Saturday, January 31, 2015

"Figures don't lie, but liars figure."

"Figures don't lie, but liars figure."

Carroll D. Wright was a prominent statistician employed by the U.S. government, and he did use the expression in 1889 while addressing the Convention of Commissioners of Bureaus of Statistics of Labor. But Wright did not claim that he coined the expression [CDW1]:
The old saying is that “figures will not lie,” but a new saying is “liars will figure.” It is our duty, as practical statisticians, to prevent the liar from figuring; in other words, to prevent him from perverting the truth, in the interest of some theory he wishes to establish.

Still later in 1889 another instance of the quote appears in an article arguing about sewer routes in California. Soon the maxim will be attached to Carroll Wright, but there are still examples, like this one in 1889 and others in the 1890s, where the saying is unattributed [LSL]:
Statements are easily made; their value, however, depends upon the reliability of the parties who make them. Figures don’t lie, but liars will figure. I challenge an investigation of the situation
See link.

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

"ma" - word in Japanese

...I told him I love the "gratuitous motion" in Miyazki's films; instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people will just sit for a moment, or sigh, or gaze at a running stream, or do something extra, not to advance the story but only to give the sense of time and place and who they are.
"We have a word for that in Japanese," he said. "It's called 'ma.' Emptiness. It's there intentionally." He clapped his hands three or four times. "The time in between my clapping is 'ma.' If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it's just busyness."

This is extremely "Japanese" in and of itself, if that makes sense.
I'm thinking of Tonari no Totoro, Mononoke-Hime, The Wind Rise, in particular.

-Spirited Away Movie Review & Film Summary (2002) | Roger Ebert

Monday, January 26, 2015

The Conceptual Age



We had the agricultural age dominated by farmers, the industrial age dominated by factory workers, and the information age enabled by knowledge workers. According to Daniel Pink, now we are in the "conceptual age" - the age dominated by creative "right-brainers". Yay! Finally I'm in vogue! Machines are programmed to do the routines work, freeing me up to do all the jobs only humans can do: create beauty, create solutions to new problems, and...play!

Monday, January 19, 2015

Difference between theory and proof

theory is an established and respected explanation of a natural phenomenon, acquired through confirmation of its principles through the scientific method - testing, confirmation, and observation and experimentation.  Evolution is a widely accepted and demonstrated theory, validated across many disciplines.

proof in science a successful demonstration of a hypothesis under study using evidence and analysis.  It is a misconception in many ways, since science actually can prove nothing.  In this sense, "proof" is a simplified way of saying "greatly enhanced confidence".

Quoted from Rick Thorne on Quora - link.

Friday, January 9, 2015

Living in a dream

"All matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration – we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There's no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we're the imagination of ourselves." - Bill Hicks

If a virtual reality computer program is your definition of "real" then this world, this universe and the body that you inhabit is real. But if a virtual reality program is your definition of an ILLUSION, then so is the "physical world" that you live in, yes, including your body.

"You're living in a dream world, Neo." - Morpheus

Religion of the Future

"The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity." - Albert Einstein

Thursday, January 1, 2015

inertia

inertia: a tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged;
"the bureaucratic inertia of government"

Photons don't have an inertial frame of reference, so they don't experience time; and if they don't experience time, it means they don't move at all and in fact their "world" is more like a single point rather than the universe we see around us. So, if that is true, "where" are photons relative to us? And how are we interacting with them?