Elven Queen Plumbing The Abyssal Reaches Got Me Wanting To Live Forever...,

Quantamagazine |  Furey has gone further. In her most recent published paper, which appeared in May in The European Physical Journal C, she consolidated several findings to construct the full Standard Model symmetry group, SU(3) × SU(2) × U(1), for a single generation of particles, with the math producing the correct array of electric charges and other attributes for an electron, neutrino, three up quarks, three down quarks and their anti-particles. The math also suggests a reason why electric charge is quantized in discrete units — essentially, because whole numbers are.

However, in that model’s way of arranging particles, it’s unclear how to naturally extend the model to cover the full three particle generations that exist in nature. But in another new paper that’s now circulating among experts and under review by Physical Letters B, Furey uses C⊗O to construct the Standard Model’s two unbroken symmetries, SU(3) and U(1). (In nature, SU(2) × U(1) is broken down into U(1) by the Higgs mechanism, a process that imbues particles with mass.) In this case, the symmetries act on all three particle generations and also allow for the existence of particles called sterile neutrinos — candidates for dark matter that physicists are actively searching for now. “The three-generation model only has SU(3) × U(1), so it’s more rudimentary,” Furey told me, pen poised at a whiteboard. “The question is, is there an obvious way to go from the one-generation picture to the three-generation picture? I think there is.”

This is the main question she’s after now. The mathematical physicists Michel Dubois-Violette, Ivan Todorov and Svetla Drenska are also trying to model the three particle generations using a structure that incorporates octonions called the exceptional Jordan algebra. After years of working solo, Furey is beginning to collaborate with researchers who take different approaches, but she prefers to stick with the product of the four division algebras, R⊗C⊗H⊗O, acting on itself. It’s complicated enough and provides flexibility in the many ways it can be chopped up. Furey’s goal is to find the model that, in hindsight, feels inevitable and that includes mass, the Higgs mechanism, gravity and space-time.

Already, there’s a sense of space-time in the math. She finds that all multiplicative chains of elements of R⊗C⊗H⊗O can be generated by 10 matrices called “generators.” Nine of the generators act like spatial dimensions, and the 10th, which has the opposite sign, behaves like time. String theory also predicts 10 space-time dimensions — and the octonions are involved there as well. Whether or how Furey’s work connects to string theory remains to be puzzled out.

So does her future. She’s looking for a faculty job now, but failing that, there’s always the ski slopes or the accordion. “Accordions are the octonions of the music world,” she said — “tragically misunderstood.” She added, “Even if I pursued that, I would always be working on this project.”

Concepts in Kron's Later Papers....,

stackexchange |  Gabriel Kron was an important research electrical engineer known for applying differential geometry and algebraic topology to the study of electrical system. Towards the end of his career he published a number of unusual, even by his standards, papers on concepts with names like polyhedral networks, self organizing automata, wave automata, multidimensional space filters and crystal computer, which I think are more or less synonymous. I have obtained a few of these papers and did not understand them at all. If they were not written be Kron, I would be suspicious of them.

I have not been able to find any significant secondary literature on these ideas. The few citations I have tracked down only mention them tangentially, but I have also found no refutations of these papers and no suggestions that Kron had gone off the rails. The papers were published in respectable journals.

I am looking for an understandable exposition or refutation of these ideas, or pointers to such. Also pointers to follow on research by others, possibly using different terminology.

I am not looking for explanations of Kron's other ideas like diakoptics and tensor analysis of networks.

Some of the relevant papers are:

• G. Kron, Multi-dimensional space filters. Matrix and Tensor Quarterly, 9, 40 - 43 (1958).
• G. Kron, Basic concepts of multi-dimensional space filters. AIEE Transactions, 78, 554 - 561 (1959).
• G. Kron, Self-organizing, dynamo-type automata. Matrix and Tensor Quarterly, 11, 42 - 52 (1960).
• G. Kron, Power-system type self-organizing automata. RAAG Memoirs, III, 392 - 417 (1962).
• G. Kron, Multi-dimensional curve-fitting with self-organizing automata. Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications, 5, 46 - 49 (1962).

I have mainly looked at the last one and material at the end of

• Diakoptics; the piecewise solution of large-scale systems. MacDonald, London, 1963. 166 pp.

i'ma have to follow the "donald's" utterances more closely...,

 

thehill |  Real estate tycoon Donald Trump cast doubt Monday on whether Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) can run for president, because Cruz was born in Canada.

"It’s a hurdle; somebody could certainly look at it very seriously," Trump said during a phone interview Monday on My Fox New York.

"He was born in Canada. If you know and when we all studied our history lessons, you are supposed to be born in this country, so I just don't know how the courts will rule on this."

Trump, who says he is exploring a bid for president in 2016, was part of the "birther" movement that questioned President Obama's birth place, as well as the veracity of his birth certificate. He recently took credit for getting Obama to release his birth certificate while speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February.

After flirting with a 2012 presidential bid, Trump has announced an exploratory committee for 2016 and says he will not renew his contract for his TV show, "The Apprentice" on NBC.  

Cruz confirmed his bid for president on Monday morning during a speech at Liberty University.

