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Sydney Harbour Bridge night
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Climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge by the arch from hinge point to hinge point -- -- without being caught by the Police
-- was one of the "must-dos" of my most conservative youth.
My daring extended to one memorial daylight trip
that is recorded for posterity here. Just click on the pix of
me bypassing the access barrier, or
here.
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harveycohen.net/papers
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PAPERS
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A chronological listing of my published journal and conference papers on visual surveillance systems,
image engineering and visual information systems, including image processing generally, and parallel processing techniques, together with some papers
devoted to the design of image codecs, to aspects of satellite systems and to the education of engineers,
from 1989 to 1997 and 2005.Plus the abstracts of my published papers in
physics. Papers published prior to 1989 -- apart from Physics papers - are
there
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Can a Perceptron select which image shows two entwined worms, and which just one ?
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THE
PERCEPTRON
CONTROVERSY
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As a member of the LOGO Group at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
in the 1970's I have the greatest of respect and affection for Marvin Minsky,
and Seymour Papert.
Shortly before I arrived at MIT in 1974, Marvin Minsky's classic paper,
"A Framework for Representing Knowledge" became freely available - and was the basis for organising my own
MIT AI Lab Memo 338
The Art of Snaring Dragons. Seymour Papert - who had actually been a member of Piaget's group,
introduced me to the gamut of research on epistemology by Piaget and his co-workers.
There is no doubt that Minsky and Papert's book Perceptrons was a block to the funding of research in neural networks
for more than ten years.
The book was widely interpreted as showing that neural networks are basically limited and fatally flawed.
The controvery is to whether Minsky and Papert shared and/or promoted
this belief. In
Percepron Controversy I show conclusively that they did in fact promote this understanding of their book.
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ERDÖS
Could a two-year old acquire an Erdös Number of 4 ?
What is Matt Damon's Erdös Number ?
Does Joan Baez really have an Erdös Number of 3?
Can a character in a novel gain an Erdös Number in their own right ?
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The Erdös Number
Extended
Paul Erdös was an amazingly prolific mathematician, who wrote research papers
in mathematics jointly with 507 collaborators.
These immediate collaborators themselves collaborated in joint papers with others, and so on . . .
Almost all professional mathematicians are connected by a chain of co-authors
of mathematics research papers with Erdös.
In fact in over 80 percent of cases this chain contains less than five links.
A joint author with Erdös has an Erdös Number of 1, those of their
coauthors who did not themselves write joint papers with Erdös have
Erdös Numbers of 2. And in general a mathematician has an Erdös Number
that is just one more than the minimum Erdös Number of his collaborators.
My personal Erdös Number is 5, -- there are in fact 5 different
chains of published papers that link me to Paul Erdös which yield
this value of five.
But mathematicians - - including Paul Erdös himself - - produce joint 'publications'
other than research papers in mathematics. So we take the same concept of Erdös Number
very seriously, but extend the concept of 'publications'.
Our Basic Rule for Assigning Erdös Numbers is: Was enough Chutzpah involved in the claim for
it to be taken
seriously ??? with chutzpah as defined
here.
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Dragons
Dragons
are captivating problems in qualitative physics, which require at most high school
mathematics for their solution , and mostly no maths. YoYo -- to left -- is an example dragon. Note conflicting heuristics.
Upper case = YOYO for a steady pull to the right- which direction does the YoYo go? YoYo rotates clockwise ??
Lower case = yoyo for a steady pull to the right- which direction does the YoYo go? In direction of pull?
The paper I wrote at MIT in 1974, Artificial Intelligence Lab memo 338 (1974)
elucidates the Art of Snaring Dragons, and relates dragons in qualitative physics to the conservation puzzles
such as the egg cup puzzle, and other qualitative puzzles Piaget
used to explore the thinking of children.
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Marbled Gecko on Wistera
Victoria - Australia
Insists on doing the impossible
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Gechos
Inducia Capillaria
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Geckos
are the most intriguing of Dragons. Colourful but bereft of eyelids,
lacking claws, yet so provocative. Aristotle wondered at the behavour:
how the gecko climbs walls and even across ceilings -- was beyond HIS physics.
When a would-be physicist is challenged by a gecko many try to bar this creature -- gecko-barring --
but the more creative task is to tame the gecko -- gecko adjustment --
to include WITHIN the physics analysis - not outside. The genus was properly first described in mathematics by Imre Lakatos, hence
the alternate nomenclature Lakatosian Monster.
