I often spend 5 minutes of my morning heading over to wikipedia, hitting the 'random article button', and reading about whatever comes up. I do this because it's more interesting to make small talk for the rest of the day if you have something interesting to say rather than just talk about the god damned weather.
A few months ago, in the above described method, I stumbled across an article on Cargo Cults.
I found it fascinating and I would like to see a documentary made... I recently learned that Jared Diamond writes about cargo cults in his book "guns, germs, and steel". I read that book and I don't recall the mention of cargo cults. I guess I didn't read hard enough. (it was an interesting book full of great ideas/theories, but Diamond's writing style is awful. He expresses his academic thesis like an 8th grader would in a 5-paragraph-essay, presumably in order to make it accessible to a wide audience. So it reads like a dumbed down academic journal article, only very repetitive).
It also turns out that Dawkins has a chapter on cargo cults in his book 'the god delusion'. I haven't read that.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
obama in 08? anyone?
The author of the very funny XKCD comic feels much the way I do regarding Obama. He makes some good arguments for his candidacy, one of which I hadn't seriously considered myself but find very compelling - Obama manages to stir up those voters who've become complacent or apathetic of our current political system because they feel it's too far gone to fix.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Why do people turn to crime?
I've often said, to those who would listen to me, that providing someone with the skill of Critical Thinking is a valuable gift.
What is critical thinking?
Some might think that it's the same as common sense. Well, it isn't common sense (the way I think of it). Common sense is an important skill to have, but you can actually learn common sense through life experience and don't require explicit instruction to gain and master it.
For example: Everyone knows that it's dangerous to run with scissors, it's common sense, because we learn through life experience that scissors are sharp and pointy and that running sometimes results in falling down and falling down on sharp pointy things can lead to serious injury. If you ask anyone "do you think it's safe to run with scissors" they will tell you YES. You can even ask them "why" and they'll probably give you an excellent reason.
Now, some people still run with scissors from time to time. This is not because they lack common sense, but because their brain isn't focusing on the fact that what they are doing is dangerous. Maybe they are working on an art project and suddenly the doorbell rings, or the baby is about to put his moist finger in the electric socket. Their brain focuses on the activity of answering the door or removing the baby from danger, forgetting the scissors in the hand.
So it's a bit harder to learn critical thinking as part of critical thinking is to be able to put those common sense issues together at such critical times and, in turn, remembering to put down the scissors. But that's, just a small part of critical thinking. An even bigger part of critical thinking is to absorb information from the world around us and using what we know to decide what to do with it. It's much easier to just absorb things and not think about them. You sort of need to train yourself to be critical about them.
For example: Let's say that you hear the following sentence "Kucinich believes in UFOs". Now, let's assume that you know that the word UFO means UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS. Your first reaction might be "Oh my god, this guy is crazy. He believes in little green men." And most people would just drop it, and move on, forever thinking that Kucinich is one crazy guy. But you could pause, and take an additional 15 seconds to think about what the sentence "Kucinich believes in UFOs" really means.
Based on only this sentence, you could assume Kucinich essentially believes that there are things which fly in the earth's atmostphere which are, at the time of their flight, unidentified. Well, I believe that too. UFOs are sighted all the time. Usually, UFOs are later identified as all sorts of things like whether balloons, toys, military aircraft, civilian aircraft, natural phenomena. Sometimes they aren't identified but, for the most part we assume that just because we can't identify them doesn't mean that they are aliens. So MAYBE Kucinich DOESN'T believe in little green men, but only believes that the military puts secret things in our skies (surely a possibility).
Or maybe he does believe in little green men (I believe that extra-terrestrial life forms, possibly intelligent, exist) AND he believes that they visit earth (I don't believe that they visit earth). Why is that so crazy? Why is that crazier than believing that the earth is only 6000 years old? At least we have concrete evidence that the earth is much older than 6,000 years, but no one seems to be calling Huckabee crazy...
Anyway, my point is that when we hear any kind of serious sentence, especially coming from the news media or people who seem sure of themselves, we should always contemplate it quietly and thoroughly. It should only take a few seconds and that's an important critical thinking skill.
Basically, critical thinking skills involve training your brain to be constantly aware of the world around you (awareness), examine one's (or others') behavior from different perspectives (empathy), and doing intelligent things with the information you gather with all 5 senses (analysis). There's a bit more, but that's the basics.
