Michael Perkins

Blog Has Moved!

2011-06-10T13:00:00.008-04:00

This blog has moved to:
http://www.michael-perkins.com

Dante Bucci: Fanfare

2010-07-13T19:48:00.002-04:00

Hang drum virtuoso Dante Bucci performs Fanfare.

See Also:
Jake Shimabukuro: While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Banjoist Bela Fleck Plays Bach
PROJECT Trio Performs Bach Bourree
Trumpeter Paul Mayes Performs Bach
Blood, Sweat and Tears: God Bless the Child
Billie Holiday sings Fine and Mellow
Chris Botti & Sting perform My Funny Valentine
Renee Fleming and Bill Frisell

Jake Shimabukuro: While My Guitar Gently Weeps

2010-06-30T22:03:00.001-04:00

I just spent the whole evening listening to ukulele music. If you think of Tiny Tim when you hear the word ukulele, then you need to watch this video.

See Also:
Banjoist Bela Fleck Plays Bach
PROJECT Trio Performs Bach Bourree
Trumpeter Paul Mayes Performs Bach
Blood, Sweat and Tears: God Bless the Child
Billie Holiday sings Fine and Mellow
Chris Botti & Sting perform My Funny Valentine
Renee Fleming and Bill Frisell

What Should Be

2010-06-29T21:40:00.002-04:00

The “what should be” never did exist, but people keep
trying to live up to it. There is no “what should be,”
there is only what is.
--Lenny Bruce

See Also:
Chuang-tzu: The Master soars past sun and moon ...
Laugh at the Sky
Jane Hirschfield: The Adamantine Perfection of Desire
Ikkyu: A single night of love ...
The Mind's Worst Disease

Advaita Vedanta: An Animation

2010-06-26T09:57:00.002-04:00

This delightful animation by Louis Lefebvre illustrates the "evolution of consciousness" as understood by Advaita Vedanta.

See Also:
With Our Thoughts We Make The World
The Mind's Worst Disease
Chuang-tzu: The Master soars past sun and moon ...
Laugh at the Sky
Jane Hirschfield: The Adamantine Perfection of Desire
Ikkyu: A single night of love ...
The Buddha: Do not believe ...

Lou Reed and Renee Fleming: Perfect Day

2010-06-20T09:29:00.001-04:00

This video is from a November 14, 2009 concert in Prague celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution (i.e., the 1989 non-violent overthrow of the authoritarian government in Czechoslovakia). Vaclav Havel was guest of honor. Seated next to Havel is former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

I can think of no better way to celebrate this momentous event than with Lou Reed's perfect song and Renee Fleming's perfect voice.

See Also:
Renee Fleming and Bill Frisell
PROJECT Trio Performs Bach Bourree

The Placebo Effect: How Expectations Shape Reality

2010-06-19T15:54:00.002-04:00

Behavioral economist Dan Ariely discusses the placebo effect and other examples of how our expectations shape our reality.

See Also:
The Taste of Fine Wine
With Our Thoughts We Make the World

Three Web-based Data Visualization Tools

2010-06-15T19:23:00.004-04:00

I recently posted a couple of blog entries that included data charts. I initially created these charts in Microsoft Excel and then converted them into images for inclusion in the post. This process was labor intensive, and the result could best be described as embarrassing. Excel is a wonderful tool with a nice charting facility, but it was not intended for the creation of charts for the web. So I decided to explore alternatives. I took a close look at three free web-based data visualization tools. To get a good feel for each tool, I reworked two of my previous blog posts in each tool. Here are my thoughts.

Tableau Public

Tableau Public is a tool for creating complex, web-based data visualizations. The tool can be used to create highly interactive, multi-chart visualizations with dynamic filtering, highlighting and drill-down capabilities. Though I rarely have use for the more powerful features of Tableau Public, I was attracted to its capabilities for customizing the look-and-feel of charts and for adding text and annotations. However, Tableau Public's powerful set of features comes with a cost in usability. Of the products I reviewed, Tableau Public is by far the most difficult to use. Effective use of the product requires a significant investment of time and effort. It is not for the casual user.

I spent several hours learning the basics of Tableau Public and was able to create some very nice visualizations. Unfortunately, for my purposes, the visualizations have unacceptably slow load times. Though I am happy with the charts I was able to create with Tableau Public, I am not willing to subject my readers to such slow page loads. Tableau Public is a great solution for applications that require sophisticated, interactive visualizations where slow load times can be tolerated. It is not appropriate, however, for the light charting I need for my blog.

To get a feel both for the power of Tableau Public and for the time it takes to load its visualizations, click here to read an old post that includes a sophisticated Tableau Public visualization.

Many Eyes and Swivel

Many Eyes and Swivel are similar in that they trade power for ease of use. I was able to create decent charts on both of these systems in minutes. Unlike Tableau Public, however, they do not offer a lot of control over the finished product. After spending time with Tableau Public, I was reluctant to give up some its features such as the ability to add text and annotations to charts. I finally decided, however, that for my purposes, the superior productivity and performance of Many Eyes and Swivel outweigh this loss of functionality.

Many Eyes offers more chart types than Swivel, but I found the look and feel of the Swivel charts to be more appealing. The Swivel charts are simple and elegant, and they load very quickly. They work well in a blog post. Consequently, I selected Swivel as my tool of choice. Click here to view a version of my recent federal spending post that was reworked using Swivel.

Seeing Patterns Where None Exist

2010-06-14T20:42:00.002-04:00

In the following TED presentation, Michael Shermer discusses the natural human tendency to see patterns where none exist. He argues that failing to see a pattern that exists is typically more costly than mistakenly seeing a pattern that does not exist. Failing to see a predator, for instance, would have much worse consequences than imagining a predator that does not exist. Consequently, the brain has evolved to err on the side of seeing too many patterns. This tendency leads humans to adopt all sorts of strange beliefs.