“It’s going to take a new generation of courageous conservatives to help make America great again, and I’m ready to stand with you to lead the fight," he said in a video touting the speech.

john nash dead

reuters |  Nash was awarded the Nobel Prize for economics in 1994 for his work on game theory and the mathematics of decision-making.

The film "A Beautiful Mind" was loosely based on his battle with schizophrenia.

Nash received his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1950 and spent much of his career there and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

He began experiencing what he described as "mental disturbances" in 1959 after marrying Alicia, a MIT physics major who was then pregnant, according to his biography on the Nobel Prize website.

"I was disturbed in this way for a very long period of time, like 25 years," Nash said in a 2004 video interview on the Nobel website.

He stressed that his was an unusual case, as he was able eventually stop taking medication and return to normal activities and his research.

The 2001 movie represented an "artistic" take on his experience, giving insight into mental illness but not accurately portraying the nature of his delusions, Nash said in the interview.

"John's remarkable achievements inspired generations of mathematicians, economists and scientists who were influenced by his brilliant, groundbreaking work in game theory," Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber said in a statement.

"The story of his life with Alicia moved millions of readers and moviegoers who marveled at their courage in the face of daunting challenges," he added.

Nash and his wife were living in Princeton Junction, New Jersey, New Jersey police said.

ethical heroism in the face of institutional religion and self-righteous clericalism...,

WaPo |  As a Protestant, I have no particular insight into the internal theological debates of Catholicism. But the participants seem to inhabit different universes. One side (understandably) wants to shore up the certainties of an institution under siege. Francis begins from a different point: a pastoral passion to meet people where they are — to recognize some good, even in their brokenness, and to call them to something better. That something better is not membership in a stable institution, or even the comforts of ethical religion; it is a relationship with Jesus, from which all else follows.

Instead of being a participant in a cultural battle, Francis says, “I see the church as a field hospital after battle.” First you sew up the suffering (which, incidentally, includes all of us). “Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds.” The temptation, in his view, is to turn faith into ideology. “The faith passes,” he recently said, “through a distiller and becomes ideology. And ideology does not beckon [people]. In ideologies there is not Jesus; in his tenderness, his love, his meekness. And ideologies are rigid, always. . . . The knowledge of Jesus is transformed into an ideological and also moralistic knowledge, because these close the door with many requirements.” 

The message seems simple. It actually highlights a complexity at the heart of Christianity: Its founder coupled a call for ethical heroism (don’t even lust in your heart) with a disdain for institutional religion and self-righteous clericalism. And this has been disorienting to institutionalists from the start. 

Francis has devoted serious attention to reforming the institutional expression — particularly the finances — of the Catholic Church. But he has chosen to emphasize the most subversive and challenging aspects of Christian faith. He really does view rigidity, clericalism and hypocrisy as just as (or more) damaging as sexual matters. Liberals want to incorporate this into their agenda. But the pope has his own, quite different agenda — which has nothing to do with our forgettable ideological debates. It is always revolutionary, and confusing to the faithful, when a religious leader believes that the Sabbath (including all the rules and institutions of religion) was made for man, and not the other way around.

a head full of symphonies

radiolab |  Bob Milne is one of the best ragtime piano players in the world, and a preternaturally talented musician -- he can play technically challenging pieces of music on demand while carrying on a conversation and cracking jokes. But according to Penn State neuroscientist Kerstin Betterman, our brains just aren't wired to do that. So she decided to investigate Bob's brain, and when she did, she discovered that Bob has an even more amazing ability... one that we can hardly believe, and science can't explain. Reporter Jessica Benko helps us get inside Bob's remarkably musical mind.

just for fun...,

What is FPV?

FPV is short for First Person View. Using specially designed FPV cameras and head sets, it’s possible to virtually put yourself in the cockpit of almost any RC model. Instead of just watching, you can go along for the ride!

---

what you need to experience FPV

PLATFORM

An FPV platform can be any RC vehicle you fly or drive. All you need is enough room to mount an FPV camera system.

TRANSMITTER

You will need an RC transmitter to fly or drive the platform that carries your FPV camera.

CAMERA

The camera captures the first person view from the platform and sends the images via video transmitter to your headset.

HEADSET

The headset lets you see what the camera on the platform sees. It’s like sitting in the cockpit or behind the wheel.

---

Spektrum Innovation Makes FPV Simple

Used to be, if you wanted to experience FPV RC, you had to piece together a system yourself. Once you did, you then had to figure out how to make everything work together. Spektrum FPV systems eliminate all the guesswork by giving you everything you need in one box. Camera, head set, batteries, charger – it’s all there, all compatible and can be ready to go in minutes.

Every component in a Spektrum FPV system is available separately too. If you want to add FPV capabilities to another model, all you have to do is buy the same camera that came with your system. Spektrum FPV cameras also come pre-installed on select Bind-N-Fly® aircraft and will work with the head set from any Spektrum system.

It doesn’t matter if you’re new to the FPV scene or a seasoned pro. Spektrum technology will allow you to have more fun with fewer hassles than ever before. Fist tap Arnach.

