With a never ending stream of tasks to which the dedication of my time was required, I didn’t manage to get through nearly as much reading over this past year as I would have hoped. That having been said, I did manage to set aside some uninterrupted time in which to get through a few books. Of those books, here are my ten favorites of 2008, in no particular order. Of course I don’t mean to imply that they we’re published in 2008, some are by no stretch of the imagination even recent publications, 2008 is just the year in which I happen to have read them.

1984 - George Orwell

Most people end up reading this classic in high school, but somehow I had managed to not read it until this year. If you’ve never read it, I would definitely recommend that you do. It really is a great book that I plan on reading again.

Flatterland: Like Flatland Only More So - Ian Stewart

If you’ve read Flatland, by Edwin A. Abbott, then you’ll know more or less what to expect. When compared to Flatland, the social commentary is minimal and the focus has shifted towards the exploration of mathematical concepts.  We follow the adventures of A. Square’s great-great-granddaughter, Victoria Line, a rebellious Flatland teenager. Victoria discovers a code in her ancestors Flatland account and, upon deciphering it, summons the Space Hopper. The Space Hopper then whisks our protagonist away to the Mathiverse where he exposes her to all of the things that, as a Flatlander, she would never have had the chance to see. While Flatterland is laid out as a story, it deals with subjects such as the fourth dimension, one and a quarter dimensions, hyperbolic space, string theory, black holes, and quantum mechanics. As such, it could be viewed as a basic primer to everything with which mathematicians and physicist have been working in recent years.

The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins

I have several Dawkins titles on my bookshelf, but this is the only one that I’ve yet had a chance to read. After having read The God Delusion, I’ve made it a priority to not only read those other titles as soon as possible, but to add to my bookshelf anything else written by Dawkins.

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - Douglas R. Hofstadter

This is one of those books that I kept picking up off of the shelf at the bookstore, leafing through it, reading the back cover, and then putting back on the shelf. Eventually, after having been convinced by several members over at the IHIQS forums, I bought a copy. I’m quite glad that I did.

If you go looking for this book at your bookstore, you might find it in any one of several places. I’ve seen it under math, art, and music with those in charge of stocking the shelves clearly having inferred the book’s topic from its title. You can hardly blame them, however, for not knowing exactly what the book is about when the author himself uses a 23 page preface (in the 20th anniversary edition) in an attempt to answer that very question. Hofstadter does, as implied by the title, touch on those topics, but only in such a way as to promote an understanding by his readers of the various concepts in the book. To put it concisely, the book explores how we might go about developing, or the paths that we might take to eventually achieve, the codification, or mechanization, of human intelligence. It builds a nice foundation for thought on the subject by looking at what we do and do not understand about the human mind. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in intelligence (both human and artificial) or computer science.

Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences - John Allen Paulos

Everyone should read this book. Mathematical illiteracy is rampant but, for whatever reason, most people don’t see this as an issue. Instead, mathematical illiteracy, or innumeracy, seems to enjoy the status of a pride inspiring quality. How many times have you heard someone laughingly declare, “I can’t even balance my checkbook!” I would venture a guess that these instances far exceeds the number of times you’ve heard someone shout with pride, “Damn right I can’t read!”

My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey - Jill Bolte Taylor

This book made it’s way onto the list because I quite enjoyed the first half. I will, however, be honest in saying that I could have done without the latter half. Jill Bolte Taylor, the author, is a Harvard trained neuroanatomist who, at the age of 37, suffered a stroke cause by a ruptured blood vessel in her left hemisphere. In the book, she recalls what happened, how she felt, and the changes that she observed as she experienced the rapid deterioration of her mind. It’s a very interesting book that I recommend to anyone with even the slightest bit of interest in neuroscience.

Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track - Richard P. Feynman

This book is a collection of letters taken from the files of Dr. Feynman, ordered chronologically, and published by his daughter. As it is just a collection of letters, the natural breaks in continuity come frequently, so it’s a perfect book to pick up when you’ve only a few minutes in which to read. That having been said, the way in which Dr. Feynman lived his life and interacted with others is so entertaining that you’ll likely want to read it in it’s entirety the first time that you pick it up.

