Light-to-moderate alcohol consumption reduces the overall risk of stroke and the risk of ischemic stroke in men. The benefit is apparent with as little as one drink per week. Greater consumption, up to one drink per day, does not increase the observed benefit (NEJM)

As compared with men who consumed alcohol less than once per week, men who consumed alcohol three to four or five to seven days per week had decreased risks of myocardial infarction (NEJM)

Most of you probably knew this, but what he also said is that you can use your weekly quotum (7 to 14 units, depending on the source) in a not-evenly spread out manner. So if you do not drink during the week, you can use your full alcohol allowance over the weekend. Unfortunately, for this piece of information, I cannot find the source or study on NEJM. Darn.

Other stuff that helps: stop smoking

Alcohol consumption was associated with a small reduction in the overall risk of death in middle age (ages 35 to 69), whereas smoking approximately doubled this risk (NEJM)

and eat fish:

The n–3 fatty acids found in fish are strongly associated with a reduced risk of sudden death among men without evidence of prior cardiovascular disease. (NEJM)

So don’t be surprised next time I look angry when someone spoils my “Saumon effeuillé mariné aux trois moutardes” and white Sancerre with cigarette smoke: It’s killing me, that’s why!

No related posts.

Arguments for the existence of a kind of intelligence which codes how a person understands the feelings, the responses, and the behavior of the others, was brought forward by Gardner (1985). He defends extensively this ability which he calls the interpersonal intelligence but he does not give any definition for it. I argue for one meaning which the definition should contain. My insight is based mainly on experience, very little on the psychological literature because I am a physicist. I try to illuminate my ideas by a few examples from everyday life. My view of the interpersonal intelligence consists of similar aspects as the social intelligence by Barnes and Sternberg (1989). They defined the social intelligence as consisting, in part, of the ability to accurately decode social information. The testees were given two tasks. First, they had to judge whether a couple pictured in a photograph was real (genuinely in a relationship) or fake (two strangers). Second, they were asked to judge which of two people in a photograph was the other’s supervisor. However, I wish to emphasize that the interpersonal intelligence does not really become apparent in the test items where the testee is to react only to the behavior of another person. In fact, testees possessing quite different interpersonal intelligences would response in a very similar way. The interpersonal intelligence becomes discernible when the testee self is involved in the matter. It shows the extent to which a person is willing to take into account the viewpoints of the other persons versus his or her own viewpoint. I think that it is possible to predict very well this kind of behavior of an individual if one has known him or her for a long time.

Mental violence is a concept which people realize in very different ways. My proposal is that it is originated from the differences of the interpersonal intelligences of people and that the degree of experience depends on the two particular persons involved in a case.

The very important impact for this writing comes from the essays of G.M. Towers in the journals of high IQ societies. Especially, I appreciate the essays which deal with the problems of social adjustment. My own experience in Finland is that very many of those people who have joined Mensa at a mature age and stayed as members, have sought for an explanation why a genuine communication does not form or why it breaks up. Towers (1988) realized that it may be explained by means of the concept of communication range. He defines it using the IQ points on tests with a standard deviation 16. It refers to communication on the level of abstract thinking, not on an emotional level.

Towers’ thesis:

• There are virtually no communication difficulties between us and our companions when the IQ difference is 10 points or less.
• Some communication difficulties exist between 10 and 20 points.
• Constant, but still bridgeable difficulties occur between 20 and 30 points.
• Beyond 30 points, communication on an abstract level begins to breakdown completely.

My experience is that this works. After almost 30 years in universities I went to teach at a gymnasium. During two years I have done short tests loaded with fluid intelligence and the results support Towers’ findings. The most apparent feature is that those pupils who have close IQ scores, tend to be companions. In Finland we had previously a system where the pupils were selected according to their talents in mathematics and foreign languages for their own classes for three years before gymnasium. The pupils at gymnasium are approximately from the age of 16 to 19. Four years ago the selection was forbidden and since the school achievements have been declining. I think that it may definitely be explained by means of Towers’ findings. An all destructing envy is easily arised.

