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Posts tagged as “Hard Science”

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternally Inspiring Tome

Published March 2, 2012 by centaur
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This is the book that got me started on artificial intelligence ... and now has inspired me again to attack my craft with greater vigor. I was writing an essay for The Centaur's Pen column for the Write to The End site and realized it depended on a concept - true, but unprovable theorems - which isn't in wide circulation. So I've started an essay on that topic for this site, and decided to go reread Gödel, Escher, Bach, the book which introduced me to the concept.

At the writing group, the topic of the essay and Gödel, Escher, Bach came up, and we all started discussing how intricate, how rewarding, and how friendly Hofstadter's immense tome is. It's a work of genius that continues to stagger me to this day. And then my writing friends told me that in the new edition there's a foreward with the entire back story of how the book came to be.

I picked it up last night, and reading the new intro I was gratified to learn that I understood his basic thesis - that conscious intelligence arises from bare matter by grounding its symbols in correspondence to reality, then inexorably turning that grounding inward into a spiral of self-reference with no end. Hofstadter and I might disagree about what's sufficient to produce conscious intelligence, but we'd just be quibbling about details, because I think he nailed a necessary component.

But after the intro of the foreword, when I began to read the story of how this 750 page long Pulitzer Prize winning book started its life as a 20 page letter that Hofstadter decided needed to be turned into a pamphlet, I was stunned.

He wrote it in 5 years.

Well, it actually took 6 to complete, because he typeset it himself---through a happy-but-not-at-the-time accident, twice---producing an amazing work that was polished far beyond his original intention. But he wrote it while in graduate school, while teaching classes, while traveling cross-country. He put it down for a bit finishing his PhD thesis itself, but basically the book's a white hot blaze of inspiration polished to pure excellence.

I'm inspired, all over again.

-the Centaur

The Stack is Growing

Published January 27, 2012 by centaur
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FROM THE WRITER'S ANONYMOUS 12-STEP SUPPORT GROUP MEETING: Hi, I'm Anthony Francis, and I'm an author. ("Hi, Anthony!") To feed my addiction, I get stuff published.

My first published novel, the urban fantasy FROST MOON featuring magical tattoo artist Dakota Frost, won an EPIC e-book award. It's out in paperback, Kindle, in German as SKINDANCER, and soon to be audiobook thanks to the wonderful reading skills of Traci Odom. The second book in the series, BLOOD ROCK, came out last year to good reviews, and the third book, LIQUID FIRE, will come out later this year. A spinoff series starring Dakota's daughter Cinnamon Frost, HEX CODE, will come out next year, also part of a planned trilogy.

One of my short stories, "Steampunk Fairy Chick," was recently published in the UnCONventional anthology. The story, featuring steampunk adventurer Jeremiah Willstone, is based on a novel called THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE (again part of a planned trilogy) which I've got in rough draft form with a possible release late this year or early next year. Another of my short stories, "Sibling Rivalry," was published in The Leading Edge magazine in 1995, but is now available on my web site. I also write flash fiction. One of my flash shorts, "If Looks Could Kill", was just published in THE DAILY FLASH 2012 (pictured above) and another, "The Secret of the T-Rex's Arms", was just published in Smashed Cat Magazine.

My nonfiction research papers are largely available on my research page, including my nearly 700-page Ph.D thesis (hork). I and my thesis advisor Ashwin Ram have a chapter on "Multi-Plan Adaptation and Retrieval in an Experience-based Agent" in David Leake's book CASE BASED REASONING: EXPERIENCES, LESSONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS, and Ashwin, Manish Mehta and I have a chapter on "Emotional Memory and Adaptive Personalities" in THE HANDBOOK OF RESEARCH ON SYNTHETIC EMOTIONS AND SOCIABLE ROBOTICS.

I have more writing in the works, including a novelette called "Stranded" set in the Dresanian universe from which this blog takes its name, and more writing on the Internet. But what I list above is The Stack At This Time - what you can get in print. Enjoy!

