Good to revive the Fitz nights yesterday, even if it was a Thursday. From what I can remember, the following topics needed follow up: Semi-identical twins; huge ligers (are they sterile?) and pizzly bears; mindfulness, meditation, depressive realists and forms of OCD; the tribulations of middle-managers; the share of London businesses that account for half of employment. What have I missed?
Also, something I meant to mention and didn't get around to - the German super baby. This is a kid with a gene mutation that makes him super-strong but otherwise healthy. You could view it as an interesting example of evolution at work - a random mutation produces a version of the species that would have been more likely to survive and pass on his genes (in cave man days at least, providing he doesn't need to eat twice as much food or anything).
Friday, June 29, 2007
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Fitzrovian Thursday
Hallo chaps. I'm going to be in London on Thursday from lunchtime'ish to mid evening - anyone interested in meeting up? Planning on visiting a couple of art galleries in the afternoon before maybe repairing to Charlotte Street...
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Size Matters
An interesting look at the Earth relative to other astronomical objects. It's a small world after all!
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Finding Someone
Wednesday
On Wednesday I found a notepad - black cover, maybe A6 size pages - lying on the pavement, near Old Street station. I picked it up and looked around for anyone that might be searching for something they'd dropped. No sign of such a person. I continued to my bus stop at which a 55 bus miraculously appeared immediately. I got on and had a quick look through the pad. It had a scrawled letter, written in red ink and the page torn in two, shoved between its pages.
The letter, scored with crossed out lines and added comments, seemed the least likely avenue for finding the owner, so I put that to one side and opened up the notepad itself. The inside cover simply said "March" with the first page looking something like a diary entry. Skipping to the back revealed some more writing, again which looked like a diary entry. There didn't seem to be any contact details; no names, phone numbers, email...I felt really uncomfortable at this point: I don't want to read someone's private writings (or, more honestly, I kind of want to but would feel guilty about it!)
Anyway, off the bus and time to wander and wonder as I made my way down the street to a convenient pub, halfway between the bus stop and my Room With A View. Now, reasoning:
So I read it. Of course, I'm not going to tell you what it said, even if I could remember it that precisely. She, and somehow I knew it was "she" before the first direct reference, is an artist. And the entries are various musings on the state of being an artist, what is important, what is irrelevant, what influences the way you perceive and think and feel. There are thoughts on her cultural background, being Bangladeshi, and her social background. On connections and relationships and paths in life. All scribbled on the pages of this little black book.
I find it strangely fascinating, like things I've read, but not quite, and not a novel: no pretence at professional writing, but all the more powerful for that. It seems to me like an odd mix between the second half of "The Collector" (John Fowles) and "My Name is Asher Lev" (Chaim Potok). And always this awareness that this wasn't written for my entertainment but as a personal journal. That my purpose is simply to find out who this belonged to, not to find it interesting. All I've found so far, identity-wise, is that the letter, rewritten in the notepad, is to "G*" and that she studies at M* College of Art. Maybe I can look up the list of lecturers and find one called G* who has a Bangladeshi student who's written him a letter. It's kind of an angry letter though and what if she hasn't actually sent it? Will it get her in trouble? Enough thinking! Do this tomorrow! The pub closes and I stagger home to bed.
Thursday
I head blearily in to work. I get the notepad out and look at it again. No inspiration. I look once more at the letter. Wait, how did I miss that?! The letter is signed "S*"! So I now have a first name; this should be easy. I go to the M* college website and do a search for S*. Nothing. Even G* doesn't give me much useful information. I'm used to this though: our own website search is useless so I tend to just search it using Google. I google for "S* Bangladeshi" and the first hit is an artist's website...an artist called S* who studies at M*! That's got to be her!
Email: "Have you lost a notepad near Old St? Last entry was a letter to someone called G*"
Reply: "That's me! Thank you!"
...and we arrange to meet at Starbucks. I have lunch at Old Street during which I get a text saying she's arrived. I go to meet her. Walk in the door and I'm not sure if she's there. There's a girl by the window who looks maybe Bangladeshi but prettier than the website picture and seems younger. I'm not sure. I call her mobile. Sure enough, she picks up her phone so I hang up and wander over.
"S*?"
"Yes."
"Ah, then this belongs to you..."
...and present the notepad. Absurdly, I feel reluctant to let it go. My mini-adventure is over. I explain a little of how I found it, that I read it, how I looked up her name. And then I leave. I don't have a coffee.
