Christie's auction of Turing offprints fails to achieve reserve price while Apple 1 sells for £110k

Steve Wozniak attended Christie's auction house at their magnificent King Street SW1 venue today and, as I did, witnessed the sale of an Apple 1 computer for £110,000.





Alas, Newman's collection of Turing paper offprints failed to achieve the reserve price of £300,000. This is so surprising, less than a fortnight ago (12 November 2010) a Chinese vase exceeded expectations, sold for £43million.


It was an exciting 1 1/2 hours this afternoon witnessing auction history in Christie's. Definitely, as Professor Max Newman's collection, Lot 60, neared for sale the heart began to pound. Thanks to the 20th century's brilliant mathematician, Alan Turing, I'm getting to enjoy science in many ways. Roll on Turing centenary year, 2012 .....



[pictures from Christie's web site]

Skyline: A Confusion of War of the Worlds, Aliens, Predator and Cloverfield

.......... ends as Beauty and the Beast!


Firstly, I thought

David Gandy appeared as the central male character Jarrod, wish he had!


In Arnie Schwarzie/Predator1 mode David Zayas' Oliver character utters something in Spanish (?) at the mother*** uglies, against which mankind's F16s and stealth bombers are simply pathetic! Twist is interesting, not sure sequel will be unique.






Trailer:

Robert Plant, rock god: in his own words

The 'Rock God' tag conjures up images of the long curly blonde locks adorning a bare chested Adonis, Robert Plant:




Fitting that BBC2 presented an evening of Robert Plant last night, Saturday 7 November 2010, read about it here.



Who can forget Plant's vocals on Led Zeppelin's Kashmir:






Rock Gods include Deep Purple's pantheresque Ian Gillan:








.......... and The Door's legendary Jim Morrison








( Photos from the web, 'spirit of Jim Morrison' from here: http://art-canyon.com/2010/09/theme-rooms-spirit-of-jim-morrison-poster/)

Giannis Kotsiras 'Pass the flame unite the world'

Giannis Kotsiras' song 'pass the flame, unite the world' is a beautiful melody and uplifting tune needed at the end of what's been a year of devastating natural disasters: earthquakes, summer fires, floods, volcanic eruptions, and hurricanes.






and in English:









Wishing the flame of 2010 passes into a peaceful and less chaotic 2011.

Bryan Ferry's new album Olympia

The seductive Bryan Ferry returns with his latest album Olympia, which includes the sexy You can dance 'padded cell remix' You can dance track:

Wilcox's Suzette ties with Carpenter's Cleverbot but fools one judge in 20th Loebner Prize

From Slashdot:

"....Suzette had easily qualified [for the 20th Loebner Prize for Artificial Intelligence]over the 3 other competitors (her score 11 pts, the nearest competitor's 7.5). Her design and data naturally gave her an edge over her competitors on the human knowledge test questions of the qualifiers. But human judge chat was an entirely different matter than the qualification test. Still, I felt she could carry on a detailed conversation better than the others and should win.

Initial installation of the programs occurred on Friday. From prechat conversations with the other contestants I learned that A.L.I.C.E. came with 3 redundant disks. Yet all three turned out to be blank! What a scare that must have been. Dr. Wallace managed to install by retrieving the program over the Internet. Cleverbot is now at 45 million lines of memorized user chat (at a rate of doubling every year). And UltraHal is now listening to tweets, so has 300K of user chat it learned and 400K of tweets it has accepted for learning (code decides if the user has had enough responses and doesn't trigger any red flags).

Then we get to the competition. While the CalState organizers had initially planned to have various interdepartmental professors act as judges (like English dept, etc.), they backed out at the last minute, so all the judges were from the Engineering/Computer Science dept. Talk about guys who might know what to expect from chatbots! And all the humans were students from the same departments. What a weird mixture to compete in. And then, each round was 25 minutes. That's bad if you want confuse a judge about who is human. But really, the programs have no chance for that. So it's good because it gives the human time to compare each program against the other. Though it's not clear to me that the judges tried to use their time to do that.

And the students didn't really understand their role. It was merely to BE HUMAN and convince the judges of that. Before startup there was informal chatting between humans and judges, which was obviously inappropriate and it was then pointed out to the humans that since the judges already knew their names, they had best use false ones in the competition.

Round 1. After a few exchanges, somehow Suzettte got stuck into repeating exactly what the judge said for the rest of the round. I have no idea how. The round is a total disaster. I've never seen such a bug before. Maybe it's in my only-lightly-tested protocol for the competition. I have no idea. But it completely derails my hopes for Suzette. She could still win on points only if she outdoes her opponents for every other judge and the other contestants vary all over the place.

Round 2, a great demonstration of Suzette. She should win on this round alone.

