There’s a video on YouTube about thinking skeptically, the Baloney Detection Kit. It’s sponsored by the Richard Dawkins Foundation.

Many of the comments are about whether science is an alternate religion, but there’s also a theme of denying climate change. What I find notable, though not surprising, is that deniers are using the Spam button to censor the messages of people asserting climate change.

It’s worth bearing in mind the way that tools to protect collective norms (e.g. defeating spam, terrorism) can be used as tools against someone an individual simply disagrees with.

I found comment #303 particularly interesting,

Tae, let that be a lesson: Blogs are not inert things that can be studied dispassionately! Sometimes they can bite back — jump right up at you through the screen.

And the meaning of sentences cannot be dissected by computer analysis.

I wonder if this will happen more as people gain awareness that they’re being analyzed.

[by way of Matthew Hurst]

On bad scientific reporting and bad quantitative methods.

Human Nature is a great column in Slate Magazine. The following is from the most recent: (see the original for better formating)

A study says liberal brains “are more responsive to informational complexity.” Test: You sit in front of a computer screen and wait for a letter to appear on it. You’re supposed to tap your keyboard if it’s an M, but not if it’s a W. The experimenters mix it up but give you more M’s than W’s to see whether you get lulled into tapping when you shouldn’t. Results: 1) On M’s, liberals and conservatives responded equally well. 2) On W’s, liberals were twice as likely to be among the more accurate responders. 3) On electrical measurements of the brain area that monitors conflict “between a habitual tendency … and a more appropriate response,” liberals were five times more likely to show brain activity. Unofficial scientist/media spin: Liberals are smarter. Official scientist/media spin: Liberals are smarter, except when circumstances call for a knee-jerk ideologue. Knee-jerk liberal spin: We’re smarter because we have more agile brains. Thoughtful liberal spin: Then again, maybe we have more agile brains because we’re smarter. (Human Nature’s view: Liberals are smart, except when their knees jerk.) To tap a reply on your own keyboard, enter the Fray.

I cringe to think how this is going to play out on talk radio. I hope Liberals don’t reinforce their stereotype as supercilious and arrogant by touting this and denigrating Conservatives. It should be dealt with soberly and not as a partisan matter. (Like so many things that aren’t.)

Mind you, the American Educational Research Association is sincere.

Volunteer Confirmation.

Dear Turadg,

Thank you for volunteering for the 2008 aera Annual Meeting.

Thank you for your submission.

Sincerely,
American Educational Research Association

SIG-Brain, Neurosciences, and Education
SIG-Career and Technical Education
SIG-Cognition and Assessment
SIG-Communication of Research
SIG-Comprehensive School Reform
SIG-Computer and Internet Applications in Education
SIG-Conflict Resolution and Violence Prevention
SIG-Confluent Education
SIG-Confucianism, Taoism, and Education
SIG-Constructivist Theory, Research and Practice
SIG-Cooperative Learning: Theory, Research and Practice
SIG-Critical Educators for Social Justice
SIG-Critical Examination of Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Gender in Education
SIG-Critical Issues in Curriculum and Cultural Studies
SIG-Critical Perspectives on Early Childhood Education
SIG-Cultural-Historical Research
SIG-Democratic Citizenship in Education
SIG-Design and Technology
SIG-Fiscal Issues, Policy and Education Finance
SIG-Foucault and Education
SIG-Hierarchical Linear Modeling
SIG-Hispanic Research Issues
SIG-Holistic Education
SIG-Home Economics Research
SIG-Indigenous Peoples of the Americas
SIG-Indigenous Peoples of the Pacific
SIG-Informal Learning Environments Research
SIG-Instructional Technology
SIG-Ivan Illich
SIG-John Dewey Society
SIG-Learning Sciences (formerly: Education, Science and Technology)
SIG-Learning and Teaching in Educational Leadership (formerly: Teaching in Educational Administration)
SIG-Literature
SIG-Lives of Teachers
SIG-Marxian Analysis of Schools, Society and Education
SIG-Media, Culture and Curriculum
SIG-Moral Development and Education
SIG-Multiple Linear Regression: The General Linear Model
SIG-Paulo Freire
SIG-Peace Education
SIG-Philosophical Studies in Education
SIG-Postcolonial Studies and Education
SIG-Problem-Based Learning
SIG-Queer Studies
SIG-Rasch Measurement
SIG-Religion and Education
SIG-Research Focus on Black Education
SIG-Research Focus on Education and Sport
SIG-Research Focus on Education in the Caribbean and Africa
SIG-Research on Giftedness and Talent
SIG-Research on Learning and Instruction in Physical Education
SIG-Research on Teacher Induction
SIG-Research on Women and Education
SIG-Research on the Education of Asian and Pacific Americans
SIG-Research on the Education of Deaf Persons
SIG-Research on the Superintendency
SIG-Research, Education, Information, and School Libraries
SIG-Rural Education
SIG-Safe Schools and Communities
SIG-School Choice
SIG-School Community, Climate and Culture
SIG-School Effectiveness and School Improvement
SIG-School Indicators, Profiles, and Accountability
SIG-School-University Collaborative Research
SIG-Science Teaching and Learning
SIG-Second Language Research
SIG-Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices
SIG-Semiotics in Education
SIG-Service Learning and Experiential Education
SIG-Social and Emotional Learning
SIG-Society of Professors of Education
SIG-Sociology of Education
SIG-Special Education Research
SIG-Spirituality and Education
SIG-Stress and Coping in Education
SIG-Structural Equation Modeling
SIG-Studying and Self-Regulated Learning
SIG-Supervision and Instructional Leadership
SIG-Teacher as Researcher
SIG-Teachers' Work/Teacher Unions
SIG-Technology as an Agent of Change in Teaching and Learning
SIG-Technology, Instruction, Cognition & Learning
SIG-Test Validity Research and Evaluation
SIG-Tracking and Detracking

