max_i_m

Нам пишут или non-profit advertisement for Berkeley area (and maybe Cambridge) people.

2009-10-12T18:20:59Z

Dear Colleagues,

You are warmly invited to join us on MONDAY, OCTOBER 19 at 5:15pm for "LOGICOMIX: The Life, Loves, and Logical Struggles of Bertrand Russell and the other Great Logicians who wrestled with the elusive goal of placing mathematical reasoning on a Firm Foundation," a panel discussion of the new graphic novel "Logicomix" with co-author Christos Papadimitriou, UC Berkeley Professor of Computer Science, and Paolo Mancosu, UCB Professor of Philosophy, and me. This free event will take place in Room 100 of the Genetics and Plant Biology building (GPB) at UC Berkeley (located nearby the West Gate to campus and the intersection of University Avenue and Oxford Street). You may view the location of the building on a campus map at: http://www.berkeley.edu/map/maps/BC12.html

For more information and a link to the NY Times book review, please see http://www.msri.org/logicomix

For a preview of the novel, go to http://www.logicomix.com/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=frontpage&Itemid=53

I hope to see you at this special event.

Yours,

Robert Bryant
Director

PS There is a Cambridge reading at http://www.harvard.com/events/press_release.php?id=2383 and a Northeastern U bookstore reading on the same day.

It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is.

2009-06-02T01:29:27Z

“made from potato flour in the sense that one cannot say that it is not made from potato flour"

The Lord Justice Hath Ruled: Pringles Are Potato Chips.

As a mainstream mathematician, I'm pleased to see a court ruling utilizing proof by contradiction. The article goes on to state:

"The Supreme Court of Judicature had little patience with Procter & Gamble’s lawyerly attempts to break out of the potato chip category. The company argued that to be “made of potato” Pringles would have to be all potato, or nearly so. If so, Lord Justice Jacob noted, “a marmalade made using both oranges and grapefruit would be made of neither — a nonsense conclusion.”

He was even more dismissive of Procter & Gamble’s argument that to be taxable a product must contain enough potato to have the quality of “potatoness.” This “Aristotelian question” of whether a product has the “essence of potato,” he insisted, simply cannot be answered."

max_i_m @ 2009-02-14T11:06:00

2009-02-14T16:17:01Z

Был такой британский математик Карл Пирсон, от которого много чего осталось такого, чему учат в университетах. Его в какой-то момент призвали в армию, там направили в авиацию, а там, узнав, что он статистик, придумали ему правильную задачу. Чем хороши королевские вооруженные силы, так это тем, что там правильные задачи ставят правильным людям. Задача была такая: надо было броней укреплять самолеты, потому что были потери. И генералы решили, что в самолетах нужно посчитать дырки от пуль, и в тех местах, где их больше, ставить броню, потому что ясно же, что именно в эти места пули чаще попадают. Я не знаю, легенда это, или нет, но тогда Пирсон аккуратно спросил: «А в каких самолетах считают?» И когда ему объяснили, что в тех, которые возвращаются с задания, он сказал: «Нет, нужно укреплять те места, где дырок нет вообще. Потому что это означает, что если пуля в это место попала, то самолет до аэродрома не долетит».

В современной геномике используется та же идея.

http://www.polit.ru/lectures/2008/04/24/gelfand.html

max_i_m @ 2009-01-31T14:00:00

2009-01-31T19:01:23Z

Опыт многократный, в самом деле горький опыт, научил его давно, что всякое сближение, которое вначале так приятно разнообразит жизнь и представляется милым и легким приключением, у порядочных людей, особенно у москвичей, тяжелых на подъем, нерешительных, неизбежно вырастает в целую задачу, сложную чрезвычайно, и положение в конце концов становится тягостным. Но при всякой новой встрече с интересною женщиной этот опыт как-то ускользал из памяти, и хотелось жить, и все казалось так просто и забавно.

Дама с собачкой.

I'm back! or It's great to be a citizen.

