Uncategorized
gregladen | February 10, 2010KATY, TX--A man in danger of losing his home had his prayers coincidentally answered Tuesday by the haphazard machinations of an indifferent and entirely random universe. Marvin Pewter, 45, was able to refinance his house after a radio station in Sioux Falls, SD played the favorite song of a local data-entry worker who, quietly singing along to the tune in her office, became distracted and missed a keystroke that eventually resulted in Pewter's credit rating increasing by 200 points.
Oh wait ... it was just a story in The Onion.
Never mind....
grrlscientist | February 10, 2010
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is less than one week away and it is still seeking submissions! Can you help by sending URLs for well-written blog essays to me?
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, nature and medical writing targeted specifically to the public that has been published in the blogosphere within the past 60 days.
The most recent edition of Scientia Pro Publica (…
cortex | February 10, 2010The amygdala is an almond shaped chunk of flesh in the center of your brain. It's long been associated with a wide variety of mostly negative emotions and behaviors, from the generation of fear to the memory of painful associations. (There's some suggestive evidence that sociopaths have a broken amygdala. Because they can't learn from their moral mistakes, they don't comprehend morality.)
And now there's solid evidence that the amygdala also underlies one of the most potent human biases: loss aversion. To understand this bias, it helps to take a little quiz, which was pioneered by the great…
agelman | February 10, 2010I just finished grading my final exams--see here for the problems and the solutions--and it got me thinking about a few things.
#1 is that I really really really should be writing the exams before the course begins. Here's the plan (as it should be):
- Write the exam
- Write a practice exam
- Give the students the practice exam on day 1, so they know what they're expected to be able to do, once the semester is over.
- If necessary, write two practice exams so that you have more flexibility in what should be on the final.
The students didn't do so well on my exam, and I totally blame myself,…
gregladen | February 9, 2010I had one of the most interesting dinners anyone has ever had.
I spent the evening at a specially prepared dinner, cooked by chef Chris Olson, and served in the diorama exhibit in the Bell Museum of Natural History. (There are no bells in the Bell Museum.) My job was to interrupt the happy diners with every course and explain to them the anthropology and evolutionary biology of what they were eating, plus a Pygmy story, which was possible in no small part because Chef Olson designed the dinner to be interesting in this regard. David Anderson invented a beer for the occasion, and it was…
nisbetmc | February 9, 2010In my remarks as part of a panel at Harvard last week, I predicted that a new public accountability narrative about climate scientists had been locked in by the "ClimateGate" controversy and that each successive event such as the dispute over the Himalayan glacier data would be re-interpreted and amplified through this lens.
Partisan segments of the public--whether on the left or the right--pay close attention to accusations of political wrongdoing on the part of officials and scientists are not immune to this interpretation. In fact, public accountability is an enduring theme and focus…
mspringer | February 9, 2010A while back I mentioned I was starting the project of reading Neal Stephenson's rather lengthy Baroque Cycle. I'm most of the way done with the second book, so we're coming round to the 2000-page mark. It's a brilliant work thus far, though it's very difficult to summarize. The plot is rather, well, baroque. If I had to cram it into one sentence I think it might be "The world undergoes a phase transition from medieval to modern via the development of science and finance."
The series is heavily populated by actual historical people. Among these are the transcendentally brilliant Isaac…
agelman | February 9, 2010Tyler Cowen quotes Barbara Demick as writing, "North Koreans have multiple words for prison in much the same way that the Inuit do for snow." So do we, no? But in our case, they seem to come from 1930s B-movies
I wonder if there are almost as many words for prison in Russia, Turkmenistan, and the other leaders on the list. Apparently North Korea is off the charts, so perhaps they have ten times as many words for prison/jail as we do.
P.S. America includes a bunch of Inuits, so I guess we have multiple words for snow also!
grrlscientist | February 8, 2010
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is just one week away and it is still seeking submissions! Can you help by sending URLs for well-written blog essays to me?
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, nature and medical writing targeted specifically to the public that has been published in the blogosphere within the past 60 days.
