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17 Dec 2004Read Dark Star Safari (2003, Paul Theroux). Yet another travelogue that raises the same bothersome questions:
And yet I continue to read his books. He is an intelligent, dispassionate observer. More of a passive reporter. There is a sensation that he has tons of emotions and judgments internalized, and I keep reading, hoping that he will spill his guts on the next page. But he never does. His picture of Africa was depressing (he was in the Peace Corps there 20 years ago): He says most countries have gone downhill since independence from their colonial overlords (about 40 years ago): Dictators, poverty, AIDS, laziness, filth, corruption ... lack of hope or opportunity. 28 Nov 2004I finally identified an unusual book I saw on EBay a few years ago: Codex Seraphinianus (1983, Luigi Serafini). See my review at Amazon.com. A nonsense book written by an Italian architect containing text and illustrations, with the text in a nonsense alphabet. Very original, though disturbing illustrations. The book is published in limited editions every few years. Price ranges from $400 to $3,000.
In my search, I posted on a book forum, and one suggestion (for my unknown book) was the Voynich Manuscript, in the Yale library. This odd book is a total mystery: Written in an unknown language. The current theory is that the book was written in the 1500s has a hoax, and sold to a gullible customer. How hard would it be to write a software program to simulate evolution? Environmental changes, mutations, survival, improvements, extinctions. If one could model it well enough, it could be a compelling argument for the theory. One could argue that the earth itself is a model that we are watching, in real time, unfold: randomly staggering forward via random perturbations and selections. In fact, this is the premise of the biology books by Richard Dawkins: Climbing Mount Improbable, The Blind Watchmaker, and The Selfish Gene. Id like to read them. 23 Nov 2004Here is another seminal article that I should read someday: "Extraterrestrial Cause for the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary" (Science, 1980, by Alvarez's) .. in which they hypothesize about a large asteroid hitting the earth to cause mass extinctions (and leaving an iridium trace around the globe). From Alexander Pope's "Essay on Man" All nature is but art unknown to thee, All chance, direction which thou canst not see, All discord, harmony not understood; All partial evil, universal good. 15 Nov 2004Great music doesnt sound predictable, it sounds inevitable. from Three Farmers on the Way to a Dance. You can't always be the best, but you can be your best. Dr. Laura advice. The world has changed more in the past 30 years than in all the time since Jesus.. Spoken in 1913 by Peguey (quoted in Three Farmers..). Finally got Still Life at the Penguin Cafe: I bought the laserdisc on EBay (it is not on DVD) and a generous stranger lent me his Laser Disk player, so I could copy it to tape. 5 Nov 2004Bush won the election, and the republicans got a majority of the house and senate. Bush says he has a mandate, but that seems too strong a word for only 49% of the vote. The novel The Natural: in the original book, the hero strikes out at the end, but the movie has him hitting a home run. The original Dutch movie The Vanishing has the kidnapped girl murdered in the end; the Hollywood remake has the victim rescued. Im having a hard time finding some of my favorite movies on DVD: La Strada, My Left Foot, Till Life at the Penguin Cafe, Gregories Girl, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. 30 Oct 2004Read Hirohito and The Making of Modern Japan (2000, Bix). A difficult biography to write because the Japanese Imperial court is ultra secretive, and very few records of the WW II era remain. The bottom line is that the emperor pro-actively managed and encouraged the war in China and the Pacific. It was only after the war that the myth of the passive figurehead was fabricated. The emperor worked very hard after the war ended to (1) avoid being tried at the war crimes tribunal; (2) and being forced to abdicate. To be fair: the Americans helped cover-up the emperor's participation because (a) the US wanted the emperor to help stabilize post-war Japan; and (b) the Cold War was starting and the US wanted Japan as an ally against its neighbor, the USSR. Japan's imperial palace has a very perverse way of raising imperial children: they are raised away from the parents. 