Hubble Images & the Vastness of Space
I loved studying astronomy as a kid and enjoyed taking astronomy courses in college, but unlike most subjects I’ve studied, I cannot understand the concepts in astronomy. Sure I can memorize the size of an astronomical unit (149,598,000 kilometers) or that the Moon rotates, but in spite of my best efforts I cannot internalize most of astronomy.
It’s a problem of scale. I can’t mentally picture what 13 billion light years is. I know it’s really far, but that’s the limit of my brain’s ability to handle a number that large. Similarly I have a hard time imagining how large the Earth actually, so that makes understanding the size of Jupiter, the Sun, or any of the other mind-blowingly tremendous celestial objects downright impossible for me.
At the end of the day, I read up on this stuff and find it incredibly cool… then I try to picture it and my brain break.
Here’s one of those incredibly cool things that broke my brain.
Now I’m going to bed.
Jeopardy: Machine vs. Meatbags Day 2
Yesterday’s first round of man vs. machine Jeopardy ended in a tie. The second round was not so kind to our organic champions. To put it succinctly, they had their asses handed to them.
As of this today these are the scores
Ken Jennings: $4,800
Brad Rutter: $10,000
Watson: $35,754
Buzzer Speed
Buzzer speed continues to be Watson’s big advantage. It’s considerably quicker on the trigger than Jennings and Rutter, and they are the fastest guns in the west.
Watson’s Gambling Problems
Watson’s score of $35,754 is a strange score for Jeopardy. This is because when faced with Daily Doubles and Final Jeopardy, Watson pulls some strange numbers from its shiny metal ass.
I’m sure it has some algorithm dictating its bets, but the numbers it generates are very odd.
Is this the end for our intrepid heroes?
Yeah, probably. Even if you combine the scores of the two humans, they aren’t even close to Watson’s score.
It seems to me that Jennings and Rutter are fiercely battling for second place. Rutter didn’t go all-in during Final Jeopardy, most likely because he really doesn’t want to lose to Jennings. Rutter is the only undefeated player in Jeopardy history. If he places second at least he will be able to claim that he has never been bested by a human competitor.
Who know? There’s one more day of competition, and that means that there is still time for one of our meatbag champions to go John Henry on Watson and win.
Jeopardy: Machine vs. Meatbags
The IBM Jeopardy Challenge pits the game’s two greatest champions against IBM’s room full of servers, Watson.
The two organic meatbag competitors Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings put up a good fight in the first of three days of man vs. machine competition.
A few things stood out to me.
Response Time
A lot of Jeopardy is buzzer response time, or so I’m told. Watson is fast on the trigger as you would expect. I’m impressed when either human buzzes in first.
Pronunciation
Watson talks sounds like a machine when it “speaks,” but it has remarkable pronunciation. At one point, Watson responded “Jean Valjean,” the character from Les Miserables, and it pronounced the name far better than I ever would have expected.
Watson is a Great Player
Win, lose or draw, IBM did an amazing job creating Watson. It’s more than holding its own against the two greatest players that the game has ever seen.
John Henry
As impressed as I am with Watson, I really want to see one of these men go all John Henry on the emotionless machine, and kick its ass. I feel pretty strongly about that because I believe this is the last time that a human will have a chance at beating a computer like Watson. The way that it’s handling itself indicates that a year from now it will be unbeatable, and two years from now it will blow everyone out of the water.
We live in interesting times.
Handyscope is iProbe-like
Are you feeling the need to turn your iPhone into a dermatoscope and check your body for skin cancer at great personal expense?
If so, $1,582.00, plus the cost of an iPhone is one hell of a bargain! You can skip that specialist co-pay, grab a cane and play Dr. House on yourself… That is unless your phone thinks it found something bad. Then you’re going to have to couch up that co-pay.
If you are interested in this crazy contraption, you can read more about it on Engadget.
I can’t help but feel like this Handyscope product is a watered down version of the iProbe.
Brains Do the Darndest Things – McGurk Effect
Our brains do some strange things. The McGurk Effect ranks pretty high on the list.
(Via BoingBoing)
Acid Trip Art Experiment
These 9 drawings were done by an artist under the influence of LSD — part of a test conducted by the US government during it’s dalliance with psychotomimetic drugs in the late 1950′s. The artist was given a dose of LSD 25 and free access to an activity box full of crayons and pencils. His subject is the medico that jabbed him.
The art speaks for itself. Have a look.
First drawing of his subject.
Same subject 4 hours 25 minutes after first dose
John Cleese on Ideas & Creativity
John Cleese of Monty Python fame is a brilliant writer, comedian, and observer of human behavior. His thoughts on creativity and generating ideas are absolutely worth your time.
That last bit about people who don’t know that they don’t know what they are doing is an interesting phenomenon known as the Dunning–Kruger effect.
I found both the video, and the Wikipedia article on Adriana’s blog, Media Influencer… Incidentally, I am about to run out the door to get dinner with Adriana.