Round 3 gets off to a horrible start. Somehow, Suzette can hear the judge but the judge can't hear Suzette. Makes no sense. A couple of restarts of Suzette doesn't fix this. Eventually they restart the judge program, and that clears it (not that that makes any sense either). Then, after a few rounds, it's clear Suzette has the judge from hell. He wants to know who she's going to vote for in the upcoming election (the unspecified California governor's race). And when she has no useful answer he wants her to name a candidate in the race. And when she has no answer to that, he simple keeps repeating the question ad nauseum, insisting she answer it. Suzette gets irritated. Then she gets angry. Suzette then gets bored. Suzette threatens to hang up on him. The judge doesn't back down until the last seconds of the round. I figure that's the end of life as we know it.

Round 4 is a mixed bag. Suzette is ok but not great. It's all over.

When the scores are tallied, Suzette ties with Rollo Carpenter's Cleverbot for 2nd-3rd. Yet, it turns out, the 3rd round judge got the human subject from hell. Poetic justice! The human was all over the place -- confusing, vague. The judge voted irritated/angry/bored Suzette as human. Instant win since no other program swayed the judges."

Loebner's interpretation of the imitation game is not what Turing had in mind, as Jason Hutchens (2008) points out: tournament is now resistible to engineering students no longer serving as an “incentive for post-graduates ... promise of $x000 prize for the creator of the ‘most human-like’ computer program, ... bronze medallion featuring portraits of both Alan Turing and Hugh Loebner” [p. 325].

Nick Clegg's desert island choice: Cesaria Evora and Petit Pays

Multilingual Nick Clegg, UK Deputy Prime Minister, choice of desert island discs presented on BBC Radio 4 included the beautiful and haunting track Petit Pays by Cesaria Evora.

Enjoy it on Youtube:

DR WHO & THE DALEKS LIVE AT WEMBLEY 2010

Childhood 'fun' nightmares were awakened with the Daleks destruction by 'the doctor' during BBC's DR WHO LIVE TOUR 2010 at Wembley last Friday.


Nigel Planer (of cult comedy The Young Ones) played the dastardly villain, what fun, but come on Steven Moffatt, do a DR WHO - Alan Turing special :-)





Watch the cyborg stomp, Churchill address and more on YouTube:

Santana - Guitar God

Carlos Santana Guitar God and Sage extraordinaire was powerful last Friday night at the O2, 1st October. Went out and bought his Guitar heaven album next day, it's beautiful, 'While my guitar gently weeps' is haunting.


Thanks to fellow fans, tracks played that night have been uploaded to Youtube, here are some of the best of them, JINGO:




and CORAZON ESPINADA:





Whole lotta love:

Inception: Heist of Mind

Nolan's Inception has the tragedy of Scorsese & DiCaprio's Shutter Island with the feel-good ending of Cameron's Avatar.

A heist of mind and the 'Matrix' for the twenty-tween decade, IMAX it to unravel the many subconscious levels of dreams.

Alan Turing's 98th birthday

Alan Turing , 'father' of the idea of thinking & talking machines was born this day 98 years ago in Paddington, London, 1912.


Andrew Hodges short biography of the Turing test creator can be found here.


Picture by Andrew Hodges from here.

Turing's Test and Soul of a Muslim Woman

Turing's Test and the Muslim Woman

What Motivates People

Excellent animation relating what motivates people: autonomy, mastery and purpose:

Ada Lovelace Day 2010: Dr Rana el-Kaliouby

For this year's Finding Ada, March 24, 2010, I'm nominating MIT's Dr Rana el-Kaliouby , an inspirational young female scientist for Ada Lovelace Day 2010.

Rana el-Kaliouby holds a BS and MS in Computer Science from the American University in Cairo, and a PhD from the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge. She co-founded Affectiva, Inc., a spin-out from MIT's Media Laboratory with Rosalind W. Picard to measure and communicate emotions.


Among Rana el-Kaliouby's achievements is "wearable technology she helped develop that may aid people with autism spectrum disorders" (from MIT news.

Organiser of the 2009 Royal Society event on Computation of emotions in man and machines, Rana el-Kalouby's research interests include:

"inventing new affective technologies that enable the real-time and offline measurement of people's affective and cognitive experiences to enhance understanding of oneself and communication with others. She is a founding member of the Autism Communication Technology Initiative at MIT. Her current research developing the first in the world suite of wearable prostheses designed to enrich the social interactions of individuals on the autism spectrum ... rated among the top 100 innovations of the year 2006 by New York Times. Her work has been featured in the NewScientist, New York Times, Reuters, CNET, Wired, the Boston Globe and Slashdot. El Kaliouby is the 2006 recipient of the Global Women and Inventors Network, Higher Education & Learning Institutes (Gold Award). ." (from here).