See Also:
Seeing Faces
The Whole Problem with the World
Believing Things Which We Know to Be Untrue
Do Not Believe ...
Denialism

The Instant We Feel Anger

2010-06-13T08:13:00.000-04:00

In a controversy, the instant we feel anger
we have already ceased striving for the truth
and have begun striving for ourselves.
--The Buddha

See Also:
The Whole Problem with the World
Believing Things Which We Know to Be Untrue
Do Not Believe ...
Denialism

The Growth in Federal Spending Since 1940

2010-06-09T20:37:00.031-04:00

The "explosion" of federal government spending is a hot topic in recent political debate, so I decided to take a close look at the Office of Management and Budget data to get a better understanding of the issue. The chart below shows federal fiscal year outlays from 1940 to 2009. Move your cursor over the line to see the exact numbers for any year.

First, note that the dramatic increase in 2009, relative to the increases in previous years, is due to roughly $345 billion in TARP and stimulus bill expenditures. If we remove these one-time expenses, we get something closer to George W. Bush's original $3.1 trillion 2009 budget. While this is a large number by any measure, it is certainly more in line with the spending increases of previous years.

Even if we look at 2009 as an anomaly, the chart still seems to show explosive growth over the last 40 years. What the chart fails to show, however, is that the U.S. economy has grown at roughly the same rate as federal spending. If we plot federal spending as a percentage of GDP, we get the chart below.

With the exception of the anomalous jump in 2009, federal spending has hovered around 20% of GDP since the early 1950s. Though it went as high as 23.5% during the Reagan years, it fell back below 20% during the Clinton administration. While we can have a legitimate debate about how much of GDP we should invest in the federal government, it is clear that the growth in federal spending as a percentage of our economy as a whole has been relatively flat for the last 60 years.

What has not been flat for the last 60 years is our unwillingness to fund this spending through taxes. The following chart, which plots both outlays and receipts since 1940, shows that with the exception of four years during the Clinton administration, we have been unwilling to properly fund our expenditures. Of course, this is the source of the current $13 trillion U.S. debt.

This table below shows which administration was responsible for each fiscal year budget. I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to sort out how well the data conform to the political rhetoric from each side.

President	Fiscal Year Budgets
Franklin Roosevelt (D)	1934 - 1946
Harry Truman (D)	1947 - 1953
Dwight Eisenhower (R)	1954 - 1961
John Kennedy (D)	1962 - 1963
Lyndon Johnson (D)	1964 - 1969
Richard Nixon (R)	1970 - 1974
Gerald Ford (R)	1975 - 1977
Jimmy Carter (D)	1978 - 1981
Ronald Reagan (R)	1982 - 1989
George H. W. Bush (R)	1990 - 1993
Bill Clinton (D)	1994 - 2001
George W. Bush (R)	2002 - 2009

See Also:
Taxes at Lowest Level in 59 Years

Joss Stone and Jeff Beck

2010-06-08T21:01:00.001-04:00

Brilliant diva Joss Stone and legendary British guitarist Jeff Beck perform I Put a Spell on You.

See Also:
Blood, Sweat and Tears: God Bless the Child
Billie Holiday sings Fine and Mellow
Chris Botti & Sting perform My Funny Valentine
Renee Fleming and Bill Frisell

Believing Things Which We Know to Be Untrue

2010-06-04T21:06:00.008-04:00

We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.
--George Orwell (1946)

See Also:
Denialism
Global Warming and Cognitive Dissonance
The Whole Problem with the World
Bertrand Russell

The Facts About Global Warming

2010-06-02T20:03:00.001-04:00

In the following video, Peter Sinclair provides a nice high-level overview of what we know about global warming:

Click here for additional videos and other information about global warming.

See Also:
Global Warming and Cognitive Dissonance
Denialism
Scientists Create First Synthetic Life Form
Beautiful Hubble Images

Global Warming and Cognitive Dissonance

2010-06-01T21:24:00.012-04:00

According to a recent Gallup poll, 74% of liberals but only 30% of conservatives believe that "the effects of global warming are already occurring." This is an interesting statistic because we would not normally expect disagreements of fact to divide along ideological lines. Facts are neither liberal nor conservative. The methods of science are independent of ideology, and the same data are available to both liberals and conservatives.

Note that disagreement about the facts is a different thing altogether from disagreement about what to do about the facts. It is not surprising that liberals and conservatives disagree about what would be an appropriate response to global warming. Liberals are more likely to advocate the regulation of industrial greenhouse gas emissions than conservatives since conservatives are generally opposed to government regulation of business.

So what are we to make of the data that shows an apparent relationship between beliefs about the facts of global warming and political affiliation? Perhaps the best explanation appeals to the notion of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is a state of tension that occurs when a person holds conflicting beliefs or attitudes. A smoker, for instance, might experience cognitive dissonance that arises from the conflict between his belief that smoking will kill him and his desire to smoke cigarettes. In Mistakes Were Made (but not by me), Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson describe this case as follows:

Dissonance produces mental discomfort, ranging from minor pangs to deep anguish; people don't rest easy until they find a way to reduce it. In this example, the most direct way for a smoker to reduce dissonance is by quitting. But if she has tried to quit and failed, now she must reduce dissonance by convincing herself that smoking isn't really so harmful, or that smoking is worth the risk because it helps her relax or prevents her from gaining weight (and after all, obesity is a health risk, too), and so on. Most smokers manage to reduce dissonance in many such ingenious, if self-deluding, ways.

Similarly, a conservative might experience cognitive dissonance arising from the conflict between her belief in global warming and her aversion to regulating business. Just as a smoker can relieve her dissonance by denying that smoking is harmful, a conservative can relieve her dissonance by denying that global warming is happening. Thus, the theory of cognitive dissonance would predict that people's beliefs about global warming would divide along ideological lines.

In general, cognitive dissonance is a universal and powerful motivator. All of us are prone to various forms of self-delusion when our beliefs and attitudes come into conflict. We should all take special note when groups disagree about the facts along ideological lines. In such cases, there is a good chance that one side or the other is motivated more by cognitive dissonance than by good science.

