Links
Stuff I find around the web that interests or amuses me.
New Research
Today, the Seattle PI’s Big Blog linked to an MSNBC story about how swearing can apparently help lessen how much pain is felt.
…the researchers had thought that swearing would make the cold water feel much colder, lowering the participants’ tolerance for pain and heightening their perception of it. “In fact, the opposite occurred — people withstood a moderately to strongly painful stimulus for significantly longer if they repeated a swear word rather than a nonswear word,” write the team….
What caught my eye was the opening paragraph of the MSNBC story’s description of this as “new research” — I was sure that I’d heard this before. A quick search of the website of the Neuroreport journal where the study was published quickly finds the study…and reveals that it was published in August 2009.
Admittedly, this is just a bit of a fluff piece on a slow news day. But really. Since when is research almost two years old “new”? It may well be the most current research on the subject, but new? That seems a bit of an overstatement.
The Proverbial Sausage Factory
This is a fascinating look at a trial from a juror’s perspective: hearing the evidence, trying to balance all the factors and evidence in coming to a decision, and watching the legal system at work. Perhaps of particular interest to me as a Law and Justice student, but the kind of thing that I think would be interesting no matter what.
From Tux Life: Beyond a Reasonable Doubt:
These are the facts we were given as a jury, facts upon which we were to decide if a boy was guilty of a crime that would put him in prison for 10 years. We were admonished to consider all of the facts but nothing outside of them. Don’t consider the sentence, or the age, or the race, or anything unrelated to what we heard while sitting in the juror box. Just focus on the facts that are presented. Yet, we were also told, time and again, that our Constitution is absolutely unwavering in its mission to protect the innocent, that no matter how clear-cut the evidence may seem, the burden of proof in criminal cases always, always, always falls on the prosecution. The boy sitting in that chair next to a pair of public defenders, possibly wearing borrowed clothes to look presentable in court, is innocent until he is proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
[…]
All I could think as I walked to my car after being excused was this: from chaos comes order. This system that we look at and think that it’s in disrepair, that nobody can possibly fix it or in which you have “activist judges” on one side and uncaring, throw-the-book-at-them judges on the other side just isn’t a fair characterization. What you truly have is a proverbial sausage factory: it’s incredibly messy, nothing seems to make sense, nothing looks good or reasonable or even real, but at the end of the line there is something like justice. It doesn’t always look right. It doesn’t always feel right. It doesn’t even always taste right. But it’s at least palatable. And no matter how it is, it’s never for a lack of sincerely trying.
(via kottke)
Drama-Free Facebook
Leave it to the kids to figure out how to make Facebook as safe, secure, and drama-free as possible.
From danah boyd | apophenia » Risk Reduction Strategies on Facebook:
Mikalah uses Facebook but when she goes to log out, she deactivates her Facebook account. She knows that this doesn’t delete the account – that’s the point. She knows that when she logs back in, she’ll be able to reactivate the account and have all of her friend connections back. But when she’s not logged in, no one can post messages on her wall or send her messages privately or browse her content. But when she’s logged in, they can do all of that. And she can delete anything that she doesn’t like. Michael Ducker calls this practice “super-logoff” when he noticed a group of gay male adults doing the exact same thing.
[…]
Shamika doesn’t deactivate her Facebook profile but she does delete every wall message, status update, and Like shortly after it’s posted. She’ll post a status update and leave it there until she’s ready to post the next one or until she’s done with it. Then she’ll delete it from her profile. When she’s done reading a friend’s comment on her page, she’ll delete it. She’ll leave a Like up for a few days for her friends to see and then delete it. When I asked her why she was deleting this content, she looked at me incredulously and told me “too much drama.” Pushing further, she talked about how people were nosy and it was too easy to get into trouble for the things you wrote a while back that you couldn’t even remember posting let alone remember what it was all about. It was better to keep everything clean and in the moment. If it’s relevant now, it belongs on Facebook, but the old stuff is no longer relevant so it doesn’t belong on Facebook.
(via Waxy)
Interesting approaches, and I don’t think I would have thought of either. Well, I might have thought of the second, but I babble enough that it would be far too much trouble to bother with (and besides, the majority of what goes on Facebook also goes to Twitter and my blog, so there wouldn’t be much point).
Links for November 1st through November 5th
Sometime between November 1st and November 5th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!
- A Piece of Their Mind: "Adding to the conundrum, of course, are their linked brains, and the mysterious hints of what passes between them. The family regularly sees evidence of it. The way their heads are joined, they have markedly different fields of view. One child will look at a toy or a cup. The other can reach across and grab it, even though her own eyes couldn't possibly see its location. 'They share thoughts, too,' says Louise. 'Nobody will be saying anything,' adds Simms, 'and Tati will just pipe up and say, 'Stop that!' And she'll smack her sister.' While their verbal development is delayed, it continues to get better. Their sentences are two or three words at most so far, and their enunciation is at first difficult to understand. Both the family, and researchers, anxiously await the children's explanation for what they are experiencing."
- ★ Going Flash-Free on Mac OS X, and How to Cheat When You Need It: "Last week I mentioned that, following Steven Frank’s lead, I’d completely disbled Flash Player on my Mac. But I have a cheat, for web pages with Flash content with no non-Flash workaround. I’m really happy with this setup, so I thought I’d document it here."
- And We Shall Call This “Moff’s Law”: "When you go out of your way to suggest that people should be thinking less — that not using one's capacity for reason is an admirable position to take, and one that should be actively advocated — you are not saying anything particularly intelligent. And unless you live on a parallel version of Earth where too many people are thinking too deeply and critically about the world around them and what's going on in their own heads, you're not helping anything; on the contrary, you're acting as an advocate for entropy."
