By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics
Kirigami is a traditional art of cutting paper. Ulrich Mikloweit takes it a step further by assembling many pieces of kirigami into intricate mathematical models. This is a snub dodecadodecahedron made from 924 cut and colored facets.
Ulrich has dedicated years to making hundreds of such hand-cut models, which can be seen on his website.
AT&T has been making slow but steady progress in their congested trouble markets of San Francisco and New York City, adding backhaul, cells sites, migrating to the more capable 850Mhz GSM band -- and doing other small but noticeable things like pointing some NYC antennas down instead of up. The company also recently launched a large Times Square hotspot in the hopes of offloading customers to Wi-Fi whenever possible. Now AT&T says they've continued to improve capacity in NYC -- with improvement across the board -- at least according to their own data:
IBM is taking the wraps off its Engineering and Scientific Subroutine Library (ESSL) for AIX V5.1.…
Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06...
She looks approximately twice that. (For the math-impaired, that means she looks 18.)
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If the World Science Festival's panel on string theory tackled the question of whether the math behind it could be a reliable guide to reality, its panel on the Limits of Understanding seemed to question whether math could be reliable at all. As the panel presented matters, math is coming up short when faced with some of the biggest scientific challenges around. Even dizzyingly complex physical systems can be simplified down to the point where they're tractable to meaningful computations, but the simplifications needed to model even a single cell seem to result in math that is completely divorced from the underlying reality.
If the practical failure is bad, however, it may pale in comparison with some of the theoretical concerns raised by the work of Kurt Gödel, a mathematician and personal friend of Albert Einstein. Gödel's most famous work involved showing that formal systems that can be used to perform math are necessarily incomplete, raising the possibility that all our systems for doing math are limited.
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When Do Diets Start:
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Steve Jobs's WWDC keynote live today at 10AM PT / 1PM ET! originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Jun 2010 08:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Steve Jobs's WWDC keynote live today at 10AM PT / 1PM ET! originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Jun 2010 08:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | CommentsSteve Jobs' WWDC keynote live tomorrow, 10AM PT / 1PM ET! originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 06 Jun 2010 23:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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What Happens During The Last Day Of School
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One of the first, and most significant, choices a student is faced with upon entering graduate school is which professor(s) you will choose to mentor you and your research throughout the next few years (the two professors linked here mentored me while I was a PhD student). The student's advisor will provide them with support and the insight they gained through experience. Studies have shown that a mentor who provides career coaching and social support to students and other protégés ensures that the recipients are more likely to receive better evaluations, higher salaries, and more promotions. It's not entirely altruistic, as the mentors—be they bosses or professors—also receive boosts to their work and careers from their time overseeing protégés.
When attempting to understand these dynamics, understanding the relationships between mentors and protégés can be key. A paper in this week's edition of Nature looks at what makes a good mentor in the field of mathematics.
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Short honk: I was delighted to read in the Financial Times and a number of other articles that Google allegedly will “hand over intercepted data” to German authorities. A government’s rules are like the white lines of the autobahn. The “data” are those presumed to have been captured from open Wi Fi transmissions due to an unfortunate error. The Fast Company story “Google Hands Over “Rogue Data” to Euro Authorities, Apologizes Again” said:
Germany is the only country considering a criminal investigation, but Google pledged to hand documents over to France and Spain as well.
Fascinating that a single event could trigger a Facebook-like outcry. In high school, I recall a person in my remedial class in math saying, “It is easier to ask forgiveness than permission.” Observing the white lines on the information autobahn in Germany makes sense in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, June 4, 2010
Freebie
Like tea party activists and some of their fellow conservatives, Congress' reckless inattention to the deficit makes me concerned for my children's future and the kind of economy they will inherit if indifference continues. It's not because Congress is spending too much. It's because Congress is investing far too little where it's needed most, to do what the private sector can't right now — create jobs. The alternative is long-term unemployment, for a long, long time — and all its attendant consequences.
When I look at the current reality of long-term unemployment and the appalling failure of our elected officials to do anything about it — despite having ready options that might begin to offer some relief — I fear I'm looking at my children's' future, and that of millions of our children. As parent who's already doing all I can, I'm asking: Why doesn't somebody do something?
