February 15, 2006
The Value of Words
FeelGoodLibrarian recently posted a touching story about the the value of words. She helped a patron at the reference desk who wanted to know what it's called when your cognitive skills aren't what they used to be. After some back and forth, they got a definition which satisfied the patron. She tells it way better than I do; and her story illustrates both the value of words and the value of good reference service.
February 02, 2006
Science And Reason In The Age Of Unreason
Science And Reason In The Age Of Unreason
Pervez Hoodbhoy
Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad
Monday, February 6, 2006
4:15 p.m., Franklin Patterson Hall, East Lecture Hall
Hampshire College
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Abstract:
Over the last two decades, science and the scientific method have come
under relentless attack from forces that cover the entire spectrum between
religious orthodoxy and post-modernism. Immense social and political
consequences flow from this surprising, and remarkably global, change. In
this lecture I shall address the reasons behind the growing philosophical
rejection of modern science in Islamic countries, and how this has
affected their social and political development.
Brief Bio:
Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy is Professor of nuclear and high-energy physics
at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan. He has written and
spoken extensively on topics ranging from science in Islam to
education issues and nuclear disarmament. He is the author of
"Muslims & Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for
Rationality" and his writings on scientific and political issues have
been published in international newspapers, including the Washington
Post, Le Monde, the Hindu, and Dawn. He is the recipient of 2003
UNESCO Kalinga prize for the Popularization of Science.
Sponsor:
The Integrated Science & Humanities Initiative at Hampshire College
Pervez Hoodbhoy
Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad
Monday, February 6, 2006
4:15 p.m., Franklin Patterson Hall, East Lecture Hall
Hampshire College
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Abstract:
Over the last two decades, science and the scientific method have come
under relentless attack from forces that cover the entire spectrum between
religious orthodoxy and post-modernism. Immense social and political
consequences flow from this surprising, and remarkably global, change. In
this lecture I shall address the reasons behind the growing philosophical
rejection of modern science in Islamic countries, and how this has
affected their social and political development.
Brief Bio:
Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy is Professor of nuclear and high-energy physics
at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan. He has written and
spoken extensively on topics ranging from science in Islam to
education issues and nuclear disarmament. He is the author of
"Muslims & Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for
Rationality" and his writings on scientific and political issues have
been published in international newspapers, including the Washington
Post, Le Monde, the Hindu, and Dawn. He is the recipient of 2003
UNESCO Kalinga prize for the Popularization of Science.
Sponsor:
The Integrated Science & Humanities Initiative at Hampshire College
February 01, 2006
Lecture on Intelligent Design
Wednesday, Feb. 8, 6:30 p.m.
West Lecture Hall, Franklin Patterson Hall
Hampshire College will host a panel discussion on evolution, science and intelligent design. The panelists include professors from the schools of Natural Science, Cognitive Science and Social Science. We will discuss the principal arguments offered in support of intelligent design, the theory of and evidence for evolution by natural selection, why intelligent design does not belong in a science classroom, and the relationships among evolution, religion and our quest for meaning. Open discussion will follow.
Panelists include (alphabetically):
Ernie Alleva, Instructor, First-Year Program, CS
Mark Feinstein, Professor of Linguistics and Animal Cognition, CS
Salman Hameed, Assistant Professor of Integrated Science & Humanities, NS/CS
Laura Sizer, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, CS
Lee Spector, Professor of Computer Science, CS
Jason Tor, Assistant Professor of Microbiology, NS
Jim Wald, Associate Professor of History, SS
West Lecture Hall, Franklin Patterson Hall
Hampshire College will host a panel discussion on evolution, science and intelligent design. The panelists include professors from the schools of Natural Science, Cognitive Science and Social Science. We will discuss the principal arguments offered in support of intelligent design, the theory of and evidence for evolution by natural selection, why intelligent design does not belong in a science classroom, and the relationships among evolution, religion and our quest for meaning. Open discussion will follow.
Panelists include (alphabetically):
Ernie Alleva, Instructor, First-Year Program, CS
Mark Feinstein, Professor of Linguistics and Animal Cognition, CS
Salman Hameed, Assistant Professor of Integrated Science & Humanities, NS/CS
Laura Sizer, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, CS
Lee Spector, Professor of Computer Science, CS
Jason Tor, Assistant Professor of Microbiology, NS
Jim Wald, Associate Professor of History, SS
January 01, 2006
Reference Librarians as Pitchmen?
We got a Ronco Turkey Oven for Christmas. A librarian friend pointed me to the 2000 New Yorker profile of Ron Popeil, Mr. Ronco and inventor of the Ronco Turkey Oven, among other things.
