John Maben interviewed by Maurice Rosen

[Hoot]

Quite an interview (save the typographical errors and the glitchy html translation). Definitely worth the read.

 

Hoot

[Bruceswar]

that is a nice read.... especially for me.. since I was very young in the 80's making that all part of something I was not....I think I got started in 1990....

[jom]

I've been thinking about getting Rosen's newsletter again. He had some great interviews when I got his newsletter in the mid-90s. I remember him helping create a "stir" when he interviewed Bob Cambell after BC's seminar at the ANA about AT'd coins in slabs. The controversy was great and the spin given by the TPG's and some dealers was classic.

 

jom

[Wihlborg]

Hi Hoot,

 

I read that interview about a month ago, and also thought it was very interesting. I replied to a thread that John Maben started about a market report a couple of weeks after I had read it, and recommended that the other board members read it if they had access to it. I didn’t have a link to the interview at the time. I got to read it because I had bought a few coins from John, and he sent a copy of the Rosen Report with the interview in it to me for free.

 

By the way, John has an ad in this week's Coin World and if any of the board members see anything that they may be interested in, I highly recommend giving John a call. The coins that I got from him about a month ago were all superb, with the highlight being a Grant with star commem in MS-65 that is the nicest example of the issue that I have ever seen.

 

John

[TomB]

Did you see that, Hoot?!?!?!

 

It's an RNA Report!!!

 

It's an RNA World!!!

 

Don't mind me, folks, I'm just being a total science geek, but my geeky friend Hoot will understand.

[Wihlborg]

Yeah, A RNA report! A RNA report! A RNA report!

 

uh... What's a RNA report?

 

John

[EVillageProwler]

I haven't read the interview/report, but the only RNA I can think of is RiboNucleic Acid.

 

Let's see if I'm right...

 

EVP

[thebeav]

Rochester Numismatic Association ??

[michael]

i liked the report\ on the web site

\

i would like to get one hard copy sent to me

 

and copy it myself and give it out to my coin club members

 

 

michael

[Hoot]

Did you see that, Hoot?!?!?!

 

It's an RNA Report!!!

 

It's an RNA World!!!

 

Don't mind me, folks, I'm just being a total science geek, but my geeky friend Hoot will understand.

 

Yeah, I saw that one and wondered if Rosen really meant to make his report in the spirit of the first self-replicating life form. It often makes me happy when biology creeps into other disciplines, but we all know that nothing biological survives this hobby. In the end, it'll just be little metal disks that bear the artifacts of active thin surfaces - much like EVP's brain. I have to purge myself now by re-reading The Blind Watchmaker.

 

God I'm a geek. Hoot

[John Maben]

Michael & anyone else that would like a hard copy:

 

email me at John@JohnMaben.com with your address I'll send you one!

 

See how easy that was!

[EVillageProwler]

In the end, it'll just be little metal disks that bear the artifacts of active thin surfaces

 

Sorry for the OT, but that's very old hat for long-term storage. Even if we assumed "active" to be some sci-fi bio-technology, I think we best be getting away from a 2-D storage mechanism.

 

Think N-D. Start with a 3-D gas matrix and refine the travelling salesman problem. Make each "path" more than a 2-state issue.

 

Hoot, as a fellow geek, look up Dr. Karmarkar's research circa 1984. He's an applied mathematician, so this should be right up your alley!

 

EVP

 

[edited to correct researcher's name and year of his famous work in linear programming]

[Hoot]

In the end, it'll just be little metal disks that bear the artifacts of active thin surfaces

 

Sorry for the OT, but that's very old hat for long-term storage. Even if we assumed "active" to be some sci-fi bio-technology, I think we best be getting away from a 2-D storage mechanism.

 

Think N-D. Start with a 3-D gas matrix and refine the travelling salesman problem. Make each "path" more than a 2-state issue.

 

Hoot, as a fellow geek, look up Dr. Karmarkar's research circa 1984. He's an applied mathematician, so this should be right up your alley!

 

EVP

 

Now given the TSP, I'm unclear what your idea is of the application to N-D states of particle objects. Are you saying that the coin will pass through a finite number of closed (entropic) states before returning to its current state? No way. One could argue that every state change for any given coin is a new entropic state, the probability of which is zero. (Thus the probability of a coin returning to its original state is zero.) Indeed, our current observations are a problem because they do not allow us to accurately measure trajectory, only static condition. In that context, the problem of combinatorics is enormous since one has to resolve every possible state condition. THAT would require the correct (read *exact*) probabilistic model to describe all conditions of the entropic space. Now I'm not a quantum physicist, but I don't believe that could be done. Too many problems with resolving so-called "closed state" conditions in a truly open system (at least relative to a coin).

 

Although my arcane notion of active thin surfaces doesn't attack the problem at the level that you're interested in, I still think it provides the correct aesthetic appeal. After all, we won't be around long enough for all of this to get resolved.

 

Hoot

[EVillageProwler]

Ahhh, I get it. You were talking about the discs as a form of new age money. I thought you meant them as a high-tech, AI version of long-term storage (i.e., sci-fi hard disk drives). I forgot that you're a bio-sci geek and not an engineer.

 

NBB time?

 

 

EVP

[Tradedollarnut]

geeks.

 

[John Maben]

Typos and glitches now fixed, and it has a print option as well!

Rosen Interview

[Hoot]

Excellent John! Thanks for making this so accessible. Printed off a copy for the archives.

 

Hoot