Why τ?

Although Pi (π) is the mathematical symbol commonly used to represent the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, The Tau Manifesto proposes that we should be using Tau (τ) for the circle constant instead. This symbol represents one turn (2π) of a circle and would actually simplify many equations.

π is wrong

So, π is wrong. No, really. π is wrong! If you don’t believe me, just ask mathematician Bob Palais, the guy responsible for identifying this issue and bringing it to a broad audience.

When to Celebrate

Since the approximate value of π is 3.14…, it is celebrated on March, 14th with Pi Day. The approximate value of τ is 6.28… so June 28th is the obvious choice for Tau Day. However, any other day is also a good time to celebrate τ.

How to Celebrate

Well, you don’t have to do anything special. Spread the word. Tell your friends. Share this page. Whatever you do, please have fun.

τism and the way of the τ

There is a growing movement to embrace tau as the true circle constant, and these followers of τism seek the way of the τ. Will you become one with the circle and embrace τ or will you forever be divided by π?

Also, please take a moment to check out The Tau Manifesto and learn more about why Tau Day is a time to celebrate and rejoice in all things mathematical and true.

As a long-time bicycle enthusiast, I’ve followed the evolution of the helmet over the years. First, I’ll have to say the obvious. Protecting your head when riding is very important! Did I ever think about using corrugated paper, A.K.A. cardboard to do it? No, I did not.

Kranium looks at creating an innovative, lightweight outdoor sports activity helmet that will revolutionize the helmet market through improved safety, recyclability and breakthrough design.

According the the site, the structure of Kranium has been developed to absorb four times the impact energy of a traditional polystyrene helmet and will hold up for multiple impacts. The light-weight, eco-friendly cardboard is impregnated with a compound to make it water-proof. The helmets can be custom shaped to fit your head precisely.

It seems like a good design. I’d like to try one out. There is no mention of the cost on the site. However, considering traditional helmets range in price from $30 to $500, the Kranium should be able to be produced and sold at a competitive price.

http://www.anirudharao.com/index.php?/project/kranium/

Before the “like” and “dislike” buttons were added, commenting was easy. All one had to do was follow this simple flowchart created by Brendan Bergen. It was designed to assist you in deciding what kind of comment to leave. The first option is “Are you an idiot?” If the answer is no, don’t leave a comment. If yes, continue following the flowchart to figure out what comment is best.

Now, however, its not so simple. With the ability to “like” or “dislike” a video, comes the urge to explain why a certain number of people agree or disagree. Often referred to as “dislike comments” because most seek to explain why somebody would have the audacity to dislike such an awesome video, these comments have taken hold as a new type of internet meme.

Some people seem to enjoy them to no end, while others deeply loathe them. Youtube also gives its users the ability to “thumb up” or “thumb down” a comment to show support or lack there of. Features like this were designed to help influence the ranking of the comments and therefore make them more relevant. Unfortunately, people keep finding new ways to make comments less relevant.

Some of the worst are nothing more than spam and often invoke the name of Justin Bieber(insert current teen idol here) at will. They do it for the publicity. Maybe people think that thumbs give them some kind of power or points. Or maybe if they’re lucky, when other people rate their comments up, their comments get to the top of the page under ‘Highest Rated Comment’ and people click on their channels to view their videos.

Some of the best dislike comments do deserve the thumbs up though. Many are witty and clever, using themes from the video. For example, the song “Friend Is A Four Letter Word” by Cake has a comment that explains the 25 dislikes by saying:

25 pple are englsh teachers (:

Youtube is by no means the only site dealing with these issues, just the most obvious. Imagine what a site like Facebook would turn into if they had a “dislike” button. Absolute chaos.

Why is there such an obsession with “likes” and “thumbs?” Perhaps because we love the approval of others, that sense of belonging, that identification with a group. Who knows, but it will be interesting to see where the discussion goes from here.

For more info, check out this very enlightening post by Chris Menning that explains these recent commenting trends in more detail.

How to Celebrate

There are lots of things that you can do to celebrate. For instance, you can memorize hundreds or even thousands of digits of this number for fun. If that doesn’t sound rewarding enough, you can bake (or just eat) your favorite pie. It doesn’t matter if its a pizza pie, pumpkin pie, apple pie, or whatever. Maybe even have a pie eating contest.

I highly recommend watching the movie Pi, which was directed by Darren Aronofsky. Its about a paranoid mathematician who searches for a key number that will unlock the universal patterns found in nature. It’s one of my favorite movies of all time. Plus it has a great soundtrack.

What are you doing for Pi Day?

Please share your ideas by leaving a comment below.

Whatever you do, keep it safe, and have fun!

Does pi Deserve this Honor?

Not everybody is jumping up and down in support of this transcendental and irrational number. As Michael Hartl points out in his Tau Manifesto, the true circle constant is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its radius, not to its diameter. Michael makes a very compelling argument that tau (the greek letter T) should be the standardized symbol for the circle constant instead of the more traditionally used pi. Though he does not deny the historical importance of pi, he does a great job of demonstrating that the mathematical significance of pi is simply that it is one-half tau (tau = 2pi).

There is a growing movement to embrace tau as the true circle constant, but will that be enough to overcome the mystical power of pi and its mass appeal? Only time will tell.

So, have a happy Pi Day, or should I say Half Tau Day?