28 Oct 2004Read Parasite Rex (2001, Carl Zimmer) a very readable and fascinating book about parasites. There are far more parasites than the obvious ones like tapeworms, flukes, trichinella (pork), sleeping sickness, and river blindness. The definition of parasites is a bit fuzzy, for instance, most biologists exclude viruses and bacteria, though they do tend to live off of a host organism. One great puzzle facing biologists is how parasites navigate to the correct place. Most parasites live in only one kind of organism, in fact, live in only one organ/site within an organism. So for those parasites that have a lifecycle where they are, in one phase, outside the host (e.g. eggs on the ground) the great mystery is how the parasite gets into the correct host, and once inside the host, gets to the correct body part. Another fascinating thing about parasites is how they evolve along with their hosts. For instance, tape worms were present millions of years ago in amphibians, then in reptiles, and now in mammals. So as the host species evolves, the parasite must evolve along with it. And, of course, there is the dilemma of the parasite's success: A parasite cannot do too much harm to the host, or else the host may become extinct. Read Sexual Selection (1989, James Gould) - not to be confused with Sexual Selections by Zuk (or 4 other books named Sexual Selection). Sexual selection is the part of evolution that comes from selecting mates based on preference, vs. survival of the fittest. The two most common forms of sexual selection are (1) Females select a male (same male often selected by several females); and (2) Males select a dominance order for mating (usually by fighting) and only the dominant males get to mate. In monogamous species, nearly every individual passes down their genes to subsequent generations. But in situations 1 and 2 above, only a fraction of the males pass-down their genes (although all females pass down their genes). There can be quite an imbalance in the next generation: an individual female may only contribute 0.001% of the gene; but a dominant male could contribute 10% or more. The division between sexual selection and natural selection becomes blurred when traits contribute to both kinds of selection: such as strength, size, and fighting ability. Another blurring between natural selection and sexual selection occurs because those males that are the smartest and healthiest (hence, selected naturally) are the same males that have the spare time and excess energy to perform tasks required for sexual selection (preening, building a bower, courting, etc). Aggressiveness can be a self-perpetuating trait, as in elephant seals: Since only the most aggressive males get to mate with the females, all offspring inherit genes related to aggressiveness. And so this trait is reinforced generation after generation. In ancient times (pre-Cambrian?) all species reproduced by simple cloning (asexual reproduction). It is bit of a mystery how and why sexual selection evolved. The most likely reason is that sexual reproduction (which is much more complex and risky) produces a much greater variety of offspring and so sexual-reproduction species are more likely to produce offspring that can survive environmental changes. If this is so, the question arises: Why has asexual reproduction managed to last so long and be so successful. The answer is probably because sexual reproduction is so fast, that mutations can happen much more frequently, and hence respond to environmental changes (e.g. consider the rate of mutation of AID virus or pneumonia bacteria). So sexual reproduction has larger inter-generational changes, but at a slower rate. The book describes the two distinct underlying impulses for variety and adaptation:
The Red Queen strategy is especially popular in biology nowadays because it addresses the situation where a host and parasite change over time, in response to changes in the other. E.g. as the host species changed from reptiles to dinosaurs to mammals, the tapeworm parasite had to evolve along with it. The book asserts that most long-lived species (ginko, sharks, ferns) use sexual reproduction, and nearly all asexual species are of recent origin. This doesn't seem right to me: I think he is trying to say that sexual species have such robust diversity in their offspring, they can survive all sorts of cataclysms; whereas asexual species easily become extinct because any fatal environmental change will wipe out the entire species. He also says asexual species are mostly parasites. Clearly, asexual algae and bacteria and fungi have been around a long time. Perhaps the author is saying that asexual species do mutate rapidly and os survive, but the survivors are not inter-breedable with the ancestor species. Asexual species include dandelions, bacteria, strawberries, quaking aspen (latter two propagate by runners), some lizards, some fish. Many species, including strawberries and aspen, can reproduce sexually or asexually. 7 Sept 2004Outside magazine says that the author of The Little Prince (St. Expury) died recently. He wrote another book (Flight to Arrras?) that has a neat line: A man is his acts, not his body. 9 Sept 2004I was driving my niece and nephew in the car, and they wanted to listen to country music. I pointed out that a lot of country music is pseudo patriotic. They didn't ask me to elaborate :-) but what I meant was that country music, and red-necks in general, cloak themselves in patriotism, when in fact their beliefs are un-American. Examples:
If I had to summarize this notion in a nutshell: Id say that the founding fathers of America were rebels, who were revolting against a government they disliked. The key principles they put into our constitution were guarantees that citizens can, and should, continually challenge and criticize the US government. Some of the key founders of America, the Pilgrims, were minorities in England, and so tolerance of minorities is a fundamental democratic principle. 6 Sept 2004I was listening to some conservative talking head on the radio, and he said "The US has adopted the 1908 Socialist Part platform". Very intriguing thought: I don't have a copy of that platform, but I can guess that it included things like:
2 Sept 2004Computerized voting machines are becoming commonplace. As a software engineer, I'm concerned about that: not just the bugginess of software, but also the possibility of hacking and fraud. My concerns are shared by the Risks digest (a group of professional engineers that are concerned about security, safety, and errors in hardware and software systems). Voting is such a precious right, that the merest appearance of fraud or mistake greatly undermines the democratic process. I cant argue with using computers to tabulate the votes, but there needs to be iron-clad backups and accountability: a paper trail that can be (optionally) independently counted would be a nice place to start. 9 July 2004Federal government passed a good law last month: They force eye doctors to give you your contact-lens prescription so you can buy the lenses from any source. Before, the doctor could keep the prescription secret, and force you to buy the lenses from him! This is a counter example to my theory that doctors have bribed congress to keep their cartels intact. I'm still waiting for congress to pass a law permitting dental hygienists to practice by themselves so I can get my teeth cleaned without paying for a dentist. Read the No 1 ladies Detective Agency (1999, Alexander Smith). Probably the only novel I will ever read that is set in Botswana (a former British colony, not to be confused with Rhodesia/Zimbabwe). A sweet, poignant, heartwarming tale of native life. Sadly, it is written by an Anglo so the book cant be very authentic. 3 July 2004Read Lost Horizon (1933, James Hilton). A rather famous book, especially the place name Shangri La, which has come to mean a utopian paradise. It is a short novel, a bit dated: it seems to be rooted in the post-WW I malaise. The head Lama predicts doom for civilization, because of our warrior tendencies. Yet WW-I happened just a few years later. The structure of the book is a man recounting a story, like Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Presidential election is coming up soon. Im not too fond of either candidate: Kerry is an wealthy, elite New Englander (reminds me of the Kennedys); and Bush got the job just because of his name. Bush is a draft dodger. Kerry is a gold digger that twice married super-rich women. Where are the normal guys that aren't corrupted by money and campaign contributions? Where is Jimmy Stewart (Mr Smith Goes to Washington?). I suppose Jimmy Carter could qualify: too bad he had the Iranian hostage crisis in his final year. Ralph Nader, even if you disagree with his policies, you must admit he is not corrupt. Speaking of Ralph Nader, he had the guts recently to challenge the remarkable influence that Israel wields over the US government (see http://www.counterpunch.org/nader10162004.html or http://www.votenader.org/why_ralph/index.php?cid=119 ). Not many public figures in America have the courage to do that. 3 June 2004Read The Botany of Desire (author TBS) which surveys the origin and natural history of apples, tulips, potatoes, and marijuana. An outstanding book in the mold of The Pencil, where the author selects a common, yet often overlooked object, and delves into the object and reveals fascinating history and details. The most memorable revelation in this book is the prevalence of cuttings rather than growth by seed. Every single red delicious apple tree in the world was grown from a shoot of another red delicious, and grafted onto a root stock. Planting a seed from a red delicious will not generate a red delicious tree. Thus, new apple varieties only arise by breeders planting seeds (random? or carefully cross-bred?) and hoping for a good result. The same for tulips, of course: which come from bulbs The only way to reproduce a desirable variety is to chop a bulb into several pieces. Therefore, when a new, marketable tulip is identified (from a seed .. which takes about 5 to 7 years!) the grower must cut up the bulb