The War of Northern Aggression
I'm visiting the South right now. It's interesting how many references there are to the Civil War. Here's something I saw that I thought you might enjoy:
Don't laugh at our Civil War monuments. If Lee had listened to Longstreet and flanked Meade at Gettysburg instead of sending Pickett up the middle, you'd be paying taxes to Richmond instead of Washington.
That's worth memorizing.
Silence is Golden
Batt did, however, settle the matter out of court by paying an undisclosed six-figure sum to the John Cage Trust in September, 2002. He said, "We are...making this gesture of a payment to the John Cage Trust in recognition of my own personal respect for John Cage and in recognition of his brave and sometimes outrageous approach to artistic experimentation in music."
Pictured above: A recent performance of Cage's 4'33"
Snap Judgements Part Two: Beauty in the Classroom
Nearly a decade ago, Daniel Hamermesh of UT-Austin and Jeff Biddle of Michigan State found that, for a variety of occupations, a person's looks have a statistically significant effect on earnings ("Beauty and the Labor Market," American Economic Review, December 1994, pp. 1174-94). Other things constant, people with above average looks earned about 5 percent more than people with average looks, and those with below average looks earned about 5 percent less. Whether this premium results from higher work productivity remains an open question. Perhaps better looking people have the confidence to seek better paid positions or people who earn more can afford better grooming, a more stylish wardrobe, and more cosmetic surgery and dental work.
As a way of moving closer to the productivity question, Hamermesh and Amy Parker, an undergraduate economics major at UT-Austin, wanted to find out whether an instructor's looks affects course evaluations. Their sample consisted of student evaluations of 463 undergraduate courses taught by 94 instructors at UT-Austin during the academic years 2000-2002. Underlying the sample were 16,957 completed evaluations.
To develop an index of beauty, the authors asked six undergraduates (three males and three females) to independently score each instructor's looks based on a photograph. Beauty scores were fairly consistent across the six judges. The authors also gathered other information about each instructor, including gender, tenure-track status, minority status, and whether educated in an English-speaking country.
They found, after adjusting for other factors, that courses taught by instructors judged as better looking received significantly higher course ratings. On a scale from 1.0 to 5.0, with 5.0 the best, evaluations ranged from 3.5 for the least attractive instructors up to 4.5 for the best looking, other things constant. The average course evaluation was 4.0. The effect was robust and found within university departments and even within particular courses. Compared to female instructors, male instructors gained more of a premium for good looks and more of a penalty for bad looks.
The question remains whether beauty makes instructors more productive in the classroom—say, because students pay closer attention or because better looking teachers are more self confident—or whether students are simply giving those with irrelevant beauty characteristics higher evaluations.
Average evaluations were lower for females, minority faculty, non-native English speakers, and tenure trackers. The higher evaluations for non-tenure trackers may at first seem surprising but these instructors are often selected specifically because of their teaching ability. "Beauty in the Classroom: Professors' Pulchritude and Putative Pedagogical Productivity" (July 2003) is available here.
William A. McEachern
Issue 25, Fall 2003
The Teaching Economist
Snap Judgements Can Be Accurate
What would you think of having someone evaluate your teaching after viewing just a soundless 10-second video clip of you in action? Sounds crazy, doesn't it? But researchers who study "thin slices" of expressive behavior have found that viewers of such a clip feel quite comfortable making an evaluation based on such limited input. What's more, this instant analysis tracks relatively well with students' end-of-term evaluations.
According to Harvard researchers Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal, observers who were presented with a 10-second silent video clip of a teacher in a classroom setting had no difficulty rating the teacher on a 15-item checklist of personality traits. Moreover, when the clip was cut to five seconds, the ratings were the same, and they remained the same when the clip was cut to two seconds of videotape. These findings were discussed by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker, ("The New-Boys Network," 5/29/2000, pp. 68-86). Gladwell admits that this all seems unbelievable, but after he viewed both ten second clips and two seconds clips, he concluded that the eight seconds were "superfluous," noting that "anything beyond the first flash of insight is unnecessary"(p. 70). Snap judgments are just that—made in a snap.
