England retain the Ashes (3-1)

Results

1st Test: Australia v England at Brisbane - Nov 25-29, 2010
England 260 and 517/1d; Australia 481 and 107/1
Match drawn (0-0)

2nd Test: Australia v England at Adelaide - Dec 3-7, 2010
Australia 245 and 304; England 620/5d
England won by an innings and 71 runs (1-0)

3rd Test: Australia v England at Perth - Dec 16-19, 2010
Australia 268 and 309; England 187 and 123
Australia won by 267 runs (1-1)

4th Test: Australia v England at Melbourne - Dec 26-29, 2010
Australia 98 and 258; England 513
England won by an innings and 157 runs (2-1)

5th Test: Australia v England at Sydney - Jan 3-7, 2011
Australia 280 and 281; England 644
England won by an innings and 83 runs (3-1)

Man of the series: Alastair Cook (who scored 766 runs at an average of 127 during the series). In total, he spent 2,171 minutes at the crease. In the Melbourne test, his score of  235 (not out) broke Sir Donald Bradman's record for the highest Test score at the MCG. At the end of the second day of the Adelaide test match, Cook's tally of 136 not out meant he had scored 371 runs and batted for 1,022 minutes without being dismissed, an England record.

More here

He has got some skills

Check this out . . .

Some nice unicycling - ridden by Kris Holm

Happy Birthday Charles Darwin !!

This week marks both the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and also the 150th anniversary of "On the Origin of Species".

Three hours from disaster - the US economic and political system

Check out this video - Rep. Paul Kanjorski explains how the US (and world) economy came within 3 hours of complete collapse due to an electronic run on the banks.

He explains just how close we all came to economic and political disaster:

I was there when the secretary and the chairman of the Federal Reserve came those days and talked to members of Congress about what was going on... Here's the facts. We don't even talk about these things.

On Thursday, at about 11 o'clock in the morning, the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous drawdown of money market accounts in the United States to a tune of $550 billion being drawn out in a matter of an hour or two.

The Treasury opened up its window to help. They pumped $105 billion into the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks.

They decided to close the operation, close down the money accounts, and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn't be further panic and there. And that's what actually happened.

If they had not done that their estimation was that by two o'clock that afternoon, $5.5 trillion would have been drawn out of the money market system of the United States, would have collapsed the entire economy of the United States, and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed.

Now we talked at that time about what would have happened if that happened. It would have been the end of our economic system and our political system as we know it.

Please check out the video!

The World is Flat 3.0

Here is an interesting talk from Tom Friedman (speaking at MIT).

He says:

A bigger problem still is that three billion new players are streaming into this newly flat world, seeking their own version of the American dream, with cars, toasters, and microwaves. “If we don’t find a cleaner, more non-emitting way to power their dreams, we’re going to burn up, choke up, heat up and smoke up this planet so much faster than even Al Gore predicts.”

Friedman scoffs at those who claim “a green revolution is going on,” calling it instead a green party, entailing no real sacrifice or pain. He says the only hope will be a “disruptive breakthrough” that brings a completely different mix of standards and taxes.” Friedman’s new mantra is, “Change your leaders, not your light bulbs.” Without new leaders to rewrite our laws and trigger the innovations, “we are cooked.”

More here

Gambling advice - two systems

Martingale System:

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Originally, martingale referred to a class of betting strategies popular in 18th-century France. The simplest of these strategies was designed for a game in which the gambler wins his stake if a coin comes up heads and loses it if the coin comes up tails. The strategy had the gambler double his bet after every loss, so that the first win would recover all previous losses plus win a profit equal to the original stake. Since a gambler with infinite wealth will with probability 1 eventually flip heads, the Martingale betting strategy was seen as a sure thing by those who practised it. Of course, none of these practitioners in fact possessed infinite wealth, and the exponential growth of the bets would eventually bankrupt those who choose to use the Martingale. Moreover, it has become impossible to implement in modern casinos, due to the betting limit at the tables. Because the betting limits reduce the casino's short term variance, the Martingale system itself does not pose a threat to the casino, and many will encourage its use, knowing that they have the house advantage no matter when or how much is wagered. (WIKI)

