ALL THINGS BIG AND SMALL 2.0

1. Artificial Life Forms generated by a computer program 2. Tom Ray's Tierra Artificial Life and World -less graphical but no less revealing 3. Conway's Game of Life-cellular automata, Life created on a Grid A ONE-PAGE DEFINITION OF LIFE Prologue Until a few decades ago, most people thought they knew what it meant to say that something was alive. Breathing, eating, the ability to reproduce, having a shape, existing in a time-space dimension etc were some of the characteristics which defined Life. Until the advent of computers and programmers who wrote code that could also perform most of the things which living things do. And that has led people [like me] to re-evaluate the meaning of saying that you are a living thing. It was John von Neumann, who first thought of self-reproducing cellular automata, and inspired John Conway, Chris Langton, Tom Ray, and Stephen Wolfram, John Holland and countless others to institute the study and creation of entities that exhibited life-like be...

1. Selling Shanghai Hairy Crabs and River Shrimp In The Waiting Room of Suzhou Railway Station 2. A Popular Pastime Among Chinese Babyboomers: Card Games At The Park 3. Aplate of Jellied Shark Meat. 4. An Autumnal Hot Pot Dish: Frog Legs, Lotus Roots, Leek, Garlic, Pine Nuts etc 4. The Ancient Back Gate to City of Suzhou, 5. View From One of the Many Bridges in this Venice of the East. Om my last trip to Shanghai, I took a 30 minute train ride to Suzhou, in Jiangsu province ,one of the most beautiful cities in China-sometimes called the Venice of the East, because of the number of canals and bridges that criss-cross the city. Being on the lower reaches of the Yangtze river, Suzhou has always been an important city for commerce, having been in existence for at least 2500 years. But it's also known for its scenic bridges, pagodas, shophouses with verandahs and wood- carved windows. Though only about 80 kilometers from metropolitan Shanghai it has a distinctly rural ambience. W...

The British have their bacon and eggs, the French their croissants, and the Japanese their porridge and pickles. The Americans have their McDonald's and their Dunking Donuts and the food that they serve in Diners and Truck Stops. The popular Singapore breakfast food above is fried Rice Noodles [more accurately, Vermicelli]. In the local Hokkien dialect it is called Bee Hoon which literally translates as "powdered rice". Its relative blandness goes well with the fried fish, slice of luncheon meat [what you call Spam], and fried egg. Cut red chilies, and Chinese parsley are garnishes which complete the dish. The fried fish is especially tasty because it has been marinaded in a blend of soya sauce and Tamarind, a sourish fruit. Singapore Bee Hoon is a light, healthy and tasty breakfast and costs about US$2.30 even for this Deluxe version with all the trimmings. Some people have just the plain noodles which costs 70 cents. But that's not all. My breakfast is always accomp...

Randomness :" I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."~~ Ecclesiastes 9:11 Non-linear Feedback Loops : “I tell you everyone who has, shall more be given, but from him who has nothing, even what he has shall be taken.” ~~Matthew 25:29 Cycles :"When the seven years of abundance enjoyed by the land of Egypt came to an end, the seven years of famine set in.."~~ Genesis 41:53/54 1. I-Dimensional Continuous Wavelet Transform of SP500 January 06-July 08 2. S&P500 Weekly Data: Jan 2006 to July 09 2008 (133 data points) 3. Wavelet-based Synthesized Time Series Example A 4. Wavelet-based Synthesized Time Series Example B 5 . Wavelet-based Synthesized Time Series Example C The reason why the stock market's direction (as represented by an Index) cannot be pr...

A Simple Chinese Repast: Click on Images for fullsize and Details. It sure is comforting in these inflationary times to know that a nutritious dinner for two can cost only US$3.50. In Singapore, the Teochew Chinese [a dialect group from Guangdong] are famous for their Rice Gruel meal accompanied by a choice of dozens of small dishes. The accompanying dishes could be something as simple as boiled peanuts or tofu cakes, to dishes like braised duck or steamed Flower crabs. If you stick to the simple stuff, a Teochew porridge dinner for two, even in big-city Singapore costs less than the price of a Big Mac. My meal for two persons downing 3 bowls of rice gruel each @ 20 cents a bowl ( above pictures of the 3 dishes, and a bowl of rice gruel) was a delicious and healthy meal that cost me just US$3.50 at the current exchange rate. The dishes are (from second top picture): (1) Minced pork with black beans, (2)boiled Silver Fish with lime and fresh-cut red peppers (3) Salted Mustard Greens. (B...

