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agelman | November 21, 2009Jimmy points me to this article, "Why most discovered true associations are inflated," by J. P. Ioannidis. As Jimmy pointed out, this is exactly what we call type M (for magnitude) errors. I completely agree with Ioannidis's point, which he seems to be making more systematically than David Weakliem and I did in our recent article on the topic.
My only suggestion beyond what Ioannidis wrote has to do with potential solutions to the problem. His ideas include: "being cautious about newly discovered effect sizes, considering some rational down-adjustment, using analytical methods that…
gregladen | November 20, 2009Artificial Intelligence as a term implies that there is a "natural" intelligence we wish to replicate in the lab and then engineer in any one of several practical contexts. There is nothing in the term that implies that "intelligence" be human, but the implication is clear that such a thing as "intelligence" exists and that we have some clue as to what it is.
But it might not, and we don't.
Read the rest here...
cortex | November 20, 2009I've got a review of Stanislas Dehaene's new book, Reading in the Brain, over at the Barnes and Noble Review:
Right now, your mind is performing an astonishing feat. Photons are bouncing off these black squiggles and lines -- the letters in this sentence -- and colliding with a thin wall of flesh at the back of your eyeball. The photons contain just enough energy to activate sensory neurons, each of which is responsible for a particular plot of visual space on the page. The end result is that, as you stare at the letters, they become more than mere marks on a page. You've begun to read.…
gregladen | November 20, 2009A high-voltage arc caused by a 500kV Switch opening up in the Nevada Desert. An enormous Jacob's Ladder
gregladen | November 20, 2009Some guy named David (but he would not give his last name) and his friends were handing around Ray Comfort's tricked-out version of Darwin's Origin of Species on the University of Minnesota Campus today. Thanks to my former student Becky for sending me these links:
Minnesota Daily: Creationists hand out Darwin's book with a twist
Huyffpo: Kirk Cameron's 'Origin Of Species' Plan: Ex-Actor To Distribute 50,000 Altered Darwin Books
mspringer | November 20, 2009Around ScienceBlogs, people who don't accept global warming as a real phenomena tend to get called denialists. In the interests of full disclosure, I should admit that I'm not a denialist but rather a global warming defeatist. Doesn't matter how bad or not CO2 is, ain't nothin' gonna stop it. People will not give up electricity and transportation in the developed world (nor should they), and people in the developing world will not be give up the quest for developed-world living conditions (nor should they). As such it's either massive and immediate worldwide switches to nuclear power and…
gregladen | November 20, 2009All marriage was accidentally banned in Texas when Texas banned "Gay Marriage." What a bunch of morons.
Details here.
gregladen | November 19, 2009Send an email to yourself in the future! This service allows you to send an email to yourself in the future. This is a little like an assignment my daughter was given this year in school: A letter to yourself that you are then forced to open and read when you are a Senior. Only this is an email and it is probably OK to just delete it if you want to.
click here
gregladen | November 19, 2009
An Icelandic firm that offers private DNA testing to customers has filed for bankruptcy in the U.S., raising privacy concerns about the fate of customer DNA samples and records, according to the Times of London.
DeCODE Genetics, a genetics research firm, began offering personalized DNA testing through its deCODEme website two years ago. A customer mails in a sample taken from the inside of his cheek, and the service calculates the subject's genetic risk for disease -- cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, heart disease.
Story here
mspringer | November 19, 2009Ok, see counselor Troi firing her phaser?
You see this kind of thing all the time on film in scifi. Whether it's Star Trek, Star Wars, or pretty much anything else, energy beams fired from future weapons are visible. Usually someone will point out that in fact laser beams are not visible in this manner. To see light, it has to reach your eyes. This is clearly not possible when all the light is actually traveling down the beam path. You can see this in action with laser pointers - only the spot where the light hits and diffusely reflects is visible. The path is not.
Writers of TV shows…
cortex | November 19, 2009Saks and Barneys and the rest of those luxury retailers have discovered that nothing destroys a luxury brand like a sale:
All around Saks Fifth Avenue, merchandise is sold out. The $2,520 Marni shearling vest? Gone. The $5,295 Brioni leather bomber jacket? Only one left. The $1,995 over-the-knee Christian Louboutin boots?
The $1,995 over-the-knee Christian Louboutin boots at Saks have sold out, unless you can wear the only pair left -- a size 11. "All gone, except for this," said Nick Passerelli, a Saks employee, dangling a size 11 boot from his fingers.
After a brutal year in which the…
gregladen | November 19, 2009... overflowing from the room with the stage. Every chair in the bar area had one or two people standing on it, as did most of the tables. ... models moved a couple at a time out onto the open stage, walked around and sometimes did things to make the crowd laugh or scream ...
Read on ...
nisbetmc | November 19, 2009Richard Kerr's recent news feature at Science magazine offers a compelling look at the many communication challenges on climate change, especially at a time of apparent "climate fatigue." As Roger Pielke comments in the Science article, by sounding the alarm on climate change too loudly, campaigners may be causing important segments of the audience to tune out their message.
In a separate article at Yale Environment 360, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Schellenberger offer a similar argument to those I have made in the past, most recently in a paper at the journal Environment. Here's how…
agelman | November 18, 2009Mark Thoma links to a report by Michael Shear on a leaked memo from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce:
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and an assortment of national business groups opposed to President Obama's health-care reform effort are collecting money to finance an economic study that could be used to portray the legislation as a job killer and threat to the nation's economy, according to an e-mail solicitation from a top Chamber official.
The e-mail ... proposes spending $50,000 to hire a "respected economist" to study the impact of health-care legislation ... would have on jobs and the…
gregladen | November 18, 2009I was sitting at a very hip bar in a very hip joint the other day speaking with a couple of very hip people. Then one of the hipsters asked the bartender for a couple of "PBR's"
"PBR," I thought. That must be the hip new drink. And silly me, I'm sitting here drinking my very unhip oatmeal stout.
Then the bartender handed over two tallboy cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon and I almost choked on the stout.
But apparently it is true. Pabst is hip. At least, according to the recently issued Hipster Bingo Card.
gregladen | November 18, 2009Do not try this at home unless you are a certified physics teacher. Try not to think about what all the crap is in this guy's microwave. And do wear goggles. The really interesting part is after five minutes. That's where the science starts.