Of course I did want to stay and talk and discuss things with her, but I didn't. And the reason why not? Well:
So maybe I'll just send S* this link and let her read my side of things...Maybe.
On Wednesday I found a notepad - black cover, maybe A6 size pages - lying on the pavement, near Old Street station. I picked it up and looked around for anyone that might be searching for something they'd dropped. No sign of such a person. I continued to my bus stop at which a 55 bus miraculously appeared immediately. I got on and had a quick look through the pad. It had a scrawled letter, written in red ink and the page torn in two, shoved between its pages.
The letter, scored with crossed out lines and added comments, seemed the least likely avenue for finding the owner, so I put that to one side and opened up the notepad itself. The inside cover simply said "March" with the first page looking something like a diary entry. Skipping to the back revealed some more writing, again which looked like a diary entry. There didn't seem to be any contact details; no names, phone numbers, email...I felt really uncomfortable at this point: I don't want to read someone's private writings (or, more honestly, I kind of want to but would feel guilty about it!)
Anyway, off the bus and time to wander and wonder as I made my way down the street to a convenient pub, halfway between the bus stop and my Room With A View. Now, reasoning:
- If I don't read this diary I'll never be able to find out who it belongs to so I might as well bin it and they'd never know or care if I'd read it or not and they'll never get it back
- If I do read it, I may be able to track the owner, or at least find out if it's worth it, and there's no need to feel guilty because it was necessary and they'll get back their valued writing
So I read it. Of course, I'm not going to tell you what it said, even if I could remember it that precisely. She, and somehow I knew it was "she" before the first direct reference, is an artist. And the entries are various musings on the state of being an artist, what is important, what is irrelevant, what influences the way you perceive and think and feel. There are thoughts on her cultural background, being Bangladeshi, and her social background. On connections and relationships and paths in life. All scribbled on the pages of this little black book.
I find it strangely fascinating, like things I've read, but not quite, and not a novel: no pretence at professional writing, but all the more powerful for that. It seems to me like an odd mix between the second half of "The Collector" (John Fowles) and "My Name is Asher Lev" (Chaim Potok). And always this awareness that this wasn't written for my entertainment but as a personal journal. That my purpose is simply to find out who this belonged to, not to find it interesting. All I've found so far, identity-wise, is that the letter, rewritten in the notepad, is to "G*" and that she studies at M* College of Art. Maybe I can look up the list of lecturers and find one called G* who has a Bangladeshi student who's written him a letter. It's kind of an angry letter though and what if she hasn't actually sent it? Will it get her in trouble? Enough thinking! Do this tomorrow! The pub closes and I stagger home to bed.
Thursday
I head blearily in to work. I get the notepad out and look at it again. No inspiration. I look once more at the letter. Wait, how did I miss that?! The letter is signed "S*"! So I now have a first name; this should be easy. I go to the M* college website and do a search for S*. Nothing. Even G* doesn't give me much useful information. I'm used to this though: our own website search is useless so I tend to just search it using Google. I google for "S* Bangladeshi" and the first hit is an artist's website...an artist called S* who studies at M*! That's got to be her!
Email: "Have you lost a notepad near Old St? Last entry was a letter to someone called G*"
Reply: "That's me! Thank you!"
...and we arrange to meet at Starbucks. I have lunch at Old Street during which I get a text saying she's arrived. I go to meet her. Walk in the door and I'm not sure if she's there. There's a girl by the window who looks maybe Bangladeshi but prettier than the website picture and seems younger. I'm not sure. I call her mobile. Sure enough, she picks up her phone so I hang up and wander over.
"S*?"
"Yes."
"Ah, then this belongs to you..."
...and present the notepad. Absurdly, I feel reluctant to let it go. My mini-adventure is over. I explain a little of how I found it, that I read it, how I looked up her name. And then I leave. I don't have a coffee.
Of course I did want to stay and talk and discuss things with her, but I didn't. And the reason why not? Well:
- [complete lie reason]: I had to get back to work (hah! like anyone would believe that!)
- [partial lie; partially honest reason]: I couldn't think of a way of saying, "Hey, I just read your private diary! Would you like to chat about it?!" that didn't sound extremely weird and creepy and just fundamentally wrong
- [totally honest reason]: I'm painfully shy with people I don't already know, so I couldn't talk to her. A problem I've had since I was a child. I'm hoping it will go away when I become an adult and all my insecurities and worries disappear, which, when I was younger, I presumed happened sometime in your late twenties. Clearly it must happen sometimes near forty or something as I haven't hit it yet and I'm now thirty-four.
