Natural selection acts on the quantum world

From Nature Magazine,
Teaser:

Because, as Zurek says, "the Universe is quantum to the core," this property seems to undermine the notion of an objective reality. In this type of situation, every tourist who gazed at Buckingham Palace would change the arrangement of the building's windows, say, merely by the act of looking, so that subsequent tourists would see something slightly different.

Yet that clearly isn't what happens. This sensitivity to observation at the quantum level (which Albert Einstein famously compared to God constructing the quantum world by throwing dice to decide its state) seems to go away at the everyday, macroscopic level. "God plays dice on a quantum level quite willingly," says Zurek, "but, somehow, when the bets become macroscopic he is more reluctant to gamble." How does that happen?

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Ebook reader - Sony LIBRIE

Being a reading-geek, I have always wanted to read electronic news and books away from my computer. The laptop had the portability -but had the problem of battery, heat, noise, weight, and readbility. I used my Palm handheld, but the screen was too small, plus it still wasn't as good as paper. So, it was with interest that I heard about projects to display print as good as paper. One of the companies E-Ink came out with the resolution almost as good as paper-print, and it only consumed power when new text is redrawn. So, that was about 2 years ago. I have forgotten about the whole deal. But, it seems like Sony has produced a consumer hand-held for the Japanese market April of 2004. Here's one review:

First, the good news. Initial reports of the screen quality left me quite unprepared for the actual thing. The screen is unbelievable. Not quite paper, more like a dull plastic like look. My first impression of the device was that it was not an actual working unit, but a plastic mock up made for stores. With high contrast black text on a reflective background, the screen has a readability rivaling actual paper. The weight of the book is also quite a shock. About the weight of a long paperback, the book will be both easy on the eyes as well as very easy to hold and carry around.

official Sony product link (in Japanese only)

The apocalypse as the locomotive of capitalism

The Economist Magazine does the Apocalypse. A slightly tongue-in-cheek historical and social exploration...

Mr Campion draws parallels between the “scientific” historical materialism of Marx and the religious apocalyptic experience. Thus primitive communism is the Garden of Eden, the emergence of private property and the class system is the fall, the final gasps of capitalism are the last days, the proletariat are the chosen people and the socialist revolution is the second coming and the New Jerusalem.

And

Science treasures its own apocalypses. The modern environmental movement appears to have borrowed only half of the apocalyptic narrative. There is a Garden of Eden (unspoilt nature), a fall (economic development), the usual moral degeneracy (it's all man's fault) and the pressing sense that the world is enjoying its final days (time is running out: please donate now!). So far, however, the green lobby does not appear to have realised it is missing the standard happy ending. Perhaps, until it does, environmentalism is destined to remain in the political margins. Everyone needs redemption.

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Destructive Emotions on Michael Krasny's Forum

I heard this interesting discussion a while back on the scientific research of meditation, mindfulness, and compassion on KQED's radio show, Forum. I'm posting it up for archiving sake. They interview the authors of the book "Destructive Emotions," which chronicles a unique collaboration between western scientists and Buddhist Monks. One of the author wrote the bestseller on Emotion Intelligence, and the other is a researcher in UCSF. And for anybody else interested in teaching, they talk about techniques akin to meditation that help teachers deal with kids. And one of the researchers talked about a broadbased movement, SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) that teach kids empathy skills. link

Quality of Smart versus Intelligent

A Professor of English, Literature, and Culture at Carnegie Mellon wrote for the Chronicle of Higher Education an article called, Here's the Problem With Being So 'Smart.'

Smart still retains its association with novelty, in keeping with its sense of immediacy, such that a smart scholarly project does something new and different to attract our interest among a glut of publications. In fact, "interesting" is a complementary value to smart. One might praise a reading of the cultural history of gardens in the 18th-century novel not as "sound" or "rigorous" but as "interesting" and "smart," because it makes a new and sharp connection. Rigor takes the frame of scientific proof; smart the frame of the market, which mandates interest amid a crowd of competitors. Deeming something smart, to use Kant's framework, is a judgment of taste rather than a judgment of reason. Like most judgments of taste, it is finally a measure of the people who hold it or lack it.

The promise of smart is that it purports to be a way to talk about quality in a sea of quantity. But the problem is that it internalizes the competitive ethos of the university, aiming not for the cultivation of intelligence but for individual success in the academic market. It functions something like the old shibboleth "quality of mind," which claimed to be a pure standard but frequently became a shorthand for membership in the old boys' network. It was the self-confirming taste of those who talked and thought in similar ways. The danger of smart is that it confirms the moves and mannerisms of a new and perhaps equally closed network.

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This reminds me of another quote from Huston Smith's book, Forgotten Truths: "Truth, Elie Wiesel has reminded us, is betrayed by its repetition. Insofar as things have been said, there is no need to resay them. Is there anything respecting our thesis that has not been said and needs to be said?"

Work:In praise of Idleness

*Highly Recommended*
Mark Slouka's humorous article on the value of idleness from the November 2004 issue of Harper's Magazine. Equal part praise of idleness, and critique of modern American society. Ends with a social implication of a society in perpetual busyness.

