Leif's Blog

http://www.launchphotography.com/Delta_4-Heavy_DSP-23.html

Delta 4-Heavy fires up the night on second flight

11/10/07 ~ 8:50pm

In one of the most spectacular unmanned launches of recent years, the massive 24-story Delta 4-Heavy rocket - two-thirds the height of the Saturn V and about the same size and power of the Saturn 1B of the Apollo days - fires to life, quite literally speaking, on its second flight and first at night. Nearly three years after its first ended with a dummy satellite nearly 10,000 miles short of its target orbit, this time the 23rd and last Defense Support Program (DSP-23) missile-warning satellite was deployed flawlessly over six hours later.

Loads of photos of places around Hardanger, all from the Library of Congress in 1900s.

Currently reading psychology and encountered this definition of creativity, in the field of problem solving:

The capacity to produce something unique, and useful (Approaches to Psychology, W. Glassman).

The thing about problem solving is that sometimes, when a new approach to a problem is needed, we usually rely on this thing called creativity. Creativity itself is mostly associated with the Art or creating new ideas. This applies to problem solving as well.

The problem with the above statement is that it makes two very unbelievable descriptions of what creativity actually is. It is so broad, yet so narrow-minded that it practically has no meaning what so ever. By describing something as unique and useful is almost ignorant.

The cognitive process itself is based on the idea of gestalt theory. While in the process of problem solving, insight usually takes place once you cognite it long enough (both consciously and unconsciously). So for example, a math problem. Sometimes there is a question formated in a different way, that applies to very different concepts, one which an individual cannot see. After thinking about it, one suddenly gets the insight into how to solve the actual problem. The process itself is most often identified as creativity. So far the definition makes sense. The solution is something unique, and has use.

The problem is when you get to problems that have no answer at all. Sometimes, creativity may lead to a practical, or useful, solution to a problem. While sometimes, there are no realistic/useful solutions, but instead ideas. Even though a solution to a math problem may be wrong, it is ultimately creative. Even though people make mistakes, people can still be called imaginative.

What my argument basically is: Creativity is something that provides no solution. Creativity is the capacity to link to different things into one single thing. It is creative to solve a math problem in a different way (compared to the standard way). It is creative to join two different words to create meaning like in music. Creativity is something that is thought-provoking, imaginative, cognizant, something that provides a new way of looking at things.

Creativity is NOT the capacity to create a solution that is useful and unique. What I believe they were ultimately defining was the ability to come up with practical ideas that work only in reality, only useful for business strategies and real world applications. Sometimes it is necessary to not believe in reality, it may help people innovate and create new ideas.

‘Then you should say what you mean,’ the March Hare went on.
‘I do,’ Alice hastily replied; ‘at least—at least I mean what I say—that’s the same thing, you know.’
‘Not the same thing a bit!’ said the Hatter. ‘You might just as well say that “I see what I eat” is the same thing as “I eat what I see”!’

Interesting that references to Mathematics is used in Alice in Wonderland.

• In chapter 1, “Down the Rabbit-Hole,” in the midst of shrinking, Alice waxes philosophic concerning what final size she will end up as, perhaps “going out altogether, like a candle.”; this pondering reflects the concept of a limit.
• In chapter 2, “The Pool of Tears,” Alice tries to perform multiplication but produces some odd results: “Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is—oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate!” This explores the representation of numbers using different bases and positional numeral systems (4 x 5 = 12 in base 18 notation; 4 x 6 = 13 in base 21 notation. 4 x 7 could be 14 in base 24 notation, following the sequence).
• In chapter 5, “Advice from a Caterpillar,” the Pigeon asserts that little girls are some kind of serpent, for both little girls and serpents eat eggs. This general concept of abstraction occurs widely in many fields of science; an example in mathematics of employing this reasoning would be in the substitution of variables.
• In chapter 7, “A Mad Tea-Party,” the March Hare, the Mad Hatter, and the Dormouse give several examples in which the semantic value of a sentence A is not the same value of the converse of A (for example, “Why, you might just as well say that ‘I see what I eat’ is the same thing as ‘I eat what I see’!”); in logic and mathematics, this is discussing an inverse relationship.
• Also in chapter 7, Alice ponders what it means when the changing of seats around the circular table places them back at the beginning. This is an observation of addition on a ring of the integers modulo N.
• The Cheshire cat fades until it disappears entirely, leaving only its wide grin, suspended in the air, leading Alice to marvel and note that she has seen a cat without a grin, but never a grin without a cat. Deep abstraction of concepts (non-Euclidean geometry, abstract algebra, the beginnings of mathematical logic…) was taking over mathematics at the time Dodgson was writing. Dodgson’s delineation of the relationship between cat and grin can be taken to represent the very concept of mathematics and number itself. For example, instead of considering two or three apples, one may easily consider the concept of ‘apple,’ upon which the concepts of ‘two’ and ‘three’ may seem to depend. However, a far more sophisticated jump is to consider the concepts of ‘two’ and ‘three’ by themselves, just like a grin, originally seemingly dependent on the cat, separated conceptually from its physical object.

Beethoven 5th Symphony (No. 5, graphical score animation, allegro)

Height = pitch and colour = instrument.

Wonderful set of images from Apollo 17 Program Summary Report.

Networking - I believe this is how the brain functions at its most basic level, and also a  representation of the WWW.

Simply amazing collection of something that looks like data, made by Tatiana Plakhova. It probably isn’t real data, but the stuff is pretty intersting as concept material.

Video of the collect here. For even more info-graphics go here.

New York Times made a survey of what certain groups do most of the day. Seems like people watch movies the entire time.

Found from here.