Comments for Ascription is an Anathema to any Enthusiasm

Comment on Specialization by bhyde

bhyde — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:18:45 +0000

David, I think you and I should take more personal responsible. I undermined Boston’s networks while you obviously energized those in the bay area.

This morning’s insta-theory for Ag is a synergy between farm subsidies and the Ag biz. Or maybe something about localities in it’s supply chain.

Comment on Specialization by David Chapman

David Chapman — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 03:08:59 +0000

I faced the same choice and went to San Francisco. I think it won because the weather was better. In the mid-80s they were otherwise roughly equal, so that was a deciding factor for me, and probably for enough other people to tip the scale.

As for ag—different plants grow better in different places, and people are still figuring that out?

Comment on Brainstorms and Powerlaw by Douglas Knight

Douglas Knight — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 03:35:07 +0000

The author of the paper JH cites applies its methods to this data set: http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/857.html

Comment on Brainstorms and Powerlaw by JH

JH — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 21:30:11 +0000

Hi Ben,

I can’t say I am terribly impressed by that paper. For one thing, the reason they give for suggesting that serial murder may have a similar distribution to epileptic fits is the discredited theories of Lombroso, a 19th century criminologist. While Lombroso was a humanitarian who worked to improve prison conditions, his discredited theory that crime is due to hereditary defects caused by de-evolution was later used to justify the Holocaust and other eugenic movements. It’s surprising to see his work referenced in an apparently serious paper in 2012…

They also make little effort to show that the data they have collected actually IS a power law other than saying that “{numerical results of their simulation} decently agree with the experimental data.” – or in other words they plotted a log-log graph and decided that their data looked roughly like the straight line from their model. There is no evidence of any attempt to do any statistical significance testing or to consider other distributions that produce roughly straight lines on log-log graphs (eg Poisson, log-normal, exponential). Their limited data set makes this even more risky.

On a more positive note, I think a paper you might find interesting if you haven’t seen it is: http://arxiv.org/abs/0706.1062

It looks at 24 datasets such as emails and phone calls and explains some of the mathematics you can use to see if they are better explained by power laws or one of the other distributions.

Sorry if this comment seems a bit negative but the paper’s comment “Thus, one may speculate that similar processes in the brain may lead to both epileptic seizures and serial killings.” was just a bit too radical for me to ignore!

Comment on Ping/Poll why they don’t scale by Ascription is an Anathema to any Enthusiasm › frackim

Ascription is an Anathema to any Enthusiasm › frackim — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 17:29:47 +0000

[...] is instant messaging bot (using XMPP) that Bob Wyman recently revealed. It tickles one of my long time interests – forward chaining on the Internet; e.g. how are updates propagated [...]

Comment on Microsoft using patents to shape standards by Jay Carlson

Jay Carlson — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 00:32:36 +0000

That’s a novel template for spam.

Comment on Microsoft using patents to shape standards by Vadym F

Vadym F — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:36:56 +0000

Yes, example with proving age to be over 18 is great.
It is not quite clear whether it is actually doable with specifications released.
It seems proving statements about integers requires a group of order hidden from proving party.
This could be done with a multiplicative group and a composite modulus.
Am I the only one who do not understand how to do that with a group of a known prime order?
The same applies for credit score, of course.
Well, this is not exactly OSP, but something journalists could follow.
Thanx!

Comment on Economic growth v.s. social well being by Rebecca

Rebecca — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 15:59:21 +0000

Maybe ‘growth’ is measured in a way that counts all the productive activities of fixing social ills.

Michele’s organization has a new marketing director, and they’ve started saying things like ‘when we roll out our new product line, the drug rehab facilities…’

Comment on Self Trading by Jenny

Jenny — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 13:55:41 +0000

Hi, I don’t suppose if you know what page this image is on in The Book of Fairies? I’m a literature student writing an essay about Rossetti and would love to include this but I can’t find the book.

Comment on Fresh Currency by Luis

Luis — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 17:08:51 +0000

“I consider it amazing that we have allowed private entities to tax a large percentage of all transaction.”

I consider it even more amazing that this is taken for granted to such a huge extent. It’s insane.