society
pontiff | January 22, 2009Part three in my continuing pedantic slow-as-molasses walk through Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell.
List of posts here: introduction, ch 1, ch 2.
SPOILER ALERT: Dude, I can't talk about the book without giving away what the book is about, so if you don't want the book's main ideas to be spoiled, don't continue reading.
IDIOT ALERT: I'm in no way qualified in most of the fields Gladwell will touch on, so please, a grain of salt, before you start complaining about my ignorance. Yes I'm an idiot, please tell me why!
Having, in the past chapter (hopefully) convinced us that…
drorzel | January 13, 2009Over at Built on Facts, Matt Springer is easing his way back into blogging by asking "What is Science?". He offers a simple one-sentence definition:
Science is the testing of ideas.
That's all. Every technicality I can think of is avoided so long as the person doing the science is honest. Create fair and objective tests, try not to fool yourself or anyone else, don't be wedded to your hypothesis, basic things like that. Be dishonest and I doubt there's a definition in the world that some sufficiently clever pseudoscientist can't wriggle out of. Test your ideas and be honest about it. That's…
clock | January 9, 2009This is your weekend reading - lots of it, some fascinating, some enraging, but perhaps if enough people are aware and scream loudly enough, something can be done:
Assistance Monkeys, Ducks, Parrots, Pigs and Ducks ... Should the law protect them?
More Follow Up on NYT Story About Assistance Creatures
More Assistance Creature Follow Up - The History of Service Monkeys, Plus Monkey Waiters
Newsflash! DOJ ADA Changes Leaked -- All Animals Set to Be Banned Except Dogs
DoJ's Rationale Behind Banning Non-Canine Service Animals
DOJ's Proposal and Rationale for Allowing Psychiatric Service Animals (…
clock | December 30, 2008This article is almost two years old, but it is perhaps even more current today than it was when it first appeared:
Pretend for a second that you're a CEO. Would you reveal your deepest, darkest secrets online? Would you confess that you're an indecisive weakling, that your colleagues are inept, that you're not really sure if you can meet payroll? Sounds crazy, right? After all, Coke doesn't tell Pepsi what's in the formula. Nobody sane strips down naked in front of their peers. But that's exactly what Glenn Kelman did. And he thinks it saved his business.
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The…
clock | December 30, 2008On the Hopebuilding's Weblog, Rosemary wrote:
When I was a journalist, many years ago now, it never really occurred to me that we spent much more time on "bad news" than on "good news". In fact, sometimes people caricatured the "good news" attempts as being Pollyanna-ish; they thought "good" news was not really news.
But these days, as I spend so much time on the web, I really appreciate the "good news" sites. It provides a healthy balance to the daily diet of so much "bad news" in the media - what my friend Jim Lord calls "deficit thinking", and what he replaces with "appreciative thinking…
pontiff | December 30, 2008Moving on to Chapter 1 in my ongoing pedantic plodding through Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success. See here for what this is all about. Note that I really am doing this as I read the book (I'm reading it really really slowly), so what I say here may be outdated by the time I get further into the book.
List of posts here: introduction, ch 1.
SPOILER ALERT: Dude, I can't talk about the book without giving away what the book is about, so if you don't want the book's main ideas to be spoiled, don't continue reading.
IDIOT ALERT: I'm in no way qualified in most of the fields…
drorzel | December 30, 2008Inside Higher Ed has an article on athletics and admissions based on an investigative report from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The report compares the SAT scores of football and basketball players to those of other students, but what it really highlights is the difference between science and journalism.
The basis of the report is pretty simple: the paper got the test score reports for 55 major colleges and universities, from data that they are required to file with the NCAA. They compared the average scores for football and basketball players to the scores of other athletes and students…
pontiff | December 29, 2008So I picked up Malcolm Gladwell's newest book Outliers: The Story of Success the other day, as I'm sure many of you will be doing on your next trip to the airport (where stands of Gladwell's hardcover book, marked down thirty percent, block your every exit through the already cramped airport bookstores.) Gladwell's books are fun, but I find myself often disagreeing with his analysis, so I thought it would be entertaining to take my time reading his latest and jot down my thoughts as I progress. Well "entertaining" in that "holy shit dude you are pedantic" sort of way. Note that I really do…
clock | December 23, 2008Duke University's John Staddon makes the case for less, and more effective, road signage in the U.S - using Durham roads and streets as examples:
From here, which I discovered here because I am fascinated by the science of traffic and driving. If only explaining the mathematical models of traffic flow and the cognitive psychology of driving to the traffic cop could get one out of a ticket....
drorzel | December 20, 2008I've said a number of harsh things here about the bad attitude of people who consider themselve Intellectuals toward math and science. After reading this New Yorker discussion about a Young Adult novel, I may need to change my stance a bit.