2009-01-31T05:38:10Z

NSF. 1 year at MSRI + 2 years at Stanford.

max_i_m @ 2009-01-30T13:52:00

2009-01-30T18:56:19Z

Лекция Цфасмана в Билингве

"С благотворительностью по-русски я сталкивался многократно в своей деятельности в Независимом университете, потому что Независимый университет независим в первую очередь от государственного финансирования, - не получает ни копейки. Поэтому где-то приходится искать деньги, и часть из них находится благотворительным путем. Эта благотворительность ужасно непохожа на западную. Благотворительность по-русски происходит следующим образом: кто-то из руководителей Независимого университета встречается с кем-то, кого он когда-то и где-то знал или кому его порекомендовали. Этот человек говорит: я бы хотел помочь Независимому университету. Ну, наш ответ, естественно, большое спасибо. А как? Он говорит: ну, например, деньгами. Мы говорим: отлично. А сколько вы можете дать? Он называет сумму, тут же вынимает наличными из кармана и дает. Тогда я или кто-то другой его спрашиваем: а каковы условия использования этих денег? Человек глубоко задумывается и говорит: ну, на доброе дело. Я его спрашиваю: а еще? Тут он задумывается еще глубже и говорит: да, пожалуй, есть еще одно условие. Вы никому не говорите, что это я дал. Видимо, основная причина, что засмеют. "

И еще много интересного.
via posic

max_i_m @ 2009-01-23T15:15:00

2009-01-23T20:17:17Z

New malware is on attack. Gotta love this bit, though:

One intriguing clue left by the malware authors is that the first version of the program checked to see if the computer had a Ukrainian keyboard layout. If it found it had such a keyboard, it would not infect the machine.

max_i_m @ 2008-12-13T13:41:00

2008-12-13T18:48:08Z

Наткнулся на старую запись bgmt. Ролевые игры как школа эмпатии - это мысль. А зачем еще они нужны?

Post-electional.

2008-11-05T21:56:40Z

Robin Hanson:
We feel a deep pleasure from realizing that we believe something in common with our friends, and different from most people. We feel an even deeper pleasure letting everyone know of this fact. This feeling is EVIL. Learn to see it in yourself, and then learn to be horrified by how thoroughly it can poison your mind. Yes evidence may at times force you to disagree with a majority, and your friends may have correlated exposure to that evidence, but take no pleasure when you and your associates disagree with others; that is the road to rationality ruin.

Party politics.

2008-11-05T14:53:05Z

The good people of Massachusetts have kept their income tax and decriminalized marijuana. The disappointing people of California have made a discriminatory definition into a law. The unbelievable people of Alaska look to have voted a convicted felon into the Senate.

In other news:

Stevens, if he wins his race, will probably still be ejected, with a special election held to replace. Maybe this is what Alaskan republicans really meant.

Not a good day for gay marriage overall (Florida, Arizona).

We will (finally) have a high-speed train from SF to LA.

And oh yes, we have a new president-elect. The celebrations in Cambridge were no match for Berkeley, but still substantial. Harvardites blocked off a part of the square and tapped passing cars, yelling and shaking hands with drivers. Central square was agitated as well. Bicoastal elitists, gosh darn'em!

Vampire.

2008-11-04T05:51:21Z

Munch's "Vampire" has been sold. Too bad. It was on a long-term loan at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and it was one of my favorites.

max_i_m @ 2008-08-07T21:14:00

2008-08-08T04:19:20Z

A multi-millionaire meets a squatter, a Freakonomics guest column.

Neo-Nazi in Russia.

2008-05-24T03:59:05Z

I have no intelligent comment. It speaks for itself.

Warning: Disturbing content.

From Russia with hate.

max_i_m @ 2008-03-04T23:14:00

2008-03-05T04:28:33Z

The New York Times lists 3 counties in Texas with the result "100% reporting, 0 votes" for the democratic primary. The same counties in the republican primary are listed with "17% reporting - 66 votes" in Roberts county, "100%- 369 votes " in Armstrong county and "100% - 1235 votes" in Hunsford county. I wonder what life is like in this Hunsford county.

Thank you for your honesty.

2008-01-26T06:39:09Z

Never have I ever...

Yes, I watched "The Moment of Truth" (and so can you). That "repetitive and irritating" (Boston Globe), "abhorrent, asinine" (Seattle Post-Intelligencer) show. Partly to see what kind of person would do this - as the LA Times noted, a completely shameless or a completely blameless person would do really well in this, but they'd never pass the audition. But partly because for all its repetitiveness and overblown dramatics the show succeeded effortlessly in making me identify with the protagonist - as an absorbing book or a movie would do. I tried the questions out. "Did you ever go through someone else's things when they were not there?" "Did you ever hit someone's car and left without leaving a note?" Then tried changing the ones that don't directly apply. "Did you ever have sexual fantasies during mass?" - at a synagogue? an interview? a math lecture? "Do you think you are better looking then your friends?" - smarter? cooler? more honest? And then tried to imagine what my friends and relatives would say.

