The success of the intelligent leader

Soaring migrant birds exploit columns of rising air (thermals) to cover large distances with minimal energy. Trying to solve this optimisation task would be a challenging analytical work for a maths or physics student, or a ressources consuming task for a super-computer. Among migranting birds such as European white storks there seem to be a few individuals that show extraordinary tallent in solving this task. Following single storks in a flock on its way from Northern-Middle Europe to the Mediterranean and Africa, researchers at the MPI in Bavaria could identify a few "leaders" who were always able to pick the best route, making maximal use of natural thermal streams. Analyzing individual and group movements on multiple scales revealed that a small number of leaders navigated to and explored thermals, whereas followers benefited from their movements. Despite this benefit, followers often left thermals earlier and at lower height, and consequently they had to flap considerably more. Followers also migrated less far annually than did leaders. These flock leaders were not the birds with highest muscle mass, but seem to be outstanding in their intellectual performance.

 

The  strategy of the intelligent flock leaders:

• visual search for nearby thermals (most likely based on particular cloud patterns)
• estimate the gain of heights a particular thermal could provide
• estimate the distance of the thermal from the planned flight route
• ballance the gain of heigth in the thermal versus the required extra distance to reach it
• make a decision to stay on direct route or deviate to the next thermal

This way, intelligent storks (and the flock who is following) can bridge large distances without flapping its wings, simply by gently gliding. They will finally reach their destination thousands of miles away in a very relaxed state.

The strategy of the dull storks is much simpler:

• they orientate by fixed landmarks (coastlines, mountains, lakes etc.) and by the sun, maybe also by the earth magnetic field and follow a defined flight route of minimal length and maximal safety
• instead of gliding from one thermal rising air to the next, they have to flap their wings regularily

This way, they will be exhausted much faster. Sometimes they give up long way before raching their final destination and spend the winter time in mediterranean countries instead of Africa. Because of their exhaustive usage of wing muscles, they will grow stronger (like people going to a muscle shop). 

Nice to see that at least among birds, natural wisdom tells most of the members in a flock to follow the bright guy, but ignore the stupid muscle guy. 

Happy Moon

Waxing Moon, April 19th 2018 (3rd night after new moon)

Rethinking Race: The real genetics of complexion

On Monday, National Geographic announced its new era of racial lucidity with a cover photograph of the English eleven-year-olds Marcia and Millie Biggs, apparently symbols of our post-racial future. Their matching dresses and long, flowing hair emphasize what can be determined from their faces: that these girls are sisters—fraternal twins. “They both have my nose,” their father, Michael Biggs, says in the story. “Marcia had light brown hair and fair skin like her English-born mother,” the article states; “Millie had black hair and brown skin like her father, who’s of Jamaican descent.”

A statistical geneticist clarifies that it is not a rarity for one child to resemble one parent and vice versa; the issue’s abstract says that “race is a human invention,” and that skin color has misguidedly been used as a “proxy” for race. And yet the magazine cover undermines all of these correctives. “Black and White,” it reads, under the portrait of the twins. “These twin sisters make us rethink everything we know about race.” The online promotion is even more contradictory: “These Twins, One Black and One White, Will Make You Rethink Race.” The framing inspires the kind of coarse racial quantifying from which the issue is ostensibly trying to escape. Linking to the article on social media, several people observed that both sisters “look” black.
The concept of human races, and in particular the notion that hair color or skin complexion is a feature that reflect racial differences, is extremely weak and lacks any scientific base. A recent genome wide association study (GWAS) on about 2000 volunteers with all possible types and shades of body hair has shown that around 170 different genes influence its pigmentation from silver-blond to dark black. And the same is true fort the complexion of our skin.
Sometimes people think they could change their ethnicity by artificially altering their skin color. Michael Jackson and many people in India use various kinds of more or less harmful chemicals, virtually peroxide bleach  to make their skin appear lighter.
But there is also the case of a strange lady of pure caucasian ancestry, who was bound by the idea to become afro-american. For some time she even managed to be elected president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP, after she excessively used UV and chemical tanning to change her face complexion to cinnamon. Rachel Dolezal even changed her name to the African sounding Nkechi Amare Diallo. In 2018, Netflix announced that they were making a documentary about her life; an announcement that caused some controversy.

