If you haven’t seen them already, you really need to check out these amazing, amazing photos of kids’ science fair projects. For so many of them I can’t even imagine what the null hypothesis could be. It’s like science from a semi-parallel universe.
I can’t really make fun of how the kids look, though, because check out this pic of my two best friends (since 6th grade), Ken and Glen:
And see how they turned out:
Reminds me of the tale of another computer hacker’s transformation:
Considering how lazy many e-daters are, and how clever many other e-daters are, it should come as no surprise that plagiarism runs rampant in the online dating world. On Friday the Wall Street Journal reported on copycat personal profiles, mentioning that in one survey 9% of respondents admitted to lifting material from someone else, and that lines from some sources appear on dozens of people’s profile pages. In some cases people cop to lack of imagination, but I suspect in others people subconsciously appropriate the sentiments behind the words so as to justify their claims of authorship.
It’s funny to me that Dan Ariely & co. are using HOTorNOT for research purposes. First, because I didn’t realize that site was still around. Second, because a few years ago, when I was a HoN profile moderator (responsible for viewing people’s submitted pics and personal statements and approving or rejecting them), I emailed a friend, "After painfully reading over 1000 profiles I think I could write a sociology dissertation on it." Also: "I have gained a tragic glimpse into the heart of human nature."
We’ve started a network of blogs at work, so I am now also blogging for Psychology Today. It’s not yet clear whether this will add to or detract from SilverJacket (though it’s already pretty clear what it’s doing to my nights and weekends…) As for competing with myself, there’s a PT-SJ Venn diagram with a lot of overlap. I’ve decided that I will be making my psych-heavy posts over there and linking to a few of them from here so you can keep up. I will save my dick jokes exclusively for SJ.
•Check out all of the PT blogs here.
•Check out Brainstorm, the blog written by me and the five other PT editors, here.
•Check out only my posts on Brainstorm here.
Experimental psychologists frequently ask people to rate things on a scale: How difficult is this task (1=super easy, 5=way hard); Are you a big drinker (1=no, 2=not sure, 3=yes); Is this task difficult because you are currently drunk (1=no, 7=what’s the question again?). Etc.
The concept of a ratings scale is pretty simple and widely applicable. Yet somehow, just because some guy named Rensis Likert wrote a paper about using these scales back in 1932, whenever researchers mention a ratings scale in a study, they call it a Likert scale. Here’s an example from a paper I covered for an upcoming issue of Psychology Today: "Participants made these ratings on a 9-point Likert scale (1 = not at all physically attractive/sexually promiscuous, 9 = very physically attractive/sexually promiscuous)."
Under US law, obtaining a patent requires that your invention is nonobvious. Here is a concept that is both obvious, and not even this guy’s invention, and it’s now named after him. It makes me wonder what it would take to get the checkbox named after me. Or for researchers to have to write stuff like "Subjects then answered a Hutson yes-or-no question about whether they liked cake."
(On your way out, please rate this post on a 1-point Likert scale in the comments section. (1=nerdy but kinda rad). I’ll be running stats shortly.)
A week ago I saw a hip hop show at Knitting Factory in Tribeca. The headliner was a Boston MC named Edan (who can rock a mic with one hand while cutting records with the other), but I was no less excited to see one of my favorite producers, Prince Paul, open for him. And PP did something new. For the first time, he performed with his 17-year-old son, Paul Fresh, aka DJ P. Together they go by Negroes on Ice. Note the appropriate "Jesus was black" and "ICE COLD" tees in the pic.
Now, Prince Paul’s been on the block for a hot minute (going back to Stetsasonic and De La Soul in the 1980’s), and I imagine growing up with your dad being such a legend would earn a kid some props at school. DJ P also has his own skills as a DJ, and he’s good looking to boot, so I’m sure he’s got a healthy alpha male ego. But still, being 17 and performing with your dad on stage? That’s enough to give a kid a breakdown. Not to mention that fact that Paul the Elder kept reaching over and tweaking Junior’s sliders and knobs. I kept watching, waiting to see just a flash of an annoyed "Gah! Dad, get your hands off my consoles! I can do it myself!" look on his face. But not a one. He just kept bopping his head, switching up tracks, smiling at the audience. That is one cool cat.
It’s beautiful to see a parent pass his passion down to his offspring, and for them to meld their engagement so smoothly, but what blew me away was seeing a relationship where a teenager can take lessons from his dad in front of an audience. I could never have done that with my dad. I mean, we both love vinyl, but seriously, have you ever tried mixing Digital Underground with Roy Orbison?
Focus on Hallucinogens: This is a little gem I've held onto since my friends Ken and Glen mailed it to me as part of a care package when I was working in Alaska after high school. It's from 1991 and out of print but still in near-perfect condition. I wrote children's science books for two years but never wrote one as fun or useful as this. It explains to 9-year-olds everything from neurons to shamans. Rad!
A couple years ago on this blog I mentioned Finnish scientist Antti Revonsuo's Threat Simulation Theory, which proposes that the purpose of dreaming is to rehearse one's reactions to real-world dangers so that we're better prepared when we meet them in waking life. It's like those training programs in the Matrix after which Neo unplugs and gasps, "I know kung fu."
The TST has definite surface appeal, but it's taken quite a beating itself over the years (with researchers noting, for example, that nightmares actually get in the way of daytime functioning, and that most dreams are not even nightmares), and there's now a paper in press in Consciousness and Cognition that puts a few more dings in the theory.
According to TST, the more threats you face, the more they'll show up in your dreams. So the researchers peaked inside the nightscapes of subjects in both South Africa and North Wales. (Guess where they're counting real sheep.) Turns out African dreams contained no more physical threats than Welch. And perhaps more telling, only about 1% of dreams in each group contained "realistic escapes from realistic physical threats." (Yes but what of flying away from killer electric sheep?) Without that crucial element, it's like the Matrix except with Neo sputtering "I know how to get the crap beat out of me."
P.S.
My colleague Jay Dixit also does a kicking of the TST tires in the December issue of Psychology Today. He concludes with the words of Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett: "Yes, dreams are worrying about disasters. But they're also planning for nice things and they're fantasizing and they're problem solving. [The purpose of dreaming is] as broad as all waking thought. That's why I say dreams are really just thinking in a different biochemical state." Check it out.
Everything I need to know about the internets I learned from Gabe and Max.
After using the program advertised above, though, I still had one burning question: "Exactly how many internets are there? Which one works best with Binary?" I guess that's 10 questions.
Anywho, Gabe and Max were nice enough to provide an answer: five.
Today I scheduled interviews for three internship applicants. Three out of three emailed me to ask where our office is.
Seriously? The address is on the front page of our Web site. I almost want to not respond and use it as a test for admission. But I can't because these are the cream of the crop. If people with Ivy League credentials and graduate degrees in journalism don't have the reporting skills to check psychologytoday.com for Psychology Today's street address, how can I expect them to do any kind of research that goes beyond—or even is limited to—Googling stuff? A bit of initiative and resourcefulness, people!
Seriously, I fear not only for my office productivity, but also for the future of journalism and thus democracy itself.
Please tell me I'm overreacting.