This is based on nothing more than reading the entry on categories at
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/categories/ so please take with a pinch of
salt...
It seems that the tools necessary to construct category systems are severely
broken. Specifically, there is no generally accepted method for
Re today's discussion about proofs of the Pythagorean theorem - here's a
link to a page with ~80 proofs:
http://www.cut-the-knot.org/pythagoras/index.shtml
Proof #4 is the one that Frank I were so impressed with; #1 is the one
that Nick (along with anyone who graduated St Johns) failed to
Koyanisquaatsi. Some fascinating shots of crowds of people, traffic etc. The
score (Philip Glass) is also an interesting example of emergence: its an
apparently simple pattern (arpeggio after arpeggio in a pretty
straightforward chord progression) but it ends up far more sonically
engaging than it
Here's a guide to making your own crop circles:
http://www.circlemakers.org/guide.html
Robert
On 6/19/08, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Interesting, although crop circles may be made by FRIAMers in England.
Paul
-- Forwarded message --
From: Earl James [EMAIL
See the Bruce Sawhill reference in
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200805/dayjet - Robert
--
Cycling 100 miles to raise $4500 - support me in raising money for the
Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Please donate at
http://www.active.com/donate/tntnmep/robertholmes
And this from Stuart Kauffman in the current New Scientist:
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19826556.000-perspectives-why-humanity-needs-a-god-of-creativity.html
I must confess to being a little disappointed in this article - once again,
it's got the Aunt Sally figure of the
I picked this up from an Economist article on the current Maker Faire
phenomenon: Addie Wagenknecht is going to be selling kits for constructing
multi-touch surfaces. Seem to be rather cheaper than Microsoft's proprietary
Surface
http://nortd.com/touchkit/faq.html
Robert
--
Cycling 100 miles
Actually chaps, it's all Darwin. See last week's Economist article:
http://tinyurl.com/2ntgaf and today's JASSS article:
http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/11/2/2.html
Robert
--
Cycling 100 miles to raise $4500 - support me in raising money for the
Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Please donate at
Please not HostGo! Otherwise I'll never get any email from you guys (bounce,
bounce, bounce)
One thing we discussed over lunch a week or so ago - how about hosting it
yourself? You'll probably be able to identify and repair problems faster
than the typical ISP's customer (non-)service. Plus
In this month's Physics World: Doing physics in Second Life
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/32673
Robert
P.S. Nick - apparently NOAA have got an SL presence... you could have your
avatar wander through its favourite storm system.
On Feb 1, 2008 8:58 PM, James Steiner [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The latest issue of JASSS has an interesting article on the practice (rather
than theory) of ABM validation: http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/11/1/5.html
Robert
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St.
Correct me if I'm wrong Nick, but isn't this all simply a case of hard
scientists (physicists, chemists etc.) understanding causality and
attributing it appropriately and soft scientists (biologists, ethologists
etc.) not?
Robert
Dave
I think the idea of using togas to denote status at 632 is inspired. Here's
what the different togas used to signify (from
http://ancient-culture.suite101.com/). I presume that Steve gets the *toga
picta*. I'll leave it to others to suggest additional person-toga mappings.
*Toga virilis* –
On Nov 18, 2007 11:58 AM, Nicholas Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
Robert,
Does a blank white wall have a pattern on it?
Nick
Nick - *YES *- Robert
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St.
On Nov 16, 2007 5:32 PM, Nicholas Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
snip So, in my idiotic postivisitic mode, I assert, that pattern IS
what causality is. I mean why would one bother to attribute it anywhere
else than where we know it.
No it's not Nick, as witnessed by the following
I've seen several articles recently on Myspace vs Facebook demographics:
lots of claims that it splits along class lies. For example:
http://www.forbes.com/home/technology/2007/07/20/facebook-myspace-internet-tech-cz_ccm_0723class.html
Robert
Creating no emissions? Really? Wow - you must be generating the electricity
for your car from one of those zero-emission power stations we keep hoping
for.
R
On 8/14/07, Marcus G. Daniels [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Glen E. P. Ropella wrote:
How about if I use my own form of carbon offset?
cases this represents more lifetime emissions
than if you'd been running an oil or gas plant.
Robert
On 8/14/07, Marcus G. Daniels [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Robert Holmes wrote:
Creating no emissions? Really? Wow - you must be generating the
electricity for your car from one of those zero
Nick,
The good idea is a hypothetical imperative as it compels actions in a given
circumstance (not all circumstances): if it will aid the boat's stability, I
should move to the opposite side.
