Nik Bear Brown - Nicholas Brown's website

Nik Bear Brown

About Me

Wanna know who created this site?

I'm a 6'6" 245 lb yogi with blond hair, and blue eyes - the "surfer dude" look. I love yoga, play capoeira, lift weights, dance and run.

Please see my websites Capoeirista.com ( http://www.Capoeirista.com) for more info on capoeira. I also have a website PeaceSymbol.org (http://www.peacesymbol.org ) that is a tribute to the Peace Symbol. I typically do something physical 2-3 hours a day.

My friends call me "Bear." I was born in Brasil (Rio de Janeiro) but grew up in the United States (Berkeley and San Francisco).

I'm a PhD student in Computer Science and Neuroscience at UCLA. I live in Los Angeles (Westwood). I have Bachelor Degree's in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Other than working out and sleeping. My life is spending 60-70 hours a week on my research writing algorithms to automagically get a computer to read the millions of abstracts in the medical literature and database information on gene-gene, protein-protein, and disease-phenotype/endophenotype relations.

I also work on research on "automated skepticism" and data mining. That is, incorporating reasoning/evidence in to search, text mining, data mining and knowledge bases. "Automated skepticism" is a form of automated critical theory that deals particularly with questions of dissonance between those ideas that are accepted as true, or normal, or acceptable while marginalizing or denying other ideas.

I'm writing several grants to get my biotech company off the ground this summer.

You can see more info at my website nikbrown.com or my blog livejournal.com/~balaramji or fotos at my myspace http://www.myspace.com/balaramji . I also have Orkut http://www.orkut.com/Home.aspx?xid=9922964117264037183. By the way, Orkut.com is the best website in the world for learning about Brazil. As of July 2005, 73% of orkut's members were from Brazil, followed by 6% from the United States. If you need an invite to join Orkut e-mail me.

I'm very interested in spiritual things (buddhism, catholicism, islam, taoism, hinduism, and zen) .

I've joined NetFlix and get 3-4 cool movies every week.

Interests: Deviance, Stealing Ballons on Free Ballon Day, Capoeira, Flossing, Medical Research, Computaional Neuroscience, Raw Food Candy Treats, Pirates, Bioinformatics, Dancing, Taking Naps, Sumo, Film, Peeing in the Shower, Brazil, Cookies, Music, Hip-Hop, Hippies, Yogurt, Yoga, Nudity, eBay, Reggae, Knock Knock Jokes, Jiu-Jitsu, Dance, Dancers, Yodeling, Googling, BBoying, Semi-Nude Yoga-Like Modern Dance, Interesting and Unusual People, Hapa Chicks, Activism.

Fav quote:

(I do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

-- e. e. cummings,

*somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond*

Who I'd like to meet:

Passionate people, athletic people, smart people. (Especially cute hapas and Latinas and Brasileiras).

Para as Brasileiras e Os Brasileiros:

Eu queiro practicar meu portuguese e adjudar brasileiros quem querem aprender o inglês.

Eu sou um dois metres, cento e dez quilo yogi . Eu tenho cabelo louro, e olhos azuis profundos. (the "surfer dude" look) Meus amigos me-chamam "urso."

Adoro atividades físicas. Eu jogo capoeira, malhar com "weights", danço e corro. Veja por favor meus websites Capoeirista.com ( http://www.Capoeirista.com ) para mais no capoeira. Eu tenho também um pagina do web PeaceSymbol.org (http://www.peacesymbol.org )

Eu moro no Los Angeles.

Eu nasci no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro) mas eu fui criado nos estados unidos então meu português é muito mau. Desculpe me meu português.

Eu sou um estudante de PhD na ciência da computadora e neuroscience em UCLA.

Você pode ter mais informações de minha pesquisa em meu website nikbrown.com ou meu blog http://www.livejournal.com/~balaramji ou fotos em meu myspace http://www.myspace.com/balaramji.

Eu sou muito interessado em coisas espirituais (buddhism, catholicism, islam, taoism, hinduism, e zen) que eu também danço (hip-hop e moderno) e faço o capoeira.

Eu estou olhando para encontrar-se com 20-36 de SAF ou Latina ou Brasileira quem é linda, atlética, simpaticá e inteligente. ( e quem gosta de mim)

Outras coisas? Eu tenho um coração macio para mulheres com olhos marrons, cabelo marrom e pele marrom; especialmente se ela é inteligente e gosta de tentar coisas novas e diferentes.

