omenti

higher order terms of good

A few days ago Om pointed to a fascinating video

Scott Yu-Jan designed and then 3d printed a nifty and, from a cool design point of view, iPad dock for his Mac Studio.  Chatting with Om I mentioned 3d printing (albeit metal printing) is used in ultra-low volume production of bikes - a track bike an Olympian would use in Paris in a few months starts around $30k with wheels going for several thousand each.  Om replied Everything good isn’t cheap. So there is that. I mean that is how everything works now sadly. 

 

I think he's right to first order.. thinking about it afterwards there rarer higher order terms where "good" can be inexpensive within bounds.  Before the 70s there was a rich DIY tradition supported by dozens of magazines aimed at everything from homemade boats to clothing and everything between. If you wanted something of quality you needed time and had to develop your own crafting and sometimes even design skill.  Now we tend to buy finished goods. Quality design and craft tends to come at a price.  

 

There are exceptions - the higher order terms.  Often skill and tools are involved: woodworking, car restoration (I'm looking at you Bryan), dress design and making (now looking at you Jheri).  I do a bit of DIY work myself, but wouldn't call it 'good' as it lacks craftsmanship and good design.  Not having the skill is probably true for most of us,  but there are options.  If you learn how to use and have access to a good 3d printer, you can support Scott Yu-Jan.  He makes his living with popular YouTube video as well as support from patrons who get access to the digital files to his designs you can copy them yourself.  And there are many others.  

 

It's the tip of an iceberg most of us ignore. Kickstarter has hosted developing labor of love projects. Here's one I funded today as a gift:  a deep dive into how comicstrips are made. Over the years I've sponsored about ten Kickstarters.  A few have been amazing delights.   Etsy is another path to inexpensive low volume good if you look around.  And you can support artists and musicians.  Ask around art and music schools to see if there are students looking for work.  It's a calculated risk, but I've done this since grad school with projects ranging from homemade paper to the composition and performance of a piece of music. (way more satisfying than going the GAI route).

 

Om is absolutely right for the vast majority - the first order - of things and experiences we pay for - good comes at price.  But hunting the tail for the higher order terms of good is not only fun, but can lead to surprises. 

 

a bit of wilding in manhattan and brooklyn

A great feature of Bell Labs and later AT&T Research was the mentoring program.  For years I was a Summer student and graduate student mentor.   I was lucky enough to have been around some really outstanding people.  A few years were particularly great - one of them had two remarkable people: Jessica and Wayzen.  So many stories and a theme of too early invention and being a bit in front of the reach of your headlights. 

 

Jessica was from a largish family.  For several years I had meetings in lower Manhattan and would have lunch in Washington Square Park on nice days (NY Dosas on the South end of the Park is the best food cart I've ever come across).  I  kept running into Jessica's horticulturist sister Rebecca who was kind enough to join me for lunch and teach me things about the how and the why of urban parks.  

 

Last Fall she gave a talk that's worth sharing.  With all of the bad news and feelings, something positive.

 

hard rockers and soft rockers

The Roadside Geology series has been around and growing  for over 50 years.  I have over a dozen and they're wonderful.  Each focuses on the geology you'll see as you travel along roads in regions the US.  They vary a bit in style given the variety authors and the publication dates.  They're very accessible to the beginner and useful for the amateur. They're also small for easy storage when you travel.

 

The trigger for the post was the most recent eruption in Iceland.  Iceland may well be going into a period of great volcanic activity - the sort of thing that comes around every millennia or so.  Yesterday's eruption was the sixth in a few months.  There are usually webcams covering these events, but Shawn Willsey posts videos with expert discussions.  He's a hard rocker (soft rockers study fossils or formations associated with organics like oil and natural gas) and co-author of the Idaho edition of Roadside Geology.    Hard rockers are among the most gonzo scientists - the types who are willing to take what seem like unreasonable risks.¹  Shawn does most of his work in the West, but interviews geologists from around the world.   His videos are unpolished, but often fascinating.  Check out his live section for recent eruptions. 

 

Any vulcanology discussion usually involves rheology - the study of how materials deform under pressure.  It's one of those areas that describes what goes on in the eye under pressure, much of geology, toothpaste, why cake batter goes up the beater in an electric mixer, and non-Newtonian fluids.  Studying it requires differential equations, but if you're curious here's an easy to read discussion that gets into the science most people never see as undergrads.

snip

...

Two of the key concepts in rheology were developed by scientists who also made significant contributions to optics: Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke. (Hooke and Newton lived in England in the 17th century. Newton (a Cambridge man) poked things in his eye as he developed theory of optics. Hooke (an Oxford man) discovered cells and published the first book on microscopy. They did not get on.)

