Category Archives: Amazing

Optimizing Eurekas per second

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I am currently trying to figure out how to spend the next semester – I have no courses to teach (for once), plenty of sabbatical time banked up, and a need to get seriously up to speed not just on the current state of tech evolution, but also on putting things in perspective.

So this (hat tip to Bjørn Olstad) podcast was a great inspiration:

This is an extremely wide ranging conversation (more than two hours) and fascinating in many dimensions, not least the way these guys communicate. It reminds me of a passage in Cryptonomicon where Waterhouse (the elder) and Turing communicate by “[…not] talking so much as mentioning certain ideas and then leaving the other to work through the implications. This is a highly efficient way to communicate; it eliminates much of the redundancy […]”. This is done at roughly 1.6x of normal conversation speed and is a delight for someone whose mind tend to wander off when things get too slow.

It also shows that much changes, but much is also the same – for instance, anyone building tools will inevitably discuss the tools they use to build those tools, and I get flashbacks to hearing Eric Raymond discuss key bindings in EMACS or Don Knuth explaining why he built TeK. LLMs, to me, is not so much something revolutionary as the next evolutionary step in our way of interacting with information – we still have work to do on the reward mechanisms, for instance, and we need to figure out a way of asserting scientific authority, so that the most popular and important LLM-based clones will be that of Steven Pinker rather than Steve Bannon. Which actually is kind of important.

Anyway, I really like the vision of building real tutors – and finding the distillation algorithm that matches the explanation to the student, whether you are learning for fun or immediate use.

Digression: As a first-year student, I was given a book of microeconomics, which tried to explain marginal cost through an elaborate example of someone growing tomatoes and selling them, wordily going through pages of text discussing the cost implications of adding another plant, etc. I read and reread it and felt my head swimming, then found a footnote after about 10 pages saying: “For those who have had calculus, the marginal cost is the derivative of the cost function.” I thought “Well, why didn’t you say so right away?” Building a tools that condenses formulaic academic papers into brilliant lunch table explanations – one of the many ideas in this interview – seems to me both a very worthy vision and a method for doing something about the academic research process, where the medium very much has become, if not the message, and least the reward mechanism.

Oh well. But it would be fun to assign this interview for my tech strat course next year – it would go over the head of many students, but for some of them, it would be a great inspiration.

And as a teacher, that is the most you can aspire to, methinks.

That will be all for now.

Stephen Fry is a genius

This kind man, perhaps the currently living person I most admire, tells stories I have heard and read before – and finishes with flourish. Life of the mind, indeed.

There is hope in America

I have always loved the USA, but it has been hard to do that lately. But this poetry reading by Amanda Gorman well, saved my day. I am two months shy of my 60th birthday and very aware of it. Praise to this 22 year old woman for raising my spirits!

This, truly, is the USA that I love and cherish.

Peter as the bionic man

Peter Scott-Morgan, former colleague of mine and a mercurial mind in so many dimensions, was relatively recently diagnosed with motor neuron disease (MND or, more popularly known as  ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease. Steven Hawking had a slow-moving version of this disease. Charlie Osborne, a friend and fellow doctoral student of mine, died from it.) A devastating blow to anyone, Peter has, not unexpectedly, turned this into an opportunity to explore technology as a way of staying connected with his surroundings.

MND gradually shuts down the communication system between your body and your brain, and can leave you trapped with a fully functioning brain locked inside a body you cannot control. Peter, who has a Ph.D. in robotics and energy enough for a platoon, aims to do whatever he can to stay not just alive, but communicating and functioning, as long as possible. To do this, he has had several operations to facilitate technology access to his body and continued functioning (you eventually lose control of the smooth (involuntary) muscles as well as the regular ones) after his brain stops communicating naturally.

Dr Peter Scott-Morgan on Vimeo.

In order to install and to a large extent develop this technology, he needs help finding people with expertise and interest in developing new technology using him as the experimental subject and development partner. Peter is no stranger to being a pioneer – him and his spouse Francis Scott-Morgan were the first gay couple to be married in a full ceremony in the UK in 2005.

So – anyone with knowledge of medical technology and interest in this project – please get in touch with Peter! (And incidentally, there is already going to be a documentary about his quest.)

Brilliance squared

Stephen Fry and Steven Pinker are two of the people I admire the most, for their erudition, extreme levels and variety of learning, and willingness to discuss their ideas. Having them both on stage at the same time, one interviewing the other (on the subject of Pinker’s last book, Enlightenment Now), is almost too much, but here they are:

(I did, for some reason, receive an invitation to this event, and would have gone there despite timing and expense if at all possible, but it was oversubscribed before I could clink the link. So thank whomever for Youtube, I say. It can be used to spread enlightenment, too.)

Me want!

Never thought I would want a sports car, but I would plunk down the money (if I had it) for this one:

(Incidentally, I am teaching the Tesla case for an EMBA class today. This gives them something to think about…

Hans Rosling in memoriam

Hans Rosling died from cancer this morning.

Not much to say, really. Or, maybe, so much to say. I met him in Oslo once, I had seen his video and suggested him for the annual “big” conference for movers and shakers in Oslo. He came and wowed everyone. Simple as that.

Here is another one (this one in Swedish) where he just shuts down a rather snooty and ill prepared newsshow host by saying, essentially, “this is not a matter of opinion, this is a matter of statistics and facts. I am right and you are wrong.”