-the Centaur

They’re at it again …

Published October 30, 2011 by centaur
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Shortly after a study from a former climate skeptic seemed to show that global warming is indeed happening, anti-climate skeptics are now accusing him of "hiding the truth" because the globe hasn't warmed in the last 10 years. Ok, let's grant that, for sake of argument. I for one believe it. But climate is defined as the weather averaged over 30 years. So even if the temperature hasn't risen for 13 years, as they suggest, that means that it has risen for 17 out of the last 30 - and that the temperature is still rising. Wait another decade and then you've got a case to make that global warming has stopped. If the skeptics are right, as they haven't been about almost anything for the past century or so, then we can throw a party. If they're wrong ... well, waiting another ten years makes fixing the problem much harder. Understand: climate skeptics are just stalling in the hope the the problem will just go away. Personally, I wait in joyful hope for the Resurrection --- but when dealing with temporal problems, I pray for God's good favor, then get to work. Why don't we all try being real about what our problems are and working hard to fix them, for a change? -the Centaur

efface[john-mccarthy;universe]

Published October 24, 2011 by centaur
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John McCarthy, creator of Lisp and one of the founders of the field of artificial intelligence, has died. He changed the world more than Steve Jobs ... but in a far subtler way, by laying the foundation for programs like Apple's Siri through his artificial intelligence work, or more broadly by laying the foundation for much of modern computing through innovations like the IF-THEN-ELSE formalism. It's important not to overstate the impact of great men like John and Steve; artificial intelligence pioneers like Marvin Minsky would have pushed us forward without John, and companies like Xerox and Microsoft would have pushed us forward without Steve. But we're certainly better off, and farther along, with their contributions. I have only three stories to tell about John McCarthy. The third story is that I last saw him at a conference at IBM, in a mobile scooter and not looking very well. Traveling backwards in time, the second story is that I spoke with one of his former graduate students, who saw a John McCarthy poster in my office, and told me John's illness had progressed to the point where he basically couldn't program any more and that he was feeling very sad about it. But what I want to remember is my first encounter with John ... it's been a decade and a half, so my memory's fuzzy, but I recall it was at AAAI-97 in Providence, Rhode Island. I'd arrived at the conference in a terrible snafu and had woken up a friend at 4 in the morning because I had no place to stay. I wandered the city looking for H.P. Lovecraft landmarks and had trouble finding them, though I did see a house some think inspired Dreams in the Witch House. But near the end, at a dinner for AI folks, I want to say at Waterplace Park but I could be misremembering, I bumped in to John McCarthy. He was holding court at the end of the table, and as the evening progressed I ended up following him and a few friends to a bar, where we hung out for an evening. And there, the grand old man of artificial intelligence, still at the height of his powers, regaled the wet-behind-the-ears graduate student from Atlanta with tales of his grand speculative ideas, beyond that of any science fiction writer, to accelerate galaxies to the speed of light to save shining stars from the heat death of the universe. We'll miss you, John. -Anthony Image stolen shamelessly from Zach Beane's blog. The title of this post is taken from the Lisp 1.5 Programmer's Manual, and is the original, pre-implementation Lisp M-expression notation for code to remove an item from a list.

Who Am I?

Published September 7, 2011 by centaur
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me in front of the bell bridge books promotional material for BLOOD ROCK Who are you? Good question. I'm Anthony Francis, and I write stuff and make computers jump through hoops for a living. What have you done? I'm most notable for the EPIC award winning urban fantasy novel FROST MOON and its sequel, BLOOD ROCK, which are about magical tattoo artist Dakota Frost and are therefore hopefully both more interesting than my ~700 page PhD thesis on context-sensitive computer memory. Also on the computer side, I've done some exploration of robot emotions. What are you doing next? Forthcoming in the Dakota Frost series is the third book, LIQUID FIRE, and this November for National Novel Writing Month I plan to work on HEX CODE, the first in a spin-off series featuring Dakota's adopted daughter Cinnamon Frost. Are you working on anything other than Dakota Frost? I've also recently completed a rough draft of the first book in a new series, JEREMIAH WILLSTONE AND THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE. A short story set in this universe, "Steampunk Fairy Chick", will be included in the forthcoming anthology UnCONventional. What are you working on currently? I'm also currently working on a fourth new series with the working title STRANDED, a young adult science fiction novel set a thousand years in the future, featuring a spoiled young centauress who must rescue a shipload of children who have crashlanded upon a world she wanted to claim as her own. This story's set in the "Library of Dresan" universe from which this blog takes its name and which was setting of my very first unpublished novel "homo centauris", which I am now happily milking for its 57 billion year backstory. Anything else? I have a flash fiction story called "The Secret of the T-Rex's Arms" to appear on the Smashed Cat Magazine. I've also published one short story, "Sibling Rivalry" in the Leading Edge Magazine. I have a webcomic, f@nu fiku, on hiatus. And I'm actively involved with helping people succeed at 24 Hour Comics through tutorials that I and my friend Nathan Vargas have put together at Blitz Comics. Is that enough questions for now? Yes, it is. Please enjoy. -the Centaur

