My new blog, where I'm keeping up to date content...

The Neuroti-Kart!

Did you know? v2

An official update to the original 2005 "Shift Happens" video from Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod, this June 2007 update includes new and updated statistics, thought-provoking questions and a fresh design. For more information, or to join the conversation, please visit http://shifthappens.wikispaces.com.

Time and relativity

I was reminded today of the theory of relativity, and in particular the idea that funny things start to happen when you try to travel as fast as light. The idea is that in order to go as fast as light you need nearly infinitely large amounts of energy to get there and will suffer an effect known as time dilation.

For example, suppose you travel around the earth as fast or faster than the speed of light. In theory, you could move fast enough to get to the point where you started before the light you saw then had reached you, hence the effect of time travel.

What I often have to remind myself is that its not about where you're coming from, but where you are going to. The destination. Start a stopwatch on yourself and one at the destination at the same time (never mind the logistics of that) and when you get to the destination, they should show exactly the same time regardless of how quickly you got there. It's not about the time that you think the destination has from where you are, but their time (assuming you use the same type of clock).

So when someone looks at the stars and says the light we can see left there umpteen years ago, thats just a feature of the story light tells. If we traveled faster than radio waves, which is a good deal slower than light, the same effect occurs. It's just not true time travel.

Spring is on its way!

Check these out from Jaime Walsh, a local garden fan. She has a really good eye and a great zoom lens! The pics are linked to her Flickr photostream. I especially like the one of Wax-eyes tasting new cherry blossoms below.

Risk and partnership

Thats what I call taking a chance! Not sure exactly where this pic came from, but it definitely carries a story. I immediately thought of the risks a couple has to take sometimes to keep a partnership going. Scary stuff eh...

Intelligent Tire.. Video

Intelligent Tire..

Intelligent Tire, just what the marshals always wanted!

Meaning in Life, in the now

Travis Eneix has a really interesting blog about making stories and individual meaning/interpretation,

The mechanism of meaning making is vitally important to our survival, as individuals and as a species. It is not to be shunned. Rather, it is to be recognized, and kept in perspective for what it is: a useful tool. When it become more than that, when it become a replacement, and substitute, for reality the tool becomes a poison.

28 Days

I just finished watching a movie called 28 Days, in which Sandra Bullock plays a person sentenced to drug and alcohol rehab. Its a feel good movie, I highly recommend it to you. Check out the user comments in that link.

What really amazed me was how intensely I experienced the movie. Especially when it not really the genre of movie that I would normally watch. Before I knew it the movie was already over, and I'd spent the last couple of hours absolutely glued to the screen! How do they do that! Kinda like The Weatherman that I recently reviewed.

I guess it helps that Sandra Bullock is easy on the eyes, but there was so much more to it than that. I've seen other movies shes been in and they didn't leave me feeling so deeply affected. Even more, it was in a positive way I think. Recently her movies have plots that are - if not necessarily inspirational - about being gentle with other peoples stories I guess. Seems to me that this was managed without the rosy colored glasses too. Movies this rare show how much of an art is involved in telling good stories.

PS: I don't really want to know exactly how they catch our attention that way, I'm prepared to just accept it as cool thing :)

Winter gardens

Despite the mid winter weather we have been subject to lately, there are still a few creatures about we might not expect to see otherwise. This somewhat bedraggled butterfly was near the top of the gardens by the Camellia courtyard. It had found one of the few warm spots and despite the interest of several people, appeared to have no intention of moving.

There's something missing

The best sci-fi movies

SCI-FI MOVIES YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED is a fascinating list of movies some of which I've seen, some which I want to.

Pay special attention to the last entry, especially if you are familiar with the Wiggles kids show and their character 'Zardozap'. Who knew... lol

Information and knowledge

I recently came across this quote,

Information is knowledge, learning is wisdom.

I'm not really comfortable with this, both axioms appear to be a fallacy. So I attempted to come up with something better.

Information creates learning,
Learning builds knowledge,
Knowledge contributes to wisdom.

To me information doesn't exist without some type of filter for organizing it. Otherwise its not useful, so by definition might as well be noise. Therefore the filter could represent some type of parallel evolution between a capacity to learn and the value of the information.

As filter(s) become more complex, we might suggest that they describe a representation of the information, knowledge emerging through the learning process. So knowledge is the result of a kind of interactive process in an environment

And finally, knowledge can contribute to, but does not always guarantee the deep insight that is wisdom.

I will think on this some more... I'm sure others have argued similar points so I should do some research. Any of you with suggestions please leave comments here.

Semantic AND intentional honesty

This article I Think You're Fat - Esquire describes the interesting insight of living with fewer intellectual filters. IMHO it's not just about being honest with 'others', but as Aristotle says, "We are what we repeatedly do". Like the author, I'm not 100% comfortable with this solution, but can see that it must be an all or nothing approach. As soon as a little bit of filtering creeps in, we find the whole house of cards reverting to the way we used to communicate. Lets face it, if you find a situation is uncomfortable, its usually because you have to adapt and change in some way to cope.

I wonder if the intellectual filters we eliminate by this approach are then replaced by a deepening emotional intelligence. Our intentions in communicating can be more clearly conveyed because there are less internal conflicts getting in the way, while our conviction/passion is more evident. Hmm...

Ontologies and folksonomies

I'm concluding a special topic course for my computing degree, in which I submitted a paper contrasting ontologies with folksonomies and their relative merits in building knowledge representation. In particular I suggested that user interfaces such as those designed for digital libraries and other repository access might benefit more from collaborative folksonomies.

A interesting example of this approach is being trialled at the Bibsonomy web site where instead of the system spending expensive processing power attempting to generate the best semantic ontology for collaborators to employ, users define the site semantics as the site grows, and language restrictions are reduced through the opportunity to use made-up words or conjoint words etc. They have used a highly structured model for the tags that maps nicely to relational database tables.

This article "Collaboration: a case for ontological commitment" describes some basic approaches used in group settings that I believe are a bit inadequate. It seems the author is generally discussing projects or activities which require time extended participation. She also states that she is not discussing semantic ontology per se, but isn't that what is suggested be developed, or have I missed the point?

By using tools like Bibisonomy, the use of folksonomies provide an opportunity for group semantics to emerge during online project/group exercise life cycles rather than needing to be explicitly established beforehand.

The following two references I found extremely relevant. I have included links which are current to the best of my knowledge.

Hotho, A., Jaschke, R., Schmitz, C., and Stumme, G. (2006), BibSonomy: A social bookmark and publication sharing system, In de Moor, A., Polovina, S., Delugach, H. ed, Proceedings of the first Conceptual Structures Tool Interoperability Workshop of the 14th International Conference on Conceptual Structures, pp 87-102, Aalborg University, Denmark from the publication home or the Bibsonomy website.

Longva, T. (2004), Sharing knowledge using rich representations, Retrieved on 19 June 2007 from here