What a man.

WWII deaths in graphics

This video by Neil Halloran shows how many people died in the second world war, and what has happened in the world since (in terms of war deaths.) It really makes an impression, and is well worth the 18 minutes.

The Fallen of World War II from Neil Halloran on Vimeo.

70 million people died during WWII, more or less (since the numbers, particularly on the Eastern front, are in dispute.) The video shows that most losses were suffered by the Soviet Union (the way the column grows and grows is heartbreaking, you just want it to stop) and China, that Poland had the most dead as a percentage of the population, that some individual incidents – massacres, battles, bombings – made for a surprisingly large portion of the dead. Stalingrad alone had more deaths than all wars since WWII combined.

The video has roughly the same message as Steven Pinker: That violence and war is on a downward trend, and that this is to be understood and appreciated. And, given these statistics, that giving the Nobel Peace Prize to the EU in 2012 perhaps wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

Call on me – by cancer patients

It’s been a secret for quite a while, but now I can share it: Jenny, our youngest daughter, lymph cancer survivor, has been to London to record a dance video with “Aktiv against cancer”. Here is the resulting video:

And here is a longer video with a bit of background and interviews with some of the participants, including Jenny:

Jenny has been a dancer all her life, and getting back to dancing through this video and the dancing classes she takes at her high school has been very important to her – a source of inspiration, as I think is evident.

XKCD’s brilliant table of approximations

This says it all:

Source: XKCD via Boingboing.

Seriously cool robot

These two robots, developed by Boston Dynamics, are Youtooobing:

I can imagine this one (called the Sand Flea) being used by the military and police for sending in cameras and other spy equipment in an urban landscape. The Big Dog (below) is something I really could use when I am gardening – a container on its back, and a voice interface so I could tell it to go empty itself in the compost bin when it is full of garden refuse.

Bohemian Rapsody on Ukulele

This is simply wonderful, shades of Rodrigo y Gabriela, you are simply amazed that it can be done at all:

By the way, you can stop watching at 7:00, the rest is just a Rolex commercial.

QI shooting for comprehensible incomprehensibility

To me, this just might be the best episode of QI ever (and that says quite a lot, doesn’t it?)

Incidentally, should you miss it, here is the second part:

Now, if someone could just syndicate this show to just about every TV channel on earth, the world would be a much more agreeable place. Smarter, more erudite, and less superstitious. In short, A Good Thing.

Please make it so.

Tim Minchin’s Stormy dinner conversation

This video by the rather hard-to-control Tim Minchin is so brilliant that I just have to have it grace my unworthy and insignificant corner of the blogosphere:

And now I know where to point people who tells me I don’t know everything…

(via Gunnar’s excellent Norwegian blog). And here is a live, text-based version.

Jay Leno remakes Rendezvous

One of the most famous car movies ever made was Claude Lelouche’s C’était un rendezvous, which is a single take, 9 minutes long, of an incredibly fast drive through the streets of Paris. The film was not speeded up, and the only safety concession was a lookout near the Louvre for a particularly sharp turn into traffic. The car used was a Mercedes 450SEL 6.9 (erhm, not unlike mine…) but the sound of a Ferrari was overlaid later. Here is the result:

Now Jay Leno, car collector and talk show host, has made a version of this for LA, doing a lap around Mulholland Drive and Beverly Hills in a Mercedes SLS AMG. Though not as exciting as the original (given that the driver is identified, it would have landed him in jail), it nevertheless induces some of that sinking stomach feeling from going really fast around a bend with a good car. (Note that the speedometer is never shown.) Enjoy:

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9/1813626064?isVid=1&publisherID=1564549380

(Yes, it is kind of childish, I know. But fun.)

Manic depressiveness as illness and lifestyle

Youtube turns out, no particular surprise, to be a fount of interesting info- and entertainment. After watching Stephen Fry about Gutenberg’s press, I came across a documentary he had done for BBC on bipolar disorder, also called manic depression. I found it very interesting because it lays out a good description of the illness and the consequences it has for patients and their families, all in a quiet and informative way that never becomes sensationalistic or titillating. It does become personal, though: You can see on Stephen Fry’s face in episode two, when he is informed of the severity of his own condition, that this is a hard message to get.

Mental illnesses are gradually becoming less of a taboo in society, and more and more we understand the underlying causes, though treatments to a large extent are experimental, treating symptoms rather than causes. This documentary, in an excellent fashion, shows the link between personality and illness – a surprising number of people with bipolar disorder like the manic phases, when creativity is flowing and inhibitions are lower. The illness is part of their personality as well, and potentially losing that is difficult choice to make.

Highly recommended. (The videos below may change, occasionally BBC kicks it off the ‘tube, then it appears again….)

 

Base as solo instrument

Don’t know how I came across this one, but this is a truly awesome (in the original sense of the word) performance of "Summertime". That base player must have finger joints made out of pure titanium…..

After that, why not listen to their rendition of Air as well…

Art that is genuinely difficult to understand

Much art is hard to understand, often, I suspect, because there is no underlying message, just the implication of one. In this fun article by Stephen Levy (who is one of those writers I just read everything I can of) shows a piece of art which both is very germane to its owner (the CIA) and really contains underlying messages.

Brilliant!

How much is one trillion dollars?

Check here. You will be surprised.

(Via BoingBoing.)