Contracting for a Fall

Patricia Kuhl: The linguistic genius of babies (TED)

This talk is just fascinating

it suggests that if you really want your kids to be awesome then you should expose them to as many native foreign language speakers as possible for as much as possible and starting as soon as they are born.




and this too

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TED:Money can't buy Happiness

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Good buy? Windows?

oh Microsoft you gave me
all the worst years of my life
all the crashes and the blue screens
suffered through so many nights
I was so buzy in the backrooms
writing work-arounds for bugs
in your costly new releases
foisted on us guileless mugs

and i'd been always
one forced to buy you


I've been using and working with computers since 1978. Back then i caught the bug about the time i started university. I recall walking through the University of New South Wales wondering how i was going to learn about computers. There was no computer science course. There were only papers that one could take in math, science and engineering that included some computer programming. I enrolled in a course in surveying because that seemed to offer me the most options to take papers that included computing. I learned FORTRAN, APL, Pascal and how to program HP programmable calculators. The FORTRAN programming was done on punch cards.

I started a computer science degree in 1983. That then gave me a bunch of majors. I was right into DCL and Unix. I was an avid owner of any computer i could afford. I learned every language i could get my hands on an interpreter or compiler for. I had the very first copy of K & R in the country.

I remember when DOS and Windows came along and most particularly when MS Word came along and gave us WYSIWYG. Gave? No way - MS always cost big big bucks. But the thing is, even though there were way better things around (Tex, Unix, DCL) the cost of a PC and the rush by "business" people to computerize saw MS take off and what i have always thought was true rubbish rose to dominate the desktop market. Oh yes there came NT but even NT was a pale shadow of the power of Unix and C.

Oh woe is me how gawd awful it has been to watch. I have stuck with *nix and time to time have been pure Solaris or Linux but work has always been easier to get on Windows no matter just how bad it has been.

Sure Windows has had some highlights though all of them very costly. But mostly it has become the same as it was when IBM was on top - gutless, uneducated and talentless people have dominated the business market for a long time and they have been stuck on buying Windows because they think they can understand it. Idiots.

The overly long dominance of Microsoft is now drawing to a close. They will retain some niches for some time i am sure (eg SQL Server) and even produce some good stuff (who knows - though Nokia is staring down the barrel of having made the wrong bet there). The writing is on the wall. Linux and other Unix variants will dominate.

Just recently i have completely abandoned Microsoft at home. My home network is now all Linux Fedora 14 and 16. I'll never go back to Microsoft. Not when i can have the sort of power i have here at the price i pay for it all: $0.

The internet runs on Linux. The world is rushing to adopt Android which is Linux. The Apple devices all run a version of Linux. Routers and switches, embedded devices in cars and fridges and almost everything else electronic are Linux. Many of the emerging weapons technologies (like hive-minded swarms of thopters and other RS and WD platforms) use variants of Linux.

Good bye Windows and good riddance.

Nervous Structure (Field) (2012)

This is pretty cool.


Nervous Structure (field) (2012) from Cristobal Mendoza on Vimeo.

Thanks to Neuro Times for the link

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Nuclear and Coal Swan Song Video

This is pretty, well, um, er, funny?




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The Viagra Haircut

So here's what i learned from some young Asian women.

A (usually western) man who is in his late forties or older and who sports a shaved head is identified by the girls as having a "Viagra Haircut".

Western men who are going bald and who are looking for a younger woman will shave their heads because they think it makes them look younger. Often they are also getting to an age where they also need Viagra.

In fact what it communicates loud and clear is that such a man is looking for a young Asian girl and that because he is not smart enough to figure out that he is telegraphing he is an easy (ie stupid) target - the girls will play him for every cent they can get out of him while they try to figure out how much money he really has and whether or not he is likely to marry and if so how hard it might be to get a portion of his wealth. All the while they are laughing about you behind your back (or in front of your face if you don't understand their language).

Men of the same age who do not sport the haircut (balding or otherwise) are considered to be unknowns - ie you have to first convince them you are stupid before they will treat you as such.


So guys, if you are sporting a shaved head in Asia you'd better realize that the girls think you are stupid.

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ps - check out the viagra haircut on the slimy banker in this video - he comes in at 2:40



(picture from http://quiddityofdelusion.blogspot.com.au)

here's a great Viagra Haircut

the Atheist and the Christian

"John!"

"Bill is that you?"

"Yes, gosh, it's great to see you. What's it been? ten years?"

"Yes, the last time was at the graduation. How've you been?"

"Great! I'm married now with two kids. What about you?"

"Well, i'm getting married next month. Fantastic girl. Amazing family."

"So, John, you still trying to convert everyone?"

