IdeaFestival

Quantum computing for Dummies

Performing an essential public service by tackling one extraordinary concept at at time, SEED Magazine offers this one page guide to quantum computing.

I'm thinking this will be just the thing to crib for tonight's dinner party.

Wayne

Space boomerang!

Now for the answer to question you probably weren't asking today: How does zero gravity affect the flight of a boomerang?

The Japanese Space Agency, JAXA, released this video showing that that answer is "not much." As Universe Today pointed out, while microgravity had little effect on the "roomerang," it isn't the same as space, which has zero gravity and is a hard vacuum besides. Aerodynamics are useless there. JAXA on the same mission released a fleet of paper airplanes to see how that they might fare during a descent through Earth's atmosphere.

Wayne

Seeing what you see

Can the epic problem of the mind, "the experience of our matter," the first-person experience, be modeled?

Jonah Lehrer writes about one attempt to do just that, the Blue Brain project.

Physics has a long history of breakthroughs fueled by conceptual ambition. Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein could conceptualize problems and answers by building abstract models using the accurate symbology of math, or drawing upon artful metaphors to visualize the unknowable. As Lehrer has pointed out elsewhere, one of Niels Bohr's central insights was that the world of electrons was essentially a Cubist world.

In the animal kingdom, intelligence comes at a cost

Does the ability to learn come at a cost to health? According to Carl Zimmer at Science Times, that's the conclusion from research showing that for some animals, being smart doesn't equate with living longer. The big idea, as one biologist in the story suggests, is this:

Dr. Kawecki suspects that each species evolves until it reaches an equilibrium between the costs and benefits of learning. His experiments demonstrate that flies [which he has trained to associate some foods with nourishment and some with predators!] have the genetic potential to become significantly smarter in the wild. But only under his lab conditions does evolution actually move in that direction. In nature, any improvement in learning would cost too much.

That cost is measured in other ways as well. Using the example of human infants, which come into the world in an obvious state of helplessness, another researcher put it this way:

'We use computers with memory that’s almost free, but biological information is costly,' Dr. Dukas said. He added that the costs Dr. Kawecki documented were not smart animals’ only penalties. 'It means you start out in life being inexperienced,' Dr. Dukas said.

"Lots of Animals Learn, but Smarter Isn’t Better" is well worth a few moments of your time.

Wayne

Large Hadron Collider to write modern chapter in creation story

In the latest in a series of terrific TED presentations filmed and posted to YouTube, particle physicist Brian Cox explains why the Large Hadron Collider matters.

Twelve particles of matter stuck together by four forces of nature interact in ways that have resulted in the mind and the eyes you are now using to read this post. To complete the mathematical equations in the Standard Model, which, as Cox says, elegantly describes why the sky is blue and could, given enough computing power, suggest why DNA is shaped the way it is, particle physicists want to uncover the Higgs Boson, which the last remaining undiscovered particle predicted by the Standard Model.

He concludes the 17 minute video with a three minute description of what particle physics means to him. Pointing to the stage props around him, he memorably says that everything from Saturn V rockets, to great literature to DNA to science itself "are the things that hydrogen atoms do when given 13.7 billion years." What's more, this narrative, which has only come into focus in the past fifty years, leaves him feeling privileged to be a part of this moment in history.

But to answer the question with which he begun, the LHC matters, he says, because it will write the next chapter of the creation story. Enjoy.

Wayne

Save Cloudy! Eat this Giant Water Bug

This is Cloudy.

He’s one of five goats born on my central Kentucky farm about a month ago. I wouldn’t want him to hear this, but he’s not the cutest of the lot. That distinction belongs to Luna, one of the females. She’s petite, light brown with silky sprays of white on her flanks, and erect ears that make her look like a tiny donkey. She’s my daughter’s pet.

Truth is, they’re all pets, the two mother goats included. My family has the luxury of keeping goats on our eleven acres just because we want to. We don’t need the milk the mothers produce and, honestly, would probably be more than a little appalled to try drinking it. That’s how insulated we are from the rougher edges of rural living.

A log of fresh goat cheese—from nearby Capriole farm perhaps—nicely sealed in plastic? Sure!

"I, Gamer"

In a brief post at Terra Nova, Ren Reynolds wonders what the societal impact will be of a generation of game players that self-identify as "gamers." Without providing any answers - are there any now? - I just thought it was an interesting question, as was the title of his blog post.

Wayne

Information age: what happens to the "cognitive surplus?"

Making the rounds in support of his new book, Here Comes Everybody, digital media theorist Clay Shirky has been asking some provocative questions lately - for example, is there a cognitive surplus waiting to be tapped? 

Put another way - and I think this is a Shirky formulation from several years ago and a question for which I certainly have no answers - what happens to society when everything knowable can be known? He elaborates on these and other issues in the video above.

Wayne

They want proof of things

In literature and poetry, the sound and figure of great text is made fatter by life experience.

Here, a poet exiled under difficult circumstances, Li-Young Lee, reads his work. I was struck by something midway through the video, when, referring to others near to him, he said they were not literary at all, but they did possess an ear for tinniness, which I took to mean an ear for falsity. He quickly added, "they want proof of things."

Interesting thing, proof.

To demand proof is a praiseworthy quality in business accounting and scientific pursuits, but not in the writing and hearing of verse. Because people who demand proof often have even higher expectations for the evidence they're willing to accept, the irony is that being willing to make peace without proof, to accept ambiguity, makes life - and poetry - so much better.

Li-Young Lee gets that.

Wayne

Wikipedia: argument Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: certainty

Business strategy: managing "from hilltop to hilltop"

Has globalization and the diffusion of information made the idea of sustained competitive advantage obsolete?

In an interview, Richard D'Aveni describes why strategic management by temporary advantage is preferable to long range planning, a state of affairs he labels "hypercompetition." D'Aveni is Professor of Strategic Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and is credited, according to the interview, "with creating a new paradigm in the field of strategic management based on temporary advantages – using rapid manoeuvring rather than defensive barriers."

Comparing the idea to the Lewis & Clarke expedition, D'Aveni says modern business managers must make progress from  "hilltop to hilltop."

Thanks Steve for the link!

Wayne