randformblog on math, physics, art, and design |
Glowlum tapping along a dull wire, artwork by Hucky Finn, oil on canvas, inspired by a photography by Baertels, www.plainpicture.com.
There have been quite some discussions here in Germany about the revelations about the surveillance of ordinary citizens and the protection of ordinary citizens data in general.
While updating my post about taxes in Greece and their semantic accessability, I looked at some current projects in “big data” and statistics and found an interesting application called Rapid Miner LOD Extension (I haven’t tried it though), which allows to do operations on linked open data (LOD) (see e.g. the european gateway to LOD) via the data mining program Rapid Miner.
The Rapid Miner LOD extension was amongst others used by the winners of the Semantic Statistics Challenge. The winner’s slideshare link hosts some examples, like maps which investigate the correlation between unemployment and police stations in France, which display a bit the capabilities of the involved programms and databases.
According to the notice “NBS signs data agreement with hi-tech firms” on Chinadaily there is also a lot going on in China:
The National Bureau of Statistics teamed up with 11 high-tech firms to use big data technology in the collecting, processing and analyzing of important statistics.
and
Under this partnership, the bureau and the 11 companies will co-develop a standard on how to use big data in statistics.
So it will be interesting to see wether some of this high tech data will enter the Linked open data pool and wether we will get to see soon some interesting visualizations of it.
Price competition in a handicraft store
There is currently some debate here in Europe about how to deal with prostitution.
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There seems to be an interesting article adressing climate change challenges called: “Intra- and intergenerational discounting in the climate game.” Despite the fact that the article claims to contribute to a better dissemination of knowledge about climate change the article is behind a pay wall. And despite the fact that at least some of the authors seem to be payed (?) by a german public institution (that is they are listed under staff) the article seems also not available via their institutions list of publications. Are the authors or the institutions paid by the publisher? Anyways one diagram of the article is visible and it seems to tell quite a bit about the content of the article.
(via phys.org)
The German Chancellery in Berlin
Do you think stable looking democracy in Germany could crumble in a nearer future? No?
Actually this could take place on sunday.
Waste disposal facility in Berlin. The german word “Entsorgung” means literally: getting rid of sorrows
John Baez has a new blog post about Europe using wood burning for energy generation. My comment to the blog post is rather detailled and it is also a comment to the currently ongoing debate in Berlin about how to organize its energy supply. This debate was initiated by the socalled Berliner Energietisch (unfortunately not yet in english) so I thought I should maybe post the comment also here.
Randform Reader Uwe W. Herzog said
I really appreciate these efforts to bring the socalled “high culture” to the people. However classical music is a rather elitistic culture. That is classical music may eventually be a way to meet the cultural needs of a small upper class, but alone the statistics show: the broad population prefers pop music or Schlagers. It may however be interesting to lure the elite to Hellersdorf like in order to draw attention onto serious deficits in urban planning. Like I heard that Helle Mitte has difficulties in renting out all that shop area?
Excerpt of performance of Jugendsinfonieorchester Marzahn-Hellersdorf in Helle Mitte, Sept.2, 2013 in juggly Hendycam-Reelmode
In a comment concerning the voting system in Syria (I recently got again a bit interested in voting systems, maybe more later) it was mentioned that there were some problems with certain german groups which were against the set-up of a refugee home in my neighbourhood, which is intended to shelter also Syrians. The image in the above linked article by Deutsche Welle shows the square Alice-Salomon-Platz in Helle Mitte, Hellersdorf, Berlin. It should be mentioned that there are also nicer events at that square.
Like the company Wohntheke, which represents several real estate companies, which offer rentals in Marzahn-Hellersdorf had organized last sunday a party in the park adjacent to the square and engaged the Jugendsinfonieorchester Marzahn-Hellersdorf (see also randform post here and here) which belongs to the music school Marzahn-Hellersdorf to play there.
Thanks to the strong men who helped director Jobst Liebrecht to carry the heavy Timpanis back to the building!
related: Soheil Nasseri is giving tonight a solo piano concert in New York.
The Berlin wall somewhere in the eighties.
Somewhere in the sixties my grandfather was searched in East Berlin.
