A Networked World

A mite of justice for Alan Turing

Just signed up for this. World Turing Petition Petition

Alan Turing was the greatest computer scientist ever born in Britain. He laid the foundations of computing, helped break the Nazi Enigma code and told us how to tell whether a machine could think.

He was also gay. He was prosecuted for being gay, chemically castrated as a 'cure', and took his own life, aged 41.

The British Government should apologize to Alan Turing for his treatment and recognize that his work created much of the world we live in and saved us from Nazi Germany. And an apology would recognize the tragic consequences of prejudice that ended this man's life and career.

I'm half tempted to say don't bother, Turing's life has been totally vindicated by history, the fact that his government could treat him so appallingly should be an object lesson to all of us, equally for all time.

Management is for compliance, not innovation of creativity

HT to Johnnie for this. The problem with incentives

Dan Pink gives a punchy TED talk about the adverse impact of incentives. He reports studies that show that offering incentives will increase performance for routine tasks. But for activities that require creativity or problem solving, the bigger the reward, the worse the performance.

Here's the TED Talk from Dan

The biggest problem with business these days, especially big business, and with Government, is that it has been captured by the managerial class and they KNOW this stuff already. But like every ruling class in history, they cannot afford to admit the problem because that involves their own career and livelihood being cancelled.

The only process by which management is finally unseated is the failure of the company.

BTW, Dan talks about the candle problem but he hints at something even more difficult; the problems that we face now are so complex that we cannot even define them properly. Even the big, apparently simple ones like peak oil can't adequately be described at any scale in which most people can take action.

You can tell that because, for most people, especially decision-makers, the problem itself is invisible, it is outside the scale of their competence and all their training comes down to, "if it can't be measured, it can't be managed" because management can do only those things that are susceptible of management. Because they have captured the organisation, only management can occur.

And around we go in the drain.

Like sand through the bathing suit

Space time may be granular. Late light reveals what space is made of

ON THE night of 30 June 2005, the sky high above La Palma in Spain's Canary Islands crackled with streaks of blue light too faint for humans to see. Atop the Roque de los Muchachos, the highest point of the island, though, a powerful magic eye was waiting and watching.

MAGIC - the Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov Telescope - scans the sky each night for high-energy photons from the distant cosmos. Most nights, nothing remarkable comes. But every now and again, a brief flash of energetic light bears witness to the violent convulsions of a faraway galaxy.

What MAGIC saw on that balmy June night came like a bolt from the blue. That is because something truly astounding may have been encoded in that fleeting Atlantic glow: evidence that the fabric of space-time is not silky smooth as Einstein and many others have presumed, but rough, turbulent and fundamentally grainy stuff.

Too cool, a vaccuum with lumps. more than that, a vacuum made out of lumps

Gambling rats and a contradiction

Canadian psychologist, Catharine Winstanley's gambling rats were an important development because "the neurobiological basis of gambling is still poorly understood and few treatment options exist," Money is on rats to help fight gambling addiction

Her international team devised a system which gave the rats four choices for getting some sugar pellets in a 30-minute time limit. The more pellets that were on offer to the rats, the higher the risk, with a greater chance of more frequent and longer periods without being able to get at the tasty food.

The rats became successful gamblers, learning that it was better to choose an option with fewer pellets but fewer penalties.

"Rats are capable of playing the odds. They learn to avoid these risky options to maximise their earnings," said Professor Winstanley, whose study is published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.

The rats were then treated with drugs that reduced the levels of two chemicals in the brain - serotonin, which is associated with impulse control, and dopamine, which is associated with pleasure.

In the first case the rats became much worse at playing the odds, and took more risks. In the second case, the gambling rats became better at maximising the number of sugar pellets they ate.

Cool experiment, but what I don't get is that people with very high risk-taking behaviours don't suffer from high dopamine levels, in fact either their dopamine level is lower than average or their receptors are less sensitive and require much higher levels of dopamine to trigger their pleasure centres, so they seek risk.

I would give good odds that when they try this on humans, we find that reducing dopamine production has a similar effect, the gambling addiction gets worse because what we crave is the high.

My wife wants to know what the deal is with us pessimists, do we have too much serotonin? Does that keep us from the kind of risk taking that we see as unsafe but most people just think is fun?

Swine flu - is it a test tube accident?

The conspiracy theorists will be ALL over this, because they will assume that if you can have an accident in a test tube, you can have a deliberate act in a test tube. Frankly I don't think we are that smart yet, but accidents? They are the mechanism of evolution. Now get this.

The World Health Organisation is investigating a claim by an Australian researcher that the swine flu virus circling the globe may have been created as a result of human error.

Adrian Gibbs, 75, who collaborated on research that led to the development of Roche's Tamiflu drug, said in an interview that he intends to publish a report suggesting the new strain may have accidentally evolved in eggs scientists use to grow viruses and drugmakers use to make vaccines. Gibbs said he came to his conclusion as part of an effort to trace the virus's origins by analysing its genetic blueprint.

