All -
The "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act" passed by the US Senate
today, and being moved on to the House, has some interesting
characteristics, and contains some (vaguely) amusing elements.
It turns out that the bill is actually an amendment to a bill
intended to require equity
All --
How reality meets modeling:
From Forbes.com ( http://www.forbes.com/2008/09/23/bailout-paulson-congress-biz-beltway-cx_jz_bw_0923bailout.html
) :
" In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700
billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.
All --
And another interesting reference:
Article in Science: "Phenotypic Diversity, Population Growth,
and Information in Fluctuating Environments" by Edo Kussell and
Stanislas Leibler, Science 23 September 2005; 309: 2075-2078;
published online 25 August 2005, http://www.sciencema
All -
I'm not singling out John for this comment, but just using it as a
trigger . . .
On Oct 31, 2008, at 11:45 AM, John Sadd wrote:
it is totally effing amazing that a black man
which raises the question, "Why isn't Obama white?"
If that question sounds silly to you, think a littl
Hmm . . .
I guess I'd have to say that sort of makes my point -- he couldn't
even just say "No" -- he had to tangle himself in semantics to avoid
the flat out lie . . . :-)
tom
On Oct 31, 2008, at 12:35 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote:
I can't resist:
On Fri, Oct
Found in the responses to this article, a wonderful neologism:
"It is always a pleasure to read George Monbiot's inciteful
analyses, even from beyond the Pond."
inciteful Just perfect :-)
tom
On Oct 31, 2008, at 11:07 AM, Richard Harris wrote:
Saw an interesting article on this
needed for survival. So if the
aggregate production is evenly distributed everyone has a
subsistence living.
I don't think this is necessarily true.
Your mentioning a gift economy is further a reason to look at a
model as simple as the Tom Carter/Victor Yakovenko model I mentioned
wh
further a reason to look at a
model as simple as the Tom Carter/Victor Yakovenko model I mentioned
where agents are giving a dollar to another random agent (ie
gifting). This model, with minimal assumptions, generates non-
equitable distribution of wealth where very few agents end u
All -
The real "random walks" link:
http://csustan.csustan.edu/~tom/SFI-CSSS/2009/LectureNotes/Random%20Walk/
tom
On Apr 12, 2009, at 3:58 PM, Tom Carter wrote:
All -
Apropos some of this, there are notes from lectures I've given
recently on some of these topics here
en two agents
exchange resources, they are both left poorer since they each
consume the received resource. In this model an agent grows wealthy
only by not exchanging resources and keeping all the resources it
produces. It then has the ability eventually to go on a shopping
spree, pig out, a
barter exchanges are
construed as income. So there is no escape from the taxation trap
except, perhaps, complete self-sufficiency.
-- Russ
On Sun, Apr 12, 2009 at 8:48 PM, Tom Carter
wrote:
Russ -
Thanks . . .
As far as thinking about how economies "really" work . . . what
follo
Just a couple of brief comments . . .
From: some...@somewhere . . .
(Do you give
an undergraduate a major in "Water"? What are they then prepared
for?)
For what it's worth, the largest major on our campus is "Liberal
Studies" . . . I'll let you speculate on "What they are then prepared
All -
It's out there now . . . rather fun :-)
http://www.wolframalpha.com/
tom
p.s. Ask it "How old are you?"
or "Are you conscious?"
or "integral log(x)"
or "What is the speed of an unladen swallow?"
On Mar 9, 2009, at 6:18 PM, Mikhail Gorelkin wrote:
http://blo
so, what does one behaviorist say to another after sex?
It was good for you, how was it for me?
:-)
tom
On Jun 14, 2009, at 11:19 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University (nthomp...@clarku.edu)
http://home.earthlink.
All --
Book recommendation: "The Best of All Possible Worlds: Mathematics
and Destiny" by Ivar Ekeland.
I've liked almost all of what Ekeland has written (particularly,
"Mathematics and the Unexpected") . . . this one talks about a variety
of issues including teleology/causality, lea
All --
Apropos some of this, today I found myself going back and forth
between the FRIAM discussion and this review/analysis of what's new in
Mac OSX Snow Leopard . . .
http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/08/mac-os-x-10-6.ars/8
tom
On Sep 7, 2009, at 7:14 PM, Birchard Hayes wro
Owen . . .
Hmmm . . . several potential issues here . . .