Eu tenho um mestrado em ciência da computação e um bachlarado em biologia molecular e em bioquimíca.

As coisas de que eu gosto incluem: deviance, roubar os balões nos dias de balão de graça, capoeira, passar fio dental, pesquisa médica, break dancing, piratas, bioinformaticas, dançar, sumo, cinema, Brasil, bolinhos, música, hip-hop, ioga, eBay, reggae, as píadas de knock-knock, jiu-jitsu, café, dança, dançarinas, yodeling, ralis políticos, e googling.

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Automated Skepticism – What is it?

Data pipelining systems, expert systems, knowledge bases, and data mining systems are becoming increasingly sophisticated making it easy to do some fairly complicated analysis of data. However all of these approaches have explicit and implicit biases and assumptions. Applying these techniques without exposing the biases and assumptions makes it easy to come up with meaningless and possibly misleading results. When explicit assumptions are known, for example a t-test is that is applied to data that doesn’t have a normal distribution can be checked and corrected. However, much of modern data analysis can use a hodgepodge of techniques like support vector machines, principal components, clustering, random forests, naïve bayes, decision trees, neural networks, etc., etc. which are intended “to find interesting structure in data” or to “reduce the dimensionality of data.” Some of these techniques are heavily dependent on parameterization and can give widely different results on the same data with different sets of reasonable parameters. Further many methodologies to find patterns in data - particularly “black box” techniques and heuristic techniques - may work beautifully on some data sets and poorly on others. Automated Skepticism is not an approach for evaluating the data; rather it is a way of evaluating the methods that are being used to evaluate that data. Automated Skepticism isn’t just a set of computational techniques per se. Rather Automated Skepticism is an attitude/philosophy about how a data analysis should be carried out. Specifically Automated Skepticism employs techniques that can help one do the following:

• Assess the appropriateness of a methodology used to find underlying structure for a given data set.
• Detect anomalies of a methodology.
• Test and expose underlying methodological assumptions of a methodology.
• Test and expose hidden bias of a methodology.
• Increase/Decrease one’s confidence for in results a methodology for a given data set.
• Determine reasonable parameterization for a methodology for a given data set.

Automated Skepticism is not testing whether some procedure is getting the “correct” answer; rather its checking the consistency, and sensitivity of a procedure over a range of plausible conditions. We are essentially testing the appropriateness of the methodology for the task at hand – realizing that individual techniques may vary greatly in the appropriateness and quality across various datasets. This process can also tell us how gracefully the specificity and sensitivity degrade as a function of noise for a given algorithm.

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Interests
Computational Biology, Yoga, Capoeira, starting my biotech company, Lifting Weights, Dance, Spiritual Things (buddhism, catholicism, islam, taoism, hinduism, and zen). Also Deviance, Stealing Ballons on Free Ballon Day, Capoeira, Flossing, Medical Research, Computaional Neuroscience, Raw Food Candy Treats, Pirates, Bioinformatics, Dancing, Taking Naps, Sumo, Film, Brazil, Cookies, Deconstruction, Music, Hip-Hop, Hippies, Yogurt, Yoga, Nudity, eBay, Peeing in the Shower, Reggae, Knock Knock Jokes, Jiu-Jitsu, Dance, Dancers, Yodeling, Googling, BBoying, Semi-Nude Yoga-Like Modern Dance, Interesting and Unusual People, Activism.
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Music

Danceble Funk: James Brown, Earth, Wind & Fire, Rufus & Chaka Khan, The Ohio Players, Parliament, Stevie Wonder, Tower of Power, George Clinton, L.T.D., Brothers Johnson, Funkadelic, Herbie Hancock, etc. ANything with passion, Opera, Reggae, Bluegrass, Bossa Nova, African, Capoeira, Hip-Hop, Forro, Axe, Classical, R&B, Jazz, Rap, Yodeling, Hindu Bhajans, Chants.

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Movies

The Incredibles, Maria Full of Grace, Finding Neverland, Rocky, Fahrenheit 9/11, South Park, Catwalk, ANything with passion (I don't mind nudity, martial arts or anything that's in Portuguese)., A Beautiful Mind, Bruce Lee flix, Carandiru, Cidade de Deus, Cool Hand Luke, Dumb and Dumber, Enter the Dragon, Fight Club, Finding Nemo, Jet Li flix, Monsters Inc., Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Nightmare Before Christmas, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Onibus 174, Pirates of the Caribbean, Pocahontas, Rejected (Don Hertzfeldt), Shrek, Shrek 2, Some Like It Hot, Taxi Driver, Troy, Zoolander, Breakdance Step-by-Step, Wild Style, You Got Served, Fight Club.

