I’ve just come back from Biohackathon 2012 in Toyama, an annual event, traditionally hosted in Japan, where users of semantic web technologies (such as RDF and SPARQL) in biology and bioinformatics come together to work on projects. This was a nice event with an open and productive atmosphere, and I got a lot out of […]
Some thoughts about the possible ways of affirming or negating something in the world led to the following formal structure. Affirmation 1. Affirmation as associating yourself, taking the path, making the choice 2. Affirmation by copying what you affirm, assuming its form 3. Affirmation by appropriating something in a sophisticated way, making it your own […]
This year I’ve spent a fair amount of time trying to read Martin Heidegger‘s great work Being and Time, using Hubert Dreyfus’ Berkeley lectures on the book as supporting material. By now I’ve almost finished division 1. I’m learning a lot, but it’s fair to say that this is one of the most difficult books […]
Kolmogorov complexity is a measure of the complexity of data. It is simple to define but appears to have deep implications. The K. complexity of a string is defined as the size of the simplest possible program, with respect to a given underlying computer, that can generate the data. For example, the string “AAAAAA” has lower […]
I’ve recently seen the film Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, based on John le Carré’s novel with the same name. In the 1970’s a TV series based on the same novel, with Alec Guinness as George Smiley, was very popular in Britain. This film, with Gary Oldman as the protagonist, is supposed to be something like […]