2008

Correcting wrong info reinforces false beliefs

education, history, politics, science / /

From Jonathan M. Gitlin’s “Does ideology trump facts? Studies say it often does” (Ars Technica: 24 September 2008):

We like to think that people will be well informed before making important decisions, such as who to vote for, but the truth is that’s not always the case. Being uninformed is one thing, but having a population that’s actively misinformed presents problems when it comes to participating in the national debate, or the democratic process. If the findings of some political scientists are right, attempting to correct misinformation might do nothing more than reinforce the false belief.

This sort of misinformation isn’t hypothetical; in 2003 a study found that viewers of Fox News were significantly more misinformed about the Iraq war, with far greater percentages of viewers erroneously believing that Iraq possessed WMDs or that there was a credible link between the 9/11 attack and Saddam Hussein than those who got their news from other outlets like NPR and PBS. This has led to the rise of websites like FactCheck and SourceWatch.

Saying that correcting misinformation does little more than reinforce a false belief is a pretty controversial proposal, but the claim is based on a number of studies that examine the effect of political or ideological bias on fact correction. In the studies, volunteers were shown news items or political adverts that contained misinformation, followed by a correction. For example, a study by John Bullock of Yale showed volunteers a political ad created by NARAL that linked Justice John Roberts to a violent anti-abortion group, followed by news that the ad had been withdrawn. Interestingly, Democratic participants had a worse opinion of Roberts after being shown the ad, even after they were told it was false.

Over half (56 percent) of Democratic subjects disapproved of Roberts before the misinformation. That rose to 80 percent afterward, but even after correcting the misinformation, 72 percent of Democratic subjects still had a negative opinion. Republican volunteers, on the other hand, only showed a small increase in disapproval after watching the misinformation (11 percent vs 14 percent).

Correcting wrong info reinforces false beliefs Read More »

An elderly Eskimo & his unusual knife

history / /

From Wade Davis’ “Wade Davis: an Inuit elder and his shit knife” (Boing Boing: 26 September 2008):

The Inuit didn’t fear the cold; they took advantage of it. During the 1950s the Canadian government forced the Inuit into settlements. A family from Arctic Bay told me this fantastic story of their grandfather who refused to go. The family, fearful for his life, took away all of his tools and all of his implements, thinking that would force him into the settlement. But instead, he just slipped out of an igloo on a cold Arctic night, pulled down his caribou and sealskin trousers, and defecated into his hand. As the feces began to freeze, he shaped it into the form of an implement. And when the blade started to take shape, he put a spray of saliva along the leading edge to sharpen it. That’s when what they call the “shit knife” took form. He used it to butcher a dog. Skinned the dog with it. Improvised a sled with the dog’s rib cage, and then, using the skin, he harnessed up an adjacent living dog. He put the shit knife in his belt and disapp eared into the night.

An elderly Eskimo & his unusual knife Read More »

How to run a command repeatedly

tech help / /

You can use the watch command, but it unfortunately isn’t available for Mac OS X. At least, from Apple. Sveinbjorn Thordarson (great name!) has a version of watch that you can download and compile on your OS X box. It’s available at http://www.sveinbjorn.org/watch_macosx.

Or, you can use this shell script:

while true ; do foo ; sleep 1 ; done

This will run foo every second until you press Ctrl-C to cancel the script.

How to run a command repeatedly Read More »

Bruno’s memory structures

education, history / /

From Laura Miller’s “The heretic” (Salon: 25 August 2008):

Still, the mental powers of Bruno and his fellow memory artists seem almost superhuman today. The basic principle, Rowland explains, is simple enough, “to link words with images.” Nevertheless, the structures employed were mind-boggling: vast, elaborate patterns and nested wheels within wheels (like the color wheels used by visual designers) that could be used to juxtapose and rearrange huge quantities of information without recourse to any extra-mental form of storage (like writing). This ability makes the minds of Renaissance intellectuals radically different from our own, almost incomprehensibly so.