One of the consequences of Towers´ theory is that an ordinary man with an IQ 100 will see anyone with an IQ 30 points or more greater than his own as incomprehensible. He perceives an IQ 135 in exactly the same way as an IQ 150 or even 180. On the other hand, I think that a person with an IQ 180 separates the others although he or she may not be able to realize why it is so difficult for the others to understand abstract relations. I believe that Towers’ theory is also valid in the areas of special intelligences. Within this framework one can easily understand e.g. the conflicts in the world of classical music. A critic may have a much higher musical intelligence than the artist although his kinesthetic ability may be poor.

It has long been pondered what kind of a man was Adolf Hitler. From the study of Gilbert (1948) at Nuremberg Trial we know that Hermann Göring had an IQ 138. The pecking order in the leading Nazi group was clearly the order of IQ’s. Thus Hitler had, probably, an IQ at least as high as Göring. Nevertheless, an ordinary person often calls him stupid. I think that it may be explained by means of Hitler’s interpersonal intelligence. In this field Hitler was stupid, in fact an ultimate case. I base my theory on him and I quote Darwin (Ochse, 1990) who suggested that it is legimate and sometimes advisable to look at extreme cases where the effects are magnified. Those who knew Hitler well, characterized him as a man who had no ability to settle himself into the position of another person. Eva Braun wrote “When he says that he loves me, he means it only at that moment”. This forms my basis for the following partial definition of the interpersonal intelligence. Interpersonal intelligence consists of an ability to settle oneself into the position of another person. I think that one may find an innate (fluid) factor and another (crystallized) factor which is mainly due to education. For more specific statements I shall assume a normal distribution for this ability with a standard deviation 16. One may now suggest by extending Towers’ theory that Hitler had an interpersonal IQ at least 30 points lower than an ordinary person. Those who were his nearest companions could be considered to be within 10 points from his score.

Examples
Next I wish to describe a few examples where the interpersonal intelligence becomes perceivable. It is easier to find those examples which show a low interpersonal intelligence, because persons who have a high ability of this kind do not usually present what they have done. I wish also to discern this ability from empathy. There are people who are willing to give anything to help a person out of a miserable condition although a long term solution would require abstinence. Further, I believe that there is no correlation between the interpersonal intelligence and the cognitive intelligence in accordance with what was found by Barnes and Sternberg for the relation between the social intelligence and the cognitive intelligence. The persons in the following cases have a fairly high conventional IQ. I believe that this is the most important range because these persons tend to be leaders and examples for the other people.

• Case 1: Dr. Letlive
  Dr. Letlive had two visitors whom he invited to his summer cottage. He said “Let us fish so that we get more food”. When the nets were taken up, only one fish was found and it was prepared properly. When people sat down to dinner, Letlive said “Because we got only one fish, I will eat it.” It is certain that if anybody else would behave similarly, this person would remember it for ages. There is a continuous stream of similar occasions.Very many of the co-workers have left for a better quality of life. But there are also people who have no problems with this fellow.
• Case 2: Director Our John
  Women call him as Our John. He has insensibly broken several of marriages of his subordinates. He considers as his privilege to have affairs but does not allow his wife the same right. He considers himself as a high-class person. But who could say like him: “I am close to your wife — here is a relationship to begin” and offer a financial compensation for the wife. The traffic regulations are for the others, not for him.
• Case 3: Penis Postcard
  A few years ago several leaders of the Finnish labour market sent a feminist a postcard where a woman was parachuting on a field filled with erected penes. There was a text “Let us concentrate to the essentials.” It caused a big sensation and the folks was divided into two camps. Many people, especially men tried to calm by saying that it was only a joke. The other camp consisted mainly of well-educated, high-level women expressed “Not that way”. One of the leaders apologized but before soon he expressed that if a woman goes with a man to a hotel room, it implicitly means a sexual intercourse.
• The following case displaying a high interpersonal intelligence is sometimes found in the novels and one could also encounter it in everyday life in Finland some 40 years ago but it is a rarity nowadays.

  Case 4: Aljosha
  Aljosha offers a sum of money to a man who is in a desparate need of it. The man refuses to take it. The next day Aljosha renews his offer and now the man accepts it. Aljosha knew that the question of honor had been responded on the preceding day.

As an example of a person with highly developed interpersonal intelligence Gardner (1985) mentions Mahatma Gandhi. Apparently Jesus may be estimated even higher.

