly not character!! Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for. 1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505 TEL: (505) 983-7728 FAX: (505) 983-1694 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] The Apex of the Vee
The interesting discussions relating to bussing, pelotons and human/animal behavior call to mind some papers I published at Caltech in 1969 relating to the advantages of Vee formation flight for migrating birds. Because the saving is in induced drag the least energy position is, counter intuitively, the apex (point) of the Vee. I was immediately assailed by ornithologists and bird watchers, who knew much more about the subject than I, and rather than checking the equations, challenged my results on their ideas of behavioral grounds. It turns out that the apex position is indeed taken by the oldest and strongest bird. Would he, they asked, take the easiest job? My answer was:yes.! Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for. 1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505 TEL: (505) 983-7728 FAX: (505) 983-1694 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] Don't believe everything you think catagory
http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-03/ff_autism I found it especially interesting to note the high utilization of 3D and other multi dimensional concept visualization among so called autistics as opposed to so called normals WOW well done I stand in awe is all I will say ( : ( : pete -- Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.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
Re: [FRIAM] Santa Fe Complex BarCamp March 7 and 8 (?)
Sure looks like fun / If you want a light hearted brown bag presentation holler ( : ( : pete Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.com/ Douglas Roberts wrote: Sounds pretty geeky. Local attendance should be good. ;-} -- Doug Roberts, RTI International [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 505-455-7333 - Office 505-670-8195 - Cell On Feb 15, 2008 9:22 PM, Stephen Guerin [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So, how about a Santa Fe Complex BarCamp on March 7,8 at http://www.santafecomplex.org? Out of towners can camp in the space and *maybe* Simon has an alternative offering for a few :-) -Stephen --- -. . ..-. .. ... - .-- --- ..-. .. ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] www.Redfish.com http://www.Redfish.com 624 Agua Fria Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501 mobile: (505)577-5828 office: Santa Fe, NM (505)995-0206 / London, UK +44 (0) 20 7993 4769 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] FW: National Science Foundation Update Daily Digest Bulletin
Sure Nick We need to move into the visual world. The same issue you mention is a huge problem in all forms of engineering / architecture as well let alone plants. The data is lousy period when it goes through immutable text variations but at least with the tactile we should be facing in the same direction more fun here http://www.ideapete.com/gwendolyn.htm Add the famous we only see 2D and its ripe for disaster To err is human to really screw up you need text and a computer ( : ( : pete Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.com/ Nicholas Thompson wrote: All -- Has anybody thought about how to make use of truly lousy data? There are increasingly sources of public data on subject matters such as weather and (see below) flowers and birds where the quality of the data is truly awful by ordinary standards and yet there is so much of it that it seems a crime not to try to make use of it. So Sally writes in to say that her morning glories are in bloom in April when what she means is her pansies. Her neighbor gets the pansies right but screws up on the tithonia. Is there any way to add this all up and get something? thoughts? nick Nicholas S. Thompson Research Associate, Redfish Group, Santa Fe, NM ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) - Original Message - From: National Science Foundation Update To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 2/15/2008 2:27:26 AM Subject: National Science Foundation Update Daily Digest Bulletin You have requested to receive a Daily Digest e-mail from National Science Foundation Update. Message: 1 From: National Science Foundation Update [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2008 10:35:16 -0600 (CST) Subject: Volunteers Across Nation to Track Climate Clues in Spring Flowers Volunteers Across Nation to Track Climate Clues in Spring Flowers A nationwide initiative starting this week will enable volunteers to track climate change by observing the timing of flowers and foliage. Project BudBurst, operated by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and a team of partners, allows students, gardeners and other citizen scientists in every state to enter their observations into an online database that will give researchers a detailed picture of our warming climate. The project, which will be launched tomorrow, ... More at http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=17govDel=USNSF_51 This is an NSF News item. Message: 2 From: National Science Foundation Update [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2008 14:58:55 -0600 (CST) Subject: Scientists Reveal First-Ever Global Map of Total Human Effect on Oceans Scientists Reveal First-Ever Global Map of Total Human Effect on Oceans More than 40 percent of the world's oceans are heavily affected by human activities, and few if any areas remain untouched, according to the first global-scale study of human influence on marine ecosystems. By overlaying maps of 17 different activities such as fishing, climate change and pollution, the researchers have produced a composite map of the toll that humans have exacted on the seas. The work, published in this week's issue of Science, was conducted at the ... More at http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=13govDel=USNSF_51 This is an NSF News item. Message: 3 From: National Science Foundation Update [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2008 15:49:19 -0600 (CST) Subject: A Newly Discovered Solar System Contains Scaled-Down Versions of Saturn and Jupiter A