So maybe I'll just send S* this link and let her read my side of things...Maybe.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Monday, May 14, 2007
Glasgow Urban Model
This is pretty impressive: Glasgow Urban Model. (See also here and here.)
They should turn it into a game - like Doom, but with neds.
They should turn it into a game - like Doom, but with neds.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Things can only get better... !
Remember that? Hard to believe the '97 election results came in a whole decade ago. How naively optimistic I was.
Three of the original cabinet have died since then - Cook, Dewar and Mowlam. Shame.
Three of the original cabinet have died since then - Cook, Dewar and Mowlam. Shame.
Monday, April 30, 2007
How Things Change
Confusing numbers
I came across this Dilbert cartoon the other day, and it reminded me of an essay by Ray Kurzweil called The Law of Accelerating Returns. You may have read this already, in which he talks about The Singularity, when technology will reach the point of advancing too quickly for humans to comprehend it. If you haven't read it, do! It makes some fascinating points.
In the meantime, you may be wondering what possible link there is between The Singularity and the above Dilbert cartoon. Well, one of the main points in that essay was that humans tend to think linearly. We intuitively understand numbers if they grow steadily, whereas exponential growth (like doubling numbers) confuses us.
In this case, Scott Adams has got his sums wrong. Which just goes to show that even an economist can get things wrong sometimes! The trouble is that his numbers look right, whereas the right numbers don't, if you see what I mean. Actually, you can see what I mean: here's a version with the numbers corrected.
Now that's a big number. In fact, at least to me, it looks ridiculously big. But, it's the correct number for 25 different possibilities in every possible combination (actually, "permutation" is the correct word here).
How permutations are calculated (if you know this already, or just can't be bothered with it, just skip to the next section)
The number of different permutations isn't too difficult to work out, at least when the numbers are small enough to be manageable!
Starting with one, if we just have one item (say "A"), then the number of permutations is one: just A.
With two (AB) the number of permutations is two: AB and BA
This is pretty easy so far...
With three (ABC) the number of permutations is six: ABC, BAC...CBA, BCA...ACB, CAB
Ok, this is a little tricker, so let's think about what we've done. For the first two permutations I just stuck the C onto the end of the two AB permutations. Then, for each of the two letters in turn (A and B) I swapped them with C. So when C was swapped with A, ABC became CBA. So, I basically just did the two (AB) permutations three times over (including swaps). 3 x 2 = 6
What happens with the permutations for four items (this can be written as "4!", which is a lot shorter!) Well, we can just add the D to the end of all the previous ones (so that's 1 times 6 permutations) and then swap the D with each of the remaining letters (which is 3 times 6 permutations). In other words, 4! = 4 x 6 = 24
Let's summarise:
1! = 1
2! = 2 x 1 = 2
3! = 3 x 2 x 1 = 6
4! = 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 24
So even if you don't get my mangled attempt at an explanation above, I'm sure you can spot the pattern!
Back to Dilbert
Ok, if it's so easy how come Mr Adams got it so completely wrong? Well, as you can see, the numbers early on in this series aren't particularly big. In fact, you'd be forgiven for thinking that I was lying about 25! being so huge! It seems part of a completely different pattern. This is really where our intuitive sense breaks down.
And this is where the relevance to Kurzweil's essay comes in. These odd and dramatic changes don't really matter when it's just an abstract number sequence (Ok, I'm sure it's vitally important for many engineers, but I mean for regular folk!). What happens when we start leaving our technological 3! and 4! with their nice, understandable results and start getting towards our incomprehensible 25! though? This is what the rate of technological advance really means.
But let's have a version that has something closer to a comforting 625. Will 720 do? Here we are:
Still doesn't look right though...
I came across this Dilbert cartoon the other day, and it reminded me of an essay by Ray Kurzweil called The Law of Accelerating Returns. You may have read this already, in which he talks about The Singularity, when technology will reach the point of advancing too quickly for humans to comprehend it. If you haven't read it, do! It makes some fascinating points.In the meantime, you may be wondering what possible link there is between The Singularity and the above Dilbert cartoon. Well, one of the main points in that essay was that humans tend to think linearly. We intuitively understand numbers if they grow steadily, whereas exponential growth (like doubling numbers) confuses us.
In this case, Scott Adams has got his sums wrong. Which just goes to show that even an economist can get things wrong sometimes! The trouble is that his numbers look right, whereas the right numbers don't, if you see what I mean. Actually, you can see what I mean: here's a version with the numbers corrected.