If you want a categorical imperative that would be applicable, I'd suggest: I
should not act like a
The Copenhagen Consensus is a Danish think-tank that gets economists and
politicians to address the question in a world of limited resources, if we
cannot do everything at once what should we do first?. The top-4 ratings
from their 2006 meeting are:
1. communicable diseases
2. sanitation
On 8/11/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Certainly there is a need for heretics and I consider myself a minor
heretic and mystic outlaw, but to deny the reality of global warming/climate
change is just stupid. snip
No it's not. Given the conclusion of the IPCC report that
I've got three satellite tuners and a Tivo that are surplus to requirements.
Anyone in town need them (gratis) for an exciting MAKE style project? The
local thrift stores won't touch these things so they need a home...
Robert
FRIAM
Read the articles and tell me what you think. But I believe the answer to
your last question is No.
Robert
On 7/3/07, Phil Henshaw [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
The task of associating abstract and real things is rather complicated,
and often made more so by using the same names for them, so it
The latest issue of Journal of Artificial Societies and Simulation is
available at http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS.html
I dunno, after our discussions about the nature of explanation, reading
JASSS left me thoroughly depressed. Want to guess how many papers compared
their simulation results
On 6/27/07, Glen E. P. Ropella [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
snip
p.s. My argument above does not make the word mathematician useless by
ascribing it to _everyone_ (as Bristol did when implying that every
thing is emergent). It is only ascribed to those who attempt to form
rigorous conceptions
is the exception rather than the rule.
And this is why we need more Mike Agars in this world.
Robert
On 6/26/07, Pamela McCorduck [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
What kind of explanation of social behavior would satisfy you?
On Jun 26, 2007, at 8:31 AM, Robert Holmes wrote:
Epstein has a new book and MIT Tech
OK - I'll bite. What does a RMAR think? I ask, because your last question to
me at Wedtech (So Robert, ARE you a materialist?) sent me scurrying to my
reference books from which I'm only just emerging and - apparently - I'm a
glutton for punishment.
And in answer to your question, yes I am; in
Even better - you can try it for yourself here:
http://labs.live.com/photosynth/
Robert
P.S. Does anyone have any ideas what tools they are using to deliver clever
stuff over the web like this? Seems far more compelling than the usual Ajax
stuff
On 6/8/07, David Breecker [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I've been reading a compilation of Stephen Jay Gould's writings The
Richness of Life. One of his recurrent themes is how we have a hard time
interpreting probability - he illustrates this with a discussion of hitting
streaks in baseball and hot-hands in basketball. He claims that although
On 6/7/07, Nicholas Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
snipThe thing about this way of thinking that makes my palms sweat is
suddently makes Waddington's concept of Genetic Assimilation totally
transparent. Before the heat shock procedure, there was isoethic variation
in wing-formation genes;
On 6/5/07, Glen E. P. Ropella [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
snip
Saying some thing _can_ be an impediment is very different from saying
that it is _always_ an impediment.
Well there's your problem Glen - you're trying to introduce conditionals and
realistic shades of grey when this group is more
On 6/2/07, Douglas Roberts [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
snip
[*Footnote from the (or should be) above: I know people who have written
applications with no object-oriented technologies at all, using FORTRAN or
C, (or worse, purely procedural Java) and who claim to have developed an
ABM. I contend,
Here's a couple of sites that could be worth checking out Phil:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=enq=object+oriented+programmingbtnG=Google+Search
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming
Robert
On 6/2/07, Phil Henshaw [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Well, for the knowledgeably
Good question and one that there doesn't seem to be a whole load of
consensus on. Wikipedia (fount of all knowledge) suggests that the
traditional granularity is one cent. And therein lies the problem: even
asking myself the question is this worth one cent? has used up more than
one cent's worth
At last, someone has had the courage to tell the real story behind global
warning.
Robert
From the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 16 April 2007, Letters section, page
6B:
You may have noticed that March of this year was particularly hot. As a
matter of fact, I understand that it was the hottest
From today's FT. Clearly the problem isn't getting China to play along, it's
getting the US to play along.
Robert
Carbon credits market triples to $30bn
By Fiona Harvey in Cologne
Published: May 3 2007 03:00 | Last updated: May 3 2007 03:00
The market in carbon credits grew faster than
Phil,
I don't think that your reliance on the second law is correct. The Clausius
statement of the 2nd law is:
The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase
over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium.
The earth isn't an isolated system: the sun inputs
On the topic of calculators - I see that HP are to re-release the HP-35 this
summer in celebration of its 35th anniversary. At last! I can get myself an
RPN calculator that isn't littered with redundant financial functions.
R
On 4/7/07, Owen Densmore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
For the Mac
Another issue of Journal of Artificial Societies Social Simulation has
been released. The article on empirical validation was OK but somewhat
waffly.
http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk
Robert
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets
BTW: Since this was written, Robert Holmes discussed with several of
us one of the fair voting schemes in the UK. I forget the details,
but the aim was to insure the individual voters maximized their input
into the vote. Robert -- do you know where that scheme fits into AIT?
