More list-spew for my own reference. First Half of February Holy Fire, by Bruce Sterling (in progress) Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques, Second Edition, by Ian H. Witten and Eibe Frank **** Specimen Days : A Novel by Michael Cunningham ***1/2 The Road by Cormac McCarthy **** Reality and Rationality by Wesley C. Salmon ***** The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz ****1/2 January Letters to a Young Mathematician by Ian Stewart ***1/2 The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture by Andrew Keen ** My California: Journeys By Great […]
Monthly Archives: February 2008
8 posts
A plug for the worthy– Warren Ellis is just about to release FreakAngels, a free webcomic saga told in 5-page weekly installments.
A few good links from today’s feeds: Locus Recommended Reading: 2007: Locus’ recommendations for the best science fiction and fantasy of 2007. I’ve only read two of the recommended books (The Yiddish Policemen’s Union & Brasyl) and I greatly enjoyed them. A Conversation with Jorge Luis Borges: A newly translated conversation with the great Argentinean fabulist. I adore Borges, so I can’t resist posting this bonus linkage to an illustrated version of The Book of Imaginary Beings and the Dictionary of Borges (.pdf warning). Evolutionary Psychology: This new entry in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy admirably summarizes the core of […]
In a twitter-like display of attentional deficit, I present to you, a list of things I am currently thinking about: Transaction cost economics and Stiglitz’s information economics as crucial modifications of Walrasian markets. The relationship between mathematical notions of invariance, symmetry and periodicity and their relationship (if any) with notions of inductive complexity outlined by Kevin Kelly (Point-set topology and all). How throwaway was my idea about Goodman-esque entrenchment as efficient coding (Huffman, maybe)? How to construct an optimal model for capital expenditures with limited reliability data, and how I may be able to leverage the DODs work on Reliability, […]
Thanks in part to the encouragement of a friend‘s father, I have submitted my curriculum vitae to the Dean of Arts and Sciences at the local junior college in the hope of doing some adjunct teaching in addition to my current job. Though the wages are ridiculously low once you factor in prep time and grading, I look forward to the possibility of sharing my enthusiasm for learning and reengaging in academic life. In particular, I am would enjoy teaching two courses that appear in the college catalog, but have (to my knowledge) never been offered: CMPSC 54 Data Mining […]
Ah, I have been tagged by Robin. The rules: Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. (No cheating!) Find Page 123. Find the first 5 sentences. Post the next 3 sentences. Tag 5 people. This was a close call between Error and the Growth of Experimental Knowledge, by Deborah Mayo and Risk Analysis in Engineering and Economics by Bilal M. Ayyub. EatGoEK won out by a hair, so here it is– page 123, first 3 sentences *after* the first 5 sentences: Now let us substitute my error statistical construal of probable success (for some specified measure of […]