The article is fascinating, but what struck me was Malcom Gladwell’s description of the pitch:
“You have to explain the invention to customers-not once or twice but three or four times, with a different twist each time. You have to show them exactly how it works and why it works, and make them follow your hands as you chop liver with it, and then tell them precisely how it fits into their routine, and, finally, sell them on the paradoxical fact that, revolutionary as the gadget is, it's not at all hard to use.”
Gladwell then talks about a handy invention called a video cassette recorder which was supposed to help us watch TV on our schedule, not the networks’. However, Gladwell argues that the VCR never was widely used for that purpose. Why?
“That's because the VCR was never pitched: no one ever explained the gadget to American consumers-not once or twice but three or four times-and no one showed them exactly how it worked or how it would fit into their routine, and no pair of hands guided them through every step of the process.”
Which makes me think about library databases: do we pitch them to our patrons? Do we explain not once or twice but three or four times, slightly differently each time, how to use InfoTrac / LexisNexis / Academic Search Premier? Do we demonstrate how these databases fit into patron’s (search) routines, and, despite their great power, how easy they are to use?
Should we think of ourselves as database pitchmen?
–
“THE PITCHMAN; Ron Popeil and the conquest of the American kitchen”
The New Yorker, October 30, 2000, ANNALS OF ENTERPRISE
by Malcom Gladwell
Pg. 64, 8162 words. Available in LexisNexis, and in the 2002 edition of “The Best Business Stories of the Year”
Also available on Gladwell’s site gladwell dot com (pdf available, too).
The article is fascinating, but what struck me was Malcom Gladwell’s description of the pitch:
“You have to explain the invention to customers-not once or twice but three or four times, with a different twist each time. You have to show them exactly how it works and why it works, and make them follow your hands as you chop liver with it, and then tell them precisely how it fits into their routine, and, finally, sell them on the paradoxical fact that, revolutionary as the gadget is, it's not at all hard to use.”
Gladwell then talks about a handy invention called a video cassette recorder which was supposed to help us watch TV on our schedule, not the networks’. However, Gladwell argues that the VCR never was widely used for that purpose. Why?
“That's because the VCR was never pitched: no one ever explained the gadget to American consumers-not once or twice but three or four times-and no one showed them exactly how it worked or how it would fit into their routine, and no pair of hands guided them through every step of the process.”
Which makes me think about library databases: do we pitch them to our patrons? Do we explain not once or twice but three or four times, slightly differently each time, how to use InfoTrac / LexisNexis / Academic Search Premier? Do we demonstrate how these databases fit into patron’s (search) routines, and, despite their great power, how easy they are to use?
Should we think of ourselves as database pitchmen?
–
“THE PITCHMAN; Ron Popeil and the conquest of the American kitchen”
The New Yorker, October 30, 2000, ANNALS OF ENTERPRISE
by Malcom Gladwell
Pg. 64, 8162 words. Available in LexisNexis, and in the 2002 edition of “The Best Business Stories of the Year”
Also available on Gladwell’s site gladwell dot com (pdf available, too).
December 26, 2005
Interspecies Communication?!
Boomer has adopted a new vocalization to tell me he wants to be picked up, placed on the bathroom counter, and have the water turned on for him. This has prompted me to search for cat vocalization articles for my e-friend Eliot.
Found something different, but possibly equally interesting:
A Comparative Study of the Use of Visual Communicative Signals in Interactions Between Dogs (Canis familiaris) and Humans and Cats (Felis catus) and Humans. Miklósi, Áam; Pongrácz, Péter; Lakatos, Gabriella; Journal of Comparative Psychology, Vol 119(2), May 2005. pp. 179-186.
Dogs' (Canis familiaris) and cats' (Felis catus) interspecific communicative behavior toward humans was investigated. In Experiment 1, the ability of dogs and cats to use human pointing gestures in an object-choice task was compared using 4 types of pointing cues differing in distance between the signaled object and the end of the fingertip and in visibility duration of the given signal. Using these gestures, both dogs and cats were able to find the hidden food; there was no significant difference in their performance. In Experiment 2, the hidden food was made inaccessible to the subjects to determine whether they could indicate the place of the hidden food to a naive owner. Cats lacked some components of attention-getting behavior compared with dogs. The results suggest that individual familiarization with pointing gestures ensures high-level performance in the presence of such gestures; however, species-specific differences could cause differences in signaling toward the human.
Full-text available in any flavor of PsycArticles, probably at your local college or university library.
Found something different, but possibly equally interesting:
A Comparative Study of the Use of Visual Communicative Signals in Interactions Between Dogs (Canis familiaris) and Humans and Cats (Felis catus) and Humans. Miklósi, Áam; Pongrácz, Péter; Lakatos, Gabriella; Journal of Comparative Psychology, Vol 119(2), May 2005. pp. 179-186.
