Couldn’t resist this, although it’s purely link propagation. If you don’t know who Claude Shannon is, this might not be so exciting. But the excellent blog collision detection has a post on juggling as a physical Turing test, which links to a wonderful short piece of video showing Shannon first juggling, then demonstrating his own juggling robot, “W.C. Fields”. As a juggler and computer scientist myself, it’s wonderful to see that one of the greats has devoted so much attention to the art.
Actually, following the link trail a bit further I found Arthur Lewbel’s obituary for Shannon (the source of the movie), with many juggling references and the following statement of Shannon’s “Juggling Theorem”:
(F+D)H=(V+D)N, where F is the time a ball spends in the air, D is the time a ball spends in a hand, V is the time a hand is vacant, N is the number of balls juggled, and H is the number of hands.
Which just goes to show, no matter how anchored in the real world a mathematician might seem to be, the lure of generalisation just can’t be ignored. Number of hands?!?
13 Comments
So this physical turing test, shall it be a normal cascade or more something like a Mills Mess? I know it took me some time to learn ;-)
Someone tried to explain Mill’s Mess to me years ago, but I never got it figured out… didn’t help that she couldn’t remember it herself, and was perhaps stoned at the time ;-) Great juggling site, btw, I’ll be stopping by again.
well, if it doesn’t work for you through this site i’ll be happy to teach you (if afterwards we go for a drumming session ;-))
Btw, you really need an overview of recent comments somewhere (look 4 a wordpress plugin).
Save the drumming for my new place, comes with drum and (more-or-less) no noise restrictions!
Comments are now summarised on a page of their own. (I like the slimline sidebar, myself.)
no noise restrictions? In Amsterdam? Heb je ergens een bunker gevonden? Bedankt voor de comments page ;-) Maar euhm, ‘Eat your heart out’? Babelfish vertaalt het als ‘Eet uit uw hart’, maar dan weet ik al helemaal niet wat je bedoelt.
hehe, wacht tot je het ziet, man, echt geweldig :-) alleen maar “bijna geen geluids-restricties”, trouwens
“Eat your heart out”: euhm, “ga je gang en veel plezier”? Eigenelijk is het wel een beetje raar ook in het engels, had nooit over het nagedacht…
i found an appropriate dutch translation: “lucht je hart”. As in: share all your feelings …
That’s absolutely not what “Eat your heart out” means (“share your feelings”). It’s more like, “Eat until your heart pops from cholesterol overload.”
Btw, I haven’t nailed Mill’s Mess yet, but it’s gently tacked down.
have a look at this drumming video (mpeg)
um, holy shit! way cool man, should politely suggest to the centraal station buskers that they take some pointers :-)