ALL THINGS BIG AND SMALL 2.0

By the 1980's, the ubiquity of computers made the encroachment of the computer into the territory of the A rts inevitable. It is only natural for humans to see if the computer's powers can be used to help them in artistic endeavours. Computer-generated art, music and poetry have been around for decades but it is only recently with the advent of high-performance personal computers that developments in this field has accelerated. Powerful computers allow for more sophistication in the algorithms that generate the poetry. Whereas earlier poem generators, used very simple rules-like picking a random verb, noun and adjective and stringing them together into sentences, the new poem generators may use artificial intelligence and pattern recognition, and 'learn' from the stylistics of real poets. Thus, it is able for example, to read dozens of poems by William Wordsworth, absorb the vocabulary, try to identify if there are any patterns in Wordsworth's use of words and sent...

In the last seven years or so, one combination of archtop guitar, amplifier and speaker cabinet has come to be regarded by many mainstream jazz guitarists as de rigeur . From the jazz joints in clubby Manhattan, New York City to the boisterous jazz scene in Miami, Florida, and even in mid-west cities like Cincinnati, Ohio this combination or 'rig' as musicians call it has found a place in the equipment collection of every professional jazz guitarist and become a standard by which other rigs are to be judged. Granted a proficient jazz guitarist can play good jazz even on a Fender Stratocaster put through a Twin Reverb , still there is no other sound that evokes the magic tone of a jazz guitar better than an archtop , fully hollow-bodied and big-bodied, out through an amplifier and speaker that faithfully reproduces the acoustic qualities of such a guitar. In this aspect, the Acoustic Image Clarus Series 2R/ [ see http://www.acousticimg.com/ ] Raezers Edge [see http://ww...

I am beginning to believe that most of the phenomena in our world are too complex to be modeled using closed-form analytic models. Even if you could identify the variables, the inter-relationship between the variables are forever changing, and the variables themselves might change. The natural tendency is to turn to computer simulation modeling, where we generate data for the simulation, run the simulation and analyze the results.. From this we can calculate probability of outcomes and the confidence intervals. Computer simulation is widely used in many fields from the simulation of manufacturing processes, to military planning and econometric forecasting, and the valuation of financial derivatives. On a more pedestrianlevel it can help estimate waiting times in queues, estimate the resources required for a project or help with decision-making when there are several options. The exponential increase in the speed and power of today's computers makes simulation less of a chore than i...

There was a time not too long ago, when as individual stock investors, we lamented the lack of information on the market and on specific stocks. Just 13 years or so ago, with the advent of the Browser, the Internet became an everyday technology for every man. Online trading, the instant transmission of information, the power of modern computers, the sophistication of new software for analyzing streams of financial data in real-time-all these became too much of a good thing. Soon we were deluged with too much information which confused us, and the noise clouded our decision-making process. Modern stock markets are characterized by this excess of information. In this globalized, super-speed environment of modern financial markets the winners are those who adopt a quantitative, objective, independent and unemotional approach to investment that is able to filter out the noise. The best way to cope with information overload is to subscribe to the philosophy and methodology of Quantitative A...