Posted in Sport, Statistics and Metrics on December 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
For some reason, the ICC Test ‘Championship’ (read ‘Perpetual League Table’) is occupying my thoughts today. Having now disregarded a malicious desire to construct a (non-trivial) ranking system that maintains Australian superiority indefinitely, I instead offer the following cluster of thoughts:
Can it really be that the ICC points system fails to incorporate runs scored or [...]
Posted in Physics, Science, Statistics and Metrics, logic on December 29, 2008 | 7 Comments »
My title is taken from a similarly titled article by the physicist Ed Jaynes, whose work influenced me greatly. It refers to a controversial idea of epistemological probability theory: the method of maximum entropy, that was popularised and (arguably) invented by Jaynes. This principle states that, when choosing probabilities on a discrete hypothesis space, subject [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on December 22, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Am I the last person to become aware of the existence of the Australian Government’s National Public Toilet Map, located where else but at http://www.toiletmap.gov.au? I would have stopped short of the slavish adherence to website personalisation that led to the inclusion of a ‘My Toilets’ section, but, in all seriousness, the website is a [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on December 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
That John Lanchester fellow has written yet another interesting article in the LRB, this time not about the economic crisis (or so it seems to me), but about the medium that this year
[f]rom the economic point of view… overtook music and video, combined, in the UK. The industries’ respective share of the take is forecast [...]
Posted in Music, Science, Science and the Public on December 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Via a gmail status message of O. X. Dive, a modular implementation of those Himalayas of engineering, the Great Ball Contraption:
There is (a non-lego) one in the Questacon at the Parliamentary Triangle and it was definitely one of my favourite exhibits as a young enthusiast of science and symmetry, along with [...]
Posted in Amusing, Creativity, Linguistics on December 20, 2008 | 5 Comments »
Via Sullivan, Keljeck (nice blog template) posts the full transcript of an interview between John Lofton and Allen Ginsberg, as printed in a 1990 issue of Harper’s Bazaar (though itself apparently a reprint!):
LOFTON: When you say you suppose this could have applied to you, does this mean you don’t know if you are mad?
GINSBERG: Well, [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on December 20, 2008 | 1 Comment »
With Christmas less than a week away, it’s time to share with you my top five songs that get stuck in my head every Christmas. Readers are encouraged to provide their own list in the comments section.
5. Wonderful Christmas Time – Paul McCartney
I don’t know any of the verses to this song, but the chorus [...]
Posted in Technology on December 5, 2008 | 4 Comments »
Those who have spoken to me recently about such things will know of my advocacy of the iTunes movie rental service. Though their selection is limited, it is an excellent proof of concept for the general idea of how digital media should sensibly be ‘owned’. I know that the Internet is full of well-informed, passionate [...]
Posted in Mathematics, Statistics and Metrics, The Universe on December 4, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Have just had a nice week working at Mount Stromlo Observatory and am looking forward to the coming week in Melbourne (generally) and Swinburne (particularly). Yesterday and the day before I was working on a small problem that grew out of a larger project (which I’m sure I’ll return to at a later date, just [...]
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