Typically, you would want to teach critical thinking skills to young people, because it's much more difficult for someone to begin applying critical thinking skills after 20 years of not. And when critical thinking skills are not being applied, they atrophy very quickly.
The world would be a better place if everyone had excellent critical thinking skills. Racism and similar types of bigotry would almost certainly disappear, petty crime would drop drastically, capitalism would be completely transformed (mostly because advertising would become less effective), we'd see much less war, people of different religions would be much more tolerant of each other, etc.
This is why I think education is so important. If we could redesign the curriculum for primary school in this country to focus almost entirely on building critical thinking skills rather than simply teaching subjects like history for history's sake or math for math's sake I feel incredibly confident that we would see amazing improvement in the quality of life of that generation.
For example, 4th grade children should not be taught about the nitrogen cycle over a 40 minute science class through a diagram in their science book with little arrows. Each full day of an entire week should be devoted to this and similar natural cycles. The children should be given the basic tools and appropriate pushes to discover the nitrogen cycle for themselves. Two simple in class science experiments, a fieldtrip to a field or forest, and some explanation and nudging from the teacher should be enough (assuming that 1st-3rd grade were filled with similar exercises, by the time they get to 4th grade, they should be pros at this type of instruction). This experience would last for the rest of the child's life, and they would gain that valuable skill of learning something through experience and experimentation. It sure beats being told something and having to believe that it's true by the teacher's authority.
What would this cost? Teachers would have to be more specialized, so they'll require more schooling and ultimately a much much higher pay. The job of a primary school teacher would need to be revered more than that of a doctor or a scientist, and similarly their pay should be much higher. The major problem now is that too many primary school teachers lack the very skills they should be teaching. Why do I believe this?
Well, when I was a sixth grader I had a history teacher (Mr. Wiggins) who, one day, told us that George Washington had wooden teeth. When I heard this, like the rest of the class, I thought "WOW, gross, weird, ha ha ha." But shortly after, unlike the rest of the class, I thought about it and decided that this probably wasn't true. This is because I knew that most wood expands when wet and shrinks when dry. Life experience should have taught anyone this. So the art of making false teeth out of wood must have been either very complicated, causing the false teeth to be more expensive than ivory or metal ones, OR possibly causing wooden false teeth to be remarkably painful or practically useless and left as an alternative to only the poor (and I knew that Washington was not a poor man). I brought this up to Mr Wiggins and he was not pleased. He argued with me so I dropped it. I did some research at the library (this was before the internet boom) and found out that George Washington's wooden teeth are a myth. I brought this up a few days later (essentially calling Mr Wiggins misinformed at best, a liar at worst, but certainly not so bluntly) and guess what happened? I got punished for it. As far as I know, my entire fifth grade class is currently still misinformed about Georgy's wooden teeth and currently, in some schools, applying critical thinking skills still nets you a detention.
This rant was brought to you by a couple of economist that try to re-analyze why the poor commit more crimes.
What is critical thinking?
Some might think that it's the same as common sense. Well, it isn't common sense (the way I think of it). Common sense is an important skill to have, but you can actually learn common sense through life experience and don't require explicit instruction to gain and master it.
For example: Everyone knows that it's dangerous to run with scissors, it's common sense, because we learn through life experience that scissors are sharp and pointy and that running sometimes results in falling down and falling down on sharp pointy things can lead to serious injury. If you ask anyone "do you think it's safe to run with scissors" they will tell you YES. You can even ask them "why" and they'll probably give you an excellent reason.
Now, some people still run with scissors from time to time. This is not because they lack common sense, but because their brain isn't focusing on the fact that what they are doing is dangerous. Maybe they are working on an art project and suddenly the doorbell rings, or the baby is about to put his moist finger in the electric socket. Their brain focuses on the activity of answering the door or removing the baby from danger, forgetting the scissors in the hand.
So it's a bit harder to learn critical thinking as part of critical thinking is to be able to put those common sense issues together at such critical times and, in turn, remembering to put down the scissors. But that's, just a small part of critical thinking. An even bigger part of critical thinking is to absorb information from the world around us and using what we know to decide what to do with it. It's much easier to just absorb things and not think about them. You sort of need to train yourself to be critical about them.
