Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Reading space opera -- Comment()
Some time ago I read "Old Man's War" by John Scalzi, now I'm reading "The Ghost Brigades". These book are space-opera type science fiction, but they also have a serious weakness: Scalzi's alien characters are not alien at all, but all too human. In fact, many of the human characters in the Vorkosigan books by Bujold are more alien that Scalzi's aliens. But on the other hand, Scalzi has built a nice technological universe with new twists on the usual sf ideas.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

There is no memory in research -- Comment()
Yes, IRs are broken. Let’s talk about it.: "Institutional repositories as a class are in serious trouble. They are not producing the outcomes they promised—or, indeed, much of any outcome in many cases. [...] Fundamentally, the value proposition on which IRs were sold to libraries was in error. Voluntary self-archiving in institutional repositories simply does not happen in the absence of deposit mandates. From a library perspective, this changes the picture from the original “build it, step back, and they will come” to “make a tremendous ongoing investment in marketing and library-mediated deposit services that may never pay off if other libraries at other institutions don’t do likewise.” It’s only sensible that many libraries back away from the latter commitment." [Caveat Lector]

This is something I have been thinking about for some time. Much of the produced research data (and metadata) is never preserved, but there currently doesn't seem to be ways to fix this, even though decisionmakers in Finland and elsewhere have a lot of good will to make it happen.

As things are, the society does not get as much value from investing in research as it should. Measurements are done again and again, data is seldom reused, and things have to be discovered again and again from scratch. Not good for the society, and not good for the researchers.

Sunday, July 1, 2007

Finches live long -- Comment()
New Scientist reported about the suprising longevity of finches. These small birds have long lifespans, and the reason was a scientific mystery until now. Never thought much about the relative life spans of different birds, but in retrospect this is an intriguing question. Why some species don't obey the normal rule of life span vs. body mass?

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Using a data matrix -- Comment()
Every once in a while you see a data matrix, which is a format for coding information into matrix barcodes. Below is the URL of this site in a data matrix. This may become popular with cameraphones.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

More emphasis on book reviews -- Comment()
I lifted links to my lists of book reviews to the top of the blog homepage, because most of the visitors come here because of these:

I have several more drafted, but I'll take some time to polish them before publication.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Blue Ocean in Finland -- Comment()
Did you hear that W. Chan Kim will come to Finland to lecture on Blue Ocean Strategy? My review of the book, in Finnish translation, Sinisen meren strategia (W. Chan Kim ja Renée Mauborgne; Talentum, 2005) has generated some interest recently.

Solving Einstein's Riddle in Python -- Comment()
I noticed Google searches trying to find code for solving the so-called Einstein's Riddle. Here is object-oriented Python code (I updated the link) for solving the problem. Here are the final results of a run:

Choices: 1
1         2         3         4         5         
yellow    blue      red       green     white     
norway    denmark   finland   german    sweden    
water     tea       milk      coffee    beer      
blues     opera     rock      pop       metal     
cat       horse     bird      fish      dog

Here you find Python code for solving logic puzzles like this one. This code is rather nice, and more general than mine. On the other hand, the code is also slower due to the generality of the approach.

Friday, May 25, 2007

New book reviews -- Comment()
Here are three new book reviews written by me. These were submitted to the CSC News magazine: