randform

I am back in Berlin. It is nice to be back again, but I will certainly miss the very english local peculiarities like e.g. discussions about discussing car races!

Unfortunately e.g. the recent headline in the Berliner Zeitung displays that there are much more serious issues than car races which need to be tackled. In particular the Berliner Zeitung article asserts that the polar Ice seems to melt faster than previously assumed. (some more images via realclimate). According to Berliner Zeitung the Arctis may well be free of ice by 2040 instead of the by the IPCC predicted 2070. There seems also to be evidence that the species in the soil of newly frost free regions like e.g. in Siberia may enforce the runaway effect, where I hope that this effect is not going as far as in the mars on earth experiment, where there was finally not enough oxygen left for breathing.

One of the major problems which leads to an even more dramatic rapid climate change is clearly the danger of overpopulation. So rethinking social conventions and dynamics may be necessary.

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A disappearing number by Simon McBurney with Original Music by Nitin Sawhney is a production of complicite which currently runs at the barbican:

Our new devised production is a meditation on mathematics, infinity and our relentless compulsion to understand.

Unfortunately as it turned out I had not the right telefon number for booking a ticket in time, so I missed it.

In an old randform post about solar cells I was writing a bit about the computer modelling of solar cells. In particular I mentioned that it seems that the involved models use mainly a theory which was to a great part developped by Shockley and Queisser in the 50/60s.

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An online browsable collection of french drawings. More than 900 nineteenth century drawings from scetches to finished works.
(via the cartoonist)

I try to stay up to date with what’s going on in the math and physics world by e.g. reading blogs of scientists. One of the probably most famous blogs in the mathematical physics world is this week’s finds by John Baez whom I visited on Friday.

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A small update to nad’s post on indra’s pearls: Jürgen Richter-Gebert has made an interactive course (german only) with his dynamic geometry program Cinderella. Now you can easily experiment with those circles and iterated function systems yourself.

Due to the tube strike I learned a lot about London bus, tube and train ticket systems (e.g. like the above oyster card, a 10 pounds recharge card). I am happy that my sister has an insight into the matter because the system is fairly complicated (e.g. for taking a longer trip a day ticket is better). However it is not as crazy as the subway system in Tokyo, where on a longer trip it may happen that one needs to pass several toll points and buy new tickets each time. As I understood this is mainly due to the fact that the lines have seperate owners. The Tokyo subway ticketing system reminded me a bit of the toll policy in Germany in medieval times, where virtually every feudal sovereign put up a toll station (it reminded me actually also of the german current network). And likewise the ticket problem in my last post seems to be at least partially due to national borders.

Despite of new means of communication such as cell phones, videoconferencing etc. you will still have to meet with your potential collaborators/business partners etc. in person. This implies that traffic will increase with growing globalization. So if one wants to reduce carbon output in traffic one of the first things one should think about is how to improve the train system as an alternative to planes. A better website may be a start.

As everybody may have noticed by now there has been a strike in the London Underground. The above news stand may indicate that Londoners were not so happy with it. The strike is adding to general complaints about the overall bad shape of the system and of the service provided by private companies. It reminds me of current thoughts to privatize the german railways called Die Bahn. And in fact in view that a train ticket to London costs about 500 Euros which is about five times the price of a plane ticket and the fact that you are not even able to find this price online (not to talk about online booking…), I rather do not want to think what happenes if the Bahn would have several new owners.

Due to the strike we were making trips into the vicinity, which were reachable by bus or just strolled around.

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This overcrowded shop window of a stationary caught my attention.

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It seems to be a London week here at randform.
sensity is an audio-visual artwork that lets you hear and see data collected by wireless sensors around in London.