Newly Discovered Solar System Contains Scaled-Down Versions of Saturn and Jupiter A team of international astronomers reports in the Feb. 15 issue of Science the discovery of a solar system nearly 5,000 light years away containing scaled-down versions of Jupiter and Saturn. Their findings suggest that our galaxy could conceivably contain many star systems similar to our own. The National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored the research. NSF is delighted to have played a role in enabling such an exciting discovery, said Michael Briley, a ... More at http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=111093govDel=USNSF_51 This is an NSF News item. Message: 4 From: National Science Foundation Update [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2008 15:57:50 -0600 (CST) Subject: Nanotechnology Undergraduate Education (NUE) in Engineering Nanotechnology Undergraduate Education (NUE) in Engineering Available Formats: HTML: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2008/nsf08544/nsf08544.htm?govDel=USNSF_25 TXT: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2008/nsf08544/nsf08544.txt?govDel=USNSF_25 PDF: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2008/nsf08544/nsf08544.pdf?govDel=USNSF_25 Document Number: nsf08544 This is an NSF Program Announcements and Information item. This e-mail update was generated automatically based on your subscription to the categories listed for each item. Some updates may belong to more than one
[FRIAM] DIFFERENTIABILITY, CONTINUITY AND COMMON SENSE
I am bewildered at the plethora of verbiage poured out on the first two topics. I studied math as a grad student scholar at Cambridge and CIT, but don't understand most of the big words your correspondents use. I know, its my ignorance! But, to be constructive, I put forward a modest proposal: that correspondents holding forth on scientific/mathematical issues provide examples and algebra (or, even better, numbers) supporting their polysyllabic pronunciamentos. My advisors always gave examples of concepts I challenged. Except once, where one said, This theorem is so GENERAL that its impossible to find a good example! I did not have the temerity to respond in the immortal words of Richard Feynman, Surely you jest, Dr XXX! Your correspondent noted that F was poor mathematician. We were both on the faculty of CIT. I knew Dick and his family socially for 30 years, but perhaps it was not long enough to see that side of his Promethean personality.He was an inveterate joker, always claiming that he knew no math and mocking those who used pomposity instead of science to make a case. I am not qualified to judge his math ability, but folks who were, physicist friends from Los Alamos (in the competent Manhattan days) and CIT, marveled at Feynmans math ingenuity. So, I dunno. I'm suppose your correspondent knew him and his works better. I'm sure a FRIAM member would never make an unsupported statement. Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for. 1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505 TEL: (505) 983-7728FAX: (505) 983-1694 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] Diff Contin. to Nick!
2. DIFFERENTIABILITY AND CONTINUITY (Nicholas Thompson) Nick: Let me be your math consultant! Taught that stuff at Caltech many years!! The mathematicians are horn swogglin' you with mis-understood function theory! A'course the f'n roof is continuous. If it weren't the rain would come through! It is trivial to write a continuous function, f(x) defined for 0x =c and g(x) defined for cx1 with f(c) = g(c), with the peak at x=c and a different slope for x=c, than for xc. But the function is continuous. Just like a roof ridge. A geometric function has, at each point, some degree of continuity, denoted by C N, where N is the order of the first discontinuous derivative. The triangular roof frame rafter is C1, meaning continuous in ordinate, discontinuous in slope. Smoother shapes have continuity of higher derivatives. Analytic functions have infinite continuity (thanks to M. Cauchy!). Airfoils have to be very smooth, but they can't be infinity smooth, since we need to tailor the pressure distribution to control separation, and the trailing edge must usually be sharp. Some of my airfoils of the olden days, when we did this by hand, were C16 -- that is continuous only up to the 16th derivative. The airfoil I designed for the Victor B Mk II(1956) is that rough, 'cause we did things on Friden calculators in them days. But, as the RAF nuclear delivery system in the hottest days of the Cold War, it scared the daylights out of the Ruzski. The airfoil on the Gossamer Condor (Lissaman 7769) is much smoother than that, although that too was pretty primitive. I did it personally using the old (1971) TRS with punched tape inputs. I used the Radio Shack computer eksactly as Picasso recommended: as an automated calculator to make the tiring number crunches needed to provide answers to my questions. Incidentally, with a trained geometric eye, which I think I have since I've been laying out airfoils and streamline shapes since the 50's, you can see about 4 derivative continuity. But the bloody air is unforgiving and wants higher smoothness than that. It responds to curvature of curvature of curvature that you didn't even know was there. But the computer does. Artists talk only up to C3, meaning continuity of curvature. Art Deco derives a lot of its arresting visual tension by deliberately exploiting discontinuities in curvature - for example a scroll of fixed radius terminating a straight banister (C3). Art Nouveau designers would rather die than do such thing -- for them it's all swooning smoothity!! I'm sure this is more than you wanted to know, but I love digressing on this, and for 20 years gave a course at Art Center on Leonardo and his art and technology. He was not a mathematician, even by the fairly unsophisticated standards of the High Renaissance, but how he longed to express things mathematically!! Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for. 1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505 TEL: (505) 983-7728 FAX: (505) 983-1694 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] It's the Spies, Stupid!
