Archive for the ‘Science’ Category

The zen of complexity

A lot of systems theoretic disciplines have seemed wholly useless because we took them as a set of tools with which we could rule over nature. Now I’m wondering if the insights from these sciences are just revelations FROM nature to teach us about our very tiny place in the grand scheme of things…
If so, [...]

Music + Science

Having siphoned energy away from a lot of my usual pursuits (okay, admittedly as part of a money-saving exercise after I spent too much on something silly), I have been channeling that energy toward music. As in, digital music composition… and it really is not good for my health… it entails even MORE hours in [...]

We of bounded rationality

I came across a fascinating article at the Communications of the ACM site about negotiation agents.

Discovering N-ness, and thus the entire field of mathematics

[updated 2010-06-13] If you haven’t gotten your mitts on ‘Mathematics: “Its Content, Methods and Meaning”* yet, run to chapters and grab a copy. It’s a hefty 3 volumes in one; let the cheery orange cover distract you from its price tag (though apparently it’s much cheaper online – on sale, no less… Sigh. Screwed by [...]

The thermodynamic arrow of… of morality?

On my way to Canadian Tire a few days ago I put the radio on and settled at the CBC radio show ‘Tapestry’ with Mary Hynes. It was an interview with Robert Wright (author of The Evolution of God) who spent the later portions of the interview trying to explain his way out of a [...]

Biosynthetic programming tools and technologies

Wow – what an amazing roundup… if you haven’t checked out Melanie Swan’s recent posts on bioinformatics, do so now.
Most of the concepts are way over my head but it is interesting to see how yet another “information technology” discipline bootstraps itself into being.
What would be great to see:
1) traditional software development methodologies continuing to [...]

cognitive semantics : lexemes and memes

The study of the morphology of language has at its heart an acceptance of imperfection and change. It seems intuitive that our grammars and vocabularies have allowed several random phonemes to accrete around central lexemes, subtly changing the meanings associated with those latter, and all the while carrying that meaning across an awesome stretch of time (and [...]

quantization bugs me…

[edits 2010-06-03]
Quantisation.
Essentially, the drawing of lines in the proverbial sand: discrimination… discerning this from that.
But when quantisation arises naturally, what causes it? Is there an informational limit to how much information can accrete below the threshold of a quantum, before the latter manifests itself? I mean, I think there is… but how would you define such a [...]

memes: mimicry vs replication

[updated 2009-03-03]
The core thrust of making memetics a respectable science with falsifiable claims and other tell-tale signs of ‘rigour’ has been the idea of replication.
As I wrote in a much older post about memes, there have already been some interesting replicators posited as possible memes. Unfortunately, this path hasn’t yielded the big breakthroughs that would [...]

My Cool Cosmos Day of Astronomy

My ‘Cool Cosmos’ day at the Ontario Science Center started with Ivan Semeniuk’s talk, titled ‘The Future of Cosmic Exploration‘. He explained how the 2009 is the ‘International Year of Astronomy‘ because 400 years ago, in 1609, Galileo perfected the telescope as a device for studying the heavens, subsequently discovering Jupiters moons and their orbits.
From [...]

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