[tips] New Years Resolutions
If Tipsters are similar to the general U.S. population (a somewhat questionable assumption) then about 48% of them have made New Year's Resolutions. As many of you are porbably well aware, the failure rate for achieving those resolutions is notoriously high (I believe John Norcross has done some research on this point). Nonetheless, to help those who have made resolutions and will attempt to achieve them, Time magazine provides some hints on how to do so with some that actually appear to be based on psychological research. See: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1950511,00.html As an example, consider the following quote on how to moderate one's behavior: |Successful moderators decide in advance how much is too much — |and stick to their limit, no matter what. Have a cookie a day, if that's |what you've deemed acceptable. But if you cheat by having just |one more, know that you are only cheating yourself and exacerbating |the problem, experts say. The point is to learn how to hold yourself |accountable. I'll let Tips on to one of my resolutions: To post more substantive message to Tips with as much relevance to teaching as possible though also items of news that may be of general scientific, cultural, and artistic interest in contrast to messages like: LOL! Who cares? Good luck in your resolutions. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Don't Procrastinate! Party Tonight!
We are all familiar with different forms of procrastination, ranging from students handing in work done at the minute or past a deadline to our own last minute attempts or missed deadlines for handing in departmental forms, reviews, and other academic and professional work. But it may come as a surprise to some that a similar form of procrastination occurs for activities that one might consider pleasurable or desirable, a form of deferred reinforcement is you will (though some folks from Florida might not suffer from this difficulty). The NY Times has an interesting article on this point titled Carpe Diem? Maybe Tomorrow; see: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/29/science/29tier.html The key point is that, in general, when it comes to the perception of time and its management, people think that they will have more free time in the far future than in the near future. With the pressing demands of today, tomorrow, and the next day, it appears easier to put off discretionary or optional or non-deadline activities until next week or later when it is assumed that there will be more time to engage in them. Of course, if one has a stable busy schedule, then unless the schedule changes to reduce the number of obligations one has to meet, one is unlikely to have that expected free time. Quoting the article: |We’re trying to do a cost-benefit analysis of the time lost versus |the pleasure or money to be gained, but we’re not accurate in our |estimates of “resource slack,” as it is termed by Gal Zauberman and |John G. Lynch. These behavioral economists found that when people |were asked to anticipate how much extra money and time they would |have in the future, they realistically assumed that money would be tight, |but they expected free time to magically materialize. | |Hence you’re more likely to agree to a commitment next year, like |giving a speech, that you would turn down if asked to find time for it |in the next month. This produces what researchers call the “Yes ... Damn!” |effect: when the speech comes due next year, you bitterly discover you’re |still as busy as ever. For fans of the movie Sideways, there is a suggested means for dealing with this problem: |Another tactic is to give yourself deadlines. Cash in the miles by summer, |even if you can’t get a round-the-world trip out of them. Instead of waiting |for a special occasion to indulge yourself, create one. Dr. Shu approvingly |cites the pioneering therapeutic work of Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher, | who for the past decade used their Wall Street Journal column on wine to |proclaim the last Saturday of February to be “Open That Bottle Night.” | |But you don’t even have to wait until Feb. 27. Remember the advice |offered in the movie “Sideways” to Miles, who has been holding on |to a ’61 Cheval Blanc so long that it is in danger of going bad. When |Miles says he is waiting for a special occasion, his friend Maya puts |matters in perspective: | |“The day you open a ’61 Cheval Blanc, that’s the special occasion.” -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] How A Pope Controls Your Calendar
I think that few people actually think about why the calendar is structured the way it is and even fewer think about how to make the calendar more rational (e.g., each month having a fixed number of days, thus making the month an interval scale of time measurement) or consistent with the astronomical and seasonal events that were originally set up to reflect but, with the passage of hundreds of years, small errors accumulate to distort the calendar (e.g., making spring come weeks earlier in the calendar). A news article in the Wall Street Journal reviews these issues as well as some of the proposed solutions; see: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126212850216209527.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_RIGHTInDepthCarousel Because of the intimate connection between the calendar and religious activites (e.g., December 25 is celebrated as Christmas by people who follow the Gregorian calendar while those who still follow the Julian or old calendar celebrate on January 7; I believe that Armenians traditionally celebrate Christmass on January 6 according to their reckoning based on the oldest gospels in Christianity -- perhaps it would be easier to simply make the fourth Thursday in December Christmas Day). This raises a question that has been highlighted recently by Norad's following Santa Claus around world as Christmas crept across the globe as well as video showing celebrations in China and Australia and elsewhere as New Year's Day crept across the globe: Given that Christmass/New Year's Day has arrived somewhere on the planet should we: (a) have a simultaneous celebration around the world given that the planet has achieved that event or (b) continue to have local celebrations and ignore that fact that what is being celebrated has already occured elsewhere (for the North and South America, they are really late to the celebration). What should it be? Think globally or think locally? -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu P.S. To make this relevant to teaching, which should be preferred: the traditional semester system or the quarter system? --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Cancer From A Devil