Thanks to all who responded in much more courteous terms than my present title! A'course, it reminded me and well should I have remembered! But old men forget as da Bard had it (Lear). My old tutor (thesis advisor in these parts, (one S.W., for those in the know )) was one of the Bletchley Boys who cracked Enigma in WW II. And, as a math grad student, I well remember more than 1/2 century ago hearing his tales as we looked out over the rainy rooftops of Cambridge! A'course, the Enigma Machine was entirely deterministic, mechanical, but verrray complicated. Wheels within wheels!! New setting each morning! I can imagine some totally bored Wehrmacht Feldwebel cranking away at this horizontal axis coffee grinder while he slurped his ersatz Kaffee and wished he had some sugar!The Brits said, languidly and typically Englishly, we usually managed to 'sort out' the day's code by tea time. Also, being an honorable Englishman, (there were still a few left then), my tutor said very little of substance because the Official Secrets Act ran for 50 years. My remarks are really meant entertain, so thanks to all for putting up with this BS!!! Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for. 1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505 TEL: (505) 983-7728FAX: (505) 983-1694 [Original Message] From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: friam@redfish.com Date: 7/22/2007 10:02:51 AM Subject: Friam Digest, Vol 49, Issue 20 Send Friam mailing list submissions to friam@redfish.com To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can reach the person managing the list at [EMAIL PROTECTED] When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than Re: Contents of Friam digest... Today's Topics: 1. Why true random? (Peter Lissaman) 2. Re: Why true random? (Robert Holmes) 3. Re: Why true random? (Russell Standish) 4. Re: Why true random? (Prof David West) 5. Re: Why true random? (Phil Henshaw) 6. Re: Why true random? (Douglas Roberts) 7. Re: Why true random? (Phil Henshaw) 8. Re: Why true random? (Roger Frye) -- Message: 1 Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 10:24:42 -0600 From: Peter Lissaman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [FRIAM] Why true random? To: friam@redfish.com Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Why is it important (except intellectually) to have true randomness??? I very well remember the early, good old, bad old, days of Aerospace, in the 50's, when we were really doing practical earthshattering things -- like going to the moon -- sans computers!! The RAND corporation, for whom I consulted, published a typed book (size of a Manhattan telephone directory) of random numbers for engineering application. Much entertainment was occasioned when, about three months later, they distributed a list of typos to their original list of random numbers. Today I use homemade random numbers alla time for real problems, specifically the actual response of real flight vehicles in real atmospheric turbulence. Flight tests support analysis, in the sense that what we predict is not obviously incorrect. We have never found it necessary to utilize any more perfectly random random sequences! Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for. 1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505 TEL: (505) 983-7728 FAX: (505) 983-1694 -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20070721/e01d235d /attachment-0001.html -- Message: 2 Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 13:34:44 -0600 From: Robert Holmes [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Why true random? To: [EMAIL PROTECTED],The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group friam@redfish.com Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Cryptography. The required robustness of a random generator is highly sensitive to the intended application; - Generating a thought for the day for your blog? Required randomness = low. - Response testing a missile system? Required randomness = medium - Stealing above test results, encrypting them and transmitting them to Al Quaeda in a form that you hope the NSA won't understand? Required randomness = high Robert On 7/21/07, Peter Lissaman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Why is it important (except intellectually) to have true randomness??? I very well remember the early, good old, bad old, days of Aerospace, in the 50's, when we were really doing practical
[FRIAM] YELP, HELP!