For example: Let's say that you hear the following sentence "Kucinich believes in UFOs". Now, let's assume that you know that the word UFO means UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS. Your first reaction might be "Oh my god, this guy is crazy. He believes in little green men." And most people would just drop it, and move on, forever thinking that Kucinich is one crazy guy. But you could pause, and take an additional 15 seconds to think about what the sentence "Kucinich believes in UFOs" really means.
Based on only this sentence, you could assume Kucinich essentially believes that there are things which fly in the earth's atmostphere which are, at the time of their flight, unidentified. Well, I believe that too. UFOs are sighted all the time. Usually, UFOs are later identified as all sorts of things like whether balloons, toys, military aircraft, civilian aircraft, natural phenomena. Sometimes they aren't identified but, for the most part we assume that just because we can't identify them doesn't mean that they are aliens. So MAYBE Kucinich DOESN'T believe in little green men, but only believes that the military puts secret things in our skies (surely a possibility).
Or maybe he does believe in little green men (I believe that extra-terrestrial life forms, possibly intelligent, exist) AND he believes that they visit earth (I don't believe that they visit earth). Why is that so crazy? Why is that crazier than believing that the earth is only 6000 years old? At least we have concrete evidence that the earth is much older than 6,000 years, but no one seems to be calling Huckabee crazy...
Anyway, my point is that when we hear any kind of serious sentence, especially coming from the news media or people who seem sure of themselves, we should always contemplate it quietly and thoroughly. It should only take a few seconds and that's an important critical thinking skill.
Basically, critical thinking skills involve training your brain to be constantly aware of the world around you (awareness), examine one's (or others') behavior from different perspectives (empathy), and doing intelligent things with the information you gather with all 5 senses (analysis). There's a bit more, but that's the basics.
Typically, you would want to teach critical thinking skills to young people, because it's much more difficult for someone to begin applying critical thinking skills after 20 years of not. And when critical thinking skills are not being applied, they atrophy very quickly.
The world would be a better place if everyone had excellent critical thinking skills. Racism and similar types of bigotry would almost certainly disappear, petty crime would drop drastically, capitalism would be completely transformed (mostly because advertising would become less effective), we'd see much less war, people of different religions would be much more tolerant of each other, etc.
This is why I think education is so important. If we could redesign the curriculum for primary school in this country to focus almost entirely on building critical thinking skills rather than simply teaching subjects like history for history's sake or math for math's sake I feel incredibly confident that we would see amazing improvement in the quality of life of that generation.
For example, 4th grade children should not be taught about the nitrogen cycle over a 40 minute science class through a diagram in their science book with little arrows. Each full day of an entire week should be devoted to this and similar natural cycles. The children should be given the basic tools and appropriate pushes to discover the nitrogen cycle for themselves. Two simple in class science experiments, a fieldtrip to a field or forest, and some explanation and nudging from the teacher should be enough (assuming that 1st-3rd grade were filled with similar exercises, by the time they get to 4th grade, they should be pros at this type of instruction). This experience would last for the rest of the child's life, and they would gain that valuable skill of learning something through experience and experimentation. It sure beats being told something and having to believe that it's true by the teacher's authority.
What would this cost? Teachers would have to be more specialized, so they'll require more schooling and ultimately a much much higher pay. The job of a primary school teacher would need to be revered more than that of a doctor or a scientist, and similarly their pay should be much higher. The major problem now is that too many primary school teachers lack the very skills they should be teaching. Why do I believe this?
Well, when I was a sixth grader I had a history teacher (Mr. Wiggins) who, one day, told us that George Washington had wooden teeth. When I heard this, like the rest of the class, I thought "WOW, gross, weird, ha ha ha." But shortly after, unlike the rest of the class, I thought about it and decided that this probably wasn't true. This is because I knew that most wood expands when wet and shrinks when dry. Life experience should have taught anyone this. So the art of making false teeth out of wood must have been either very complicated, causing the false teeth to be more expensive than ivory or metal ones, OR possibly causing wooden false teeth to be remarkably painful or practically useless and left as an alternative to only the poor (and I knew that Washington was not a poor man). I brought this up to Mr Wiggins and he was not pleased. He argued with me so I dropped it. I did some research at the library (this was before the internet boom) and found out that George Washington's wooden teeth are a myth. I brought this up a few days later (essentially calling Mr Wiggins misinformed at best, a liar at worst, but certainly not so bluntly) and guess what happened? I got punished for it. As far as I know, my entire fifth grade class is currently still misinformed about Georgy's wooden teeth and currently, in some schools, applying critical thinking skills still nets you a detention.