Inducia Capillaria [to left and right] is a gecko that looks again at the problem of water (or mercury) rising (falling)
up (down) a capillary tube. In most elementary physics courses the student is shown a computation of H,
the rise/fall of the liquid column above/below the surrounding fluid, as H = K/r
where r is the capillary radius, and K involves the surface tension and the angle of contact. One can simply reject the two images here as "unphysical"
or simply "impossible" --
but the real challenge is to extend the analysis to work out just what happens for tubes of "insufficient" length.
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My late wife Elizabeth Essex-Cohen, photographed in 2002
with a 1:1 model of the FedSat satellite,
for which she was in charge of GPS-related experiments.
The historic website of the GPS Science Group she lead till 2004 is
here An annotated (but incomplete) listing of her publications on ionospheric physics, the use of microsatellites etc is at
www.harveycohen.net/essex
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WRESAT
FEDSAT
and
GPS
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The first Australian scientific satellite, WRESAT,
was launched from the (Australian) Weapons Research Station
at Woomera, South Australia, in 1967.
The second Australian scientific satellite,
the micro-satellite FedSat, was launched December 14, 2002.
The FedSat researcher in charge of
GPS-based
experiments was my late wife
Dr Elizabeth Essex-Cohen, who in 1974, working at the (US) Air Force
Geophysical
Research Laboratory near Boston, had evaluated the impact of the
ionospheric plasma on radio signals from satellites powering the
proposed satellite navigation system, then called NAVSTAR, later renamed GPS.
Essex-Cohen had in 1969 pioneered the first use, in Australia,
of so-called
beacon satellites to probe the ionosphere.
This website aims to provide an overview of
- WRESAT - Weapons Research Establishment SATellite launched in 1967
- FEDSAT - the FEDeration Satellite lauched in 2002 in lieu of 2001.
- Dr Elizabeth Essex-Cohen, first Australian satellite beacon
experimenter 1969.
- Dr Elizabeth Essex-Cohen, role in the design of the NAVSTAR-GPS satellite system in 1974.
She was as an ionospheric physicist utilising
NAVSTAR/GPS from 1978.
For FedSat she was
in charge of GPS-related experiments on FedSat. This had great possibilities
for exploring the region of the ionosphere ANOVE FedSat's LEO orbit.
During 1974, Elizabeth worked at the Air Force Geophysical Research Laboratory, just outside Boston, computing
the curved trajectories of radio waves from low earth orbiting satellites, these radio rays being curved due to ionospheric plasma.
This work was basic to the determination of orbit parameters for the GPS satellite constellation. At the same time, the writer
was in a part of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, in a building in Tech square. On the floor below was the CIA, on the floor below was
IBM; Elizabeth and I were in the heart of the US Military, academic and industrial complex in Boston.
- GPS - basics
- GPS ionospheric corrections
The (historic) web page of the GPS Signal Science Centre, at
Space Physics Department, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia
has been reproduced
here. Inherently this historic (~1997) web-page has
several broken links which at this late date cannot be repaired.
Elizabeth Essex-Cohen, the fourth Australian woman to obtain a PhD in Physics in Australia,
was born in Grafton, NSW in 1940. Its a striking coincidence that the first female radio atronomer
Ruby Payne-Scott MSc was also born in Grafton, and that both can be described
as radiophysicists.
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Skiing Mt Baw Baw 26 December, 2006, with Alex.
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During 2006 I spent July - August in California, leaving daughter Zoey to feed my two cats, Heisenberg and Schrodinger.
As a reformed orthodox, and lapsed Kabbalist, I have no special
standing in the Land of Oz as a Cohen. But I learnt from TV's "The OC"
that in Orange County the Seth Cohens rule supreme. But maybe both
The OC
and Dan Brown lie? As I got fit for tramping the Sierras by
daily bushwalks along the Yarra, I spied an albino kangaroo -Silas - lurking
in the trees, shadowing me. At midnight Friday, lying with my limbs
contorted in the rough shape of a driedel, the realisation came that
the mysterious Shabbat Dei was after me.
Yet I survived California, climbed Half Dome high above Yosemite
with my son RayZ, bicycled across the Golden Gate with Vic, to
return refreshed to Australia. I love this years summer --
spent Boxing Day 2006 skiing on Mt Baw Baw (120 east of Melbourne)
with Alex and his redhead. It wasn't til afterwards that I learnt
that the Redhead had been educated at Hogwarts - which must be the explanation for this magical day.
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and touristing
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New Year 2004
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On December 28, 2003, with sons Raymond and Alexander (plus Megan) we set forth on the
ultimate Australian bushwalking challenge - to reach the top of Federation Peak,
in the most inaccessible portion of South-West Tasmania.
