MachineMachine /stream - tagged with models http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron therourke@gmail.com The Mastery of Non-Mastery http://lareviewofbooks.org/post/20167996473/the-mastery-of-non-mastery/los-angeles-review-of-books-the-mastery-of-non-mastery MT @ilparone: The Mastery of Non-Mastery... reflections of an anthropologist: the normality of abnormal http://t.co/48WrZEC6 #x ]]> Sun, 08 Apr 2012 01:06:16 -0700 http://lareviewofbooks.org/post/20167996473/the-mastery-of-non-mastery/los-angeles-review-of-books-the-mastery-of-non-mastery The Body Counter: A statistician’s guide to mass atrocities http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/02/27/the_body_counter?page=full/the-body-counter-by-tina-rosenberg-foreign-policy A statistician’s guide to mass atrocities: http://t.co/GdyiVo8T ]]> Thu, 01 Mar 2012 10:59:31 -0700 http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/02/27/the_body_counter?page=full/the-body-counter-by-tina-rosenberg-foreign-policy Hawking contra Philosophy http://www.philosophynow.org/issue82/Hawking_contra_Philosophy Professor Hawking has probably been talking to the wrong philosophers, or picked up some wrong ideas about the kinds of discussion that currently go on in philosophy of science. His lofty dismissal of that whole enterprise as a useless, scientifically irrelevant pseudo-discipline fails to reckon with several important facts about the way that science has typically been practised since its early-modern (seventeenth-century) point of departure and, even more, in the wake of twentieth century developments such as quantum mechanics and relativity.

Science has always included a large philosophical component, whether at the level of basic presuppositions concerning… ]]> Sat, 19 Feb 2011 06:31:20 -0700 http://www.philosophynow.org/issue82/Hawking_contra_Philosophy Testing the flotation dynamics and swimming abilities of giraffes by way of computational analysis http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2010/06/giraffe_flotation_dynamics.php

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The background to this research

Everybody loves giraffes, and god knows they've been covered on Tet Zoo enough times (see the links below). And something that's been mentioned many times is the alleged inability of giraffes to swim, or even to float. There are several specific comments on this in the literature (e.g., Shortridge 1934, Goodwin 1954, MacClintock 1973, Wood 1982); Crandall (1964) mentioned a case where a captive giraffe escaped from a carrying crate, fell off the end of a jetty, and immediately sank in the Hudson River (incidentally, dead giraffes have… ]]> Sat, 12 Jun 2010 09:50:00 -0700 http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2010/06/giraffe_flotation_dynamics.php Think Globally http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/think-globally/ The most familiar ideas of geometry were inspired by an ancient vision — a vision of the world as flat. From parallel lines that never meet, to the Pythagorean theorem discussed in last week’s column, these are eternal truths about an imaginary place, the two-dimensional landscape of plane geometry.

Conceived in India, China, Egypt and Babylonia more than 2,500 years ago, and codified and refined by Euclid and the Greeks, this flat-earth geometry is the main one (and often the only one) being taught in high schools today. But things have changed in the past few millennia.]]> Fri, 26 Mar 2010 05:54:00 -0700 http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/think-globally/ The Next Great Discontinuity: The Data Deluge http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/04/the-next-great-discontinuity-part-two.html

Speed is the elegance of thought, which mocks stupidity, heavy and slow. Intelligence thinks and says the unexpected; it moves with the fly, with its flight. A fool is defined by predictability…

But if life is brief, luckily, thought travels as fast as the speed of light. In earlier times philosophers used the metaphor of light to express the clarity of thought; I would like to use it to express not only brilliance and purity but also speed. In this sense we are inventing right now a new Age of Enlightenment…

A lot of… incomprehension… comes simply from this speed.… ]]> Tue, 05 May 2009 07:35:00 -0700 http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/04/the-next-great-discontinuity-part-two.html A Society of Simulations http://www.nextnature.net/?p=3361 This essay aims to increase our understanding of simulations and their impact on our notion of reality. Following on some observations regarding the dominant role of visual representations in our culture, I will argue that we are now living in a society, in which simulations are often more influential, satisfying and meaningful than the things they are presumed to represent. Media technologies play a fundamental role in our cycle of meaning construction. This is not necessarily a bad thing, nor is it entirely new. Yet, it has consequences for our concepts of virtual and real, which are less complementary, than… ]]> Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:22:00 -0700 http://www.nextnature.net/?p=3361 Liam Gillick: The Discursive | Journal / e-flux http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/35 A discursive model of praxis has developed within the critical art context over the last twenty years. It is the offspring of critical theory and improvised, self-organized structures. It is the basis of art that involves the dissemination of information. It plays with social models and presents speculative constructs both within and beyond traditional gallery spaces. It is indebted to conceptual art’s reframing of relationships, and it requires decentered and revised histories in order to evolve. ]]> Mon, 16 Feb 2009 06:59:00 -0700 http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/35