"You will learn who your daddy is, that's for sure, but mostly, Ann, you will just shut the fuck up."
-Henry Rollins
Gallup: More Than Half of Americans Reject Evolution, Back Bible
Topic: Society
1:20 pm EST, Mar 9, 2006
"Several characteristics correlate with belief in the biblical explanation for the origin of humans. Those with lower levels of education, those who attend church regularly, those who are 65 and older, and those who identify with the Republican Party are more likely to believe that God created humans 'as is,' than are those who do not share these characteristics."
And this would be why they keep cutting education funding. God forbid they should go to school and stop voting Republican...
[ I'm not saying there isn't a lot of anti-evolution foment right now, and I'd never argue that plenty of americans have a literalist interpretation of the bible, but I think the wording of this particular poll is bad.
In direct reply to the comments above, I think it's a mistake to frame this as a partisan issue. It undermines the credibility of the argument, because it seems to stem from a pre-determined policy stance as opposed to logical argument. It's hard enough to convince a fundamentalist literalist to see a differing point of view without complicating the discussion with politics. -k]
Chapter 72 of the McGraw-Hill Homeland Security Handbook addresses the important issue of the ideological differences between the United States and al-Qaida and the necessity to win the war of ideas. This chapter outlines the ideology promulgated by al-Qaida and associated terrorist groups. It examines recent attempts by the United States to combat al-Qaida’s worldview and compares this effort with America’s global propaganda campaign against the Soviet Union. The chapter concludes with some preliminary ideas about waging an effective counterpropaganda campaign against al-Qaida, including potential themes and approaches.
Hijexx wrote: Basing sentencing on motive alone seems like a slippery slope to thought crime.
I've been thinking about this. I agree that sentence modifiers aren't a deterrent with respect to crimes of passion rather then profit. However, FineThen did a good job of convincing me that a hate crime, such as a cross burning in someone's yard, is a substantially different thing from an act of vandalism. It has a greater emotional impact on the victims and a greater impact on the community at large. Can these things be reconciled?
Repeated test-taking better for retention than repeated studying, research shows
Topic: Miscellaneous
5:15 pm EST, Mar 7, 2006
"Students who self-test frequently while studying on their own may be able to learn more, in much less time, than they might by simply studying the material over and over again," he adds. "Incorporating more frequent classroom testing into a course may improve students' learning and promote retention of material long after a course has ended."
Perhaps equally important, this study demonstrates that students who rely on repeated study alone often come away with a false sense of confidence about their mastery of the material.
Doesn't seem so surprising. Active recall is supposed to work better than passive recall for enshrining memory. It's why flashcards work better than lists. There's theory for this all over and if you google, you'll find tools to help you learn using graduated interval recall as well. These work on the theory that each time you recall something, you keep it for a little longer before needing a reminder. They vary in sophistication, but the concept seems useful to me, and fits my experiences as well, which never hurts.
Newsvine combines the best features of a number of companies and products like Digg and Google News with great features like chat and blogging-style comments. The result is a perfect news site (note that new competitors, like spotback (mentioned here) are aiming to overthrow Newsvine already, however).
The result is a really wonderful social news experience.
Memestreams sinks lower...
[ Hm. One thing it doesn't seem to do is care about reputation, which is the theoretical basis that separates memestreams from all the other similiar sites that seem to be cropping up.
If anything, memestreams should care more about reputation, i think. It should be obvious at a glace who can be considered an authority here. It's something that differentiates this community from others technologically, but it's actual application is unclear. I think that's the major sticking point, honesty.
That, and the lack of a few hundred k of VC, perhaps. -k]
Paul Krugman deconstructs health care in the current issue of The New York Review of Books.
Bottom line up front:
So what will really happen to American health care? Many people in this field believe that in the end America will end up with national health insurance, and perhaps with a lot of direct government provision of health care, simply because nothing else works. But things may have to get much worse before reality can break through the combination of powerful interest groups and free-market ideology.
Fascinating read. Pretty close to a gold star, though I wish they'd left out the political potshots. Even if true, it provides an easy out for people to just categorically ignore the whole thing.
Most product quality problems exist between terminal and chair
Topic: Technology
4:57 pm EST, Mar 6, 2006
Half of all malfunctioning products returned to stores by consumers are in full working order, but customers can't figure out how to operate the devices, a scientist said on Monday.
Hard to say if I'm more aligned with the title of the meme or the position of the story. There is an abundance of poor product design out there. But there's also an abundance of impatient and ignorant humanity.
It's obvious to anyone who has worked in software development that the last thing you want is developers designing interfaces. We don't think like the users will, and what makes perfect sense to us, and our like-minded friends, will be incomprehensible to normal humans. It doesn't surprise me particularly that other industries are finding out the same thing.
Time to start hiring human interface experts who understand how people want to interact with their environment, I guess.