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Anti-martingale system:

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In a classic martingale betting style, gamblers will increase their bets after each loss in hopes that an eventual win will recover all previous losses. The anti-martingale approach instead increases bets after wins, while reducing them after a loss. The perception is that in this manner the gambler will benefit from a winning streak or a "hot hand", while reducing losses while "cold" or otherwise having a losing streak. This general idea of increasing bets when conditions are believed to be favorable can improve the odds in games with a memory by using a strategy like card counting. But in a true random memoryless game there is no such thing as a winning streak or losing streak (these notions are gambler's fallacy) so this strategy can't improve the expected winnings in such situations. (WIKI)

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HINT: Both systems don't work unless you have unlimited amounts of money to throw away!!

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HINT 2: The concept of martingale in probability theory was introduced by Paul Pierre Lévy, and much of the original development of the theory was done by Joseph Leo Doob. Part of the motivation for that work was to show the impossibility of successful betting strategies!!!! (WIKI)

Normal Accidents: Living with High Risk Technologies

I have just been having a read of "Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies" by Charles Perrow.

The blurb on the back reads:

"Normal Accidents analyzes the social side of technological risk. Charles Perrow argues that the conventional engineering approach to ensuring safety- building in more warnings and safeguards - fails because sytems complexity makes failures inevitable. He asserts that typical precautions, by adding to complexity, may help create new categories of accidents. (At Chernabyl, tests of a new safety system helped produce the meltdown and subsequent fire.) By recognizing two dimensions of risk - complex versus linear, and tight versus loose coupling - this book provides a powerful framework for anaylzing risks and the organizations that insist we run them."

** Well worth a read, especially if you are familiar with the work of Ulrich Beck and his ideas of the Risk Society.

Note: I was recently reading about the Exxon Valdex Oil disaster and how it was caused by jealousy (see River pilot's jealousy linked to massive oil spill) but after reading this book I can see how it was not simply the fault of the captain (i.e. human error) but was the result of a 'normal accident' due to the massive complexity of the global oil system. The added 'safety' precautions made it more unsafe due to the increased complexity of the system and therefore more likely to fail.

Thus, the failure was not the pilot's fault as such, nor was it due to the inability of humans to design systems that are foolproof, rather Charles Perrow suggests it is simply a result of the increased complexity of our human systems and that failures will occur in multiple and unforeseen ways that are virtually impossible to predict. He explains this well on pages 5 -8 of his book here using an everyday example of someone having a 'bad day' and being late for an job interview.

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Also check out:

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New Green Jobs ??

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Splitting: 'jobs' versus 'the environment'

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Comments always welcome !!!

Iceland stock market not looking good

Figure 1: The value of the OMX Iceland 15 from January 1998 to October 2008 (log scale).
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Iceland Stock Market
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Trading in shares of six financial companies on the OMX Nordic Iceland Exchange was suspended on 6 October by order of the FME. On Thursday 9 October, all trading on the exchange was frozen for two days by the government "in an attempt to prevent further panic spreading throughout the country's financial markets". The decision was made to do so due to "unusual market conditions", with share prices having fallen 30 percent since the start of the month. The closure was extended through Monday 13 October due to continuing "unusual market conditions".

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The market reopened on 14 October with the main index, the OMX Iceland 15, at 678.4, compared with 3,004.6 before the closure. This reflects the fact that the value of the three big banks, which form 73.2 percent of the value of the OMX Iceland 15, had been set to zero.

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After a week of very thin trading, the OMX Iceland 15 closed on 17 October at 643.1, down 93% in króna terms and 96% in euro terms from its historic high of 9016 (18 July 2007).

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Source:

If you are interested, I found a link to an OECD report on the environmental performance of Iceland.

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What do people think??

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Comments most welcome !!