We trudged across button grass plains, and climbed up the almost vertical Moss Ridge
tree by tree to Berchevaise Plateau
using the route pioneered by the Antarctic explorer Berchevaise in 1949.
This was more than a bushwalking trip, so Harvey carried the 50m rope and each of us had
a climbing harness for the high exposure climb up the final 20m to the top.
The ascent of Moss Ridge fully equipped involves much pack hauling using ropes,so
from Cutting Camp
we set out very early with only day packs hopefully to make a one day return trip to the summit,
or at least to return to a tolerable bivouac location well below the summit.
Here is our trip report.
Other pics from this trip are on Smugmug at
http://shogun.smugmug.com/gallery/644041/1/27518366 (Opens in new window).
Years ago, I made an attack on Federation Peak from the other side,
coming up Luckman's Lead and circling around to Goon Moor,
where we camped for five whole days waiting for a break in the weather.
From Goon Moor I took
this pix of the flank of Federation down to Lake Jeeves,
with "The Sundial" straight ahead.
Click on thumbnails on left to view full-size.
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The Kowmung River very close to the Colong Caves.
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Saving the Colong Caves
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Saving the Colong Caves
In 1971 with fellow caver Nicolas White organised the Melbourne campaign to save Mt Armour and the adjoining Colong Caves,
which were in the very heart of a proposed Kanangra-Boyd National Park.
The story is quite amazing - one aspect to be highlighted
is that to generate publicity I staged the first Conservation
Absail in Australia. The mining company APCMA, which hoped to quary Mt Armour to produce cement,
had relocated its AGM to Melbourne to avoid publicity,
but as a result of this campaign the AGM became TV and headline news.
To right is press cutting describing what was the first conservation abseil in Australia.[Click to enlarge]
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The La Trobe Talking Communicator
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The La Trobe Talking Communicator
1981 was the international year of the disabled, and it
was also the first year a text to speech chip was manufactured,
making possible very compact and cheap computer speech.
I conceived of a project entitled
"Computer Communication, Access, and Programming by Severely Handicapped (Non-Speech) Children.
With funding from the Schools Commission, I put together a small group,
and designed fabricated and programmed a battery of 10 microprocessor-based talking communicators,
controllable via either single key or 5 key keyboards - meeting a long-felt need by the Yooralla Special School.
Its notable that project was completed close to $20,000 under budget. However the School's Commission
used these funds plus later grants to fund a teacher controlled
project at Yooralla -- blocking further development of what had been a world leading project,
cited in the Hawke Government's
Report on its First Sixth Months (p42)
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OZNAKI
The first educational robotics project for
primary and junior High School students. Based on the earliest PCs - pre-Apple and pre-PC
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The Oznaki Project 1975-84
In December 1975 I was invited to attend a NSF-funded "Loud Thinking Workshop" at MIT,
and enroute I visited the worlds second computer store at Palo Alto. On my return I
successfully sought funding
OZNAKI - Polish for Symbol -was an educational robotics project that I ran from 1975-84.
With research student the first Turtle robot outside the US was constructed. The first micoprocessor was only four years old,
so software support was non-existent, requiring signal work in developing software development
tools.
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Around Harvey's Head
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Around Harvey's Head
This rolling panorama takes you on a complete circuit of Harvey's Head.
Elsewhere on this web page there is text linking the viewed phenomena
with a AI views of problem solving . (Be warned your head will start spinning soon
if you read outside the context to which this page belongs.)
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www.ajhs.info
| AJHS
| The official home page for the Australian Jewish Historical
Society, the AJHS. The AJHS, founded in Sydney in 1938,
has published its Journal since 1939. Fom 1995 I had urged the AJHS Vic
to establish a website but this idea was rejected both on the grounds of cost,
and relevance to the ageing membership.
Finally, at my personal initiative and expense, I established
this website in 2004.
A succint directory of recent journal issues and special publications is given, including contents.
Online here is a complete cumulative index -- by subject and category - to the AJHS Journal - from 1939 to now.
Details of the archives of both the AJHS (Vic) and AJHS [NSW] are given.
This site includes the website of AJHS (Vic).
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jewishhistoryaustralia.net
| Jewish History Australia
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A tour of Australian Jewish History.
A timeline of Australian Jewish History from 1788.
This site documents the Jewish experience in Australia,
which began with the arrival of the First Fleet in 1778, and continued with Jewish involvement in all facets
of the subsequent development and evolution of Australia. The involvement of Australia with the re-establishment of the state
of Israel is detailed, along with vignettes of certain Pacific and Asian Jewish communities.
