society
clock | May 21, 2010A 1947 movie made by the Department of War - as current today as it was then:
You can download the video or watch it bigger here.
clock | May 16, 2010This is one of the four TED videos we showed (according to the TED rules a TEDx has to show original TED videos as a certain percentage of the program) at TEDxRTP back in March:
When The Bride Of Coturnix posted this video on her Facebook Wall, she added this little note: "People often ask me what, exactly, Bora does for a living. This is the closest answer. The 'for a living' part is a bit of a gray area..." LOL
cagapakis | May 11, 2010Unlike many of my colleagues, I'm not really interested in the whole "science vs. religion" thing, but I do want to point out the very thoughtful analysis of genetic engineering and synthetic biology by the Church of Scotland's Society, Religion, and Technology Project. On GM food, they write:
The official scientific and economic reports support the view of the 1999 Assembly, that GM is not a simple 'yes or no' issue and must be taken case-by-case, weighing up many different factors. Theologically, SRT has found no convincing reason to say it is a wrong act to transfer genes into a crop from…
clock | May 9, 2010Scott Huler (blog, Twitter), the author of 'Defining the Wind', has a new book coming out this Tuesday. 'On The Grid' (amazon.com) is the story of infrastructure. For this book, Scott started with his own house (unlike me, Scott did the work) and traced where all those pipes, drains, cables and wires were coming from and going to, how does it all work, does it work well, where does it all come from historically, and how its current state of (dis)repair portends to the future.
You can read a review in Raleigh News & Observer, as well as an article by Scott in the same paper and another one…
drorzel | May 4, 2010As James Nicoll is fond of saying, context is for the weak. So here's a context-free poll regarding the reporting of election results:
Releasing a rank-ordered list of candidates with vote totals after a contested election is:online survey
If you'd like to explain what context you might imagine this to have in the comments, that could be fun to see.
drorzel | April 26, 2010I'm currently enjoying the high, thin whistle of an impending deadline, so here are a couple of poll questions about infuriating behaviors to pass the time. The first is about people:
Which of these is more infuriating to read/watch/hear?online surveys
The second about presentations:
Which of these talks is more infuriating to listen to?Market Research
My answers to these are probably a big part of why I sometimes have trouble with the Internet and the people on it. I'm interested to know what other people think, though. And while the polls themselves are binary choices, feel free to…
clock | April 23, 2010Angela Shelton (@angelashelton), an Asheville NC native, gave a powerful talk at the 140conf in NYC this week:
clock | April 11, 2010
The other night I went to the opening night of RENT at Duke, the latest production of the Hoof 'n' Horn ensemble, the 'South's oldest student-run musical theater organization' (find them on Facebook and Twitter). Here's the promo video, released before the opening night:
I always have difficulty judging plays by amateur ensembles - at exactly which standard should I hold them? I have seen amazing high-school plays and horrible professional ones (I mentioned both in this post), as well as, of course, amazing professional ones. The Duke group is a mix of people with some stage experience and…
drorzel | April 9, 2010The National Science Board made a deeply regrettable decision to omit questions on evolution and the Big Bang from the Science and Engineering Indicators report for 2010. As you might expect, this has stirred up some controversy.
I wasn't surprised to learn this, as I had already noticed the omission a couple of months ago, when I updated the slides for my talk on public communication of science-- the figure showing survey data in the current talk doesn't include those questions, while the original version has them in there. I noticed it, and thought it was a little odd, but it had no effect…
clock | April 7, 2010Our April Science Café (description below) will be held on Tuesday 4/20 at the Irregardless Cafe on Morgan Street. Our café speaker for that night is Rogelio Sullivan, Associate Director of the Advanced Transportation Energy Center and also of the Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management Systems Center (FREEDM) at NCSU. Come and learn how our country is dealing with our ever-increasing energy consumption, and of ways that we may be able to reduce our dependence on foreign oil using a combination of innovative alternative energy cars and changes in our daily transportation…
clock | March 21, 2010Three thought-provoking reads (even more thought-provoking taken together than each in isolation):
Crowdsourcing Honesty?:
In short, we are far more likely to be honest when reminded of morality, especially when temptation strikes. Ariely thus concludes that the act of taking an oath can make all the difference.