Try to eat less than a million bananas a year

Published July 13, 2011 by centaur
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Why? Bananas are naturally slightly radioactive. While it's unlikely your body could retain all that radioactive potassium in those bananas, if it did you'd absorb enough radiation to cause an increased cancer risk: xkcd radiation chart There are disputes about those figures, of course, but at ~105 calories a banana, you're getting roughly 143 times your daily allotment of 2000 calories, so probably you should cut back anyway. -the Centaur P.S. One BED (Banana Equivalent Dose) is 0.1 microsieverts of radiation. XKCD claims that 100 millisieverts of radiation is the lowest dose linked to increased cancer risk. Take that with a grain of salt ... but do the math.

So you’re going to be a stem cell donor …

Published June 30, 2011 by centaur
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anthony at mervyn's after receiving unrelated good news ... or, actually, I'm going to be a stem cell donor. Only 1 in 20,000 actually match, so this is pretty lucky. If all goes well with the physical and blood tests, I'll be helping out someone who's got few remaining options. Good things do happen. -the Centaur P.S. No grief, only 1 in 20,000 match. So check out Be The Match dot org and consider getting your cheek swabbed. Somewhere out there someone may be depending on you - so no pressure.

What Is Consciousness?

Published April 3, 2011 by centaur
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what information is beautiful thinks i think about consciousness infographic on consciousness as functionalism The ever wonderful chaps at Information is Beautiful have put up a beautiful animated infographic of many of the major theories of consciousness. Click on the graphic to the right to see them all ... I'm essentially a functionalist but try to keep an open mind. OK, I can state it more forcefully than that: I believe, and believe I can point to evidence for, that consciousness performs many important functions, and I want to know what they all are, how they work together, and how they relate to the other functions of the brain. If we do build up a solid picture of that, however, it won't surprise me too much if we find interesting phenomena left over that require us rethinking everything we've done up to that point. -the Centaur UPDATE: Ooo, there's even more to the graphic than I thought ... you can click on the brains and get it to produce a composite graphic of what "your" theory of consciousness is.

It’s … radiation

Published March 29, 2011 by centaur
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radiation doses for various things Over at Information is Beautiful they've got a chart detailing the levels of radiation at the Fukushima nuclear disaster compared with other things, like the radiation at Chernobyl (bad) and the radiation for eating a banana (not so much). As XKCD tried to put into perspective earlier, the radiation at the plant is a real threat to the heroic workers trying to shut it down ... but for the rest of us, not so much. Sorry, folks. Radiation is just not as dangerous as you've been told in the movies and the media - we simply try to keep exposure low because the effects are random. And even if you do get a fatal dose, it won't give you superpowers. -the Centaur

Need a mental tuneup?

Published January 5, 2011 by centaur
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XKCD on Misconceptions What do you get for somebody who thinks they know everything? A dose of realism! Here are a few useful links to get started: Follow the links, then follow more of them. Lots of good stuff in there - I sure found holes in what I thought I knew. -the Centaur

Conventions … not the fan kind

Published July 24, 2010 by centaur
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I've picked up a fair number of conventions over the years ... notations, ways of writing things to make the type of thing that I'm writing clear. Most of these I've picked up from others, some are my own. Here are a few of them:
  • Novel titles are written in ALL CAPS
    You write novels this way to make it clear that it's a BOOK you're talking about, dag nab it. Examples: FROST MOON, ATLAS SHRUGGED, ULYSSES. I picked up this convention from my publisher, Bell Bridge Books.
  • Search queries are written in [square brackets]
    You write search queries this way, rather than with quotes, because quotes can appear in search queries. Examples: [frost moon], ["frost moon"] - note the results are not the same. I picked up this convention from The Search Engine That Starts With a G.
  • Command line text is indented in a special format where the prompt is bold, the command is bold italic, and the command response is plain text.
This last one takes more explanation (and breaking out of the unordered list to overcome WordPress CSS theme issues). When including command line responses in email, you indent the entire excerpt to set it apart from your message, then put the command prompt in bold, the command in bold italic, and its response in plain text, like so:
centaur@mobile (Sat Jul 24, 00:44:54) [501] ~:
$ imagelink comicon-2010-01.jpg san diego comicon 2010