Now that's a big number. In fact, at least to me, it looks ridiculously big. But, it's the correct number for 25 different possibilities in every possible combination (actually, "permutation" is the correct word here).
How permutations are calculated (if you know this already, or just can't be bothered with it, just skip to the next section)
The number of different permutations isn't too difficult to work out, at least when the numbers are small enough to be manageable!
Starting with one, if we just have one item (say "A"), then the number of permutations is one: just A.
With two (AB) the number of permutations is two: AB and BA
This is pretty easy so far...
With three (ABC) the number of permutations is six: ABC, BAC...CBA, BCA...ACB, CAB
Ok, this is a little tricker, so let's think about what we've done. For the first two permutations I just stuck the C onto the end of the two AB permutations. Then, for each of the two letters in turn (A and B) I swapped them with C. So when C was swapped with A, ABC became CBA. So, I basically just did the two (AB) permutations three times over (including swaps). 3 x 2 = 6
What happens with the permutations for four items (this can be written as "4!", which is a lot shorter!) Well, we can just add the D to the end of all the previous ones (so that's 1 times 6 permutations) and then swap the D with each of the remaining letters (which is 3 times 6 permutations). In other words, 4! = 4 x 6 = 24
Let's summarise:
1! = 1
2! = 2 x 1 = 2
3! = 3 x 2 x 1 = 6
4! = 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 24
So even if you don't get my mangled attempt at an explanation above, I'm sure you can spot the pattern!
Back to Dilbert
Ok, if it's so easy how come Mr Adams got it so completely wrong? Well, as you can see, the numbers early on in this series aren't particularly big. In fact, you'd be forgiven for thinking that I was lying about 25! being so huge! It seems part of a completely different pattern. This is really where our intuitive sense breaks down.
And this is where the relevance to Kurzweil's essay comes in. These odd and dramatic changes don't really matter when it's just an abstract number sequence (Ok, I'm sure it's vitally important for many engineers, but I mean for regular folk!). What happens when we start leaving our technological 3! and 4! with their nice, understandable results and start getting towards our incomprehensible 25! though? This is what the rate of technological advance really means.
But let's have a version that has something closer to a comforting 625. Will 720 do? Here we are:
Still doesn't look right though...Thursday, April 26, 2007
Email Bankruptcy
Quite an appealing idea. I wonder if I could extend it to other areas - work projects, domestic chores etc.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Wireless hijacking under scrutiny
Man charged for using someone else's wi-fi connection. I didn't know that was illegal!
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Wedding Belles
Anyone else see this? We videoed it on Thursday and watched it last night - pretty good, I thought, probably better than anything else Irvine Welsh has done post Trainspotting. His range might be limited but he does what he does very well.
I was also impressed to see cameos from Balamory's Eadie Mcreadie and Archie.
I was also impressed to see cameos from Balamory's Eadie Mcreadie and Archie.
Friday, March 30, 2007
From the New Scientist
"If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene, you don't say, 'I read a science fiction novel that says it's not a problem'" - so said Al Gore when testifying to congress, as quoted in New Scientist this week (with Michael Crichton in mind I'm sure).
In a similar vein, they've also got an interview with Darwin's great great grandson Matthew Chapman, who attended the court hearing in Dover Pennsylvania last year when they were trying to teach intelligent design in the local school. He makes some good points, relevant to our earlier discussion about how people can convince themselves about particular theories contrary to the apparent evidence. He talks about how the intelligent design advocates 'would intellectually and morally contort temselves to cling to ideas one felt even they did not quite believe', and about how there must be 'some part of the fundamentalist mind that recognises the facts that contradict a literal biblical interpretation, yet they insist that another truth in conflict with this exists.'
His rather elegant suggestion is to teach intelligent design in classrooms, and then use the scientific method to challenge it - thereby teaching kids how the whole process of scientific enquiry works.
In a similar vein, they've also got an interview with Darwin's great great grandson Matthew Chapman, who attended the court hearing in Dover Pennsylvania last year when they were trying to teach intelligent design in the local school. He makes some good points, relevant to our earlier discussion about how people can convince themselves about particular theories contrary to the apparent evidence. He talks about how the intelligent design advocates 'would intellectually and morally contort temselves to cling to ideas one felt even they did not quite believe', and about how there must be 'some part of the fundamentalist mind that recognises the facts that contradict a literal biblical interpretation, yet they insist that another truth in conflict with this exists.'
His rather elegant suggestion is to teach intelligent design in classrooms, and then use the scientific method to challenge it - thereby teaching kids how the whole process of scientific enquiry works.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
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