On the 8 Spot

One of the many things that I miss in being a student is the access all the IEEE journals through UP’s academic access. Nothing seems more against the principle of the academe than the way that research isn’t propagated because of cost. See I am interested in alot of things , this is because of an intense curiosity that tries to seek out as much knowledge as my little brain can grok. One of the themes that continously arises is how much progress made in the sciences are due to lateral or expansive grasp of present knowledge.

I use lateral in the way that alot of progress is due to connecting various seemingly independet events into a theory that explains both. I put Einstein’s theories in this category.

The expansive grasp means knowing all the pertinent techniques with respect to your problem. If you read Feynman’s Nobel Lecture you see whaI mean here. He had a claim that(probably true) that he knew everything about the problem he was trying to solve, which help him connect the dots on the different approaches to the same problem.

Both of these are negatively impacted by the high cost of journals. The amateur/hobbyist is doubly affected , and what are most of us in fields that we are not actively trying to research further are we? Most of us are not experts in everything and some of us  (including me) are not even expert in anything.  How much progress is not being made because information is not readily available?

If this is a simple case of “It’s always been done like this!”, then I think we need to rethink this. In a way science has progressed. During the time of newton or darwin  they rarely collaborated with fellows, but we have progressed far faster because of openly available information. The thing is we are moving ever faster towrds an age where science would either stagnate or reach a point that people call a singularity. Stagnation means that there would be a return to malthus and that is something we cannot let happen, this for me means that we have a duty to ourselves and those that come after us to make sure that the future is aor near the singularity. This calls for cheaper if not free flow of information!

The ridiculous high prices of online journal articles.

I’m a lucky guy! I work for a major UK University and one of the perks of the job is that I (along with every other member of the University) get access to a massive array of academic journals and this is close to priceless as far as I am concerned. I’d rather take a salary cut than lose that particular perk (shhhh, don’t mention this to my bosses) and I don’t even do any formal research!

I have been blogging for almost two years now and one thing I have learned from the whole experience is that the world contains legions of amateur scholars – people who do research for personal rather than professional reasons. These scholars (and I like to think I am one of them) don’t want to publish papers or get qualifications, they simply want to learn about and discuss whatever subject takes their fancy. In my case I focus on subjects such as mathematics and physics since they are (and always have been) the subjects that float my boat and they are also the subjects I studied both at school and at University.

via Walking Randomly » The ridiculous high prices of online journal articles..

In the Philippines people practice something called counter flowing, this is the act where a driver moves his car and enters a lane that is going at the opposite direction. You see this behavior whenever only one side of a busy road is experiencing heavy traffic. Well this behavior is dependent on two weaknesses. ONe is that when they are trying to get back at the proper lane drivers are either scared or kond enough to let them back into the proper lane. This creates a feedback loop where you one up other people by not following the rules and it is expected. This is bad because this causes the other lane to be more congested and in turn creates a very bad traffic jam. I suggest that traffic enforcers be made to book these traffic offenders to lessen this driving barbarism and that we do not let these types of drivers dominate the streets. If you read the article it has a nice dissection of the problem. The individuals are optimizing for themselves and thereby decreasing the total societal value. What is needed is for traffic enforcers to be the ones, through doing there jobs, force these players into a nash equilibrium where everyone wins!

But maybe these two traffic models have more in common than it first seems. Both encourage individuals to drive more slowly so that everyone gets to his destinations faster. Both favor a holistic approach to traffic, one that designs from the perspective of the overall flow rather than that of an individual driver. And both open up more space for pedestrians.

It’s not too difficult to imagine a city designed with these principles in mind. Fewer roads with slower but smoother traffic. Spaces that can easily be converted to car-free zones to suit the needs of the network. And fewer opportunities for people to drive like jerks. Sounds like a nice place to take a walk, actually.

via Does closing roads cut delays? | csmonitor.com.

At the start of the day I have something of a ritual which involves in almost chronological order:

-Get Coffee

-Check Email, Answer only immediate and important emails, leave the rest for later

-Read RSS Feeds of  Expansion/Thinkers/Coding

-Check Unimportant/Not immediately pertinent emails

-Check Friendfeed

-Check Facebook

-Read RSS feeds from news sources (Inquirer/GMA)

-Breakfast

-Check tasks for today.

-Check production servers applications I am supporting.

-Begin work on tasks.

All in all this takes about 1-2 hours of my workday.

I’ve recently lost internet acces to most sites I go to, thank God for google reader, still can read most posts.

So I was pleasantly surprised with the new “social features” that they have included in google reader.

As far as I can see they have made liking more open, because now people who allow other people to see their likes are showing up at the rss entry.

This is interesting because  now you can follow these people.

Following other people has been an old feature of google reader, what’s new is that it is now far easier to find people who read the same things you do.

Hope they can do this with google reader notes, and that they find a way to convince more people to read posts from rss.

I’ve been just using the new social features for a few minutes but, I can see the possibilities!

Kudos to the google reader team, I don’t know what they plan for the future but I am surely going along for  a ride!

I think it is totally defensible that a lot of people need or is at least is happy with the notion of feeling special. I think this is one of the reasons that cults proliferate in our world (People who know me may actually call me out in with an irony), that conspiracy theories do not only abound but it seems it to be the default among polite company.

I don’t know maybe my need to feel special is driving me towards solitude. I just have this default action when I don’t like the game I do not play. I can’t understand why it seems to me that most things belong to the walk away from category.

I do not think I am special, What I believe is that we are special by striving for something, trying to find what paolo coelho terms as our personal legend. It is about finding our place in this world, the things that we we’re meant to do.

This post was prompted by this, ty to Chris Blattman for the pointer

meh