Attempting to build an emotionally intelligent machine, one that can

".. detect your mood and can make decisions based on that. For example, it can alert you if you are falling asleep while driving, detect if you are frustrated when you can’t find what you are googling for, or can switch to a music genre that will cheer you up [when] you are sad. MindReader API enables the real time analysis, tagging and inference of cognitive affective mental states from facial video. The API builds on Rana el Kaliouby's doctoral research, which presents a computational model of mind reading as a framework for machine perception and mental state recognition. (From here).

Rana el-Kalioubt "exhibits her work regularly to engage the public in research, and to encourage more under-represented individuals to pursue a career in technology innovation. She has been invited to present her work at Google".


A mother of a five yea-old daughter, Rana el-Kaliouby is a most fitting and inspiring young female scientist to be associated with Lord Byron's daughter, Lady Ada Lovelace, another extraordinary woman, 19th century mathematician and first computer programmer.

Flash Forward Returns

Flash Forward returns on Five; will we learn the cause of the global blackout? Can't wait!

James Cameron's Avatar Interview

James Cameron interview for Discovery News:

Making of Bellamy's People

Mock 'behind the scenes' view of BBC2's comic series on what makes British people British: Bellamy's People.


Episode 6



Hilarious: 'What is the question?'






The Modern British Army:




More clips here.

James Cameron Speaking on TED

Good timing TED (ideas worth spreading), posting last year's James Cameron talk now, just before OSCARS 2010!

This is the way to impress, not the way Nicholas Chartier, producer of HURT LOCKER, chose - censured for explicit and aggressive campaigning, resulting in a ban from attending the Oscars.

2010 Chatterbox Challenge

Chatterbox Challenge (CBC) is an annual contest held over the Internet that compares artificial conversational entities - ACE, across categories including 'best system'. The contest is loosely based on Alan Turing's notion to gauge whether a machine can think, conveyed through its answers to questions from a judge. The judge is not allowed to hear, see or touch the ACE, and must use their own interrogation technique via text-based questioning to assess.


The 2010 Chatterbox Challenge is looking for a small number of judges for this year's contest beginning March 15th. Judging requires access to an Internet-enabled computer. Judging is fun and also allows an insight into a broad area including the fields of natural language study, psychology, philosophy, software engineering and computer science.

Having participated in the 2005 CBC contest, I can say it was very interesting, and allowed for a paper write up for the Natural Language Understanding and Cognitive Science workshop, part of ICEIS 2006 (http://www.iceis.org/iceis2006/)

If anyone is interested to act as a judge in the 2010 Chatterbox Challenge, please contact the Sponsor on support[at]chatterboxchallenge[dot]com

For more information on the contest, please see CBC's site here:

http://www.chatterboxchallenge.com/index.php


You can follow CBC:

on Twitter - http://twitter.com/CBCSite

on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Chatterbox-Challenge/266598751339

2010 IET/BCS Turing Lecture

"Exponential growth in data is driving the new machine intelligence."

Microsoft's Professor Christopher Bishop presented the Prestige IET/BCS 2010 Turing lecture at Savoy Place last night.

The talk can now be viewed here:

IET/BCS Turing Lecture 2010 - Embracing Uncertainty: The new machine intelligence Professor Christopher Bishop, Chief Research Scientist, Microsoft Research Cambridge Computers From: The IET/BCS Turing Lecture 2010-02-25 00:00:00.0 IT Channel >> go to webcast>> recommend to friend

The 7 Stages of James Cameron's Avatar-viewing Heaven!

Having tonight seen AVATAR for the third time, exactly two months since first being overwhelmed by it at the BFI IMAX, surprised to learn there remain people in the Northern Hemisphere of Planet Earth who have not yet seen James Cameron's cine-spectacular, thus, not enjoyed his Pandora epic. Perhaps they're waiting for Cameron's Avatar novel:

Cameron confirmed reports that he’s turning his Oscar-nominated movie “Avatar” into a novel. “There are things you can do in books that you can’t do with films,” said Cameron... the book version of “Avatar” will follow the film version “quite closely” in terms of the plot. But the novel will also include “interior monologues” and provide details about the characters and Pandora...Cameron said he first considered writing the book when he was filming the movie. “I told myself, if it made money, I’d write a book”. (From here).

Below I've listed the seven stages of AVATAR movie-viewing heaven:

1. 3D BFI IMAX London - massive screen, awesome AVATAR/Pandora experience
2. 3D any other IMAX cinema
3. 3D cinema - not the same engagement as the IMAX experience, still enjoyable
4. 2D cinema - pleased it looks good in this format too

and come November 2010, the date for release of AVATAR on DVD (see below*), the next best ways to enjoy AVATAR for ever are:

5. 3D TVs can't wait!
6. Massive home Plasma screen TV with blu-ray player
7. PC or any other TV/screen

Avatar's Michell Rodriguez speaks of her pride:

Speaking at Hollywood's ACE Awards, the actress said she was impressed by how many people the movie seemed to have touched.