It is my experience that those persons who have a very low interpersonal IQ are characterized also by the properties of greediness, envy and jealousy which Berke (1988) considers as the basic substances of the evil. This kind of man does not see another individual as a separate person, only as a continuation of him- or herself. A spouse is necessary for well-being but if this person happens to fall in love deserting the spouse does not cause a problem. I have met fellows who can offer a permanent job, but who in one week may even forget to tell the employee his or her change of mind although the offer has caused the employee to transfer across the country. It is not difficult for this person to fire people without any reason, or lie if it seems to bring benifits, and all this with a pure conscience. Nevertheless, he or she is very vulnerable of criticism. Hitler’s desire of Lebensraum, a space to live, transforms into a mania for travelling. Another repeated phrase, Leben und leben lassen, live and let people live, in this context means that this person only should be able to live without too many restrictions. In the ultimate case one encounters an obsessive slanderer who in old Greek was called Satan. Hate was Hitler’s source of power. A Swiss diplomat told that he had never met a man who could create so dense an atmosphere of envy, slandering and malice (Berke,1988).

On the other hand, those persons who have a very high interpersonal IQ, are characterized by the properties of generosity, thankfulness and empathy which form the basics of goodness. I do not suggest that a high interpersonal intelligence is a typical feminine ability.

Now I return to the concept of mental violence. I suggest that the degree of the experience depends on the magnitude of the difference of the interpersonal IQ’s of the two persons who are interacting. The person who has a higher interpersonal IQ, feels mental violence, because he or she usually take into consideration the feelings and behavior of the companion. By the extension of Towers’ theory we may now state that if the difference is more than 30 points, the circumstances become by time intolerable. If the difference is between 20 and 30 points, the partners may tolerate each other but they try to minimize the contacts. If the difference is between 10 and 20 points, they accommodate to the situation although they know that things could be better. If the difference approaches nil, the partnership becomes into a harmony despite of how high or low the shared attitudes are.

It is well-known that the average difference in cognitive IQ between spouses is ca.13 points (Jensen, 1980). This is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a happy marriage. One can easily imagine that if the other one is a total jerk, the relationship will not last. The interpersonal intelligences should also be close enough.

It is obvious that if the mental violence arises from this basis as I believe, it cannot be written into the legislation. The only thing that can be done, is to teach children continuously. The chances are diminishing because the super teacher, TV, creates an enticing illusory world into which it is easy to escape. It is well known that the population norms of the conventional IQ testing show a constant improvement. It is due to the changes of crystallized intelligence which is ascribed to the influencies of increased education, the norms for fluid intelligence have not changed. On the other hand, I believe, the average level of the interpersonal intelligence is decreasing. This is due to the crystallized part. It is a common complaint that many children have no manners and it is ascribed to free raising. It is obvious that one has to speak to those people who have a low interpersonal intelligence, in their own language before they believe. In a class room it is not a nice procedure at all but it is the only way. In the world class we have a conversation with Saddam Hussein and we have to use the same procedure. The analysis of the collapse of the former system in East Europe can be accomplished within this framework. The system collected by time a leading gang with low interpersonal intelligence with which people got fed up. Mental violence often precedes physical violence. People in Yugoslavia ask where all this evil came from. I think that it was there. The present war is only a way to share the privileges once again.

I think that would be a very difficult task to design a test of the interpersonal intelligence. But a good test would really help the mankind to evolve to a more human direction which is often desired. This is a subject which I would like the readers of In-Genius to comment or develop further.

Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Professor Asko Aurela for suggesting the case 4. I am obliged to many people who want to stay anonymous, for several discussions. I am also grateful to Grady Towers for correspondence on general intelligence which explicitly and implicitly has influenced on this writing.

REFERENCES
Barnes, M.L., & Sternberg, R.J. (1989). Intelligence 13, 263.
Berke, J.H. (1988). The tyranny of malice. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Gardner, H. (1985). Frames of mind. The theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books Inc.
Gilbert, G.M. (1948). Nuremberg Diary. p.19. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode.
Jensen, A.R. (1980). Bias in mental testing. p.388. New York: Methuen.
Ochse, R. (1990). Before the gates of excellence. The determinants of creative genius. p.38, Cambridge: University Press.
Towers, G.M. (1988). The margins of mind. Vidya (The Journal of the Triple Nine Society) 95, 3-7.
Towers, G.M. (1988). IQ and the problem of social adjustment. Vidya 98, 5-9.
Note: The article was originally published in In-Genius 87, Sept 1993. In-Genius is the journal of Top One Percent Society (TOPS).