See Also:
Denialism
Scientists Create First Synthetic Life Form
Beautiful Hubble Images

Henry Miller: The Aim of Life

2010-05-29T09:04:00.003-04:00

The aim of life is to live,
and to live means to be aware,
joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.
--Henry Miller

See Also:
Let Us Read and Let Us Dance
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened ...

PROJECT Trio Performs Bach Bourree

2010-05-28T17:16:00.002-04:00

PROJECT Trio is a unique chamber music ensemble featuring Greg Pattillo (flute, see Beatbox Bach), Eric Stephenson (Cello) and Peter Seymour (Bass). PROJECT Trio incorporates a variety of musical styles and techniques to create a unique and entertaining musical experience. In the video below, they perform the Bach Bourree in E minor. For more information about the group, including additional videos, go to http://www.whatisproject.org.

See Also:
Banjoist Bela Fleck Plays Bach
Trumpeter Paul Mayes Performs Bach
Beatbox Bach
Pocket Jazz: Summertime on the iBone
Embouchure
Blood, Sweat and Tears: God Bless the Child
Billie Holiday sings Fine and Mellow
Chris Botti & Sting perform My Funny Valentine
Renee Fleming and Bill Frisell

Banjoist Bela Fleck Plays Bach

2010-05-26T22:07:00.007-04:00

Bela Fleck is a brilliant musician who constantly pushes musical boundaries. In this video, he delivers a wonderful performance of Bach's Violin Partita No 3 (starting at 1:22) on the 5-string banjo.

See Also:
Trumpeter Paul Mayes Performs Bach
Beatbox Bach
Pocket Jazz: Summertime on the iBone
Embouchure
Blood, Sweat and Tears: God Bless the Child
Billie Holiday sings Fine and Mellow
Chris Botti & Sting perform My Funny Valentine
Renee Fleming and Bill Frisell

Trumpeter Paul Mayes Performs Bach

2010-05-25T20:50:00.001-04:00

Virtuoso trumpeter Paul Mayes performs Bach Badinerie.

See Also:
Beatbox Bach
Pocket Jazz: Summertime on the iBone
Embouchure
Blood, Sweat and Tears: God Bless the Child
Billie Holiday sings Fine and Mellow
Chris Botti & Sting perform My Funny Valentine
Renee Fleming and Bill Frisell

Beatbox Bach

2010-05-24T18:31:00.010-04:00

Beatbox Flautist, Greg Pattillo, performs Bach Badinerie.

See Also:
Pocket Jazz: Summertime on the iBone
Embouchure
Blood, Sweat and Tears: God Bless the Child
Billie Holiday sings Fine and Mellow
Chris Botti & Sting perform My Funny Valentine
Renee Fleming and Bill Frisell

Let Us Read and Let Us Dance

2010-05-24T15:17:00.004-04:00

Let us read and let us dance - two amusements that will never do any harm to the world.
-- Voltaire

See Also:
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened ...

Scientists Create First Synthetic Life Form

2010-05-23T14:05:00.005-04:00

A team of scientists led by Craig Venter have created a living synthetic bacterium. The following Channel 4 story gives a nice brief overview and contains an interview with Venter.

See Also:
Denialism
Beautiful Hubble Images

Google Launches Government Request Tool

2010-05-20T21:29:00.034-04:00

Google should be applauded for launching a Government Requests Tool for reporting the number of requests for private user information and the number of requests for removal of content that the company receives from governments around the world every six months. For instance, during the six months ending in December 2009, Google received the following requests for private user data:

Country	Requests
Brazil	3663
United States	3580
United Kingdom	1166
India	1061
France	846
Italy	550
Germany	458
Spain	324
Australia	155
Argentina	98
Poland	86
Belgium	67
Netherlands	67
Singapore	62
Portugal	45
Japan	44
South Korea	44
Switzerland	42
Canada	41
Israel	30

In a blog entry announcing the tool, David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer wrote:

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights states that "everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." Written in 1948, the principle applies aptly to today's Internet -- one of the most important means of free expression in the world. Yet government censorship of the web is growing rapidly: from the outright blocking and filtering of sites, to court orders limiting access to information and legislation forcing companies to self-censor content.

So it's no surprise that Google, like other technology and telecommunications companies, regularly receives demands from government agencies to remove content from our services. Of course many of these requests are entirely legitimate, such as requests for the removal of child pornography. We also regularly receive requests from law enforcement agencies to hand over private user data. Again, the vast majority of these requests are valid and the information needed is for legitimate criminal investigations. However, data about these activities historically has not been broadly available. We believe that greater transparency will lead to less censorship.

Denialism

2010-05-18T21:27:00.005-04:00

A denialist is someone who champions certain beliefs despite clear and overwhelming evidence that the beliefs are false. Holocaust deniers are paradigm examples of denialists. Despite the overwhelming and incontrovertible evidence that the holocaust did indeed occur, Holocaust deniers claim that the genocide of the Jews during World War II was a hoax perpetuated as part of a Jewish conspiracy. Other examples of denialists are those who deny that HIV causes AIDS, those who believe that the U.S. government was complicit in the 9/11 massacre, those who deny that tobacco use causes cancer, and those who deny that Barack Obama is a natural born citizen of the United States. Some commentators also claim that those who deny evolution, those who believe vaccines cause autism, and those who deny global climate change are denialists in this sense.

In his 2009 book, Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives, science writer Michael Specter claims that denialism occurs "when an entire segment of society, often struggling with the trauma of change, turns away from reality in favor of a more comfortable lie." The denialist denies the facts because the facts are uncomfortable. One might argue, for instance, that the Holocaust deniers are anti-semites who are faced with the fact that anti-semites were responsible for one of the most horrific crimes in the history of mankind. Their denial of the Holocaust resolves the conflict between their anti-semitism and this uncomfortable truth.

In a recent New Scientist report on denialism, Michael Shermer argues that the denialist's discomfort is usually based on a conflict between the facts and an ideological or religious belief. This discomfort causes the denialist to filter the evidence so that these ideological or religious beliefs need not be discarded.