I would like to add
In my role as FRIAM's official Cassandra (I should get a T-shirt printed),
has anyone ever shown that these highly intensive simulations give
quantitatively better results than, say, something written on Owen's laptop
in NetLogo? Do we know that we get a better assessment of (for example) the
Fair enough: big simulation answers some questions, small simulation answers
others. So what are the specific questions that a big epidemiological
simulation can answer? It can't be anything too predictive (ohmigod, New
York has just fallen to small pox. Which city is next?) because that
depends
Anyone round here want to teach finite math?
R
On Behalf Of Nancy O'Connor
Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2007 10:01 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Tutor Wanted
CAE (*The Center for Educational Excellence at the College of Santa Fe*) is
looking for
http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS.html
Articles on social reputation and cultural stuff look promising.
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe,
Googling grounded theory software comes up with NVivo and Nudist (both
available through http://www.qsrinternational.com/). Both have free 30 day
trials.
Robert
On 1/29/07, Nicholas Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Hi, All.
Is there a software that would allow me to listen to a piece of
Phil,
You're always asking for datsets and the site Tom linked to is full of them
(http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/browse/data). How about using
your tools on one of them and then reporting back to the group? I'm sure
we'd all be happy to comment on the results once we had a concrete
Oops. The iPhone may not be called the iPhone for much longer:
http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/07/01/10/2320257.shtml
Meanwhile in the UK...
http://tinyurl.com/ycojk8
R
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at
Did you try to follow the link for the full text? $30!!! Now I know that
Nature has to make their money just as much as any of the rest of us, but it
galls me that after paying my taxes to fund this particular researcher and
his institution I don't get access to the results for free
R
On
Some mistake, surely? An English rainbow has seven colours, not six. Hence
the mnemonic taught to all school children Richard of York gave battle in
vain. (V for violet rather than purple).
R
On 11/30/06, J T Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
My apologies, and I seem to be pushing the evelope
Not really no. About 30% of the installed machines are the Diebold touch-screen model that does NOT give you a printout. There's no paper trail and absolutely no way to check that what the person voted for is what the machine recorded. In addition, Diebold won't release source code because it's
As someone who doesn't have a vote here, I'm appalled by how little those who do have a vote care about it being stolen. See http://www.harpers.org/ExcerptNoneDare.html
for a discussion of the media's lack of coverage of the Ohio thefts.ROn 11/6/06, James Steiner
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:I found
Latest issue of JASSS has just appeared: http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS.htmlIt includes a Netlogo simulation of a malfunctioning road traffic junction in India. Not - unfortunately - the one that we saw the video of earlier this year.
Robert
Scholarpedia seems like a good idea but IMHO is let down by it's complete lack of content. I clicked on a dozen links in the three encyclopedias they are hosting (the encyclopedia of dynamical systems sounded fun) and all I got was canned messages saying This article has been reserved by Prof.
Aaaargh! One of the most interesting meetings in months and I have to miss it :-(Given the huge quantity of technologists round here we really out to get this whole recording/podcast thingy sorted outR
On 10/31/06, Giles Bowkett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
+1Podcasts! (I have to go to Abq.
On 10/29/06, Phil Henshaw [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Robert,snip Where the implication that things beginning from scratch have to display
implied derivatives of the same sign comes from is a corollary of theconservation laws. snip Consider these 3 attributes of a company: revenue R, cost C, profit
How about Microsoft's XNA Game Studio Express?http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/gse/From the blurb on their website, it's
... aimed at helping students and hobbyists build games for Windows and the Xbox 360. I must admit, I quite like the idea of taking an Xbox into a client
http://www.google.com/codesearch/advanced_code_searchA prize will be awarded to the first person who finds some of their own code via Google.
R
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
On 10/3/06, phil henshaw [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
So I picked up last
week's New Yorker to find one of it's thorough and insightful articles of the
same name, in this caseby Jim Holt on the demise of string theory, and the
books by Smolin and Woit. What caught my attention was the
On 9/24/06, Phil Henshaw [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Robert,
Thanks
for asking. I'm getting a little help from Gabor on the use of zoo, and
will eventually learn how to code the things I want. The R core is
really neat in that what would be 50 tangled lines of code in lisp
aresimple short
At FRIAM today I was chatting with Mike (Agar) about the Mass Observation movement, an eccentric Enlish take on anthropolgy from the 1930s. Here's a link to a New Yorker article about it:
http://www.newyorker.com/critics/content/articles/060911crat_atlargeRobert
Check out R. It's got good interpolation and plotting routines, it has a good package for time series analysis, it's free and has a huge user base.http://www.r-project.org/
RobertOn 9/14/06, Phil Henshaw [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Owen types: I'd like to get back to the task at hand -- evaluating
... and here's a toybox so you can build your own virtual versions:http://www.souptoys.com/RobertOn 9/9/06,
Owen Densmore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
OK, Rube Goldberg, step aside! http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3163263343187879320 -- OwenOwen Densmore
SFI are putting on quite a lecture series next week. The themed back-to-back public lectures is getting me all nostalgic for the Royal Institution's Christmas lectures (y'know, those guys up Hyde Park Road should think about an annual event like that...)