Text taken from sigmasociety (now gone)

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Step 1: take a good root grid

Let’s start with an completely valid Sudoku filled-in grid. Any one would do, I take the one that has 1-2-…-9 in the top row, and in the top left 3×3 square:


If you’re not familiar with these puzzles: for a 9×9 grid to be a valid Sudoku grid, the following 3 requirements should be fulfilled:

1. for each row: every number from 1 to 9 should occur exactly once
2. for each column: every number from 1 to 9 should occur exactly once
3. for each 3×3 square with a thicker border (there are 9 of them): every number from 1 to 9 should occur exactly once

Step 2: shuffle the grid around

There are a couple of transformations that we can apply on a Sudoku grid while still keeping it in a valid state. They are:

• swapping two rows in same group: when you swap 2 rows within the same ‘group’ (within the 3×3 borders), the Sudoku requirements remain fulfilled (I won’t include a formal proof, but trust me on this one).
  
• swapping two columns in same group: the vertical version of the previous one.
• swapping two groups of rows: when you swap two 9×3 groups of cells, that keeps the grid valid too.
  
• swapping two groups of columns: vertical version of the previous one
• transposing the whole grid (the columns become the rows and vice versa)
  

There are maybe other, more complex, transformations, but these will take you a long way. Maybe someone could prove that with these base operations all possible Sudoku grids can be constructed, or maybe on the contrary, that some combinations can never be reached. We don’t really care, as long as we can apply a random sequence of the above transformations to get a grid that seems kind of random but is still valid.
You can compare this ’shuffling’ with the Rubik cube: you get it in the virgin state and then you shuffle it around to get a pseudo-random start situation.

Step 3: erase a number of cells

This was the more tricky part. How many cells do I erase, and how do I make sure that the remaining challenge is still solvable, with only 1 solution?

1. number of cells to erase: this is one of the most important factors that define the difficulty level of a Sudoku puzzle. There are 81 cells in a full grid, the ‘easy’ puzzles have around 30-35 remaining cells, the intermediate 25-30, the difficult ones 20-25. These are indications based on real-life examples, not some kind of official law. One could probably make a 30-cell challenge that is unsolvable, or a 22-cell challenge that is considered ‘easy’. But let’s take these numbers as a guideline
2. random approach: just erase 50 (easy) to 60 (difficult) cells at random. Very easy, but it is possible to make grids that are unsolvable. Consider e.g. a challenge with only the bottom 3 rows filled in (i.e. 27 remaining cells). There’s no single solution to that.
3. random with simple limits: e.g. take as a limit that only N rows or columns may be empty. Taking N = 0 for easy challenges and N = 1 for difficult challenges could be a safe strategy. I’m not sure this is safe enough, so I made something even more refined.
4. random with level-1 check: this would only erase the cell if it could be solved by a level-1 strategy. What do I call “level-1″? That is: if applying the sudoku rules (rows/columns/squares) only leaves 1 possible solution for that cell. To calculate this, you just take the nine possible values for that cell and strike out all numbers that already appear in that row, that column and that square. If you’re left with only one possible number, that’s a level-1 solution.
   One remark on this: the first couple of cells you check will always be level-1 solvable (if there are already eight occurences of e.g. ‘5′ in the grid, the ninth is always level-1 solvable). As the grid becomes emptier and emptier, some cells will not meet the level-1 requirement and will not be erased. There is a point somewhere where no more cells can be erased, but I’m not really sure where that point will be, and how variable it is (is it e.g. always between 20 and 30? Is it always 27?) I haven’t built a prototype yet so I can’t say. If this point would be too high (we want to make a ‘difficult’ challenge and we can’t erase any cell anymore to get below 25), we might need a 2nd round of erasing that does not use the level-1 check.
5. random with level 2 check: level 2 is where you need to make suppositions about a second cell in order to find the solution for the given cell. I’m not going into details (nor do I have all the details ).
6. row-per-row / column-per-column / square-per-square erasing: instead of jumping at random in the grid, check a (random) cell for each row sequentially, going from 1 to 9 and start over. This can help to make the distribution of remaining cells more even (e.g. every square has 2 – 4 cells left). The ’simple’ or ‘level-1′ checks can be used like described above
7. number-per-number erasing: instead of jumping at random in the grid, check a (random) occurrence for each number sequentially, going from 1 to 9 and start over. This can help to make the distribution of remaining numbers more even. The ’simple’ or ‘level-1′ checks can be used like described above

The only way to make sure that the resulting algorithm actually works, would be to prove it mathematically (don’t feel that’s something I would want to do – certainly not step 3) or to build a proof of concept and let it run a solid number of test challenges (don’t have that much free time now). If anyone has better suggestions, don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

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Now take a look at this chart:

This seems to imply that, since the term “RSS” is more searched for than “blogs”, that RSS is more popular than this whole “blogs” thing, right?