Does anyone know a computer wizard who will come (for $) to my home in Santa Fe, and fix a recalcitrant laptop which seems to be surfing in molasses! I know it defies laws a' probability but the last four I paid knew less than I! Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for. 1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505 TEL: (505) 983-7728FAX: (505) 983-1694 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] Will Rogers and Animal Behavior
When he was given a brief description of the learned theories of Dr. Freud, and told that they accounted for all human behavior, Will Rogers stated that: he found it real interesting, but reckoned that in Oklahoma, folks mainly did things jes' acause they felt like it. I gave a paper at AIAA annual meeting in Reno earlier this week on birds extracting energy from turbulence. There's a lot in it for the birdies, with their low flight speeds, superb sensing and rapid response. Ravens in Santa Fe are marvellous aerobats in the turbulence rolling off the Sangres. But why? When you see them rolling off perfect chandelles, as with dolphins surfing and gamboling in the bow wave, you have to admit that they're jes' havin' fun, contrary to these gloomy animal behavioristos who claim animals do everything for a reason. Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for. 1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505 TEL: (505) 983-7728FAX: (505) 983-1694 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] Anecdote vs Observation
Yogi Berra said, You can observe a lot by just looking around. I am not an ornithologist, so really have only anecdotal knowledge of bird formations, derived from my own un instrumented and un scientifically recorded sightings, so I dunno much here. They're not observations in the scientific sense. And I've been looking hard at birds only since 1969. The only birds I have ever seen in Vee formations are brown and white pelicans and various large migratory geese and swans. I have watched many times the big Vulture (Aasvogel) of East Africa, where I was born. They do not formate and HATE company. Doan wanna share their supper! Ravens do not formate but they sure fool around. Now folks who know what they're talking about (unlike me) say that the rough and tumble play of cubs and puppies is a training for fighting and killing in the adult state. Maybe, and maybe ravens whooping it up in the turb is a training for evading redtail hawks and other predators that bag them. Yeah, yeah! I do know fighter and test pilots though, professionally, and they certainly fly aerobatics to improve their emergency, evasive and killing skills, but they still LOVE doin' it! This really exhausts my professional knowledge, indeed goes a little beyond it, so I reckon I'll sign off and leave the subject to the innocent and the eager. Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for. 1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505 TEL: (505) 983-7728FAX: (505) 983-1694 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] Research in Formation Flight
The video of frigate birds is charming but says nothing. Anyone who can read anything from that must be an astrologer. (I'm an Aquarian and Aquarians don't believe in astrology!). Mebbe two lions ambling side by side across the bushveldt are practicing drafting! You can bet they're sniffing the breeze for a few foolish upwind hunters! But, but, but, the wings of frigate birds are indeed interesting, because the highly tapered tip planform is contrary to established aerodynamic theory. We dunno why! I have a Ph. D. student at USC working on this. It seems wise not to use the word draft incorrectly, it has a well-defined meaning among professionals. There is no issue of whether there is a physical principle underlying formation flight - this has been established since Wieselsberger (1914). I'm told that Doktor W. went on to help the design of the Albatros D.III, a favorite gun platform of Von Richthofen! Benefits of formation flight are supported by a large body of research. In fact, the field is overripe in research to the level of decay. There is a huge amount of professional stuff in the aerodynamic and ornithological literature. There's a nice recent Ph. D. thesis by Rachel King that I had something to do with (On the Use of Wing Adaptation Formation Flight for Improved Aerodynamic Efficiency, NCSU, 2005). It contains a 69 entry bibliography, all legit., I think!Her supervisor, Ashok Gopalakrishnan, knows a lot more than I about this topic - I've only published six papers on it and given one grad course on this at UCLA. Also one can find stuff in Google that provides a start, if slightly dangerous! Google has an extract from a bit I wrote on formation flight for Tony Filippone's book, Flight Performance of Fixed and Rotary Winged Aircraft (Elsevier, 2006). The extract is slightly wrong, but OK in many respects. Be careful of web material - lotsa stuff I've found in Wikki on advanced mathematics is incorrect.Trubble is -- how the hell do you know it's BS -- if you don't know already!! Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for. 1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505 TEL: (505) 983-7728FAX: (505) 983-1694 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] Mechanics of Formation Flight