Simulacra and Simulation (The Body, In Theory: Histories of Cultural Materialism) - Jean Baudrillard

While I’m quite aware that this blog hardly needs to be nerded up any more than it is, I’ll risk doing so in admitting that my inspiration to read this book came from the film “The Matrix”. If you watch closely, near the beginning of the film, this is the book in which Neo hides his illicit software. Upon looking into it, I discovered that this book was one of those upon which the Wachowski brothers had based “The Matrix”. Unfortunately, if you read this book, you’ll quickly realize that, in acknowledging it as a book upon which their film was based, the Wachowski brothers must have either grossly misunderstood the book or simply have read only the back cover. Nevertheless, the book is outstanding. Jean Baudrillard spent most of his teaching career in France and is widely considered to be one of the country’s leading intellectuals. Baudrillard uses several interesting concepts in order to develop a theory of contemporary culture.

Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character) - Richard P. Feynman

If you’ve never heard of Dr. Richard Feynman, then this book is a perfect introduction. Dr. Feynman definitely tops the list of people whom I would love to have met at some point in my life. This book is his autobiography and served as my introduction to him. Further more, it inspired me to read every book that I could find written either by or about him. Also, if you have any interest in physics, I would recommend that you read “The Feynman Lectures on Physics“. His passion for the subject is quite obvious in the way that he taught it.

Why Beauty Is Truth: A History of Symmetry - Ian Stewart

I was inspired to read this book after having read Flatterland and being quite entertained by Ian Stewart’s style of writing. Yes, this is a book about math but, if you aren’t mathematically inclined, don’t let that discourage you. Aside from the fact that Stewart’s writting style is very non-technical, the book deals mainly with the history of mathematics and tells the stories of mathematicians from ancient Babylon to the 21st century, all of whom made fundamental contributions to the search for symmetry in mathematics.

I’m hopeful that 2009 with present me with more opportunities in which to read than did 2008, as I’ve already amassed a dauntingly large stack of books which I look forward to reading and I’m very well aware that the stack will only grow as the year progresses.

Feel free to share in the comments any recommendations that you might have!

Books Books, Top Ten

This will be a quick post as I still consider myself to be (as made evident by my recent lack of posts) on vacation.

Rick Rosner is recorded as having one of the world’s highest IQ’s. He scored 44 out of 48 on Ron Hoeflin’s Mega Test (47 on a subsequent attempt) and holds the only perfect score on Hoeflin’s Titan Test.

Below are links to a documentary, in which he was featured, that tells the story of his experience with the game show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire”.

Enjoy!

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7

Movies Intelligence, TV

This is one of those nice and easy tutorials that require absolutely no artistic skill in order to achieve the desired result. Just follow the steps and you’ll have your rays of light.

I recently used this technique when creating a background for my Twitter page, you can see it here.

Step 1

First of all, create a new document. Once we’ve finished this tutorial, the light rays will look as if they are being emitted from the center of your page. So keep this in mind when choosing the dimensions; if your intention is to have the light rays coming from the side of an image, you’ll need to create an image that is a little more than twice as wide/tall as it needs to be so that you can crop it later. For example, if the effect that you are trying to achieve is light radiating from the lower left corner of a 728×90 banner, then you’ll need to create a document that is initially roughly 1500×1500 pixels. If this is at all unclear, the reason for doing this will quickly become apparent as we progress through the tutorial.

Step 2

Now, we will need to create a gradient, so choose a color for both your foreground and background. Make sure that the gradient type is set to “Foreground to Background” then create a vertical gradient to fill your layer.

Step 3

Once you’re happy with your gradient, go to Filter > Distort > Wave.

First, change the Type to Square.

Number of Generators is fine at 5. The important thing to know here is that the Min and Max Wavelength values must be the same. You can set them as high or low as you’d like, but they must equal one another. Lower values will create more rays of light whereas higher values will result in fewer.

You can play around with Amplitude until you achieve the result that you’re going for. Basically, lower amplitude values will preserve more of the gradient within each vertical strip while higher values will create much more contrast, essentially giving you bands of color that match your initial foreground and background picks.

Leave Scale untouched.

Step 4

Odds are, once you apply the filter, that you’ll be left with a vertical band on the right side of your image that isn’t quite as wide as the others. This will affect our final image, so crop it out. After having done so, ensure that the vertical band on the far left is the opposite of that which appears on the far right. If it’s not, crop it out.