Denialism is typically driven by ideology or religious belief, where the commitment to the belief takes precedence over the evidence. Belief comes first, reasons for belief follow, and those reasons are winnowed to ensure that the belief survives intact.

In the video below, Michael Specter provides an interesting discussion of denialism and the harm that it causes.

Related:
Taxes at Lowest Levels in 59 Years
The Whole Problem with the World
Bertrand Russell
Blind to the Look of Disgust
The Taste of Fine Wine
The UK Statistics Authority
Facebook Linked to a Rise in Syphilis

Pocket Jazz: Summertime on the iBone

2010-05-16T21:12:00.003-04:00

This amazing video features Gershwin's Summertime played on an iPhone application called the iBone.

Related:
Embouchure
Blood, Sweat and Tears: God Bless the Child
Billie Holiday sings Fine and Mellow
Chris Botti & Sting perform My Funny Valentine
Renee Fleming and Bill Frisell

Embouchure

2010-05-15T14:41:00.007-04:00

(may take a moment to buffer)

Embouchure

I want a man who can blow a trumpet,
a chet-baker-square-jaw-jazz-man, a man
who understands embouchure, who knows
what to do with his lips and tongue, who
knows what to do—and what not to do—
with his teeth. I want a man who knows
how to breathe, a long slow exhale, past
himself and through you, into you. I want
a man who can make a brass horn sing,
scream a little, scream loud sometimes,
a melody, a harmony, a whispered prayer.
I want a horn man, a brass man, a trumpet
player, a man who knows how to blow,
how to make his lips buzz, how to double
tongue. I want a man who will make love
to music he makes up himself, who’ll make
me want to respond, react, breathe back,
sway my hips in bed. I want a man who
will make me feel like I’m an integral part
of an orchestra, or make me feel like an
intimate part of a jazz ensemble, or make
me feel like the mouth of a river, a tributary,
the current that carried Moses, that made
him a king, a hero, a savior, a man.

--Paula J. Lambert

Blood, Sweat and Tears: God Bless the Child

2010-05-15T01:12:00.010-04:00

I wanted to post Billie Holiday's God Bless the Child, but I was unhappy with the recording quality of the original Billie Holiday versions that I found. So I decided to post a more recent recording of the song. There are dozens of versions of this wonderful song. In addition to Billie Holiday, it has been recorded by Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, Diana Ross, Sam Cooke, Anita Baker, Lou Rawls, Stevie Wonder, Whitney Houston and many, many other great vocalists and instrumentalists. I listened to several of them, but I kept coming back to the version recorded by Blood, Sweat and Tears in 1968.

I first heard Blood, Sweat and Tears when my eighth grade band teacher called me into her office and played part of their new album for me. I fell in love with it immediately, and 42 years later, this brilliant album still thrills me. God Bless the Child is one of the album's many high points. Enjoy.

God Bless the Child

Them that's got, shall get
them that's not, shall lose
so the Bible said, and it still is news
mama may have, and papa may have
God bless' the child,
that's got his own
that's got his own

Yes the strong seem to get more
while the weak ones fade
empty pockets don't
ever make the grade
As mama may have
and papa may have
God bless' the child
that's got his own
that's got his own.

And when you got money,
you got a lots of friends
crowdin' 'round your door
When the money's gone
and all you're spendin' ends
they won't be 'round any more
no, no, no more

And rich relations
may give you
a crust of bread and such
you can help yourself
but don't take too much
mama may have
and your papa may have
but God bless' the child
that's got his own
that's got his own
God bless' the child who can stand up and say

I've got my own
Ev'ry child's, got to have his own!

-- Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog Jr.

Related:
Billie Holiday sings Fine and Mellow
Chris Botti & Sting perform My Funny Valentine
Renee Fleming and Bill Frisell

Turing Machines

2010-05-14T19:41:00.008-04:00

Alan Turing was a brilliant mathematician and logician whose work in the first half of the 20th century was seminal in the development of computer science. In his famous 1936 paper, "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem," he introduced the notion of what is now called a Turing machine. Turing machines are imaginary computing devices that provide a useful formalism for investigating the notion of computability.

A Turing machine is a very simple device that uses a tape for storing and manipulating symbols. The machine can read or write a symbol at the current location of the tape, and it can move the tape one position either left or right. The machine contains a single register for recording the current state of the machine. At any point in its execution, the state of the machine together with the symbol read at the current tape position determines the machine's actions.

Despite its simplicity, the concept of a Turing machine adequately captures the general idea of computability. According to the Church-Turing thesis, anything that is computable is computable by a Turing machine. This means, for instance, that even the operation of an extremely complex modern digital computer system could be realized using the simple operations of a Turing machine.

Though Turing machines are interesting primarily for their theoretical properties, Mike Davey has built a physical Turing machine. The video below shows Davey's machine in action. You can find more information about this beautiful device at Davey's website.

In the following video, Davey's machine uses a typical Turing machine strategy to solve a simple subtraction problem.

Related:
Bertrand Russell

Taxes at Lowest Level in 59 Years

2010-05-12T20:45:00.023-04:00

Data from the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis show that in 2009, Americans paid, on average, 9.17% of their personal income in Federal, state and local taxes. This is the lowest share of income paid in taxes since 1950. The 2009 percentage is 21.7% lower than the 2008 percentage, and it is 21.9% lower than the average of 11.75% for all years since 1950. The chart below shows the percentage of income paid in taxes for every year since 1950. Move your cursor over the line to see the exact number for any year.

This analysis is based on data from the National Income and Product Accounts Table 2.1, Personal Income and Its Disposition.

See Also:
The Growth in Federal Spending Since 1940
Denialism

Why I Am Not a Vegetarian

2010-05-11T19:09:00.011-04:00

I was a vegetarian for more than twelve years. I ate dairy and egg products but avoided eventhe hint of meat. My early studies of Buddhismled me to reflect on this practice, and I realized that my motivations were not well-founded. I was not a vegetarianbecause I was opposed to harming animals. I was not a vegetarian because I thought the vegetarian diet washealthy. I was a vegetarian simplybecause I wanted to be a vegetarian. Itprovided part of my identity. It was somethingI could be -- and without too much effort.

