Archive for the ‘Info’ Category

The IVR Cheat Sheet by Paul English

Thursday, December 29th, 2005

screenshotThe IVR (“Interactive Voice Response”) Cheat Sheet, a simple list of the keypad numbers you have to press in order to reach an actual human being when you call the customer service line of different companies and government agencies. For the main list, click 1. If you would like further information about the cheat sheet, click 2. To submit an update to the cheat sheet, click 3. For a FAQ, click 4. To view companies with great customer service, click 5.

Collapse of civilization

Thursday, December 29th, 2005

Collapse of civilization: Not necessarily a bad thing Many will no doubt find the foregoing discussion of collapse depressing or pessimistic. In “How Civilizations Fall: A Theory of Catabolic Collapse”, John Michael Greer hints at why this is, writing, “Even within the social sciences, the process by which complex societies give way to smaller and simpler ones has often been presented in language drawn from literary tragedy, as though the loss of sociocultural complexity necessarily warranted a negative value judgment. This is understandable, since the collapse of civilizations often involves catastrophic human mortality and the loss of priceless cultural treasures, but like any value judgment it can obscure important features of the matter at hand.” Greer goes on to characterize collapse in terms of ecological succession. …Collapse happens precisely because it improves our lives—and it happens when the alternative is no longer tolerable.

holy cow!

Wednesday, December 28th, 2005

Study: Cows Excel At Selecting Leaders
Recent studies on leadership in cows and other grazing herbivores suggest that intelligence, inquisitiveness, confidence, experience and good social skills help to determine which animals will become leaders within herds.

The findings suggest that, at least among these animals, individuals are not necessarily “born leaders,” and that bullying, selfishness, size and strength are not recognized as suitable leadership qualities.

“The fact that in groups of animals of different age, leaders are amongst the oldest animals suggests that it’s not innate, but the result of previous experience,” said Bertrand Dumont, lead author of a recent Applied Animal Behavior Science paper on leadership in a group of grazing heifers.

Dumont is a researcher at INRA, the national institute of agricultural research in Saint-Genès-Champanelle, France.

Continue reading …

The mathematics of Sudoku, a puzzle that boasts “No math required!”

Tuesday, December 27th, 2005

Unwed Numbers
The mathematics of Sudoku, a puzzle that boasts “No math required!”

A few years ago, if you had noticed someone filling in a crossword puzzle with numbers instead of letters, you might well have looked askance. Today you would know that the puzzle is not a crossword but a Sudoku. The craze has circled the globe. It’s in the newspaper, the bookstore, the supermarket checkout line; Web sites offer puzzles on demand; you can even play it on your cell phone.

Continue reading …

the theory of six degrees of separation

Monday, December 26th, 2005

The theory that everyone in the world is separated by at most five acquaintances was first proposed in a 1929 short story by the Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy. The story was called “Chains,” and while the six degrees theory was a purely fictional conceit, the idea proved popular.

In 1967, psychologist Stanley Milgram tried to test the theory by sending several letters to random people in the Midwest. The letter featured the name, address, and occupation of a single person on the East Coast; participants were asked to forward the letters to the people who they thought were most likely to know the person. It took an average of five intermediaries to reach the target.

The experiment came into some scrutiny afterwards, but the results were published in Psychology Today and gave birth to the phrase “six degrees of separation.” Playwright John Guare popularized the term with his play, which later became a film starring a then up-and-coming Will Smith.

But get this — the original 1967 experiment was repeated in 2001 with email, and the same results came back! Then there’s that whole Kevin Bacon business….

Who was Granny Smith?

Sunday, December 25th, 2005

Who was the mysterious matron of the green apple? Cathy’s Apple Page states Granny Smith was an Australian woman who stumbled on her famous variety after throwing out a bunch of apples in the mid-19th century.

As the story goes, from this pile of bad apples a young tree sprung, bearing a light green fruit that was tart but not excessively sour. The new strain of apple could also withstand lengthy bouts of storage and shipping.

The story is true, mostly. The city of Ryde in New South Wales, Australia, hosts her official biography. Born in 1799 in Sussex, England, Maria Ann Sherwood emigrated with her husband Thomas Smith to Australia in 1838 to plant orchards in the new Australian colony.

Granny Smith developed her famous fruit late in life. Her distinctive green apple came from a seedling tree that had grown from the remains of “some French crab apples grown in Tasmania.” She never lived to see its success. In 1870, just two years before folks began cultivating her new seedling tree, she passed away. Granny Smith apples won first prize in a local agricultural fair in 1891, and five years later they were being shipped around the world.

Australia’s Earliest Footprints Found

Friday, December 23rd, 2005

The shifting sands of time have revealed Australia’s earliest human footprints, giving a glimpse of life at the height of the last ice age.