Bruno’s memory structures Read More »

John Berryman’s suicide note

art, history, language & literature / /

From Steve Marsh’s “Homage to Mister Berryman” (Mpls St Paul Magazine: September 2008):

Berryman’s last words to Kate came on that January morning—he told her he was going to campus to clean his office. He had never said that before, she says, but Kate, who was attending Al-Anon meetings at the time, was trying “not to manage this situation.” Berryman had actually been sober for several months following repeated periods of hospitalization, twice at St. Mary’s and once at Hazelden. “But he had developed a hum,” Kate says. “He would hum all the time. And he stopped talking very much.”

After his suicide, Kate found a note written on the back of an envelope in a wastebasket.

O my love Kate, you did all you could.
I’m unemployable & a nuisance.
Forget me, remarry, be happy.

John Berryman’s suicide note Read More »

Interesting psychological disorders

science, weird / /

From Lauren Davis’ “Delusion or Alien Invasion? Disorders That Make Life Seem Like Scifi” (io9: 27 September 2008):

Capgras Delusion: You believe a loved one has been replaced with an exact duplicate.

…

Reduplicative Paramnesia: You believe that a place or location has been moved to another site, or has been duplicated and exists in two places simultaneously.

…

Alien Hand Syndrome:Your hand seems to have a will of its own.

…

Alice in Wonderland Syndrome: You perceive objects as much larger or smaller than they actually are.

…

Fregoli Syndrome: You believe that multiple people in your life are actually a single person in disguise.

…

Jumping Frenchman of Maine Disorder: You obey any order shouted at you in a commanding voice.

…

Delusional Parasitosis: You believe that you are infested with parasites.

…

Cotard Delusion: You believe you have died and that your body is rotting and/or your soul is gone.

Interesting psychological disorders Read More »

Why you should not run Windows as Admin

security, technology / /

From Aaron Margosis’ “Why you shouldn’t run as admin…” (17 June 2004):

But if you’re running as admin [on Windows], an exploit can:

  • install kernel-mode rootkits and/or keyloggers (which can be close to impossible to detect)
  • install and start services
  • install ActiveX controls, including IE and shell add-ins (common with spyware and adware)
  • access data belonging to other users
  • cause code to run whenever anybody else logs on (including capturing passwords entered into the Ctrl-Alt-Del logon dialog)
  • replace OS and other program files with trojan horses
  • access LSA Secrets, including other sensitive account information, possibly including account info for domain accounts
  • disable/uninstall anti-virus
  • cover its tracks in the event log
  • render your machine unbootable
  • if your account is an administrator on other computers on the network, the malware gains admin control over those computers as well
  • and lots more

Why you should not run Windows as Admin Read More »

Amazon’s infrastructure and the cloud

business / /

From Spencer Reiss’ “Cloud Computing. Available at Amazon.com Today” (Wired: 21 April 2008):

Almost a third of [Amazon]’s total number of sales last year were made by people selling their stuff through the Amazon machine. The company calls them seller-customers, and there are 1.3 million of them.

…

Log in to Amazon’s gateway today and more than 100 separate services leap into action, crunching data, comparing alternatives, and constructing a totally customized page (all in about 200 milliseconds).

…

Developers get a cheap, instant, essentially limitless computing cloud.

Amazon’s infrastructure and the cloud Read More »

To solve a problem, you first have to figure out the problem

commonplace book, science, true stories / /

From Russell L. Ackoff & Daniel Greenberg’s Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track (2008):

A classic story illustrates very well the potential cost of placing a problem in a disciplinary box. It involves a multistoried office building in New York. Occupants began complaining about the poor elevator service provided in the building. Waiting times for elevators at peak hours, they said, were excessively long. Several of the tenants threatened to break their leases and move out of the building because of this…

Management authorized a study to determine what would be the best solution. The study revealed that because of the age of the building no engineering solution could be justified economically. The engineers said that management would just have to live with the problem permanently.

The desperate manager called a meeting of his staff, which included a young recently hired graduate in personnel psychology…The young man had not focused on elevator performance but on the fact that people complained about waiting only a few minutes. Why, he asked himself, were they complaining about waiting for only a very short time? He concluded that the complaints were a consequence of boredom. Therefore, he took the problem to be one of giving those waiting something to occupy their time pleasantly. He suggested installing mirrors in the elevator boarding areas so that those waiting could look at each other or themselves without appearing to do so. The manager took up his suggestion. The installation of mirrors was made quickly and at a relatively low cost. The complaints about waiting stopped.

