Tag Archives: politics

Items of some interest:

Posted on by

These are my recent Pinboard.in links:

Items of some interest…

Posted on by

These are my recent Pinboard.in links:

  • Progressives and the Ron Paul fallacies – Salon.com

    The fallacy in this reasoning is glaring. The candidate supported by progressives — President Obama — himself holds heinous views on a slew of critical issues and himself has done heinous things with the power he has been vested. He has slaughtered civilians — Muslim children by the dozens — not once or twice, but continuously in numerous nations with drones, cluster bombs and other forms of attack. He has sought to overturn a global ban on cluster bombs. He has institutionalized the power of Presidents — in secret and with no checks — to target American citizens for assassination-by-CIA, far from any battlefield. He has waged an unprecedented war against whistleblowers, the protection of which was once a liberal shibboleth. He rendered permanently irrelevant the War Powers Resolution, a crown jewel in the list of post-Vietnam liberal accomplishments, and thus enshrined the power of Presidents to wage war even in the face of a Congressional vote against it. His obsession with secrecy is so extreme that it has become darkly laughable in its manifestations, and he even worked to amend the Freedom of Information Act (another crown jewel of liberal legislative successes) when compliance became inconvenient.

    politics party-politics-in-particular cognitive-dissonance cultural-assumptions dialog-it-ain't

  • A modest proposal to give Free Software equal legal standing as proprietary. | Carlo Piana :: Law is Freedom ::

    Laws are more often than not an annoyance, despite their aim to improve the legal framework in any given field. Free Software (AKA "Open Source") has thrieved despite the absence of any legal recognition by the law, if not in spite of rules that clearly are shaped around proprietary software. In many jurisdictions it has passed the enforceability test. So, no laws seem necessary to make it work. Yet, can some legal principle be put forward, and included in some laws, to help?

    via:Glyn-Moody licensing law contracts modest-proposals

  • 2011 in Review

    to-read to-keep-in-mind lists movies books comix

  • Best and Worst Science Fiction/Fantasy Movies of 2011

    to-keep-in-mind movies lists

  • [1109.3248] Reconstruction of sequential data with density models

    We introduce the problem of reconstructing a sequence of multidimensional real vectors where some of the data are missing. This problem contains regression and mapping inversion as particular cases where the pattern of missing data is independent of the sequence index. The problem is hard because it involves possibly multivalued mappings at each vector in the sequence, where the missing variables can take more than one value given the present variables; and the set of missing variables can vary from one vector to the next. To solve this problem, we propose an algorithm based on two redundancy assumptions: vector redundancy (the data live in a low-dimensional manifold), so that the present variables constrain the missing ones; and sequence redundancy (e.g. continuity), so that consecutive vectors constrain each other. We capture the low-dimensional nature of the data in a probabilistic way with a joint density model, here the generative topographic mapping, which results in a Gaussian mixture. Candidate reconstructions at each vector are obtained as all the modes of the conditional distribution of missing variables given present variables. The reconstructed sequence is obtained by minimising a global constraint, here the sequence length, by dynamic programming. We present experimental results for a toy problem and for inverse kinematics of a robot arm.

    inverse-problems statistics algorithms learning-from-data nudge-targets

  • [1110.5063] Recovering a Clipped Signal in Sparseland

    In many data acquisition systems it is common to observe signals whose amplitudes have been clipped. We present two new algorithms for recovering a clipped signal by leveraging the model assumption that the underlying signal is sparse in the frequency domain. Both algorithms employ ideas commonly used in the field of Compressive Sensing; the first is a modified version of Reweighted $ell_1$ minimization, and the second is a modification of a simple greedy algorithm known as Trivial Pursuit. An empirical investigation shows that both approaches can recover signals with significant levels of clipping

    signal-processing inference compressive-sensing algorithms nudge-targets

  • [1112.2316] Complexity-entropy causality plane: a useful approach for distinguishing songs

    Nowadays we are often faced with huge databases resulting from the rapid growth of data storage technologies. This is particularly true when dealing with music databases. In this context, it is essential to have techniques and tools able to discriminate properties from these massive sets. In this work, we report on a statistical analysis of more than ten thousand songs aiming to obtain a complexity hierarchy. Our approach is based on the estimation of the permutation entropy combined with an intensive complexity measure, building up the complexity-entropy causality plane. The results obtained indicate that this representation space is very promising to discriminate songs as well as to allow a relative quantitative comparison among songs. Additionally, we believe that the here-reported method may be applied in practical situations since it is simple, robust and has a fast numerical implementation.

    signal-processing classification data-analysis clustering representation music nudge-targets

  • [1112.6178] A general framework for online audio source separation

    We consider the problem of online audio source separation. Existing algorithms adopt either a sliding block approach or a stochastic gradient approach, which is faster but less accurate. Also, they rely either on spatial cues or on spectral cues and cannot separate certain mixtures. In this paper, we design a general online audio source separation framework that combines both approaches and both types of cues. The model parameters are estimated in the Maximum Likelihood (ML) sense using a Generalised Expectation Maximisation (GEM) algorithm with multiplicative updates. The separation performance is evaluated as a function of the block size and the step size and compared to that of an offline algorithm.

    signal-processing audio-segmentation statistics algorithms metaheuristics nudge-targets

Items of some interest…

Posted on by

These are my recent Pinboard.in links:

  • [1112.6209] Building high-level features using large scale unsupervised learning

    We consider the problem of building detectors for high-level concepts using only unsupervised feature learning. For example, we would like to understand if it is possible to learn a face detector using only unlabeled images downloaded from the internet. To answer this question, we trained a simple feature learning algorithm on a large dataset of images (10 million images, each image is 200×200). The simulation is performed on a cluster of 1000 machines with fast network hardware for one week. Extensive experimental results reveal surprising evidence that such high-level concepts can indeed be learned using only unlabeled data and a simple learning algorithm.

    image-analysis image-segmentation unsupervised-learning learning-by-doing feature-extraction nudge-targets

  • [1105.0158] Detecting emergent processes in cellular automata with excess information

    Many natural processes occur over characteristic spatial and temporal scales. This paper presents tools for (i) flexibly and scalably coarse-graining cellular automata and (ii) identifying which coarse-grainings express an automaton's dynamics well, and which express its dynamics badly. We apply the tools to investigate a range of examples in Conway's Game of Life and Hopfield networks and demonstrate that they capture some basic intuitions about emergent processes. Finally, we formalize the notion that a process is emergent if it is better expressed at a coarser granularity.

    emergence complexology cellular-automata signal-processing nudge-targets

  • [1008.0901] Convergence to global consensus in opinion dynamics under a nonlinear voter model

    We propose a nonlinear voter model to study the emergence of global consensus in opinion dynamics. In our model, agent $i$ agrees with one of binary opinions with the probability that is a power function of the number of agents holding this opinion among agent $i$ and its nearest neighbors, where an adjustable parameter $alpha$ controls the effect of herd behavior on consensus. We find that there exists an optimal value of $alpha$ leading to the fastest consensus for lattices, random graphs, small-world networks and scale-free networks. Qualitative insights are obtained by examining the spatiotemporal evolution of the opinion clusters.

    agent-based social-dynamics network-theory complexology nudge-targets

  • [1110.4876] REBOUND: An open-source multi-purpose N-body code for collisional dynamics

    REBOUND is a new multi-purpose N-body code which is freely available under an open-source license. It was designed for collisional dynamics such as planetary rings but can also solve the classical N-body problem. It is highly modular and can be customized easily to work on a wide variety of different problems in astrophysics and beyond.

    simulation computational-science astrophysics numerical-methods simulator library open-source nudge-targets

  • [1112.5908] Query Answering under Matching Dependencies for Data Cleaning: Complexity and Algorithms

    Matching dependencies (MDs) have been recently introduced as declarative rules for entity resolution (ER), i.e. for identifying and resolving duplicates in relational instance $D$. A set of MDs can be used as the basis for a possibly non-deterministic mechanism that computes a duplicate-free instance from $D$. The possible results of this process are the clean, "minimally resolved instances" (MRIs). There might be several MRIs for $D$, and the "resolved answers" to a query are those that are shared by all the MRIs. We investigate the problem of computing resolved answers. We look at various sets of MDs, developing syntactic criteria for determining (in)tractability of the resolved answer problem, including a dichotomy result. For some tractable classes of MDs and conjunctive queries, we present a query rewriting methodology that can be used to retrieve the resolved answers. We also investigate connections with "consistent query answering", deriving further tractability results for MD-based ER.

    databases graph-theory algorithms nudge-targets

  • The Washroom Game by Jan Heufer :: SSRN

    This article analyses a game where players sequentially choose either to become insiders and pick one of finitely many locations or to remain outsiders. They will only become insiders if a minimum distance to the next player can be assured; their secondary objective is to maximize the minimal distance to other players. This is illustrated by considering the strategic behavior of men choosing from a set of urinals in a public lavatory. However, besides very similar situations (e.g. settling of residents in a newly developed area, the selection of food patches by foraging animals, choosing seats in waiting rooms or lines in a swimming pool), the game might also relevant to the problem of placing billboards attempting to catch the attention of passers-by or similar economic situations. In the non-cooperative equilibrium, all insiders behave as if they cooperated with each other and minimized the total number of insiders. It is shown that strategic behavior leads to an equilibrium with substantial under utilization of available locations. Increasing the number of locations tends to decrease utilization. The removal of some locations which leads to gaps can not only increase relative utilization but even absolute maximum capacity.