Dogs' (Canis familiaris) and cats' (Felis catus) interspecific communicative behavior toward humans was investigated. In Experiment 1, the ability of dogs and cats to use human pointing gestures in an object-choice task was compared using 4 types of pointing cues differing in distance between the signaled object and the end of the fingertip and in visibility duration of the given signal. Using these gestures, both dogs and cats were able to find the hidden food; there was no significant difference in their performance. In Experiment 2, the hidden food was made inaccessible to the subjects to determine whether they could indicate the place of the hidden food to a naive owner. Cats lacked some components of attention-getting behavior compared with dogs. The results suggest that individual familiarization with pointing gestures ensures high-level performance in the presence of such gestures; however, species-specific differences could cause differences in signaling toward the human.
Full-text available in any flavor of PsycArticles, probably at your local college or university library.
Emotions are All in the Mind
ABC Radio National’s All in the Mind just ran a 4 part series on emotion. They covered Sexual Desire (arguably not an emotion), Anger, Jealousy, and Joy.
They feature comments from real people who experience the emotion in question, interspersed with interviews with scientists in the field. Tidbits that I liked:
From Jealousy:
David DeSteno (Associate Professor, Psychology Department, Northeastern University):
“Engaging in satisfying relationships is associated with all kinds of wonderful things: lower cardiovascular threat, greater immune system response, greater wellbeing. And so what jealousy does is it alerts you and impels you to the threat that your relationship is going to be lost.”
DeSteno categorizes jealousy as a “social emotion” rather than a more basic emotion like anger and fear, adding that social emotions “help us navigate our social landscape, much as more basic emotions help us navigate the physical one.”
From Joy:
Lea Williams (Associate Professor, Brain Dynamics Centre, Westmead Hospital and University of Sydney) and Susan Turk Charles (Assistant Professor, School of Social Ecology, University of Southern California) suggest that as we age we get happier. Well, they can’t prove it in so many words, but Williams has found “the part of that that regulates negative emotion actually becomes better able to do that with older age, and, in a sense, takes the brakes off the positive emotions.”
Charmin Härtel (Professor of Organisational Behaviour, Department of Management, Monash University):
“There’s an old saying that if you took three people and you put them in a room and two of them were positive and one of them was negative that they’d all come out depressed. And there’s a little bit of truth in that, it’s a lot easier for the emotional tone of a place to go negative than it is for it to go in a positive way or create a positive environment.”
Transcripts, citations to articles for more information, as well as podcasts & RealAudio of the show are available for all stories.
They feature comments from real people who experience the emotion in question, interspersed with interviews with scientists in the field. Tidbits that I liked:
From Jealousy:
David DeSteno (Associate Professor, Psychology Department, Northeastern University):
“Engaging in satisfying relationships is associated with all kinds of wonderful things: lower cardiovascular threat, greater immune system response, greater wellbeing. And so what jealousy does is it alerts you and impels you to the threat that your relationship is going to be lost.”
DeSteno categorizes jealousy as a “social emotion” rather than a more basic emotion like anger and fear, adding that social emotions “help us navigate our social landscape, much as more basic emotions help us navigate the physical one.”
From Joy:
Lea Williams (Associate Professor, Brain Dynamics Centre, Westmead Hospital and University of Sydney) and Susan Turk Charles (Assistant Professor, School of Social Ecology, University of Southern California) suggest that as we age we get happier. Well, they can’t prove it in so many words, but Williams has found “the part of that that regulates negative emotion actually becomes better able to do that with older age, and, in a sense, takes the brakes off the positive emotions.”
Charmin Härtel (Professor of Organisational Behaviour, Department of Management, Monash University):
“There’s an old saying that if you took three people and you put them in a room and two of them were positive and one of them was negative that they’d all come out depressed. And there’s a little bit of truth in that, it’s a lot easier for the emotional tone of a place to go negative than it is for it to go in a positive way or create a positive environment.”
Transcripts, citations to articles for more information, as well as podcasts & RealAudio of the show are available for all stories.
Does Usability Change with Events?
The New York Times reports today that during last week’s transit strike, the New York City news site NY1.com displayed a “stark black-and-white page with basic blue headline links” rather than its usual flashy graphics. Folks at NY1 say they streamlined their site to help site visitors get information quickly (hits increased from an average 30,000 to 100,000 during the strike). The Times suggests that NY1 stripped it down to prevent potential load problems — odd, they argue, since the site is owned by cable Internet provider Time Warner which should have the bandwidth to handle anything.
