Social Networking Reversing the Trend of Social Isolation

Posted by on May 17, 2012 No comments

This article in technology review called “How Facebook Saved us from the Suburbs” is an interesting read. You often hear complaints about how the internet, cell phones, and Facebook are making people more isolated. I’ve always been skeptical of ideas like these since social isolation has been increasing for a longer time than any of these technologies has been around.  For proof of this, see the book Habits of the Heart which tackled the topic in 1985.  If you’re looking for technology that isolates us, try the automobile. The internet and cell phones might actually be bringing us back together again.

Why things that are untrue get repeated

Posted by on May 15, 2012 No comments

I’ve been on a little bit of a debunking kick recently, and I may have come to my final thoughts on the topic.  I’ve seen two posts in the in the past few days debunking widely circulated myths.  What is most interesting about these posts is that both attempt to show why this actually happens.

The first post was written by Professor Mark Liberman on Language Log.  He looks at the claim that studies have shown 1 in 10 Wall Street employees to be psychopaths.  There is no evidence for this.  What I find interesting about this post is that he remarks that myths like these have taken the place of Bible Stories in that they are values more for their moral instruction than their truth.  I find this analogy interesting and helpful in understanding what is really going on when a myth is widely circulated.  However, I’m not sure that I believe it 100%.  Among people that I know, at any rate, I think that there is still a standard of factual accuracy that is expected from newspaper articles that is not expected from Bible stories, but that is certainly not a scientific evaluation.  I think it would be interesting to do a study comparing how people read newspaper articles and how they read Bible stories.

The second article is by Gwen Sharp on Sociological Images and looks at the myth that 85% of recent college grads are moving back in with their parents.  In her article, Sharp traces the myth back to its source, in this case CNNMoney, and notes that once a myth has been published by a reputable news source, it gets repeated much more widely.  The Language Log article touches on this as well.  The main reason that myths like this circulate in journalistic laziness.  One the one hand, this is troubling, but on the other, it is completely understandable.  None of us can fact check everything we read, so it seems reasonable to assume that a piece published by a reputable source has its facts straight.  Finding that a publisher is not sufficiently fact-checking should make us reconsider its reputation.

But the truth is that inaccuracies are everywhere.  This really hit home for me when reading the manifesto for the Skeptics Society today.  It repeats a famous misquote of Socrates in the second paragraph:

Skepticism has a long historical tradition dating back to ancient Greece when Socrates observed: “All I know is that I know nothing.”

While Socrates, as portrayed by Plato, was certainly a proto-skeptic, this quote doesn’t appear anywhere in Plato.  The manifesto has no citation, so it’s hard to track down where this quote came from, but Wikiquote claims it comes from section 354c of The Republic.  No English translation is cited, but none that I could find rendered that line in that way.  Reading the Greek, it’s clear that what Socrates is saying is that, having reached the end of his current line of inquiry, he can only conclude that he knows nothing.  The translation in the Perseus archives renders it better:

…the present outcome of the discussion is that I know nothing.

All that is to say, factual errors are everywhere and it’s impossible to catch all of them.

And so, having demonstrated a misquote in the Skeptics Manifesto, I think that I will be taking a break from debunking for a while.

Requiring Sharper Arguments

Posted by on May 10, 2012 No comments

I’ve written before about how much it bothers me when people write about important topics and yet can’t seem to get their facts straight.  It’s good to know that I’m not the only one who feels this way.  The article that I’ve linked, written by Deborah Blum, looks at an op-ed piece from the New York Times about toxic chemicals and it neatly gets to the heart of the topic.  The op-ed piece that Blum looks at starts out with vague science and finishes with even vaguer policy prescriptions.  The author, no doubt, wants to convince people that they should be concerned about toxins that they consume, but, in doing so, he also demonstrates a disregard for doing so.  There’s a word for this kind of writing.  As Blum points out, the fact that the regulation of toxic compounds is very important makes the situation worse and not better.  I really don’t have much to add to this article and I link to it because requiring sharper arguments from those you are inclined to agree with is something that I’d like to see more of in public discourse.