Step 5

Now that you’ve prepared the image, you can apply the final filter. Choose Filter > Distort > Polar Coordinates.

The default setting of Rectangular to Polar is fine, you can apply the filter.

Done! Your final image should look something like this

You can play around with this to get the effect that you’re looking for. Try applying a Twirl or Ocean Ripple filter.

I hope that you find this helpful!

Design Photoshop, Tutorial

Interested in owning your own space shuttle? NASA is offering their slightly used shuttles starting at the low low price of $42 million dollars, or 42,000 easy payments $999.99!

NASA has put the call out to schools, museums, and various other “appropriate organizations” that might be interested. The $42 million dollar price tag includes the estimated $6 million cost of preparing the shuttle and mounting it to the back of a modified jumbo jet for delivery to your local airport. The price, NASA warns, will be largely affected by the distance between the shuttle’s final delivery location and the airport.

Now, I hate to rain on your parade but, before you start trying to figure out how much time a space shuttle could shave off of your daily commute, you should know that NASA will only deliver the shuttles to buyers who will keep them in an indoor climate controlled display. And, just so that you don’t get any ideas, the shuttles will be delivered without any main engines.

Based on Bush’s plan to have astronauts return to the moon by 2020, NASA will retire Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour by September 30, 2010. Obama has, however, hinted at the possibility of keeping the shuttles in use beyond 2010. If that’s the case, I’m sure that there will be a few very disappointed shuttle ownership hopefuls. Although, I’m sure that disappointment will quickly turn to a sense of relief as I can’t imagine anything triggering buyer’s remorse more aggresively than a $24 million space shuttle that does nothing but occupy space (just not quite in the way that you would have hoped).

General Science NASA

As a healthy adult, would you take prescription medication, originally intended for other purposes, in order to enhance your cognitive ability? If so, you wouldn’t be alone: 7 percent of university students on US campuses have admitted to doing so, along with 20 percent of scientists.

In choosing to join the ranks of the enhanced student and scientist, you would be breaking the law. In the US, the use of these drugs without a prescription is a crime and is punishable by prison.

But is this right? People will be quick to draw a comparison to the use of performance enhancing drugs in athletics, the media coverage of which has rendered “enhancement” an ugly word. The difference lies in the fact that, as a competitive athlete, achieving an enhancement in your performance through the use of banned substances is a violation of the rules. These rules are enforced in order to level the playing.

Rules from an ethical or moral perspective have never been established in the academic or professional arenas. And why should they have been? In these fields, is a level playing field really something towards which we should strive? With scientists working towards outcomes that will, among many other things, enrich lives and cure disease, would we not want them to have every possible advantage? To ban the use of these drugs is to potentially deny ourselves innovations and accomplishments that, without cognitive enhancement, might have never been achieved or, at the very least, not realized until much later.

Human intelligence has severe limitations. Our cognitive capabilities are far exceeded by our circumstances, a fact made painfully evident by our limited understanding of the world in which we live and the widespread obstinate acceptance of irrational and childish beliefs. We need to adapt a way of thinking that will not result in restrictions being imposed on those who are willing to dedicate themselves to finding solutions.

The brain-boost shopping list

Intended as treatments for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), both Ritalin (methylphenidate) and Adderall (mixed amphetamine salts) affect the catecholamine system thus increasing executive functions. This can result in an improved ability to focus and to manipulate information in the working memory. Some memory enhancement can also be achieved.

Provigil (modafinil) is prescribed to treat fatigue caused by various sleep disorders. It can help you to stay awake for days without being burdened by the need for sleep. Some tests also show that, when taken by rested adults, certain aspects of executive function are enhanced.

Aricept (donepezil), developed to treat Alzheimer’s disease, raises acetylcholine levels in the brain, resulting in improved memory.

Further reading

Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy
It should be noted that both Barbara Sahakian and Ronald C. Kessler, two of the authors behind the article to which I’ve linked, work as consultants for several pharmaceutical companies. Barbara Sahakian holds shares in CeNes and Ronald C. Kessler has received grants from several pharmaceutical companies. Bias is everywhere; take from it what you will and form your own opinion.

General Science Intelligence