RLecture I, Tuesday, September 12How Plants
Phil,Following on from Steve's comments, the mean distance of a randomly-walking point from its origin is of the order sqrt(N) where N is the number of steps in its walk. Steve's flocks don't exhibit this behaviour, so it's safe to say that no, swarms do not generally display random walk
Hi all,Owen asked me where I got my peculiarly thin wallet (handy for anyone who puts their wallet in back pocket and doesn't want their spine thrown out of kilter).From here:
http://www.all-ett.com/R
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group
On 8/9/06, McNamara, Laura A [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Computational social science doesn't lend itself to VV the way that physics-based mod-sim does, so creativity in VV is required...I agree, and I think the approach that RAND take is as good as any. My concern though is that any social science
On 8/9/06, Pamela McCorduck [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
snip...In fact, asking for the true mathematical definition of complexity today is like asking for the true mathematical definition of electricity in 1800: to understand electricity, it turned out to be much more productive to define several
would be good to read?There are apparentlyseveral!
-- OwenOwen Densmorehttp://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.orgOn Jul 24, 2006, at 8:55 AM, Robert Holmes wrote:
You beat me to it Mike. I was re-reading Kuhn this morning because I'm pretty darn sure that complexity science
One can certainly start from the partition function. But the partitionfunction is something that is additional to the microscopic
description, hence emergent. Indeed, the partition function isdifferent depending on whether you are using microcanonical, canonicalor grand canonical ensembles, each
] wrote:
Well, there's the roads, yeah, and then there's the...Romans are the right metaphor, since much of what's happened in thelast X years has been diffusion of ideas--ideas, not measures--intonumerous different domains. Like Kuhn said...
MikeOn Jul 24, 2006, at 7:21 AM, Robert Holmes wrote: Hi
Models such as Schellings segregation and Axtel and Epsteins artificial societies typically take place on some bounded checker board through which nothing flows. By the defintion below are these therefore
not complex systems?RobertOn 7/21/06, Stephen Guerin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Yet when I ask
On 7/21/06, Owen Densmore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
...Does this mean, for complexity, there's no There There?... Do we all talk about complexity yet have no basis for it?
-- OwenOwen,You have forgotten the Complexity Koan:The core concept of complexity science is that there is no core concept of
On 7/23/06, Stephen Guerin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
... In other systems like the ant foraging ABM model, we're trying to generalize the
notions of work and heat beyond traditional mechanical processes. we've saidthat work is performed on the agents at the micro level as the system becomescomplex
OK, I'll bite. Could you just give some details of how I calculate the Reynold's number for (say) an ant algorithm? I can see how I might ascribe a density, a characteristic length and a mean velocity but viscosity?? What's the analogue there?
Why don't we all just get over our physics envy and
Not strictly true I think. Sure, Linux can't run without a PC but does that mean it can't exist without one? Linux started its existence in Torvalds' head before it appeared on a CPU and if all CPUs vanished tomorrow it would still exist in his and other experts heads.
Similarly, who says I can't
Indeed. I'm certainly capable of misapplying statistical techniques several orders of magnitude faster than I could a decade ago.RobetrOn 7/19/06,
Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Wed, Jul 19, 2006 at 02:07:58PM +0200, Carlos Gershenson wrote: Also agree, but what I claim is that
Here's a fun string-bashing article: http://www.nwfdailynews.com/articleArchive/jun2006/notevenwrong.phpIt makes a couple of serious points though. What I found worrying was the claim (for which the author provides some limited evidence) that it is now impossible to get on in physics academia
About half the time that I send email to someone with a Cybermesa email it get bounced because their spam filter (Spamcop) has listed the Gmail servers as potential spam sources. Anyone know how I fix this/get round it? I don't want to give up gmail because it's so gosh darm handy. Thoughts
Given that the world is due to end today (what with it being 6/6/6) I thought I'd share these while I had time:Sum of squares of first seven primes = 2^2 + 3^3 + 5^2 + 7^2 + 11^2 + 13^2 + 17^2 = 666
Sum of first 144 ( = (6+6)(6+6) ) digits of pi = 666... and yet more on
201 - 279 of 279 matches
Mail list logo