A Quick Shout Out For Third Half Studios

Posted by on March 7, 2012 Comments Off

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About a year and a half ago, I went to the Indie Craft Experience in Atlanta and came away with a button of a squirrel holding a brain.  It was quite awesome.  I recently lost this button and, thanks to the internet, I was able to locate the artist who made the button.  (I’m not sure that I ever knew.)

So, I’m giving a shout out to Third Half Studios, the maker of the button.  I just got my replacement today.

China Mieville on Censorship

Posted by on March 6, 2012 Comments Off

China Mieville has the following to say about censorship–in regards to a Tintin children’s book, but I think that it can be applied widely to topics debated publicly. If you look carefully at his post, you can see that he has also worked in ESPN and Jeremy Lin and, of course, it has implications wider than that. To quote:

“It is depressing to have to point out, yet again, that there is a distinction between having the legal right to say something & having the moral right not to be held accountable for what you say. Being asked to apologise for saying something unconscionable is not the same as being stripped of the legal right to say it…. Cry Free Speech in such contexts, you are demanding the right to speak any bilge you wish without apology or fear of comeback. You are demanding not legal rights but an end to debate about & criticism of what you say.”

Better Off and Critical Reading

Posted by on March 1, 2012 Comments Off

I file this under: Don’t believe most of what you read.

In general, I’m pro-technology but I’m very interested in questions about the appropriate use of technology.  So, I was interested to hear about a book that suggested that Luddites and Ned Ludd in particular might be misunderstood.  The book in question is Better Off by Eric Brende, and on page 9, it has this to say about Ned Ludd:

“If there was one moment when the scales tipped irrevocably in favor of machinery in the English-speaking world, however, it was probably back in 1817, when the legendary Ned Ludd and his followers were hanged for vandalizing the power looms that were ruining their livelihoods. At that moment came the fulfillment of Locke’s novel definition of human rights: destroying a machine became legally tantamount to murder.”

What is so striking about this passage is that it is mostly untrue.  Ned Ludd was not hanged in 1817.  In the strictest sense, Ned Ludd had no followers.  The Luddites took there name from a man who smashed two stocking frames in 1779, but little is known about Ned Ludd and he was not a leader of the Luddite movement.  The book has no footnotes, so it is impossible to tell what Brende is referring to here, but most likely he is referring to the Pentrich Rising of 1817.  In that uprising, an angry mob did break looms, but also committed quite a few other crimes including the murder of at least one person.  Even were this not the case, Brende makes the mistake of reading an event that took place in 1817 with modern eyes.  He claims that “destroying a machine became legally tantamount to murder” because people got the death sentence for doing it.  Today, the death sentence is reserved solely for those who commit murder, but in the UK in 1817, this was not the case.  Someone might be hanged for stealing or a number of other crimes.  It’s just not sexy to say that destroying a machine became tantamount to stealing.  For now, I’m not going to even touch the issue of Locke’s definition of human rights.  Suffice it to say that Brende also seems to have a fairly novel reading of Locke.

This passage demonstrates either sloppy research and reasoning or a deliberate twisting of the facts.  In either case, it’s not terribly heartening.  For me, it throws into question anything the author might say.  Perhaps I shouldn’t judge an entire book by two sentences, but Brende is supposed to have studies technology and culture at MIT.  If he can’t get these facts right, it says a great deal.

The worst part of it is that this is a topic that I care a great deal about and it deserves a book that will treat it properly.  It also gets me down in an age where the most famous newspaper in the country asks its readers if it ought to do fact checking.  I get it.  I feel it.  In the information age, misinformation can spread as quickly as actual information and it’s often hard to tell between the two.  I often find myself saying something that is not true because I misheard or misunderstood.  It just means that we need to be all the more careful.

Improv Story Part 16

Posted by on February 18, 2012 Comments Off

She suddenly realized that she hadn’t eaten since yesterday and grabbed the closest turkey leg. Brit was already four bites in when she realized that she held the means of her escape in her hand. She had packed the turkey leg because she had thought that she might want it while she was cooped up for hours inside the Trojan Penguin. She hadn’t eaten it previously because her anxiety had overcome her hunger. It had been the moment when she had resigned herself to being caught that she had reached for the turkey leg without thinking. The bites had stayed her hunger and her mind was beginning to work again. This wonderful, greasy turkey leg was her salvation.