Today, mirrors in elevator lobbies and even on elevators in tall buildings are commonplace.

To solve a problem, you first have to figure out the problem Read More »

The 6 stages of political scandal

history, politics / /

According to Mickey Kaus’ Why write about the Edwards scandal? (Slate: 4 August 2008), these are the 6 stages of any political scandal:

… the natural progression in cases like this: 1) Too horrible and shocking; it can’t possibly be true; 2) It’s not true; 3) You can’t prove it’s true; 4) Why are you trying to prove it’s true? 5) It’s disgusting that you’ve proved it’s true; 6) What’s the big deal anyway?

The 6 stages of political scandal Read More »

I for one welcome our new OS overlords: Google Chrome

business, technology / /

As some of you may have heard, Google has announced its own web browser, Chrome. It’s releasing the Windows version today, with Mac & Linux versions to follow.

To educate people about the new browser & its goals, they release a 38 pg comic book drawn by the brilliant Scott McCloud. It’s a really good read, but it gets a bit technical at times. However, someone did a “Reader’s Digest” version, which you can read here:

http://technologizer.com/2008/09/01/google-chrome-comic-the-readers-digest-version

I highly encourage you to read it. This browser is doing some very interesting, smart things. And it’s open source, so other browsers can use its code & ideas.

If you want to read the full comic, you can do so here:

http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/

BTW … I don’t think Chrome has the potential of becoming the next big browser; I think instead it has the potential to become the next big operating system. See http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/01/meet-chrome-googles-windows-killer/ for more on that.

I for one welcome our new OS overlords: Google Chrome Read More »

Dropbox for Linux is coming soon

business, tech help, technology / /

According to this announcement, a Linux client for Dropbox should be coming out in a week or so:

http://forums.getdropbox.com/topic.php?id=2371&replies=1

I’ve been using Dropbox for several months, and it’s really, really great.

What is it? Watch this video:

http://www.getdropbox.com/screencast

It’s backup and auto-syncing done REALLY well. Best of all, you can sync between more than one computer, even if one is owned by someone else. So I could create a folder then share it with Robert. It shows up on his machine. If either of us changes files in the folder, those changes are auto-synced with each other.

Very nice.

So check it out when you get a chance. 2 GB are free. After that, you pay a small fee.

Dropbox for Linux is coming soon Read More »

The Elizabethans and their love of booze

history / /

From Sam Anderson’s “A History of Hooch“, a review of Iain Gately’s Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol (6 July 2008):

Elizabethan England had a pub for every 187 people. (By 2004, the country was down to one for every 529 people.) The Pilgrims’ Mayflower was actually “a claret ship from the Bordeaux wine trade,” and a group of settlers who came over to join them brought 20,000 gallons of beer and wine but only 3,000 gallons of water.

The Elizabethans and their love of booze Read More »

The Aztecs and their New Year’s Festival

history / /

From Sam Anderson’s “A History of Hooch“, a review of Iain Gately’s Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol (6 July 2008):

Aztecs liked fermented sap, but had a legal drinking age (52) higher than their average life expectancy – although every four years they’d hold a New Year’s festival called “Drunkenness of Children,” at which all citizens, including toddlers, were required to drink.

The Aztecs and their New Year’s Festival Read More »

Fat footers

tech help, technology / /

Jerry wrote this & sent it to a client;

A fat footer is a means of showing secondary navigation, or
showcasing primary navigation, or reinforcing selected pieces of your
navigation. Here are some examples:

On a long-scroll blog page, put some choices at the bottom:
http://bokardo.com/

Put sales and branding at the top and navigation at the bottom:
http://www.dapper.net/

Promote the pages you really want them to visit:
http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/

Pizazz at the top, decision-making choices at the bottom:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/

We think it’s usually best to have a color change for the footer:
http://billyhughes.oph.gov.au/

Fat footers Read More »