Saturday, February 27, 2010

Blue Brain


The Blue Brain Project, led by Henry Markram, is an attempt to use a supercomputer to simulate the operation of the mammalian brain. The research team is painstakingly examining and cataloging regions of the brain neuron by neuron. This information is then used to build a detailed computer model of a single region of the brain. Markram believes that he will have a complete simulation of the human brain in ten years. In the following TED presentation, Markram provides an overview of the project and some of its ramifications.





Do Not Believe ...




Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

-- The Buddha
Thursday, February 25, 2010

The Wonderful Music of Emily Howell


Emily Howell is a computer program that composes sophisticated and original music. Emily was created by composer, music theorist and computer scientist David Cope. The following samples of Emily Howell's music appeared with an interesting Miller-McCune article called Triumph of the Cyborg Composer.

Emily Howell Sample 1
Emily Howell Sample 2

To hear more samples of Emily Howell's music, check out this NPR interview with David Cope.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Wiggle: More Fun with Processing

Manny Tan's Wiggle is a fun little interactive animation programmed in Processing.  You can interact by moving your mouse or clicking in the animation space.  Click here to play.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Tips for Living

I ran across an old Boing Boing post that listed 10 tips for living by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan.  They're worth reposting here:

1 Scepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be sceptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.
2 Go to parties. You can't even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity. If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues.
3 It's not a good idea to take a forecast from someone wearing a tie. If possible, tease people who take themselves and their knowledge too seriously.
4 Wear your best for your execution and stand dignified. Your last recourse against randomness is how you act - if you can't control outcomes, you can control the elegance of your behaviour. You will always have the last word.
5 Don't disturb complicated systems that have been around for a very long time. We don't understand their logic. Don't pollute the planet. Leave it the way we found it, regardless of scientific 'evidence'.
6 Learn to fail with pride - and do so fast and cleanly. Maximise trial and error - by mastering the error part.
7 Avoid losers. If you hear someone use the words 'impossible', 'never', 'too difficult' too often, drop him or her from your social network. Never take 'no' for an answer (conversely, take most 'yeses' as 'most probably').
8 Don't read newspapers for the news (just for the gossip and, of course, profiles of authors). The best filter to know if the news matters is if you hear it in cafes, restaurants... or (again) parties.
9 Hard work will get you a professorship or a BMW. You need both work and luck for a Booker, a Nobel or a private jet.
10 Answer e-mails from junior people before more senior ones. Junior people have further to go and tend to remember who slighted them.

These are from an interesting profile of Taleb from Times Online.  You can read the full article here.

Beautiful Data Visualizations

A beautiful TED presentation by Hans Rosling.  He makes wonderful use of animation to visualize time series data.  Also note his use of bubble charts and animation to clearly present data on four dimensions.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Algorithmic Beauty

Glenn Marshall programs beautiful and interesting animations entirely in the Processing programming language.  Enjoy!





 
Metamorphosis from Glenn Marshall on Vimeo.
 

Test Your Powers of Observation