"Yeah, I am proud," she explained. "I'm proud that love could strike people like that - that's all it is."

"It's like unconditional love translated into special effects, 3-D and a great storyline," the actress said of the Oscar-nominated movie.

"I just love how receptive people around the world have been to that message, because it makes me think that there is still hope out there." (From here)

Let's hope James Cameron is appreciated this weekend with an armful of BAFTAS.

*Feb 17 2010 6:09 PM EST:
'Avatar' Director James Cameron Says 3-D DVD In Stores This November: 'We'll follow up with some kind of special edition later down the line,' Cameron says. By Eric Ditzian, with reporting by Josh Horowitz

"Avatar" arrived in December, and it looks like the DVD will start shipping 11 months later. That's what James Cameron told MTV News when the writer/director stopped by the newsroom to chat on Wednesday (February 17).

"We're going to put 'Avatar' out probably in November on 3-D — bare bones, just the movie — and then we'll follow up with some kind of special edition later down the line," he said.

By the time the DVD arrives, major electronics manufacturers like Samsung, Panasonic and Sony should have home 3-D television systems available for purchase, albeit at a premium price. Pair one of those sets with a 3-D-enabled Blu-ray player, and while you won't exactly be re-creating an IMAX viewing environment, you will get three dimensions of Pandoran glory and still be close enough to your fridge to hit pause and grab a cold soda.

Cameron ... expanded and clarified ... the DVD ... is likely to contain five or six minutes of fully finished, theatrical-release-quality deleted scenes and 15 minutes of footage that was excised early on and thus contains rough CG effects.

"The unfinished scenes look like a cheesy video game," Cameron said. "They're the performances — you can really see what the scenes would have been — but it doesn't have that magical realism of the finished film."

Among the deleted scenes will be footage focusing on the main group of Na'vi humanoids of Pandora, the introduction of other Na'vi clans, and the ritual hunt for a colorful creature called a Sturmbeest in which Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) takes part.

"It's all wonderful stuff, but it was sort of bogging down the middle section of the movie," Cameron told us back in December. "So there's plenty for a value-added DVD experience on this film. Of course, we'll have to go punch it all up and get it all mixed and stuff like that."

(From MTV.com)

Bellamy's People: 'What Exactly is Britishness?' Spoof!

3rd episode of hilarious new comedy Bellamy's People aired last night on BBC2.


The show is predicated on the idea of an award winning radio phone-in host, who has decided to leave his studio to find out what Britishness actually means. As intrepid as the other Bellamy (biologist, David), Gary goes forth meeting with people of today's Great Britain. Sometimes bemused by them, at other times playfully attacked, Bellamy connects with every caricature of multi-cultural Britons. Read the Gary Bellamy blog here.


Favourite character, is played by the brilliant Felix Dexter. As an African student, Julius Olufemwe, in London for the past twenty years reading Hotel Management Studies, he is just too funny!



We learn Julius adores British history, culture and traditions. He admires British buildings, shows Bellamy wonderful examples such as Big Ben, Houses of Parliament. Yes, Dexter's African student loves all that is British, but especially its fabric, that which makes Britain lovely, its nobility! - Julius would love to say to his mother and father that he has become the Marquis of Shropshire, the Earl of Broadstairs, the Viscount of Guildford or the Duke of Reading :)

Bellamy talks to the outspoken radio talk-show host (think Jon Gaunt!), the Yorkshire poet, the un-racist English builder, the Aussie who thinks Great Britain is down the pan, the Pakistani who acquaints Bellamy of the benefit of his home nation: it's hotter :) And there's a Professor, Michael Dadd, who has all the important dates in British History at his fingertips, including the year of the Battle of Agincourt, which, much to the Historian's chagrin, Bellamy does not, and neither do I, without looking it up!

Many more characters to enjoy while spoofing up Britishness - watch on BBC iPlayer.

OSCARS 2010: AVATAR & HURT LOCKER Nominated 9 Times Each

My favourite movie 2009-end and New Decade-Tweens, Avatar received 9 Oscar nominations:

Best picture
Director
Best film editing
Art direction
Cinematography
Music (original score)
Sound editing
Sound mixing
Visual effects

Good luck to Kathryn Bigelow, her Strange Days (story written by James Cameron), is one of my favourite movies of the 90s:







Back to AVATAR, I love James Cameron's Pandora:

AVATAR: Biggest Box Office Movie Ever!

While Avatar has broken Titanic's record, Toby Young blogs an alternative view of James Cameron's 3D cine-spectacular. Don't be fooled by the author's comments, Avatar is a timeless, classic tale of the meek inheriting and keeping their wondrous planet




Roll on BAFTA and OSCAR awards!

Cameron's AVATAR replacing Slumdog Feel-good? - BAFTA nominations

JAI HO !!!!