In the NY Times there is an interesting little article on the origin of a specific cancer in the marsupial known as the Tasmanian Devil. The news article is based on an article published in Science today. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/01/science/01devil.html?emc=eta1 Here are a few points to consider: (1) The cancer is a deadly facial cancer that has apparently killed 60% of all Tasmanian devils since it was first observed in 1996. (2) The cancer spreads from one animal to another when one animal bites another animal's face. Yes, when the cancer cells are freed from a host, they will grow/infect the new host. It is important to note that what gets transferred is not a virus but the cancerous cell itself which acts like a parasite. (3) It appears that the cancerous cells originally came from Schwann cells in the nervous system. Quoting the article: |They argue that a single Schwann cell in a single animal was |the progenitor of all the devil facial tumor disease cells. (4) Only one other case of cancer cells acting like parasite has been found: canine tansmissible veneral tumor which also appears to have a single host origin thousands of years ago. I had not heard of cancer as a parasite, that is, as a bug that could be gotten from another organism. I suspect that we may find more examples in the future. MORALE: Be careful about whose face you bite. Happy New Year, Y'all! -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Too Many Honors?
A curious article in today's NY Times about the proliferation of high school honor societies and the difficulties that these seem to pose to college admissions board who are unsure about how to evaluate participation in those societies; see: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/01/education/01honors.html?themc=th Apparently this is becoming a widespread problem which has become the concern for some educational policy wonks, such as Chester E. Finn, Jr who is quoted in the article: |“This cheapens the currency,” ”said Chester E. Finn Jr., president |of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a nonprofit educational policy |group in Washington. “Once everyone’s wearing rhinestones, you |might not notice someone wearing diamonds.” For more on Mr. Finn see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_E._Finn,_Jr. Disclosure: for the longest time I confused this Finn with another educational researcher, Jeremy D. Finn who had developed the program MULTIVARAIANCE which, back in the 1980s, allowed one to do a variety of general linear model analyses, including repeated measures ANOVA, MANOVA, and other procedures. See the following article in the American Statistician announcing the release of the PC version. http://www.jstor.org/pss/2684303 It was one of the statistical packages put out by Darrell Bock's Scientific Software International (SSI) company which was best known for marketing LISREL (and providing workshops on Lisrel programming back in the 1980s at the University of Chicago; I attended one of these and one of my strongest memories about the UofC is that it had more churches and tennis courst per square foot than any other college/university I've ever seen). Has the high school honor society issue been relevant to any Tipsters? -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Who Speaks For Science?
In a news article in the Washington Post, Chris Mooney (co-author of Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future) points out that scientists need training in dealing with the mass media and in getting their messages about scientific issues out to the public is an accessible style. Climategate and other recent problems have made the general public (at least in the U.S.) more suspicious about science. For example, quoting from the article: |In the ensuing Climategate scandal, scientists were accused of |withholding information, suppressing dissent, manipulating data |and more. But while the controversy has receded, it may have |done lasting damage to science's reputation: Last month, |a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 40 percent of |Americans distrust what scientists say about the environment, |a considerable increase from April 2007. Meanwhile, public |belief in the science of global warming is in decline. What is the problem that may need to be overcome? Consider the following quote: |Scientific training continues to turn out researchers who speak |in careful nuances and with many caveats, in a language aimed |at their peers, not at the media or the public. Many scientists |can scarcely contemplate framing a simple media message for |maximum impact; the very idea sounds unbecoming. And many |of them don't trust the public or the press: According to |a recent Pew study, 85 percent of U.S. scientists say it's a major |problem that the public doesn't know much about science, and |76 percent say the same about what they see as the media's inability |to distinguish between well-supported science and less-than-scientific |claims. Rather than spurring greater efforts at communication, |such mistrust and resignation have further motivated some scientists |to avoid talking to reporters and going on television. For the complete article, see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/31/AR2009123101155_pf.html -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Lebowski Studies?