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Please check out:

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Combating Climate Change and Boosting Growth Are Natural Allies

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Splitting: 'jobs' versus 'the environment'

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Polar Bear Begs

Nine meals from Anarchy

"Nine Meals from Anarchy: Oil Dependence, climate change and the transition to resilience" was the Schumacher Lecture 2008 (given in Leeds, UK) by Andrew Simms from the New Economics Foundation (NEF: Economics as if people and the planet mattered).

It is a great summary of the problems societies face (both now and in the past) and offers Solutions as if people and the planet mattered.

It is easy to read and has great quotes like this one:

"The invisible hand of the market has been at odds with the invisible heart of the core economy".

Simms suggests the core economy is made up of family, neighbourhood, community and civil society. The core economy is the operating system upon which the money economy depends upon (much like we depend upon the atmosphere). However the money system is corroding the core economy (working longer hours, capitalism promotes individual values over community values, etc).
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The values of the 'money economy' do seem to outweigh the values of the 'core economy' in modern society. Many people seem more concerned with 'interest' and their 'shares' than showing interest in others or sharing.

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In the same way, we often fail to value (and instead take advantage of) the Earth's 'core economy' (its fauna and flora, its forests, its rivers lakes and oceans, its local, regional and global ecosystems) and instead focus on the business/economic 'reality' (i.e. the money economy).

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We put anthropocentric values over ecocentric needs and as a result the Earth's core economy (broadly the environment) suffers - much as many people's work/life balance suffers when money becomes more important than people and community - except the results will be much worse than anything a financial crisis can muster. We need to learn to care about other species and share the Earth much more fairly between all.

Anyway, I hope you find 15 mins to read it.

Enjoy!

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What do people think??
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Comments most welcome !!
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Please check out:
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Combating Climate Change and Boosting Growth Are Natural Allies
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Splitting: 'jobs' versus 'the environment'
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Polar Bear Begs

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Random Man Planet Earth

The 'Black Swan' and the 'Fourth Quadrant'

Sometimes you read something that really gets you thinking . . .

Statistical and applied probabilistic knowledge is the core of knowledge; statistics is what tells you if something is true, false, or merely anecdotal; it is the "logic of science"; it is the instrument of risk-taking; it is the applied tools of epistemology; you can't be a modern intellectual and not think probabilistically—but... let's not be suckers. The problem is much more complicated than it seems to the casual, mechanistic user who picked it up in graduate school. Statistics can fool you. In fact it is fooling your government right now. It can even bankrupt the system (let's face it: use of probabilistic methods for the estimation of risks did just blow up the banking system).

The above is from an essay called THE FOURTH QUADRANT: A MAP OF THE LIMITS OF STATISTICS by Nassim Nicholas Taleb [9.15.08]. It contains two very interesting ideas.

The idea of the 'black swan' (highly improbable and unpredictable events that have massive impact) and the 'fourth quarter' (complex decisions in 'extremistan' [the Black Swan's domain] where statistics are useless and statistical based claims should be seen as hopeless guesses (at best).

Taleb suggests there are two classes of probability domains: Mediocristan and Extremistan.

In Mediocristan, exceptions occur but don't carry large consequences. Add the heaviest person on the planet to a sample of 1000. The total weight would barely change. In Extremistan, exceptions can be everything (they will eventually, in time, represent everything). Add Bill Gates to your sample: the wealth will jump by a factor of >100,000. So, in Mediocristan, large deviations occur but they are not consequential—unlike Extremistan.

Anyway, I thought you might like the link too.

What do you think???

Worried about the Earth ??

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Check out some mind food below

1. Nanotechnology - risks and benefits

2. 'Clean Coal' ???