Scene is set for James Cameron's AVATAR to replace last year's multi-BAFTA winning Slumdog-endearing-Mumbai Dharavi-kids feel-good movie with the botanist, the paraplegic and Neytiri the Na'vi.


Image: Official Avatar Movie flickr photostream




Avatar has already become the "biggest Hollywood grosser at the Indian box office" with over 1bn Rupees (IDMB).

AVATAR is nominated in the following BAFTA categories:

BEST FILM: James Cameron, Jon Landau
DIRECTOR: James Cameron
MUSIC: James Horner
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Mauro Fiore
EDITING: Stephen Rivkin, John Refoua, James Cameron
PRODUCTION DESIGN: Rick Carter, Robert Stromberg, Kim Sinclair
SOUND: Christopher Boyes, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson, Tony Johnson, Addison Teague
SPECIAL VISUAL EFFECTS: Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham, Andrew R. Jones

Watch James Cameron: A Life in Pictures at an Alfred Dunhill BAFTA event here.


Let's hope Cameron's 3D epic wins those awards and is OSCAR nominated similarly. AVATAR is the New Year / Twenty-ten's and New Decade / Tween's feel-good movie - Jai Ho!!




Avatar trailers and movie clips here.

James Cameron receives 2010 Golden Globes: Best Director & Best Movie- Avatar

Innovative film maker James Cameron receives 2010 Golden Globes for 'Best Director Motion Picture' and 'Best Motion Picture - Drama' for Avatar.

Well done!!!

Beyond Darwin, Turing's Biology of Creation, Chemistry of Nature: The Secret Life of Chaos

The perspicacious physicist, Baghdad-born Professor Jim Al-Khalili, presenter of the excellent three-part BBC series Language of Science returns with a stunning tale of chaos:

A system completely described by mathematical equations that is more than capable of being unpredictable without any outside interference, whatsoever. (Al-Khalili, 2010: BBC4)

Launching The Secret Life of Chaos, Al-Khalili acquaints us with another seminal paper by 20th century mathematician, Alan Turing: The chemical basis of morphogenesis. In 1952, Turing was the first man to take on the momentous task of unravelling nature's mysterious mathematics, Al-Khalili reveals. Turing, grasping the idea, that the wonders of creation derive from the simplest of rules, wondered about 'mind', what is it?, explained Turing's biographer, Dr. Andrew Hodges featured in Al-Khalili's programme.

Familiarising viewers with the butterfly effect (flapping of wings in one place can effect massive change, such as in weather, somewhere else), and the link between nature's power to self-organise, Al-Khalili demonstrated that chaos is everywhere, unpredictability is hard-wired into every aspect of the world we live in, and that global climate can dramatically change in the course of a few short years. Order is linked to chaos, Al-Khalili showed. Moving through Belousov's patterns to Mandelbrot's set, Al-Khalili's journey to the centre of chaos shows us that feedback gives rise to both order and chaos and involves pattern formation, which is deeply woven into fabric of the universe. Patters are everywhere, just waiting to happen, Al-Khalili added.

Complexity is based on simple rules, which themselves give rise to complexity through a feedback loop. Spontaneity emerges from the feedback of simple rules, organisms replicate with a few random mutations now and again. Feedback comes from the environment which favours mutations best-suited to it. Nature's ability to turn simplicity into complexity explains why life exists, Al-Khalili maintains, and that it is evolution, a powerful system of creative power, which has caused the universe, full of simple dust to create human beings, causing inanimate matter to spawn intelligence from simple rules. It is evolution, an unconscious process, which hones patterns and experiments by mutating, finding what works and then builds upon this.

Design, Al-Khalili concluded beautifully, does not need an active, interfering designer; self-organising complex systems develop from simple rules, without conscious thought. Professor Jim Al-Khalili's The Secret Life of Chaos can be viewed here.


Mandelbrot set image: Scientific American

Haiti Earthquake Disaster - Ways to Donate

Photo from NYnews.com


Follow links to donate:

DEC

OXFAM

Red Cross

Save the Children

UNICEF

Russell Group's Wendy Piatt Discusses UK University Cuts

From Twitter:

Dr Wendy Piatt due to appear on the Jeff Randall show on @skynews later today to talk about university cuts

Are the British Government leading UK science down the garden path to third world STEM nation-ship? Or do universities need to consider their role in cheapifying themselves through reduced calibre student intake, increasing lower-cost business studies courses, at the expense of engineering, mathematics and physics?

[Comment left by capot on CiF: I know a woman who was sent four emails with three different answers on her eligibility to progress to the next year. One of the emails very explicitly said her results were well below the standard required. Out of the blue, she was allowed to continue. That was a Russell group university. The course was said to be the most sought after in Britain in that subject area.]