The World Health Organisation received the study last weekend and is reviewing it, Keiji Fukuda, the agency's assistant director-general of health security and environment, said in an interview. Gibbs, who has studied germ evolution for four decades, is one of the first scientists to analyse the genetic makeup of the virus that was identified three weeks ago in Mexico and threatens to touch off the first flu pandemic since 1968.

A virus that resulted from lab experimentation or vaccine production may indicate a greater need for security, Fukuda said. By pinpointing the source of the virus, scientists also may better understand the microbe's potential for spreading and causing illness, Gibbs said.

Possible mistake

[...] Gibbs and two colleagues analysed the publicly available sequences of hundreds of amino acids coded by each of the flu virus's eight genes. He said he aims to submit his three-page paper today for publication in a medical journal.

[...]The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta has received the report and has decided there is no evidence to support Gibbs's conclusion, said Nancy Cox, director of the agency's influenza division. She said since researchers don't have samples of swine flu viruses from South America and Africa, where the new strain may have evolved, those regions can't be ruled out as natural sources for the new flu.

No evidence

''We are interested in the origins of this new influenza virus,'' Cox said. ''But contrary to what the author has found, when we do the comparisons that are most relevant, there is no evidence that this virus was derived by passage in eggs.''

On the other hand, absence of evidence is not evidence and they ARE taking it seriously.

The WHO's collaborative influenza research centers, which includes the CDC, and sites in Memphis, Melbourne, London and Tokyo, were asked by the international health agency to review the study over the weekend, Fukuda said. The request was extended to scientists at the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, the World Organization for Animal Health in Paris, as well as the WHO's influenza network, he said.

[...] Gibbs said his analysis supports research by scientists including Richard Webby, a virologist at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, who found the new strain is the product of two distinct lineages of influenza that have circulated among swine in North America and Europe for more than a decade.

In addition, his research found the rate of genetic mutation in the new virus outpaced that of the most closely related viruses found in pigs, suggesting it evolved outside of swine, Gibbs said.

[...] Gibbs said he has no evidence that the swine-derived virus was a deliberate, man-made product.

The fact is that there is no evidence of the flu in the pig farms near the human source of this virus and the only pigs that appear to have contracted it in North America seem to have picked it up from people, so the question about its origin is deadly serious.

As we push the environment harder and harder, both outside in the world and inside in the lab, we increase the number of opportunities for weirdness.

And whatever the answer, this sucker is definitely weird.

Terry Pratchett will LOVE this

How camels could explain quantum uncertainty.

a mathematical concept called the "symplectic camel" promises to explain quantum uncertainty in simple classical terms.

Given that terry's camels are mathematical geniuses to start with, I'm betting on a symplectic one turning up in the next Discworld novel.

Serious Static

Hat tip to David I for the link to these pics: Fotos Tormenta eléctrica en erupción del volcán Chaitén.

Astonishing.

I glad I'm an ocean away although if this thing goes with a big enough quake I could wind up swimming in my living room because there is nothing between us and Chile but water.

Pascal's wager

This is good. Well, the subject is anyway.

5m, 2000kg - and magnificent

I'm not into tooth and claw docos on National Geo or Discovery channels, but THIS is just magnificent: photos.

South African wildlife photographer Chris Fellows took the pictures as the 5m, 2000kg predator exploded from the water to grab a lure.

The shark was travelling about 50km/h as its 250 teeth clamped on to the rubber bait.

"When kids see a shark eating a seal they feel sorry for the seal, but it's like a lion catching a zebra - it's a natural phenomenon," said Fellows.

Nah, some of them get off on the violence and the killing. But the first and third pics in the sequence are pure joy.

Right Brain v Left Brain

Interesting on several fronts: Right Brain v Left Brain | Herald Sun.

THE Right Brain vs Left Brain test ... do you see the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise?

If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa.

Most of us would see the dancer turning anti-clockwise though you can try to focus and change the direction; see if you can do it.

1. Yes, If I look away for a moment I can reverse the direction
2. Why is the "dancer" a naked woman? What does this say about the experimenter, and the experiment? Why can't the editor correctly identify the figure?
3. Checklist for me.

LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS

uses logic  (yes)
detail oriented (no)
facts rule (no)
words and language (yes)
present and past (yes)
math and science (no)
can comprehend (yes)
knowing (yes)
acknowledges order/pattern (no)
perception (yes)
knows object name (yes)
reality based (yes)
forms strategies (no)
practical safe (yes)

RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses feeling (yes)
"big picture" oriented (yes)
imagination rules (no)
symbols and images (yes)
present and future (yes)
philosophy & religion (no)
can "get it" (i.e. meaning) (yes)
believes (no)
appreciates (yes)
spatial perception (yes)
knows object function (yes)
fantasy based (no)
presents possibilities (yes)
impetuous (sometimes)
risk taking (yes)

Wild stab - most of us are ambidextrous, anyone who doesn't have a fair representation in both lists should not be allowed near levers, buttons or sharp objects.

Anyone who accepts the characterisations probably also reads their horoscope every day.

Plus, I like getting somewhere on my own that smart people like Dave Snowden at Cognitive Edge live in. I wonder where on the list, and which side of the brain, "shameless self promotion" live.