After a month-long hiatus, thought I’d return with an exposition of a very, very neat paper I read recently. This takes us into the still-inchoate world of computational biology, at the intersection of the platonic mathemtics of computer algorithms and the messy junkyard of cell biology. If you’re not versed in the language, try to hang in there, because it’s all rather interesting.
Merry Candlemas everybody. As apparently only devoted churchgoers, beekeepers, and aging revolutionaries and their game show hosts still remember, it has been 40 days since Christmas (if you’re not a Julianist), and hence time to celebrate the fact that Mary completed her 7 days of uncleanliness, plus her 33 days of continuing in the blood of her purifying, and so brought Jesus into the temple for the first time.
Legacy of Dissent
ed. by Nicolaus Mills
Dissent Magazine is my favorite contemporary political journal (admittedly, of like three that I ever read). It’s avowedly left-wing, so it doesn’t try to be all things to all people (like some). Yet unlike many left-wing magazines, it doesn’t waste your time with choir-preaching conservative-bashing that serves merely to make you feel righteous, rather than advance a discussion (like a few magazines I can think of). Rather, it devotes its energy to liberal self-critique, challenging of orthodoxies, and honest insight into what in the liberal agenda is both moral and practicable.
Some theories of origins have inspired generations of musicians. Darwin’s theory of evolution has not. This may be because humans have a hard time emoting about an impersonal process that unfolds over millions of years. Or it could be because there is no enormous institution extracting tithes from the entire population and commissioning artistic works that perpetuate its worldview.
In any case, I do know of two pretty neat songs that are about evolution, and thought I’d share them with you. You can listen to lo-fi previews of the songs, which hopefully won’t get me in trouble.
 | Gentle Arms of Eden Dave Carter & Tracy Grammer Drum Hat Buddha | [ Buy from iTunes ] [ read the lyrics ] |
 | I Come From Water The Toadies Rubberneck | [ Buy from iTunes ] [ read the lyrics ] |
David Chalmers has started a blog (via Matthew Yglesias al Alina Stefanescu al Forking Paths). If you’re unfamiliar with him, Chalmers is one of two or three people responsible for wresting control of the discussion about consciousness from the epiphenomenalists. I’ve seen him talk a few times and he’s quite engaging, so the blog will be worth following.
Apparently these days he’s working on something called “two-dimensional modal logic”, which according to this book description that Chalmers links to, is part of a movement that
[wishes to] revive descriptivism in the philosophy of language, internalism in the philosophy of mind, and conceptualism in the foundations of modality. … In the last twenty-five years, this attack on the anti-descriptivist revolution has coalesced around a technical development called two-dimensional modal logic that seeks to reinterpret the Kripkean categories of the necessary aposteriori and the contingent apriori in ways that drain them of their far-reaching philosophical significance.
Well. Glad that’s clear. Perhaps when chapter two is finished our philosopher friend can explain?
Okay, I probably should have known many of these words. But that’s why it’s practice…
ordure: excrement; or, something morally offensive. [Latin horridus]
“That kind of rig, a man’d die settin’ in his own, uh, ordure long before they got around to stretching his neck.” - p13, The Confessions of Nat Turner
chattel: An article of moveable personal property (as distinguished from real estate). [Latin capitalis]
“The point is that you are animate chattel and animate chattel is capable of craft and connivery and wily stealth… Because that’s how come the law provides that animate chattel like you can be tried for a felony, and that’s how come you’re goin’ to be tried next Sattidy.” - pp21-22, The Confessions of Nat Turner
sedulous: persevering, assiduous.
Right now I had this other bitterness to contend with, the knowledge of which for ten weeks I had so sedulously shunned… - p23, The Confessions of Nat Turner
fagot: A bundle of sticks tied together. [Greek phakelos, bundle]
They moved with quick and sprightly motions… piling twigs and sticks and fagots high in their arms against their bodies. - p40, The Confessions of Nat Turner
bruit: a rumor or report; in medicine, an abnormal sounds heard in auscultation [Old French bruir, roar]
“For several years now there has come to my attention wondrous bruit of a remarkable slave, …, who had so surpassed the paltry condition into which he had been cast by destiny that — mirabile dictu — he could swiftly read from a difficult and abstract work in natural philosophy… - p66, The Confessions of Nat Turner
folderol: Foolishness, nonsense
“I do think Boysie’s sermon was most inspiring, don’t you, little Miss Peg?” “Oh Mother, it’s the same old folderol, every year! Just folderol for the darkies! - p104, The Confessions of Nat Turner
gallus: suspenders.
He blinks steadily, and with his other hand he adjusts one gallus on his shoulder… - p149, The Confessions of Nat Turner
Have a merry snowstorm, everybody.
The brilliant, if eccentric and self-congratulatory Vladimir Vapnik has been trumpeting a major shift in the scientific method, and perhaps our epistemological stance, over the past few years. Whether or not Vapnik gets his revolution, at the very I least I’ll wager you will see “transductive inference” gain increasing attention as his ideas trickle out from statistical learning theory to other intellectual fields. So what’s it all about?
You are at a cocktail party. People are introducing themselves and shaking hands. Since parties make you uncomfortable, you lean against the wall. Rather than having meaningful human interaction, you can do a little graph theory instead, which is much more fun. With a little thinking, you can derive two interesting conclusions:
An even number of people shook an odd number of hands.
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