Jordan Peterson has 2 more

If you think that after Moses Ten Commandments there is nothing more to add, you might be wrong. Jordan Peterson, acclaimed professor of philosophy and psychologist has recently published his

12 rules

Rule 1 Stand up straight with your shoulders back
Rule 2 Treat yourself like you would someone you are responsible for helping
Rule 3 Make friends with people who want the best for you
Rule 4 Compare yourself with who you were yesterday, not with who someone else is today
Rule 5 Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them
Rule 6 Set your house in perfect order before you criticise the world
Rule 7 Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)
Rule 8 Tell the truth – or, at least, don’t lie
Rule 9 Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t
Rule 10 Be precise in your speech
Rule 11 Do not bother children when they are skate-boarding
Rule 12 Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street

Life is tragic, says the provocative Jordan Peterson, and we are all capable of turning into monsters. But this hasn’t stopped millions from watching his online lectures. 

Windows 10 gives me a headache: But I learned the lesson now

Anywhere in the world it is possible to mark/copy/paste text.

This works in Alaska, in Timbuktu and on the Marshall islands, and it works on systems such as pre-Win7, Android, Linux, iOS, SunOS or Robotron's SCP.

Where it does not work is in the „help“ menues and „settings“ of Win10. Here it is impossible to copy a single word of their very cryptic, paranoid instructions into the dashboard. Such as if these were all copyright-protected verses of the highest poetic quality.

One is wondering if the whole confusion in Win10 does not result from the developer team failing to use a common language. One is reminded of a Babylonian chaos of inconsistent terminology. Why in the Win10 instructions for instance they sometimes refer to Data storage devices („Datenträger“), sometimes to disk-drives („Laufwerke“).

In the Settings („Einstellungen“) there is a similar chaos. If you go to „Back-up system“ and „Recover sytem“ they recommend doing a reinstallation and „...sometimes it is usefull to reinstall from a system recovery image („System-Abbild“)“. If you try to find out how to produce this „system recovery image“ by simply put the term in the search window, you are left with „this term was not found“.

How is it possible, for instance, that a new OS like Win10 passes all internal testings of MS developers while it consistently shows important pop-up windows always hidden between all other status windows ? This is like the Mafia, handing over the bribery money wrapped in a yesterdays newspaper.

Why in gods name has MS decided to remove the important „checking disk drive for errors“ from the system maintenance menues ? It is deeply hidden now, only to be found by multiple clicking through file manager, drive properties, tools. Maybe Win10 does not like the „checking disk drive for errors“ command, because after installing Win10 on a complete error-free, virgin drive, suddenly some default sectors appear. Funny, in the past the OS where so clever to repair defect sectors on the drive during or prior to the installation. But only Win10 is doing the masterpiece and causing new hard-drive errors during its installation.

There are hundreds more of such sever issues that got worse when you upgrade from Win 7 to Win 10. Instead making functionallity more stable and robust and more logic, the facial design of the system (the facade, I would call it) received so much attention from the developers, that I ask myself if they are mainly graduates from „Media design schools“ rather than real IT developers.

My patience with and my loyality to Microsoft more and more reaches its limits. In the past, with every upgrade I used to test in parallel an alternative OS. When I had to replace my first smart-phone (running Windows Mobile) I tried in parallel a (than still novel) Android phone. Meanwhile, I can not remember having switched on the WindowsPhone for ages any more, because its continous instability and freezing caused me too much headache.

And 5 years ago, while upgrading my desktop and laptop from XP to Win7, I already thought to give Linux a trial (as a dual boot OS in parallel with Win7). This was a wise decision, since everytime Win7 got stalled with no reasonable error message or alternatively hundreds of error messages accumulating in the „system event-log“ over month, without ever causing any day-to-day problem, I could quickly switch to Linux, by pulling the power-plug of the PC and opting for reboot to Linux-Debian OS. Useless to mention, of course, that Linux OS allows access to all the drives on the machine, including all the Windows drives. Can you imagine that from Microsofts XP/Win7/Win10 the file-manager would give you any hint that there are other drive volumes that belong to a non-Windows OS ?