    game-theory agent-based complexology economics nudge-targets

  • [1109.0777] Efficient and Correct Stencil Computation via Pattern Matching and Static Typing

    Stencil computations, involving operations over the elements of an array, are a common programming pattern in scientific computing, games, and image processing. As a programming pattern, stencil computations are highly regular and amenable to optimisation and parallelisation. However, general-purpose languages obscure this regular pattern from the compiler, and even the programmer, preventing optimisation and obfuscating (in)correctness. This paper furthers our work on the Ypnos domain-specific language for stencil computations embedded in Haskell. Ypnos allows declarative, abstract specification of stencil computations, exposing the structure of a problem to the compiler and to the programmer via specialised syntax. In this paper we show the decidable safety guarantee that well-formed, well-typed Ypnos programs cannot index outside of array boundaries. Thus indexing in Ypnos is safe and run-time bounds checking can be eliminated. Program information is encoded as types, using the advanced type-system features of the Glasgow Haskell Compiler, with the safe-indexing invariant enforced at compile time via type checking.

    domain-specific-language algorithms grid-computing nudge-targets

  • What’s Challenging About Paul? : Lawyers, Guns & Money

    It’s wrong to think of Ron Paul’s racism and his libertarianism as two distinct parts of his political persona, when in fact they are deeply tied together. White supremacists understand what Glenn, apparently, does not; the absence of Federal authority makes it easier for private actors and local governments to repress the civil and political rights of minorities. Paul’s libertarianism emerged in a regional and cultural context that was deeply hostile to Federal efforts at integration. The newsletters give strong indication that none of this is lost on Ron Paul. A notional President Paul is just as likely to use the powers of the office to gut Federal enforcement of a wide range of civil liberties protections as he is to do any of the things that Glenn would like him to do.

    politics libertarianism racism conservatism populism

Items of some interest…

Posted on by

These are my recent Pinboard.in links:

  • The Economist on the Republicans « The Reality-Based Community

    The Economist – despite its unerring judgment about  books on crime control and drug policy – cannot be justly described a Democratic or liberal publication; it identifies itself as “pro-business, right-of-centre.” But, unlike the friends of plutocracy on this side of the Atlantic, the folks at The Economist believe in principles other than deregulation of enterprise and low taxes on the rich. Moreover, they remain largely reality-based, eschewing wingnut postmodernism.

    conservatism politics journalism

Items of some interest…

Posted on by

These are my recent Pinboard.in links:

  • Deus Ex Malcontent: Quote of the Day

    "Again, there's a point to be made that it's a waste of time and copy-space to give Paul's ramblings any more credence than those of the recently released Bellevue patient who's now staked out a soapbox in the middle of Central Park. For Christ's sake, in 1977 Jimmy Carter implored this country to make the tiny sacrifice of dropping the thermostat a few degrees and wearing a sweater — and he was publicly castigated for it. You think Americans are gonna go for the abandonment of entire swaths of the country and its people every time a disaster like a monster hurricane hits? You're even more of a lunatic than Ron Paul — and that's not easy."

    libertarianism politics amusing-pseudorationalists-at-the-gate Thunderdomes

  • The Exile Bibliophile: Books: Owning them, Loving them

    "So, I recently discovered Stacked Up: Writers Show off their Shelves, which is exactly what it sounds like. Short interviews with writers and some of their books. Just wonderful, though a bit too NYCentric to be truly invigorating. I just don't get that worked up over THE BIG DEAL that is NYC. Give me space, keep your crowds! But, NYC is where a LOT of writers live, so I can't be too cranky about it. Hopefully the Stacked Up folks will one day be able to get off the little island and out into the real world. Anyway, go enjoy these things Book Folk– you're not alone."

    books bibliomania bookshelves another-tag-involving-the-word-books authorship writing-culture video

  • Creative Commons Is Not Public Domain | Compound Eye, Scientific American Blog Network

    "Again, I do not know that the bloggers didn’t write the photographers to obtain commercial-use permission. But I doubt it. My judgement is borne from personal experience. I see my images popping up on commercial blogs all the time, and fewer than one in ten asks my permission.

    I don’t mean to single out WIRED, either. I’m only picking on them for the recent ant example. In reality, many commercial blog networks show rampant disregard for the rights of artists, photographers, and musicians. They may not have been caught, yet, but they could incur substantial legal liability when a copyright owner decides to seek damages. After all, using an image beyond the bounds of the license is breaking the law.

    The bottom line is this: if someone else’s creative work is helping you make money, you have a moral and a legal obligation to reach an agreement with that person about the terms of use. Creative Commons is supposed to make this easier, but it only works if the content consumers treat CC as a contract and not a blanket license for free use. Creative Commons is not public domain."

    creative-commons intellectual-property copyright cultural-assumptions