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Books

I'm currently reading Elmo can quack like a duck. I just finished reading Sesame Street Oscars Book and Sesame Street Grovers Book.

I also like: Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing by Christopher D. Manning, Speech and Language Processing: An Introduction to Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics and Speech Recognition by Daniel Jurafsky

Light on Yoga by B.K.S. Iyengar, Yoga: The Path To Holistic Health by B.K.S. Iyengar, Anatomy of Hatha Yoga, The Heart of Yoga by T. K. V. Desikachar, Ashtanga Yoga: The Practice Manual: An Illustrated Guide to Personal Practice by David Swenson, Health, Healing and Beyond : Yoga and the Living Tradition of Krishnamacharya, Yoga: The Iyengar Way, The Light On Pranayama : The Yogic Art of Breathing by B.K.S. Iyengar, Asanas: 608 Yoga Poses by Dharma Mittra, Yoga by Linda Sparrowe, Living Yoga: Creating A Life Practice by Christy Turlington, Moola Bandha: The Master Key by Swami Buddhananda, Thai Massage : Sacred Body Work by Ananda Apfelbaum, Yoga Mala by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois,

Nude Body Nude by Howard Schatz, Twisted Yoga by Inc. Philobolus

Fart Proudly by Carl Japikse

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Cool Links

peacesymbol.org - my tribute to the peace symbol

capoeirista.com - my and a friend's informational capoeira site

afrobrasil - my eBay store

balaramji - my livejournal blog

nik's space - my myspace site

ucla center for cognitive phenomics - my work

ucla coop - my hippie communal living situation

ucla - my school

muscles - my training tips

svet.us - one of my best friends, Svet has a personal training site. Svet (at 185 lbs) is a: Bulgarian National Free-Style Wrestling Champion, Bulgarian National Power Lifting Champion, Two-time World Sumo Champion, Two-time European Sumo Champion, Three-time Bulgarian Sumo Champion and Bulgarian National Handball Champion.

skymediation.com - If you are interested in Breathing Meditation, Herbs, Acupuncture, Moxibustion, Cupping, Scraping or Acupuressure then check out my friends site
skymediation.com

melindadance.com - need a belly dancer? Then check out my friend's Melinda's site.

jaredfox.com - one of my best friends and biotech business partners site

rawyogis.com - a friend Raghunath's website on raw food and yoga. Raghunath teaches one of the best yoga classes in Los Angeles (which is saying a lot given the amount of yoga taught in LA). I've also tasted his raw food; particualrly these raw food sweet treat things he makes. They are unbelievable - better than candy and good for you! He also does yoga retreats. E-mail him about upcoming yoga workshops.

writing-by-ashley-karr.com - a friend's free lance writing website. Need some wordsmithing? She's the chick to do it!

google.com - decent search engine

capoeira - Mestre Boneco's Capoeira Brasil group in Los Angeles

sumo - interested in competing or watching amateur and pro sumo in the United States? Than check out usasumo.com.

ucla co-op (ucha) - A Co-op (UCHA) é uma comunidade muito barata e está localizada ao lado da UCLA, em Los Angeles.

A Co-op está aberta a estudantes de qualquer tipo, sejam estudantes da UCLA, de escolas de idiomas, da faculdade de Santa Monica(SMC) e que, durante o veraccento, abre suas portas para todas as escolas. Voce sempre encontrará um Brasileiro por lá. A Co-op é um bom lugar para os Brasileiros que quiserem aprender inglês e conhecer os Estados Unidos. Para ver fotos e ter maiores informaçoes sobre a Co-op é so acessar: http://www.geocities.com/uchaonline/ucha_home.htm

The UCHA Co-op is a very cheap housing community next to UCLA that is open to students of any sort (UCLA students, Santa Monica College, etc.) and everyone in the summer. You can see pictures, details and prices at http://www.geocities.com/uchaonline/ucha_home.htm

craigslist - want some cheap crap? want to meet some crazy people? then check out craigslist los angeles

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