Monday, December 17, 2007

Famous Adages - Eponymous Laws

These are famous Adages. Short, but memorable sayingsthat holds some important fact of experience which is considered true by many people, or has gained some credibility through its long use. category: Eponymous laws, Social law, from Social : Possibly, maybe...
 
  • Terman's Law of Innovation : If you want a team to win the high jump, you find one person who can jump seven feet, not seven people who can jump one foot each.
  • O'brien's Variation : If you change queues, the one you have left will start to move faster than the one you are in now.
  • Conway's Law : In any organization there will always be one person who knows what is going on. This person must be fired.
  • The Peter Principle : In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.Work is accomplished by those employees who have not reached their level of incompetence.
  • H.L.Mencken's Law : Those who can, do. Those who cannot, teach.
  • Martin's Extension : Those who can't teach,administer.
  • Belani's Extrapolation : Those who cannot even administer, become consultants.
  • Lieberman's Law : Everbody lies; but it doesn't matter since nobody listens.
  • Kovac's Conundrum : When you dial a wrong number,you never get an engaged one.
  • Van Herpen's Law : The solving of the problem lies in finding the solvers.
  • Murphy's Law of Government : If anything can go wrong, it will do so in triplicate.
  • Bell's Theorem : When the body is immersed in water, the telephone rings.
  • Ruby's Principle of Close Encounters : The probability of meeting someone you know increases when you are with someone you don't want to be seen with. - Black's Extension : The probability of meeting a gorgeous female increases geometrically when you are with a friend, a friend who is richer than you, your girlfriend and finally your wife.
  • Young's Law : Great discoveries are made by mistake.
  • Kin Hubbard : A good listener is usually thinking about something else.
  • One Anonymous Great Seer's Law : Money can't buy love, but it sure gets you a great bargaining position.
  • Law of constant product : The product of beauty,availability and intelligence is a constant.

Robots that are "self-aware": Hod Lipson on TED

Engineer Hod Lipson demonstrates and talks about a few of his cool little robots, which have the ability to learn, understand themselves and even self-replicate. At the root of this uncanny demo is a deep inquiry into the nature of how living beings learn and evolve, and how we might harness these processes to make things that learn and evolve. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, California. Duration: 06:29.)

Why you should listen to him: To say that Hod Lipson and his team at Cornell build robots is not completely accurate: They may simply set out a pile of virtual robot parts, devise some rules for assembly, and see what the parts build themselves into. They've created robots that decide for themselves how they want to walk; robots that develop a sense of what they look like; even robots that can, through trial and error, construct other robots just like themselves.

Working across disciplines -- physics, computer science, math, biology and several flavors of engineer -- the team studies techniques for self-assembly and evolution that have great implications for fields such as micro-manufacturing -- allowing tiny pieces to assemble themselves at scales heretofore impossible -- and extreme custom manufacturing (in other words, 3-D printers for the home).

His lab's Outreach page is a funhouse of tools and instructions, including the amazing Golem@Home -- a self-assembling virtual robot who lives in your screensaver.