Microsoft really became more and more aggressive against interfacing with non MS systems. If you dare to opt-out of the Microsoft Edge browser in Win10, at almost every webpage you open by using Firefox or Chrome you are reminded by little „info pop-ups“ that Edge would be the faster/better/sexier browser. And without having proper evidence, at least my gut-feeling tells me that Win10 artificially slows down data transfer as soon as it recognises that the user works with an non-MS browser.

Why does Microsoft thinks that by fixed installation of a XBox command in the Win10 start menue, or by re-installing kids computer games or shooter games, or by pre-instalation of their own Xing-network, they could get someone like me buying any of this crap ?

When Win10 asked me to set-up and log-in to a personal Microsoft online account („...to help me getting the best safety and update information for my new PC....“ LoL !!!!) I quckly recognized I was simply redirected to a Microsoft supermarket. There was zero information about the PC on which I just had upgraded to Win10, let alone any possibility to get update drivers or security packs. Instead there were all sorts of the latest useless MS products: Windows phones, Microsofts arm bracelets, Surface lap-tops, Xboxes. All with quick-buy and easy-credit options.

In summary I have got the feeling that Win10 is the helpless, but all-to-obvious attempt of Microsoft to hedge its former dominance in the software industry from the worldwide switch to alternative platforms. Apart from the Apple community (which is limitted to professional iOS users in design and research and to the large number iPhone-users in the West), Android becomes a more and more robust competitor, not only on mobile devices, but on linking all entertainment and household applications and data integration.

And Linux and the whole GNU software world becomes more and more accessible also for computer users without a strong IT background. At work we feel a better and growing support from the IT department and from the financial department to switch to open office, to free- or shareware graphics solutions (GIMP) or mail- and teamware products (Zimbra), a massive shift away from the former Microsoft dominance with programs such as Office, Outlook, or Publisher.

It is hard to believe that in a field that is so competitive as IT, where young, flexible and innovative developers come up with creative solutions every day in the software engineering offices of Google and Apple or in the freelance Linux communities, a dinosaur ier such as Microsoft can regain ground simply by cosmetic operations on its outer face, or by rediculous attempts to blind its customers from seeing or testing alternatives.

Little Green Man

With the 2015 occupation of the Crimean Peninsula they earned world wide fame:  The little green man, than armed with AK47 and dressed in green camouflage forms. When asked by foreign reporters from where they are and where they are going, they insisted (with a waggish smile on their face) that they are from a nearby village and now on their way on a fishing trip.

Today, fortunately, Google made us aware of a much elder tradition of little green (and also red) men. Also from the Eastern part of Europe, they are on a totally peaceful mission as the little cartoon figures on the red and the green traffic lights in Germany.

Today they celebrate their 56th birthday, and - as originally a pure East-German breed - would have to wait for another 9 years (till 2026) to switch from RED stop modus to the GREEN go modus. In 2026 they will celebrate their 65th birthday and would have benefitted from the than unique and generous law that with achieving retirement age, people became eligable to legally cross the iron courtain and explore the wide world.

 

But since the iron courtain came down in 1989 - the little green and red traffic light figures were in their late 20s only - they quickly took the opportunity and went West. A peaceful wave of immigration took place, and the green and the red fellows (the red is a girl, of course) not only gave an amazing example of successful cultural integration, but they had children and grand-children and thousands of great-children, who populated the traffic lights all over Germany.

Google hired graphic artist Laura Edelbacher to design a Google Doodle cartoon to commemorate this event.

You can also learn about the historical background of the little traffic figures on a youtube video

Please note the white peace dove that Laura Edelbacher has placed in her cartoon next to the traffic light. It is a clear sign that the little green and red figures are indeed on a pure peaceful mission.
The proportion of the little guys, however, seems to be a little bit distorted in this YouTube video. In reality, the two resemble gnomes (like on the photo on top), and are almost as wide as they are tall.