This rant was brought to you by a couple of economist that try to re-analyze why the poor commit more crimes.
Frustration building...
Any college student who chooses a major based on his perception of its difficulty SHOULD NOT PURSUE HIGHER EDUCATION.
-all majors are difficult if you really put yourself into it. If you are just looking to "graduate college as easily and as quickly as possible" then do yourself, your parents, your possible future professors, TAs, and fellow undergrads a favor and re-analyze your decision to go to college.
Any college student who fears having to deal with "a lot of memorization" SHOULD RE-EVALUATE THEIR DEFINITION OF LEARNING.
-what's the difference between memorizing and remembering? What's the difference between remembering and learning? I know what the differences are to me, I've known since I started high school. That's how I've managed to go through the past 11 years of schooling without memorizing ANYTHING.
If you make a claim based on no shared evidence and someone else refutes your claim you cannot require the refuter to come up with evidence against your claim. THE BURDEN OF PROOF RESTS ON THE PERSON MAKING THE UN-EVIDENCED CLAIM.
-too many times I've heard religious faithfuls ask "rationals" to come up with proof for the un-existence of God. Unfortunately, that doesn't make much sense. Observe the absurdity of the following conversation.
Person 1: I believe that I have two pairs of lungs, but one of the pairs is incorporeal, unable to be x-rayed or MRIed or touched with human hands.
Person 2: I think you are misguided - you do not have two pairs of lungs.
Person 1: Prove it!
If person 1 is fair in his demand, then it is now person 2's job to prove that person 1 does not have a second incorporeal set of lungs. Unfortunately, due to the very nature of this pair of lungs, Person 2 will not likely come up with proof. Does this mean we are to believe that the claim of person 1's second set of lungs is true?
According to many many many folks, who don't think about stuff before they are interviewed on television, yes.
============ Rant ==================
Now I don't like to get involved in arguments about religion for many many many reasons.
The problem is that when I hear arguments between a religious faithful and a "rational" I often find major logical faults, or scientific inaccuracies/misunderstandings with the arguments made by the faithful. Similarly, I tend to have a major problem with the method that the "rational" employs to make their point. So I get angry (or involved) because most of these discussions/debates become intellectually fruitless.
In the above paragraph, by the way, "rational" is in quotes because I do want to make clear that "rational" in this sense is meant to be someone who has applied logic to his belief system without appealing to the supernatural. "rationals" might not be rational in the sense that they often get involved in religious debates with poor purpose or goal. Many such supporters of atheism feel that the goal of this discourse should be to "eradicate religion" and they do this by ridiculous tactics such as trying to show how stupid the opposition's argument is.
The goal, I think, should be for both parties, though one at a time, to incrementally build an understanding from the smallest claims that they can agree on. That way, the most basic disagreements can be identified, targeted, and resolved or noted. I've seen this type of debate happen twice before, both people keeping calm and rational, tempers unflaired.
Ultimately both of these debates ended with the rational "rational" conceding that there was no proof that a god didn't exist but believing that it was irrational to suppose one does exists, and the religious faithful conceding that the only thing they had to sustain their belief system was faith and personal experience but believing that this was more than enough to stick to their convictions.
This is a good resolution to expect because
A: the goal of the "rational" should be to make sure that everyone is using a fair and logical system to evaluate claims such as "you must prove to me that vishnu does not exist" and not to claim that the religious faithful is simply wrong. History has shown that only mass murder/extinction or the encroachment of a new idea can effectively eliminate a belief system (see the greeks or mayans for examples of these). If one really wishes to see religion disappear, one has to replace it with something really good and let time do its work (because no one should be murdering anyone). Maybe logic and compassion is enough as a replacement, but we'll never know if one side is constantly belittling or bullying the other.
B: the religious faithful should truly examine their own belief system and make sure that their comprehension of it is not simply a result of indoctrination and simply going along with the motions. If one believes something because of the joy in their heart or the personal miracles they experience, that is fine. But this is a personal belief and one has to really think about and understand the way that it should or shouldn't be applied to the rest of the world with respect to prostelatizing, relying on prayer, making laws about stem cell research, and teaching our children (especially those who don't share that belief system) about the world.