QUITTING THE PAINT FACTORY
On the virtues of idleness

Ah, but here's the rub: Idleness is not just a psychological necessity, req­uisite to the construction of a complete human being; it constitutes as well a kind of political space, a space as necessary to the workings of an actual democracy as, say, a free press. How does it do this? By allowing us time to figure out who we are, and what we believe; by allowing us time to consider what is unjust, and what we might do about it. By giving the inner life (in whose precincts we are most ourselves) its due. Which is precisely what makes idle­ness dangerous. All manner of things can grow out of that fallow soil.

And another teaser:

Leisure is permissible, we understand, because it costs money; idleness is not, because it doesn't. Leisure is focused; whatever thinking it requires is absorbed by a certain task: sinking that putt, making that cast, watching that flat-screen TV. Idleness is unconstrained, anarchic. Leisure - particularly if it involves some kind of high-priced technology - is as American as a Fourth of July barbecue. Idleness, on the other hand, has a bad attitude. It doesn't shave; it's not a member of the team; it doesn't play well with others. It thinks too much, as my high school coach used to say. So it has to be ostracized.

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Ancient Books Manuscripts

In my recent web surfing, I found the British Library, which is digitalizing their collection of some of ancient books. This includes scans of beautiful Illuminated Manuscripts and other books like Leonardo's Notebook, Lindishfarne Gospel, a Sultan's copy of the Qur'an, and a copy of the Vajra (Diamond) Sutra. Many of the books, include text and audio remarks from the Curator on different sections of the book. And includes a magnifying glass for examining details (though not for the Diamond Sutra), and an interactive way of turning the pages (it's pretty cool). link....

Note: There's a cute addition, History of the England, written by Jane Austen.
Updated Note: There's an enhanced 2.0 version, which could be found here. You do need Windows Vista, Windows XP with .Net 3.0, or Quicksilver. link....

-------------------In addition,-------------------------------------
So, the scan of this Diamond Sutra Scroll was found in a sealed desert cave in Dunhuang, Chinese Central Asia, along with 40,000 other scrolls, hidden and perserved. Alone with carvings, statues, and paintings.

Here is the website that is the hub for Curator, Historians, with an emphasis on digitisation. It's called, The International Dunhuang Project (IDP), which is an interesintg website on its own.

This website seems to be rich with resources and links based on discovery from Dunhuang, but 2 image archive links I suggest is:

For the more limited image archive, but more User-friendly, Tour-like format, with Curator commentary, try: link

For high-res images database, try: link

Brain Research:Brainport

Ms. Schiltz and other patients like her are the beneficiaries of an astonishing new technology that allows one set of sensory information to substitute for another in the brain.

Using novel electronic aids, vision can be represented on the skin, tongue or through the ears. If the sense of touch is gone from one part of the body, it can be routed to an area where touch sensations are intact. Pilots confused by foggy conditions, in which the horizon disappears, can right their aircraft by monitoring sensations on the tongue or trunk. Surgeons can feel on their tongues the tip of a probe inside a patient's body, enabling precise movements.

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Animal Cognition:Prairie Dog Language

Another neat animals-are-smarter-than-we-thought article from the Associated Press. Scientist research unveils the complexity of Prairie Dog language. link

The Big Bang, Part XXXXIV?

A Universal Cycle of birth and rebirth occurs every trillion years or so, according to one new cosmology based on String Theory. Big bangs result when two 10-dimensional "branes" collide and expand and then collide again. In this scenario, our universe marks just one phase in this infinite cycle.

A simpler summary:
Scientific American: String Theory revision of the recurring Big Bang

A lengthier, more technical summary:
Scientific American: A Recycled Universe

Mob Psychology

NPR Day to Day interviews the writer of the book, The Wisdom of Crowds, discuss the unwisdom of Crowds. Traits of the crowd: anonymity, lower social penalty and personal responsibility, and self-feeding cascade allows a smaller group of hard-core unruly fans to get everybody to chant racist epitets they normally don't chant.

Okay. You say, I heard it all before. However, conversely, if there's enough people who are known to never participate in violence with the crowd (like women and children), the crowd's behavior will be moderated. [Skip to 3:00 for that part]. link

The State of String Theory

From the New York Times, celebrating 20th anniversary of the String Theory. A lengthy article detailing the genesis, success, controversies, and possible implications of String Theory.

A tantalizing quote:

In effect, as Dr. Witten put it, an extra dimension of space can mysteriously appear out of "nothing."

The lesson, he said, may be that time and space are only illusions or approximations, emerging somehow from something more primitive and fundamental about nature, the way protons and neutrons are built of quarks.

The real secret of string theory, he said, will probably not be new symmetries, but rather a novel prescription for constructing space-time.

"It's a new aspect of the theory," Dr. Witten said. "Whether we are getting closer to the deep principle, I don't know."

As he put it in a talk in October, "It's plausible that we will someday understand string theory."

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Camera that Draw Outlines

Technical Review of a camera with 4 flashes to render edge outlines. Pretty cool effect (superior to Photoshop with more dimensionality), and looks like sketches from a skilled cartoonist.

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