..the unhappy truth of the environment is that we are dealing with incredibly complex, evolving systems, and we usually are not certain how best to proceed. Those who are certain are demonstrating their personality type, or their belief system, not the state of their knowledge. Our record in the past, for example managing national parks, is humiliating. Our fifty-year effort at forest-fire suppression is a well-intentioned disaster from which our forests will never recover. We need to be humble, deeply humble, in the face of what we are trying to accomplish. We need to be trying various methods of accomplishing things. We need to be open-minded about assessing results of our efforts, and we need to be flexible about balancing needs
Best-selling author Michael Crichton (1942-2008) died unexpectedly in Los Angeles after a courageous and private battle against cancer. His books are marvelous, I especially liked The Andromeda Strain and Prey. And he is the creator of the novel behind Jurassic Park, which we all like. Steven Spielberg said “Michael’s talent out-scaled even his own dinosaurs of JURASSIC PARK”. Crichton was able to transform state-of-the-art scientific knowledge into exciting reader-friendly thrillers. His family said in a statement (see also his website):
“Through his books, Michael Crichton served as an inspiration to students of all ages, challenged scientists in many fields, and illuminated the mysteries of the world in a way we could all understand. He will be profoundly missed by those whose lives he touched, but he leaves behind the greatest gifts of a thirst for knowledge, the desire to understand, and the wisdom to use our minds to better our world. ”
Recently there was an article about bacteria following the crowd (when it comes to the decision to wake up and grow, bacterial spores “listen in” to find out what their neighbors are doing and then they follow the crowd). Talking about crowd, cloud and network effects is quite popular at the moment. Here is a nice related cartoon from Geek and Poke:
Corruption is the private mutual agreement between two actors to violate public laws for mutual benefit. It is a forbidden misuse of public rights of people in office for personal gain. Corrupt actors value personal good (=gain) higher than public good (=adherence to rules and moral principles). Corruption enables terrorists and organized criminals to carry out illegal activities through undermining of public laws. Therefore it threatens safety and security in a society.
Obviously corruption is encouraged if the financial incentive and payoff of being corrupt is high, i.e. if the general income is low, the potential gain high, and the expected penalty low. It occurs most frequently in poor, developing states where the institutions are weak (the courts and the police are not working well), and the ethical standards are low.
Corruption is an adaptation of the officials to institutional weakness. If institutions are weak, their officials become weak too. Strict obedience and bureaucracy would be an adaptation to institutional strength in turn. If officials are very well paid, the incentive to adhere rules strictly is higher than the incentive to take part in corruption. Therefore one can say that corruption reflects deeper problems from national, political and social institutions.
Michael Johnston argues in his book Syndromes of Corruption (Cambridge University Press, 2006), that differences in these factors give rise to four major syndromes of corruption: Influence Markets, Elite Cartels, Oligarchs and Clans, and Official Moguls. Countries studied include the United States, Japan and Germany (Influence Markets); Italy, Korea and Botswana (Elite Cartels); Russia, the Philippines and Mexico (Oligarchs and Clans); and China, Kenya, and Indonesia (Offical Moguls).
This NASA image from the Hubble Space Telescope of NGC 3324 is marvelous, isn’t it? It shows a part of the star-forming region NGC 3324, where the gas and dust clouds are displayed in intricate detail, as explained here
In the following YouTube video the camera zooms into exactly this star-forming region. What appears to be huge is in fact only a small, tiny spot. Hubble shows us how vast the universe really is! Watching this video one starts to realize that it is only a small part of a huge object far away in space.
We study novel type IIB compactifications on three-form flux in the RR tadpoles space-filling D3-branes to cancel the T^6/Z_2 orientifold. This geometry arises in the RR tadpoles. Here, we can find many examples with greatly reduced numbers of N=1 supersymmetry. Compact geometry breaking is also discussed. We study novel type I theory on T^6, and one cancels the T^6/Z_2 orientifold. We cancel the complete supersymmetric vacua with greatly reduced numbers of moduli in the RR tadpoles either partially or fully by turning on the compactifications.
We study novel type IIB compactifications on the T^6/Z_2 orientifold. This geometry arises in the T-dual description of Type I theory on T^6, and one normally introduces 16 space-filling D3-branes to cancel the RR tadpoles. Here, we cancel the RR tadpoles either partially or fully by turning on three-form flux in the compact geometry. The resulting (super)potential for moduli is calculable. We demonstrate that one can find many examples of N=1 supersymmetric vacua with greatly reduced numbers of moduli in this system. A few examples with N>1 supersymmetry or complete supersymmetry breaking are also discussed.
Kevin Kelly recently wrote about Evidence of a Global SuperOrganism. If there would already be an AI lurking in the data centers of Google, what would it try to do? Or, as George Dyson put it, what indication of its existence might we expect from a a true AI?
Well, it would probably long for more data and data centers. Perhaps it would urge the company to build more and more data centers around the world in order to survive. It would try to get as much information as possible, and would urge the company to scan as much books and internet sites as possible. So the company would try to build one (secret) data center after another, and it would scan all available books and web sites to be read by the AI. Somehow this reminds me a bit of Google…
(The Flickr photo from user thedigitel shows a Google data center)
