tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15046435130872561682024-03-13T22:21:43.959-07:00etceteraUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger74125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1504643513087256168.post-80551642252623723412011-11-25T10:53:00.000-08:002011-11-25T10:54:01.422-08:00I've moved!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0VPscb-glZQ/Ts_kL2lqAJI/AAAAAAAAA78/E6g847rxaO8/s1600/moving.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0VPscb-glZQ/Ts_kL2lqAJI/AAAAAAAAA78/E6g847rxaO8/s400/moving.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>My rambling is now over at <a href="http://lenagroegeretc.com/">lenagroegeretc.com</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1504643513087256168.post-51456969009813086952011-06-04T17:01:00.000-07:002011-06-04T17:01:36.849-07:00Click here to add link<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fE9qCTweoZ8/TerHJhZUdtI/AAAAAAAAAQs/_W76QmhG12A/s1600/Link.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="87" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fE9qCTweoZ8/TerHJhZUdtI/AAAAAAAAAQs/_W76QmhG12A/s400/Link.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">There's lots of talk about linking. <a href="http://explainer.net/2011/01/bora_zivkovic/">Link, link, link</a> – it's what Bora Z calls the "currency of the web" and a fundamental element in journalism these days. Link out to sources, to scientific papers, to interesting videos or more comprehensive <a href="http://explainer.net/">explainers</a>. Linking establishes credibility, trust, and with everything online, it's easier to do than ever before.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">So linking is important, got that. But sometimes the writer of a story doesn't either a) know the best places to link, or b) care enough to fill his/her story with useful links. So why is there no easy mechanism for <i>other</i> people (not the original author), to add links themselves, after the story has been published? Someone could be reading the piece an think - oh! I know a great explanatory blog post on exactly that topic, or man, I know a great infographic that illustrates exactly that point, or wow, I wished she had linked to the original study, it took me 15 min to track it down. This wouldn't have to be a free-for-all link fest littering stories with useless spam – it could be moderated by the author.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Kinda like Facebook and photo tagging. Facebook lets you tag yourself or friends in photos that you didn't take, and the request goes to the original photographer, who then approves the tag or not. Couldn't links work the same way?</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">"So-and-so wants to add a link to your story." [Accept] [Don't Accept]</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Seems simple enough to me, and for all I know this already exists in some way shape or form. But as long as stories can be edited and updated after the fact (they certainly can online) and as long as the author wants to make his/her story the most useful as possible, there should be some sort of "add link" mechanism, in addition to regular comments. Now... who knows how to make this happen?</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1504643513087256168.post-46208290279416158082011-06-04T16:55:00.000-07:002011-06-04T16:55:26.564-07:00All Wired, all the time.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Hnsiy6snXME/TerFdnDvESI/AAAAAAAAAQo/423jp7JAk_g/s1600/wired.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="82" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Hnsiy6snXME/TerFdnDvESI/AAAAAAAAAQo/423jp7JAk_g/s400/wired.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The past few weeks have been, well, just slightly insane. I started working at Wired (a name that quite aptly matches the intensity of the office atmosphere), and getting used to deadlines that approach by the hour instead of the week has been, let's just say, a learning experience. Not to mention that satellites and DARPA aren't exactly my specialty. But now that my hands have finally stopped shaking, it's a blast. Learning something totally – I mean <i>totally</i> – new every day and having something published by the end of it is pretty cool (especially when I can Photoshop the picture). Here are some of the articles I've written so far. </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/05/spies-meet-shakespeare-intel-geeks-build-metaphor-motherlode/">Spies, Meet Shakespeare: Intel Geeks Build Metaphor Motherlode</a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/05/a-digital-diet/">A Digital Diet: Drop (Calls, Texting, Web) and Give Me 28 (Days of Peace) </a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/05/fight-corruption-with-chicken/">U.S. Wants to Fight Afghan Corruption — With Chicken</a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/05/the-pentagon-declares-war-on-rust/">The Pentagon Confronts New Enemy: Rust </a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/05/nook-simple-touch/">Barnes & Noble Slims, Simplifies Nook E-Book Reader </a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/05/air-force-wants-satellites-smart-enough-to-fly-themselves/">Air Force Wants Satellites Smart Enough to Fly Themselves</a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/05/augmented-reality-for-army-medics-in-new-plan/">Augmented Reality for Army Medics in New Plan</a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/05/air-force-ground-squirrel/">Air Force’s New Target: Mojave Ground Squirrel </a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1504643513087256168.post-20749962138879954982011-04-18T08:55:00.000-07:002011-04-18T08:55:19.007-07:00Patricia Churchland's science of morality<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wZT6qYt9PmU/Taxcaa2IdHI/AAAAAAAAAP4/kev2HZbVMiA/s1600/4737475214_121a5a6d29_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wZT6qYt9PmU/Taxcaa2IdHI/AAAAAAAAAP4/kev2HZbVMiA/s400/4737475214_121a5a6d29_z.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 85%;"><i>> It all began with a very adorable vole...</i></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I've got a <a href="http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2011/04/only-platform-patricia-churchlands.html">new post</a> up at Rationally Speaking about what neuroscience can tell us about morality. I'll have more to say when I make it to the final chapter of Churchland's book (where she talks about religion). Here's the beginning:</span><br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A few weeks ago I went to a talk by philosopher-turned-neuroscientist <a href="http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/pschurchland/index_hires.html">Patricia Churchland</a> about her new book <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9399.html">Braintrust</a>. The talk begins with the moderator turning to a packed audience in Columbia’s Havemeyer Hall and asking quite pointedly: “With a show of hands, can science tell us right from wrong?”</span> </blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Only about four hands go up. </span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">“All right,” he says, beckoning Churchland to the stage, “let’s see what you all think afterwards.” </span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Presumably Churchland is about to change a few hundred minds on the science of morality. But as she proceeds through her lecture, it becomes increasingly clear that even she wouldn’t answer the moderator’s question wholeheartedly in the affirmative. She is providing the “yes” to another question, something more like “Can science tell us about right and wrong?” While the question is slightly less interesting (because it seems so obvious) her answer is fascinating. </span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It all begins with me. Ok, not <i>me</i>, but the self. Each one of us is equipped with a neural circuitry that ensures our own self-caring and well-being — values in the most fundamental sense. As Churchland likes to say “we’re all born with systems that are very deep in the values business.” Neurons in the brainstem and hypothalamus monitor the inner state of our bodies to keep us alive; they also cause us to run from predators or eat when we’re hungry. Without these life-relevant feelings we wouldn't survive very long, let alone reproduce. </span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The next step is to move from self-caring to other-caring. In mammals, this shift occurs not by some radical new engineering plan, but by slight adjustments to the neural mechanisms that are already in place. Modifications to the emotional, endocrine, stress and reward/punishment systems motivate new values, namely, the well-being of certain others. It’s as if the “golden circle of me” expands to include offspring, mates, friends and eventually even strangers.</span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The rest of the post is <a href="http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2011/04/only-platform-patricia-churchlands.html">here</a>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Image: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/manualcrank/4737475214/sizes/z/in/photostream/">manual crank</a>, flickr. com </span></span><br />
