Alwinian.net

facts of life: random

// August 30th, 2010 // No Comments » // Books, BrainStorms, Science, Uncategorized

I’ve finally caught up on some reading. Some of the more interesting by-products of today’s deep thoughts and reading are listed below:

• drone subs: at any given second, we can see drone planes whizzing around, but there must be enumerable drone subs combing the bottom of the sea too. both commercial and military. Looking for sunken treasure, oil, or laying in wait. The resources of the ocean are undermined to date,, so this is ‘exploration’ is possibly the next resource frontier. If used properly, it would be a good thing.
• Like newton’s first law, The effect of almost any incident has usually an element of good and bad and stimulates peaks and valleys in the ‘event wave’ (to use water as the analogy). take for eg: bubonic plague –> invention of calculus; world war ii –> invention of computer, a liberation of european intellectual power immigrating to the u.s. and onto that generations many accomplishments..
• Akbar the great, (the mughal who is most famous for building the taj mahal) is a very interesting character. He is a bit like Louis IV, or even cosimo de medici. militaristic, strong, but enlightened and pluralistic in his beliefs. Revamped the concept of equality among muslims and hindis, revised taxation, translated persian texts into hindi and vice versa. a catalyst in the best sense…. the india of the mughal era, was religiously diverse and multi-cultural. the creation of pakistan during 1947 is such a bad idea.. taking a group of people artificially and creating a country from them..  At the time, it’s the only solution but, the fall-out and dislocation always creates mega-conflict as it beckons the  intense power grab which follows, in my op. The best way should be the transition method, from most cases of people-moving and nation-building.My long-term fascination with spain is finding itself mutating into the fascination with india. Going to read Gandhi’s autobiography next - “the story of my experiments with truth” available free online here.
• John Travolta is an accomplished pilot, licensed to fly numerous aircraft, including a Boening 747 jet.
• Reading “In Search of Memory” by Eric Kandell. Learning how the brain works, at a molecular level is a bit like watching a car drive around a race course… almost all blackbox. the machinery for memory, it turns out is both complex and elegant. learning about it is very very similar to how an internal combustion engine works.. there are all these events that happen, that push along the memory. serotonin, glutamate, kinase A, Cyclic AMP, KREB, NDMA and bunch of other stuff. The mechanism can target specific synapses. given then each neuron can have hundreds of axons, that gives an idea of the mind-numbing number of circuits that can be created. the book is highly recommended.
• We are at a level of understanding biological engineering, similar to the level we were at with electronics in around 1900-1910. We can build simple things, most of which are of little use except as playthings, but demonstrate knowledge of how things work. The true value will be unlocked later on.
• On Level 256 of all Classic Pac-man, there is a glitch in the sub-routine of generating the bonus items, which causes an integer overflow which all the code to be one read, a digit off.. this makes the level appear as if it was on lysergic acid.

Netflix Off-the-beaten track recommends: Unstrung; Art & Copy; Hubble’s Rescue; Sin Nombre

// July 12th, 2010 // No Comments » // BrainStorms, Random, Three Stars, Uncategorized

Out of the thousands of videos on Netflix, off the beaten path, i found these and would recommend them to you.  They more or less revolve around my passions: tennis, space, art/business, real-life (ie. the other side of the tracks). Honorary mention should go to Glass (about philip glass), Derrida (about jacques derrida), Word Wars (too geeky, about scrabble players),  the ‘examined life’ (interviews with modern philosophers) and ‘the September Issue’ (behind the scenes of Vogue magazine churning it’s September issue).. all of whom were good, but either too boring, too dry, too narrow in it’s coverage or - as in the case of the September issue - just too damn ridiculous, but still well done nonetheless, like miles davis’ late albums ; -)

Unstrung - Follows a group of top rated tennis prodigies to the final of the USTA Juniors.  Chosen from disparate backgrounds, single parent homes, loving but impoverished double parent homes, one parent living out of a van with his son, millionaire parents, typical tennis-parents and inbetween. I would recommend also the article http://www.esquire.com/features/sports/the-string-theory-0796 , expresses the same point, which is a look at the exponentially difficult and merciless but meritocratic world of pro and near pro tennis. How good really are the pros that you see on t.v. Especially for people who take tennis seriously the huge gulf that exists between top - say - college level players and the real professional level players…. (ie. the vast majority of top college players will never make money in their sport). As Greg Hirschman’s Father in the film said “Many are called, but few are chosen”. It’s a great look at that and the sacrifice needed.