The end
-all majors are difficult if you really put yourself into it. If you are just looking to "graduate college as easily and as quickly as possible" then do yourself, your parents, your possible future professors, TAs, and fellow undergrads a favor and re-analyze your decision to go to college.
Any college student who fears having to deal with "a lot of memorization" SHOULD RE-EVALUATE THEIR DEFINITION OF LEARNING.
-what's the difference between memorizing and remembering? What's the difference between remembering and learning? I know what the differences are to me, I've known since I started high school. That's how I've managed to go through the past 11 years of schooling without memorizing ANYTHING.
If you make a claim based on no shared evidence and someone else refutes your claim you cannot require the refuter to come up with evidence against your claim. THE BURDEN OF PROOF RESTS ON THE PERSON MAKING THE UN-EVIDENCED CLAIM.
-too many times I've heard religious faithfuls ask "rationals" to come up with proof for the un-existence of God. Unfortunately, that doesn't make much sense. Observe the absurdity of the following conversation.
Person 1: I believe that I have two pairs of lungs, but one of the pairs is incorporeal, unable to be x-rayed or MRIed or touched with human hands.
Person 2: I think you are misguided - you do not have two pairs of lungs.
Person 1: Prove it!
If person 1 is fair in his demand, then it is now person 2's job to prove that person 1 does not have a second incorporeal set of lungs. Unfortunately, due to the very nature of this pair of lungs, Person 2 will not likely come up with proof. Does this mean we are to believe that the claim of person 1's second set of lungs is true?
According to many many many folks, who don't think about stuff before they are interviewed on television, yes.
============ Rant ==================
Now I don't like to get involved in arguments about religion for many many many reasons.
The problem is that when I hear arguments between a religious faithful and a "rational" I often find major logical faults, or scientific inaccuracies/misunderstandings with the arguments made by the faithful. Similarly, I tend to have a major problem with the method that the "rational" employs to make their point. So I get angry (or involved) because most of these discussions/debates become intellectually fruitless.
In the above paragraph, by the way, "rational" is in quotes because I do want to make clear that "rational" in this sense is meant to be someone who has applied logic to his belief system without appealing to the supernatural. "rationals" might not be rational in the sense that they often get involved in religious debates with poor purpose or goal. Many such supporters of atheism feel that the goal of this discourse should be to "eradicate religion" and they do this by ridiculous tactics such as trying to show how stupid the opposition's argument is.
The goal, I think, should be for both parties, though one at a time, to incrementally build an understanding from the smallest claims that they can agree on. That way, the most basic disagreements can be identified, targeted, and resolved or noted. I've seen this type of debate happen twice before, both people keeping calm and rational, tempers unflaired.
Ultimately both of these debates ended with the rational "rational" conceding that there was no proof that a god didn't exist but believing that it was irrational to suppose one does exists, and the religious faithful conceding that the only thing they had to sustain their belief system was faith and personal experience but believing that this was more than enough to stick to their convictions.
This is a good resolution to expect because
A: the goal of the "rational" should be to make sure that everyone is using a fair and logical system to evaluate claims such as "you must prove to me that vishnu does not exist" and not to claim that the religious faithful is simply wrong. History has shown that only mass murder/extinction or the encroachment of a new idea can effectively eliminate a belief system (see the greeks or mayans for examples of these). If one really wishes to see religion disappear, one has to replace it with something really good and let time do its work (because no one should be murdering anyone). Maybe logic and compassion is enough as a replacement, but we'll never know if one side is constantly belittling or bullying the other.
B: the religious faithful should truly examine their own belief system and make sure that their comprehension of it is not simply a result of indoctrination and simply going along with the motions. If one believes something because of the joy in their heart or the personal miracles they experience, that is fine. But this is a personal belief and one has to really think about and understand the way that it should or shouldn't be applied to the rest of the world with respect to prostelatizing, relying on prayer, making laws about stem cell research, and teaching our children (especially those who don't share that belief system) about the world.
The end
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
The last (fluent?) speaker of the language Eyak has passed away. That's linguistically relevant in itself. But the reason I'm discussing it is that the article I read about this event has the following paragraph:
It took me a while to figure out what this paragraph was saying. On my first read I understood that Jones died, but her mother, who was apparently lost somewhere, was found by a friend of Jones'. Then I thought her mother also died and she was found dead along with Jones. That made me construct a scenario where both women died due to some kind of gas leak in their home. Eventually I made it to the "said Bernice Galloway, a daughter..." which cleared things up a bit.