The most recent edition of Scientia Pro Publica (Science…
ddobbs | February 8, 2010
According to a poll (pdf) conducted in the days before the Super Bowl, "Democrats strongly prefer the Saints, by a 36-21 margin, but Republicans are narrowly going for the Colts, 26-25. Independents lean toward the Saints as well, 33-20." Hopefully, Democrats take some lessons from their favored team, too.
Early in the game, the Saints failed to score when they had the ball on their opponent's three-yard line. Big setback, and eerily reminiscent of the metaphors many are using for health care. But then the Saints decided against walking off the field and throwing the game to the Colts.…
cortex | February 8, 2010Sam Anderson, in New York Magazine, takes on ChatRoulette, that strange new site that connects you, via webcam, with a stream of strangers:
The site was only a few months old, but its population was beginning to explode in a way that suggested serious viral potential: 300 users in December had grown to 10,000 by the beginning of February. Although big media outlets had yet to cover it, smallish blogs were full of huzzahs. The blog Asylum called ChatRoulette its favorite site since YouTube; another, The Frisky, called it "the Holy Grail of all Internet fun." Everyone seemed to agree that it…
gregladen | February 8, 2010The question is: how does a bird "know" when to stop laying? When is enough enough? When is the clutch (all of the eggs laid in one breeding attempt) complete? Most of ecological literature is focused on energetics: are birds getting hungry, have they depleted some important source of energy, etc.
But the circadian field looks for internal mechanisms.
This paper is by Bora! (and co-authors)
Check it out!
agelman | February 8, 2010Ouch.
Here's the story (which Kaiser forwarded to me). The English medical journal The Lancet (according to its publisher, "the world's leading independent general medical journal") published an article in 1998 in support of the much-derided fringe theory that MMR vaccination causes autism. From the BBC report:
The Lancet said it now accepted claims made by the researchers were "false".
It comes after Dr Andrew Wakefield, the lead researcher in the 1998 paper, was ruled last week to have broken research rules by the General Medical Council. . . . Dr Wakefield was in the pay of solicitors…
Helping people fill out financial aid forms (at H&R Block!) increases the rate of college attendance
agelman | February 8, 2010Eric Bettinger, Bridget Terry Long, Philip Oreopoulos, and Lisa Sanbonmatsu write:
Growing concerns about low awareness and take-up rates for government support programs like college financial aid have spurred calls to simplify the application process and enhance visibility.
Here's the study:
H&R Block tax professionals helped low- to moderate-income families complete the FAFSA, the federal application for financial aid. Families were then given an estimate of their eligibility for government aid as well as information about local postsecondary options. A second randomly-chosen group of…
cwilcox | February 7, 2010Think of something wonderful - something someone said to you that made your day, or the happiest moment you can remember. Go ahead, take a moment. Now, what are you doing? Odds are, you're smiling.
It takes 12 different muscles in our faces to produce the easily-recognized expression. But smiling is far from a tough feat for our facial muscles. Smiles are so hard-wired into the human condition that babies have been known to smile before birth. Smiling is as instinctual to us as breathing.
Why do we smile? In part, smiling is a social action. We smile to let others know how we feel. Facial…
gregladen | February 7, 2010The number of anti-Semitic incidents in the UK set a new high in 2009, the most since records began, according a report released on Friday.
This is from the Jerusalem Post.
The increase in antisemetic acts has been attributed at least in part to the aftermath of the December 27, 2008 Israeli military campaign in Gaza known as Operation Cast Lead
"The increase in anti-Semitic incidents recorded by CST in the early part of last year is deeply troubling and I want to be unequivocal today; I am a proud friend of Israel and welcome a robust debate about how we ensure both a secure Israel and a…
grrlscientist | February 7, 2010
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is almost here once more and it is still seeking submissions for next Monday's edition of this blog carnival! Can you help by sending URLs for well-written science, medicine, and nature blog essays to me?
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, nature and medical writing targeted specifically to the public that has been published in the blogosphere…