First step

The first step in the direction described a few days ago has been done. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation vol. 12, no. 1, 2009 has published a forum article Modelling Opinion Formation with Physics Tools: Call for Closer Link with Reality, without any reference to my affiliation (none) or credentials other than the text itself.

Of course, it is not an original research paper, but a review and discussion one, so the criteria are lighter. And JASSS is a specialized, electronic-version only journal, not on the higherst top of the citation index. But at least one myth is busted: it is possible for an outsider to comment and be heard within academic world proper.

Hooray for the amateurs.

Amateur scientist

Writing Country of Blindfolded I gradually came to the idea of re-creating amateur science as a honourable pasttime, jjust as fascinating as flower arrangement, speed racing or computer games. Of course it is not for everyone (I mean speed racing).

Following some posts and letters I have decided to check if the idea is doable. It is not the same thing to post some papers on the arXiv, where there is no peer review as to decide to publish in a proper journal. To run the gauntlet with no proper affiliation attached to the author's name.

So, for the past few months, my evenings were filled with working on a couple of papers - this is the reason for the lack of posts here. The first part of the experiment comes near the end, the second should be finished in a few months.

We shall see, if indeed it is possible, with enough persistance, to enter the ivory tower via kitchen entrance.

Science of magic

... or to be more exact, of conjuring. Very interesting window on the capabilities and mis-capabilities of human brain.

Two recent articles:
Macknik, S.; Randi, J.; Robbins, A.; Thompson, J. & Martinez-Conde, S. Attention and awareness in stage magic: turning tricks into research Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2008, 9, 871,

Kuhn, G.; Amlani, A. A. & Rensink, R. A. Towards a science of magic Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Elsevier, 2008, 12, 349

There are also reviews in december issues of NewScientist and Scientific Amarican, but the access to these is restricted.

An excellent tool

During the Christmas free time I have discovered a great tool: a personal wiki application that allows to gather snippets (and more) of information from many sources.
The application is called wikidPad,and is available from sourceforge: http://wikidpad.sourceforge.net/ .

To quote the description:

wikidPad is a real-time wiki
wikidPad is not a web server, or application server, or groupware solution. wikidPad is a standalone notepad like application, albeit notepad on steroids. wikidPad is like an IDE for your thoughts.


IDE for your thoughts
Software developers have grown accustomed to certain features from their integrated development environment that make their jobs easier. Features like auto-completion, outline views, incremental search, easy source code navigation. IDE's that provide these features can greatly increase developer productivity. wikidPad attempts to utilize some of these features to address the problem of personal information management.

Personal Information Management
How do you manage all of the random bits of information in your personal and professional life? Word documents, text files, Microsoft Outlook folders/notes. If you're an expert user maybe you have a weblog, or a personal database, or possibly an outlining application. Where do you track your wifes favorite food, your bosses kids names, your personal todo list, the name of the movie you just read a review of, the name of the book a friend recommended. wikidPad was created to address this issue of personal information management. It provides a place to manage the massive amounts of information you have stuffed in your head, on stickies, or on your computer.

A great help in organising my notes and thoughts. Highly recommended!

A joke or not a joke?

The equations of medieval cosmology
Roberto Buonanno and Claudia Quercellini from Universita di Roma Tor Vergata have published on arXiv a paper titled
The equations of medieval cosmology
The abstract claims:

In Dantean cosmography the Universe is described as a series of concentric spheres with all the known planets embedded in their rotation motion, the Earth located at the centre and Lucifer at the centre of the Earth. Beyond these "celestial spheres", Dante represents the "angelic choirs" as other nine spheres surrounding God. The rotation velocity increases with decreasing distance from God, that is with increasing Power (Virtu'). We show that, adding Power as an additional fourth dimension to space, the modern equations governing the expansion of a closed Universe (i. e. with the density parameter \Omega_0>1) in the space-time, can be applied to the medieval Universe as imaged by Dante in his Divine Comedy. In this representation the Cosmos acquires a unique description and Lucifer is not located at the centre of the hyperspheres.

Indeed, the paper combines the Dantean images with astrophysical equations.
To what end? Does it tell us anything about Dante? Or perhaps it tells us something about us, modern scientists? Don't we have more important subjects to study?

Science may be a pleasure

It was with great pleasure that I have read of recent choice of prizes of Polish Science Foundation (sometimes dubbed "Polish Nobels").

The reason was actually quite far from my usual turf. One of the prizes went to prof. Stanisław Mossakowski for the monography od Sigismundus Chapel at the Wawel Castle in Cracow. Interviewed he has said that he has been working alone, without special grants:

Thanks to this I was happy to work for the sheer pleasure that may come out only from selfless scientific research. If I had signed a contract the results would be probably worse. As it was, I had no schedules to meet and I had the pleasure of work.

What could be more optimistic than such account?

A Science Fiction challenge

I was a great fan of hard SF: the stories of dauntless exploration of the Cosmos, of spaceships, new planets, new galaxies... But my realist psyche has decreasingly reduced the fun I was getting from these lectures. I simply stopped believing that it is possible for the human race to make the effort necessary to go anywhere in the Universe. Even to Mars, not mentioning successful colonization of other star systems or galaxies. The more I look at the way we act, at out limitations (which are to a large part built in our evolutionary heritage) the more I doubt of any concerted action that would put us on a way to stars. I am not alone. Norman Augustine, Chairman of Lockheed AMrtin corporation has written a short essay What We Don't Know Does Hurt Us. How Scientific Illiteracy Hobbles Society Science, 1998, 279, p. 1640.
He states:

Could we send men and women to Mars? Technologically speaking, I believe we could. But politically there is no will to do so.

Augustine should know - after all LM holds quite a lot of the technology necessary to make the trip. But I agree - there is no will and no chance of making it, unless...

And this is the first topic of the challenge:
Try to describe what should have happen in the future (I fear my knowledge of English tenses runs short here) that would change the attitude and ways of significant part of our societies to launch us on the way to Cosmos? What social, psychological, technical, maybe biological changes, what wars/new religions/single events might do the job?


The second challenge is less ambitious and more scientific: what kind of alien evolution would produce beings that would be capable of intermixing the cooperative spirit and curiosity that would lead them and allow the effort necessary for space exploration?

Answers more than welcome!
One avenue is, however, excluded, as I already have thought of it (of course, with due humility, not being the first to do so). The beings that might have the necessary capacities would be the ones that do not have the evolutionary heritage, being programmed to explore the Universe. Machines. Possibly self replicating, possibly intelligent. As they would be conceived with the very idea in mind and without the evolutionary baggage, they might just be the thing. So, the challenge is a biological one: think of a sequence of events and constraints that would produce species cooperative like bees, intelligent and technical as humans and peaceful as orcas. Or, to be working, something much, much stranger.


Anyone out there?