Monthly Archives: October 2005

Scary Mathematical Symbols

NOTE: This article was begun on October 25th, 2005, slightly less than one month AFTER Dr. Duncan Watts’ Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age (c. 2003, W. W. Norton & Company) came into my posession.

Although I believe the basic concept advanced herein was uniquely conceived by me under no influence from this or other sources, I have since become aware that Dr. Watts’ much earlier publication utilizes a very similar (if less elaborate) categorization scheme in its “Further Reading” section and I must acknowledge such precedence and the possibility that I might have been influenced by, and subsequently forgotten, or unconciously picked up on the basic concept.

Either way, whether this represents a coincident re-invention on my part or an unconscious borrowing, I believe there is much to be gained through the use of such markers to alert readers to the intellectual ‘terrain’ ahead. I also feel that the addition of optional subsets of symbols adding an additional degree of detail to the basic glyphs with minimal added complexity, contributes to the utility of the concept as a whole.

Scary Math - Green Circle.jpg = WARNING Contains Basic Mathematics: Arithmetic

Scary Math - Blue Square Algebra.jpg = WARNING Contains Intermediate Mathematics: Algebra

Scary Math - Blue Square Trig copy.jpg = WARNING Contains Intermediate Mathematics: Trigonometry

Scary Math - Black Diamond Blank.jpg = WARNING Contains Advanced Mathematics: Unspecified or Various

Scary Math - Black Diamond Stat.jpg = WARNING Contains Advanced Mathematics: Statistics

Scary Math - Black Diamond Calc copy.jpg = WARNING Contains Advanced Mathematics: Calculus

Scary Math - Black Diamond Calc II.jpg = WARNING Contains Advanced Mathematics: Extreme Calculus

Scary Math - Black Diamond DiffEQ copy.jpg = WARNING Contains Advanced Mathematics: Differential Equations

Smaller versions could be used in-line with references:

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Repeated symbols convey increasing levels of difficulty:

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Sounds too good to be true

…but then again, I’ve often wondered if there wasn’t a solution like this sitting out there somewhere waiting for someone to find it:

A unique system that can produce Hydrogen inside a car using common metals such as Magnesium and Aluminum was developed by an Israeli company. The system solves all of the obstacles associated with the manufacturing, transporting and storing of hydrogen to be used in cars. When it becomes commercial in a few years time, the system will be incorporated into cars that will cost about the same as existing conventional cars to run, and will be completely emission free.

From reading the full article, it sounds as though the car will actually require two fuel sources — water and a very heavy metal coil which enables the production of free hydrogen by producing metal oxide (what folks like us call rust, one presumes) as the by-product of running the engine. Apparently the driver would need to put water in the tank on a par with putting gas into the fuel tank of a conventional vehicle. How long the coil lasts is not stated, but seeing as it weighs 100 Kg, one would hope that the driver won’t need to go sticking in a new one every week.

231005_Hybrid_Car.jpg

Via Kurzweil AI.

UPDATE: Plenty of healthy skepticism about this over at SlashDot, where I got the link to the cover story of the latest New Scientist — Metal: The Fuel of the Future.

Doping the Math Majors

Arnold Kling, in the second in his series of essays inspired by Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near, writes:

Perhaps the last unenhanced human to make a significant contribution in the field of mathematics has already been born. In twenty years, the tenure track at top university mathematics departments may consist entirely of people who depend on drugs, direct neural-computer connections, genetic modification, or a combination of all three in order to achieve high-level performance.

Some people would argue that the leading edge of this phenomenon is athletes’ use of steroids. I would caution, however, that athletics is atypical in that it is a zero-sum game, and we should not automatically adopt zero-sum bioethics.

Kling is skeptical about strong AI, but less skeptical about the possibility of augmenting human potential. However, even the non-strong-AI route is fraught with potential difficulties:

Over the next twenty to forty years, these enhancement technologies are going to make their appearance. Early adopters of these inventions may achieve dramatic benefits while incurring significant risks. The long-term side-effects and unintended consequences will be necessarily uncertain.

Kling has some thoughts on who those risk-takers might be, but I don’t think he tops the suggestion we made in the most recent Better All the Time.

Rocketeers, Start Your Engines!

One of the side-effects of accelerating change is the increased workload required to keep up. Another event we missed in passing recently was the announcement by X-Prize foundation chariman Dr. Peter Diamandis and Mr. Grainger Whitelaw of the innauguration of the Rocket Racing League. (Press Release)

RRL Logo Merged copy.jpg

While I am sure that this announcement will generate a great many “NASCAR-In-Space” and “What do Rednecks n’Rockets have in common?” jokes, I’d like to remind our readers that air racing was (and still is) one of the most popular passtimes for the young and wealthy and that such races were the driving force behind the technological evoloution of aircraft before and between the World Wars. (See the movies “Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines, or “The Great Waldo Pepper”, or “The Aviator”, for dramatized examples.)

Initial plans call for two “Tiers” of racing activities:

  • Tier 1 racing, reminiscent of Indy Car, Formula 1 or Las Vegas Air Racing, consists of multiple vehicles (currently, derivitives of the Burt Rutan-designed XCOR EZ-Rocket, see image below) racing around a closed 3D course at distances requiring refueling.

    • RRL EZ Rocket.jpg
    (click to enlarge)

  • Tier 2 racing, similar to last year’s X-Prize competition, would involve teams taking varied designs on suborbital hops, possibly with cross-range, distance, precision landing, or other additional criteria. Presumably these races would be executed against the clock, but head-to-head action is also a possibility.

    • Although not yet officially an option, plans exist to extend the RRL to another level as technology allows:

  • Tier 3 racing would eventually encompass orbital races.

    • This author envisions the latter as RRL’s analog to LeMans, Enduro, or Rally racing in that on-orbit endurance (and therefore distance), as well as higher orbits (speed), and rendezvous (navigation) might become the challenges at this level.

    If this is the kind of business plan that it takes to get commercial space travel underway, I say “Let’s light this candle!”

    (h/t Wired)

    Impending Catastrophe

    Well, this is scary.

    PITTSBURGH—A zombie-preparedness study, commissioned by Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy and released Monday, indicates that the city could easily succumb to a devastating zombie attack. Insufficient emergency-management-personnel training and poorly conceived undead-defense measures have left the city at great risk for all-out destruction at the hands of the living dead, according to the Zombie Preparedness Institute.

    And I’m afraid that Denver is just as poorly prepared.