The clamp that had trapped her was loose around the wrist. If she could just get enough grease onto her trapped hand, she might be able to pull it free. She rubbed the turkey leg around the opening of the box and pulled hard. Her hand slid a bit, but did not come free.

Brit knew that she only had a few minutes at best. She tried to calm herself and rubbed the turkey leg around her wrist some more. She heard footsteps coming from around a corner in the hallway. Was it Chad? It really didn’t matter. If anyone saw her here, it would mean trouble. She pulled as hard as she could, but her hand did not come free.

At the opposite end of the hallway, the doors burst open and Ted came running through carrying two pies. He winked at Brit as he ran by and rounded the corner in the hallway as fast as he could. Brit heard a startled yelp, a grunt, and the thud of two bodies hitting the floor.

“Ashbrook, what are you doing?” It was Chad’s voice. Had Ted not intervened, he would already have discovered her. Ted had bought her an extra minute at most.

“I’m sorry Chad,” Ted said. “I just realized that I had forgotten some pies in my car. The Bake Sale had already started, so I knew I had to hurry.”

Brit pulled as hard as she could, and her hand came free. She fell bakwards and crashed into the lockers on the other side of the hallway.

“What was that?” Chad asked. “Ashbrook, did you see anyone at my locker?”

“Your locker?” Ted asked.

Brit got up and ran as fast as she could towards the school’s exit.

“My locker is right around the corner,” Chad said. “You must have run right by it. Did you see anyone?”

“Sorry, Chad. I was kind of in a hurry,” Ted said.

Brit pushed out of the door. She knew Chad would hear it, but at this point, she didn’t care. She just wanted to get back inside the Penguin before he spotted her. She hoped that he would take a moment to inspect his locker before he followed her out of the door.

Brit sprinted to the hatch on the Penguin and leapt inside. She took a quick look at the school’s door, it was still closed, before she slammed the hatch shut. Brit strained her ears to see if she could hear Chad come out of the building. All she could hear was her own breathing amplified inside the confines of the Trojan Penguin. If Chad comes by, he’ll hear me, she thought. She tried to take deep breaths to relax her breathing.

Brit heard voices from outside. She hadn’t heard the door, but she knew it had to be Chad and Ted.

“He couldn’t have gotten far,” Chad said. Had he said “he?” Brit was hoping that she hadn’t misheard. If he had said “he,” that meant that he didn’t suspect her at all.

“Are you sure you didn’t see anyone?” Chad asked.

“I must have seen someone, but I don’t remember what the person looked like,” Ted said. “I just thought it was some guy at his locker. I didn’t look closely at who it was.”

Brit smiled. Ted was doing a good job of throwing Chad off her scent.

“How do I know it wasn’t you, Ashbrook?” Chad asked.

“We heard someone running and the door opeing and closing,” Chad said. “Besides, up until five minutes ago, there are hundreds of people who could say they saw me at the Bake Sale.”

“You’re right,” Chad said. “If you weren’t such an idiot, I would have caught him.”

“Whoever it was, he’s probably long gone by now,” Ted said.

Don’t sell it too hard, Brit thought.

“Or he might still be around,” Chad said. There was a pause. Brit wondered for a moment if they had gone back inside.

“Yeah, someone broke into my locker,” Chad said. There was a pause again. Brit realized that Chad wasn’t talking to Ted anymore. “They took my jacket. There wasn’t much else in my locker. I want you to keep an eye out for it. The thief might still be around. I’ve got to go get cleaned up. That idiot Ashbrook got pie all over me.”

There was silence again. Brit counted to three hundred before flipping on the light inside the Penguin. They had done a number of tests to see if the light would be visible outside of the Penguin. Neither she nor Ted nor Jamie had ever seen the faintest sliver when the hatch was closed and the light was on inside. Still, she didn’t want to risk it if Chad was standing right outside. She kept her hand on the switch and counted to three hundred again after the light was on. When she was satisfied that nothing was going to happen, she pulled Chad’s jacket out of her backpack.