There is nothing wrong with being a vegetarian. However, it did not seem to me that the privilege of simply calling myself a vegetarian was sufficient reason not to eatmeat. So I had grilled salmon for dinner– and a burger shortly thereafter. Now Ienjoy telling people that my encounter with Buddhism caused me to give up myvegetarianism.

A Meal of Fresh Octopus

Lots of arms, just like Kannon the Goddess;
Sacrificed for me, garnished with citron, I revere it so!
The taste of the sea, just divine!
Sorry, Buddha, this is another precept I just cannot keep.

--Ikkyu

The Whole Problem with the World

2010-05-09T21:31:00.005-04:00

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
--Bertrand Russell

Related:
Bertrand Russell

Lady Sings the Blues

2010-05-08T12:00:00.004-04:00

Billie Holiday sings Fine and Mellow in this 1957 recording with an amazing all-star band that includes:

Ben Webster (tenor sax, 0:52)
Lester Young (tenor sax, 1:28)
Coleman Hawkins (tenor sax, 4:29)
Roy Eldridge (trumpet, 5:06)
Doc Cheatham (trumpet)
Vic Dickenson (trombone, 2:40)
Gerry Mulligan (baritone sax, 3:17)
Danny Barker (guitar)
Mal Waldron (piano)
Milt Hinton (bass)
Osie Johnson (drums)

Bertrand Russell

2010-05-07T22:55:00.004-04:00

Bertrand Russell was a giant among 20th century intellectuals. He is remembered primarily as a philosopher and mathematician. He was one of the founders of analytic philosophy, and with Alfred North Whitehead, he co-authored Principia Mathematica, one of the 20th century's most important works on the foundations of logic and mathematics.

Lord Russell was also a pacifist and political activist. He was inprisoned and later dismissed from Trinity College for his pacifist activities during World War I. Later in life, he was a tireless advocate of nuclear disarmament and a strong opponent of the Vietnam war.

Russell was an outspoken social critic who often found himself at odds with the establishment. In 1940, his appointment as Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York was annulled by the New York Supreme Court on the grounds that he was morally unfit for the post. In defense of this claim, the court cited, among other things, his liberal views on premarital sex.

A prolific writer on a wide range of topics, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950.

Above all, Russell was a tireless champion of reason in all areas of human affairs.

In the following brief excerpt from a 1959 BBC interview, Russell expresses two ideas he would like to pass down to future generations.

With Our Thoughts We Make the World

2010-05-06T22:06:00.000-04:00

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world.

-- The Buddha

Seeing Faces

2010-05-05T21:16:00.000-04:00

The following were posted in a thread on the Schizophrenia forum at eHealthForum:

Now, here is what happened. When I became schizophrenic, sometime after, I can't remember exactly when I began seeing faces in things, like trees and clouds and in the material that the walls are made of. But it isn't a hallucination at all, given the time to show someone I could show them what I was seeing. Before I was schizophrenic this never happened. Now though, when I look at the clouds, either the entire thing or part of it makes the shape of a face, weird faces, and they are really there, once again not a hallucination, you could tell if it was. If you look closely enough at things, like trees in the dark of night in the street lights, there are faces in them, the shape of the trees, parts of them anyway form faces. Unfortunately, if my old self was visited by who I am today and my today self tried to show my old self these faces then I would've thought that I was crazy, I wouldn't have been able to see them. Something happened. And they are really there, it's just like those optical illusions where if you look at the white part of the picture it makes a completely different image than the black part which most people pay attention to at first. If you look at the clouds or whatever with the right mind, paying attention to the right portion of the cloud and paying attention to the right shades, just like the black and white optical illusions, they make faces alot of the time. Now someone in their early stages of developement will only see the black part of the picture so to speak, only see certain shades and only certain portions. It's a quite strange happening. Funny how the mind works isn't it? Somebody who is that way won't see them at all even though they are there, I used to be one of them so I know what it is like, you just don't see them. Go ahead, try it.
--Woops

I also see faces everywhere, last night I was looking at the moon, and I've always seen a howling wolf when I've looked at it, but last night, I saw the face of a beautiful woman, I smiled at her and she smiled back, and I had a nearly overwhelming feeling of peace and happiness, and for some reason I knew I had to make a wish, it did flash through my mind to wish to win the lottery, but for some reason, deep down inside I knew that this would be the wrong thing to wish for, and if I wished for personal gain, I would get nothing, so I wish for something else instead. It worries me sometimes and makes me think that I'm going mad, which is why I came across this site, as I was looking for information. Sometimes I feel that there are people in the room when I am the only person there, this tends to annoy me, and I tell them to go away, I believe that they are spirit people, sometimes I know when the phone is about to ring and who is ringing, it freaks me out at times, and I worry if I am safe to be around, at times I get images in my mind's eye, more often than not they are not very nice, and bad impulses, though I have never and would never act on them, they feel alien to me, as in somebody is trying to tell me to do something, but I am stronger than that, which then makes me think that maybe I'm possessed by something. I've seen faces in things from a very early age, it was always put down to an over active imagination. I always have a high pitched ringing in my ears, though when I was a child it would only happen when I was just about to go to sleep, I have it constantly now, the doctor said it was Tinnitus and I have been treated for this, it did not cure the problem, some times it is louder and others faintly there, but always there, and is as if somebody has a radio on, but it is out of tune, so that all that can be heard is static, I have had my ears tested, and I have perfect hearing, I just don't know what to think any more... or where to go or what to do next.....?
--Royou

omg omg omg , finally i found someone who would believe me, it was driving me insane, i've seen them since i was a little kid, and they were everywhere, the funny thing, when i start seeing a specific face, then others can see it, if it disappears from my mind , it wouldn't exist there anymore, not even for others! yea sounds crazy i know, but it is soooo real, real faces not just cartoonic, feels like real humans .. i think there is no way to fix this right? .. they're everywhere, now i dont let myself look anywhere with patterns for more than 1 second, trying to avoid it ... still happens .. no use i guess
--Another_Dreamer