Or is 'the market' at fault for attracting bright STEM graduates away from producing good science into calamitous banking complexity? Could universities have worked closer with schools to foster interest in science beyond teenage, celebritifying their bestest alumni? One notable item has emerged from the Alan Turing Year 2012 project, there's no money in Government to celebrate a true British genius. Perhaps if Ministers had put their hands in their own pocket regularly, rather than in the taxman's, as Obnoxio so indelicately puts it, "It's the insane unreasonableness of arrogant MPs", there might be a little bit left over for fantastically engaging science projects. Turing digress over!

The Guardian delivers Dr Wendy Piatt's bleak outlook for UK universities (audio report).

Other reports here:

"While academics are terrified by the threat of redundancies and pay cuts, commentators are rightly worried that cuts and fee-rises will threaten the project of opening up university education to a wider section of the public" (Guardian CiF)

"The Russell Group, which represents the top 20 universities, warns that the cuts will damage research and teaching, as well as British competitiveness. They point out that, by contrast, other leading European economies and the US are pumping more into universities as an investment for the future. The impact of the cuts would be felt quickly in terms of student places." (London Evening Standard)

"Spending cuts targeting universities are threatening to bring Britain's higher education sector "to its knees"." (Politics.co.uk)


Michael Arthur and Wendy Piatt warn: "It has taken more than 800 years to create one of the world's greatest education systems and it looks like it will take just six months to bring it to its knees" (in the Guardian)

Responded with fair points:

"You can't be immune from cuts given the size of the public sector deficit. Leaving your funds intact means some pensioner freezes, OK?

So you have three choices left -

1. Swallow the cuts and make do with less. Don't pretend our gold standard universities don't have some old duffers on the staff drawing salaries for doing bugger-all, nobody will believe you. {guffaw, guffaw!!}

2. Increase tuition fees to plug the gap.

3. Admit that Blair's dream of 50% of people going to university was ineptly planned and implemented: allowing a bunch of former tech colleges to call themselves universities and hand out confetti degrees for "music technology" or "media studies" to any fool who turns up, with no prospect of ever being sent down and jeopardising future funding, was the real betrayal of the gold standard.

Newspapers and recording studios are not hiring these days, and the end of the recession is not going to change much. Most of the cannon fodder drafted in to make up Blair's wish-list numbers should be doing apprenticeships or some other vocational training. Which might actually lead to decent, well-paid jobs.

And they would not be starting those jobs with a £20,000 student loan to repay". [stevehill, from here].

And finally: "... some Russell Group universities (especially Oxbridge, LSE, Imperial and UCL) are secretly loving the prospect of these cuts. They know they'll survive them, but they also know it gives them just the right amount of political leverage to force the government's hand on eliminating tuition fee thresholds, which is ultimately the modus operandi of the Russell Group. Wendy & Michael, be upfront about who and what you're representing here. The fall of London Met, Manchester Met, Liverpool John Moores, or many more of the substandard creations of the 1992 Education Act will not keep you awake at night." [snappymuffins from here].

New Turing Test papers for 2010

(Image: © Mark Allen)


In the 60th anniversary of Turing's Mind article, papers discussing Alan Turing's imitation game, textual comparison of machine against a human, in 2010 include:

From the Buzzing in Turing's Head to Machine Intelligence Contests (submitted, Shah & Warwick)

Hidden Interlocutor Misidentification in Practical Turing Tests (submitted, Shah & Warwick)

Testing Turing's Five Minutes Parallel-paired Imitation Game (Kybernetes Turing Test Special Issue, 3/4, March-April 2010, Shah & Warwick)

What does the Turing test really mean? (2009, Tyler Cowen and Michelle Dawson, link)

Turing100in2012 Goes Live!

Professor Kevin Warwick's Turing100in2012 page has gone live and can now be found here.


Gradually, more information will be added about this exciting event, celebrating the brilliant 20th century mathematician in his centenary year, at a very special venue connected to Alan Turing.

Chatterbox Challenge 2010

In its 10th year, in the 60th anniversary of Turing's Computing Machinery and Intelligence, 'can a machine think?' game Chatterbox Challenge launches its 2010 contest.

Alternative to the Loebner Prize, the Chatterbox Challenge galvanises:

Botmasters

- Improves your skills in building your bot.

- Benchmarks your bot intelligence for free.

- Makes your bot win prizes based on his intelligence and personality.

- Gets your bot more popular and reviewed by visitors.

Visitors

- Gives you the opportunity to judge and review chatbots.

- Helps you to vote for the best chatbot.

- Shows the latest and the most innovative techniques in Artificial Intelligence.

- Is a good reason to start building your own bot.

Sponsors

- Shows you new innovative techniques to run your business.

- Helps you to get in touch with the world wide talents.

- Makes you more popular with a higher page rank.

- Gets you associated with innovative industry for present and future.

Developers can enter their artificial conversational entities - ACE here. Chatterbox Challenge history can be viewed here.