The article can be found on the website for the seattle post/intelligencier. And I suspect their copy editors don't care much for the online version of their paper.
Jones [the last speaker] died peacefully in her sleep Monday. Her mother was found by a friend, said Bernice Galloway, a daughter who lives in Albuquerque, N.M.
It took me a while to figure out what this paragraph was saying. On my first read I understood that Jones died, but her mother, who was apparently lost somewhere, was found by a friend of Jones'. Then I thought her mother also died and she was found dead along with Jones. That made me construct a scenario where both women died due to some kind of gas leak in their home. Eventually I made it to the "said Bernice Galloway, a daughter..." which cleared things up a bit.
The article can be found on the website for the seattle post/intelligencier. And I suspect their copy editors don't care much for the online version of their paper.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
lip reading
Some researchers at the University of East Anglia are hoping to create a 'lip reading' machine -- in essance: a computer which uses only video of a person's face, as she is talking, to decipher what is being said.
First off - lip reading is, at best, unreliable. This is because the vast majority of contrastive sounds are not visible (or barely visible) at the lips (or the front of the oral cavity). For example: to the average speaker of American-English, the words "do" and "to/two/too" look almost identical to each other when being pronounced. This is because the major difference between them is whether the vocal folds are vibrating during the pronunciation of the first consonant. However, the way the lips are shaped during the pronunciation of these words varies a lot, as it is dependent on the words preceding and following. This is basically because of the grammatical function and the shortness of these words.
Furthermore - even tiny visible differences which you might expect can differ drastically from speaker to speaker. It is surprisingly common, for example, for young American-English speakers of certain regions to pronounce some 'l' sounds with the tongue placed prominently between the teeth. This could actually help lip readers, but because it is not applicable to all speakers, it is not something a computer will be able to apply all that well.
There are many more reasons why lip reading is difficult, and why no one can lipread as reliably as a hearing individual can hear. In a paper linked to the bottom of this article, it seems that the researchers have some understanding of these problems. However, they still think they can overcome them.
Presumably, the researchers are motivated by the fact that there exist a few people who have become quite good at lip reading. But here is the real kicker - the way that those people become good is that they use cues from syntax and semantics to make good educated guesses about what the words might be.
For example the following two sentences (when I pronounce them) look identical at the lips:
I tread the path to success
I dread the path to success
If I'm having a conversation with an expert lip reader, she will use many non-lip cues to figure out which of these sentences I've said: cues like what kind of person I am, or what my previous sentence meant, or what our conversation has been about.
So, for example, if I had said "I want to be successful but I [d/t]read the path to success" then one of those words is going to make a lot more sense than the other. As far as I know, no English parsing software exists which can reliably use such semantic cues to help make sense of a sentence.
Good Luck, British researchers...
First off - lip reading is, at best, unreliable. This is because the vast majority of contrastive sounds are not visible (or barely visible) at the lips (or the front of the oral cavity). For example: to the average speaker of American-English, the words "do" and "to/two/too" look almost identical to each other when being pronounced. This is because the major difference between them is whether the vocal folds are vibrating during the pronunciation of the first consonant. However, the way the lips are shaped during the pronunciation of these words varies a lot, as it is dependent on the words preceding and following. This is basically because of the grammatical function and the shortness of these words.
Furthermore - even tiny visible differences which you might expect can differ drastically from speaker to speaker. It is surprisingly common, for example, for young American-English speakers of certain regions to pronounce some 'l' sounds with the tongue placed prominently between the teeth. This could actually help lip readers, but because it is not applicable to all speakers, it is not something a computer will be able to apply all that well.
There are many more reasons why lip reading is difficult, and why no one can lipread as reliably as a hearing individual can hear. In a paper linked to the bottom of this article, it seems that the researchers have some understanding of these problems. However, they still think they can overcome them.
Presumably, the researchers are motivated by the fact that there exist a few people who have become quite good at lip reading. But here is the real kicker - the way that those people become good is that they use cues from syntax and semantics to make good educated guesses about what the words might be.
For example the following two sentences (when I pronounce them) look identical at the lips:
I tread the path to success
I dread the path to success
If I'm having a conversation with an expert lip reader, she will use many non-lip cues to figure out which of these sentences I've said: cues like what kind of person I am, or what my previous sentence meant, or what our conversation has been about.
