[FRIAM] Cinder, Robert Hodgin, Adjacent Possible

Robert Hodgin's atomic instability is interesting. Particles repel like particles, and the large particle attracts the small particles. http://vimeo.com/13172748 And this related one shows a nice visual of the Adjacent Possible: http://vimeo.com/13172823 BTW, is anyone messing with Cinder?

Re: [FRIAM] NASA-Funded Research Discovers Life Built With Toxic Chemical

Roger Critchlow wrote circa 12/06/2010 09:39 PM: > Ah, a microbiologist rips the NASA research: > > > http://rrresearch.blogspot.com/2010/12/arsenic-associated-bacteria-nasas.html Very cool! Thanks, Roger. > Via

[FRIAM] Fwd: Google's Nexus S official, coming December 16th

This is apparently The Next Big Thing for android: http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/06/googles-nexus-s-product-page-goes-live/ If anyone gets one, could they let us know about what they think? Heck, while I'm at it: Android users: what would be your 3 wishes in terms of improving the OS? I

Re: [FRIAM] NASA-Funded Research Discovers Life Built With Toxic Chemical

Glen, and All, You know, it wasn't SO long ago (i.e., I remember it) that SOME journals thought of themselves as "archival," and their reviewers* saw their role as defending the pages of those journals against error. In that context, getting published was supposed to be the end of a conversation

Re: [FRIAM] Math education

I approached this talk on Math Education as a skeptic -I have always thought that the idea of letting the computer do all the work sounds great but is flawed. Of course, I don't like the idea of presenting math in the schools as mainly rules of calculation, but I feared that using calculators

Re: [FRIAM] NASA-Funded Research Discovers Life Built With Toxic Chemical

Nicholas Thompson wrote circa 12/07/2010 08:53 AM: > You know, it wasn't SO long ago (i.e., I remember it) that SOME journals > thought of themselves as "archival," and their reviewers* saw their role as > defending the pages of those journals against error. In that context, > getting published w

Re: [FRIAM] NASA-Funded Research Discovers Life Built With Toxic Chemical

Russ, you had a small typo in your Shrödinger quote. Instead of extracting "energy", Schrödinger actually defined living systems as extracting "negative entropy" from the environment: "the only way a living system stays alive, away from maximum entropy or death is to be continually drawing from it

Re: [FRIAM] Math education

One of my most disappointing moments in life was when I'd spent weeks tutoring a Vietnam Vet who realized after 4 years in college that he didn't have the emotional temperament to be a teacher and decided he did have the temperament/aptitude for Engineering. Uncle Sugar bought him a nice big p

[FRIAM] The FRIAM journal. WAS: NASA-Funded Research Discovers Life Built With Toxic Chemical

Well, not quite so fast, Glen! Look. How many papers do you read a day? How do you decide which papers to read? You can form an organization of like-minded folks that puts before you only the papers that that organization thinks are good. (i.e., an archival Journal) You can set up some "wisd

Re: [FRIAM] The FRIAM journal. WAS: NASA-Funded Research Discovers Life Built With Toxic Chemical

OK. I can take your point. However, my objection is not to _recommendation_. My objection is to the "error free" part ... or even just the "error" part. I recommend papers that contain errors all the time. Hell, since I'm a programmer, and since no code is bug free, I actually _sell_ buggy co

Re: [FRIAM] The FRIAM journal. WAS: NASA-Funded Research Discovers Life Built With Toxic Chemical

Glen, I like the journal format and I am sure I would like the paper if I could understand a word of it. This reminds me of one of the most inconvenient of truths: I am not competent to read everything. I loved the idea of "in silico livers" as people who resided in the area around San Jose,

[FRIAM] Privacy, Individual vs. Collective

In the age of social media and social networks privacy has become an issue of intense debate. Privacy means an individual has the right to be secure from unauthorized disclosure of information about oneself. Now if a state has "state secrets", is this fundamentally different from privacy issu

Re: [FRIAM] Privacy, Individual vs. Collective

Fixed that for you. Opinions are always welcomed. On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 2:41 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote: > In the age of social media and social networks > privacy has become an issue of intense debate. > Privacy means an individual has the right to be secure from unauthorized > disclosure of infor

Re: [FRIAM] [sfx: Discuss] Fwd: Google's Nexus S official, coming December 16th

The reviews for the Nexus-S I've scanned were generally underwhelmed. It's a nice phone, but not much of an advance on the Nexus-One, which should get the Gingerbread release of Android before Christmas. And no support for the HSPA+ digital service on T-Mobile, so you probably will need wifi to

Re: [FRIAM] Don’t Look, Don’t Read: Governme nt Warns Its Workers Away From WikiLeaks Documents

The thing that upsets me about Wikileaks is the conflation between whistle blowing and advocating transparency. Whistle blowing is a "rule of law" action intended to bring to light _illegal_ or unethical activities. Although there's usually a strong correlation, whistle blowing is orthogonal to

Re: [FRIAM] Privacy, Individual vs. Collective

What were the really egregious evils they did? I confess to not reading them all. -- Owen On Dec 7, 2010, at 2:51 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote: > Fixed that for you. Opinions are always welcomed. > > On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 2:41 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote: > In the age of social media and socia

Re: [FRIAM] Privacy, Individual vs. Collective

Jochen Fromm wrote circa 10-12-07 01:41 PM: > Now if a state has "state secrets", is this fundamentally different from > privacy issues for > the individual (only for the state)? Should > a state in a democracy have any real secrets > at all? And if the state has the right to prevent invasion of pr

Re: [FRIAM] Privacy, Individual vs. Collective

> It's like the paparazzi for diplomats. Well done! -- Owen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Re: [FRIAM] Privacy, Individual vs. Collective

It's my belief that individual privacy is entirely NOT the same as government classification (as secret, top secret, etc) of information. Governments do NOT have a "right of privacy". Our government is supposed to be "by, of, and for" the people. It's use of secrecy is appropriate (and should be p

Re: [FRIAM] Evaluating Expressions, part 7 – Tra nsactions and Exceptions

Thanks, Dale. I have been enjoying these! Owen and I have a backburner project where we'd like to employ the Actor model in a distributed Javascript system using nodeJS on servers communicating via websockets to the browswers. Have you seen anything like this done already? As a proof-of-c

Re: [FRIAM] Evaluating Expressions, part 7 – Tra nsactions and Exceptions

Wow, that sounds super-awesome. On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 10:40 PM, Stephen Guerin wrote: > Thanks, Dale. I have been enjoying these! > > Owen and I have a backburner project where we'd like to employ the Actor > model in a distributed Javascript system using nodeJS on servers > communicating via we