Judges wishing to assess systems (between March and May) can contact the Organiser here.

Baroness Susan Greenfield, female science role model, dismissed unfairly from the Royal Insititution?

This statement put out by the Royal Institution of Great Britain January 8, 2010:

"The Trustees of the Royal Institution of Great Britain have completed the first stage of a governance review and as a consequence have concluded, that the requirement for the functions of the role of Director as currently defined has ceased to exist. We are therefore sad to announce that Baroness Susan Greenfield left the Ri on 08/01/2010."

Adding:

"Baroness Greenfield has played a leading role, not only in the development of the Ri, but also in the wider scientific community through her work in popularising science. In her twelve years as Director of the Ri, she was the driving force behind numerous initiatives, notably, the recent visionary refurbishment project and the renowned Science Media Centre."

Why release her then? Why not allow the successful Baroness to ..

"focus on strengthening its finances, fundraising, and addressing the organisational governance to ensure the Ri continues to deliver its many, diverse and renowned activities in scientific research, education and public engagement."

?????

Would the Royal Institution have acted in this manner if the Director position had been held by a male? Why ignore Susan's significant contribution and treat her thus:

Britain's most prominent female scientist, Susan Greenfield, was locked out of her grace-and-favour flat in central London within hours of being made redundant on Friday by the Royal Institution.

The 59-year-old neuroscientist, who had been director of the institution since 1998, has now consulted a QC over the decision to serve her with redundancy papers. Sources say Baroness Greenfield was offered a "generous" redundancy package and glowing tributes if she agreed to leave her post, but refused. She is now planning to make a sex discrimination claim following the institution trustees' move to axe her position.

Friends claim an "old boys' club" culture in the institution has led to the move. "I am the only female appointed to this iconic post throughout the 211-year history of the Royal Institution and cannot see how this decision can be in the best interests of the organisation or its members," Greenfield said.

This decision was denounced by Professor Lisa Jardine, a former member of its governing council. "The institution has always had a charismatic scientist as its director. To get rid of the post suggests it has decided to commit suicide. Susan has done her job superbly and did not deserve to be escorted off the premises on Friday. We are allowing one of our most important scientific institutions (where Sir Humphry Davy and Michael Faraday once worked) to go to the wall."

... news on Friday stunned the institution. Staff were given 30 minutes' notice to attend a meeting at which the chief executive, Chris Rofe, announced her redundancy. "There was absolute silence when we were told," said one worker.(Guardian)

Shocking, absolutely shocking.

Accusations cast upon the Baroness, and other notable scientists, include self-promotion; communicating science to the masses is often followed with such charges from quarters who really ought to weigh the 'crime' against how much others are inspired, and influenced in a positive way. For goodness sake the world and the UK suffers from a desperate shortage of high-profile scientists, especially female science role-models.

Not overlooking that the Baroness divides scientists, with followers (Times report), and decriers including Dr. Ben Goldacre, who writes in his blog:

"In my view her argument [about computers damaging childrens brains] is pretty thin, and the goalposts and extremities of the claims seem to me to shift depending on the audience. All I have said is: write it up in an academic journal, making your hypothesis clear, set out the evidence, and set out what evidence you think should be gathered. ... Baroness Greenfield launched her own personally endorsed range of very expensive computer games to train your brain in the House of Lords, to much media fanfare in the Times, Telegraph, BBC and more."

The world demands practicality from science, but when science does produce, occasionally its producers are attacked for profiteering! While there is a strong argument for academic papers, Ben Goldacre's comments infer that the peer-review process is perfect, that reviewers are truly experts in the field they are assessing and that they don't allow garbage, assumption-based hocus pocus through for publication. However, watching family youngsters at play with their various computing devices, I disagree with the Baroness and believe children are more social; they're able to be more interactive with other humans via machines - whether it's a mobile 'phone, playstations, Wii, etc., than children were thirty years ago.

Nonetheless, it is a brave person that takes on the establishment: the Ri will have to answer for their actions in an Employment Tribunal, the Baroness is suing for 'sex discrimination':

"Redundancy is supposed to be about the post, not the person. So my personal performance should not be relevant." (Guardian). "She said she could not comment on other specifics of her claim, but said they would include allegations of sexual discrimination." (Telegraph).

Ri's action unwittingly sends out a signal, that it is better for rung-climbing fecund scientists to curb their personality, inhibit it so as not to clash with fellow climbers and those looking down above the glass ceiling. Apt quote for the Baroness's predicament: "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds" (Albert Einstein)

Not a propitious moment for the Ri celebrating "200 years as a member organisation". Wish Susan Greenfield, the charismatic neurologist all the best with her case and her future.