"No. Actually, i'm an atheist now. You know, evolution and all that."

"Unbelievable John. I'd have never imagined you to give up Christianity. It was, like, your defining Characteristic."

"Well Bill, we can all learn. It was like a light went off in my head. It was my fiance who helped me understand. She and her family are atheists. Like you."

"Uh, funny that John. You see, i'm no longer an atheist. I've been saved."

"You're kidding me! You? You were the ultimate atheist right through school. You knew more about evolution than even the science teachers. What happened?"

"Well, i guess i had time to think about it. And my wife, she's a Christian. She opened my eyes to God's Truth."

"That's amazing. Who'd have thought? You! A Christian! Absolutely unbelievable."

"Yeh. Weird ay."

"You believe all that stuff about God?"

"Yeh. I do."

"Like you believe that the earth is only 5000 years old?"

"Yeh. Really. It is."

"You're shitting me."

"No. It's true. Evolution is a scam."

"Well i'll be fucked!."

"Er, i'd prefer it if you'd not be so profane."

"Sorry Bill. I just can't get over it. You really mean it, you've taken to heart everything?"

"Yes. Jesus saved me."

"The Ten Commandments too?"

"Yes, absolutely"

"So, what's the Third Commandment?"

"Ah, 'Don't Kill?'"

"You mean you believe in God now but you don't know the Ten Commandments?"

"Well you don't need to know all the details to believe something. Anyway that was what you were into - all that Bible reading all through school."

"I guess so. Yeh maybe you're right. I can't claim to know a lot about evolution."

"Really? So, what has more impact on diversity - sex or mutation?"

"Ah, mutation i guess. Is that right?"

"You know what John. I recon we should both go get drunk."

"Yeh. I think that's a good idea. You can teach me all about God and I'll teach you all about evolution."

"Crazy."

"Aint it the truth."


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Stocks will go up!

According to Robert Trivers (The Folly of Fools, pp 133, 134 "Positivity in old age") "by age sixty (if not earlier), a striking bias sets in towards positive social perceptions and memories". "[Older people] simply do not attend to negaive information".

Baby Boomers hold a lot of wealth. Combine this wealth with a bias towards the positive and a blindness to the negative and it's quite likely that over the next decade, as more and more boomers enter this age, we shall see some impact on prices. Many still feel that they have not saved enough. What else are they to do but try to reap some profits? If enough are buying it will contribute to positive feedback - sending prices even higher. There certainly does not seem to be too many negatives hindering economic growth - energy seems quite safe for now.

Of course, i am approaching that age group, so maybe i am blind to the negatives.

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Black Swans from a Black Swan

Comment in response to:


    The Black Swan of Cairo, and here, here and here.




Until about 65 million years ago dinosaurs filled every ecological niche imaginable. We poor mammals survived by our wits and tactics we evolved to protect our young for as long as possible. Not only we mammals but a few  other species evolved tactics that kept their young hidden - crocodiles, turtles, birds. They were not to know that a Black Swan event would turn these strategies to another advantage. But that's how natural selection works - traits that aid survival for one reason can lead to survival for an altogether different reason.

The dinosaurs happily laid their eggs in the open air and for tens of millions of years the balmy climate incubated them. Temperature volatility was unknown. Mom dinosaur need only be nearby to protect her clutch - the climate would do the rest.

Eggs can incubate in a very narrow temperature range. Vary outside that range and nothing hatches. If by chance you were a species that evolved to hide eggs where how you did so also provided insulation or warming from the ocean or decomposing vegetable matter your eggs would still hatch. If you were carrying your young around inside they too were protected by your high metabolism (developed to better run from hungry dinosaurs).

Came an unforeseen event - a meteor impact that lowered global temperatures by more than eggs could tolerate and lo - there were no longer any dinosaurs (other than the few that survived in some remote isolated warm places that became dwindling islands of last refuge against the explosion of other species that survived - like us).

I sometimes wonder if by blanket inoculation against all disease there will come a time that, because of collapse of our infrastructure, vaccines will no longer be available. Nor insulin, nor plentiful clean water.

Of course, Murphy always being ready to do his best (worst), such a collapse will come when there are no books left anywhere - we all depend on google for everything and with it gone not only will we not have access to vaccines and modern medicine but we'd not have access to information with which we might recover. We could go from 9 billion to 90 in a matter of decades. Whatever species had been suppressed by us would then be let loose - from viruses and bacteria to everything you can imagine - rats, cockroaches.....

Safety is a two edged sword - one day we too might find ourselves like the dinosaurs - totally dependent on a very narrow set of conditions.

But then, all species have their life cycle.


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What do other's have to say?


    One-way Evolution (New Scientist)