MECHANICS OF FORMATION FLIGHT -- PETER LISSAMAN Here are some actual facts, which folks may wish to use for discussion on tother hand maybe they just prefer their own opinions! Doesn't matter to anyone who just wants to ramble on a fascinating subject. I am designing flight systems to use turbulent energy, in test flight right now, so, unfortunately, gotta stick to Newtons Laws!. 1. A lifting wing develops one half its induced wash AHEAD of it. Yeah, folks, before the air has even met the wing. Its a continuous fluid, remember! The balance of the induced wash due to the trailing system develops downstream of the wing and is reaches its asymptotic value about 3 spans downstream. Within the span of the wing this induced flow is downwash, more or less spanwise uniform; outboard it is upwards, very intense just beyond the tip and attenuating rapidly as one moves away from the wing. 2. If another wing system is positioned outboard of the wing, it experiences a strong upwash, that will greatly reduce its power requirements. This effect is mutual, and its integrated intensity depends only on the tip separation as a fraction of span. 3. Consider three identical wings, line abreast, call them Left (L) Center (C) and Right (R). In this configuration the wing R experience a favorable upwash due to C and L, but the L contribution is fairly small. So it has a certain saving in its induced drag. But the wing C experiences the full upwash effect from both L, R and consequentially C has approximately double the saving. Good news for C! 4. If the wings L, R get pissed off at all that hard work, and drift downstream, they will experience stronger upwash due to the trailing system of C, but their influence on C will be attenuated, so they will experience larger savings at the expense of C. If they drift very far downstream, then they will have no influence on C, but L, R will still experience the induced flows of C so that ALL the saving will now be transferred to R , L. In the vernacular, C doesn't even know the wingmen are there, far astern, but they can see Cs fully developed wake lying right between them! There is a configuration providing equipartition which defines the Vee angle of this little Vic. 4. This mechanism continues for flights with larger numbers of wings. The calculations indicate, as so often in aerodynamics, that infinity is not far away, and reached very soon, so that large flights are advantageous but with diminishing returns. 5. The stability mechanism (we have the math, but its too much for here) is that if a formation were in echelon (a single skewed line) then the front bird would have a hard time, and he'd drift downstream. His wingman would then be leading and think, Jesus, I'm in front now! No way. And he'd drift downstream. This would proceed until you had about three or four birds in one file of the Vee. By that time the current lead bird would be experiencing maximum favorable induction from both sides, and would be quite comfortable and equipartition would have been achieved. 6. Steady winds have no effect on formation flight, of course. Chap called Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) had some wise words on that topic, almost a century after Leonardo had made some nearly right hypotheses re flight. But wind variation due to shear layers or turbulence due to these shear layers can always be exploited. Albatrosses use the marine shear layers to fly thousands of Km across the southern oceans with flapping a wing. This dynamic soaring has recently been validated in manned flight with a two place L-23 Super Blanik in a recent (May, 2006) USAF project out of Dryden. Energy extraction from random turbulence is also attractive, but requires wings with rapid sensing and response systems. The Santa Fe ravens are pretty good at riding the gusts of the Sangres, but its hard for machines to operate at this time scale. A Ph.D. student of mine is investigating this with a 2 m R/C IMU instrumented computer controlled flight model at Stanford. He and I are giving a paper on this at the Annual AIAA meeting in Reno this week. Its my idea of reality -- not talking, and not (God forbid!) computer simulation its a real airplane flying in a real atmosphere. 7. Flight speeds, size and other physical aspects of the wing system have no effect on the benefits of formation flight, but the savings are reflected only in the induced drag term. 8. There is no favorable drafting effect in any flight system. Drafting is always bad news for the draftee and has no effect on the lead vehicle. Anyone who has flown under tow, or seen movies of glider towing, will know that you have to stay high above your tow plane to get away from that bloody wake. Brown Pelicans are often observed flying line astern on fishing forays, but one sees each bird stays well above the preceding one. 9. All the above mechanisms apply