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1504643513087256168.post-70207484969357877532011-04-15T10:49:00.000-07:002011-04-15T10:50:21.143-07:00Less or equal to?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I love love love <a href="http://www.nyu.edu/ipk/events/172">this</a>. A huge, controversial, political, philosophical, racial, social and legal topic captured in three single marks. </span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Less or equal to?</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Amazing.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BTpb5KdGLL4/TaiDxaehr6I/AAAAAAAAAP0/hjCztPKcM6M/s1600/image_5089196954d9c7c78a16bf.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><i><img border="0" height="233" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BTpb5KdGLL4/TaiDxaehr6I/AAAAAAAAAP0/hjCztPKcM6M/s400/image_5089196954d9c7c78a16bf.png" width="400" /></i></a></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.nyu.edu/ipk/events/172"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Unequally Free? The Social Limits of Liberty</span></b></a></span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.nyu.edu/ipk/events/172"></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Apr 19, 2011 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</span></b></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">20 Cooper Square, New York, NY</span></b></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">NYU Journalism 7th Floor Commons</span></b></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1504643513087256168.post-42336924412224252762011-04-09T05:06:00.000-07:002011-04-09T05:12:29.283-07:00Radiation Explained<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vIvgqSFfWcs/TaBM6qWpsbI/AAAAAAAAAPw/wVG4St-SwF4/s1600/RadiationExplainerPart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="285" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vIvgqSFfWcs/TaBM6qWpsbI/AAAAAAAAAPw/wVG4St-SwF4/s400/RadiationExplainerPart.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Spent a good part of last week working on this <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=radiation-levels-explained-an-expos-2011-04-08">radiation level infographic</a>, for Studio 20's <a href="http://explainer.net/">Building a Better Explainer</a> Project. Check it out over at the <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=radiation-levels-explained-an-expos-2011-04-08">Scientific American Guest Blog</a>!</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1504643513087256168.post-25409111431734087512011-03-28T19:32:00.000-07:002011-03-28T19:34:26.406-07:00It's been a-lot-of-coffee kind of month...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-J2YfdrJ-4Fo/TZFEEK6f3yI/AAAAAAAAAPo/H4Busi9WoJE/s1600/4271504035_7d326b824b_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="295" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-J2YfdrJ-4Fo/TZFEEK6f3yI/AAAAAAAAAPo/H4Busi9WoJE/s400/4271504035_7d326b824b_z.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Here's my past few weeks or so of blogging and writing! On the nature/nurture debate, musical epigenetics, bias (or not) in political psychology, and why we do science in the first place. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><a href="http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2011/03/so-whats-science-good-for.html">So, what's science good for?</a></i> How doing science can make you a better person. </span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">March 7, Rationally Speaking</span></span><br />
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</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><a href="http://scienceline.org/2011/03/political-%E2%80%94-or-politicized-%E2%80%94-psychology-2/">Political – or politicized – psychology?</a></i> Scientists combat the charge of ideological bias</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">March 8, Scienceline</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><a href="http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/student-voices/the_tangle_of_the_naturenurture">The tangle of the nature-nurture debate</a>.</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> The false dichotomy and why it persists. </span></div><div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">March 10, Nature Education</span></span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times;"></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><a href="http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/student-voices/the_sound_of_epigenetics">The sound of epigenetics</a>.</i> Using musical software to explain the expression of our DNA</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">March 16, Nature Education</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: xx-small; line-height: 20px;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />Image: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/philograf/4271504035/sizes/z/in/photostream/">Philipp Hilpert</a>, flickr.com</span></span></span></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1504643513087256168.post-41681756048830250412011-02-04T13:44:00.000-08:002011-02-04T13:44:13.231-08:00What Wittgenstein can tell us about happiness<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TUxyimlsIAI/AAAAAAAAAPc/ytls5waZhUo/s1600/Wittgenstein.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="251" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TUxyimlsIAI/AAAAAAAAAPc/ytls5waZhUo/s400/Wittgenstein.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Here's my recent <a href="http://scienceline.org/2011/01/happiness-do-we-have-a-choice/">story</a> on happiness and its many dimensions. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Ludwig Wittgenstein, a famous 20th century philosopher, was miserable all his life. Depressed and anxious, he once wrote in his diary, “There is no happiness for me; no joy ever.” Yet minutes before he died, he muttered: “Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life.”</span> </blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The concept of happiness is universally understood, yet escapes all comprehension. Can someone really be both unhappy everyday and happy over a lifetime? Does the notion of happiness change throughout the world, between communities, between people? Most importantly, do we have any choice in the matter?</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Recent research in psychology, economics and public policy may help unravel this tangled knot of questions.</span> </blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">“Objective choices make a difference to happiness over and above genetics and personality,” said Bruce Headey, a psychologist at Melbourne University in Australia. Headey and his colleagues analyzed annual self-reports of life satisfaction from over 20,000 Germans who have been interviewed every year since 1984. He compared five-year averages of people’s reported life satisfaction, and plotted their relative happiness on a percentile scale from 1 to 100. Heady found that as time went on, more and more people recorded substantial changes in their life satisfaction. By 2008, more than a third had moved up or down on the happiness scale by at least 25 percent, compared to where they had started in 1984.</span> </blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Headey’s <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/09/27/1008612107.abstract">findings</a>, published in the October 19th issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, run contrary to what is known as the happiness set-point theory — the idea that even if you win the lottery or become a paraplegic, you’ll revert back to the same fixed level of happiness within a year or two. This psychological theory was widely accepted in the 1990s because it explained why happiness levels seemed to remain stable over the long term: They were mainly determined early in life by genetic factors including personality traits.</span> </blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Instead of existing as a stable equilibrium, Headey suggests that happiness is much more dynamic, and that individual choices — about one’s partner, working hours, social participation and lifestyle — make substantial and permanent changes to reported happiness levels. For example, doing more or fewer paid hours of work than you want, or exercising regularly, can have just as much impact on life satisfaction as having an extroverted personality.</span></blockquote><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;">The full story is <a href="http://scienceline.org/2011/01/happiness-do-we-have-a-choice/">here</a>.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: xx-small; line-height: 20px;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: xx-small; line-height: 20px;">Image: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/christiaan_tonnis/2983983740/">Christiaan Tonnis</a>, flickr.com</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1504643513087256168.post-63273887838341744262011-01-26T20:37:00.000-08:002011-01-26T20:38:36.501-08:00It's WHAT?!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TUD2Nv4-7tI/AAAAAAAAAPM/rYTHe5CtTLc/s1600/canvas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TUD2Nv4-7tI/AAAAAAAAAPM/rYTHe5CtTLc/s400/canvas.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">My recent <a href="http://www.scienceline.org/2011/01/blood-and-lace/">profile</a> of Brooklyn artist Laura Splan, who paints with her own blood, embroiders pathogens, and thinks art shouldn't just be about beauty – it should be about ideas.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br />
<blockquote style="font-family: Times;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;">With a steady hand Laura Splan dips her paintbrush into a glass vial filled with red ink, brushing one, two, three times against the side to catch any excess drops. In a single sweeping motion, she stains the pristine white surface with a crimson brush stroke that looks an awful lot like…</span></span></span></span></div></blockquote><div style="border-bottom-style: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-style: none; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: 0px; color: inherit; font-family: Times; font-style: inherit; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-style: none; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span id="more-9894" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-style: none; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-style: none; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span></span></div></div><blockquote style="font-family: Times;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Blood. It’s Splan’s blood, and it’s her ink of choice. She’s been combining horror and beauty, the biological and the familiar in her artwork for over ten years. For her current project she is using her own blood to paint over vintage doilies, which serve as stencils. When removed from the canvas, the doilies leave behind a series of overlapping, almost floating <a href="http://laurasplan.com/images/claybord/enlargements/claybord_6.jpg" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-style: none; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-style: none; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">organic forms</a> – created by the blood seeping into the negative space.</span></span></div></blockquote><blockquote style="font-family: Times;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Splan’s sanguine artwork began on a curious whim. “I basically just scrounged up a needle in my house one day and pricked my finger, just to see what it would look like,” said Splan. “I liked what it was doing.”</span></span></div></blockquote><blockquote style="font-family: Times;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><a href="http://laurasplan.com/" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-style: none; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-style: none; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Splan</a>, 37, an artist and certified phlebotomist (technician trained to draw blood) lives in a small Brooklyn apartment that doubles as her studio. It was during her undergraduate years studying biology at the University of California, Irvine that she realized that “art didn’t have to be about beauty, it could be about ideas.” Scientific ideas continue to inform her art, often surfacing in unexpected ways – like the blood on her paintbrush.</span></span></span></div></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The rest of the story is <a href="http://www.scienceline.org/2011/01/blood-and-lace/">here</a>. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1504643513087256168.post-70130269959627882932011-01-23T14:56:00.000-08:002011-01-23T15:34:27.241-08:00Please, do explain.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TTy6Pmnb_II/AAAAAAAAAPE/0adGEsBLTvE/s1600/lightbulb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TTy6Pmnb_II/AAAAAAAAAPE/0adGEsBLTvE/s320/lightbulb.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I recently had a chance to talk to </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://blog.coturnix.org/about/">Bora Zivkovic</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> (master guru of the science blogging world), about the who, what, and how of science bloggers and explanation. The </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>explanation</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> part fits in with some of the communication/education issues within science that I've spent a lot of time thinking about. How to get people engaged with scientific stories, methods, ideas, ways of thinking? What is the role of a science journalist or writer – educator? truthteller? watchdog? Also, what are the best methods and approaches for telling stories about scientific topics and making these stories relevant to a wider public? How does the public experience these stories, and how do they participate in creating them? Finally, how do these stories and ideas lead to real action in the world?</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Lots of thoughts. Luckily, they overlap with a project I'll be helping out on this spring, called <a href="http://explainer.net/about/">Building a Better Explainer</a>. It's part of the <a href="http://journalism.nyu.edu/graduate/courses-of-study/studio-20/">Studio 20</a> program at NYU, and the idea is to investigate the best practices for explaining complex issues (from infographics to timelines to clear prose), and experiment with creating some of these "explainers." Providing this type of context and background – on stories from the <a href="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/355/the-giant-pool-of-money">housing crisis</a> to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html?scp=1&sq=you%20fix%20the%20budget&st=cse">fixing the budget</a> – hopefully creates ways for people to enter into current news stories that they don't quite understand. So instead of the news being a constant stream of updates, it will be something a bit more useful. </span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I saw the connection to science right away, since describing complex, technical issues, with context, in an accurate but understandable way seems pretty darn close to a scientist or science writer's job description. Who better to tell us about explaining (providing background knowledge, presenting intelligible data, providing a historical/contextual dimension), than the people who do it every day? So here are some highlights from my <a href="http://explainer.net/2011/01/bora_zivkovic/">Q&A</a> with Bora, who is very excited about the project and was a ton of fun to talk to.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #424242; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;"></span></span><br />
<ul style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; list-style-type: circle; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Explain until you’re done, and then stop. Don’t be afraid of length – long posts do well because they are useful, and people will come back to them again and again.</i></span></blockquote></li>
<li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; list-style-type: circle; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>A personal, conversational tone keeps people reading. Just like you wouldn’t walk out on someone in the middle of a conversation, you read an engaging piece through until the end!</i></span></blockquote></li>
<li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; list-style-type: circle; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Metaphors can be useful in explaining complex issues, but it’s important not to get stuck with just one. A combination of metaphors is often the best way to help people understand.</i></span></blockquote></li>
<li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; list-style-type: circle; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Images like graphs, cartoons, or even hand drawn sketches help people visualize and see the data. Images are not just decoration – they can convey important information.</i></span></blockquote></li>
<li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; list-style-type: circle; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Sometimes complicating the picture is part of explanation. But one must find a balance between the overly simple and overly detailed.</i></span></blockquote></li>
<li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; list-style-type: circle; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Explanation is also about sending people away. Articles become useful by linking out to the best information. Link, Link, Link!</i></span></blockquote></li>
</ul><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Here's the full </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://explainer.net/2011/01/bora_zivkovic/">interview</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: xx-small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: xx-small;">Image: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/zetson/3036254720/">zetson</a>, flickr.com</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1504643513087256168.post-53203003993317412562011-01-13T20:04:00.000-08:002011-01-13T20:06:05.834-08:00Back to the basics of science & data viz<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br />
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #222222; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 25px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TS_I6voN4XI/AAAAAAAAAOo/IM-1b6nAgS0/s1600/geometry.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="152" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TS_I6voN4XI/AAAAAAAAAOo/IM-1b6nAgS0/s400/geometry.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">One of my goals for the new year is to take a closer look at the science/design connection – especially presenting lots of data in a coherent (and beautiful) way. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">To start off, here's a recent <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=words-pictures-and-the-visual-displ-2011-01-12">article</a> I wrote for the Scientific American Guest Blog about designing and displaying information in science (it's also basically an ode to <a href="http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/">Tufte</a>). </span></div><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222;">Data visualization. Infographics. Ooh, better yet, make that <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>interactive</i></span> infographics. The recent buzz around the visual display of information makes it seem like everyone should be rushing to whip up some multi-colored <a href="http://www.worldmapper.org/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="">cartogram</a>, <a href="http://flowingdata.com/2010/11/23/how-to-make-bubble-charts/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="">bubble chart</a> or <a href="http://www.wordle.net/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="">word cloud</a>. Never before have we had both the <a href="http://www.tableausoftware.com/public" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="">tools</a> and the <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/15557443" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="">vast amounts</a> of <a href="http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="">raw data</a> to play around with, and scientists and <a href="http://datajournalism.stanford.edu/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="">journalists</a> alike are making fabulous use of this opportunity. From <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/11/06/business/economy/unemployment-lines.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="">unemployment rates</a> to <a href="http://www.aaronkoblin.com/work/flightpatterns/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="">air traffic patterns</a> to the <a href="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/12/data-visgasm-watch-the-world-get-richer-and-healthier/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="">wealth and health of nations</a> to <a href="http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/visualizing-bloodtests/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="">blood test results</a>, information has never been so fun to look at.</span></span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But before we get too carried away with swirling globes and animated charts, it’s worth going back to the basics – taking note of some simple methods for visually presenting data. This endeavor is particularly relevant to science and health, where visual information appears anywhere from diagrams in scientific research papers to public health campaigns. The field of information design is vast, but I’ll concentrate on just a few simple ways to approach the combination of words and pictures. Many examples come straight from <a href="http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="">Edward Tufte</a>, the information design guru who put the serious study of infographics on the map, so to speak (the New York Times has called him the Leonardo da Vinci of Data). Since the publication of his first book<i> <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="">The Visual Display of Quantitative Information</a></span></i> in 1983, Tufte has demonstrated over and over how the right approach to visual displays can dramatically improve the clarity and effectiveness of data. And in fact, many of the classic principles of good information design can be found throughout the history of science...</span></blockquote><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #222222; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 25px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The whole thing is <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=words-pictures-and-the-visual-displ-2011-01-12">here</a>. I'm hoping to write more on this stuff in the near future!</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1504643513087256168.post-38811604376250902962011-01-09T19:10:00.000-08:002011-01-09T19:10:07.263-08:00Language and Lenses<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TSp3eKOEyGI/AAAAAAAAAOk/oMxXsSNJREE/s1600/3854561398_57f09954c8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TSp3eKOEyGI/AAAAAAAAAOk/oMxXsSNJREE/s400/3854561398_57f09954c8.