Blackwell colleague a important meeting

Factoid Tracing? Huh?

The cogitation or noodle for the day is something I like to call Factoid Tracing. This is the most interesting phenom of the wide open web where you can traverse topics creating your own threads of factoids (small bite-sized facts) of related information based on your own context (what I know, what seems appealing, etc). Much like a directed random walk, if that is not an oxymoron, in a subject area trying to create a picture of understanding or at least one of connectedness in topics.

My experiment is using Google notebook for this purpose. So the experiment looks like this:

1. Pick a book
2. Find a concept, word, etc that you don't understand but have some interest in
3. Google the concept
4. Walk, cross walk or hyperlink around capturing the most relevant snippet of information on the page or ideally the most complex topic you don't know
5. Post that in your Google notebook, it couldn't be easy
6. See what you come up with and see if it makes any sense to someone who has no interest in the topic

For example, here is my public notebook on a weird topic from my complexity studies

http://www.google.com/notebook/public/15710041006556846397/BDQ9jIgoQ7OWC5bQj?hl=en



Guess the topic or comment on the validity of this Factoid Tracing ;-)

Bookbar Experiment Part 2

Loading...

Sunset in the way out west taken from the mower

Ffiona

Complex Thought for the Day

Great new book, "Thinking in Complexity" by Klaus Mainzer (Springer Complexity Series). Perhaps I should say it is new to me, the fifth edition having been published in 2007. Its sort of a compendium (not sure I am using that appropriately, but seems to work) of complexity topics for all the sciences.

Today the quote from it that suits my research is "In complex systems, the behavior of a single element is often completely unknown and therefore considered to be a random process. In this case, it is not necessary to distinguish between chance that occurs because of some hidden order that may exist and chance that is the result of blind lawlessness." -
(Klaus Mainzer. "Thinking in Complexity - The Computational Dynamics of Matter, Mind and Mankind." Springer: Complexity Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2007.p. 200-201.)...Just Love the use of the phrase, "blind lawlessness".

Driving to work exhibits all the behaviors of a complex system and the probability (or "chance" as Mainzer mentions) of understanding any one driver's behavior is zero and clearly that behavior could be some outcome of real thinking (okay, sure) or more likely the result of blind lawlessness, particularly during commute hours on highway 26, 217 or I-5, all roads I directly experience twice a day, everyday.

BTW why do many of us love Springer books? Because when you buy one it usually weighs way more than you think it should compared to others, they don't skim on paper quality and you feel you should mount it on the wall with its own special museum downlighting system because its THAT expensive...I actually refuse to eat my lunch around it (that's somethin' special)

Further thoughts on slime molds

Slime Mold example

SO that didn't work

Well, the bookbar experiment was a miserable failure and I have run out of patience on it at this point. (This might be a lie, not sure). I know I should be able to drop that in there.

Experiments in BookBar

type="text/css"/>

rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>

Loading...