The Site provides information, sources, photos, links useful for family history and genealogy.
Historic sites, portraits. Stories and folklore. Australian Jewish 'firsts'. Links to other resources.
Included is an account of the underground school in the Kovno Ghetto during the Nazi occupation, and amazing links of
that act of defiance of the Nazis to Australia.
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| The
Nulla Nullas
of
Wallaga Lake
At about the time of the NSW "Freedom Bus"- the Australian National University Jewish Students Union - established
a children's club at the Wallaga Lake Aboriginal Reserve,
on the far south coast of NSW.
The Club - the Nulla Nullas - run during 1964-66 -
had undoubted success, but ended as key ANUJSS members left Canberra in early 1966.
It is noteable that the Nulla Nullas gave charity in (in the form of gifts) to white children (in hospital).
Others both within and outside the Koori community have since contributed to the revitalization
and empowerment
of the Koori village at Wallaga Lake, but traces of ANUJSS's interaction are there still.
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| My Yarra
A few pix of a stretch of the Yarra River near my home.
Includes shots of the mysterious Red Billabong,
and the local albino kangaroo, Silas.
Click to view the
Google satellite view
that covers my stretch of the Yarra from the end of Laughing Waters Road, past the mysterious Red Billabong
to opposite the Pound Bend Tunnel.
Those who appreciate images of the tranquil beauty of the Yarra will wish to view images
from a bushwalk along the
Sorrento-Portsea Artist's Trail
from the Sorrento bay beach to the ocean beaches via the famous
London Bridge
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www.poavic.org
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POAVIC
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This is the homepage I created for the Property Owners Association of Victoria.
The POAVic is
a non-profit group concerned to represent and serve the interests of small-scale
owners of both residential and commercial land in Victoria. Australia is unique in the world in having
in several states a set of taxes "progressively" based on the aggregated values of the
owners total holdings. Historically, Land Tax was only applied to very large holdings,
but steady inflation has brought the most modest holding within the
gamut of this bizarre tax - from which personal homes and all primary production
land are exempt. The Land Tax regime is especially severe in the state of Victoria,
where the POA-Vic has gathered anecdotal evidence that it
is having a major effect in reducing the level of private ownership
of low-cost residential properties. Moreover, large scale developers who must strive to minimise
the impact of Land Tax are driven to the overdevelopment of suburban land, to produce
oversized apartment towers.
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New Zealand Jewish Archives
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This is the website I created in 2006 for the New Zealand Jewish Archives,
which are located at the national capital of Wellington.
From the earliest days of European contact with New Zealand, Jews were involved
in all facets of New Zealand history.
In fact the Dutch "discoverer" of NZ in 1642, Abel Janszoon Tasman, had as quartermaster a sailor
by the name of Cornelius Joppe, most probably a Jew. As a percentage of the population
Jews have always numbered less than 0.2 % -- yet -- in a number of ways have
made a difference to the development and history of New Zealand.
A Melbourne Rabbi, Morris Goldman, wrote the first history
of the Jews in New Zealand,and over the past sixty years the
Australian Jewish Historical Society has published papers on aspects
of this history. In 1993, to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the first service
held in NZ, a substantial history with a Wellington focus,
A Standard for the People was published. The
New Zealand Jewish Archives, established in 1980,
but increasingly active more recently, has been accumulating the basic resources for historical and genealogical research:
such as communal registers and minute books, as well as portraits and other items of
cultural significance.
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Hawks on Top
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My family has had a long involvement with the Hawthorn Football Club. Perhaps most strking, on Sunday September 24th 1983,
Elizabeth I and the boyZ were at a hotel on the rim of the the Grand Canyon, Arizona. The 3 boyZ - aged 8, 6 and 3 -
wearing Hawthorn tops found themselves being congratulated all round on Hawthorn's comprehensive victory against Essendon in the Grand Final win of the previous day.
Of course Hawthorn was in the next six Grand Finals.
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www.kutzpah.net
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I've never inhaled, nor do I play the sax. But I do admit to gross kutzpah.
In his classic book Chutzpah Alan Dershowitz defines kutzpah, however
spelt, as "boldness, assertivenes, a willingness to demand what is due, to
challenge authority, to raise eyebrows"
Another Harvard alumnus, my nephew Rodney Marks, who recently served a year as 'professor at large'
at the University of NSW, has written the most comprehensive dictionary
of management terms called the contradictionary, as a guide to the kutzpah of
management.
What more can I write? This is my very personal take on kutzpah for those --
like me -- who never managed the guttural k sound in Chutzpah .
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