Rossi won't tell you his secrets, but John lets you in on his - so help him get the glass!

kickstarter | Some people have asked me "What's the deal with casting glass?" Why can't I use just regular glass, like bottle glass and cast with that? Why can't I just pick up bottles from the side of the road, and use them for free? Short answer is, bottle glass, or sheet glass, or old window glass, doesn't cast very well, or not all. 

Longer answer is, some companies have spent their entire existence developing casting glass to a high level of quality. There are only a handful of them out there. One such company (and in fact, if I'm not mistaken, the American pioneer in fusing and casting glass) is Bullseye Glass in Portland, Oregon.

That's who I want to get my glass from.

Now wait, you say, are you shilling for Bullseye here? No. I LIKE their glass. I get consistent results with their glass. I like what the glass does when I cast it.

I've been using their glass since 1996. I've used assorted scraps of glass that span decades, and yet, when cast together, are almost indistinguishable in their properties. That, to me, signifies a level of quality control that I can appreciate.

There is a special chemical formulation that can make the glass soften at a lower temperature and flow more readily into detailed crevices and textures and forms. Better still, because different colored glasses are composed of different chemicals, getting different colors to cast together and not explode to smithereens when they come out of the kiln, is, quite frankly, close to magic. And to do this consistently, over decades of manufacture, has made me a loyal fan.

I like the fact that they have gone through all the headaches of formulating their glass and therefore my casting process has that many less headache inducing moments to deal with when I cast something. And, not surprisingly, the expense in buying it is a lot more than picking up roadside bottles.

much too much fun to watch.....,

GIVE.IT.UP.FOR.CLANG

white shirts gettin they thug on....,

NYTimes | The New York Police Department puts an endless list of tasks on the shoulders of its so-called white shirts — the commanders atop an army of lesser-ranking officers in dark blue.

But the portfolio of the white shirt has now unexpectedly grown to include the role of enforcer.

As the Occupy Wall Street protests, which began on Sept. 17, lurch into their third week, it is often the white shirts who lay hands on protesters or initiate arrests. Video recordings of clashes have shown white shirts — lieutenants, captains or inspectors — leading underlings into the fray.

White shirts led the face-off with protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday afternoon. The episode provided no viral YouTube moments, as the senior officers avoided confrontations with the demonstrators. Yet as hundreds of arrests were made, chants of “white shirts, white shirts” could be heard.

And a white shirt is the antagonist in the demonstrations’ defining image: Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna’s dousing of some penned-in women with pepper spray on Sept. 24, which seemed to surprise at least one of the blue shirts standing near him on East 12th Street, near University Place. The department is investigating the spraying.

Martin R. Stolar, a member of the National Lawyers Guild who is representing protesters, said, “It appears that it is white shirts that are directing the rough arrests.” To him, their actions constitute a policy from on high. Even the chief of department, Joseph J. Esposito, the highest-ranking officer, was mixing with marchers last Saturday, briefly holding two people by the arm and directing their arrests.

Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, did not return a call to discuss the department’s strategy, but in an e-mail he said most of the roughly 80 arrests made last Saturday “were made by police officers directed by supervisors.”

In everyday policing situations, the one-two punch of uniformed response usually goes like this: Blue shirts form the first wave, with white shirts following. But those roles seem reversed in the police response to the Wall Street protests.

extrasensory perception of digital erotica...,

Video - 2 Live Crew - Me So Horny (Uncensored)

NYTimes | In an interview, Dr. Bem, the author of the original paper and one of the most prominent research psychologists of his generation, said he intended each experiment to mimic a well-known classic study, “only time-reversed.”

In one classic memory experiment, for example, participants study 48 words and then divide a subset of 24 of them into categories, like food or animal. The act of categorizing reinforces memory, and on subsequent tests people are more likely to remember the words they practiced than those they did not.

In his version, Dr. Bem gave 100 college students a memory test before they did the categorizing — and found they were significantly more likely to remember words that they practiced later. “The results show that practicing a set of words after the recall test does, in fact, reach back in time to facilitate the recall of those words,” the paper concludes.

In another experiment, Dr. Bem had subjects choose which of two curtains on a computer screen hid a photograph; the other curtain hid nothing but a blank screen.

A software program randomly posted a picture behind one curtain or the other — but only after the participant made a choice. Still, the participants beat chance, by 53 percent to 50 percent, at least when the photos being posted were erotic ones. They did not do better than chance on negative or neutral photos.

“What I showed was that unselected subjects could sense the erotic photos,” Dr. Bem said, “but my guess is that if you use more talented people, who are better at this, they could find any of the photos.”

lady t - r.i.p.

Video - Lovergirl Teena Marie.

agua de beber

Video - Astrud Gilberto Agua de Beber

c'est si bon

Video - Eartha Kitt C'est Si Bon

x faculties in search of application

Video - Eidetic memory with accurate graphical reproductive recall.

The eldest of the old nerd contingent - and designer builder of the failsafe mechanism - has this faculty and is fully cognizant of how it distinguishes him from his peers. He's a mechanical engineer. Back in the days when blueprints and schematics were rendered by hand - such capabilities were exceedingly highly valued. Nowadays, not so much. Fist tap Bro. Makheru.