drplokta

I'm referring to the BBC's article here, which unfortunately was written by a journalist and not by a mathematician.

The BBC won't tell you, but the original paper is here.

I can't bear to read any more comments on Slashdot, Wikipedia or Digg from people who don't know as much maths as they think they do, so here is what's actually going on. Do not pay any attention to any other commentary on this subject that does not include the words "field" or "ring" in their mathematical senses.

The "transreal numbers" defined in this paper may very well be internally consistent, although it's not been peer-reviewed and it would be too much work to check it out thoroughly. However, it doesn't really matter, because by the author's own axioms A8 and A18, "nullity", "infinity" and "-infinity" do not have additive or multiplicative inverses, which means that the transreal numbers aren't a field (hell, they're not even a ring), which means that everything you ever thought you knew about arithmetic will have to be rigorously revalidated, and a lot of it will probably turn out not to work any more. This is a high price to pay for being able to work with the result of 0/0 arithmetically instead of just treating it as undefined, and so the transreal numbers are effectively useless.

[Edit: bohemiancoast points out that one of the other authors on the paper I reference above looks strangely familiar.]

I just posted the following to the Eastercon Yahoo group, but I'll repeat it here:

My thoughts on the situation, in numbered paragraphs to give an illusion
of organisation.

1. We are probably at more risk of having several competing Easter
conventions in 2007 than of having none.

2. If anyone speaks to Tim Kirk in the near future, we need
answers to some questions, e.g.:

a) Is it likely that the circumstances of Convoy's cancellation will
preclude the use of other Britannia hotels (e.g. Britannia
International in Docklands, Sasha's in Manchester) for 2007, or indeed
for future years?

b) Is Convoy prepared to endorse some alternative rescue convention as
an "official" successor, and if so then by what process?

c) When are refunds being mailed, and are they prepared to enclose
fliers from 2007 conventions (whether held at Easter or not) with them?

d) Is it likely that Convoy's guests of honour would wish to be
invited as guests to a replacement convention?

3. Getting good hotel rates is easier five months out than it is two years
out. If they don't have a conference booking for Easter now, they know
they're not getting one unless a miracle comes along.

4. Legitimacy is over-rated (and certainly over-discussed). If there is a
single convention run over Easter 2007, by people who have some previous
track record of running Eastercons, then that's the Eastercon (and can
select the 2009 Eastercon). Legitimacy only becomes an issue if the
Eastercon forks.

5. Sizing a replacement con is a problem. Assuming we end up before
Christmas with a single con, held over Easter, with Convoy's blessing,
somewhere between London and Bristol on the east-west axis and between
Brighton and Newcastle on the north-south axis (sorry to the Welsh and
Scots, but Scotland had 2006 and Wales doesn't have the population), then
would it get 300 members? 500? 700? It makes it hard to budget. I feel
that under the circumstances it would have to be deemed acceptable for an
Eastercon to close memberships at a particular number, as long as that
number is at least 500.

6. Notwithstanding point 5, running a replacement con is going to be a
bigger financial risk than is normal for an Eastercon. Are there any
fannish organisations able (and willing) to underwrite part of the risk?
Does the Mexicon Hat have any money left? LFF? Interaction? Concussion?

7. I have seen on Livejournal but not repeated here that Chris O'Shea has
contacted the Britannia International in Docklands, where the proto-Plokta
Cabal held the 1995 Eastercon (with 750 members), and they do not
currently have a conference booking for Easter 2007 (but see point 2a
above).

I've switched to using Google Reader to manage my RSS feeds, mostly because stuff I read at work gets marked as read at home and vice versa, and I also get the chance to mark as "shared" anything I find sufficiently interesting to share. See the feed here: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/01547211033930992160 (and yes, there's an RSS feed available).

There's more on the Stern Review here. He's still not talking about major consequences from global warming -- a mere 5% to 20% one-off GDP hit by 2100, equivalent to the economy in 2100 being the size it would have been some time between 2090 and 2097 without global warming. But it's clarified that his 1% of GDP cost to fight global warming is also a one-off, in which case it makes obvious sense to make the minuscule sacrifice of 1% of GDP growth in order to prevent the relatively small 5% to 20% of GDP costs of global warming. 1% by 2050 is about 0.02% per year, so we're talking about the UK sacrificing only about £200 million per year of economic growth, or around 1% of expected growth rates of 2% per year.

We keep seeing scary-looking estimates of the cost of climate change -- most recently an estimate here that it could be costing the UK £42 billion per year by 2080. What all these estimates have in common is that, while they look scary, they are in fact extremely small numbers, and indicate that we should do nothing about climate change.

Let's take that £42 billion per year by 2080 as an example. The UK's GDP is currently a little over £1 trillion per year. But if we assume 2% real growth in the economy per year over the next 74 years, then in 2080 it will be over 4.3 billion, and that £42 billion per year will be less than 1% of the economy, or equivalent to delaying economic growth by less than six months. Put another way, the effect of climate change will be to reduce average growth over the period from 2.00% to 1.99%, so it doesn't seem worth spending more than .02% of current GDP, or £200 million per year, to do anything about it.

flickgc and I went to see the China Power Station exhibition at Battersea Power Station before the redevelopment work starts next month. There are some photos here. It was well worth the £5 admission to get to see the power station, which is just as well as the actual exhibition wasn't up to much.

Allegedly, the Royal Mail has suspended a postman for telling people living on his round how to opt out of the "Door to Door" service that delivers unaddressed advertising material with your post. Wouldn't it be a shame if the publicity around this inspired a few million people to email optout@royalmail.co.uk with their postal addresses and ask for the form to opt out?

We seem to have purchased a defective box of eggs for breakfast this morning