And this is exactly what was written in businessweek.com. It was cited by socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com, who -to their credit- added the wise remark that:

To be honest, I do think that RSS is as important as I said above, but in terms of use frequency it’s also got the semantic advantage of only having one tense. People will write about and search for blogs, blog and blogging for example – but RSS is a one-term wonder.

Dave again
The whole thing was started by Dave Winer:

Interesting comparison between blogs and podcasting. RSS is bigger than both.
(But then podcast vs blogs shows something different.)
scripting.com via businessweek.com

Dave is of course a clever man, so I don’t think he was trying to show that RSS is more important than blogs, rather that with a careful choice of keywords, one can ‘prove’ whatever one likes. He chose the keywords: “podcasting”, “blogs” and “rss”.

Podcasting

“Podcasting” does not rank very high in search traffic, but “podcast” does much better as a keyword. Of course, people are lazy. If Dave and Adam had chosen another name for podcasting with a more unique first part, say “ppoodd-casting’, the biggest search term would be ‘ppoodd’, not ‘ppooddcast’.

Blogs

Same remark: ‘blog’ is the shortest significant keyword, so the most popular. Not ‘blogs’, ‘blogging’, ‘weblog’, …

RSS

In fact, this graph has no meaning. It looks like it plots the popularity of RSS and Atom web feeds against that of ‘XML’, but the data is contaminated. RSS is also “Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh” (a nationalist social service organization in India – described by The Economist as the largest non-communist organisation in the world), and the UK Royal Statistical Society, who would probably agree with the danger of misusing statistics.
‘Atom’ might also be a syndication format, it will always primarily be the ‘smallest possible particle of a chemical element that retains its chemical properties’.

Better chart
So this would be, in my opinion, a better chart:

The popularities of ‘RSS’ and ‘podcast’ are in the same order of magnitude, but ‘blog’ is clearly a much more important keyword.

Google Trends worthless?
Is Google Trends worthless then? I don’t think so, I just think it is a tool to be used by someone with some experience in data analysis, statistics, language and most of all: some critical sense. And preferably for questions of life and death, like: who’s more popular, Angelina Jolie or Britney Spears?

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If it were weight/length you can attach a mental image to that: if you took horizontal slices of the body, how much would a 1m high slice weigh? For weight/length³ you can have an image too: kg/m³ or density of the body. But BMI is kg/m² or something like ‘pressure’ (multiply it with gravity 9.81 m/s² and you get the unit of pressure: Newton/m² or ‘Pascal’).

So I started playing with an estimate function for the weight of a person: I modeled a body as a rectangular 3D box.

• The length L is the person’s length.
• The ‘equivalent width’ EW of a body is dependent on the average width (e.g. ear-to-ear, shoulder-to-shoulder, hip-to-hip).
• The ‘equivalent depth’ ED of a body is dependent on the average depth (e.g. tip of the nose-to-back of the head, chest-to-back, tip of the toes to heel).
• The definition of EW and ED is such that L x EW x EW = volume of the body = the actual volume of the body.
• One could calculate that for an ‘ideal’ adult body, e.g. the dimensions of the guy with the arms and legs spread that Leonardo Da Vinci created, EW will be a fraction of the total length, EW = SW x L (SW = scaling of width). One could argue that this SW is dependent on gender, age and race. Let’s ignore that for now.
• Every real person will be less or more wide by a ratio α (if α is < 100% you're thinner, if it is > 100% you’re wider). Each person will also be less or more ‘deep’ by a ratio β. (if β < 100% you're thinner, if β > 100% you’re fatter).
• The body has a certain average density (kg/m³), but this will depend on the composition of the body: muscles have a density DM of 1080 kg/m³, fat has DF of only 700-900kg/m³ (less than water: it floats!), bones are more like 2000kg/m³ and lungs will have a totally different density whether they are filled with air or not. I only take into account the % body fat. Let’s call that … λ!