Art & Copy - Interviews and traces some of the top advertising agencies and their key founders. The stories and thinking behind some of the most influential media campaigns, such as ‘Just do it’, ‘got milk’, ‘i love ny’ etc.. If you’re in advertising it is a must see.

Hubble’s Rescue - Similarly the care and precision required to do the hubble rescue was amazing. It follows the life of the astronauts as they train.. and then you get to see how even after 2 years of planning, things can still go awry.. (just less)

Sin Nombre - A beautiful film by Cary Fukunaga; the tale of a group of illegal immigrants moving from the south of mexico beginning in mara (gang) areas to the u.s. It’s a film, it’s dramatic, it’s beautiful shot and acted.

Hope you enjoy,

Building Public Space Under the Gardiner Express

// June 20th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // BrainStorms

Here was my letter to Toronto Mayor David Miller in response to Les Klein’s idea to build a green roof over top of the Gardiner: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/putting-the-garden-back-in-the-gardiner/article1188258/

Dear Mayor David Miller,
I am a great fan of yours and love our city very much. I think you have done an excellent job. Thank you so much for the dedication and honesty with which you brought to the Mayor’s office. Below please find some quick simple points/idea, which I thought to send along and which I hope will be of use to you and your administration:

• Suggest A:

‘one stop rule’ for streetcars and buses, which would prevent 2 buses/streetcars from tailing one another.

Reasoning: especially with streetcars, where one cannot pass another, they tend to bunch, with the front streetcar collecting all the passengers on a run, and the other will follow in its wake, with no passengers for the remainder of the route!

A ‘one stop rule’ would leave adequate spacing between streetcars and buses, which is better resource allocation and improves service. As an economist, I mention that it is a pareto-efficient improvement, with no losers. I wanted to check again, if there was a reason for its implementation or non-implementation?

• Suggest B:

In response to Les Klein’s suggestion of a green gardiner, which seemed to attract a lot of media attention

I thought to suggest to you what I believe is a better idea, (if it has not been suggested before) the possibility of zoning to build an enclosed mall/retail/public space under the Gardiner. At first thinking it is a possibly ‘crazy’ idea, but here are the reasons as a possible method to save and legitimize the Gardiner:

1. The bracing of the gardiner already is ripe for such a structure, as there is no foundation to lay. All weight-bearing wall/trusses are already in the Gardiner structure.
2. Given proper soundproofing, only cosmetic changes need to make the space such as this inhabitable. See pic of Gustavino’s (below)
3. You can enclose a large area extremely cheaply with a ‘sheet of glass’ style architecture, which can be ‘hung across’ vast expanses to enclose the space.
4. The Gardiner buttresses are ironically, already in a vault shape.
5. Give incentives for developers in this space, it enlarges real estate and brings in extra taxation revenue for the city, through permit and property tax.
6. An ‘Eaton Centre’ style mall down in this area will popularize the waterfront, (which I have read has been an iniative of yours, in your study of Chicago) by attracting people to the area. Tourists and residents alike.
7. In visiting costal towns, I notice that there is always a commercial centre a few blocks inland from the actual coast line. This ‘mall’ would act as such a ‘base’, being a commercial center, steps to the water.
8. Building a mallway underneath will reinforce the existence of ‘The Gardiner’ as a viable structure in the community and part of Toronto. (If not leaving it there, the other option is to tear it down, which is costly).
9. This will cause no disruption in service to the highway itself, saving millions.
10. Building one length of such a mall, would act as a pilot, and if successful, the length of the ‘mall’ could easily be extended easily (lots of room to grow).
11. In my envisioning of such a project/structure, there is a public running and bicycle lanes as part of the throughway, (actually a loop) that allows runners to jog, and cyclists to commute for free in a clean-air enclosed environment. The runner/cyclists and commuters would support the retail stores in the area. Especially in the winter, this will indeed see even more use during the winter as a local draw.
12. I refer to the restaurant Gustavino’s (a high-end restaurant) under the Queensborough bridge in New York, and other projects of this nature in England/New York, which have been very successful when executed properly. If done well, they are ‘unique’, Gustavino’s is largely considered an architectural masterpiece. Such unique structures add to the cachet and attractiveness of the city.