Brit checked all of the pockets, turned the jacket inside out, and felt the lining for any mysterious bumps. She didn’t find anything. She had almost gotten caught for nothing. She hoped that things were going better Ted. He would need to win the Bake Sale so that they could get into the Dailey house.

 

Part 15 of what is no longer a NaNoWriMo novel

Posted by on December 13, 2011 Comments Off

 “I need a complete set of Gruttax energy tools–quantum certified–the kind that their energy smiths use to build midis aughts,” Jamie said.

“That’s your price for taking the Trojan Penguin to the Bake Sale?” Brit asked.

Jamie nodded.

“There are two problems with that. First, I have no idea who the Gruttax are. Second, I have no idea what a midis aught is.”

Brit had never really been sure about including someone else in their plans, but Ted had said that he needed Jamie’s help to build the Trojan Penguin. He also insisted that Jamie was trustworthy. Brit couldn’t disagree with that. Even if Jamie decided to spill the beans, she could rely on the fact that no one would understand him.

“Go to gruttax.com,” Jamie said. “That should explain everything.”

Brit opened her laptop and pulled up the site. Gruttax appeared to be a retail outlet in a distant corner of the universe that offered intergalactic shipping. Brit started browsing the online store. It offered the standard collection of geek novelty items while, at the same time, doing nothing to break the illusion that they would be coming from the other side of the universe. Brit quickly found the Quantum Certified Energy Tools. They were $29.95.

“I have to say, I’m relieved that even in distant galaxies, they take Mastercard,” Brit said.

“Well, Gruttax does have accounts at local banks to handle those transactions,” Jamie said.

“And what does Gruttax do with all of those US dollars?”

“The Federal Reserve will convert them to Gruttax credits. That’s what it was created for.”

Brit decided not to pursue this further. “Ok, I’ve ordered the tools and selected the best shipping which will apparently overnight them from three million light years away. Is that good enough to get you to drive the penguin to the Bake Sale today?”

“That’ll do.”

Jamie and Ted had loaded the Trojan Penguin onto a trailer the night before. Now, Jamie attached the trailer to his parents’ pickup truck. Brit was hoping to be on Blackstone’s campus by 6AM, before anyone else arrived. All he had to do then was unhitch the trailer and then leave before anyone realized that it had actually been dropped off by a Remedial student.

“All right,” Jamie said. “We’re ready to go.”

Brit climbed into the Penguin through a hatch just below the tail. There was room inside for her and a small shelf that could be used as a desk. There was a battery powered light, but Brit didn’t turn it on. She would need it later. She closed up the hatch and settled in. Now, she had to wait.

She heard the truck start and then felt the motion as they moved out of the driveway. She had assumed that she would fall asleep during the wait, with no light and nothing to occupy herself. She had set an alarm on her phone and it would vibrate when it was time for her to sneak out of the Penguin. She hoped that would be enough to wake her up. For the moment, she wasn’t worried about falling asleep. Instead, she woried that Jamie would get in an accident and that kept her up.

Brit felt her phone vibrate and shook herself awake. She hadn’t remembered falling asleep, but, when she checked the time, it was 11AM. The Bake Sale was underway.

They had built a periscope into the Trojan Penguin that would allow her to look out of the Penguin’s eyes. Of course, she wouldn’t be able to fully tell that the coast was clear unless she rotated the Penguin’s head. She hoped that, if there were any onlookers, ther would just think that it was a cool mechanical effect for the giant penguin, and would not suspect that someone was actually inside. It would also serve as additional confirmation that no one was around, since anyone seeing the head turn would likely remark on it and she would hear it.

Brit looked outside and saw no one. She had also asked Jamie to park the Penguin near the school entrance closest to Chad’s locker. She was able to confirm that he had done so. So far, the plan was working perfectly. She grabbed a backpack that she would use to carry Chad’s things from the locker back to the Penguin where she could examine them more closely. If all went well, she wouldn’t be out of the Penguin more than a couple of minutes.