One can expect an obese person to have: a high α (broad hips, thick legs), a high β (fat belly, 4 chins) and a high λ. Since fat weighs less than muscle, one might argue that a high body fat % makes you lighter, but let’s keep in mind that this is mostly excess fat: you still need a minimum of muscles in order to function.

The formula is then:
Weight (kg) = L x (α x EW) x (β x ED) x (λ x DF + (1-λ) x DM) or
Weight (kg) = L x (α x SW x L) x (β x SD x L) x (λ x DF + (1-λ) x DM)
So the BMI is something like:
BMI(kg/m²) = L x (α x SW) x (β x SD) x (λ x DF + (1-λ) x DM) which still contains a factor L.

Geometric approach
I discovered in a mailing list dating back to 1996 that I was not the first one to ask this question. It appears that the L² was chosen for empirical reasons: the main puropose of the BMI was to detect risk for obesity and anorexia, and the square happened to match best with clinical statistics.
Dividing the weight by the more intuitive cube of the length L³ can be called the geometric approach. In the formula this gives:
GEO(kg/m³) = ( SW x SD ) x (α x β) x (λ x DF + (1 - λ) x DM)
with SW and SD being constants (be it maybe for a particular gender, race or age). This makes total sense.

Allometric approach
A Michael Raymond Pierrynowski actually argues that to have a more meaningful index, you need to divide by L ^4. This compensates for allometric effects: larger persons/mammals need stronger bones to support all that mass:

One way to observe that geometric similarity is NOT correct is to note that some animals are not scaled up versions of others (i.e. the lion and the cat). The lion has much thicker legs than the cat to support its trunk. These larger legs must have extra mass, therefore doubling the size of the cat does not 8 fold increase the mass of the lion but increases the mass by 16 times.

I took the data I had of the candidates for the Top Model show, and also added statistics for US baseball players (the team from the LA Lakers), who are at the other end of the spectrum. A common criticism on BMI is that it often qualifies athletes of heavy sports like baseball as potentially obese, whil they rather have way more muscles than average people and are often very healthy individuals.
I’ve put 3 lines on the graph for each system: a bottom line, under which you are considered rather light, an average line, and a top line, above which you are ‘too heavy’. You can see that the allometric curves are more lenient on the baseball players. Almost all models as well as all athletes fall within the norm.

Conclusion: BMI is just ‘a’ way of measuring relative weight, maybe not the best. The usage aof the square of the length is contra-intuitive, but seems to give acceptable results.

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CHANDLER: So ah, whatcha watching?
JOEY: Baywatch.
CHANDLER: What’s it about?
JOEY: Lifeguards.
CHANDLER: Well, it sounds kinda stupid… Who’s she?
JOEY: Nicole Eggert. You’ll like her.
CHANDLER: Wow! Look at them run.
JOEY: They do that a lot.
(from The One With the Flashback)

The UK bra brand ShockAbsorber took it one step further and actually teamed up with Portsmouth University to explore the exact dynamics of chest movement during sports activity. Whoever said science was dull?

Teaming up with Portsmouth University
In 2004, we joined forces with Portsmouth University to update and expand our original research into breast movement during exercise. Established in 1992, the Sports Science Department has an impressive track record of research.
(…)
The results
Analysing the movement of a C cup, it was found that wearing no bra resulted in a 3D bounce of up to 6.7cm, compared to 6.4cm for a normal bra and 3.4cm when wearing a Shock Absorber.
Conclusion: Shock Absorber reduces 3D bounce by up to 74% (A cup; B989 style)
(from shockabsorber.co.uk)

They used the results to create the Bounce-o-meter: simulate breast movement for any cup size with and without sports bra. Joey would have loved it. One thing you notice when playing with the parameters: horseriding with a C-cup is a bad idea without the proper support. We live to learn.