The Taste of Fine Wine

2010-05-04T19:37:00.005-04:00

Jonah Lehrer discusses how easily the sensory impressions of wine experts can be influenced by false beliefs about the wine. He describes two interesting studies:

In 2001, Frederic Brochet, of the University of Bordeaux, conducted two separate and very mischievous experiments. In the first test, Brochet invited 57 wine experts and asked them to give their impressions of what looked like two glasses of red and white wine. The wines were actually the same white wine, one of which had been tinted red with food coloring. But that didn't stop the experts from describing the "red" wine in language typically used to describe red wines. One expert praised its "jamminess," while another enjoyed its "crushed red fruit." Not a single one noticed it was actually a white wine.

The second test Brochet conducted was even more damning. He took a middling Bordeaux and served it in two different bottles. One bottle was a fancy grand-cru. The other bottle was an ordinary vin du table. Despite the fact that they were actually being served the exact same wine, the experts gave the differently labeled bottles nearly opposite ratings. The grand cru was "agreeable, woody, complex, balanced and rounded," while the vin du table was "weak, short, light, flat and faulty". Forty experts said the wine with the fancy label was worth drinking, while only 12 said the cheap wine was."

Lehrer draws the following conclusion:

"When we taste a wine, we aren't simply tasting the wine. This is because what we experience is not what we sense. Rather, experience is what happens when our senses are interpreted by our subjective brain, which brings to the moment its entire library of personal memories and idiosyncratic desires. As the philosopher Donald Davidson argued, it is ultimately impossible to distinguish between a subjective contribution to knowledge that comes from our selves (what he calls our "scheme") and an objective contribution that comes from the outside world ("the content"). Instead, in Davidson's influential epistemology, the "organizing system and something waiting to be organized" are hopelessly interdependent." (emphasis mine)

I'm not sure that this is exactly what Donald Davidson had in mind, but the point is still interesting. For more on wine experts, click here for an interesting WSJ article by Leonard Mlodinow.

Chris Botti Makes Love to Sting's Wife

2010-05-02T19:14:00.005-04:00

Chris Botti and Sting perform My Funny Valentine at the Wilshire Theatre, December 2005.

The Mind's Worst Disease

2010-04-30T19:01:00.005-04:00

If you want truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between for and against is the mind's worst disease.

-- Seng-ts'an

Renee Fleming and Bill Frisell

2010-04-29T22:09:00.005-04:00

Jane Hirschfield: The Adamantine Perfection of Desire

2010-04-28T21:40:00.007-04:00

The Adamantine Perfection of Desire

Nothing more strong

than to be helpless before desire.

No reason,

the simplified heart whispers,

the argument over,

only This.

No longer choosing anything but assent.

Its bowl scraped clean to the bottom,

the skull-bone cup no longer horrifies,

but, rimmed in silver, shines.

A spotted dog follows a bitch in heat.

Gray geese flying past us, crying.

The living cannot help but love the world.

-- Jane Hirschfield

Tableau Public Data Visualization Service

2010-04-26T22:52:00.010-04:00

Tableau Public is a free service for creating sophisticated, interactive data visualizations. The obesity data visualization below, created using Tableau Public by Rina Bongsu-Petersen, won first place in a data visualization contest sponsored by ReadWriteWeb and Tableau. Select a region, state or county to get started. Be patient. The performance leaves a little to be desired.

Laa-Laa Plays Hendrix

2010-04-24T22:02:00.009-04:00

Beautiful Hubble Images: Celebrating 20 Years

2010-04-24T09:49:00.019-04:00

John Williams and Julian Bream play Manuel de Falla

2010-04-21T21:29:00.004-04:00

Guitar legends John Williams and Julian Bream play the music of Manuel de Falla.

The Master soars past the sun and moon ...

2010-04-18T19:23:00.001-04:00

The Master soars past the sun and moon,
tucks the universe under her arm,
and is one with the ten thousand things.
She lets the confused stay confused
if that is what they want
and is always available
to those with a passion for the truth.
In the welter of opinions,
she is content with not-knowing.
She makes distinctions
but doesn't take them seriously.
She sees the world constantly breaking
apart, and stays centered in the whole.
She sees the world endlessly changing
and never wants it to be
different from what it is.

-- Chuang-tzu

The Music of Akihiko Matsumoto

2010-04-15T23:10:00.003-04:00

Akihiko Matsumoto is a young Japanese composer and sound artist who works extensively with algorithmic composition techniques. On his website, Akihiko describes his compositional methodology as follows:

Akihiko usually uses Openmusic and max/msp for algorithmic composition and uses RTcmix for generating sound.

Usually Akihiko's compositional style is called "meta composition." Because Akihiko sets the rules of generating musical material and structure before actual composition. It's the result of influence from meta compositional theory like Schenkerian Analysis.

But Akihiko's compositional technique and programming methods depends on aesthetics in each work. Example, "Violix"(2005) is collaboration of a computer generation and a human composition.

He has also integrated interesting visual elements into some of his pieces.

Akihiko also identifies himself as a guitarist, web designer, and web programmer. He is currently a graduate student at the Tokyo University of Arts.

The following is an example of his work:

I, the Blind Donkey, know the truth

2010-04-13T21:58:00.008-04:00

Rinzai's disciples never got the Zen message,
But I, the Blind Donkey, know the truth:
Love play can make you immortal.
The autumn breeze of a single night of love is
better than a hundred thousand years
ofsterile sitting meditation ...

- Ikkyu

The Economist: The Data Revolution

2010-04-11T22:43:00.004-04:00

Special report from The Economist on the prospects and problems created by the abundance of data:

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened ...

2010-04-08T12:34:00.003-04:00

The computer programmer, like the poet ...