<a href="http://www.dresan.com/images/comicon-2010-01.jpg" alt="san diego comicon 2010"><img src="https://www.dresan.com/images/comicon-2010-01.jpg" alt="san diego comicon 2010" border="0" width="600" /></a>
Some WordPress or theme weirdness is making this formatting a little harder than it is in Gmail. I think this is fixed to the point that you should be able to see that the "informational" part of the prompt (when the command was executed) appears on its own line, with a colon and line break to separate it from the command proper. The command proper is prefixed by a dollar sign, a UNIX standard that distinguishes it from the response text that follows. This communicates and distinguishes when you did it, what you did, and what you got. This one is mine. I've been developing this convention over the years as a way of communicating results from the command line in email. I have to admit, this is driven in part by a bit of egoism: I want people to know that the results I'm sending them can be done in one line of Bash, Sed and (g)AWK. And the remaining part is, I want people to learn that yes, they too can in a minute do immense amounts of computation with Bash, Sed and AWK. That's all for now. Next time: why the Einstein summation notation is cool. -the Centaur

How quickly can lava burn through your shoe?

Published January 24, 2010 by centaur
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Not fast enough:
There was a case a few years ago where a geologist accidentally stepped into some lava. The nylon laces of his boots burned off almost instantly but the thick leather did not, and he had only minor burns on his foot. After that we all made sure that we only wear real leather boots out on active flows, not the lightweight part-nylon kind.
Revenge of the Sith, it ain't. Still, I'm not swimming in it.

-the Centaur

UPDATE: Reading around a bit on the site, it turns out if you aren't wearing one of those metal bunny suits you can catch on fire from radiant heat, so Revenge of the Sith, it is.

Hey, *my* birthday is coming up *too*…

Published January 23, 2010 by centaur
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... you might think about this:
Space shuttle for sale, fully loaded, air conditioning, one careful owner. It's the ultimate bargain. NASA has cut the price of a space shuttle to $28.8 million. The vehicles will go on sale after they finish constructing the International Space Station, scheduled to be later this year.
I take no credit for the "my birthday is coming up" joke, which I stole shamelessly from my coworker Othar Hansson.
-the Centaur

Rise, Lolho the Squamous!

Published January 23, 2010 by centaur
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lenora and tachikoma

If the world didn't have enough evil already, dedicated computer engineers have figured out how to put it on tap. Behold the terror that is the Lovecraftian Name Generator! Go on, click on it, see what I'm talking about.

Back? Ok, I admit, "Lolho" and "Ual'ke" aren't the scariest Lovecraftian names. But it's programmatic. You can create more than one. The current limit is 25, but by the unholy names of Anai, Bbhaaat, Bosaush, Cazagorarl, Ch-yos, H'eligthorteg, Han-dha, Ibhagugu, K'zaru, Kephoital, Mazazho, Mephangos, Mmililog,Nacharsar, Nali-yatl, Naquggo, Niquggolo, Phomasothugn, Ralellosaq, Rhub-harny, Rlakibha, Uga-urshu, Uggugakithu, Ygg-cyo and Yishotha, not even in Lovecraft's coldest visions of an indifferent universe could he have imagined you'd be able to create an entire pantheon with the click of a button!

Even worse, that limit is no doubt arbitrary, designed to protect their computing infrastructure if not the fabric of space-time. A truly evil black-hatter could use a sequence of queries to generate matched sets of Cthulukin at the upper limit of the QPS (queries-per-second) their servers could handle! Hopefully they have some kind of DoS (Denial of Shoggoths) throttling on their servers to protect humanity. If not-

the mind reels.
-the Centaur

The Sexiest … Brain on Earth?