The next step for Ambady and Rosenthal was to compare these snap judgments with judgements of teacher effectiveness based on end-of-term student evaluations. The correlation was relatively high. As Gladwell concludes, "A person watching a two-second silent video clip of a teacher he has never met will reach conclusions about how good that teacher is that are very similar to those of a student who sits in the teacher's class for an entire semester" (p. 70).
William A. McEachern
Issue 19, Fall 2000
The Teaching Economist
Why Rubbing a Boo Boo Makes It Feel Better
Have you ever banged your shin on a coffee table? Boy, that smarts.
Your first reaction, after cursing under your breath, was probably to rub it. Rubbing doesn't make the pain go away, but it sure makes it feel a lot better.
So what's going on?
Here's a story that helps to explain the phenomenon: I once banged my shin (just like we've been talking about), and a brother of mine who shall remain nameless (Chris), decided to help me out. He said, "Come here Drew—this will make you forget your shin." and WHAM!, he punched me in the arm. This new "distration" did indeed cause me to forget my shin.
Well, the same happens when you rub a boo boo. You have two sets of neurons competing for the attention of your brain: pain fibers and touch fibers. When you bang your shin, the pain fibers signal the brain. Rubbing the affected area causes the touch fibers to send another signal to the brain, and as a by-product, reduce the amount of pain signal that gets through.
That's the short, slightly inaccurate, explanation. For the full scoop, click on the three icons below. They will expand to slides that describe the actual mechanism.
Normal Condition
Pain
Pain and Touch
What They Don't Teach at Harvard Business School
Six years ago, Republican Jack McMullen suffered a humiliating U.S. Senate primary defeat at the hands of Tunbridge dairy farmer Fred Tuttle, who managed to portray the high-tech management consultant as a wealthy carpetbagger from Massachusetts.
Tuttle (and O'Brien, of course) provided one of the most dramatic moments in all of Vermont's political history during a Vermont Public Radio debate.
"Now Jack," Fred Tuttle asked, "How many teats on a milk cow?"
Jack McMullin, hazarded an answer. "Six," he said.
"No Jack. There's only four teats on a cow."
Vermonters doubled over with laughter and that pretty much decided the primary.
Note: McMullin graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University with a degree in applied physics and electronics engineering, was a Navy lieutenant working on the Navy's top-secret nuclear program as a member of Admiral Hyman Rickover's staff and he holds both business and law degrees from Harvard.
Five-Card Nancy
First, a little background:
Ernie Bushmiller's comic strip "Nancy" is a landmark achievement: A Comic so simply drawn it can be reduced to the size of a postage stamp and still be legible; an approach so formulaic as to become the very definition of the "gag-strip"; a sense of humor so obscure, so mute, so without malice as to allow faithful readers to march through whole decades of art and story without ever once cracking a smile.
Five-Card Nancy is a game where player(s) randomly select single panels from the strip (like playing cards) and then arrange them one by one in a sequence to tell a story. The inventor of the game has created an "official set of rules," but you can avoid all that nonsense by simply playing solitaire.
Here's my creation—a little crude I know, but that's the way the cards fell...
Making Cinematic Quality Home Videos
How do you take the crummy home videos your husband shoots and turn them into cinematic masterpieces? I'll tell you how...with the help of two little software applications (and a decent book).
First, let's fix that problem where everyone who watches his videos gets queasy because he can't hold the camera still and he refuses to use a tripod. iStabilize ($29.95) removes unwanted shaky motion from movies with respect to translation, rotation, and zoom. Take a look at some of the "before and after" movies here. Pretty amazing, huh?
Second, let's make the video footage look cinematic with CinemagicX ($29.95). The features in CinemagicX were developed after researching the techniques editing professionals use to improve the look of their video footage. Many editors use an ecclectic combination of filters and multiple overlays of the same footage with various transfer settings to get their desired results—CinemagicX gathers these film-look techniques under one plugin.
Finally, you should buy a good book—and get your husband to read it (Father's Day is coming up, remember?). I recommend Movie Making with iMovie. It covers everything you need to know to plan, shoot, and edit a home video.