Either way, it’s an interesting approach to a crisis: make an important web site more usable. Then again, why not make the site more usable ALL THE TIME?! [sigh]
When News Breaks, Flashy Content Loses Out
By DAVID F. GALLAGHER
New York Times, December 26, 2005
Visitors to NY1.com seeking news about the city's transit
strike found a stripped-down design featuring basic blue
headline links and no photos.
Either way, it’s an interesting approach to a crisis: make an important web site more usable. Then again, why not make the site more usable ALL THE TIME?! [sigh]
When News Breaks, Flashy Content Loses Out
By DAVID F. GALLAGHER
New York Times, December 26, 2005
Visitors to NY1.com seeking news about the city's transit
strike found a stripped-down design featuring basic blue
headline links and no photos.
Two Cool Webcasts
MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory celebrated its formal opening on Dec. 1 with a “major scientific symposium” entitled the Future of the Brain. The event focused on the future of neuroscience research, and included several Nobel Laureates, and experts in neuroscience, memory, and consciousness. They have posted a webcast which features the whole 7 hour session broken into two parts.
On November 17, 2005, the New York Public Library sponsored a debate about Google Print, entitled "The Battle Over Books: Authors & Publishers Take on the Google Print Library Project". It featured Larry Lessig, Stanford Law Professor; Chris Anderson (editor-in-chief of Wired magazine); Paul LeClerc, president & CEO of the NYPL; David Drummond, Google’s VP of Corporate Development, and others. Larry Lessig reports on his blog that various electronic versions of the event are available. You can download an mp3, a video torrent,view a QuickTime movie, or listen to the audio via QuickTime.
Isn’t technology great?!
On November 17, 2005, the New York Public Library sponsored a debate about Google Print, entitled "The Battle Over Books: Authors & Publishers Take on the Google Print Library Project". It featured Larry Lessig, Stanford Law Professor; Chris Anderson (editor-in-chief of Wired magazine); Paul LeClerc, president & CEO of the NYPL; David Drummond, Google’s VP of Corporate Development, and others. Larry Lessig reports on his blog that various electronic versions of the event are available. You can download an mp3, a video torrent,view a QuickTime movie, or listen to the audio via QuickTime.
Isn’t technology great?!
December 12, 2005
Technology + PubMed Searching Tips
The University of Washington Health Sciences Libraries has created a very cool set of training “videos” online for PubMed. They use the Camtasia software to capture both actions taken on the screen as well as accompanying audio to create an online training “video.”
The Libraries have divided the videos into 18 categories, with each lasting 30 seconds to almost 5 minutes. Topics include Clinical Queries, the MeSH database, and Basic Search.
Now that I’m at UConn, I need to learn to be more proficient in PubMed – from this video, I learned how to limit my search to humans (or animals). And this is a great way to explain PubMed (and other databases’) advanced features to undergraduates, public library patrons, and even library school students.
Thanks to Greg Notess’ “On the Net” column in the Nov/Dec. 2005 issue of Online magazine. (Note: the article isn’t freely available online, but most major databases offer this in full-text, including Expanded Academic and Academic Search Premier).
The Libraries have divided the videos into 18 categories, with each lasting 30 seconds to almost 5 minutes. Topics include Clinical Queries, the MeSH database, and Basic Search.
Now that I’m at UConn, I need to learn to be more proficient in PubMed – from this video, I learned how to limit my search to humans (or animals). And this is a great way to explain PubMed (and other databases’) advanced features to undergraduates, public library patrons, and even library school students.
Thanks to Greg Notess’ “On the Net” column in the Nov/Dec. 2005 issue of Online magazine. (Note: the article isn’t freely available online, but most major databases offer this in full-text, including Expanded Academic and Academic Search Premier).
December 11, 2005
Science & Consciousness Review Online
Articles and other information about science and consciousness at the online SCR. They review articles about science and/or consciousness, including abstracts and links to the full-text of the article in its native format (i.e. ScienceDirect or Nature Neuroscience). (wish they had an RSS feed...)
Recent articles cover synesthesia and New Scientist’s Special Report on the Human Brain. Check out the side bar where they list PubMed articles on related topics.
Of interest to librarians, is the HubMed interface — see what they’ve done with this article on Where is the Brain in the Self? — links to the original PubMed abstract, the full-text at ScienceDirect, and a demo SFX pop-up menu. Very cool.
Thanks to MindHacks for the link.
Recent articles cover synesthesia and New Scientist’s Special Report on the Human Brain. Check out the side bar where they list PubMed articles on related topics.
Of interest to librarians, is the HubMed interface — see what they’ve done with this article on Where is the Brain in the Self? — links to the original PubMed abstract, the full-text at ScienceDirect, and a demo SFX pop-up menu. Very cool.
Thanks to MindHacks for the link.
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