foobsr

Web Intelligence & OLPC

2008-01-05T14:56:00.000Z

Triggered by a story on /. on the OLPC, I was astounded to find two non-mainstraim sources of information with rather insightful comments on the issue.

First, an article worth mentioning, namely 'Formula for Milking the Digital Divide' as well as a specialized news-site, olpcnews.com (via Jon Camfield's blog ).

Now there is reason to be both optimistic and pessimistic.

Gravity::Evolution

2007-08-16T16:20:00.000+01:00

This is concerning the role that the effect of gravity plays within the course of the evolution of life, but certainly not the ridiculous arguments that creationist tend to come up with at times.

It seems that gravitation is well researched upon within the realms of astronomy and (astro-)physics, though not understood despite tremendous amounts of money spent on funding.

The interaction of 'life' and — gravitation on a 'universal' scale — and gravity with regard to a more down to earth focus however appears to be a rather neglected area.

The question now is whether ...

— these propositions can be supported,
— how a 'theory of life' can be built on the basis of gravitational force
— how life is interacting with gravity/gravitation

The ultimate goal will be to show that conditions of ill health can be explained by an organism's inadequate coping with gravity.

Health::Tension

2007-07-30T13:27:00.000+01:00

The proposition is that an organism is to be considered 'in a condition of proper health' if it is in a yet to be more narrowly defined state of equilibrium.

One of the most crucial underlying parameters is 'tension' within a tensegrity model.

Then, basically, the description of the perceivable/measurable world may be reduced to physical terms that should grasp anything relevant to the issue at hand (there is even plenty room for the 'spiritual' or the (nonsensical) 'supernatural' if one tends to share the assumption of dark energy).

Health::Posture

2007-07-22T23:07:00.000+01:00

The hypothesis to be pursued:

Posture is the entity that - within the observable realm - influences health the most.

Health::Progress

2007-07-20T16:28:00.000+01:00

In no way does evaluation of progress - technological that (almost) exclusively is - into account whether 'health' is affected (the assurance that there is no 'negative' impact is brought forward in any case and is thus redundant).

If one follows KEVIN KELLY, quote: " Technology as a whole system, or what I call the technium, seems to be a dominant force in the culture. Indeed at times it seems to be the only force — the only lasting force — in culture.", it is even worse.

Body::Mind

2007-07-17T12:22:00.000+01:00

Following up on fragmentation as a factor of conditions of 'ill-health', I hypothesize that industrialized medicine, presumably as a means to boost profits, encourages their 'objects' to learn that self-observation is useless.

Psychologists

2007-07-17T12:17:00.000+01:00

Two men are in a hot-air balloon. They drift into a dense cloud bank and are stuck there for hours. Finally as they emerge they look around at the ground below in hopes of figuring out their location.

They see a man in a garden and shout down to him.

"Hello down there! Can you tell us where we are?"

"The man below replies, "You're in a hot-air balloon."

The first man looks at his partner and comments, "Just our luck, a psychologist."

The partner asks, "Why do you say he's a psychologist?"

The first man answers, "Well, what he said was obviously true, but it didn't help at all."

seen at

Fragmentation

2007-07-16T11:20:00.000+01:00

Fragmentation of life (both in space and time) that is not compensated for (if at all possible) is closely connected to ill-health.

The term 'cause' is avoided at will, as it considered too simplistic to interpret complex networks of events in a fashion heavily dependent on cause-consequence 'relations'.

Health::Wording

2007-07-08T11:40:00.000+01:00

At the time being, this is more questions than answers.

What exactly do 'illness' and 'ill health' imply?
What is the etymology and what differences across languages do exist?

Health::Approach

2007-07-08T10:36:00.000+01:00

The term may not be applied to a single organism, as the current entry in Wikipedia (as of 08/07/07) suggests, quote: "Health is the level of functional and/or metabolic efficiency of an organism at both the micro(cellular) and macro(social) level. In the medical field, health is commonly defined as an organism's ability to efficiently respond to challenges (stressors) and effectively restore and sustain a "state of balance," known as homeostasis."

Thus, health, at a top level, may be circumscribed as "A state of equilibrium".

Whilst this introduces terms yet undefined, it more emphasizes that 'health' can not be defined on an individual level but as a characteristic of a whole system.

Health::Definition

2007-07-07T16:54:00.000+01:00

Polling

2007-07-05T16:22:00.000+01:00

"Do you think Iraq is or is not involved in a civil war at this time?"

Err ... ?§#&!!

But there was an outcome:

42% -"Yes"
56% -"No"

From an ABC poll.

And yes, it is in the questionaire.

TiddlyWiki

2007-07-03T17:05:00.000+01:00

Great. Now how to integrate it with blogger.xml ?!

Fei-Yue Wang

2007-07-02T16:56:00.000+01:00

Having stumbled across an apparently innocent article on 'social computing' (link), I soon realized that one of the authors (Fei-Yue Wang, Chinese Academy of Sciences and University of Arizona) also published on “Artificial Intelligence for Homeland Security” (link, with Hsinchun Chen, also University of Arizona)

What else (among other stuff that fits well)?