- 500 Internal Server Error: 500 Internal Server Error
- To NSFW or Not to NSFW? (NSFW) – Roger Ebert’s Journal: "America has a historical Puritan streak, and is currently in the midst of another upheaval of zeal from radical religionists. They know what is bad for us. They would prefer to burn us at a metaphorical stake, but make do with bizarre imprecations about the dire consequences of our sin. Let me be clear: I am not speaking of sexual behavior that is obviously evil and deserves legal attention. But definitions differ. Much of their wrath is aimed at gays. I consider homosexuality an ancient, universal and irrefutable fact of human nature. Some radicals actually blamed it for 9/11. For them the ideal society must be Saudi Arabia's, which I consider pathologically sick."
Links for October 21st through October 30th
Sometime between October 21st and October 30th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!
- Who Lives There – A Home in the Pyramid Atop Seattle’s Smith Tower: "TO get to the top of the world, Petra Franklin Lahaie ushers her two young daughters and their girly bikes through a set of heavy bronze doors, greets the 24-hour elevator operator in the Prussian blue uniform, rides up 35 stories past mostly vacant office suites, debarks next to an observation deck and Chinese-themed banquet room, passes through a portal marked 'private residence,' climbs two stories into a neo-gothic pyramid and enters a penthouse apartment."
Links for October 8th through October 17th
Sometime between October 8th and October 17th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!
- Lens Culture: In Almost Every Picture # 7: "The chronological series begins in 1936, when a 16-year-old girl from Tilburg in Holland picks up a gun and shoots at the target in a shooting gallery. Every time she hits the target, it triggers the shutter of a camera and a portrait of the girl in firing pose is taken and given as a prize. And so a lifelong love affair with the shooting gallery begins. This series documents almost every year of the woman's life (there is a conspicuous pause from 1939 to 1945) up until present times. At the age of 88 Ria van Dijk still makes her pilgrimage to the Shooting Gallery."
- Caught Spying on Student, FBI Demands GPS Tracker Back: "A California student got a visit from the FBI this week after he found a secret GPS tracking device on his car, and a friend posted photos of it online. The post prompted wide speculation about whether the device was real, whether the young Arab-American was being targeted in a terrorism investigation and what the authorities would do. It took just 48 hours to find out: The device was real, the student was being secretly tracked and the FBI wanted their expensive device back, the student told Wired.com in an interview Wednesday."
Links for September 28th through October 1st
Sometime between September 28th and October 1st, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!
- Google Lateris Nescis (Using Google Translate’s Latin-to-English on the standard "Lorem Ipsum" text): "Hello world! Is here to cancel meals. Fresh troops the avenging can take the price of the gate elit. That beating you soften large and less trouble. In the fireball there is no element of time will not be avenging Moors, always. Product Sample no, the volutpat But to drink in that, at times as before. Show your little was Nisl undertakes to please a quiver. Maecenas from the fear of eros, which does not fear feugiat. Phasellus to leaven good lion Felis arrows beating. Smartphone EU nibh dignissim or to drink in your family is. "
- STEAL THIS PRESENTATION!: An excellent presentation on how to create excellent (PowerPoint/Keynote) presentations.
- Relative Sizes of STAR TREK and STAR WARS Ships: "It's interesting to see that a Next Generation-era Klingon Bird of Prey looks like it could probably take out an AT-AT with one shot, while the USS Defiant looks outmatched by the rebel ship from the opening scenes of the first Star Wars film."
- This Is a News Website Article About a Scientific Finding: "In this paragraph I will state the main claim that the research makes, making appropriate use of 'scare quotes' to ensure that it's clear that I have no opinion about this research whatsoever. In this paragraph I will briefly (because no paragraph should be more than one line) state which existing scientific ideas this new research 'challenges'."
Links for September 20th through September 26th
Sometime between September 20th and September 26th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!
- Billboard Error Creates Embarrassment: "If you ever wondered how much difference just one letter can make when it comes to a message, ask the thousands of people who drove by a digital billboard near the intersection of Ironwood and Indiana 23 between Thursday and Monday morning. The ad urged people to go to the 'southbendon.com' website for a look at the '15 best things about our pubic schools.' That's right, the billboard said 'pubic' instead of 'public' schools. The letter 'L' had been left out of the word public."
- My Relentless Pursuit of the Guy Who Robbed Me: "See, aspiring thief, you just never know what you're stepping into when you hit up a random car on a random street. However badass you think you may be, there is someone on the other side of the robbery. And in this particular case it was someone who escaped the Iranian Revolution as a child; who roamed the world alone for five years because her parents couldn't get out; who watched from a dozen blocks away as the twin towers crumbled; who had just barely clawed her way out of that concentration camp known as late-stage cancer, if only because she was intent on raising her babies, come hell or high water. And all of this before she even turned 40. Can you see how that someone might be way more twisted than you?"
- My First Week With the iPhone: "The other night, however, a very amazing thing happened. I downloaded an app called Color ID. It uses the iPhone's camera, and speaks names of colors. It must use a table, because each color has an identifier made up of 6 hexadecimal digits. This puts the total at 16777216 colors, and I believe it. Some of them have very surreal names, such as Atomic Orange, Cosmic, Hippie Green, Opium, and Black-White. These names in combination with what feels like a rise in serotonin levels makes for a very psychedelic experience. […] I went outside. I looked at the sky. I heard colors such as 'Horizon,' 'Outer Space,' and many shades of blue and gray. I used color queues to find my pumpkin plants, by looking for the green among the brown and stone. I spent ten minutes looking at my pumpkin plants, with their leaves of green and lemon-ginger. I then roamed my yard, and saw a blue flower. I then found the brown shed, and returned to the gray house. My mind felt blown."