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gregladen | October 14, 2009I have no clue. But I hope to work it out by Friday when Desiree Schell, Omar Mouallem and I talk about this on Skeptically Speaking.
From comedy and music, to scientific studies and how we respond to them, to blogging vs. mainstream media, to attention-grabbing stunts... is all publicity good publicity, or do our own efforts sometimes work against us?
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cortex | October 14, 2009In light of my recent post on the difficulty of changing our decision-making habits - even when we're aware that our habits are biased and flawed - I thought it might be interesting to look at two examples from professional football. Why sports? Given the intense competitive pressure in the NFL - there's a thin line between victory and ignominy - you'd expect head coaches to have corrected many of their decision-making mistakes, especially once those mistakes have been empirically demonstrated. But you'd be wrong.
Consider some research done by David Romer, an economist at UC Berkeley, who…
gregladen | October 14, 2009Let's look at open source software using a real-world example. To me, the FreeDOS Project will always be the first example I look to, so I'll use that. It should speak to the commitment of the open source software community that FreeDOS continues under active (if slow) development 15 years after it was conceived. How has FreeDOS held the interest of its users? Because FreeDOS embodies the important qualities that an open source project must possess in order for it to succeed.
Jim Hall's second installment...
gregladen | October 13, 2009Certainly not Tim Pawlenty, because he (thinks he) is going to be President of the United States. So, it has to be one of these people.
gregladen | October 13, 2009And he gets squid in the deal!!!
Is that an iPod they're looking at just under 3 minutes.
I think I want to eat a banana now.
Go here, learn more, and give them your money. Seriously.
gregladen | October 13, 2009In 1968, and the few years before and after, American commercial aircraft were hijacked to Cuba on a regular basis. It became part of our day to day culture...
The latest essay us up at Collective Imagination.
gregladen | October 13, 2009A repost
This is obviously true, and i’ve been saying this for a long time. And I’m not talking about the butt-slaps and sharing chewing tobacco and stuff.
To a certain extent, digit ratios seem to be a reasonable indicator of the kinds of hormonal environment in which a person develops in utero. It turns out that the indicator of homosexuality is the same as the indicator of athleticism, only turned up even more. In other words, a certain kind of hormonal environment in which a male fetuses develops can result in a higher likelihood of that person growing up to be an athlete. But if that…
gregladen | October 13, 20091975, winter, somewhere in the American Southwest. I am driving across a state border and there is a sign that reads "do not transport citrus fruit across state lines." There on the side of the road is a check point with uniformed federal agents, a place to pull off, some garbage cans. I look at the oranges sitting on the floor over on the passenger side and figure ... "better pull off and dump this contraband." But then something surprising happened.
A repost from the Days of Bush. But has this problem been solved yet?
I started to pull into the checkpoint, and one of the uniformed…
cortex | October 13, 2009Over at Mind Matters, Chadrick Lane reviews a fascinating experiment that revealed the rewarding properties of information, regardless of whether or not the information actually led to more rewards:
In the experimental design, monkeys were placed in front of a computer screen and were trained to perform a saccade task, in which they learned to direct their gaze at specific areas. The monkeys were first given the option of choosing between one of two colored targets. One of these targets would give the monkey advance information about its future reward. The advance information came in the form…
illconsidered | October 12, 2009 Sipping from the internet firehose...
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H.E.Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
(sorry to be late this week!)
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Disruption News October 11, 2009 Chuckle, Bangkok, Tripati et al., 4 Degrees, World Bank, Cosmic Rays , Bottom Line, Planetary Boundaries, GDCA Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, _Famine_, Food Production Hurricanes, Monsoon, GHGs, Temperatures, Feedbacks, Aerosols, Paleoclimate ENSO,…
gregladen | October 12, 2009Cleaning Up the Orbital Neighborhood
Space debris of the man-made variety has been around ever since the first rocket launches in the late 1950s, but it was not until the end of the Cold War that the major space-faring nations began to see the growing number of leftover objects still in orbit from previous space missions as a concern.
Read it here
gregladen | October 12, 2009Automation may .. provide the mechanism needed to balance the needs between privacy and policy. Video cameras are everywhere - this genie is out of its bottle. But for many computer vision applications, raw imagery can be analyzed on the fly and need never be directly viewed by human observers.
Peter Tu's latest post. Please check it out.
gregladen | October 12, 2009Funktionide Part II from eltopo on Vimeo.
Get your own blob here.
Hat Tip: Desiree
mikethemadbiologist | October 12, 2009Merry Monday. Some links for you. Science:
Scientists call for changes to personal genomics based on comparison of test results
Geographic Variation in Public Health Spending: Correlates and Consequences
Pandemic Tests a Patchwork Health System
Why the epidemiology of swine flu matters
Playing catch up on flu rumors
Other:
The Conservative Rewrite of the Bible
What Not Being Able To Buy Oil In Dollars Means
David Obey's Radical Idea
Q&A: Our Threatiest Threat
IOZ Interviews: Malcolm Gladwell
Economics and similar, for the sleep-deprived
grrlscientist | October 12, 2009
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
Would you like to share your excellent writing about science, nature or medicine with the world? Now you can! There is a blog carnival that celebrates the best writing in the blogosphere about these topics and we are seeking submissions from you, the reading and writing public that you think are suitable for this blog carnival.
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, nature and medical writing…
cortex | October 12, 2009Over at the BPS Research Digest, a number of researchers respond to a very interesting question: "What's one nagging thing you still don't understand about yourself?" All of the replies are intriguing, but my favorites answers concerned the limitations of self-knowledge. Here, for instance, is David Buss:
One nagging thing that I still don't understand about myself is why I often succumb to well-documented psychological biases, even though I'm acutely aware of these biases. One example is my failure at affective forecasting, such as believing that I will be happy for a long time after some…
gregladen | October 12, 2009This makes Elinor Ostrom of Indian University the first woman to win this prize.
Ostrom won "for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons" and Williamson, of Berkeley, won "for his analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm."
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