So, for example, if I had said "I want to be successful but I [d/t]read the path to success" then one of those words is going to make a lot more sense than the other. As far as I know, no English parsing software exists which can reliably use such semantic cues to help make sense of a sentence.
Good Luck, British researchers...
Friday, January 11, 2008
Not at all how I remember it
The big city near the small suburb I grew up in has been having a little trouble figuring out what to do with a lot of trash. Rioters, as they often do, responded by setting things on fire.
I remember Naples as being a very stinky city and I think burning refuse is not going to make it smell prettier.
I remember Naples as being a very stinky city and I think burning refuse is not going to make it smell prettier.
We should all be like Alexander Hamilton (not George Hamilton)
Scotch improves everything, especially history.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
The myth of experience
Someone needs to explain to me what kind of experience is optimal for the job of president of the US. Since the Iowa caucus wrapped up, I've been reading tons more opinion pieces on why Obama would not make a good president because of his lack of experience. That is, tons more than I was reading before when polls seemed to show that he was a distant second to Hillary.
I'm mostly not swayed by these arguments for a few simple reasons.
Reason, the first: I understand that a president hardly ever makes a decision without comprehensive discussion and information exchange with the relevant members of his cabinet. Typically, a good president surrounds himself with intelligent, competent, and EXPERIENCED people in that particular field of knowledge. I believe that Obama would certainly sorround himself with intelligent, competent, and experienced people.
Reason, the second: Given the first reason, a president needs to have decision making experience of the kind many people outside of politics also possess. I believe that Obama possesses the ability to make those important decisions and has honed this skill in his political career.
Reason, the third: I feel that there is such a thing as BAD EXPERIENCE. Just because a candidate has, say, 14 years experience governing the state of Mississippi does not mean that he has accumulated 14 years of useful experience running a country. In fact, learning how to run Mississippi can train you to have very bad habits regarding fiscal conservancy or international relations.
I think that in the current state of the country, the skill set of the most useful president would not necessarily be augmented by a dozen or more years of political grinding and special interest poisoning.
I'm mostly not swayed by these arguments for a few simple reasons.
Reason, the first: I understand that a president hardly ever makes a decision without comprehensive discussion and information exchange with the relevant members of his cabinet. Typically, a good president surrounds himself with intelligent, competent, and EXPERIENCED people in that particular field of knowledge. I believe that Obama would certainly sorround himself with intelligent, competent, and experienced people.
Reason, the second: Given the first reason, a president needs to have decision making experience of the kind many people outside of politics also possess. I believe that Obama possesses the ability to make those important decisions and has honed this skill in his political career.
Reason, the third: I feel that there is such a thing as BAD EXPERIENCE. Just because a candidate has, say, 14 years experience governing the state of Mississippi does not mean that he has accumulated 14 years of useful experience running a country. In fact, learning how to run Mississippi can train you to have very bad habits regarding fiscal conservancy or international relations.
I think that in the current state of the country, the skill set of the most useful president would not necessarily be augmented by a dozen or more years of political grinding and special interest poisoning.
Monday, January 7, 2008
A thing that makes me, quite literally, sick right in my stomach
Can atheists be parents?
Despite previous success in parenting an adopted child, an 'atheist couple' is denied a second adoption due to their being atheists (despite their "high moral and ethical standards" as noted by the judge blocking the adoption)...
This was a story from 1970. I wonder what happens in such cases today?
Despite previous success in parenting an adopted child, an 'atheist couple' is denied a second adoption due to their being atheists (despite their "high moral and ethical standards" as noted by the judge blocking the adoption)...
This was a story from 1970. I wonder what happens in such cases today?
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
When will Jesus come already?!?
It used to be the case that if you entered www.2007rapture.com into your browser's address bar you would find yourself on the webpage of a guy proclaiming, with absolute certainty, that the end of the world would occur in 2007. Well, 2007 came and went with no return of jesus. That domain holder is a good sport though, so if you go to that website now he has written a long apology and explaination (sort of).
But, fear not. www.2008rapture.com has been up and running for a while now. Maybe this year will be the one?
Regardless of if the end is near or not, try to have a good year!
But, fear not. www.2008rapture.com has been up and running for a while now. Maybe this year will be the one?
Regardless of if the end is near or not, try to have a good year!
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