Brit climbed out of the Penguin and then closed up the hatch behind her again. She wasn’t worried particularly about stealth, concentrating more on speed. She ran into the school and found Chad’s locker. She had his combination memorized and had the locker open in less than a minute.

There was less inside than she had hoped, just his jacket and a box of books at the bottom of the locker. Well, it would have to do. She grabbed the jacket and stuffed it into her backpack. Then she grabbed a couple of the books. The box immediately closed up on her wrist trapping her.

“Please give the password,” came a voice from the box.

Brit froze for a moment. She had no plan for a secondary security system. She had to think of what Chad might pick as his password.

“Dailey Rules?” Brit guessed.

“I’m sorry, that password is incorrect,” the box said. “Chad Dailey is now being notified. While things could not possibly be worse for you, I would still ask that you not struggle.”

Brit took a deep breath. She told herself that she could get out of this. She just needed a little bit of help. With her free hand, Brit pulled out her cell phone. Ted would be just setting up his pie table. Brit dialed him.

“Brit,” Ted said when he answered. “Chad just left. He may be coming to you.”

“I know,” Brit said. “I’ve gotten myself into a little bit of a jam.”

NaNoWriMo 2011 Post Mortem

Posted by on December 5, 2011 1 comment

NaNoWriMo is over and, since I was posting all of my writing here, it should be clear to everyone who was following that I didn’t finish the task I set for myself.  I realized this about halfway through the month when two things became clear:

  1. November was going to be an extraordinarily busy month for me.
  2. The task that I had undertaken for myself was more difficult than I had expected it to be.

I don’t think that I need to go into the specific details of the first item.  Suffice it to say that in a very busy month, I still managed to put about 15,000 words on paper.  It tells me that perhaps I should be doing better than that in other months.

For the second item, I would like to go into specifics.  To start off, I’d like to say that, despite being more difficult, this was the most fun NaNoWriMo project I’ve ever done.  The new sentences always offered unexpected challenges and posting the story as I went along got people reading it at the same time that I was writing it.  I know that Stephen King says that he always writes first drafts with the door closed, and I think that’s generally sound advice.  But, in this case, I found it fun to be putting sections of the story in front of readers pretty much as soon as I was finished writing them, typos and all.  I figured out pretty quickly that I wanted to write each of my 1000 word sections as discrete chunks which meant bringing the narrative to some kind of break every 1000 words.  To further help things along, I decided I needed to have two main characters and that I wanted to go back and forth between the points of view of those two characters depending on the sentence that I had to use next.  This worked really well, but it was hard to develop a writing flow.  Even as I began getting into the narrative, I ran into the possibility of a complete left turn every 1000 words.  This generated some creativity, to be sure.  I never would have come up with the idea of an Evil Genius Bake Sale, if I hadn’t gotten a sentence about S’mores Pie.  Still, it was very often hard work trying to come up with what I wanted to do.

I’ll do a more thorough analysis of this exercise later because… I intend to finish the story and use all of the sentences that I have.  I’ll be slowing down the pace a bit, as I have some other things that I want to work on.  However, I’m expecting to update the story at least twice a week.

So thanks to everyone for submitting sentences and reading.  It made my hectic November a bit more fun.

NaNoWriMo 2011 Part 14

Posted by on November 20, 2011 Comments Off

 “I admit it wasn’t a Radio Flyer accident, ok?” Ted said knowing that he had to sell his exasperation to the assembled crowd. The Trojan Penguin had already drawn quite a lot of admirers by the time he showed up at Blackstone with the s’mores pies. “But neither was it this.”

The “Trojan Penguin” was Ted’s depiction of what happened to him on the Day of Recognition and Ostracism—highly stylized of course. It was a twenty-foot-tall penguin riding a tiny rocket ship. The penguin was wearing aviator goggles and a bomber jacket with the words “Remedial or Bust” printed on the back. Ted liked that touch, but this was not the time for him to be showing pride in his work.