At the rate we're growing now as far as jobs are concerned, we'll stay far short of what's necessary to even return to the same level of employment we had in 2007, before the financial crisis. The latest jobs numbers can't be encouraging to anyone who can do simple math. Sure we gained 431,000 jobs in May, but 411,000 of those were Census jobs that will evaporate come the end of summer. That means we really added only about 20,000 jobs in may. That's 520,000 less than the 540,000 analysts expected, and still 109,000 short even if we count all of the census jobs.
Our real job growth in May was just 20,000 private sector jobs, and mostly in manufacturing, suggesting that non-government hiring barely registers a pulse. Meanwhile, we need to be adding between 150,000 to 200,000 to even have any hope of replacing the more than 8 million jobs lost since the end of 2007, when the recession began. (Factor in population growth over the next several years, and we need to add more than 10 million jobs to keep up.) And every month we're fall short, we're further away from returning to the level of employment we had in 2007. (And that doesn't even begin to address nearly a decade of zero job growth during the George W. Bush administration.)
As hopeless as those numbers sound it's not like there nothing to be done. Passing the Local Jobs For America Act, is something Congress can and should do that would:
The Jobs for Urban sustainability Act would direct $10 billion in newly returned TARP money into cities with populations of 600,000 or more and unemployment rates of 10% or more, to provide job training, public works, and economic development in those cities. This would
Every job created, retained or restored — state or local private or public sector —strengthens local economies, because it literally means people who would have otherwise been laid-off have income that they spend in local businesses, thus supporting jobs that will likely disappear as demand for goods and services disappears with the jobs and income that created and drove that demand. Even extending jobless benefits will help ensure this, and protect some existing jobs.
Contrary to being "anti-market" creating, retaining or restoring jobs means more consumers — literally, more people "going to market" with money to spend —which would seem to be good for the "market." It makes sense to me, but then again I'm not an economist. David Leonhardt, however, is closer being one than I am, and he pretty much says the same thing.
Voters may not like deficits, but they really do not like unemployment.
Looking at the problem this way makes the jobs bill seem like less of a tough call. Luckily, the country’s two big economic problems — the budget deficit and the job market — are not on the same timeline. The unemployment rate is near a 27-year high right now. Deficit reduction can wait a bit, given that lenders continue to show confidence in Washington’s ability to repay the debt.
As a result, Congress does not have to choose between the problems. It can pass the jobs bill, putting people back to work, and even pass a separate bill to help struggling states. History has shown that state aid, which prevents layoffs of teachers, emergency medical technicians and other workers, is the single most effective form of stimulus.
Long-Term Unemployment Now
The alternative is a 10% or higher unemployment rate in the long-term, and even more long-term employment. The Wall Street Journal paints the picture of long-term employment today.
The job market is improving, but one statistic presents a stark reminder of the challenges that remain: Nearly half of the unemployed—45.9%—have been out of work longer than six months, more than at any time since the Labor Department began keeping track in 1948.
...Overall, seven million Americans have been looking for work for 27 weeks or more, and most of them—4.7 million—have been out of work for a year or more.
Long-term unemployment has reached nearly every segment of the population, but some have been particularly hard-hit. The typical long-term unemployed worker is a white man with a high-school education or less. Older unemployed workers also tend to be out of work longer. Those between ages 65 and 69 who still wish to work have typically been jobless for 49.8 weeks.
The effects of long-term unemployment are likely to linger when the overall jobless rate falls toward normal, threatening to create a pool of nearly permanently unemployed workers, a condition once more common in Europe than in the U.S.
The picture is that of a crisis or a correction, depending on your point of view. Regardless, it is the the reality of more than 7.9 million Americans who have fallen off the economic radar, of "off the grid" depending on where you stand on the crisis/correction question. The downward slide that started with manufacturing, blue collar and construction workers is now reaching other classes of workers — from the toolmakers, woodworkers and food processors (median 38.1 weeks unemployed) whose work was supported or was supported by jobs now lost to the those who once worked in management, business and financial operations (median 32.3 weeks unemployed).
Ezra Klein, and an unemployed correspondent at Andrew Sullivan's blog, paint a picture of the consequences of long-term unemployment, particularly as it affect "re-employment."