Believe it or not, guitars breathe, and they do need to breathe if they are to sound good. Take out a guitar that has been kept in its case for ages, especially an acoustic guitar, and pluck the strings. It will sound muffled and stifled. The ringing sustain with clear overtones that you expect from a good guitar will be absent. But leave the guitar outside its case for a few days, in a place that's not so humid, and there will be a difference in the sound. Good wines breathe, and so do guitars. The type of finish (paint) used on a guitar is a very important factor in its ability to breathe. Many vintage guitars sound great because they do not have thick coats of paint but were au naturel, or had only a thin coat of paint followed by a top coat of nitrocellulose lacquer. The ban on nitrocellulose lacquers (for health or environmental reasons I think) and the fashion for guitars to have custom colors like Shell Pink, Pacific Blue, Candy Apple Red, etc resulted in guitars that could...

Click on images for full-size and details. By this time you must be pretty disillusioned with analysts' estimates and forecasts as well as what Companies tell us they are worth i.e. their book value.Using ValuEngine's Model and Viscovery's Self-Organizing Map, we take a look at what kind of stocks appear in our stock pick list if we ignore analysts' estimates, Price/Book ratios, Price/Earnings and Price/Sales ratios. We also ignore the forecasts of ValuEngine's Forecast Model that does simulation treating stock prices as mean-reverting stochastic processes, since at this stage we believe that certain Model variables such as Average Volume [Liquidity], Volatility, and Size should have greater weighting in the Model parameters. In the top image, the statistics of Cluster 3 [S3] are the most favorable when measured in terms of standard deviation from the screened population. The screen used is somewhat similar to the "stocks for a recession screen" of the Ma...

Autocorrelation characteristics of Exxon Mobil [XOM] Autocorrelation characteristics of Petroleo Brasileiro [PBR.A] Autocorrelation characteristics of Statoil [STO] Autocorrelation characteristics of Google [GOOG] * click on images for full-size and details. It is a fact that a stock's past price affects its current price. i.e. A stock's price is correlated with itself for any given period of lag. A less technical explanation of this phenomenon would be that investors look to a stock's past price as a guide for future prices. The 'collective memory' of a stock's investors thus manifests itself as its autocorrelation characteristic. The degree of autocorrelation [AC], and the total effect over time varys greatly with each stock. In the context of ValuEngine's Valuation model, a high autocorrelation level indicates high persistence in over or undervaluation, and a long period to correct the mispricing. If we know the AC characteristics of a stock, it can be...

The big difference between Western medicine and Chinese medicine is that the former treats the symptoms, while the latter treats the causes. For example, a Western doctor will give pain killers, antihistamines and antibiotics for the relief of the symtoms of influenza. A Chinese doctor on the other hand, believes that the influenza was caused by a temporary break-down of your body's immune system caused by imbalance of your Yin [negative, cool, female etc] and Yang [positive, heat, male etc] properties. He will therefore brew you a herbal concoction to restore the balance of Yin and Yang in your body and allow its immune system to function normally again. Most of the Chinese herbs that give energy and power such as Ginseng and Cordyceps [caterpillar fungus***] restore deficiencies in Yang. But some people, may suffer from too much Yang, and this also leads to fatigue, headaches, being prone to influenza, sore throat, teary-eyes, tinnicus, sniffles, swelling of the lymph nodes etc....

Yunnan province, in the South-west of China, is close to Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam and has a small area in the North-West bordering Tibet. This mountainous region has a climate that is tropical and yet pleasantly cool the whole year round. Kunming, the capital is known as the City of Eternal Spring. The area is very rich in natural resources, and was one branch of the famed Silk Road. Yunnan's products include the best rare Chinese medicinal herbs, the famous Pu-erh tea, historically sent as tribute to the Emperor in Beijing, jade, silk, flowers, iron ore and gold. Foodwise, it is famous for its mushrooms and ham. Many species of strange-shaped mushrooms thrive in this wet, cool environment and some of them are known for their medicinal properties. The dry mountain air also makes Yunnan ham the best in China. And it is the province with the largest number of ethnic minorities (26). Otherwise known as Hill tribes. The presense of these tribes make this area an anthropologist's par...