Thank you very much, Mayor David Miller and your staff for handling this email. I hope it affects some change or will be used as an idea to strengthen other more deserving ideas for the improvement of the city.
All best, kindly

Alwin

Using vectors to measure organization’s efficacy

// June 19th, 2009 // No Comments » // BrainStorms, Economics, Four Stars, Meta, Three Stars

Why are some organizations efficient and others not?
It occurred that possibly the best way of analyzing and finding inefficiencies in an organization is to use vectors. Like electricity, macro-economics and swimming, aggregate/net action is really the most important thing. Measurement of energy versus application is easily seen with vector relationships. If bureacracy brings you in a circle, your net vector will be zero, but energy applied, will be much higher. The organizations with the greatest absolute vector magnitude divided by energy applied will be the strongest most efficient organization. This ratio, M/E call it should be as important as P/E for finance. It seems that this is the easiest way to create metrics, for bureacracies and to eliminate ‘circles’.

Wolfram-Turing Connection

// June 2nd, 2009 // No Comments » // BrainStorms, Flatulence, Three Stars, Uncategorized

This one-off may not make sense, without knowing who these people are, but here goes…

It occurred that Wolfram cellular automata have within their domain, all Turing Machines, and is a more vivid representation of them outside of binary rules.

Wolfram’s work is an extension of Turing’s, which is not something that i think is acknowledged, is it???

This is sort of like the interesting French people - Jazz connection.

All the original Jazzer musicians came from the U.S. and brought it to France, but undeniably, the music reeks a lot of French influence. Its a shadow mother.

It occured, that the shadow mother of Wolfram’s work is Turing.

World’s Most Advanced Straw

// May 26th, 2009 // No Comments » // BrainStorms, Meta

Not sure why I like this so much, but I do. The world’s most advanced straw. enjoy.

partial dimensionality in number sequences?

// May 16th, 2009 // No Comments » // BrainStorms, Flatulence, Three Stars

Are repeating numbers symptomatic of partial dimensionality?? Like in flatland, when something is at right angles to your dimension, are you unaware of it (or there is no apparent pattern to it?).

The path to AI. Comparing Pigs to Computers.

// May 16th, 2009 // No Comments » // BrainStorms, Flatulence, Random, Uncategorized

I’m reading about Mandelbrot right now, which is making me think about a lot about high frequency feedback loops right now. They abound in nature, and no one really wanted to look at them until Mandelbrot came along. He is this kind of anti-clean, anti-ascetic temperment personality which i really enjoy, the more i get to read about his personality, the more i enjoy him.

Reading about Mandelbrot’s ideas, combined with Google’s (and others - download.com for instance) predictive search ability made me think that a feedback loop will be possible, that may eventually lead to an important form of AI. If nothing else, it will generate and interesting conversation between only computers, with no human intervention involved whatsoever. With this algo, in theory can come with ideas. All that is required is the iteration between modules. (perhaps explaining seperation of modules in the human brain).

It seems one of the many properties, humans do have which computers do not, is this sort of non-algorithmic reasoning, that comes partially from a dialectic.

For myself I believe strongly that computers will achieve some form of AI eventually, though people will want to gauge this in a typically monocultural-monospecist way.. Can i talk to this computer at the water cooler??? … no probably not, but i do believe that at least a pig-level intelligence is coming very soon. (don’t laugh).

Both pigs and computers communicate in a very different language than humans, which i think creates a level of uniformity and objectivity.. We often view people who speak a different language in this same sort of light. We wrote in our history textbooks that Columbus discovered America.

In anycase, there is some sort of reasonable comparison between pigs and computers to be made, and pigs are considered one of the most intelligent animals, so that would be quite an impressive feat already.

How I believe it will happens is through the conversation of three modules.
search, predictive text and model building (the most difficult one).

1. picker module chooses a random word from a dictionary, performs a search.

2. a version of google brings up likely results based on vector matching (what google is today already), where car and auto still mean the same thing.

3. those results are fed from the search engine module into the picker module again. The picker module follows a power law distribution in its deviation from the main search results. usually picking the top one, but not always.

4. that result and the preceding (say 5) results are logged, and piped to the modelling module, which attempts to assemble a semantic relationship between these ‘random/monte carlo-ed’ results. A semantic model is stored away and built.

Whether we can do the modelling module (create a theory of mind framework), is debatable, but certainly the first two modules can already be built as an algorithm, and will always generate interesting new and novel semantic combinations. Those semantic combinations form the raw ingredients for creating theory of mind with abstractions of the relationships between identical phenomena.

Despite the book “the emperor’s new mind’, by Roger Penrose, (whom i hold in very high respect btw) who disregards true human thinking as fundamentally unapproachable by computers, by their very nature. I think this path of randomness matched against database-like answers posed by the randomess, in a high iteration feedback loop, will create dialogue that will appear to be human.

Watch out for flying pigs. peace.