Update January 11, 2010: (Ironically) The Royal Institution to host 'Women of Substance: Inspiring Women in STEM' event!!!! Link

75th Anniversary - Elvis Presley

That great, 20th century rock 'n roll protagonist, Elvis Presley would be celebrating his 75th birthday today, had he not died prematurely aged 42.

With an unrivalled voice, smooth looks, athletic physique and gyrating hips Elvis's musical legacy will live on forever with terrific tunes, including my favourite Elvis number that begins with a crooning drawl ending with pacy tempo: Devil in Disguise:




Official Elvis Presley, king of rock 'n roll site here.


Guardian piece on Elvis's costumes:

"most famous design, and probably my personal favourite, is the suit Elvis wore for his Aloha in Hawaii in 1973. He had requested a patriotic design because the show was going to be broadcast around the world. I grabbed a piece of paper and sketched out an eagle in blue and yellow marker and told Bill, "I want to do this." He said: "Go for it." I think that jumpsuit became synonymous with his image for many people."

Read more here.

Update: Found this beautiful Elvis ballad - Just Tell Her Jim Said Hello

Where Should Tiger Woods Go to Redeem Himself?: Planet Pandora!

Must-see brilliantly funny segment on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: The Best F**king News Team Ever - Tiger Woods' Faith


Shown on More4 yesterday, a day later than viewed in the US, the clip can be viewed here (unfortunately, not if you're based in the UK).

The Daily Show's advice for Tiger Wood's redemption? Become a Navi Avatar and enjoy Planet Pandora!!!!




For lovers of the movie, you can 'avatarise yourself' here. This is mine:

James Cameron's Avatar is a Phenomenon: Fastest to Earn $1bn Worldwide!

Amazing news, but hardly surprising considering its global appeal (see the official fan page on Facebook), James Cameron's latest cinematic spectacular, Avatar, has earned $1bn so far, the fastest movie to achieve this, phenomenal! Everything James Cameron 'touches' turns to gold.


Pandora world, image: Flickr

From BBC:

"Distributors 20th Century Fox say it has earned more than $350m (£217m) in the US and more than $670m (£415m) in the rest of the world in only 17 days. The 3D science fiction blockbuster was directed by James Cameron, who also made Titanic, the best selling movie of all time.

The latest figures make Avatar already the fourth-biggest film ever made. Ahead of it are Titanic ($1.8bn; £1.1bn), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King ($1.12bn; £695m) and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest ($1.07bn; £664m).

Avatar - ... reportedly the most expensive film ever made, with a budget of at least $300m (£186m).

"This is like a freight train out of control," said 20th Century Fox distribution executive Bert Livingston. "It just keeps on going.

"I think everybody has to see Avatar once, even people who don't normally go to the movies, they've heard about it and are saying, 'I have to see it'," he said. "Then there are those people seeing it multiple times."

Avatar has now reached most parts of the globe. It opened in China on Saturday and is due to reach Italy - its final market - on 15 January.

The huge box office takings are partly down to the higher cost of tickets for 3D performances, says the BBC's Peter Bowes in Los Angeles. But as Hollywood enters its traditional slow season, with few big films due for release, Avatar is likely to dominate the box office for several more weeks, he adds."

It has to be seen in 3D, especially in an IMAX, to appreciate Cameron's brilliance and the wonder of his Pandora world.

Happy New Year Twenty-ten - 60th Anniversary of Alan Turing's MIND paper

Image of fireworks around the London Eye, New Year's Eve (from Sky News)

Let's hope the new year, Twenty-ten, brings forth a fresh decade of compassion and opportunity that is far removed from, as described by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the "terrible and gruelling" Noughties.

2010 marks the 60th anniversary of Alan Turing's MIND paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence - his Imitation Game, and the question of whether a machine can think remains much 'beloved' for philosophers of mind!

"I propose to consider the question, "Can machines think?" This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think." The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous, If the meaning of the words "machine" and "think" are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to the question, "Can machines think?" is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words.

The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the 'imitation game'."

Read the full paper on Hugh Loebner's Artificial Intelligence Prize site.


2010 is also the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society, world’s oldest science academy of which Alan Turing was a Fellow.

Royal Society, 6-9 Carlton Terrace SW1 (picture: copyright KaihsuTai)

Royal Society's 350th anniversary events will include celebrating "local heroes .. pioneers, mavericks and geniuses, who for centuries have changed the way we live and see the world", and a summer Festival of Science at the Southbank (more information here and here).

Update: 4 January, 2010: BBC Radio 4 In Our Time

In a four-part series which began this morning (repeated tonight at 21.30), Melvyn Bragg introduces the history of the Royal Society, with a visit to Wadham College, Oxford. Listen here (45 mins).

Neal Stephenson's (author of Snowcrash and Cryptonomicon), Baroque Cycle, beginning with Quicksilver is a must read adventure of the period encapsulating the enigmatic and eminent characters in the early days of the Royal Society, including Sir Isaac Newton.