Published January 22, 2010 by centaur
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From Coilhouse's shoutout Stephen Hawking - "It matters if you just don't give up":
Hey, guess who else was born on Jan 8th? World-renowned theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking. He turns 68 today. Here’s a small assortment of reverent (and not so reverent) clips and quotes concerning a brilliant and resilient man whose mind is arguably Teh Sexiest human organ on this entire planet:
One of my favorite of the clips in that article follows:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNcHFRq6wOQ]
"I hope I would not use the [robotic boxing glove the Simpsons gave me]. But sometimes I'm sorely tempted."

Filed under "Thank You, Carl Sagan" because, well, he's practically the next best thing to Carl we have now.
-the Centaur

The Real Fortress of Solitude

Published January 20, 2010 by centaur
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More than a sixth of a mile underground. 122 degrees Fahrenheit. 100% humidity. An environment that could kill a man in ten minutes - filled with 35 foot long selenite spears straight out of the Fortress of Solitude.

They're the Naica caves, one of the most beautiful environments on Earth:

Thank You, Carl Sagan

Published January 10, 2010 by centaur
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"Thank you, Carl Sagan" is an in-joke I and my friends use which requires a bit of explanation. I've been a member, on and off, of the Planetary Society since ... oh, heck, I don't know, since I lived in Greenville, South Carolina ... which makes it at least 25 years, a credible guess since the Planetary Society was founded by Carl Sagan in 1980.

Back in the 80's, I was first coming into my own as a space enthusiast - getting a subscription to Scientific American, joining the Science Fiction Book Club, and of course joining the Planetary Society.

A few years after I joined, I opened my mailbox in Greenville and found a renewal letter for the Planetary Society. That was great - I had planned to renew - but when I pulled out the envelope and prepared to write my check, I found the following (roughly reconstructed from memory):
Thank you, Carl Sagan for the opportunity to renew my subscription at the Planetary Society! Yes, I'd like to sign up for another year of the Planetary Report and to contribute to all the Planetary Society's great causes!

I was flabbergasted. This was my first barely-adult encounter with marketing speak and I couldn't imagine the hubris of someone asking me for money writing the response letter in such a way that it looked like I was thanking them.

Even though I was young and naive, on some level I knew Carl Sagan hadn't written that letter, and even if he had seen it he would have approved it without a second thought (I mean, come on, the Society IS providing a valuable service). But it was funny enough at the time to show it to all of my friends, most of whom were also big fans of Cosmos.

So every time Carl Sagan's name was mentioned, it was immediately followed by a chorus of: "Thank You, Carl Sagan!" I still hear those words every time I hear his name ... but the meaning has changed:
Cosmos. Contact. Intelligent Life In the Universe (with Shklovskii). The Pioneer Plaque. The Pale Blue Dot. The Planetary Society itself. And A Still More Glorious Dawn Awaits (with Stephen Hawking and Colorpulse).

Thank you, Carl Sagan, indeed...
-the Centaur

“He always had a lot to say … too bad he left so soon”

Published January 7, 2010 by centaur
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M]

Carl Sagan ruminates on life on Earth, how, as seen by a far-off camera on a spacecraft, a pale blue dot houses everyone anyone ever has known in the course of human history.

the pale blue dot

From his speech on the Pale Blue Dot:
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Thanks, Carl.
-the Centaur

Real Estate Opportunities for the Far-Seeing Investor

Published October 10, 2009 by centaur
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I don't know why this strikes me as so funny, but it does:

exoplanets
Exoplanets, also known as "extrasolar planets", are planets outside our solar system, orbiting distant stars. To keep track of this fast-changing field, the Planetary Society presents this list of exoplanets. Here you will find a complete and up-to-date registry of known exoplanets and what is known about them.

Perhaps it's because when I see "find out more", "explore our catalogue" and "go directly to listings" related to land masses I expect them to have a list of foreclosures or beachfront properties. Nevertheless, the search for extrasolar planets is hot, and is only going to get hotter:

fomalhaut b

Remember, "a new life awaits you in the Off-World colonies. The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!"


-the Centaur

Initial image and text from the linked pages on the Planetary Society web site (not to be confused with the Planetary Organization). Fomalhaut B image courtesy of NASA and Wikipedia. Full disclosure: I have been a member of the Planetary Society since, like, forever.