Girls Ask Alice for Programming Skills
eWeek (03/19/07) Taft, Darryl K.

A program called Alice, originally conceived by Carnegie Mellon’s Stage 3 Research lab, has proved effective in getting young women excited about computer programming. Alice allows those who do not have high-level programming abilities to try their hand at creating 3D computer animated stories, using characters, scripting tools, and pre-existing graphic elements. Originally designed to help build virtual environments, Alice was eventually given a drag-and-drop interface, which has made it an effective tool in introducing both women and minorities to computer programming, according to CMU. A study was conducted to see what impact a version of Alice with storytelling support had on girls, compared to a version without storytelling support, and the “Results of the study suggest that girls are more motivated to learn programming using Storytelling Alice; study participants who used Storytelling Alice spent 42 percent more time programming and were more than three times as likely to sneak extra time to work on their programs as users of Generic Alice–16 percent of Generic Alice users and 51 percent of Storytelling Alice users snuck extra time,” says CMU graduate student Caitlin Kelleher, who developed Storytelling Alice. Using Alice in middle school, where many girls are found to lose interest in math and science, provides students with positive exposure to programming. The program has also been used in colleges and high schools. The program “really seems to be hitting its stride this year,” said IBM Rational division chief scientist Grady Booch, after attending the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education’s (SIGCSE) 2007 symposium in Covington, Ky. To learn about ACM’s Committee on Women and Computing, visit http://women.acm.org
Click Here to View Full Article

Now Beauty Is in the Eye of the Computer
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) (03/18/07) Dasey, Daniel

After spending several years refining computer software designed to rate the attractiveness of women, Australian computer scientists Hatice Gunes and Massimo Piccardi at the University of Technology, Sydney, are now looking for commercial partners. The software is designed to quickly analyze a photograph of a women’s face, and immediately produce a beauty rating on the scale of 1 to 10. “Potential applications exist in the entertainment industry, cosmetic industry, virtual media, and plastic surgery,” the researchers write in a paper in the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. Piccardi is especially excited about the idea of having doctors use the facial analysis technology to ensure that modifications for plastic surgery patients improve their attractiveness. The program can predict how beautiful humans would consider a female face to be plus or minus 1.5 marks, and the researchers say the margin of error could be reduced with continued development. The beauty quotient of the software is based on 14 facial measurements, 13 related ratios, and images of supermodels, actresses, and more than 200 other women.
Click Here to View Full Article

Unfortunately, Monk and his colleagues don’t provide the final answer; more research is called for. But the problem seems to be that people pay more attention when they hear only half a conversation. It’s apparently easier to tune out the continuous drone of a complete conversation, in which two people take turns speaking, than it is to ignore a person speaking and falling silent in turns.

You know you wanna hear it.

Full article from New Scientist.

So be careful when you fart in the ocean; you may confuse a little herring into losing its momma.

New Scientist: Grass stalks fit bill for earliest toothpicks

“Teeth from early human fossils as old as 1.8 million years show characteristic grooves that may have been carved by the repeated use of toothpicks. But dental floss didn’t exist and wooden picks don’t leave marks, so the toothpick’s identity was a mystery. But new experimental work shows that grass stalks fit the bill. What’s more, our ancestor’s teeth cleaning habits could be the oldest human custom yet recorded…”

But researchers could at least explore whether TNA-based biology is feasible. “Szostak could evolve a TNA world,” says Eschenmoser.

A TNA world? Isn’t that a male fantasy?

But seriously, evolving a TNA biosphere would be historic. It would show us just how easy it is for life to spring forth from matter, adding one more notch to the belt for evolution and making extraterrestrial life that much more likely.