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Apparently I'm on a language/communication kick. The last two stories for Scienceline are both about some of the implications of language – on society and on our minds.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> First, the <i>language</i> of genetics clearly has a huge impact on how well people understand it, or don't. This includes specific words like "</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">heritability," which has created a whole tangle of problems (don't ask me to explain it again here, it took me days to write that paragraph!) It also includes the metaphors used in describing </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">concepts or ideas or processes, like the blueprint vs. mixing board metaphor to describe how genes relate to the environment. Second, language may have a profound influence on how we think </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(or it may not, depending on which way the evidence convinces you). At the very least, it seems that even critics admit there may be small ways that language can shape thought, producing certain habits or drawing attention to distinctions or particular aspects of the world, etc. Some past articles (and the sources of inspiration for the story!) on this issue: from the <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703467304575383131592767868.html">Wall Street Journal</a>, the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html">New York Times</a>, and the <a href="http://www.economist.com/debate/overview/190">Economist</a>. </span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Also, lenses and glass imagery keep popping up: the "Mendelian lens of heredity" and all the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Through-Language-Glass-Different-Languages/dp/080508195X">looking glass</a>, mirror, and <a href="http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/books/stuff/index.html">window</a> references in the language/thought debate. Huh. </span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Anyways, here they are: </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><a href="http://www.scienceline.org/2010/12/rethinking-the-gene/">Rethinking the Gene:</a></i> The popular notion of genetics is wrong.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">December 24, Scienceline</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><a href="http://www.scienceline.org/2011/01/the-world-through-language/">The World Through Language:</a></i> What language can tell us about how we think. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">January 7, Scienceline</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;">Image: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/dylanramos/3854561398/">D_P_R</a>, flickr.com</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1504643513087256168.post-92123911049603282812010-12-22T12:31:00.000-08:002010-12-22T12:31:03.114-08:00Just Say No to Christmas Displays?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TRJe_yyGTiI/AAAAAAAAAOc/CBZUEXUe7nA/s1600/3134541835_8b7e7504b0_b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="285" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TRJe_yyGTiI/AAAAAAAAAOc/CBZUEXUe7nA/s400/3134541835_8b7e7504b0_b.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">If you tend to like any and all things celebrating the Christmas spirit, <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WJB-50DF8J0-4&_user=9664417&_coverDate=11/30/2010&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_origin=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1586983662&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=9664417&md5=76d4f11900873c90eb3c98f261f40299&searchtype=a">this study</a> may be a bit of a downer. Apparently, Christmas displays reduce feelings of well-being and positive mood in people who don't celebrate the holiday. (I know, I know, if your first reaction is anything like mine, it's – they actually did a study on this?! Seriously?) But I kid you not, here's the abstract: </span><br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 90%;">In two experiments we examined the differential psychological consequences of being in the presence of a Christmas display on participants who did or did not celebrate Christmas (Study 1), or who identified as Christian, Buddhist, or Sikh (Study 2). Participants completed measures of psychological well-being in a cubicle that either did or did not contain a small Christmas display. Across several indicators of well-being, the display harmed non-celebrators and non-Christians, but enhanced well-being for celebrators and Christians. In Study 2, we found that the negative effect of the display on non-Christians was mediated by reduced feelings of inclusion. The results raise concerns about the ubiquitous presence of dominant cultural symbols (such as Christmas displays) in culturally diverse societies. </span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">No, I don't think we need to go out and immediately eradicate all Christmas displays. But the study does challenge a few assumptions about the harmlessness of certain symbols in public spaces.<br />
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But, since </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Happy Holidays</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> has a kind of empty ring to it, I'm still going to go ahead and say – all positive feelings and good cheer intended – </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Merry Christmas! </i></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1504643513087256168.post-391553704883179712010-12-17T08:25:00.000-08:002010-12-17T08:25:17.746-08:00Shoes, Politics, and Willpower<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Two stories and a blog up on Scienceline (several more coming soon). <br />
A few conclusions I have reached:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
1. From now on, every difficult task is energizing. I have heaps of self control. And a will of steel. (I just gotta repeat this often enough and it'll be true, I swear)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
2. "Scientific articulacy" is a pretty cool term. I think we should adopt it. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
3. Apparently every shoe recommendation I've ever read in Runner's World is wrong. I should really stop buying those expensive Asics Kayanos. Sigh. </span><br />
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<i><a href="http://www.scienceline.org/2010/12/the-reins-of-self-control/">The Reins of Self Control</a></i>: Changing your expectations could change your willpower</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">December 15, Scienceline<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><a href="http://www.scienceline.org/2010/11/scientists-get-political/">Scientists, Get Political:</a></i> To move forward on climate change, the illusory boundary between science and politics must come down<br />
November 17, Scienceline<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><a href="http://www.scienceline.org/2010/11/no-glass-slipper-for-runners/">No Glass Slipper for Runners:</a></i> Current running shoe recommendations won’t protect you from injury</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">November 16, Scienceline</span><br />
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</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1504643513087256168.post-72116955779862687292010-11-13T11:23:00.000-08:002010-11-13T11:27:51.023-08:00Brains and Choices<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Where my blogging effort has gone the past month or so:</span></div><div><br />
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><a href="http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/student-voices/the_architecture_of_choice">The Architecture of Choice:</a></i> How subtle cues in the environment can effect our decisions</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">November 11, Nature Education </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><a href="http://www.scienceline.org/2010/10/the-brain-in-the-voting-booth/">The Brain in the Voting Booth:</a></i> How hidden biases influence our vote</span></div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">October 27, Scienceline</span></div><div><br />
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><a href="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2010/10/26/what-neuroscience-has-to-say-about-gaps-logo-disaster/">What Neuroscience Has to Say about Gap's Logo Disaster:</a></i> (and why designers already knew it)</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">October 24, Discover</span></div><div><br />
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><a href="http://www.scienceline.org/2010/10/the-brain-scan-appeal/">The Brain Scan Appeal:</a></i> Bringing neuroscience into the courtroom may influence more brains than we think</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">October 4, Scienceline</span></div></div></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1504643513087256168.post-50585039254365606962010-10-12T16:38:00.000-07:002010-10-12T16:40:07.997-07:00What You "Get Out of Reading"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TLTxIXAMWgI/AAAAAAAAAOY/KFdmKPUgzBw/s1600/open_book_pages-other.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="263" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TLTxIXAMWgI/AAAAAAAAAOY/KFdmKPUgzBw/s400/open_book_pages-other.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What are you actually doing when you read a novel? What's the point of reading, and if you've forgotten what you read, did it really matter? I’ve noticed a few articles lately that deal with these questions about literature and the sort of knowledge you get out of reading. The most recent was a few days ago in the NY Times The Stone column, where philosopher Robert Pippin gave a “<a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/in-defense-of-naive-reading/">Defense of Naïve Reading</a>.” After describing how an overly scientific “research paradigm” has infiltrated the modern study of literature, he says: </span><br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 90%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"Literature and the arts have a dimension unique in the academy, not shared by the objects studied, or “researched” by our scientific brethren. They invite or invoke, at a kind of “first level,” an aesthetic experience that is by its nature resistant to restatement in more formalized, theoretical or generalizing language. This response can certainly be enriched by knowledge of context and history, but the objects express a first-person or subjective view of human concerns that is falsified if wholly transposed to a more “sideways on” or third person view. Indeed that is in a way the whole point of having the “arts.”