At tens of thousands of years old, the find is the largest group of human footprints from the Pleistocene era ever found.

Archaeologist Matthew Cupper of the University of Melbourne and colleagues reported their findings from the New South Wales Willandra Lakes World Heritage Area online ahead of print publication in the Journal of Human Evolution.

“It’s a little snapshot in time,” said Cupper. “The possibilities are endless in terms of getting a window into past Aboriginal society.”

Continue reading…

Horny and sensitive!

Tuesday, December 20th, 2005

nullThe narwhal, often termed “The Unicorn of the Sea,” has a really odd tusk. It’s long, spiraled, and there’s only one of ‘em per animal. Its purpose has been disputed for ages, but at long last, it seems that the answer has been found. And it’s pretty damn cool.

Bumblebees Recognize People

Tuesday, December 20th, 2005

Don’t be too proud of never forgetting a face: It turns out even a humble bumblebee can distinguish and recall different human faces, say researchers who have conducted experiments on the surprisingly canny insects.

Researchers in the UK have found that bumblebees show a remarkable ability to spot the same human face even days after training.

“The more we study these creatures, the more we find they have abilities like ours,” observed insect vision researcher Mandyam Srinivasan of Australian National University in Canberra.

From bees to wasps, spiders and even sheep, other animals have proven they can not only recognize our faces, but they navigate mazes, match objects and shapes and even associate smells with previous experiences.

“Sometimes I wonder what we are doing with two-kilogram brains,” mused Srinivasan.

Bumblebees, for their part, have brains weighing less than a tenth of a gram — that’s about 20,000 times less massive than the human brain.

The larger implications of such a small number of neurons doing such complex tasks are intriguing, but not obvious, says Dyer. There is the possibility, for instance, that someday humans who have experienced brain damage could borrow the bumblebee trick — whatever the trick is — to relearn facial recognition and other lost abilities, he says.


Continue reading …

Warped geometry speeds airline boarding

Monday, December 19th, 2005

What’s the most efficient way to get passengers on an airplane – boarding from front-to-back or a “free for all”? The answer may surprise you. (Here’s the full paper in PDF format.)

Neural network sorts the blockbusters from the flops

Monday, December 19th, 2005

Will the 3-hour special-effects-loaded remake of King Kong be a box office smash or a complete turkey? For movie producers, getting such questions right can be worth millions, and now they have a computer system to help them work it out before a film is even made.

The idea comes from Ramesh Sharda, an information scientist at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, who has trained an artificial neural network to recognise what makes a successful movie (Expert Systems with Applications, vol 30, p 243).

Continue reading …

May be someday Neural network can sort – relationships….

Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked

Sunday, December 18th, 2005

Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked – Henry Jenkins points out errors in the myths we hear about videogames and those who play them. It’s nice to hear intelligent commentary that doesn’t run along the lines of the usual messages.

A to Z: The Year in Medicine 2005

Saturday, December 17th, 2005

This year, as every year, the struggle against disease was a grab bag of good and bad–vision and shortsightedness, courage and obtuseness, scientific masterstrokes and experiments that came to naught. It’s medicine’s historical dance, with every two steps forward matched by at least one step back. In a very good year, you might push that ratio to 3 to 1. TIME’s 2005 A-to-Z guide to the year in medicine tracks the highlights of the 12 months soon ending–and suggests that this year may have been one of the good ones.

By any measure, 2005’s biggest medical news came out of Hwang’s lab–despite the subsequent scandal. The earliest bulletin was the announcement that Hwang and his 45-person team had become the first to using cloning techniques to create stem cells from human patients suffering from diseases such as diabetes and spinal-cord injury. Tissue derived from those cells could, in theory, be implanted in the pancreas or spine with little chance that the body would rejected it. If such experiments work, the same approach could be applied to other parts of the body, such as the brain or heart.

Continue reading …

– L –
LAUGHTER Remember the last time you laughed so hard you couldn’t stop? Good. Do it again. Laughter increases blood flow by causing the inner lining of blood vessels (the endothelium) to expand, according to a small study of healthy moviegoers who were shown both funny and distressing clips from films and then tested for the physical effects of each. With laughter, blood flow increased 22%; under stress, it decreased 35%.

Chameleon scarf coordinates with your outfit

Saturday, December 17th, 2005

People lacking any sense of fashion no longer need worry about their scarf clashing with their clothes this winter – researchers have created one that automatically changes colour to suit an outfit.

The colour-shifting garment, dubbed a chameleon shawl, was developed by Akira Wakita and colleagues at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan.