(via i-wisdom.typepad.com)

Technorati: science – women

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MINIMAL:

a filename, typically autogenerated by the camera (e.g. “DSC0009″) or chosen at the moment of import (e.g. “Trip to Portugal 001″ or “Aug2005_001″)

a filedate, which probably correponds to the date the picture landed on the hard disk

EXIF information: date of image capture, camera brand and model, aperture, … (maybe in the future also geo-location from a built-in GPS)

ADDED BY HUMAN HAND

a title and a description: in free text

an group/set/album name: typically less than 10 words

tags or labels: the ideal search criteria, typically added by the owner

geo coordinates: the new craze on Pixagogo (who then also add the city name as a tag), so the pictures can be mapped on Google Maps

If the human-added metadata is missing, there is hardly a way to find the picture through Google Images or Flickr. What if there could be an software that analyzes a picture and automatically adds relevant metadata to a picture?

Munjal Shah, onetime cofounder of the auction services firm Andale, finally let slip on his new blog what he’s been working on since leaving last year (…) In other words, his startup, tentatively named Ojos (Spanish for “eyes”), is creating a new way to search and organize photos.
(…) he revealed the key technologies behind Ojos: face and text recognition. (…) The other key: You can assign tags, or keywords, to one photo and the service will automatically append that tag to other photos of the same people.
blogs.businessweek.com

I wonder if it also could be used to recognize familiar archetypes/icons like: a house, an sunset, an iPod, a Ferrari…

On his own blog, Shah writes:

I think Flickr’s tag based system is just super (in fact I love it), but I wanted all of my photos on there, I wanted them all tagged, and I didn’t want to spend hundreds of hours doing it. So being the lazy engineers that we are, we thought maybe we can at least auto-tag some of the faces and names.
on munjal.typepad.com

Ho John Lee states on his blog that the technology should be offered as a web service, not as yet another photo storage site. He has a point, and I can see also it working in a technology licensing model: let Flickr or Pixagogo run it locally and let them pay per million pictures treated. Anyway, it will be interesting to see where this company goes.
(via John)

Technorati: AI – images – startup – technology

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Co-founder Danny Hillis escorts me down a hallway that dead-ends into an old-fashioned red phone booth. The phone rings. He places receiver to ear.
“The blue moon jumps over the purple sky,” he says, and hangs up.
Suddenly, the booth becomes a door, swinging out to reveal a vast, open room filled with engineers, gadgets and big ideas.
from Applied Minds Think Remarkably (Wired)

I remember Maarten, Henry, Frederik and me, in the early days of Keyware (in 1998, I think), preparing a demo for Walter Debrouwer’s Riverland company. The latter wanted to impress his prospective client BP, and so he wanted a biometric access control to his ‘labs’.

We hacked something together with a hastily purchased badge-reader-annex-intercom, linked to a PC’s soundcard, running the first beta demo of our speaker authentication software (based on a Lernout & Hauspie technology). I think we even added the Visionics (now Identix) face recognition software we licensed, linked to a QuickCam webcam. So the system would recognize your face, recognize your voice while you pronounce your passphrase and then let you in when it was sure enough it was actually you. Wonderful when it works. And when it doesn’t, you can always explain about false rejection, false acceptance, and equal error rate. Maarten and me even wrote a white paper on the subject, but I can’t find that document back, only references (PDF) to it.

Frederik is now at Vasco, Maarten is at Imec, Henry has set up Broncoway. But I have no idea what happened to Veronique, An, Anke, Rudy and the lovely Julia. Maybe it’s time for a reunion.

Technorati: biometrics

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The universe comes in a box. It’s a big box, and you almost never see the walls, but its boundaries are immovable – the speed of light, gravity, the way atoms interact. Even if time and space are unlimited and illimitable, physics, chemistry, and biology dictate maxima and minima in the universe. Like the strict meter and structure of a sonnet, they make the final product all the more beautiful. – Adam Rogers

5 billion Years – Maximum time Earth has left.

That’s when the sun goes red giant and expands past Earth’s orbit.

5.4 * 10^-44 seconds – Shortest possible time.

Any shorter and quantum mechanics can’t tell whether events are simultaneous.

1.419 * 10²⁶ meter (15 billion light-years) – Maximum distance we can see.

The universe is about 15 billion years old - this is light’s travel time.

1.6256 * 10^-35 meter (6.4 * 10^-34 inches) – Shortest possible distance.

Planck length: any shorter and quantum mechanics can’t tell between here and there.

34.92 km (21.7 miles) – Maximum height of a mountain on Earth.

Uplift reaches equilibrium with pressure at the base.