Craig Newmark on the Web's Next Big Problem:
And what is that? The question of who to trust online, according to Newmark. To solve it, he believes that what the web needs is a "distributed trust network" that allows us to manage our online relationships and reputations. I just…
clock | March 5, 2010On Wednesday, Bride Of Coturnix and I went to Ignite Raleigh. There was an Ignite show in many cities around the world that night, and the one in Raleigh was one of the biggest, with 702 people in attendance, in Lincoln theater (which is far too small for such a crowd - but crowdiness made it more intimate). It was a blast. I saw a lot of old friends, met some of the people I only know from Twitter or blogs, and met some new ones. All 19 talks were excellent, thought-provoking and, what is important at Ignite, they were all full of energy and fun (and funny!). It is hard to pick favourites,…
drorzel | February 10, 2010We had a meeting yesterday with the chair of the CS department, who wanted to know about our computing needs. Sadly, she just meant that she wanted to know what computing things we would like our students to be taught, because my real computing need, as I said to Kate last night, is "I need the entire computer industry to operate on a different paradigm than it does now, because the current system is making everyone miserable."
I was half joking, but not entirely. I genuinely am annoyed at the whole way the industry operates, because planned obsolescence means that I am constantly being…
drorzel | February 7, 2010My talk at Maryland last Thursday went pretty well-- the impending Snowpocalypse kept the audience down, as people tried to fit in enough work to compensate for the Friday shutdown, but the people who were there seemed to like it, and asked good questions. If you weren't there, but want to know what I talked about, here are the slides on SlideShare:
Talking to My Dog About Science: Why Public Communication of Science Matters and How Weblogs Can Help
View more presentations from Chad Orzel.
This flattens out some of the more animation-dependent jokes, but gets you the basic idea. It is, of…
clock | January 29, 2010If there were ever a place that came close to the magical world of Pandora in James Cameron's new film Avatar, it would probably be the Amazon. There may not be butterflies that look like flying squid, but in the Amazon can you eat giant worms and lemon flavored ants for dinner in a forest that is home to both the jaguar and the pink dolphin. Reporter Melaina Spitzer joined a group of indigenous leaders from the Amazon in Ecuador's capital Quito, to see Avatar on the big screen in 3D.
I heard the story on PRI's The World this afternoon. Glad to see there is also a video. Interesting....
clock | January 25, 2010The current forum discussion on PRI/BBC The World is Tackling the Global Organ Shortage. This week's guest is Dr. Mustafa Al-Mousawi, past president of the Middle East Society for Organ Transplantation. Listen to the podcast and ask Dr. Al-Mousawi questions in the forum. He'll be checking in and responding throughout the week:
Worldwide, there is a dire shortage of organs for transplantation.
In the United States alone, more than 100,000 people are waiting for new hearts, lungs and kidneys. Many of these patients will die waiting.
Frustrated, some patients turn to a global black market in…
drorzel | January 22, 2010The NSF's Science and Engineering Indicators report came out not too long ago, and the bulk of it is, as usual, spent on quasi-quantitative measures of scientific productivity-- numbers of degrees granted, numbers of patent applications for various countries, etc. I find all of those things pretty deeply flawed, so I tend to skip past them and go straight to the stuff about public knowledge and understanding (chapter 7, available as a PDF at the link above).
This doesn't get much press, probably because the results are depressing. They've asked a bunch of factual knowledge questions of people…
drorzel | January 18, 2010One of the less attractive features of the New York Times is its tendency to feature little profiles of horrible people. They're not presented that way, of course, but that's the effect-- I read these articles, and just want to slap everybody involved.
Today's story on marital tensions caused by environmental issues is a fine example of the form:
He bikes 12 1/2 miles to and from his job at a software company outside Santa Barbara, Calif. He recycles as much as possible and takes reusable bags to the grocery store.
Still, his girlfriend, Shelly Cobb, feels he has not gone far enough.
Ms. Cobb…