Brit had arranged for the Trojan Penguin’s arrival at Blackstone for early in the morning and she was the secret rider inside it. It was supposed to look like some enterprising Blackstone student having a joke at Ted’s expense. When Ted finally arrived on campus, his job was to look embarassed and annoyed to reinforce the illusion.

A ripple of giggles passed through the crowd. Ted turned his face away from everyone becuase he wasn’t sure he could hold back a smile. “I’ll be down at my table,” Ted said and stormed off.

The rest of the Trojan Penguin operation was up to Brit. He had his own task to take care of. He had to make sure that the s’mores pies won the Bake Sale competition. The administrations of the two schools had approved his proposal to build a smart phone app for tallying the votes. However, they had insisted that a paper ballot box be set up, just in case some people didn’t have smart phones. This made things a bit tricky. Ted would not be able to declare the winner of the competition himself when accessing the vote tallies at the end of the sale. He would submit his tallies to the competition organizer who would then add in any votes from the paper ballots and declare the winner. He could just put his pie ahead by a couple thousand votes, but that might draw suspicion. If he knew how many people voted with paper ballots, he could put his pie ahead by that number. Short of watching the ballot box the whole time, there was no way that he could know that. Ideally, he would be able to discover the final vote totals from the ballot box before submitting his results, but that would be even trickier. His app had a back door that let him keep an eye on the vote totals as the day progressed. Ted figured that he would have a good idea of how many votes he was getting in paper votes based on how many he was getting with electronic ballots. He just hoped that his pie wasn’t significantly more popular with the smart phone carrying crowd.

Tables were set up throughout the Blackstone gymnasium for the Bake Sale. Ted brought his pies to table 14 and began setting out whole pies for sale and smaller slices for tasting.

“Well, if it isn’t the Penguin Tamer,” Chad Dailey said from table 13.

“I suppose I have you to thank for that monstrosity in front of the school,” Ted said.

“I wish I could take credit for that, but unfortunately I can’t,” Chad said. “What have you got there?”

“S’mores pie.”

“You made a pie out of a campfire treat for Girl Scouts? And I was actually worried I might have some competition at this Bake Sale. I guess the Home Ec classes at Remedial aren’t what they used to be.”

Ted ignored Chad and went back to setting up pies. Two of Chad’s goons had come over and it seemed that Chad had gotten a momentary fill of handing out insults. The Dailey’s had a family Black Forest Cake recipe that turned up at all of the Evil Genius Bake Sales. The Dailey’s also always took table 13. Ted hadn’t been placed next to Chad by chance. Being here meant that he could keep an eye on Chad and report his whereabouts to Brit.

“Look, I can’t leave the table or my mom will kill me,” Chad said. “But I want you to find out who’s responsible.”

Ted grinned to himself. There was no way that those two goons were going to be able to find out that he had been behind the mysterious penguin.

“But you don’t know that it’s not just a coincidence,” one of the goons said.

“Someone didn’t coincidentally create a smart phone voting app,” Chad said.

Ted froze. This wasn’t about the penguin. It was about his voting app. There was a good chance that they would be able to trace that back to him. And why was Chad so upset about it anyway?

“I may be paranoid, but you don’t become a succesful Evil Genius by ignoring things like this,” Chad said. “Someone may have gotten wind of my plans and, if that’s the case, I need to know about it. Now find out who wrote the damn app.”

The goons ran off to their work and Chad sat and seethed for a moment. Ted watched Chad carefully wondering what would happen when Chad found out he was behind the voting app. Was Chad also intending to cheat at the Bake Sale?

Ted saw Chad take out his smart phone and check it. Whatever Chad saw on his phone, it made him jump up immediately.

“Mom,” he shouted across the gym. “I need to go take care of an emergency, I’ll be right back.”

Chad ran off and Ted pulled out his phone to call Brit and let her know. When he pulled out his phone, however, he could see that Brit was already calling him.

“Brit,” Ted said. “Chad just left. He may be coming to you.”

“I know,” Brit said. “I’ve gotten myself into a little bit of a jam.”