Unemployment isn't just a problem because it means someone loses his job. It's a problem because it means that person's next job is likely to be worse than his last one. People lose their skills, their contacts, their self-confidence. Their resume begins to look worse and, if they're older, age discrimination kicks in. This unemployed correspondent of Andrew Sullivan's explains it eloquently:
Several things I've learned: You can't apply for jobs well under what your previous job was; you won't be taken seriously and will be considered over-qualifed. You must fall completely to the bottom and get the occasional minimum wage, temporary job. No one will commit to any training for a new position. If you've done exactly the job advertised before, you'll be considered. But you'll be considered incapable of learning anything new. General experience will not be considered. Stuff learned on your own will be denigrated or discounted. University degree qualification doesn't matter. Age discrimination is alive and well.
Unemployment, in other words, lasts. It affects re-employment. And the longer you're unemployed, the worse your next job is likely to be. So the spike in the number of long-term unemployed is the sort of thing that we need to worry about even as we move into recovery, because it implies that recovery, for a lot of people, will not be the return to normalcy that they'd hoped.
That's the scenario facing the currently long-term unemployed — many of whom have worked all their lives, and would very much like to find work again. If Sullivan's correspondent's experience is any indication, the longer many of them are unemployed, the less likely they are to find jobs as good as the ones they had before in terms of income and benefits, if they find permanent positions at all. (And no amount of magical thinking about jobs is likely to change that.)
If not, they join the newly minted entrepreneurs whose ranks growing at a surprising rate during this recession. Even more surprising is that most rise in business start-ups have been fueled by 35-to-44 year olds, followed by the 55-to-64 set. If you're thinking this sounds like people who were previously otherwise employed, you're right. But these are not people freeing themselves from the "bureaucratic straightjackets" of their old jobs and striking out to "fulfill their creative dreams."
According to Paul Krugman, "entrepreneur" and "self-employed" in this economy are new names for an old familiar problem: unemployment. Krugman also relates the story of an acquaintance he calls "George," an entrepreneurial everyman whose story echoes that of Sullivan's unemployed correspondent.
But this upbeat interpretation doesn’t include lots of people who don’t particularly relish becoming their own employers, like an acquaintance whom I’ll call George. George was an associate partner at one of the world’s largest technology and consulting firms until he lost his job last year in a wave of layoffs. For months, George knocked on doors but got nowhere because of the deep recession.
Finally, his old firm got some new projects that required George’s skills. But it didn’t hire George back. Instead, it brought him back through a “contingent workforce company,” essentially a temp agency, that’s now contracting with George to do the work. In return, the agency is taking a chunk of George’s hourly rate.
Technically, George is his own boss. But he’s doing exactly what he did before for less money, and he gets no benefits — no health care, no 401(k) match, no sick leave, no paid vacation. Worse still, his income and hours are unpredictable even though his monthly bills still arrive with frightening regularity.
The nation’s official rate of unemployment does not include George, nor anyone in this new wave of involuntary entrepreneurship. Yet to think of them as the innovative owners of startup businesses misses one of the most significant changes to have occurred in the American work force in many decades.
And don't think that the George's in this economy will bounce back when we finally see a recovery that reaches beyond Wall Street. A New York Times article from February of this year, along with christening George and others like him "the new poor," suggested that even with a vigorous recovery George and American's like him will remain out of work for years, and then for most recovery will not mean a return to their middle-class economic status.
Every downturn pushes some people out of the middle class before the economy resumes expanding. Most recover. Many prosper. But some economists worry that this time could be different. An unusual constellation of forces — some embedded in the modern-day economy, others unique to this wrenching recession — might make it especially difficult for those out of work to find their way back to their middle-class lives.
Labor experts say the economy needs 100,000 new jobs a month just to absorb entrants to the labor force. With more than 15 million people officially jobless, even a vigorous recovery is likely to leave an enormous number out of work for years.
When I look at the crisis of long-term employment, I have to ask whether George's present reality is the future our children — yours, mine, and millions more — have to look forward to.
I have to wonder whether thelack of action to prevent it by addressing long-term employment now, is because to some people present levels of long-term unemployment and its long-term consequences are not a crisis, but an opportunity.
Steve Jobs' WWDC keynote live on Engadget this Monday, 10AM PT / 1PM ET! originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Jun 2010 14:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | CommentsWhich side do you come down on? Both have their pros, both have their cons. If all it takes to win you over is a serene nature wallpaper that comes pre-installed on your machine, may I suggest a PC? If your attention is better entertained by shiny objects, go Mac. Or maybe, at the end of the day, it all comes down to what you can afford. Only you can say.
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Reasons People Want A Mac
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Difference between Mac and PC
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Condition of Bread VS No. of Times Put Through Toaster
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