2010-04-07T07:55:00.000-04:00

Fred Brooks

The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. … Yet the program construct, unlike the poet's words, is real in the sense that it moves and works, producing visible outputs separate from the construct itself. … The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be.

– Fred Brooks

Elizabeth Loftus on False Memories

2010-04-04T20:25:00.000-04:00

Elizabeth Loftus is generally considered one of the most important living psychologists. She has done ground-breaking research on false and biased memories. In this brief video, she describes some of the research that demonstrates the ease with which false memories can be created in human test subjects.

Laugh at the Sky

2010-04-01T21:30:00.004-04:00

When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky.

-- The Buddha

Magnetosphere by Robert Hodgin

2010-03-30T22:17:00.000-04:00

A beautiful audio-reactive processing animation by Robert Hodgin:

Rampant Porn Problem at SEC?

2010-03-27T12:32:00.011-04:00

A March 23 a Huffington Post headline asserts that:

SEC's Porn Problem Was Rampant, According To Reports

The facts reported by Huffington Post to support this claim are:

The Washington Times reported that a dozen SEC workers were caught viewing porn.
Documents obtained by Gawker suggest that there were sixteen investigations of porn use at the SEC and that porn was viewed over 8000 times. The Huffington Post article doesn't say how many people were responsible for the page views or over what period of time they occurred.

According to a 2005 Harris Interactive poll, 25% of men and 12% of women admit to having viewed porn at work. I don't know the proportion of men to women at the SEC so let's use the lower number and assume that 12% of the SEC workforce has viewed porn at work. According to the SEC's site, they have 3500 employees. If we believe the Harris Interactive poll and if the people at the SEC are like the general population, then we would reasonably expect 420 of them to have viewed porn at work.

The fact that twelve people were caught viewing porn and that sixteen were investigated hardly constitutes a rampant porn problem. Actually, this is much less than we would expect from an organization of this size. This is just another example of sensationalist media headlines unsupported by the facts.

Fibonacci Music

2010-03-25T22:22:00.000-04:00

The Fibonacci Sequence is a special sequence of natural numbers discovered by the Italian mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci in the thirteenth century. The sequence begins with 0, 1 and continues with each subsequent number being the sum of the previous two numbers.

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89 ...

The Fibonacci numbers can be found throughout nature and art. In nature, for instance, the number of lines in the spirals on a sunflower is almost always a Fibonacci number. Similar patterns are found in pine cones and pineapples. Also, the sequence of the ratios of adjacent Fibonacci numbers approaches the constant known as the Golden Mean which figures prominently in architecture and art.

In the video below, composer and pianist Bence Peter performs a composition based on the Fibonacci Sequence. Peter mapped the Fibonacci numbers onto the diatonic scale to generate the notes used in the composition.

"Facebook Linked to Rise in Syphilis"

2010-03-24T21:36:00.026-04:00

The following headline appeared on Telegraph.co.uk today:

Facebook 'linked to rise in syphilis'
Facebook has been linked to a resurgence in the sexually-transmitted disease syphilis, according to health experts.

Similar stories were carried by other British media outlets.

The Telegraph reports that:

The virus has increased fourfold in Sunderland, Durham and Teesside, the areas of Britain where Facebook is most popular, because it has given people a new way to meet multiple partners for casual sexual encounters.

Professor Peter Kelly, director of public health in Teesside, said staff had found a link between social networking sites and the rise in cases, especially among young women.

This conclusion appears to be based on the fact that the reported cases of syphilis in Teesdale last year rose fourfold to 30. And what is the connection with Facebook? The Telegraph reports that:

Research has shown that young people in Sunderland, Durham and Teesside were 25 per cent more likely to log onto social networking sites than those in the rest of Britain.

So an increase to 30 total reported cases of syphilis in an area of Britain that is know to use social networking sites more heavily than the rest of Britain constitutes evidence that "Facebook is linked to a rise in syphilis."

It sounds like there's an opportunity here for the UK Statistics Authority!

It's easy to make fun of this, but the sad fact is that many people will read it and believe it.

The UK Statistics Authority

2010-03-23T21:50:00.018-04:00

Richard Aldritt

It comes as no surprise that government officials often misuse statistics to advance their own political and personal agendas. In an attempt to reverse the British public's growing skepticism of public statistics, in 2008, the British Parliament established an independent agency, the UK Statistics Authority, for evaluating government practices in the collection and reporting of official statistics. The Authority's web site states:

The Authority's statutory objective is to promote and safeguard the production and publication of official statistics that serve the public good. It is also required to promote and safeguard the quality and comprehensiveness of official statistics, and ensure good practice in relation to official statistics.

Richard Aldritt was named the Authority's Head of Assessment. Aldritt, a professional statistican, and his team evaluate the data and review the claims made by officials in over 200 agencies.

Last month, for instance, Conservative MP Chris Grayling claimed that police statistics showed an increase in violent crime during the Labour party's time in government. The Conservatives, moreover, sent the numbers to activists throughout England and Wales in an attempt to show a decline in law and order under the Labour party. The UK Statistics Authority issued an assessment of Grayling's claim that concluded that the apparent increase in crime was due to a change in reporting methodology. Moreover, they noted that the British Crime Survey, normally considered a more reliable source, showed a decrease in violent crime during the same period.

Predictably, Chris Grayling responded as follows:

The reality is these figures actually reflect real crimes, reported to real police stations, by real people. And the reality is however you caveat these figures, whatever qualifications you make about changes to the recording methods, they show a big increase in violent crime over the past decade and we are going to carry on saying that.

Click here to read a BBC article about the flap.

It should be noted that not all assessments by the Authority have been dismissed so cavalierly. The BBC article states that:

In 2008, [the Authority] criticised Labour ministers for releasing what it said was "premature and selective" data about hospital admissions for knife wounds in certain parts of the country. The then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith apologised for the early release.

