The wikiBerry paradox

The interesting number paradox pretends to show that there is no smallest uninteresting number (because otherwise it would be interesting for this reason).

Yesterday one of my friends (I think it was Stuart) suggested the Wikipedia version: the smallest integer without a page in Wikipedia. A quick check suggests the smallest integer without its own page (at the point of writing) is 217. Given this important property, clearly it deserves its own page (and if it got it does not deserve it, and so on).

Of course, Wikipedia has an easy way out: declare that the whole issue is not notable. This is similar to declaring that all numbers and their properties are uninteresting. Declaring it not notable works unless it becomes a big debate like malamanteau (214,000 hits according to Google right now). Overall, XKCD has amply demonstrated that like complex formal systems powerful enough to allow self-reference Wikipedia has Gödel-like topics it cannot cover according to its own rules. Of course, not being a formal system and run by intelligent agents the attempts of getting out of such states are pretty inventive.

Improve your visual literacy

Just found a very nice series of blog posts on beginning graphic design from 2008:

• Design elements and principles
• Anatomy of visual messages
• Visual rhetoric
• Typography
• Colors

Very clear presentation, very worth reading through to improve one's visual literacy.

Infinity, 5 or 3?

After dinner discussion yesterday: which of the terms in this series stands out?

1, infinity, 5, 6, 3, 3, 3, 3, ...

An extra challenge (below the fold) is of course to tell what generates it.

This and that

My bank webpage has *opening hours* for some subsections, a quite remarkable concept that completely negates most of the point.

I just finished making the first version of my own website for Eclipse Phase texts.

Tarte Tatin is hard to beat as a dessert.

Rebecca Roache rechecked my survey for the truth of Nick Bostrom's claim "there are more papers on the reproduction on dung beetles than about the risk of human extinction". Looking at ISI, Scopus and Google Scholar this seems to hold true- Due to the nature of search, this kind of survey will tend to overestimate human extinction papers ("human extinction learning" etc will cause overcounting) and underestimate the dung beetles by not using their correct taxonomic names).

Another glaring comparison: scholarly papers on Star Trek and human extinction.

Not that Star Trek or Scarabaeinae are uninteresting or unimportant research topics. But it is a bit embarrassing we are spending so little effort on ensuring our own survival.

Ego vs environment

Numeracy vs. feel-good (Practical Ethics) - I blog about the PNAS paper showing that people are bad at estimating energy savings. Basically a continuation of my jihad against lack of innumeracy and lack of proportion.

I wonder how much of people preference for curtailment rather than efficiency increases is due to anti-modernity sentiments and propaganda? It could be, as I argue in the other post, that it is just because curtailment has immediacy that people go for it as the better choice, but I suspect at least some thinks it is more virtuous to go without. Which doesn't help the environment, but does stroke their own self esteem.