Hi! Just a reminder that George Sinkler will be playing at Jim and Sue McCauley's this Sunday evening from 6 to 10. Bring your drinks, a snack to share and don't forget something for George. DIRECTIONS: From Buckingham, at the intersection of Rts 263 & 413: Take Rt 413 south toward Newtown. Go 1.5 miles. Look on the right for the entrance to "Village of Buckingham Springs". Go in the entrance. At the stop sign turn left, then the first left again onto Juniper Circle. The 6th left is Elder Ct. Hope to see you! Art (Suzie Bartel's Assistant!!!!!!!) A tomato and sunflower stall on the PA side of the Delaware opposite Frenchtown Shad festival, Lambertville NJ The bridge across the Delaware at Stockton,NJ Old-fashioned Truckstop near Coopersburg PA The bridge that links Lambertville NJ with New Hope PA A street in Doylestown, Bucks County PA Farmer's market, Doylestown PA The email above, from a friend who did not know that I had moved back to Singapore, bring...

* image of a complex system taken from http://www.necsi.org/ , the New England Complex Systems Institute.Nassin Nicholas Taleb's book The Black Swan [ see http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/ ] is about the great impact that highly improbable events can cause in financial markets, in history, in natural events, on our working life, in our personal relationships etc. Taleb makes us aware of and fear black swans. But not all black swans are bad. There are good black swans too. In life, highly improbable events can lift you up to heights never imagined in your wildest dreams. The obscure writer/musician who was 'discovered' and rose to stardom. The small businessman who had a lucky break, a chance meeting that led to success. That first job interview with an interviewer who liked you. The lonely Blog or the YouTube video that, by word of mouth,and being in the right place at the right time drew a million visitors a day. These are all examples of riding to the sky on a black sw...

Dry Bulk shipping companies are those that carry raw materials such as coal, iron ore, grain, fertilisers and chemicals in their specialized ships. The demand for dry bulk shipping is a good leading indicator of the health of the world economy. The Baltic Dry Index is an index of freight rates for dry bulk shipping as compiled by the Baltic Exchange in London. Since October, the BDI has gone down by 40 %, and with it the share price of the dry bulk shippers. In this experiment, using the Self-Organising Maps [SOM] in http://www.viscovery.net software. [for more on Self-Organizing Maps see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organizing_map ] we took the data for 156 stocks from the Transportation Sector. The data included the output of ValuEngine's quantitative models and covered variables such as Valuation, EPS growth, 1 year-forecast retrun %, 1-month forecast return%, P/E ratio, Sharpe Ratio, 1 yr return %, 5 -yr return % etc. There were more than 30 variables. For more on ValuEn...

* This article was actually written about a year ago. The year of the Pig is now coming to an end, and Chinese New Year on Feb 07 will usher in the year of the Rat. The Pig is an animal, as useful as can be An icon of happiness and prosperity They say that the Pig is most intelligent I can vouch that it is not belligerent Pigs are productive and breed like rabbits Though I can’t say much about their mating habits What I like most about pigs is not what they do What I like most about pigs is a bowl of pork rib stew Pigs ear, pig’s tongue, pig's brain and pig’s tummy The last when cooked with white peppercorn is real yummy Pig’s liver, snout, kidney, skin and even pig’s tail Does something good for appetite, they never fail This year it is, the Year of the Pig This year, I think I’ll make it big And the reason is as clear as a Fig For I was born in the year of the Pig Not just any Pig, but a pig of Gold 600 years in waiting, lo and behold The Golden Pig has come to my door Not much...

Click on Table for full-size and details Nassim Nicholas Taleb's "The Black Swan" (Random House, 2007) has attained cult status with the hedge fund crowd. His book is about the enormous consequences of highly improbable events. The essential points are: 1. Black Swans are the highly improbable events that have had enormous historical impact- like the current credit crunch caused by the sub-prime crisis, 9/11, the Latin American debt crisis of 1982, or the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990. Though very rare, Black Swans have many times more impact than more predictable, more frequent events. Black Swans are by definition unpredictable. 2. Black Swans are not as improbable as conventional statistics theory would have us believe. This is because the way we calculate probability has always been, and continues to be based upon the Gaussian [Bell Curve] distribution, where anything beyond 3 standard deviations is considered to have a probability of less than 1 %. Black Swan dis...