</span></span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 90%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Likewise ─ and this is a much more controversial thesis ─ such works also can directly deliver a kind of practical knowledge and self-understanding not available from a third person or more general formulation of such knowledge. There is no reason to think that such knowledge — exemplified in what Aristotle said about the practically wise man (the phronimos)or in what Pascal meant by the difference between l’esprit géometrique and l’esprit de finesse — is any less knowledge because it cannot be so formalized or even taught as such. Call this a plea for a place for “naïve” reading, teaching and writing — an appreciation and discussion not mediated by a theoretical research question recognizable as such by the modern academy."</span></span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In "<a href="http://www.theamericanscholar.org/reading-in-a-digital-age/">Reading in a Digital Age</a>", literary critic Sven Birkerts suggests something similar – that the novel is not just a statement or message-driven device to allow an author to convey content to his readers. Not at all, in fact, literature is much more about creating an experience and fostering a new way of thinking:</span><br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 90%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"[The novel] is not, except superficially, only a thing to be studied in English classes—that it is a field for thinking, a condensed time-world that is parallel (or adjacent) to ours. That its purpose is less to communicate themes or major recognitions and more to engage the mind... it's inwardly experiential, intransitive, a mode of contemplation, its purpose being to create for the author and reader a terrain, an arena of liberation, where mind can be different, where mind and imagination can freely combine...</span></span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 90%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I read novels in order to indulge in a concentrated and directed sort of inner activity that is not available in most of my daily transactions. This reading, more than anything else I do, parallels—and thereby tunes up, accentuates—my own inner life, which is ever associative, a shuttling between observation, memory, reflection, emotional recognition, and so forth. A good novel puts all these elements into play in its own unique fashion."</span></span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Finally, author James Collins in "<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/books/review/Collins-t.html?_r=1&ref=books">The Plot Escapes Me</a>" struggles with the dreadful thought that all his reading might have been a waste of time, since he can't recall the plot: </span><br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 90%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">“But this cannot be. Those books must have reshaped my brain in ways that affect how I think, and they must have left deposits of information with some sort of property — a kind of mental radiation — that continues to affect me even if I can’t detect it. Mustn’t they have? …</span></span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 90%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> “It’s there,” Wolf said. “You are the sum of it all.”</span></span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 90%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This was very encouraging, and it makes intuitive sense: we have been formed by an accretion of experiences, only a small number of which we can readily recall. You may remember the specifics of only a few conversations with your best friend, but you would never ask if talking to him or her was a waste of time. As for the arts, I can remember in detail only a tiny fraction of the music I have listened to, or the movies I have watched, or the paintings I have looked at, but it would be absurd to claim that experiencing those works had no influence on me. The same could be said of reading.”</span></span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I tend to agree that literature can’t be measured in a strictly quantifiable way, books are not only objects of “research” to be studied and explicated, and reading must affect us long after the details of a novel or the experience of curling up on the couch are gone. How exactly – I can’t say. (I’ll obviously have to go read more about it). </span><br />
<div><br />
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1504643513087256168.post-21787852420699925392010-10-03T05:56:00.000-07:002010-10-03T05:57:17.743-07:00Words of Wisdom<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TKgolP75X9I/AAAAAAAAAOU/9Ir0yxH5kQ4/s1600/SnowyOwl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="271" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TKgolP75X9I/AAAAAAAAAOU/9Ir0yxH5kQ4/s400/SnowyOwl.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I thought it'd be fun to keep a collection of quotes from Dan, Michael, and Charles (SHERP professors), as well as our guest speakers as we continue through the semester. Eventually they'll range from realistic accounts of the world of journalism today to funny war stories from times immemorial. Right now they're more just quirky aphorisms. I'll leave them anonymous – can you guess who said them?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>"Nobody is god's gift to journalism. God didn't leave many gifts to journalism."</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>"In journalism, we never need to worry about getting our feelings hurt – we're gonna get the last word anyway."</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>"Journalism is the art of verification."</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>"Every story has an ecology, you just have to figure out your way around that world."</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>"Call up the editor in you – they are a fearsome beast!"</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>"I like poking at the cathedral of science."</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>"A science journalist isn't always talking about the 'good' in science."</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>"Journalists are unable to question numbers... they will take it as gospel."</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>"You don't want to end up with a masters degree in No Clips."</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1504643513087256168.post-81176159746619804352010-09-26T07:56:00.000-07:002010-09-26T07:56:41.565-07:00It Sounds Blue! Kandinsky and the Brain<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;"></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TJ9auR46gVI/AAAAAAAAAOQ/JAs7NLJACsE/s1600/wassily-kandinsky-blue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TJ9auR46gVI/AAAAAAAAAOQ/JAs7NLJACsE/s400/wassily-kandinsky-blue.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">The overwhelming "what? that's going on right now too?!" of New York City has hit me for real this month, so the blog posts are sadly lacking. But, since this science journalism stuff means I am bombarded with ideas and stories to write about a day, I'm going to make an extra effort to post more often (I need at least some partial record of my thoughts during these wonderfully-crazy months).</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">So, for starters, I have to share this amazing series in the New Scientist called "<a href="http://www.newscientist.com/special/six-ways-that-artists-hack-your-brain">Six ways that artists hack your brain.</a>" It's all about the neuroscience and psychology of how we perceive/understand/interpret artwork (or get really confused by it). To my surprise, this cross-disciplinary field even has its own a name: </span><i><span style="font-size: small;">neuroaesthetics</span></i><span style="font-size: small;">. Below is a quote from one <a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_102925921">section about </a><a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727781.500-brainhacking-art-getting-your-wires-crossed.html">synaesthetes</a>,<i> </i>people who have a neurological condition where their </span>senses seem to get mixed up – they'll hear <span style="font-size: small;">blue or taste yellow, for example.</span> </div><blockquote><div class="infuse" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 90%;">LETTERS, words, numbers, sounds, touch, pain and smell all trigger flashes of colour in <a href="http://web.mit.edu/synesthesia/www/carol.html" target="nsarticle">Carol Steen</a>'s mind. The New York-based artist first discovered she could paint her synaesthetic visions after a visit to her acupuncturist. "Each time a needle went in a colour flashed in front of my eyes," she recalls. "When all the needles were in it was like watching a movie. I rushed home and realised I could recall enough to paint a part of what I had seen."</span></div><div class="infuse" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="infuse" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 90%;">Other synaesthetic artists include David Hockney and Wassily Kandinsky, who painted the piece below, entitled <i>Blue</i>. There is still some speculation over whether Kandinsky actually had synaesthesia or was simply influenced by reports of the phenomenon in other people. But to <a href="http://www.ski.org/CWTyler_lab/" target="nsarticle">Christopher Tyler</a> of the Smith-Kettlewell Brain Imaging Center in San Francisco, who has analysed Kandinsky's work, it is obvious (<i>Journal of the History of Neuroscience</i>, vol 12, p 223). "It's very explicit in his work and his writings. He went to a performance of Wagner's music and then wrote about how vivid the visual impressions of the horns were and the colour that the music evoked in his mind. That's synaesthesia," he says.</span></div><div class="infuse" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="infuse" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 90%;">Steen agrees: "I saw a sphere like the one in Kandinsky's <i>Blue</i> in one of my acupuncture sessions. Since it is really hard to explain your visions to someone, I assume Kandinsky was a synaesthete." The striking colour contrast with the red dot is also familiar to her.</span></div><div class="infuse" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="infuse" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 90%;">These experiences are probably due to extra connections between the auditory and visual cortex, says <a href="http://experts.uchicago.edu/experts.php?id=493" target="nsarticle">Jack Cowan</a>, a mathematical neuroscientist at the University of Chicago. He thinks the additional flow of information into the visual cortex overloads its normal inhibitory mechanisms, allowing spontaneous waves of activity that would normally be eliminated to propagate through the brain. These signals may represent shape or colour. Since the brain can't tell whether a signal was generated within the brain or externally, synaesthetes see the shapes as if they came from the eye.