A truly independent gadfly agency that checks public statistics is probably a good idea, but I doubt that it is going to solve the problem. The flood of statistics, many of which are flawed or misleading, coming out of government and the media is making education in statistics increasingly important. As H.G. Wells said:

Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read or write.

Toxiclibs

2010-03-20T17:46:00.000-04:00

Toxiclibs is an open source library of Java and Processing functions for computational design. The library contains functions for audio, color, geometry, math and physics. The following video is a collection of experiments and projects using the library.

toxiclibs showreel from postspectacular on Vimeo.

Art from Your DNA

2010-03-19T11:45:00.003-04:00

If you send a sample of your DNA to the folks at DNA 11, they will create a one-of-a-kind "art" work based on your DNA. The images don't really rock my boat, but the idea is very cool.

They also create works based on fingerprints and kisses.

Gapminder: Unveiling the Beauty of Statistics for a Fact Based World View

2010-03-18T21:25:00.005-04:00

Gapminder has just launched a new website. If you've seen the Hans Rosling TED presentation that I posted a while ago, you have some idea what Gapminder is about. Gapminder is a non-profit venture founded by Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund and Hans Rosling in 2005. Their motto is "unveiling the beauty of statistics for a fact based world view." In particular, Gapminder aggregates world economic, health and political statistics, and provides a wonderful facility, Gapminder World, for charting those statistics and analyzing trends. The new website is nice. Check it out.

Happy Pi Day!

2010-03-13T13:42:00.085-05:00

March 14 (3.14) is Pi Day. Here are four videos for your Pi Day entertainment. Enjoy!

The Pi Song

Pi Diddy

Kate Bush: Pi

A Piece of Pi (violin music for Pi Day)

Visualizing Hamlet II

2010-03-12T19:20:00.004-05:00

The result of putting the full text of Hamlet into Wordle.net.

Visualizing Hamlet

2010-03-11T18:43:00.031-05:00

Click here to see the TextArc representation of Hamlet

A TextArc is a visual representation of a text. In a TextArc analysis, the full text of a work is drawn in a tiny, one pixel tall line in two concentric spirals. Each distinct word is also drawn in a readable font at a location that is the average of all the actual word locations. Each of the readable words is then attached to the tiny words that occur in the text by lines. This provides a graphical representation of the word's distribution in the text.

For a more detailed explanation and additional examples, check out http://www.textarc.org.

Complexity Kills

2010-03-09T17:03:00.015-05:00

Complexity kills. It sucks the life out of developers, it makes products difficult to plan, build and test, it introduces security challenges and it causes end-user and administrator frustration.
- Ray Ozzie

Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming.
– Brian Kernigan

Increasingly, people seem to misinterpret complexity as sophistication, which is baffling - the incomprehensible should cause suspicion rather than admiration. Possibly this trend results from a mistaken belief that using a somewhat mysterious device confers an aura of power on the user.
– Niklaus Wirth

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
– Leonardo da Vinci

Beauty is more important in computing than anywhere else in technology because software is so complicated. Beauty is the ultimate defence against complexity.

– David Gelernter

Awesome Video-Reactive Animation

2010-03-05T20:55:00.004-05:00

The following video was created by Jonathan Brandel using the Processing programming language. The overlayed animation appears to be reacting to motion in the video. Brandel describes it as "new type of interactive visualization combining computer vision and audio analysis." Click here for more awesome videos by Brandel.

News Dots: Visualizing the News

2010-03-04T20:30:00.002-05:00

News Dots is a cool new service on Slate.com that represents current topics in the news as nodes in an interactive visual network. The network graph shows the relationships between the topics in addition to the importance of each topic.

News Dots uses Calais to automatically tag news stories from major publications. Relationships are established by identifying tags that appear together in the same stories. The visualization tool was built using flare, an ActionScript library for building interactive flash visualizations.

Click here to check it out.

Blind to the Look of Disgust

2010-03-02T20:43:00.008-05:00

A study reported in the August 2009 issue of the Journal of Investigative Dermatology seems to show that patients with psoriasis have a diminished capacity to recognize facial expressions of disgust.

When male psoriasis patients were shown images of disgusted faces, fMRI data showed significantly reduced activity in the insula cortex compared to age-matched male controls. No significant differences in brain response were found when the psoriasis patients viewed neutral or fearful faces.

These results were corroborated by the test subjects' performance on the facial expression recognition task (FERT). Psoriasis patients were less able than controls to identify various intensities of disgusted facial expressions. They were, however, able to identify fearful and sad expressions as well as the control group.

The investigators hypothesize that the psoriasis patients' inability to process disgusted facial expressions protects them from stressful emotional responses.

This appears to be a striking example of what Cordelia Fine calls the "vain brain."

The vain brain presents a "softer, kinder reality" that preserves the individual's positive self-evaluation. While it troubles philosophers, for the rest of us it is vastly more comfortable that we can only know ourselves and the world through the distorting prism of our brains. Freud suggested that the ego "rejects the unbearable idea," and since then experimental psychologists have been peeling back the protective layers encasing our self-esteem to reveal the multitude of strategies our brains use to keep our egos plump and self-satisfied. (Cordelia Fine, A Mind of Its Own, p. 6, emphasis mine)

Flightpattern: an Audio-reactive Animation

2010-03-01T17:33:00.006-05:00

Flightpattern is a cool audio-reactive animation programmed in ActionScript by Gwen Vanhee. The music is El Cargo by Amon Tobin.

Flightpattern from Gwen Vanhee on Vimeo.

Blue Brain

2010-02-27T22:47:00.004-05:00

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 ...

2010-02-27T01:46:00.006-05:00

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

The Wonderful Music of Emily Howell

2010-02-25T20:22:00.007-05:00

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.

Wiggle: More Fun with Processing

2010-02-22T22:10:00.006-05:00

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.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Tips for Living

2010-02-21T20:02:00.003-05:00

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

2010-02-21T19:56:00.001-05:00

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.

Algorithmic Beauty

2010-02-16T23:15:00.002-05:00

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

2010-02-16T08:37:00.001-05:00