Re: [FRIAM] Friam Digest, Vol 43, Issue 6 Formation Flight
In connections with the comments about FORMATION FLIGHT FORMATION FLIGHT by PETER LISSAMAN The formation flight of birds has long been of interest to natural scientists. Leonardo da Vinci discussed this in 1504, as did Lord Rayleigh in 1889. The Vee formation produces significant energy saving. There is no debate about this. It has been established unequivocally theoretically, measured in flight tests with aircraft, and also, indirectly, in the remotely monitored pulse rate of formations of our feathered friends, actually Brown Pelicans. The mathematics is complicated. It relates to the flows induced by the vortex wake behind a lifting wing. Outboard of the wing a large upwash is induced, proportional to the circulation on the wing, and the wing man (bird?), if he tucks up tight on the tip, is flying in a strong upwash, with big drag savings. Thats all there is to it! But, Ah, the Details! As Leonardo said God is in the Details! It would be boring to go into those mathematics, except to say that the procedure is considered well-understood and correct, but a helluva mess! The birdies jus' do it, and could care less! The first paper I know of that treated the topic mathematically (and brilliantly) was Wieselsberger in ZFM, 1914; and there has been a fairly lively activity since then, as computers have removed the formidable and intelligent math required, and made it possible for anyone to get results without understanding them. In 1969 Carl Shollenberger, my valued friend and colleague, and I worked on this, and published the results in Science. The paper (Lissaman Shollenberger, Formation Flight of Birds, Science, Vol. 168, 1970) shows the very large size of these savings. We used the impressive new IBM 360 computer at Caltech. It occupied a three storey building about the size of a four unit apartment block, and had mens and womens toilets inside, as well as 12 real people who punched cards, fed data and generally dealt with the I/O. One picked up outputs at about 3:00 am each night. My wife never really believed that was what kept me up, although I did my thesis on mathematics of wing theory some years before using that old 360! And used the same story! Computation is clumsy, but more than Doktor Wieselsberger ever had! Carl was killed a few years later, flying in night mountain turbulence over the Sierra Madres. It was a great loss to aviation he was a fine pilot and aerodynamicist. I acknowledge his contribution fondly. He would be glad that his work was still used. Recently I revisited this subject in a paper Simplified Analytical methods for Formation Flight (Lissaman, AIAA. Jan. 2005) and next week will give a paper Neutral Energy Cycles for a Vehicle in Sinusoidal and Turbulent Vertical Gusts (Lissaman Patel, AIAA. Jan 2007) The Science paper shows that in theVee, for tight formations, one can almost double the range for a given energy input. Also that there is a stability mechanism, by which a member finds that moving ahead of the line of the Vee requires power increases. So theres a comfortable groove to fall into, which animals love! One should always be skeptical of attributing effects derived from theoretical calculations to animal behavior, but the general consensus of ornithologists and aerodynamicists is that this Vee formation saving is so significant, and its application so ubiquitous, that migrating birds DO use it to extend their range. The paper addressed the savings for different positions in the Vee. In line abreast, the center birds experience twice the saving of the tip members, but if the tip members find this hard work and fall back to take advantage of the increased favorable downstream upwash of the vortex wakes of the inner members, then a balancing of savings occurs. We calculated the angle of the Vee for equipartition. It is about the same as is observed with migrating birds. We also showed that it was not necessary have equal legs of the Vee. Provided there are at least about 6 birds on one side of the Vee, the other leg can be almost as long as the birds choose to make it. Interestingly, for a linear Vee, the wing at the apex of the Vee has the maximum saving. In 1971 I was in communication with ornithologists in Florida, who noted that their observations validated our Vee estimates and indicated that the apex position was usually taken by the older and more powerful birds. They wondered why the more powerful members of the flight should take the easiest jobs! My answer was that most intelligent species are pretty anthropomorphic! It may be noted that the savings are not related to drafting, that is following behind a draggy object to take advantage of its lower dynamic pressure wake. I am very familiar with this, and, as an automobile aerodynamicist, have utilized this theory in race car design, and as is obvious, the slingshot maneuver is very significant. But not in flight! It is, in fact, horrible to fly