3. Americans and climate change

4. What is nanotechnology?

5. Peak Oil Debate

6. Limits to growth ???

7. History of Nanotechnology
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More at http://randommanplanetearth.blogspot.com/

Engelbart and the Future of Nanotechnology

I have been reading "Overcoming Bias" (from the University of Oxford: Future of Humanity Institute) for a while now, but yesterday they had a very interesting post by Eliezer Yudkowsky called "Engelbart: Insufficiently Recursive".
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So who is Engelbart?
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Well Douglas Engelbart was a computer pioneer (best know for his invention of the computer mouse) and in the days when computers were just getting started, he had a "vision of using computers to systematically augment human intelligence".
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In 1962 he wrote a paper for the Stanford Research Institute called "Augmenting Human Intelligence: A conceptual framework". I had a read of it last night - it is relatively easy (although it does get more difficult in sections).
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He points out 4 different classes of ways to augment human intelligence:
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1. Artifacts: physical objects that can manipulate things/materials or symbols
2. Language: meaning of symbols
3. Methodology: method for problem solving
4. Training: the conditioning needed by the human being to bring his skills in using artifacts, language and methodology to the point where they are operationally effective.
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Anyway, when looking back on this paper we find that he was biased (hence the post on Overcoming Bias) and his conclusions were therefore incorrect. Yudkowsky suggests Engelbart was incorrect because:
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1. He underestimated how much cognitive work gets done by hidden algorithms running beneath the surface of introspection, and overestimated what you can do by fiddling with the visible control levers (such as his later computer 'mouse' invention).
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2. Engelbart anchored on the way that someone as intelligent as Engelbart would use computers, but there was only one of him - and due to point 1 above, he couldn't use computers to make other people as smart as him.
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Anyway, today I had another look on the site (mainly to read the replies to the above post) and found that the follow-up post "Total Nano Domination" was on the subject of future nanotechnology and avoiding the same types of incorrect assumptions that were made by Engelbart when looking toward the future. I love this site !!
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So the question they pose is this:
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Will the development of nanotechnology go the same way as computers - a smooth, steady developmental curve spread across many countries, no one project taking into itself a substantial fraction of the world's whole progress? Will it be more like the Manhattan Project, one country gaining a (temporary?) huge advantage at huge cost?
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Could one country or company get nanoweapons 'ready' that would give them the same advantage that the Atom Bomb gave the United States at the end of WWII?
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What do you think??
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UPDATE: I just saw Engelbart for the first time (being interview on TV about his mouse invention).

Beware the power of Mars Bars !!

A man who says he eats 10 Mars bars a day has claimed a lack of sugar prompted him to attack his girlfriend when she wore big, Bridget Jones-style knickers instead of a G-string, a British court has heard.
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More here

Nanotechnology

Here are some links to my posts on nanotechnology:

History of Nanotechnology

What is nanotechnology?

Nanotechnology - risks and benefits

What do you all think ???

Comments most welcome !!!

Some good psychology links . . .

I found this great site "Classics in the history of psychology" - an internet resource developed byChristopher D. Green York University, Toronto, Canada.

It has many of the original classic psychology texts including those written by Bandura, Broca, Freud, Galton, Jung, Maslow, Pavlov, Rogers and Skinner (and many others).

It is possible to search by author or topic.

Topics include:

Ancient Thought

Medieval/Renaissance Thought

Modern Philosophical Thought

Behaviorism

Evolutionary Theory

Intelligence Testing

Social Psychology

Psychoanalysis & Psychotherapy

and others too.

Worth checking out if you want to know more about psychology and its history.

http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/index.htm

Obama man

Can he save the world ???

More Isaac Asimov

More from the great man.

Isaac Asimov on Global Warming (1989)

Here is the legend himself, Isaac Asimov speaking about global warming back in 1989.

Note: Humanism is, by its very name, anthropocentric; perhaps we need a more ecocentric world-view.

I agree that we are 'all in this together' and that we have 'more similarities than differences' and think that a world government is the way to solve global problems.

America is in the process of losing its hegemonic power, and will (hopefully) under Obama will come to join the international community more fully to deal with problems such as global warming and poverty.

Any comments ????

Some Ray Bradbury advice

Here is Ray Bradbury speaking at the age of 86.

Some great advice too.

Check it out.