Application of a Decomposed Support Vector Machine Algorithm in Pedestrian Detection from a Moving Vehicle by Hong Qiao, Fei-Yue Wang, and Xianbin Cao (link to IEEE International Conference on Intelligence and Security Informatics (IEEE ISI-2005))

Fast Pedestrian Detection Using Color Information by Yan Wu Xu, X.B. Cao, Hong Qiao, Fei-Yue Wang (ISI-2006)
Covering Based Granular Computing for Conflict Analysis by William Zhu, Fei-Yue Wang (ISI-2006; Surveillance, Bioterrorism, and Emergency Response)
A Multiclass Classifier to Detect Pedestrians and Acquire Their Moving Styles by D. Chen, Xianbin Cao, Hong Qiao, Fei-Yue Wang (ISI-2006)

Tiananmen, Kent State, Baghdad - all automatic.

It is worth noting that the person in focus is said to have been involved in the Chinese government's long-term technology planning.

The question to be further investigated is how the US government gives input (via funding) to developing means of suppresion of democracy to have them employed in China to gain empirical evidence on the least immersive but still promising methodology.

Followup needed.

Structure::Web

2007-06-30T14:05:00.000+01:00

Doomsday

2007-06-29T18:05:00.000+01:00

Venter is going on his way to patent life, trying to build bacteria to, e.g., clean up toxic waste.

Time to remind of 'Mutant 59 - The Plastic Eaters' (1971) by Gerry Davis and Kit Pedler (mutated bacteria eat away all plastic, grinding civilisation to a halt :).

Learning

2007-06-26T17:52:00.000+01:00

With the assumptions that ...

1. mirror neurons are a means of perception
2. there is a variety for different channels of perception
3. they are subject to neuroplasticty
4. the brain adapts to needs as well as intentions

... one can derive that reality is made up and can be built on demand.

Now add the idea of feeding this into the genome.

Knowledge

2007-06-25T18:37:00.000+01:00

quoted from Nathan Sivin, On the Word "Taoist" as a Source of Perplexity. With Special Reference to the Relations of Science and Religion in Traditional China

>My point is a modest one, inspired by a saying of Confucius himself that can hardly be improved upon as a guide to critical research: "When you know something, to know that you know it; when you don't know it, to know that you don't know it: that's knowledge."

(Analects 2.17. Chih refers to understanding and recognition of significance as aspects of knowledge, not to objective factual knowledge isolated from the act of understanding and evaluating.)<

Science::Religion

2007-06-25T11:21:00.000+01:00

Having begun to dive into the matter (without emotions regarding the issue, much more so, however, with respect to proponents of - for short - either side) I propose that one may reduce as follows in order to have a basis for the discussion of positions.

Three groups, those who ...

1. ... have faith that they can explain everything by the 'scientific method'
2. ... have faith in some god(s) (no capitalization here)
3. ... do try hard not to occupy a position imposed by an idiology

Religion::Science

2007-06-24T16:53:00.000+01:00

Having almost literally stumbled across the 'medieval' discussion regarding above topic that is currently taking place in the US (which, by the way, is worth millions of dollars if you build your marketing strategy properly), I think that it is worth to collect some evidence that the self elected proponents of atheism are about to create 'A Church of Science' (probably one could also find some facts that they have a plan to create personal wealth by this effort).

Clarification: I am an agnostic.

Privacy

2007-06-22T23:11:00.000+01:00

Reminder: Take ethics of current (leading?) scientists/intellectuals (??) as exemplified by comments regarding Edge questions as a basis for what can be expected in a 'networked' (read Brin) society.

I do not buy that it will not be a subversion of 1984.

Mirror Neurons

2007-06-22T11:18:00.000+01:00

The next question to research is whether one could identify neurons that fire if a person encounters physical objects without actually perceiving them by what commonly is referred to as 'normal senses'.

Seems that much of what is tagged 'supernatural' suddenly shifts domain.

Mirror Neurons::Reality

2007-06-21T14:51:00.000+01:00

Maluma vs. Takete

2007-06-19T11:14:00.002+01:00

Choose one if appropriate!

Takete

2007-06-19T09:58:00.000+01:00

This is the drawing that is identified as 'takete'.

Maluma

2007-06-19T09:48:00.001+01:00

In almost, if not all, languages this or a similar drawing is identified as 'maluma' if contrasted to 'takete'.

Now browse through your mental images of common symbols and see which fit either.

Farsight

2007-06-15T17:54:00.000+01:00

The man who sees further than others begins with infinity.

found at talking squid

Truth

2007-06-15T16:05:00.000+01:00

Reality - the picture that you look at.
Truth - the illusion that there is only one picture.

Russian ATM runs on unactivated copy of Windows

2007-06-12T21:49:00.001+01:00

Unbelievable how many retards/believers are around.

read more

Happiness

2007-06-12T12:03:00.000+01:00

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. Hemingway
This may be due to a tendency to be directed towards a specific worldview by the overwhelming majority.

Second Thought

2007-06-11T08:48:00.000+01:00

Propose a draft of an answer the question which evolutionary advantage 'intelligence' could have.

This could be based on a comparison of naturally occuring 'distributions' and those attained when applying control to structures of interrelated processes (call it complex systems, though the term is rather fuzzy due to difficulties defining 'complexity' - not to say that 'intelligence' is well defined).

Select One

2007-06-07T09:27:00.000+01:00

Build a tensegrity model of human posture. (tensegrity)

Differentiate the web-language among popular 'schools of publications'. (webthought)

Demonstrate how 'classical' medicine thoroughly fails. (alternative-health)

Show how the current structure of the internet (as a reflection of values held up by whom) leads to a 'virtualization of humanity'. (media)