</span></div></blockquote><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><span style="font-size: small;">Check out the other parts of the series like the <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727781.300-brainhacking-art-making-an-emotional-impression.html">emotional response to impressionism</a> or <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727781.400-brainhacking-art-two-pictures-for-the-price-of-one.html">Dali's illusions.</a> More to come soon!</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1504643513087256168.post-10993119957003905292010-09-08T08:37:00.000-07:002010-09-10T18:41:54.023-07:00Two Cultures (and many more)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TIerOz7eJfI/AAAAAAAAAOI/V49tKu1LbBg/s1600/twocultures.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="116" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TIerOz7eJfI/AAAAAAAAAOI/V49tKu1LbBg/s400/twocultures.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The first official reading assignment for school (yes, very excited to be a student again!) is C.P. Snow's "The Two Cultures." I've come across this essay – originally a lecture in 1959 – several times over the past year, mostly in the context of "look what a knowledge gap there is between scientists and the public" or "scientists are just fundamentally different people from the rest." Snow articulates a serious problem he notices in Western society: the splitting of intellectual life (and in turn, practical life) into two polar groups that do not communicate and do not understand one another. These two groups, literary intellectuals and scientists, have become increasingly isolated by a "gulf of mutual incomprehension." The gulf is widened by hostility, distortion, and most of all just a lack of understanding. In later writings, Snow called for a "third culture" to bridge this gap.<br />
<br />
Even though Snow was writing 50 years ago, his observations are still relevant today. Many recent articles and books reference the "two cultures" theme, although it seems the modern flavor of this dichotomy has shifted – less "science & humanities" and more "science & everyone else". Those who can speak science to the masses – bypassing the literary intellectuals – are what John Brockman, editor of the Edge magazine, calls "<a href="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/">third-culture thinkers.</a>" This brand of intellectuals include people like E.O. Wilson, Stephen Jay Gould, Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett. The success of popular science books may surprise the "old-style intellectuals," (Brockman's phrase) but he thinks this is just a sign that science is becoming the new popular culture. </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><blockquote style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>"The third culture consists of those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are...</i> </blockquote><blockquote style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;">Today, third-culture thinkers tend to avoid the middleman and endeavor to express their deepest thoughts in a manner accessible to the intelligent reading public.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;"> The recent publishing successes of serious science books have surprised only the old-style intellectuals. Their view is that these books are anomalies--that they are bought but not read. I disagree. The emergence of this third-culture activity is evidence that many people have a great intellectual hunger for new and important ideas and are willing to make the effort to educate themselves." </span></i><br />
<div align="left"></div></blockquote><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
While I do agree with much of Brockman's characterization, I have some concerns about these "third culture" scientists. Thinking it sufficient to communicate directly to the public, they sometimes ignore the arts and humanities altogether, or act as if science has taken its "rightful" place at the top of the intellectual kingdom. To build a bridge across the gulf, there must be collaboration and openness between the disciplines – what Jonah Lehrer's calls a "<a href="http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_future_of_science_is_art/">fourth culture.</a>" </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><blockquote style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>“This fourth culture, much closer in concept to Snow’s original definition… will ignore arbitrary intellectual boundaries, seeking instead to blur the lines that separate. It will freely transplant knowledge between the sciences and humanities, and will focus on connecting the reductionist fact to our actual experience. It will take a pragmatic view of truth, and it will judge truth not by its origins but by its usefulness."</i> (from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Proust-Was-Neuroscientist-Jonah-Lehrer/dp/0618620109"><i>Proust Was a Neuroscientist</i></a>)</blockquote><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
Chris Mooney, author of Unscientific America, <a href="http://www.scienceprogress.org/2008/01/one-culture-two-culture-three-culture-four/">agrees</a> with Lehrer. But he takes the argument one step further, urging science to interact and learn from all parts of society. </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><blockquote style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>"It’s not just that we need people transplanting knowledge between science and humanities—it’s that we need people who can transplant between science, the humanities, politics, communication, law, business—and everything else. All other walks of life, types of talent, kinds of expertise…the more science draws upon these and the more these intersect with science, the closer science will move back into relationship with the society that fosters it." </i></blockquote><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">For Mooney, science should not attempt to take the place of other intellectual traditions, but rather it should mesh and share ideas freely with all of them. </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And at this rate (with enough communication, interaction, and Snow's 1959 lecture firmly in mind) we may end up with a fourth, fifth, or sixth culture sooner than we expect.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Related link: <a href="http://seedmagazine.com/twocultures/">Are We Beyond the Two Cultures?</a> Video series from seedmagazine.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1504643513087256168.post-87604116780195497882010-08-26T09:48:00.000-07:002010-08-26T09:48:11.312-07:00Monkeying Around in Science<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/THaXASX4kdI/AAAAAAAAAN4/qlWgyRbyPPo/s1600/Monkey.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/THaXASX4kdI/AAAAAAAAAN4/qlWgyRbyPPo/s320/Monkey.gif" width="255" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.economist.com/node/16886218?story_id=16886218&fsrc=rss">The Economist</a> calls it "ironic." In the midst of working a book called <i>Evilicious: Why We Evolved a Taste for Being Bad</i>, evolutionary psychologist Marc Hauser has been accused of some wrongdoing of his own. Specifically, scientific misconduct and cheating. What exactly did he do? The <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Document-Sheds-Light-on/123988/">Chronicle of Higher Education</a> provides an overview:</div><blockquote style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><div><br />
</div><div><span style="font-size: 85%;">It was one experiment in particular that led members of Mr. Hauser's lab to become suspicious of his research and, in the end, to report their concerns about the professor to Harvard administrators. The experiment tested the ability of rhesus monkeys to recognize sound patterns. Researchers played a series of three tones (in a pattern like A-B-A) over a sound system. After establishing the pattern, they would vary it (for instance, A-B-B) and see whether the monkeys were aware of the change. If a monkey looked at the speaker, this was taken as an indication that a difference was noticed. The method has been used in experiments on primates and human infants. Mr. Hauser has long worked on studies that seemed to show that primates, like rhesus monkeys or cotton-top tamarins, can recognize patterns as well as human infants do. Such pattern recognition is thought to be a component of language acquisition.<br />
<br />
Researchers watched videotapes of the experiments and "coded" the results, meaning that they wrote down how the monkeys reacted. As was common practice, two researchers independently coded the results so that their findings could later be compared to eliminate errors or bias. According to the document that was provided to <i>The Chronicle</i>, the experiment in question was coded by Mr. Hauser and a research assistant in his laboratory. A second research assistant was asked by Mr. Hauser to analyze the results. When the second research assistant analyzed the first research assistant's codes, he found that the monkeys didn't seem to notice the change in pattern. In fact, they looked at the speaker more often when the pattern was the same. In other words, the experiment was a bust. But Mr. Hauser's coding showed something else entirely: He found that the monkeys did notice the change in pattern—and, according to his numbers, the results were statistically significant. If his coding was right, the experiment was a big success.<br />
<br />
The second research assistant was bothered by the discrepancy. How could two researchers watching the same videotapes arrive at such different conclusions? He suggested to Mr. Hauser that a third researcher should code the results. In an e-mail message to Mr. Hauser, a copy of which was provided to <i>The Chronicle</i>, the research assistant who analyzed the numbers explained his concern. "I don't feel comfortable analyzing results/publishing data with that kind of skew until we can verify that with a third coder," he wrote. A graduate student agreed with the research assistant and joined him in pressing Mr. Hauser to allow the results to be checked, the document given to <i>The Chronicle </i>indicates. But Mr. Hauser resisted, repeatedly arguing against having a third researcher code the videotapes and writing that they should simply go with the data as he had already coded it. After several back-and-forths, it became plain that the professor was annoyed.<br />
<br />
"i am getting a bit pissed here," Mr. Hauser wrote in an e-mail to one research assistant. "there were no inconsistencies! let me repeat what happened. i coded everything. then [a research assistant] coded all the trials highlighted in yellow. we only had one trial that didn't agree. i then mistakenly told [another research assistant] to look at column B when he should have looked at column D. ... we need to resolve this because i am not sure why we are going in circles."<br />
<br />