into, say 6 pieces, then grow them a year, then cut them up, and so on. Exponential growth is fast, but it still takes 4 or 5 years to get enough bulbs to start selling them commercially (and that is after the several years of growth from the first seed). This reminds me of roses, which are also replicated by grafting cuttings onto root stocks. One source says that varieties tend to degrade after 20 or 30 years. I'm not sure why: do new diseases arise that the old plant is not resistant to? Or does the DNA get degraded after decades of reproduction? The author says that apples, before 1920, were grown in the USA primarily to brew hard apple cider. He says that prohibition put a big dent in the apple-growing industry, so the industry started a marketing campaign ("an apple a day keeps the doctor away") to boost sales for consumption by families. And it worked. 19 May 2004Read The Third Chimpanzee (Jared Diamond) by the author of the prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel. His new book is a rambling discourse on how humans differ from other animals, much like Desmond Morris' The Naked Ape. This book is a collection of lots of neat tidbits and facts, but doesn't have an overriding theme that GG&S did. The author did surprise me: His first book implied that any shortcomings in a culture (such as poverty, poor infrastructure, laziness, lack of art, lack of education, lack of health care, etc) are primarily due to geographic constraints, rather than to poor attitudes and values. I never agreed with that hypothesis, and labeled the author an extreme liberal. But his new book has some views that are more conservative: specifically, he gives some examples of primitive cultures who committed horrible ecological crimes:
These examples are a long time coming. I am an environmentalist myself, but I was always skeptical about the reverence some environmentalists held for Native Americans. My readings of the history of Native Americans showed that they were not at all concerned with the environment, and instead were rather greedy and short-sighted, and did not have a notion of "balance" with mother nature. I always believed that the concept of American Indians carefully living in balance with nature was propaganda. The author claims that the races of many arose primarily from sexual selection rather than natural selection (natural selection is "survival of the fittest"; whereas sexual selection are traits that arose because individuals found those traits attractive in the opposite sex when selecting a mate). I suppose that makes some sense (hair color, hair texture, beards vs beardless, etc), but dark skin may have a natural-selection advantage in the sunny tropics; and slanted eyes may have a natural-selection advantage in the blinding light of the artic. Darwin's book The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex was the seminal work that originally defined sexual selection (this was a follow-up to his earlier The Origin of Species, which focused on natural selection). Darwin gave dozens of great examples of sexual selection in animals, but deliberately avoided humans, leaving the reader to draw their own conclusions (what is the purpose of large breasts in female humans? or beards on men? or deep voices in men? hairy armpits? and so on). In general, the animals that Darwin describes follow a certain pattern:
But then these preponderances are all suspect, because Darwin was a male himself. The book Sexual Selections addresses that issue. 14 May 2004Read The River (1999, E. Hooper) a book about the origin of AIDS. He examines the appearance of AIDS in the late 1960's and explores the various theories of how it was transmitted from African primates (called SIV for Simian Imm. Virus) to humans. Most scientists subscribe to the theory that AIDS came from humans eating a raw monkey, or a monkey biting a human. The author promotes a more controversial theory (he is not the first to do so): that SIV was transmitted to humans in 1957/1958 when about 400,000 poor Africans in Uganda/Congo were given polio vaccine (as part of the first large-scale polio vaccination), some of which was tainted with SIV. Then the SIV mutated to HIV in the human hosts, which led to AIDS after a latency of 2 to 9 years. This is called the OPV/AIDS theory. The author does not suggest that AIDS was introduced deliberately by the west (as was suggested by last years Nobel Peace prize winner) but rather it was an accident that no one could detect at the time. The polio vaccines were (and still are?) processed by growing them in a medium of monkey kidneys. In the 1950s and 60s, the kidneys contained several monkey viruses, including one that killed hundreds of humans in the 1960s before it was eliminated from the kidney supply. No one knows, for sure, if the 1950s vaccines contained SIV or not. The only remaining sample of a 1950s era polio vaccine is in the