Openlander

meta

• IPA pronunciation machine: (1) go this AT&T site, then enter this text <phoneme alphabet="ipa" ph="kæt"> </phoneme> , and substitute the IPA code for the kæt portion of the code.

biology

• Type_II_topoisomerase cuts a DNA strand, passes another thru the cut, then re-ligates the cut strand. nuts. Type I unwinds DNA, by cutting only one strand, letting spin, the re-ligating.
• Cistrome is the entire set of cis-acting targets of trans-acting regulatory elements in a genome

misc

• interesting word from gibson's pattern recognition: apophenia
• starting points for exploring the forgetting of names: mnemonic, nominal aphasia
• inventor of mouse: Douglas Engelbart
• nice graph-paper generator, and also this canned triangular graph paper
• musical and graphical converter for abc notation
• earn out is a business term relating to acquisition of start-ups
• karoshi = japanese word for salary-man sudden death
• Fredkin's Paradox -- finally a name to this idea! "The more equally attractive two alternatives seem, the harder it can be to choose between them - no matter that, to the same degree, the choice can only matter less." (Minsky 1985, The Society of Mind).
• Göbekli Tepe (12 kya): temple -> motive for foragers to commit to one location -> ability to follow up on breeding experiments -> grains suitable for agriculture -> agricultural revolution. Opposite of conventional view that agriculture -> settlement -> temples.
• Bernal sphere: eponymous unit of extra-terrestrial habitat proposed by 1929 nanotech pioneer
• BGP = core of the internet
• Subsidiarity is an organising principle of decentralisation, stating that a matter ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest, or least centralised authority capable of addressing that matter effectively. Introduced in Antifragile.
• L'esprit de l'escalier - thinking of the right answer only after the conversation is over.

aesthetics/philosophy/psychology

• Liane Gabora "Origin of the modern mind through conceptual closure", etc.
• aesthetics of non-ornamentation: Adolf Loos (came upon via wittgenstein (who i came upon via kirkegaard))
• supervenience is a kind of dependency relationship, typically held to obtain between sets of properties.
• Umwelt the range of perceptual input that a being can comprehend (faster/slower, larger/smaller, more/less abstract, etc.)
• Moral Foundations Theory explaining the basis of moral behavior of people all over the world

math

• handy reference: table of logic symbols; for more detail, see table of mathematical symbols
• cool: cauchy sequence
• pointless topology
• diagram chasing
• Isoline or Contour line is a super set of Isoquant and isocost, etc.
• Topological data analysis using Topology to do machine learning
• Peano curve is a 1D curve that wanderingly fills 2D space

recent major results

• Poincaré conjecture was proved in 2006 by Grigori Perelman
• Fermat's Last Theorem was proved in 1994 by Andrew Wiles
• Four color theorem was proved in 1976 by Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken (first computer-based proof)

physics

• minkowski diagram could be a good way of teaching special relativity without math
• is the relativity of simultaneity for real?
• light cone was in lee smolin's three roads to quantum gravity

body

• triphala = indian herbal supplement, supposedly healthy

economics

• Reconstruction Finance Corporation, a New Deal entity that loaned out huge amounts of money, moving faster than the Fed was able to. Most of the money was paid back, at least in nominal dollars. Is that different from what was paid back in PPP or gold equivalent?