Sometimes I'd get off easy for one reason or another ("Are you a member of the "Hair Club for Men?", "Do you delay having children because you are not sure that your wife is going to be your lifelong partner?"). Sometimes I could safely say "No" to a question and almost hear an internal "whew!" of relief. But then sometimes I couldn't. The show serves simultaneously as a source of very rare information about others and a force for self examination. Before watching I almost thought I would be one of the "blameless". Now I'm not so sure (though I should note that there is a difference between saying "yes" to what the show writers would think an embarrassing question and actually being embarrassed about it).

The truth shall set you free.

At one point a friend asked a contestant's wife "Is it worth a hundred thousand dollars to hear this?" I, too, would like to know. How much is it worth to be paid to know that your husband thinks you will not stay married? What about to know that he has a lover? How much would you pay a private eye to find out?

The show does not put a price tag on information, it puts one on embarrassment. The knowledge you'd pay to gain privately is often the same knowledge you'd pay to keep private. As a result we get not a market of truth, but of shame. Here shamelessness, not truthfulness, is turned if not yet into a virtue, then certainly into profit.

Shame is a social structure for enforcing honesty. For a moral person lying is to be avoided, as is crime. Yet we impose shame, just as we impose our criminal system, to reinforce the weak moral fiber and bend more people into honesty and obedience to law. Lying, however is generally a much smaller transgression and shame is a correspondingly softer penal mechanism. It has to be, for we lie all the time.

In his New York Times article (included in the "Best American Science Writing 2007) "Looking for the Lie" Robin Marantz Henig cites a the following study. A group of people were asked to keep a diary of their social interactions. The subjects averaged 1.5 lies a day. These are self-reported and, judging from the samples given, factual lies like "Lied about where I had been," or "Said that I did not have change for a dollar," as opposed to lies of opinion as "I like your new jacket" or "That was a good dinner" could be. I can only speculate what number of daily lies a tabulation by an impartial and omniscient observer would produce. Lies are the lubricant of social interaction. Remove them and it would grind to a halt.

Or would it?

This is certainly the position that Henig takes. He writes that if a truly efficient lie detector could be developed, we might find ourselves living in "a fundamentally different world than the one we live in today" and then that "this would be a problem. As the great physician-essayist Lewis Thomas once wrote, a foolproof lie-detection device would turn our quotidian lives upside down: "Before long, we would stop speaking to each other, television would be abolished as a habitual felon, politicians would be confined by house arrest and civilization would come to a standstill."

The article's last sentence sums it up:

"Worse than living in a world plagued by uncertainty, in which we can never know for sure who is lying to whom, might be to live in a world plagued by its opposite: certainty about where the lies are, thus forcing us to tell one another nothing but the truth."

Would it really be so horrible? Sure, if you were to start telling the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth to everyone you meet it would not end well. Do people really want to hear that they are fat or boring or stupid? That their new shoes are ugly (unless of course the shoes were a well-intended but misguided gift from grandma)? I leave the more grave questions of the type asked on "The Moment of Truth" to your imagination.

But what if everyone did it? All the time. Of course there would be problems - by the time you are done telling your wife that she is not as good looking as her sister she may not be in the mood to hear you say you love her anyway and start counting the ways. Yet after that first fury, would she not be relieved when she finds out you do love her? Or even if she finds you don't - now, as opposed to ten years and two kids later - would she not be happy?

We would have to change our reactions to everyday remarks. Even something as simple as "How are you?" could now be an interesting question. We would have to get good at compressing information, develop shorthand, learn to make explicit the omissions implicit in "Fine, thanks." Learn to take negative feedback not as personal offense and positive comments not as sign of friendliness, but simply as information.

It would be a different world, that is certain. Certain, indeed, is what it would be. No crime. No political manipulation. No drama. Well, at least no melodrama. Imagine what that would do to romance and love. Yes, you can say I'm a dreamer. All I know is that when that pocket lie detector comes out - I'll be camping out in front of the store.

Epilogue

Colombian version of "The Moment of Truth" was canceled after a contestant admitted to hiring a hitman to kill her husband. Sometimes the truth can land you in jail.

Now that's an iron lady for ya!

2007-10-25T00:44:59Z

River is a Terminator!

Public Service Announcement

2007-10-05T01:06:38Z

Monday, October 22
Lecture/Concert
Co-sponsored by the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
and the Davis Center*

/"The Social Philosophy of the Genre of Popular Song in the
Post-Industrial Network Society"/
khaloymes Psoy Korolenko (Pavel Lion), Ph.D., Moscow State University
Harvard Yard, Dudley House, Junior Common Room
4:15 p.m.

makes a fellow proud to be a graduate

2007-10-04T04:41:37Z

http://www.youtube.com/ucberkeley

Not that many courses so far, but it's a start. Richard Muller's non-major intro physics is among them. Good.