The claim is that GM crops are better because they can be designed to resist disease, drought, pesticides, and herbicides. Also, extra nutrients can be added to make the food more nutritious. While Biotech firms are confident that GM crops are beneficial, they never seem to consider the negative effects on human and animal health, the future of the food chain, nor the environment as a whole. However, many others have serious concerns about the dangers.

The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) states, “Genetically Modified foods have not been properly tested and pose a serious health risk.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) is also concerned about GM foods, primarily with three areas.

Allergenicity

Because of the way genes from different organisms are combined, a person might have an allergic reaction to a food that is normally safe. For example, if you are allergic to peanuts and eat corn that has been genetically modified with peanut genes, you could have an allergic reaction. This effect could also lead to the creation of brand new allergies.

Gene transfer

When eating genetically modified foods, strange and potentially dangerous genes can be transferred to a person. Imagine what would happen if anti-biotic resistant genes became part of your body. These genes can also be transferred to the bacteria in the stomach.

Outcrossing

When genetically modified crops are grown, the wind and other pollinators inadvertently contaminate conventional crops grown nearby.

Jeffrey M. Smith, Director of the Institute for Responsible Technology has written several books on the subject including Seeds of Deception and Genetic Roulette. He points out numerous findings from studies that are disturbing. These include, for instance, a greatly increased death rate of the offspring of rats fed GM soy, immune responses in mice fed GM peas, and rats fed Monsanto’s GM corn (which produces a pesticide called Bt-toxin) that developed kidney inflammation, altered blood cell counts and organ lesions.

Have you heard of Monsanto? Well you should have. Monsanto’s stated aim is to own the patents for all the food crop seeds in the world. Do you know what Monsanto does when their patented GM crops contaminate neighboring farmers’ fields? They issue a lawsuit to the farmer for infringing their patent. Hundreds of farmers are being forced to pay Monsanto to have their fields contaminated by genetically modified organisms.

So, why is it that GM food does not need to be labeled in the USA? Oh yeah, the guy in charge of regulating food in this country was the former Vice President for Public Policy at Monsanto Corp. from 1998 until 2001. That’s right, President Obama appointed Michael Taylor as the new Food Czar so don’t expect any changes in regulation any time soon.

Are GM Foods Dangerous?

Absolutely!

So what can you do about it? Well, to start off, try to avoid all GM food. This can be very difficult without the proper labeling regulations. Eat organic foods whenever possible. Get to the source. Buy your produce at a farmers market or shop at a local food co-op. Another thing you can do is to join the Millions Against Monsanto Campaign which is organized by the Organic Consumers Association.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZJMzd9ek9A

By moving lips, eyelids, eyebrows, and other bodily joints, a robot named Kobian that was recently unveiled in Japan is able to express its emotions.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FBUt336wBI

However, if you’ve ever read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, you know about Marvin the paranoid android. Maybe there is a downside to emotional robots. After all, who wants to deal with a depressed robot?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_sZD7ZnWvc

Unfortunately, most of them are MP3s that were ripped at a low bitrate. Yes, the file size is much smaller than it would be if they were WAV files, but the quality suffers. If only there was an audio format that was similar in file size to an MP3 and similar in sound quality to a WAV. Enter Josh Coalson who is the primary author of the FLAC format. Thanks Josh! Lossless audio means that an audio file can be compressed but the original quality will be preserved. And if that’s not cool enough, its also open source, so look for this format to gain popularity. I think we should all support this format in any way we can. Now what to do with all these lo-fi MP3′s? They must be good for something, like old CDs can be used as coasters. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

http://www.flac.org

Text based CAPTCHAs are no longer able to fool the bots. How long will it be before they can handle image based CAPTCHA’s as well? And is reducing your spam worth alienating a percentage of your users? The harder it is for a computer to solve, the more inconvenient it becomes for legitimate users. This results in less users. Many have pointed out that using CAPTCHAs to stop spam bots is doomed to fail and that we should use a different approach. Simple questions are often used effectively. Perhaps flash or javascript can help. But are these really solutions or only temporary measures to prolong the inevitable?

It’s like an arms race between spammers and spam blockers. Spammers aren’t just using bots anymore either. The new trend is to buy or outsource a cheap labor force to break CAPTCHAs. These data workers often earn much more solving CAPTCHAs than doing legitimate work.

The future of this arms race between spammers and spam blockers looks bleak. However, some see a silver lining to the spam problem in that we can harness the spammers to solve important AI (Artificial Intelligence) problems by using specific types of CAPTCHAs. Some of these problems include OCR (Optical Character Regognition), Voice Recognition, etc.

That would be great for AI, but does that mean your inbox will never be free of Wholesale Watches, fake Bank Account updates, Discount Pharmacy, Multiple Orgasms, and Online Diplomas? I hope not.

While recently doing some work for a client who runs a network security business called “Breached Systems,” I was introduced to an end-point security software called Blink.

Blink provides home PC protection plus Internet Security including all-in-one antivirus, antispyware, antiphishing, identity theft protection, plus personal firewalls. Created by eEye digital security and offered as a fully functional (and free) one-year trial. After the first year, they charge $25/year to continue using the product.

I was convinced when a friend downloaded Blink, scanned his hard drive, and found 11 threats including a keystroke logger that his other “security” software had failed to detect.

So, if you’re worried about your security (and you should be), consider taking action before it’s too late.

http://www.eeye.com