...

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¹ A good friend who did his PhD in geophysics at Caltech likes to freeclimb frozen waterfalls for fun.  You don't want to go hiking with him (speaking from experience). A storied geophysics professor at Stony Brook was known for being the first person set foot on Surtsey shortly after it emerged from the North Atlantic. He left in his Zodiac a few hours before it exploded and vanished from view for a month or so. 

Shaun, in an interview of a vulcanologist from North Carolina State University, noted they met a few years ago in Iceland. A large number of Icelanders and tourists had hiked to a safe distance.  He noticed the only other person dressed in protective gear and taking samples of the flow and decided to introduce himself.

Sukie (my wife) would counter that some wildlife field work is as crazy.  She's been stung by hundreds of wasps, has growled down a jaguar and still suffers from something unknown she caught in the Amazon.  Her people, when they get together,  tell stories and show wounds (like missing fingers)

 

theia's last dance

a minipost

We're less than a month away from the last North American total solar eclipse for a long time.  The Earth-Moon system is odd for a number of reasons.  How the Moon formed is still a puzzle, but evidence is getting much stronger and an odd fact about the inside of the Earth is partial evidence.

 

Here's the leading hypothesis:   About 4.5 billion years ago a Mars-sized planet struck the Earth resulting in the Earth-Moon system. There's been a lot of debate where Theia (one of the Titans and the mother of Selene, the goddess of the Moon) came from and how it hit the Earth, but one of the leading collision contenders has the event taking place in a few hours.   It can be argued we owe life as we know it to this event. 

More recent work links two huge structures inside the Earth to this event.

the correct tools for the job

Every now and again I'm asked to be an outside member on a thesis committee.  Every school I know of requires a member from outside the department and often outside the university.  They're a lot of work, but they can be a lot of fun.  At first you run into the imposter syndrome, but you can ask questions to clarity from the candidate as well as their advisor and even other people in their department.  It's a neat window into an area you didn't know much about.

 

But you're there to bring your expertise and offer constructive criticism

 

About 20 years ago I was on doing this at a nearby Ivy.  The candidate was excited by the work and very articulate, but as I came up to speed it was clear their statistical interpretation was just wrong.  A few questions revealed they didn't know the basics and they should have had at least a year of statistics and a good probability course.  Not knowing how to drive, they used a commercial statistics package.  (the graphs were very pretty) I told them they'd have to do it right or not have it in the thesis.  This turned out to be a problem.  The defense was in three weeks.  Their advisor agreed and the candidate spent the next four or five months learning statistics and reworking the thesis. The final defense was flawless, but I could tell they weren't happy having lost all that time,    Then, a few years ago, I got a call out of the blue.  It was the candidate, now a professor at UCSD.  He thanked me for holding his nose to the grindstone - "it was one of the best lessons I had in college.."  You don't get calls like that often.

 

In the last few weeks I've spent time with some other folks interviewing professors and students to get a sense of modifying the school's honor code as well as general instructions to students and faculty.  It's clear this is an on-going effort as people learn and technology changes, but the experience reminds me of being an outside examiner. It's also clear the purpose of education at this school is to inspire students to follow a path of mastery rather than achievement.  It's pretty clear that a lot of  AI (I use the term loosely as it's mostly a marketing term at this point) is being used without much thought of costs vs rewards.  Sometimes these tools are appropriate and sometimes they're wrong.  Here's an analogy I proposed:

Almost everyone has a microwave oven now. Most of us use them to cook frozen meals, reheat leftovers, boil water, pop popcorn etc and some interest uses like cooking corn on the cob have emerged. They’re extremely useful in these domains. When they were less common - the  period from the 60s through the mid 80s - manufacturers pitched them as general cooking tools that save time. Cook pot roasts, chickens, pies, etc.. there were special tools like temperature probes and browning trays, but the physics just doesn’t work and people generally gave up after a few attempts. Currently AI, in particular GAI, is like the early microwave ovens. It will take time for people to discover the best tasks for it. We’re still at the cooks your whole Thanksgiving dinner - or at least it will next year stage.

Without going into my personal experiences I offer an example of a serendipitous learning when a wrong tool turns out to work.  At least it was serendipitous to me.. the person who pulled it off knew exactly what she was doing.  First find a recording of the Preludio of Bach's E Major Partita for Violin.  It's very famous so there are any number of good recordings - I like Isabelle Faust's interpretation, but your mileage may vary.     After you've listened, try this version by Tobie Miller.   She takes some liberties, but you can tell who wrote it and her playing is lovely.