Interwoven into the scarf material are pixels containing red, blue and green light-emitting diodes (LEDs), so adjusting the brightness of each type of diode turns the scarf a different overall shade.

A small sensor embedded in the garment also enables it to identify the colour of the nearest item of clothing. A microcomputer then selects a suitable colour for the scarf itself to adopt.
Tasteful shade

“In the default setting, the microcomputer in the shawl is programmed to change to the coordinative colour of the input data,” Wakita told New Scientist.

This means that if its owner is wearing dark blue, for example, the scarf will instinctively turn a tasteful shade of light blue to match. “A kind of colour coordination will be established automatically,” Wakita says.

If, however, the wearer fancies making a more daring fashion statement, the scarf’s computer can be configured to match more unusual colours together. “Theoretically, about 4000 colours can be generated,” Wakita says. “However, the difference may not be perceivable for human eyes.”

The scarf was demonstrated at the International Symposium on Wearable Computing (ISWC2005) in Osaka, Japan, in October 2005.

Plain English Campaign

Friday, December 16th, 2005

The Plain English Campaign Awards have been published again. No Rumsfeldian “known unknowns” this time, just this from Rhodri Morgan:

The only thing which isn’t up for grabs is no change and I think it’s fair to say it’s all to play for, except for no change.”

The complete shortlist (word doc) and BBC report.

2003 awards previously

Merriam-Webster Open Dictionary

Friday, December 16th, 2005

Merriam-Webster Open Dictionary: “Have you spotted a new word or a new sense for an old word that hasn’t made it into the dictionary yet? Well, here’s your chance to add your discovery (and its definition) to Merriam-Webster’s Open Dictionary”. Some examples:

Snotcicle (verb) : a pendent mass of ice formed by the freezing of dripping snot

phonecrastinate (verb) : to put off answering the phone until caller ID displays the incoming name and number

scrax (noun) : the waxy coating that must be scratched off an instant lottery ticket

photostroller (noun) : Person who walks with camera ready to take photos.

e-nail (verb) : to expose yourself unwittingly, or to be exposed by another, by the forwarding of an e-mail containing personal comments to the person referred to in the message. One e-nails oneself most often by adding cc recipients to a long exchange, forgetting that the person added is referred to earlier in the exchange.

“Max e-nailed me when he cc’ed Sally on my message about her screw-up.”

(Via GeekPress.)

“park and walk” versus “cruise the lot.”

Tuesday, December 13th, 2005

Parking Space Roulette

It’s the holiday season, and the parking lot at the mall is busy. You’re looking for a parking space. What’s the best strategy for selecting a “good” spot quickly?

If the lot is really jammed, you take the first spot that you can find—no matter where it is or how inconvenient it might be.

At other times, you might seek a spot that keeps the distance you have to walk to the mall entrance to a minimum or cuts down the amount of driving that you have to do to find a spot (or a combination of the two, represented by the total time it takes you to reach the mall’s front door).

In one approach, you enter the parking lot, select a row near the lot’s fringe where you entered, and take the first open space.

Alternatively, you could gamble by driving to the row nearest to the mall entrance to look for the closest open space. If there isn’t an open space in the first row, you “cycle” to the next adjacent row and take an open space, if one is available. Otherwise, you return to the first row and again look for the closest open spot.

Several years ago, C. Richard Cassady of Mississippi State University and John E. Kobza, then at Virginia Tech, compared the two strategies: “park and walk” versus “cruise the lot.” Their study appeared in the journal Transportation Science.

Enlightened Technology: Prophet of the Electric Age

Wednesday, December 7th, 2005

Thomas Easley

Enlightened Technology
Prophet of the Electric Age
By
Thomas M. Easley © Copyright 2005
(with author’s permission)

Why is it so difficult for mankind to produce just and meaningful leadership? Why do small minded people, believing that acquisition of power increases intelligence, so often amass authority over the maintenance of societal well-being?

Are we certain, without doubt, that mankind is evolving?

Is there a link between technology and the concept of belief?

The human species is a self-organizing system wherein we, its comprising ingredients, exist as individual parts contributing to the species’ self-organization. This is much like an individual human body self-organizing its many parts. The immune and lymph systems, coordination, balance, soul, brain and heart functions, cellular and nerve functions, conscience, the senses, etc. all initiate and develop in conjunction with the mutual goal of shared authority over the life of the human body. As such the presence of leadership in the body of mankind represents a troubling deficiency, a failure in and of the organism to protect itself, to link all its parts, to understand itself, to actualize potential, to evolve.

Leadership by this account is a fraud, a millenniums old assault on the species well-being and the dissemination of supplementary scales of vision to its various organs and parts.

