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August 2010You may need to click "Load Images" or something similar on your browser to see the images in this newsletter. You may also see the on line version that will have pictures.Welcome Things
have been very busy since the last newsletter, when Sonja and I traveled to USA
and Canada for just over a month. We had one day in Los Angeles when we
went on a tour past movie star's homes and then on to Universal
Studios. The next day we flew to New York , where we stayed in the
Theosophical Society guest rooms and I gave a talk to them.  We
ticked off all the usual tourist spots: Empire State building (although
the queue took four hours), Statue of Liberty (they closed the gate to
go inside the statue itself just as we arrived), the Rockefeller
Center, horse ride through Central Park, Ground Zero, shopping (Macy's
etc), watched the Mary Poppins Broadway show, Time Square, used the
subway (it was really great), Brooklyn, Staten Island, 4th of July
Macy's fireworks, Grand  Central
Station, watched the New York Mets play baseball against the
Cinncinatti Reds (the Reds won), United Nations, MoMA, Guggenheim,
Museum of Natural History, the Met, the Chrysler building, a helicopter
ride over the city, a boat tour, Battery Park, a bus tour. I'm sure I
must have forgotten something.Next was an Intrepid Tour that took us to Boston, Harvard University (Where I dropped in at the New England Complex Systems Institute and met Yaneer Bar Yam), Albany, Niagara (where Sonja and I got engaged!!), Gettysburg, Washington DC, Baltimore (Where we met up with Mike Taylor, who took us for a meal), Philadelphia and back to New York. We got caught in a three hour traffic jam in New Jersey getting back to New York and were extremely lucky to get on a flight arriving at the airport just over 30 minutes before the departure.(We took off 30 minutes or more behind time)  Arriving
in Toronto, we ascended the CN tower (The tallest in the world: 147
stories up) before catching a Greyhound bus to Waterloo for the
conference of the International Society for Systems Science, where I
was lucky enough to get to present two papers and met the most amazing
people from all around the world and met some old friends again, such
as Mary. Following
the conference we flew to Calgary and went to the Heritage Park and
then hired a car to drive through the Rockies (driving on the right
hand side of the road), which included horse riding and a flight on a
Cessna around the mountains.We dropped off our vehicle in Vancouver and explored the downtown area before catching the ferry to spend two days in Victoria on Vancouver Island. We stayed with an old friend, Derek and his partner Carolyn having an amazing time. We braved the waters to go on a whale watch, seeing seals, a Grey while and a number of orca.  Next, was a
ferry to Seattle. In one day we went on a Duck Tour (an amphibious
vehicle dating back to WW II), had a meal up the space needle, visited Pike
Market and did some shopping. Then it was back to Vancouver. It should
have been by bus, but it was held up for three hours at the Canadian
border coming to Seattle and we were transferred to the train. Back
in Vancouver we went to the market at North Vancouver (We were headed
for Grousse Mountain, but ran out of time). As we left Vancouver the
previous time, we noticed the Cirque du Solleil tent and luckily found
a performance we could fit in on our final day before going to the
airport for the flight home.Now that we are home we have to get everything in order, such as reading over the information from the conference and sorting all the photos and video we took. I am also hoping to get my book published this year and have plenty on my plate with the Theosophical Society. Interesting WebsitesAt the conference in Toronto I met Javier Livas, who told me about his video programme available on YouTube using Cybernetics and Chaos Theory to provide a paradigm for understanding our world. It is long having been broken down into over 20 videos, but well worth the effort. It can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ociyaR4zx4c |
Subscribe to this newsletterIf you would like to receive this newsletter as a monthly email just send me an email. You may choose to email me to Unsubscribe. Previous NewslettersNewsletter archiveOld "Recent News" Books Victor is readingI did not get as much reading done as I though I might on the planes, buses and aeroplanes.Bursts  Albert Laszlo Barabasi has followed his book, Linked, with "Bursts". "Linked" was all about networking and our understandings from it using the science of complexity. This book looks at power Law distributions, which are an integral part of complex systems, but focuses on power laws expressed through time. Barabasi looks at how we do not generally behave randomly, but in bursts of activity. We will send a number of emails in a burst while we are at our computer, then leave it for some time, before returning for another burst. The intervals between sending emails, fits the maths of power law distributions. He covers this topic by interweaving a number of stories together. I found it took a while before the various fragments of stories fitted together and a thread through them all was discernible. There seemed to be a lot of story, without that much holding it together. It was good to recognise how power laws do manifest as temporal sequences. How things Work  Yaneer
Bar Yam, the director of the New England Complex Systems Institute for
the last ten years or so, has written this book about complex systems
. I received an autographed copy when I visited him. I have not yet
read enough to make any real comments, but I like how he started out
with the basics of human behaviour in pattern recognition. |
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Victor's web page Victor's complexity website Subscribe Email Victor Victor's first book |
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