possession of the Wistar Institute (which ran the 1957/8 African immunization campaign) and they refuse to release it for testing. Furthermore, no one is really sure if those samples really are from the 1950s or not). The most interesting thing about the book is not the theory, but the fact that the author got stonewalled at every turn by the scientific establishment. The establishment refuses to discuss the hypothesis or publish any papers about it. The establishment clearly is afraid of the repercussions if the theory is proven true, because it would have severe racist overtones. All the evidence, however, is that the scientists were working altruistically, and many of them in the 1950s volunteered to receive the vaccine themselves. The reader ends up siding with the author, because the author is excruciatingly objective and thorough: he took 10 years to do the research. He is the first to admit that his research does not prove the OPV/AIDS hypothesis (the Wistar Institute would have to cooperate to prove it one way or another), but the book leaves the reader questioning the honesty and forthrightness of the scientific establishment. [A contrary view (prompted by the book, no less) is "CHAT oral polio vaccine was not the source of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 group M for humans." - Clinical Infectious Diseases 2001;32:1068-1084 http://www.mast.queensu.ca/~tday/EvoMed/Plotkin2001a.pdf 13 April 2004Read Why They Kill (1999, R. Rhodes), an analysis of the causes of violent criminal behavior, based on the research of Lonnie Athens. The thrust of the book is that violent behavior is more due to environment (child abuse, neglect, violent surroundings) than genetics. The suggested remedy is non-violent upbringings, especially in juvenile correction facilities. This conclusion is contrary to the conservative premise that individuals need to take personal responsibility for their actions, and cannot claim they are victims of a bad childhood. 10 April 2004Read Bad Boy Ballmer (2002, Maxwell), a profile of Microsoft's CEO. He is a very enthusiastic overachiever and a driving force behind Microsoft's success. The book says that 30% of all CEOs (of high-tech companies) are Jewish, and that 33% of all US multi-millionaires are Jewish (Ballmer is Jewish). Those statistics seem a bit hard to believe, since Jews account for only about 3% of the US population. On the other hand, the book quotes Mark Twain who says that [Jewish] contributions to the world's list of great names are away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. Certainly the Jewish culture values achievement and professional careers, and there is that ineffable drive that Jews have above and beyond Christians and Hindus, who can rely on the rewards of an afterlife, and so do not feel so compelled to excel in this life. Looking at the supreme court (9%) or the US Senate (11%) or professional walks of life (Doctors, Lawyers) Jews are represented far more than the overall population portion would suggest. The author also quotes Alan Dershowitz who acknowledges that Jews "are often offensive to more passive Christians" in business negotiations. That reminds me of a friend MC who works in a bank in Los Angeles. Her branch is in a neighborhood populated primarily by Jews and Iranians, and she complains that the customers are much more rude and pushy than non-middle-eastern customers. The plain truth is that "turning the other cheek" is a new testament tradition, whereas shrewd, aggressive bargaining is a Semitic characteristic. 7 April 2004Read The Great Arc (2000, John Keay) about the mapping of India 1810 to 1860 by the Briton Lambton and his successor Everest. Specifically, they geodetically triangulated the subcontinent using a theodolite to measure horizontal and vertical angles on hundreds of large triangles across india (20 to 50 miles per edge). They measured the length of a side of a triangle about every 100 triangles or so. The length was measured with a "chain" and it was a very painstaking process. They shifted to a temperature-compensating chain about half way into the process. I'm dying of curiosity to know how the chain worked, since it must have been extremely difficult to move forward in a straight line, and to prevent small errors from accumulating. Many triangle vertices are permanent points (mountain tops, buildings, towers) but many were just temporary (a wooden tower was built, then removed). 18 Mar 2004Finally figured out the source of the phrase "Sabine Women": It is from ancient roman history. Livy (in The History of Rome, circa 0 BC) says that Romans, around 700 BC, needed more women in their town (which was initially populated by opening it as a refuge for criminals and refugees); so they invited the people from the neighboring towns to a festival. During the festival, the Romans kidnapped the unmarried Sabine girls. The Sabines did retaliate later, but were defeated by the Romans in battle. Livy says that the Sabine women later came to accept their fate because their Roman husbands were devoted. I've heard the phrase from the musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and in the name of a sculpture. Finished installing our kitchen cabinets. Found some neat pulls that look timeless:
10 Mar 2004Read about the notion of Time's Arrow: The concept is that every law of physics is reversible when considered in the time dimension. That is, any chain of events can be "played backwards" and it will still comply with all laws of physics. This is easy to understand at a microscopic level, but a bit hard to swallow when you think of examples like:
This topic, of course, is closely related to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, since that law implies that time does have a preferred direction: Things move forward in a direction that causes entropy to increase; that causes things to fall to a lower state of potential energy. A system will become more ordered, less uniform, only if energy is supplied from an external source. Things fall, things level out, things homogenize. Stacking blocks requires energy. Blocks falling down is "forward". What was the initial state of the universe? Is it just coincidence that the universe started super-organized (super low entropy)? Thus, we have only one way to go? Could there be a universe that has an initial condition that is super high entropy, but the initial condition causes things to become more ordered? For every state of a system, there is a reverse state that can be obtained by simply reversing the velocities (and other states) of all molecules. This reversal will cause the system to run backward (decreasing entropy). Thus, 50% of all initial states will cause a system to decrease in entropy, and thus violate the 2nd law. Does Heisenberg's uncertainly principle come into play? 12 Feb 2004Read A New Kind of Science (2002, Stephen Wolfram). See my review at Amazon.com. The author is the very intelligent (and very wealthy) creator of the Mathematic software program. This book is his magnum opus, and it was heavily hyped before publication. Wolfram himself is a bit of a recluse, and doesn't collaborate with other scientists: None of the book's contents was published in journals prior to publication. The book was published by Wolfram's own publishing company. He published the book himself, and he did not have an editor, or anyone else to give him a sanity check. The book is very unusual. It is large, with lots of illustrations, but the pictures have no illustration numbers (this is Wolfram's own idea, and it is rather novel, but not too confusing). All the pictures were produced within his Mathematica program. The main thesis of the book is that computers can be used to model phenomena (the "new kind of science") that were impossible to study before computers (the "old kind of science"). Specifically, he focuses on his specialty: Computer automata, which are simple recursive algorithms. I didn't like the book at all. Mostly, I was put off by his arrogance and failure to cite others who did similar work. His self-centeredness is astonishing. He talks about himself and his breakthroughs ad nauseum, but rarely even gives passing mention to others. As a computer engineer, I was not too impressed with his thesis. I (and my colleagues) have been using computer modeling for decades to model the world: using simple and not-so-simple algorithms to generate very complex behavior. From simulations, to the game of life, to fractals, to weather modeling, to recursion, ... this is routine and old hat. His thesis has tremendous overlap with other work that has been going on recently, notably in chaos theory and recursion and computer modeling, but he neglects to discuss the other work in detail. He does demonstrate some automata that exhibit very complex behavior, but then he makes the mistake of suggesting, but not discussing, that the automata are related to complex phenomena such as weather, evolution, economic, hydraulics, biology, etc. This is a major shortcoming: Either he should say that his automata do accurately model these phenomena, or he should say that they don't (but are similar). For example, he suggests that the stripes on a tiger may be based on an automata. A suggestion is not enough: Is he saying it is, or isn't? Granted, one philosophical approach to biology and evolution is that we are all just deterministically expressing ourselves based on our DNA and surroundings, but if Wolfram want to claim that all life is just an automata, he should explicitly say so (but he wont, because others before him already made that claim). Furthermore, this topic was already covered by Dawkins in his book The Blind Watchmaker. Most puzzling is his grand finale: The major point of the book is his "Principle of Computational Equivalence". This is supposed to be the major revelation. But he never clearly states what it is. Other reviewers on Amazon say that Wolfram plagiarized others by the name of Zuse, Fredkin, and Schmidhuber, but I cannot comment on that since I'm not familiar with them. The one worthwhile thing Wolfram did do is study lots of automata (recursive formulae). He studied them, compared them, and graphically presented them. Although other sicentists maybe studied a handful of automata (Mandlebrot sets, Lorenze attractors, etc) Wolfram studied more, and in a more thorough fashion. 