What Do You Think?
Please. Let me know that you are out there.
If you're reading this, then click on the Comments link below and at least type in, "I'm a reader."
Or, go whole hog and take 30 seconds to tell me what you think about this blog. What do you like? What don't you like? The more feedback I get, the more I can make this blog interesting to you.
Your post will be anonymous and you don't have to submit an e-mail address to comment.
Thanks.
What to Say When a Child Asks, "What is this?"
New research suggests that when children ask "what is this?" they may seek an object’s functionNormally, adults assume that when children ask, "What is this?" in reference to an object, they are seeking merely a name—some kind of label to help differentiate the elements of their rapidly burgeoning universes. However, a new study explored the possibility that children posing such a question might actually be seeking the object’s function, not simply its name. These findings by Swarthmore College researchers Deborah Kemler Nelson, Morghan Holt and Louisa Chan Egan will be published in the June issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the American Psychological Society.
The study separated two-, three-, and four-year-olds into two groups, and allowed the children in each group to inquire about unfamiliar artifacts. In one group, questions were answered with the name of the object; in the other, its function was provided. Regardless of age, children were inclined to follow up with supplemental questions about an object when they were told only its name. However, the children given thorough, functional information seemed more satisfied with the response.
Moreover, children receiving only an object’s name tended to rephrase their questions over the course of the session in an attempt to elicit more functional information. These results suggest that young children might well be interested in and capable of distinguishing objects by more than just a superficial classification.
So, when your child asks, "What is this?", answer by saying something like:
That's a spoon; we use it to help us eat food.
This is a shovel; we use it to pick up and move dirt.
This is tape; we use it to stick paper together.
Extra credit: Say, "Let me show you." and then model the object's use.
It's my opinion that it is never too early to begin this kind of interaction. (Don't wait for a child to have the expressive vocabulary to ask the questions. As you go through your daily routines, explain what you are doing and why.) Even when you think your child is too young and doesn't have the vocabulary to understand everything you are saying, they are picking up a great deal of information. Plus, you become better at providing descriptions with practice.
SoundTrack Music Composition Software
Besides making the best personal computers, Apple Computer makes the coolest software. Take for instance SoundTrack, their music composition software.
Soundtrack's easy-to-use interface makes it simple for you to create your own original music, even if you don't have a background in music or composition—like me. And the music you make with Soundtrack and its 4,000 pre-recorded loops can be distributed, broadcast, or sold...royalty-free. You just drop the loops into the timeline to start building a song. Soundtrack automatically syncs them up to your project tempo and key, making a perfect sounding accompaniment for your project. (GarageBand is a similar, lower cost product also made by Apple.)
I've created a couple of clips that I'd like to share with you to show you the kind of music you can make. The first sounds like the music you would hear during the opening credits for a suspense film. The second is more like the music that would be played during a car chase or getaway scene in a 1970s film. Both clips took me about 10 minutes to put together. The "album art" is just to get you in the mood. = )
The Wayback Machine
Sometimes you want to find an old version of a webpage—Google's "cached" feature will display the lastest version of sites that are no longer online (most of the time). But suppose you want to find every version of a website?
Time to enter The Wayback Machine.
Browse through 30 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago. To start surfing the Wayback, type in the web address of a site or page where you would like to start, and press enter. Then select from the archived dates available. The resulting pages point to other archived pages at as close a date as possible. Keyword searching is not currently supported.
The Wayback Machine, which currently contains over 100 terabytes of data and is growing at a rate of 12 terabytes per month, is the largest known database in the world, containing multiple copies of the entire publicly available web. This eclipses the amount of data contained in the world's largest libraries, including the Library of Congress.
Tastee-Rings Burger Press
It's summertime...and time to fire up the grill. If you're frustrated by the way your hamburgers turn out, I've got a tip for you.
The Tastee-Rings Burger Press does a remarkable job of preparing hamburger patties so that they cook uniformly and unusually fast. They're moist, they hold together, and they finish with a perfect shape. So what's the secret?
The grooves.