If your goal is to "get to know Conway" better, then you really
ought to start with ONAG (On Numbers and Games), which is a "classic"
of sorts -- a non-standard way of developing number systems (but, if
you are thinking about
Glen -
Ligature . . . ff is (sometimes) a "single glyph" . . .
tom
On Oct 14, 2009, at 5:06 PM, glen e. p. ropella wrote:
And, more importantly, why do my searches for Clifford fail in Adobe
Reader, but succeed in Evince, while reading the following file:
http://www.ams.org/bull/2002-39-0
Glen -
It's probably worth remembering that collections of spatio-
temporally located mathematicians will choose to use the "definitions"
that give them the amount of "traction" they want. They'll use
definitions that are sufficiently general as to cover the cases
they're most intereste
com/ygaa4fj> or maybe getting some novel
> interactive light show to accompany the concert. or maybe a lecture on video
> feedback leading to chaos, maybe Rob Shaw has some ideas, or sociology of
> deadheads:
> http://www.amazon.com/Deadhead-Social-Science-Gonna-Learn/dp/07
http://www.archive.org/details/furthur2010-03-12.flac16
tom
On Mar 20, 2010, at 7:51 PM, Tom Carter wrote:
> All -
>
> David Gans did a "back yard party" in the back yard of my radio-show
> colleague (chair of the Philosophy department) a year or so ago. Very good
> show --
Indeed they did -- and played acoustic guitars for the whole first set!
On Mar 20, 2010, at 8:53 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote:
> They led off with my favorite: Ripple.
>
> On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 9:49 PM, Tom Carter wrote:
> p.p.s. -- you start to feel old when the bass player in y
Owen -
An interesting paper on some of these issues (you may recognize the author
:-) :
http://eprints.kfupm.edu.sa/36302/1/36302.pdf
But, possibly more fun:
http://books.google.com/books?id=XW7fICYtkg8C&pg=PA223&lpg=PA223&dq=spaghetti+dewdney&source=bl&ots=fXNU7klBKJ&sig=z3hibL7KkO-W
ss reading . . . could this be a new entry in
the "next Sokal" sweepstakes?)
tom
On Mar 25, 2010, at 12:49 AM, Tom Carter wrote:
> Owen -
>
> An interesting paper on some of these issues (you may recognize the author
> :-) :
>
> http://eprints.kfupm.edu.sa/3630
I can also recommend Harley Flander's book on Differential Forms ...
tom
On Jul 14, 2010, at 5:53 AM, Eric Smith wrote:
> Hi Glen,
>
> I believe it's also called a "wedge product". Mike Spivak's tiny but
> frustrating but elegant book Calculus on Manifolds, if I remember correctly,
> define
All -
10??? Oh, well . . .
When I was a kid, my parents installed this in the living room (you can still
sometimes find it in used book stores -- saw one a few years ago for $150,
missing Marx and Freud !). I learned a lot :-):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_We
e context in which you are reading these
> things?
>
> Nick
>
> From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf
> Of Tom Carter
> Sent: Saturday, October 09, 2010 12:07 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [
Nick -
A place to begin exploring some of these issues might be:
Muddling Through : Pursuing Science and Truths in the Twenty-First Century,
by Mike Fortun and Herbert Bernstein (billed as a "science historian" and a
"quantum physicist" . . . I have found it to be a good read . . .)
Th
Owen -
Haven't read . . . but in an effort to understand "why string (or something?)
theory?" I've been doing some background reading on "what the issues are" . . .
(e.g., what actually makes up the Standard Model, that needs "updating").
Recent lunch reading for me has been this article (f
Nick -
Actually, paint toenails red is strawberry patch, have red eyes is cherry
tree . . . :-)
tom
On Dec 10, 2010, at 2:19 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> Has to do with the efficacy of painting their toes red.
>
> N
>
> From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com]
Nick -
There seem to me to be some good parts, and some not so good parts, to the
article.
Back when I used to teach "Science, Technology, and Human Values" I had my
students read this article from Science (about salt and diet, and science, and
public policy):
http://www.junkscience
Hmmm . . .
I would say this just slightly differently -- the amount of information an
observer gains from observing an event is equal to the decrease in uncertainty
the observer has from observing the event (e.g., if I am almost certain an
event will occur, I gain almost no information from o
Owen -
Well, I'm not a Brit, but I have had an interest in voting (and even from a
mathematician's perspective) . . .
I was actually pretty disappointed in this whole process, and I'll have to
say I found Gowers' posting(s) somewhat less than what they might have been.
In Britain in rece
All --
I've had some reasonable success with Wubi (have a dual boot ASUS EEE PC . .
