December 4, 2009 – 12:47 pm
Physorg on the question of computer vision:
“Reverse engineering a biological visual system—a system with hundreds of millions of processing units—and building an artificial system that works the same way is a daunting task,” says Cox. “It is not enough to simply assemble together a huge amount of computing power. We have to figure out how [...]
November 25, 2009 – 10:22 am
Lawrence Johnson on FB has sparked yet another conversation related to education and culture, drawing on an example of textbook company incentives and the seeming de-emphasis of the value of hard work required for excellence in learning: use this tool and student performance will improve. The conversation is proceeding but as I don’t like [...]
November 22, 2009 – 9:02 pm
The buddha in me is burning.
October 2, 2009 – 2:33 pm
Today Rio won the Olympics bid. The media narrative has taken a variety of positions as a response:
1. Why would Obama risk support?
2. What is the meaning of the right wing response?
3. What does the loss mean in the context of America’s standing in the world?
None of this makes much sense [...]
August 14, 2009 – 2:40 pm
I’ve been storing potential course readings to Diigo in a list called Common Issues, as I find that the broad subject categories, such as Environment and Cities, can get confusing in terms of what was actually placed there and whether the intent of the bookmark was for course use or for some other purpose. It [...]
Here’s today’s story plotting by word length in Tinderbox, using this bit of code as a rule: $Pattern=”plot($WordCount)”.
Considering length hasn’t been much of an issue, as the internal questions about plot and character have taken precedence. Day to day writing prohibits length, but the upper parameter of length hasn’t been much more than [...]
My wife sent me this article (perhaps sensing story struggle). In any event, there are some interesting conclusions and contexts:
In today’s innovation economy, engineers, economists and policy makers are eager to foster creative thinking among knowledge workers. Until recently, these sorts of revelations were too elusive for serious scientific study. Scholars suspect the story [...]
Wallach and Allen’s Moral Machines was an interesting read. There are a few principle conclusions: that ethics questions must be considered in tandem with systems, from the ground up; that some framework must be developed to guide the future of AI systems in technical, cultural, legal, and operational contexts, but that the nature of [...]
I heard a wonderful radio program on NPR yesterday on Miles Davis and Kind of Blue. One of the interviewees was Herbie Hancock (I think). He talked about Miles Davis’ process, specifically on the single session, “first takes,” out of which Kind of Blue was “discovered” in the studio. He talked about [...]
February 13, 2009 – 7:09 am
From Jesse Abbot:
The giant of modern physics Niels Bohr purportedly once quipped that if one isn’t confused by quantum mechanics—sometimes called QM for short—one doesn’t really understand it.
One of the world’s leading philosophers of science, Dr. Barry Loewer, is coming to Tunxis on Thursday, February 19th at 7 p.m. to give kind of a narrative [...]
December 26, 2008 – 1:09 pm
I’m currently reading Maryanne Wolf’s Proust and the Squid. It’s a book that sets up a major goal and I wonder if Wolf can meet the expectation: to expose the neurological reading process without remaining too anecdotal. We can describe reading experiences and expose brain function. But is this satisfying enough? [...]
December 21, 2008 – 9:43 am
An excellent post by Tim O’Reilly on hard work. This follows the theme in my last post on semester observations.
There’s a long arc in computing that teaches us how much we gain through advances in ease-of-use, with the iPhone being the latest breakthrough success. But it’s important to remember how much we lose when [...]
December 18, 2008 – 8:32 pm
Dennis Jerz has interesting remarks on teaching literature in higher education:
I am working on an opening lecture that introduces literary criticism not as a series of facts to memorize and names to drop, but as a way of studying the thinking process that forms our own world view. Since I teach alongside colleagues who write, [...]
October 8, 2008 – 8:25 pm
Dan Green engages a post by Obooki (?)
Since I, too, cannot think of any particular novel that “has changed my thinking about life,” and since I also don’t read novels “for philosophy, for meaning” and am antipathetic to “philosophizing” in novels (as well to the underlying notion that fiction is a medium for “saying something” [...]
September 16, 2008 – 7:45 pm
I find Dan Green’s sidebar reorganization very helpful. Check it out.
I’m also looking forward to Susan Gibb on hypertext and Kundera.
For those wondering about the availability of the 100 Days art book, I should have direct links to Blurb in a couple of days.
That Night I Wandered on my Homeward Way (DrunkenBoat 10)
100 Days: 100 Poems, Summer 2008