4 Feb 2004Read On War (Vom Kriege; 1832, Clausewitz). Very famous book ("well known but little read" says the introduction), famous not so much for its tactical instruction, or its pithy quotes, but rather from stating the important, yet elusive, principle that "War is merely the continuation of policy by other means". A corollary is "A nation does not carry out war for war's sake, but rather to obtain a specific political objective". And the more remote, but more significant, corollary: "The military must be obedient to the civilian branch of the government". The tactics discussed in the book are outdated, of course, but his style and philosophy is very engaging. He wisely focuses on concrete examples of battles, and generally avoids reducing his advice to abstract tips and rules. He says that any military strategist that focuses on rules, hints, and tips is a fool. When ne does try to summarize a point in an abstract way, he wisely accompanies his rule with several exceptions. He is fully aware that this approach makes his book less quotable, less readable, but his integrity refuses to let him succumb to aphorisms. His writing style is very clear and understandable: Something an engineer could appreciate. He criticizes authors that use lots of jargon and clichés to hide the fact that they don't have much to say. Reminds me of Strunk and Whites advice about writing in general. I'm not sure who said "A battle plan is everything before the battle starts, and worthless after the battle starts". 1 Feb 2004Read Chaos (1987, Gleck). Tolerable book: no formulas (must have been scared off by the publisher's adage "each formula cuts the sales in half"). Too personality-centric (tidbits about scientists dress or habits), but there is no theme, no point, no development. And no clear definition of chaos. Just a collection of math/physical phenomena that the author has lumped under the rubric "chaos". Some samples include:
The Lorenz strange attractor was created by Lorenz to model simple weather inside a closed box: Heat is applied from the bottom, and (looking at a 2D cross-section) heat rises in the middle and descends down the sides. From this, Lorenz developed some simple differential equations, namely: dx / dt = a (y - x) dy / dt = x (b - z) - y dz / dt = xy - c z For constants a,b,c. The parametric 3D curve traced by this differential equation is non-repeating, and its path is vastly different for small changes in initial XYZ stage. I get the impression that these equations are now more used just for studying chaos, and have lost their initial usefulness for studying thermodynamics. The Lorenz Waterwheel is very, very interesting: A physical model of this has been created: the concept is to build a large wheel, with a dozen or so buckets mounted around the perimeter, each with a constant leak/outflow at the bucket's bottom; and a single water source at the top of the large wheel, pouring water into (at most one bucket at a time): the rotational movement of the large wheel will be very chaotic. Here is a lame picture:
There is a really nice 2m diameter outdoor wheel, but I cant find any photos of it. Some info is: "Fachhochschule Brugg-Windisch (Switzerland) was constructed in the context of Environmental Ethics Courses introduced by Fridolin Stähli and Fritz Gassmann in the 1990s". Ah, I finally found a picture of the real waterwheel and a Java applet: http://chaos.nus.edu.sg/teaching/GEM2505/Java/Waterwheel/Wwheel1.HTML This site has two independent variables: (1) the water flow (inflow and total ooutflow are identical); and (2) friction ("braking"). Depending on these two chosen values, there are four possible outcomes: (a) constant rotation; not rotating at all; pendulum; or chaotic. So not all situations give rise to chaotic motion. The collection of topics addressed in the book make one wonder what the definition of "chaos" is. Some things that seem to fall under that rubric:
I'm not sure I'd classify weather and Jupiter's red spot under the topic of chaos: I think they both involve very complex, non-linear fluid dynamics, and I doubt they can be defined using simple algorithms. 13 Jan 2004Winter in the inland northwest: Got my first casualty of freezing: the faucet in the garage sink busted. Tiny leak, but a leak nonetheless.
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