As the patties begin to cook, the grooves trap juices and seasonings. As they continue to cook, the hamburger shrinks and the grooves close up. With a hand-flattened patty, you end up with a burger that is thick and undercooked in the middle and thin and overcooked at the edges—and that's no good.
$6.00 is not a lot to pay for a handy little kitchen gadget that helps produce such beautiful and flavorful hamburgers.
For you scientists/technologists that want to check out the patent drawing, click on the icon below.
Homemade Macaroni & Cheese
The only macaroni and cheese I've ever had is that fluorescent orange stuff that comes out of a box and the occasional side dish at a restaurant. I decided recently to try homemade mac and cheese, and I'm glad I did—it's great.
2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp flour
1¼ cup milk
8 oz elbow macaroni (2 cups uncooked)
8 oz chedder cheese (2½ cups grated)
Salt, pepper, and paprika to taste
1. Boil the macaroni in a big pot of water according to the directions on the box (7 minutes ought to do it). Drain in a collander.
2. Melt butter and flour in a saucepan over high heat, stirring frequently.
3. When the butter starts to turn a light caramel color (it takes only a few minutes so keep an eye on it) turn off the heat and pour in the milk slowly—stirring quickly and constantly (with a whisk) until you have a nice, smooth mixture.
4. Switch to a wooden or plastic spoon and add the cheese a little at a time, mixing it into the mixture until you have a thick, smooth cheese sauce.
5. Pour the macaroni into the cheese sauce and mix it up good.
6. Add the salt, pepper, and paprika to taste.
7. And for you diehards out there: add 4 drops of orange food coloring if you want it to look like the macaroni and cheese you grew up with.
Some people bake their macaroni and cheese. If you want to do that, knock yourself out. Pour your mac & cheese into a lightly greased casserole dish, sprinkle some more cheese on top, and bake it at 350° until the top is browned (about 30 minutes). But who wants to wait 30 minutes?
Instant Shoe Shine
Clothes don't make the man, but people do judge a book by its cover. You figure it out.
When it comes to clothing, the last thing that most men think about is their shoes. I'm not going to tell you what kind of shoes to wear (black oxfords, no toe cap please), but I am going to tell you to keep them looking sharp.
I once read that you should polish your shoes once a week. Right.
I have a better idea: polish them every time you wear them. Use an inexpensive "instant shine" sponge. It keeps the dust off and it gives your shoes a nice glossy appearance. It takes 10 seconds max and people will notice.
E ink
The principal components of electronic ink are millions of tiny microcapsules, about the diameter of a human hair. Each microcapsule contains positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles suspended in a clear fluid. When a negative electric field is applied, the white particles move to the top of the microcapsule where they become visible to the user. This makes the surface appear white at that spot. At the same time, an opposite electric field pulls the black particles to the bottom of the microcapsules where they are hidden. By reversing this process, the black particles appear at the top of the capsule, which now makes the surface appear dark at that spot.
Ok. So what does that mean to you and me?
E ink's electronic paper display is reflective and can be easily read in bright sunlight or dimly lit environments while being able to be seen at virtually any angle—just like paper. Its black and white ink-on-paper look, combined with a resolution in excess of most portable devices at approximately 170 pixels per inch (PPI), gives an appearance similar to that of the most widely read material on the planet—newspaper. Because the display uses power only when an image is changed, a user can read more than 10,000 pages before the four AAA Alkaline batteries need to be replaced.
Bottom line: liquid crystal displays have replaced bulky cathode ray tubes. E ink and similar technologies are starting to ship now, and they will replace liquid crystal displays.
Here's a close-up photo of what the beads look like:
For more information about E ink go here. If you'd like to see a similar technology called Gyricon, go here.
Recent Posts
- Demo of Livescribe Pencast
- The Enemy of Truth
- Music City USA::Nashville, Tennessee
- The War of Northern Aggression
- Silence is Golden
- Snap Judgements Part Two: Beauty in the Classroom
- Snap Judgements Can Be Accurate
- Why Rubbing a Boo Boo Makes It Feel Better
- Science & Poetry
- What They Don't Teach at Harvard Business School
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