But how, you ask, can we survive without our Kings, Queens and Presidents, our Dictators, Tyrants, Popes, Princes, Teachers and Saints? How does one man survive from morning to night, day to day, year to year? He relies on the combined intelligence of all his parts to direct his way.

Presently, because of mankind’s addiction to leadership, survival without leadership would be difficult, even impossible. Yet … an ant of change is on the march. Year by year more people come to abhor our diminutive and abridged perspective on reality. More people flee the confines of our linear one-dimensional perspective and begin to reason multi-dimensionally, to increase scale of vision. We as a people are beginning to understand that those, or that, which we deservedly follow do not lead. They learn, and we learn from them that true leadership amasses no disciples.

Today’s average, the “common” man, has begun to gather and process observations with the initial gradient of species scale-of-vision: the freedom to communicate on all levels of interest both mundane and otherwise without the burden of physical proximity and the predatory assessment of an overriding authority granting them the privilege of doing so.

In these uninitiated saints, the anonymous masses, the electric age is being born. In them the gestating seeds of enlightened technology are taking hold and growing. Our species is self-organizing us.

For thousands of year’s one man’s ability to communicate with another was local. But for a long walk, distant ride on a horse or ship, a new idea in North America would not reach Asia. Even then when new ideas did travel they were filtered through established powers engineered to maintain leadership rule. Men were not free to exchange ideas as individuals. Today this has changed. Technological advances, an escalating Internet, media broadcasts and a wide range of telephone services have begun the process of interconnecting separate and diverse parts, expanding the reach of species-self-organization.

This is so because technology is not merely an array of intriguing and helpful devices. Technology is a being-state within the species, a quality of mind, or “brane;” capable of implementing the next level of species evolution. It may even represent the manufacture of our experience of human soul, our ambitious visions of eternal life and our contentious apprehensions of God.

Rather than using technology, perhaps it is we who are being used, used by our own species directing the growth of technological prowess to its purpose; that which we deservedly follow.

Further, taking the Bible as a historic rather than a religious text, we find this intriguing phrase, “Christ will return to Earth after the word of God (or is it Species Dictation), has reached all four corners of the Earth.”

Apart from being a man of profound worth in the role he plays in Christian belief systems, Jesus Christ duplicates as light or energy … electricity. Scanning the globe via satellite we note with some significance that electricity; technologies food source, has, in fact, reached all four corners of the earth.

The return of “The Son of God” is upon us yet not in the form or manner predicted. Indeed, but for whom has “The Light” returned, for whom or what?

Here we link belief with technology as man’s successful adaptation to Enlightened Technology requires belief, but not a belief in the absence or presence of any and all forms of God or God-ness.

Belief is a bioelectric impulse made active in all men as a means of fusing individuals to laws and processes (both known and unknown) governing the whole of mankind. That we believe, and not that we believe in, is the force of law within the species that connects the electricity in one man to that of all men. The common bioelectric of belief accounts for our eager and capable adaptation to any and all things electric, our hurry to turn on the light once it was invented.

Belief is our pathway to the stars held down by possessive interpretations of leadership. Where leadership prospers it divides and we are made weak as a whole. This deficit will be corrected as all structures requiring leadership, religious, political, economic, etc., meld into our absorption of electricity through technology, Enlightened Technology: prophet of the electric age.

Google “Click-to-call”

Tuesday, November 29th, 2005

A new product that gives you a free and fast way to speak directly to the advertiser you found on a Google search results page – over the phone.

Here’s how it works: When you click the phone icon, you can enter your phone number. Once you click ‘Connect For Free,’ Google calls the number you provided. When you pick up, you hear ringing on the other end as Google connects you to the other party.

Sun Tzu & The Art of War

Tuesday, November 29th, 2005

THE OLDEST MILITARY TREATISE IN THE WORLD. Full text online.

National Geographic’s WildCam Africa

Saturday, November 5th, 2005

We admit, there are days we wish we’d followed our nine-year-old aspirations and wandered off to Africa to study the animals. This is one of them. Pete’s Pond was created by Pete Le Roux, the general manager of Botswana’s Mashatu Game Reserve. Because poachers frequented the nearby Limpopo River, Pete decided to help repopulate the reserve by digging a pond to provide an alternative watering source. And with some technical help from a webcam, you can see what kind of crowd now hangs out at Pete’s Pond. Get sighting updates,
or just check out what the elephant and leopard researchers are spending their time on. And if you can’t tell a steenbok from an eland or an African civet from a large-spotted genet, the animal gallery can help you out. If you happen to catch the pond at a slow moment, you can relive busier times with video highlights. But in only one hour, we saw a herd of elephants, a sprinkling of zebras, a variety of birds, and one lone warthog. We were working, we swear!