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04 August 2003 |
Four different time systems are used: Coordinated Universal, International Atomic, GPS and GMT. They're gradually getting out of sync because they either observe or ignore (for mostly systemic or historic reasons) leap-second adjustments made for the earth's rotation slowing. Some outcomes: navigational/astronomic/legal quagmire; atronomers expensively upgrade their systems; a return to the kind of timezoning done in the railroad era (albeit on a smaller scale); each group redefines the second to get the different systems back in sync, and keep them there (which the ITU would never allow, but would be funny).
5:43:26 PM 
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Antimega is receipt-mapping his life, which prompted the question 'What do the locations of his transactions tell us about him?'.
We put Holmes on the case, who observed the some of these receipts came from Northish London, and others from the Docklands, or thereabouts. Holmes then suggested that if we were to pick a tube station in Northish London (one in zones 1 or 2), we might be able to find him on the London Bloggers list, by taking advantage of the 'Weblogs Within 10 Minutes Of This Station' feature. We tried Baker Street, and then performed a 'Find in this page...' search. Elementary: Case closed.
Next week, Holmes says he may use inductive reasoning to delve further into Antimega's life, or to geographically stalk someone else.
5:30:49 PM
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5000 London Taxi Points and 4000 black cabs allow mobile users to text and book the nearest available cab, night or day.
28 July 2003: Anyone who has struggled to find a black cab in London will soon be able to locate the nearest available taxi and book it, all using SMS. With SMS connectivity supplied by Netsize, London's new Taxi Point service removes the need to wait on the street searching for a cab. Instead, customers can use one of the new 'Taxi Points' - actual signs that use a unique four-digit code to identify an exact location within central London. People wishing to use the service text the location code to the London Taxi Point short code (83220). Using GPS tracking, the service will identify and book the nearest black cab from the participating taxi fleets, delivering a confirmation SMS, and an alert when the taxi has arrived.
The service will cost the user £1 and Taxi Point signs will be positioned in locations such as public and private buildings, restaurants, theatres and bars. More than 5000 Taxi Point locations will be created in London over the next three years.
Just as the 5000 Taxi Point locations finished being rolled out, the mobileworld will finally tip over and most location mapping will be done by the network, not via an intermediary sign.
Or is this done for ease of cabs: so they need to know 'merely' 5000 locations, rather than attempting to find where you are from location data that isn't granular or accurate enough? We don't understand.
[via antimega]
5:02:10 PM
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In 'Of Two Minds and One Nature', Rhonda Roland Shearer and Stephen Jay Gould use the Jastrow duck-rabbit figure in discussing the idea that Leonardo, Duchamp and other artists successfully bridged art and science, and therefore show us the value of breaking down/through the unhelpful (false, even? - in the view of our authors, themselves a well-known partnership of art theorist and paleo-scientist) dichotomy between the two cultures.
In a key passage from one of the most influential books of our times (The Structure of Scientific Revolution), T.S. Kuhn bridged the disciplinary gap between visual representation and conceptual innovation when he used the famous gestalt illusion of the duck-rabbit [...] as a primary symbol for the meaning and nature of scientific revolution: 'It is as elementary prototypes for these transformations of the scientist's world that the familiar demonstrations of a switch in visual gestalt prove so suggestive. What were ducks in the scientist's world before the revolution are rabbits afterwards.'
An interesting article, but not sure it tells us anything new, unlike much of Shearer's research into MD.
Art students usually discover the duck-rabbit figure via Gombrich, who says:
we can switch from one reading to another with increasing rapidity; we will also 'remember' the the rabbit when while we see the duck, but the more closely we watch ourselves, the more certainly will we discover that we cannot experience alternative readings at the same time.'
[Art and Illusion, A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation, 1959, 5]
Yet this famous binary flip-flop between duck and rabbit always seemed insufficient: if you look at the picture long enough, the visual opposition starts to break down. The duck aspect becomes minimally contaminated by the (possibility of flipping over to the) rabbit aspect, and vice versa. This contamination is, we guess, what makes the flip-flop possible. You start with Jastrow's duck-rabbit = a rabbit OR a duck. You end up with Jastrow's duck-rabbit = a rabbit-duck OR a duck-rabbit. (Just found our embarrassingly confused explication of same, with images from 1997. Forgive our cod-Derridean enthusiasm.) Which is what we think Wittgenstein means when he writes about 'seeing-as' being a combination of seeing and thinking [Philosophical Investigations, 212e] and:
I am shewn the duck-rabbit and asked what it is; I may say 'It's a duck-rabbit'. But I may also react to the question quite differently. - The answer that it is a duck-rabbit is again the report of a perception; the answer 'Now it's a rabbit' is not. Had I replied 'It's a rabbit', the ambiguity would have escaped me, and I should be reporting my perception.
The change of aspect. 'But surely you would say that the picture is altogether different now!'
But what is different: my impression? my point of view? - Can I say? I describe the alteration like a perception; quite as if the object had altered before my eyes.
[...] The expression of a change of aspect is the expression of a new perception and at the same time of the perception's being changed.
[Philosophical Investigations, tr. G.E.M.Anscombe, 1953, 194-5]
More to be read:
1:26:19 PM
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© Copyright 2003 rodcorp.
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