The research assistant who analyzed the data and the graduate student decided to review the tapes themselves, without Mr. Hauser's permission, the document says. They each coded the results independently. Their findings concurred with the conclusion that the experiment had failed: The monkeys didn't appear to react to the change in patterns. They then reviewed Mr. Hauser's coding and, according to the research assistant's statement, discovered that what he had written down bore little relation to what they had actually observed on the videotapes. He would, for instance, mark that a monkey had turned its head when the monkey didn't so much as flinch. It wasn't simply a case of differing interpretations, they believed: His data were just completely wrong.</span></div></blockquote><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The reaction to the Hauser investigation has been a mix of outcry against academic dishonesty, frustration at a lack of research standards, and distress over the terrible blow to the scientific community. But a refreshingly optimistic angle comes from <a href="http://jlvernonphd.tumblr.com/post/992792566/hausergate-is-good-for-science">JL Vernon</a>, who sees "Hausergate" as an opportunity to demonstrate the integrity of the scientific process. Here are some of his ideas:</div><blockquote style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 85%;">My reaction to this story may surprise readers of my blog, because I believe there is a silver lining to this story. If handled properly, this tragedy can do great things for science. What we have here is a ripe opportunity to showcase the integrity of the scientific process. As I mentioned in <a href="http://jlvernonphd.tumblr.com/post/972146501/creating-science-brand-loyalists">my recent article</a> on creating science brand loyalists, I think scientists need to be more transparent about the scientific process from experimental design through peer-reviewed publication. By emphasizing the mechanisms built into the scientific process that brought this deception to an end, science communicators and journalists can make the public aware that science is a self-regulating system in which fraud will not endure. While there were failures in the system, science ultimately prevailed. <br />
<br />
In this particular case, the misconduct that led to the investigation of Dr. Hauser occurred at the earliest stage of the scientific process, the experimental design. David Dobbs does a great job describing the <a href="http://www.neuronculture.com/http:/www.neuronculture.com/archives/this-hauser-thing-is-getting-hard-to-watch">weaknesses of Hauser’s experimental protocols</a>. The experiments involved observation of video recordings of monkeys responding to certain stimuli that were varied over time in order to induce a response from the monkeys. The monkeys’ reactions to the stimulus were recorded by the observer. Based on a letter written by the whistleblower researchers, professor Hauser’s observations conflicted with those of his lab assistants. After the researchers realized that Dr. Hauser was trying to force them to accept and publish shoddy data, they acted properly by approaching the Harvard University administration to address these issues of scientific misconduct. <br />
<br />
For their bravery, the whistleblowers should be recognized as “loyal defenders” of science. Not only did they end Dr. Hauser’s dangerous practices, they also fulfilled the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2007/sep/12/ahippocraticoathforscienti">unofficial oath for science</a>. <br />
<br />
Thankfully, once these individuals brought this issue to the attention of the Harvard University ombudsman and the Dean of Arts and Sciences, the appropriate investigation was undertaken. As far as we know, Dean Smith did not delay the investigation and subsequent to the completion of the investigation Dr. Hauser was properly sanctioned. </span></blockquote><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Related Links: A <a href="http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/08/harvard-dean-confirms-misconduct.html">letter</a> from the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences describes the findings against Hauser in more detail. </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1504643513087256168.post-8139749744794217812010-08-17T09:57:00.000-07:002010-08-17T09:57:44.194-07:00By any other cover?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TGq7c0oYWMI/AAAAAAAAANw/OGAfgmHyGI0/s1600/1984.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="155" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TGq7c0oYWMI/AAAAAAAAANw/OGAfgmHyGI0/s400/1984.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Rightly or wrongly, we tend to judge books by their covers (ok, just a little bit). Why else would so much time be spent on their design? Some book cover designs are publicly declared great, making lists like the <a href="http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/5050-recent">AIGA 50 Books/50 Covers</a>, soon to be an exhibition in New York. Other times they go unnoticed, conveying the stories they contain so clearly they become invisible. And other times... they ruin the whole thing. This <a href="http://flavorwire.com/101979/now-then-redesigned-book-covers">great collection</a> of book cover before-and-afters shows just how crucial a cover can be – and highlights the success (or tragedy) of a redesign. </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Some examples: </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TGqydIEcThI/AAAAAAAAANY/oTYuPDfsqvU/s1600/nakedlunch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TGqydIEcThI/AAAAAAAAANY/oTYuPDfsqvU/s320/nakedlunch.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TGqzdLAIuCI/AAAAAAAAANg/tbJwYDwg6fE/s1600/BraveNewWorld.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="248" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TGqzdLAIuCI/AAAAAAAAANg/tbJwYDwg6fE/s320/BraveNewWorld.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TGq6GAJk93I/AAAAAAAAANo/AYoLhJ34t7o/s1600/thetrial.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TGq6GAJk93I/AAAAAAAAANo/AYoLhJ34t7o/s320/thetrial.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1504643513087256168.post-17908430985691778532010-07-28T09:32:00.000-07:002010-07-29T07:42:53.878-07:00Bigger the Better? Not So Much.<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TFAxJ3ZPe0I/AAAAAAAAANI/f5kA5pQsQIM/s1600/wikileaks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="100" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TFAxJ3ZPe0I/AAAAAAAAANI/f5kA5pQsQIM/s400/wikileaks.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The <a href="http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Afghan_War_Diary,_2004-2010">WikiLeaks information dump</a> of over 90,000 documents covering the war in Afghanistan has some journalists quite worried. Not just about the content of the reports (although there is plenty to be concerned with on that front), but about what <i>the reaction</i> to the leak means for the media and the public. Specifically, the lack of much reaction at all. NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen points out that often huge revelations produce the smallest consequences (how </span><span style="font-size: small;">sadly ironic)</span><span style="font-size: small;">. At some level, the information overload is so great that people just ignore it and move on to something more bite-sized.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Some quotes: </span></div><blockquote style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><div><span style="font-size: 90%;">'We tend to think: big revelations mean big reactions. But if the story is too big and crashes too many illusions, the exact opposite occurs.' My fear is that this will happen with the Afghanistan logs. Reaction will be unbearably lighter than we have a right to expect— not because the story isn’t sensational or troubling enough, but because it’s too troubling, a mess we cannot fix and therefore prefer to forget.</span> </div></blockquote><blockquote style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><div><span style="font-size: 90%;">Last week, it was the Washington Post’s big series, <a href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/">Top Secret America</a>, two years in the making. It reported on the massive security shadowland that has arisen since 09/11. The Post basically showed that there is no accountability, no knowledge at the center of what the system as a whole is doing, and too much “product” to make intelligent use of. We’re wasting billions upon billions of dollars on an intelligence system that does not work. It’s an explosive finding but the explosive reactions <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/07/23/intelligence/index.html">haven’t followed</a>, not because the series didn’t do its job, but rather: the job of fixing what is broken would break the system responsible for such fixes.</span> </div></blockquote><blockquote style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><div><span style="font-size: 90%;">The mental model on which most investigative journalism is based states that explosive revelations lead to public outcry; elites get the message and reform the system. But what if elites believe that reform is impossible because the problems are too big, the sacrifices too great, the public too distractible? What if cognitive dissonance has been insufficiently accounted for in our theories of how great journalism works… and often fails to work?</span> </div><span style="font-size: 90%;"></span></blockquote><blockquote style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 90%;">I don’t have the answer; I don’t even know if I have framed the right problem.</span></blockquote><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Regardless of how it is framed, I think Rosen has identified a troubling problem.</span> How does one communicate truly consequential ideas or findings in a way that has real consequence? How do you get someone out from under a pile of information to go act (and react) in the world? Is it a matter of being overwhelmed into paralysis or not really caring to begin with? <span style="font-size: small;">Some questions worth considering.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">The rest of Rosen's post also brings up a number of points about the nature of WikiLeaks (the "world’s first stateless news organization") and the rise of the political press. Read it <a href="http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2010/07/26/wikileaks_afghan.html">here</a>.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Related article at Slate: <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2262066/pagenum/all/#p2">The WikiLeaks Paradox</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">And another (added 7/29): <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2262067/pagenum/all/">How to Give (and Take) a Leak</a> - drip irrigation works better than a monsoon </span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1504643513087256168.post-6130444518959208982010-07-15T15:16:00.000-07:002010-07-15T15:16:45.017-07:00They're Made Out of Meat<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TD-Iayg5-VI/AAAAAAAAAMM/6VHhDwQPJzo/s1600/Meat%21.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="173" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TD-Iayg5-VI/AAAAAAAAAMM/6VHhDwQPJzo/s400/Meat%21.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Just came across a short story that brought me back to the beginning of high school. It'd be fair to say it was one of the first pieces of writing to get me interested in the whole mind/body problem and philosophy in general. I had completely forgotten about it. It's pretty amazing (in a gross but awesome sci-fi way).</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>They're Made out of Meat</i>, by Terry Bisson<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 85%;">"They're made out of meat."<br />
