Recursion

Recursion is a fundamental property of reality. The laws of physics operate on the present instant to produce the next. Although the progress of time from one instant to the next for us seem seems to be continuous but is not. There is some minimum time interval, probably near the Planck time. 

The resolution of the Ultraviolet catastrophe was to assume that there is a finite minimum frequency. Without that assumption, the energy would become infinite as the wavelength decreases to zero. Length, time, and energy all had to have some minimum quantity, called quanta. The size of the minimums just had to be finite - not zero. The size turns out to be some 35 orders of magnitude smaller than our familiar world. 

Some very simple recursive systems display complicated, even unpredictable behavior. Conway's Game of Life is an example well worth the time to investigate. If you want a deep dive into the concepts, I recommend a book, A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram.

Concept of the week for 2013 52 -- Hormesis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis

Nuclear Proliferation

The US never had a monopoly on the knowledge of how to make nuclear bombs. At least two of the people who worked on the Manhattan project thought that it was too important for not only one nation to have this knowledge. They found ways to communicate it to Russia, which was an ally at the time. When FDR told Stalin that we had nuclear bombs Stalin did not ask any questions. I think that was because he was afraid he reveal that he already knew as much as FDR. Non-proliferation efforts were doomed even before the first test. Then with Ike's"Atoms for Peace" program and France's entry into the nuclear "club" the race was on. FDR's decision to not share the results from the Manhattan project with Russia or even England was a mistake that undermined the trust we could have had internationally. I agree that nuclear weapons, themselves, are not the problem. The attitudes of regimes are the problem. We need to face the fact that we are part of the problem. Now, how to fix this?

Richard Feynman on the 2-slit experiment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUJfjRoxCbk

Defund the EPA

 Tax code as social engineering.
"Off-budget expenditure" would better describe the granting of tax-exempt status. The honest way to achieve the honest objectives of the granting of tax-exempt status would be to appropriate it like any other expenditure.

Rajan Loknathan

The spread of languages is complex, of course. Although it is not a specific example discussed in this book, "Games of Life: Explorations in Ecology, Evolution and Behaviour" by Karl Sigmund, You will see the parallels.