3.048 * 10^-7 m (1.2 * 10^-5 inches) – Minimum size of an actively growing cell.

Free-living cells need room for a full genome, proteins, and guts.

130 m (427 feet) – Maximum height for a tree on Earth.

Gravity overcomes surface tension in the plant’s circulatory system.

265 – Minimum number of protein-coding genes for life.

As seen in the smallest known single-cell organism.

200 million years – Maximum age of sub-oceanic crust.

Older than that: it cools, becomes denser, and “subducts” back into magma.

-273.15 ° Celsius (-459.67 ° Fahrenheit) – Minimum possible temperature.

Heat is a function of molecular motion, which stops at absolute zero.

338 km/h (210 MPH) – Maximum wind speed for an Earth hurricane.

A storm can acquire only so much energy from the sea.

0.24 second – Minimum delay of a signal sent via geosynchronous satellite.

It’s light speed up 35.600 km (22.300 miles), and back down.

430.000 Mbps – Maximum speed to record data to magnetic media.

Bits won’t flip reliably with a pulse under 2.3 picoseconds.

100 Tbps – Maximum information bandwidth over optical fiber.

Higher power levels mash signals together.

10⁵¹ operations per second – Maximum computational power.

Quantum rules won’t let the ideal 1-liter, 1-kilogram laptop crunch data any faster.

Contributors: Sunny Bains, Thomas Hayden, Greta Lorge, Michael Myser, and Boyce Rensberger / Sources: Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith, and the Search for Order (Knopf, 1995); Institute for Genomic Research; Lucent Technologies; MIT; NASA; National Institute of Standards and Technology; Nature; UC Berkeley; Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; Yale

via Andrew Ferguson and bytehead.org

Technorati: science

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Thus a drug called melanotan (…), which was developed as an analogue of this hormone to promote a natural tan as protection against skin cancer, was found to have the side effect of dramatically increasing libido in men and women during clinical trials. Female rats increased their rate of copulation by 300% after a dose of melanotan, and 80% men suffering from impotence reported getting normal erections after taking this drug. Melanotan also inhibits appetite by suppressing the action of the hunger center of the hypothalamus. So it makes you tanned, thin and horny – which is why it is sometimes called the “Ken and Barbie drug.”
from www.hss.bond.edu.au

Now let’s see how long it takes before I get my first “Herbal Melanotan” spam mail.

Also covered in: dissectleft.blogspot.com – www.adamsmith.org – news.bbc.co.uk

Technorati: health

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An increasing intelligence would also reach a point where it became aware of its own intelligence and that’s a highly dangerous spot because an intelligence that was naked and transparent would be susceptible to intellectual manipulation. The first thing that a mind smart enough to see itself would do is start to hack itself.
Kevin Kelly (on edge.org)

The irony of this is that the research performed by Mr. Kelly is doing just that: trying to hack the mind. But he makes a great point. The above quote actually comes from a reply to an earlier article, the original ‘A self worth having’ thesis:

This case stayed with me � to remind me, if I should ever forget, how much consciousness matters. Even to the extent that mattering may be one of the main reasons why consciousness exists. What if it’s consciousness that gives us a reason for waking up every day, and going out into the world �to experience the qualia of a rainbow, the sunset, music, interactions with our friends, sex, food? What if consciousness provides such an incentive for living that, as human beings, we would not � and probably could not � do without it?
Nicholas Humphrey (on edge.org)

So, making out under a rainbow, Marvin Gaye in the background, just after a picknick with some excellent Sancerre is not by accident an enjoyable event: you are actually celeberating the Self. And far too busy to start picking your own mind.

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Length:

1 mile = 8 furlong, 1 furlong = 40 rod, 1 rod = 5.5 yard, 1 yard = 3 feet, 1 foot = 12 inch

Which gives us: 1 mile = 1760 yard or 1.609344 km

Weight

1 stone = 14 pounds, 1 clove = 7 pounds, 1 pound = 16 ounces, 1 ounce = 16 drams

Which gives us: 1 stone = 224 ounce

Volume

1 gallon = 4 quart, 1 quart = 2 pint, 1 US pint = 16 US fluid ounces but(!) 1 Imperial pint = 20 Imperial fluid ounces

Which gives us: 1 Imperial gallon = 160 Imperial fluid ounces or 4.54609188 liter

Two observations:

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