.). It's pretty easy to set up, and also seems to be reversible, if you want
to uninstall later . . .
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WubiGuide
Thanks . . .
Tom Carter
On Feb 26, 2012, at 5:37 P
inear-Systems/Nonlinear-Systems.pdf
(these are in progress lecture notes for a class I teach . . .)
Thanks . . .
Tom Carter
On Mar 18, 2012, at 5:18 PM, Russ Abbott wrote:
> Neat idea. Here are some images that actually scan. I found them with a
> simple search for "QR Code&q
All -
Probably too much to respond to, but for no particularly good reason, a few
comments . . .
1.) Whenever I teach about logic / scientific-method, one thing I make sure
to do is remind students that "deduction" is not a "truth *producing*" system,
but is at best a "truth *preserving*"
All --
A couple of issues / observations . . .
Concerning the probability that an "advanced civilization" (or "intelligent
species"), even if it ever comes into being, will persist long enough to be
noticed by another hypothetical "intelligent species" -- there are arguments
that it (the p
Owen -
Can't remember if I've recommended this here in the past . . . but apropos
various of these topics is "The Anthropic Cosmological Principle" by Barrow and
Tipler. It's getting a bit old now (1988), but I think still worth the read .
. . they cover tons of fascinating stuff . . . (and
As a youngster, I read a (stunning :-) book that contained this:
“What the hell are you getting so upset about?” he asked her bewilderedly in
a tone of contrite amusement. “I thought you didn’t believe in God.”
“I don’t,” she sobbed, bursting violently into tears. “But the God I don’t
believe
Robert -
There's a reasonably good discussion of this here:
http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/58518.html
Thanks . . .
tom
On Oct 8, 2012, at 9:20 AM, Robert J. Cordingley wrote:
> I probably should know this...
>
> So when you rearrange the digits of a number (>9) and take t
I know I must have been there, since I don't remember . . .
tom
On Jul 14, 2007, at 8:04 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:
> For those of us over the hill:
>http://www.backspaces.net/files/Remember.wmv
>
> -- Owen
>
>
>
>
> FRIAM Appli
Nick / Eric -
Judea Pearl's book "Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference" is
actually pretty good -- somewhat technical, and not always convincing
(to me :-), but worth reading . . .
http://www.amazon.com/Causality-Reasoning-Inference-Judea-Pearl/dp/0521773628/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/1
All -
Yes, interesting . . . my immediate response is, not symplectic
enough . . . I never really did like so(3, 1) . . .
But I like the general idea, and the movie is pretty ( http://deferentialgeometry.org/anim/e8rotation.mov
:-)
tom
On Nov 24, 2007, at 6:29 PM, Richard Lowenberg
Nick -
So, ummm . . . in a carefully done axiomatization of Euclidean
geometry, the terms "point", "line", "plane" (among others . . .) are
left explicitly *undefined* . . . See, for example, Hilbert's
axiomatization as described here:
http://www.math.umbc.edu/~campbell/Math306Spr
Nick -
OK . . . now that we recognize that terms like "point" are (should
more properly be?) left intentionally undefined in the axiomatic
systems, we can move to the next step . . .
A term like "point" (in an axiomatic theory) is a place where we
can make a (temporary?) connection be
Nick -
Have you read Thomas Nagel's "The View From Nowhere" ?You
might find it amusing . . .
tom
On Jul 14, 2008, at 8:35 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
But then I want to continue to wonder (for perhaps a few more
days) what implications this might have for the concept of mind.
e, though,
that changing the base of the logarithm also introduces a constant in the
"dimensionless" Shannon formulation. . .
Thanks . . .
Tom Carter
p.s. Pedagogical question: An exercise I do in class from time to time is to
ask this question: "What would Avogadro's Number
el G.
Mackey . . . nice little book . . .
Thanks . . .
tom
p.s. More pedagogy: Which weighs more, a pound of gold or a pound of wheat?
(And, for extra credit, which weighs more, an ounce of gold or an ounce of
wheat?)(explain your answers . . . :-) (I'm teaching an undergra
Credited on the InterWeb to Mark Twain:
A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling:
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be
replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the
alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained w
rain . . .
Ah, the joys of curses on a vt100 . . . :-)
tom
On Apr 30, 2014, at 4:57 PM, glen e. p. ropella wrote:
>
> I know some of you are old geezers and would appreciate this bit of history
> as much as I do:
>
> http://telehack.com/
>
> cf:
> Playable Archaeology: An Interview with
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