It's not that they're better than expected when it comes to math and science-- the subject never comes up. The mind-changing thing is their really appalling ignorance of and attitude toward YA books. It's really pretty amazing. And if somebody said things in public that were half as insulting to teenage girls as what they say about teenage boys, they'd be…
clock | December 19, 2008You may have heard the story that Scarlett Johansson had a cold when she appeared on Jay Leno's show the other day. And you may have heard that she got the cold from her 'The Spirit' co-star Samuel L. Jackson. And you may have heard that she had to blow her nose into a tissue during the show. And you may have heard that this particular tissue is now up for sale on eBay. And you may have heard that all proceeds of this sale will benefit USA Harvest, the charity of Scarlett Johansson's choice.
What you may not know is that, due to the content of the tissue being regarded as biohazard (or even…
clock | December 15, 2008Pawel tried, for a year, to be a freelance scientist. While the experiment did not work, in a sense that it had to end, he has learned a lot from the experience. And all of us following his experience also learned a lot about the current state of the world. And I do not think this has anything to do with Pawel living in Poland - I doubt this would have been any different if he was in the USA or elsewhere.
You all know that I am a big fan of telecommuting and coworking and one of the doomsayers about the future existence of the institution of 'The Office'. And you also know that I am a…
clock | December 15, 2008Jeff Cohen was one of the people interviewed for this article in Raleigh News & Observer today about the Future of the Internet:
In 2020, powerful mobile phones will rule, privacy will erode further and the line between work and home life will be faint, if not obliterated.
That's what 578 technology gurus see in their crystal balls, according to a new report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The survey, "Future of the Internet III," conducted by Pew and Elon University, envisions amazing advances in mobile devices, virtual reality, voice and touch technology -- possibly…
clock | December 12, 2008Hmmm, I am wondering if this is connected - adult sites are feeling the crunch so....are they now funding scientific consumer research?
pontiff | December 11, 2008The Optimizer ideas on Worldview Manager gets written up in Forbes.The program will work by showing users a list of statements about a topic and then asking them how strongly they agree or disagree with each. At the end, the system will present users with a list of the statements they endorsed that contradict one another. It will also suggest that users reconsider those views and the assumptions behind them.
Similar teaching programs already exist for narrow fields, especially in technical areas of philosophy. Aaronson, though, is extremely ambitious for Worldview Manager and wants it to…
clock | December 11, 2008For instance, to protest Creationist bills in state and local legislatures:
clock | December 6, 2008You build a mine where the ore is. And facilities right next to the mine, to extract the metals from it. And a factory next to it that turns the raw metal into parts and objects. And a train station or a port next to it, so you can move the objects to the stores you built where the people are. And you also build a town where all your employees will live.
That's how it's always been done.
You cannot work the land, without living on it and getting your boots muddy. If you are hoarding something valuable, you need to hire night-guards who will actually show up at work. I understand, there…
drorzel | December 5, 2008A few days ago, I complained again about the relative lack of science books in the New York Times "Notable Books of 2008" list. Yesterday, one of the big stories was CNN axing its entire science unit, such as it was, which drew comments from lots of blogs (and more whose links I can't be bothered to track down).
I'm probably the only one who thinks this, but in my opinion, these two are related. I'm not saying one caused the other, but that they're both symptoms of the same thing: the broad lack of respect for science among educated people. (Which I've ranted about before.)
One of the…
pontiff | December 4, 2008Robert Ebert: Win Ben Stein's Mind.
Peter R. Saulson: Review of "Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture" by Alan Sokal
Skewers of "Expelled" from the first:This film is cheerfully ignorant, manipulative, slanted, cherry-picks quotations, draws unwarranted conclusions, makes outrageous juxtapositions (Soviet marching troops representing opponents of ID), pussy-foots around religion (not a single identified believer among the ID people), segues between quotes that are not about the same thing, tells bald-faced lies, and makes a completely baseless association between freedom of speech…
drorzel | December 3, 2008Last year, around this time, I posted a rant about the lack of science books in the New York Times's "Notable Books of 2007." While I was out of town last week, they posted this year's list. So, have things improved?
Yes and no. They do, in fact, have two books that are unquestionably science books on the list: THE DRUNKARD’S WALK: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, by Leonard Mlodinow (which I also reviewed), and THE SUPERORGANISM: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies, by Bert Hölldobler and E.O. Wilson.
By my count, they list 52 non-fiction titles, meaning that a whole 3.8…