Skip The Numbahs

Consequently he who wishes to attain to human perfection, must therefore first study Logic, next the various branches of Mathematics in their proper order, then Physics, and lastly Metaphysics. - Maimonides

It seems the trend these days is to skip all the hard stuff like logic, math, and physics (including chemistry) and go straight for the metaphysics. It leaves out all that tiresome stuff subject to experiment and proof and goes straight for the ineffable. Which no one can possibly eff. Very convenient.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Defeating Libertarian Logic

You have met them. Those oh so logical Libertarians where every acceptable thought has to be a verified part of a system. They have to tie themselves in logical knots to come to the proper logical conclusion.

Ralph has a few words about that.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,

adored by little statesmen and philosophers

and divines.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Now that I'm a Republican I no longer have to compromise my logic to come to a predetermined conclusion. What a relief.

Well any way - we are neural computers, not digital logic machines. Correlation machines not computing machines (generally). Our reasoning for the most part is different. Einstein didn't compute all the partial derivatives when he wanted to pick up a glass of water.

And you can quote me on that.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

A New Kind Of Transistor

I just read an interesting article in NASA Techbriefs about a new kind of transistor called a Not Majority gate. It has three inputs and puts out a true signal if true inputs are not in the majority. In ordinary logic majority gates are not simple. A majority gate would take 32 transistors to make in conventional CMOS logic. A single transistor majority gate would greatly simplify the logic of a full adder by taking advantage of the ability of a majority gate to change from NAND to NOR logic by changing one input. The full adder in CMOS logic would take about twice as many gates and four times as many transistors vs. majority gate logic. Here is a nice explanation of Majority Gate transistor works, with an idealized view of how one is constructed.

Now all this is kind of esoteric (unless you are a bit head) so what is the good of it? It has the potential of shrinking and speeding up the logic part of microprocessors. A small advance (most silicon area these days is devoted to memory of one sort or another), but it will help. In addition it will help a lot in power consumption. With fewer gates switching for a given function, power losses will be lower.

If you are in a particularly geeky mood I have a nice article on High Frequency Transimpedance Amplifiers up at IEC Fusion Technology.