I wonder if MIT's OCW is going to join in.

Чтоб многие дети России сказали: "Рожденьем своим мы обязаны Вам!"

2007-10-03T00:21:55Z

Если кто еще не видел:

Стихи о Путине, человеке и шедевре Квебекской кулинарии.

И о состоянии дел в России:

2007-08-15T22:32:10Z

Д.Ф. Аяцков, В.А. Динес ("Государство Российское и его история", учебно-методическое пособие, СГСЭУ, 2002): "По мнению В.В. Путина, с которым можно, конечно, спорить, но нельзя не согласиться....."

via luchshe_molchi

Scientific blogging.

2007-07-23T23:56:43Z

My friend Yanki and I have jokingly discussed an idea of "two-sided journal of mathematics" - a journal in which every paper's "traditional" formal write up would be accompanied by a parallel informal text giving motivations, connections, explaining what exactly the point of each technical step is etc. One of the obvious obstacles to realizing this idea is that someone, presumably the author of the paper, would have to write the supplementary text. This would put an undue extra load on the author - writiing a good paper is hard as it is, we don't want people to have yet more work. Well, we the readers do, but the authors would probably resist.
On the other hand there has recently been an upsurge in the number of mathematical blogs - every Fields medalist and every decent grad school seems to be producing one. And a good percentage of space in such blogs is dedicated to motivations, connections and discussions. So here's a logical corollary idea: math journals should have blogs. Generate an entry for each article in each new volume, and voila! The interested readers would produce the additional text, author's participation completely optional.
Of course I just made that up, and so perhaps I see more merit in this idea then it really has. I have no experience running either a blog or a journal. Any reason this would not work?

max_i_m @ 2007-07-07T10:47:00

2007-07-07T14:50:54Z

NY Times on Williams syndrome

“Ever since she was tiny, Nicki has always especially loved to talk to men. And in the last few years, by chance, she figured out how to do it. She reads the sports section in the paper, and she watches baseball and football on TV, and she has learned enough about this stuff that she can talk to any man about what the 49ers or the Giants are up to. My husband gets annoyed when I say this, but I don’t mean it badly: men typically have that superficial kind of conversation, you know — weather and sports. And Nicki can do it. She knows what team won last night and where the standings are. It’s only so deep. But she can do it. And she can talk a good long while with most men about it.”

Summer schedule (draft).

2007-05-23T04:10:55Z

May 23 - May 25 NY
May 25 - June 14 Turkey
June 14 5 pm June 15 11 am - Amsterdam
June 15 - June 25 Daly City
June 25 - June 29 Stanford (?) or Daly City
June 29 - July 1 Daly City
July 2 - onwards Boston (and whatever comes up).

xkcd!

2007-05-01T01:12:02Z

Randall Munroe of xkcd is at MIT on May 14.

It's our turn to decide what that means.

algorithms and manifolds.

2007-02-24T18:08:04Z

I've been reading this amazing book. It has a chapter called "The method of eastern philosophy" and a picture of a cactus as an illustration. Plus some cool math.

Most geometers have heard that 4-manifolds cannot be classified because they can have any finitely presented fundamental groups, and finitely presented groups cannot be classified. However, this in itself does not prove anything. The real argument should construct 4-manifolds from a given presentation in such a way that two of them are diffeomorphic (homeomorphic, PL-isomorphic, pick your category) if and only if the presentations describe the same group. This is what Markov's theorem indeed accomplishes (A. A. Markov is presumably the same Markov as in the "Markov moves" on braids, the son of A. A. Markov of "Markov chains"). Weinberger gives a construction in the same spirit to prove that higher dimensional spheres are not algorithmically recognizable, which in turn implies that any given n-manifold with n>4 is not recognizable (hello Grushko's theorem!). Note that this leaves the question of algorithmically recognizing the 4-sphere unsolved (Weinberger's proof fails because h-cobordism is invalid, and because conditions for a group to be a fundamental group of a homology n-sphere are different for n=4 and n>4). On the contrary, 3-sphere is recognizable as explained in first edition of Sergei Matveev's book. Someone in ru_math asked if geometrization conjecture implies that 3-manifolds are algorithmically classifiable and received no reply. Maybe the second edition will have an explanation - just have to wait till April.