"Meat?"<br />
"Meat. They're made out of meat."<br />
"Meat?"<br />
"There's no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."<br />
"That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?"<br />
"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines."<br />
"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."<br />
"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."<br />
"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."<br />
"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they're made out of meat."<br />
"Maybe they're like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage."<br />
"Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn't take long. Do you have any idea what's the life span of meat?"<br />
"Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside."<br />
"Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads, like the weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through."<br />
"No brain?"<br />
"Oh, there's a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat! That's what I've been trying to tell you."<br />
"So ... what does the thinking?"<br />
"You're not understanding, are you? You're refusing to deal with what I'm telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat."<br />
"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"<br />
"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?"<br />
"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."<br />
"Thank you. Finally. Yes. They are indeed made out of meat. And they've been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."<br />
"Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?"<br />
"First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact other sentiences, swap ideas and information. The usual."<br />
"We're supposed to talk to meat."<br />
"That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello. Anyone out there. Anybody home.' That sort of thing."<br />
"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"<br />
"Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."<br />
"I thought you just told me they used radio."<br />
"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat." <br />
"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"<br />
"Officially or unofficially?"<br />
"Both."<br />
"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe, without prejudice, fear or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing."<br />
"I was hoping you would say that."<br />
"It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?"<br />
"I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say? 'Hello, meat. How's it going?' But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?"<br />
"Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can't live on them. And being meat, they can only travel through C space. Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact."<br />
"So we just pretend there's no one home in the Universe."<br />
"That's it."<br />
"Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you probed? You're sure they won't remember?"<br />
"They'll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we're just a dream to them."<br />
"A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat's dream."<br />
"And we marked the entire sector unoccupied."<br />
"Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others? Anyone interesting on that side of the galaxy?"<br />
"Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a class nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotations ago, wants to be friendly again." <br />
"They always come around."<br />
"And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be if one were all alone ..."</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Apparently, some fans also made a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaFZTAOb7IE">short video</a> version of the story. </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1504643513087256168.post-21020580722250441822010-07-01T20:34:00.000-07:002010-07-01T20:34:54.753-07:00Article Published in ACSM Health & Fitness Journal!<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TC1dkqx8fGI/AAAAAAAAAL8/tGo4VfmLnoI/s1600/73712628.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="283" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TC1dkqx8fGI/AAAAAAAAAL8/tGo4VfmLnoI/s400/73712628.jpg" width="400" /><span id="goog_186448834"></span></a></div><span style="font-size: small;">"<a href="http://journals.lww.com/acsm-healthfitness/Abstract/2010/07000/Injury_Risks_for_the_Female_Athlete.7.aspx">Injury Risks for the Female Athlete</a>"<span id="goog_186448835"></span> is finally out in print!! After hopping and squealing around my room in excitement, I sat down and read the <a href="http://journals.lww.com/acsm-healthfitness/pages/default.aspx">From the Editor</a> at the beginning of the journal:</span><br />
<blockquote><span style="font-size: 90%;">The risk of injury is low when doing moderate-intensity physical activity, but increases with exercise intensity, especially in a competitive environment. And in this regard, female athletes are at a higher risk than male athletes. In her feature, Injury Risks for the Female Athlete, Marielena Groeger, B.A., provides a concise review of women’s unique physiological and biomechanical responses to exercise that influences risk, and outlines measures that can be taken to prevent injury. Given the large number of girls and women involved in fitness programs and competitive sports, this article is an important read for all of us.</span></blockquote><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Yeah! So super happy about this.<br />
<br />
(If you wanna read it, email me and I'll send you the final PDF)<br />
<br />
And thanks to Hannah for this very <a href="http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/phys-ed-what-exercise-science-doesnt-know-about-women/">relevant article</a> in the NY Times about exercise science and women.</span> </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1504643513087256168.post-9593543942729694672010-06-22T09:31:00.000-07:002010-06-22T09:32:51.186-07:00You Don't Know That You Don't Know (and Other Such Puzzles)<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TCDklBPEJCI/AAAAAAAAALc/UomwpiQTDPs/s1600/cube-arty-photo.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="262" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ixWYAQQByog/TCDklBPEJCI/AAAAAAAAALc/UomwpiQTDPs/s400/cube-arty-photo.gif" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/anosognosics-dilemma/">This series</a> is making my brain hurt... in a good way. </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></div><blockquote style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 93%;"><i>The Anosognosic’s Dilemma: Something’s Wrong but You’ll Never Know What It Is</i></span><br />
<a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/the-anosognosics-dilemma-1/"><span style="font-size: 93%;"><i>(Part 1)</i></span></a></blockquote><blockquote style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 85%;"><b>DD: </b>There have been many psychological studies that tell us what we see and what we hear is shaped by our preferences, our wishes, our fears, our desires and so forth. We literally see the world the way we want to see it. But the Dunning-Kruger effect suggests that there is a problem beyond that. Even if you are just the most honest, impartial person that you could be, you would still have a problem — namely, when your knowledge or expertise is imperfect, you really don’t know it. Left to your own devices, you just don’t know it. We’re not very good at knowing what we don’t know<b>.</b></span></blockquote><blockquote style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 85%;"><b>EM:</b> Knowing what you don’t know? Is this supposedly the hallmark of an intelligent person?</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b></b></span> </blockquote><blockquote style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 85%;"><b>DD:</b> That’s absolutely right. It’s knowing that there are things you don’t know that you don’t know. Donald Rumsfeld gave this speech about “unknown unknowns.” It goes something like this: “There are things we know we know about terrorism. There are things we know we don’t know. And there are things that are unknown unknowns. We don’t know that we don’t know.” He got a lot of grief for that. And I thought, “That’s the smartest and most modest thing I’ve heard in a year.”</span></blockquote><blockquote style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><div><a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/21/the-anosognosics-dilemma-somethings-wrong-but-youll-never-know-what-it-is-part-2/"><i><span style="font-size: 93%;">(Part 2)</span></i></a></div></blockquote><blockquote><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 85%;">In a brief communication presented to the Neurological Society of Paris, Joseph Babinski (1857-1932), a prominent French-Polish neurologist, former student of Charcot and contemporary of Freud, described two patients with “left severe hemiplegia” – a complete paralysis of the left side of the body – left side of the face, left side of the trunk, left leg, left foot. Plus, an extraordinary detail. These patients didn’t know they were paralyzed. To describe their condition, Babinski coined the term <i>anosognosia</i> – taken from the Greek agnosia, lack of knowledge, and nosos, disease. <br />
<br />
The contemplation of anosognosia leads to many questions about how the brain puts together a picture of reality and a conception of “the self.” It also suggests that our conception of reality is malleable; that it is possible to not-know something that should be eminently knowable. It may also suggest that it is possible to know and not-know something at the same time. But additionally, it puts the question of how we “know” things at the heart of a neurological diagnosis, and raises questions about how we separate the physical from the mental.</span> </div></blockquote><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0