Seriously, this isn’t funny:

I don’t understand how commodity (or currency) traders can possibly figure out the direction of their holdings.

Actually… I don’t think they do.

(See also)

I thought perhaps, I could gain a greater understanding of the direction of oil (and thereby gasoline) prices, if I added a news box for the term “oil” to my Google Homepage.

Not so much.

And if so, why doesn’t it get me more cool points?

I bought a compact car in 2000. At the time, gas was $1/gal. Today it has over 180K miles on it and still gets 34mpg or better on the highway doing 70 with a full trunk and four riders. It was recently listed as one of the top 16 most economical used cars to get. SUVs and other gas guzzlers, once popular status symbols and family “necessities” are now being discarded like Betamax tapes.

I’ve also been riding the bus to work since I started my current job about two years ago, when gas was under $3/gal. A few times here and there I also take the train.

I beat the first trend by 6-8 years and the second trend by 1-2 years.

Now, to figure out what trend to be ahead on next.

BoingBoing’s recent post on interesting uses for cellular automata led me to Rudy Rucker’s blog. Rudy is a math prof at San Jose State, who specializes in chaos and cellular automata (fairly closely related to each other, and relatively modern subareas), as well as an author. (Chaos is closely related to the study of fractals, and a famous cellular automaton is Conway’s Game of Life.)

It’s occurred to Rucker that chaotic, fractalline, and even CA style patterns are found abundantly in nature. He’s come across some very interesting ones, having found CA patterns on the backs of a seashell-living creature called the textile coneshell.

Rudy is starting to think all this is more than just a nifty coincidence, that mathematics has just happened to stumble on a method of creating patterns that look just like so many natural patterns. In his latest post, he makes the suggestion that “God” could be a deterministic non-reversible class four paratime metaphysical cellular automaton. In other words, the driving force of Nature, humankind, and the ravages of time are really just (for lack of a more discretionary term) one big fractal.

Over at another post, he literally draws it out, drawing a diagram that illustrates the possibility that the universe is the cross of one 4D CA system involving space and time, being perturbed by another 2D system.

In short… it’s clear I’m not the only one who has grasped onto the notion that the workings of the Universe, from the habitual shaking of my leg, to world war, to the shapes of salt crystals and lobsters, to the motions of planets, could be summed up as one very complex fractal, a myriad of chaotic forces all acting on each other all at once, resulting in a huge chaos that is ultimately an order.

His new book is called The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul. I may have to pick that up.

For about a week and a half now, I’ve been taking a multivitamin every day. And since then, I’ve started to feel like my mood has improved. I seem to be less morose, and less defensive, and a bit more confident. I feel better, not in any physical way, but in a more not-identifiable overall general way. I think have a little more energy than normal.

(more…)

North Korea’s only friend in this world was China… and now even China is saying, hey world, let’s do something about this little punk.

China urges UN action on N Korea
Beijing - traditionally Pyongyang’s closest ally - said it had not ruled out UN sanctions….
China’s UN ambassador, Wang Guangya, has said North Korea must face “some punitive actions” for conducting a nuclear test.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said: “This will no doubt have a negative impact on China and North Korea’s relations.”

Even Russia, another lukewarm NK associate, went cold.

Russia, which like China has resisted sanctions in the past, has said it is “ready to take part in joint efforts of the interested parties….”

Of course, this FR disaster on NK’s part only bolsters my (and others’) hypothesis that it was a trick — that NK will come out and say “well, it wasn’t really a nuclear device… but it COULD have been…” And I really don’t think that impoverished NK’s nuclear weapons program, working in a vacuum, would have managed to create and detonate (safely, underground, and with complete containment) a 5-to-15 megaton device. Did we already forget just how good their missile program is?

NK would be better off worldwide if they’d spent that kind of money, resources, and effort on finishing the damned hotel.

From the BBC: Scientists take fresh look at Ceres

Ceres, the latest entry into the dwarf planet club, got a full 3-D infrared scan recently, exposing its true richly-featured surface, and eliminating old assumptions that it was smooth.

This new attention is no doubt partly due to the former asteroid’s promotion to the newly formed planetoid group.

Where Pluto was once the runt of the solar system, it’s now the eldest member of a new class of junior solar system bodies. Which is a dubious distinction, to be sure; akin to being the captain of a Special Olympics team in a crowd of pro football players, but by no means one that is without high potential for honor.

[From BoingBoing] This site from caffeine-addict blog Energy Fiend will calculate how much of any of your favorite energy delivery products you would need to drink in a day in order to die from caffeine overdose.

For example, I know that 75 and a half cans of Rockstar is my limit. Likewise, 166 and a half bottles of Coke Blak will do me in. However, I can drink 7-Up to my heart’s content.
[Link]

[From Digg] Dr. Gene Cooperman, director of the Institute for Complex Scientific Software at Northeastern University in Boston, has received a $200,000 grant for 20TB of storage to store and analyze as many as possible of the 43 quintillion possible positions of a Rubik’s Cube. The toys are to be used as a model for operations research, a science dedicated to using computers to solve and optimize complex combinatorical logistics problems. Rubiks also have been used as mathematical models for diverse fields including particle physics.

Prof. Cooperman is one of two people at NU who claim to know the best algorithm for solving the 2×2x2 Pocket Cube, proving that any arrangement can be solved in 11 moves or less.

[Link]

In lieu of serious content, here’s something that just looks cool.

These fascinating organic sculptures are created by Professor Walter R. Tschinkel at FSU. Prof. Tschinkel created a series of blank earth enclosures, into which he let loose a few hundred harvester ants to build a home. After a few days, Tschinkel recaptured the ants, and then poured dental plaster (or molten metal) into the top, which seeped through the entire nest structure. The dried and cleaned results expose systems of ant-made space-age caverns connected with winding, helical shafts.

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