Remember the movie The Great Lebowski by the Coen brothers? Tt has become a cult film and has spawned a whole area of academic enterprise as represented in a semi-review of a book on the subject. The book is: |“The Year’s Work in Lebowski Studies,” an essay collection edited |by Edward P. Comentale and Aaron Jaffe (Indiana University Press, |$24.95). And the semi-review is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/30/books/30lebowski.html?_r=1pagewanted=all It is a curious review but any review that quotes Umberto Eco can't be all bad. To give a sense of what Lubowsku Studies is about, consider the following quote: |As a new generation of “Lebowski” fans emerges, Dude Studies |may linger for a while. In another of this book’s essays, “Professor |Dude: An Inquiry Into the Appeal of His Dudeness for Contemporary |College Students,” a bearded, longhaired and rather Dude-like |associate professor of English at James Madison University in |Harrisonburg, Va., named Richard Gaughran asks this question |about his students: “What is it that they see in the Dude that they |find so desirable?” | |One of Mr. Gaughran’s students came up with this summary, and |it’s somehow appropriate for an end-of-the-year reckoning: “He |doesn’t stand for what everybody thinks he should stand for, but |he has his values. He just does it. He lives in a very disjointed society, |but he’s gonna take things as they come, he’s gonna care about his |friends, he’s gonna go to somebody’s recital, and that’s it. That’s |how you respond.” | |Happy New Year, Dude. Happy New Year, Dudes and Dudettes (ignore the dudettes if you realize that Dude can be used in gender neutral mode). -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
RE: [tips] Stats on airplane terrorism
I would like to add to Scott's point that terrorism involving commercial flights is a low probability but high impact event by pointing out that a better measure of the effect of terrorism is how many people have died from all identified instances of terrorism. As Nate Silver (see his picture in the dictionary under nerd) points out, there has only been six incidents with commercial airlines. If this were the only empirical indicator of the effects of terrorism, then one might feel safe to ignore terrorism but that would be a foolish thing to do. Nate Silver is just doing number crunching because certain numbers are available to crunch. He doesn't go deeper and ask why is that number so low given the great impact that terrorism involving commercial airlnes has on society. The number is not small because it is a naturally low number but because huge resources have been used to keep that number low. The real question is what are the best practices to keep the number of terrorists events low while putting the least amount of restrictions on what people can do when flying. Other better questions for Nate to ask is what would be the naturally occurring rate of terrorism involving commercial airliners be if there were no processes in place to prevent it? Or how long would it take for commercial airlines to be reduced to only a few flights a day because the probability of being involved in a terrorist event would cause people to use other means of transportation? But this requires more than number crunching, it requires understanding the role of terrorism, how to use it effectively against a population, and how people respond to terrorist threats. I don't think Nate thinks at that level. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 03:30:41 -0800, Scott O Lilienfeld wrote: All true, and I don't dispute the statistics. But there's a good reason to be (much) more concerned about terrorist attacks than lightning: lightning doesn't learn from experience. Were terrorists able to find a dependable way of bringing explosive devices on board planes with low risk of detection, all it would take is one or at most two downed commercial planes to paralyze (temporarily, one would hope) the airplane industry, national and international travel, and much of the world economy. Again, I don't dispute that the absolute risks are at present extremely low. I just wouldn't want us to leap to the unjustified conclusion that the amount of worry we should devote to such incidents should be much less than to lightning strikes, as the issues involved here are markedly different. Scott From: Paul Brandon [paul.bran...@mnsu.edu] Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2009 1:19 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Stats on airplane terrorism Not to mention the risks of being killed by an infected cheeseburger. We cheerfully tolerate many higher but less dramatic risks than 'terrorism'. On Dec 29, 2009, at 12:03 AM, Christopher D. Green wrote: Here are some statistics on the probability of being the (attempted) victim of terrorism on a commercial flight that may make for interesting discussion in your courses: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/12/odds-of-airborne-terror.html Here's the best bit: the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning. --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
re: [tips] social psychology trade books; need recommendations for project
On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 11:16:03 -0800, Traci Giuliano wrote: I'm always on the lookout for recent (or even not-so-recent trade books that I may have missed) for a project in which students read trade books written by social psychologists (or sometimes non social psychologists on social psychological topics) and develop useful applications based on the book for a class project. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them. How about: Phil Zimbardo: The Lucifer Effect (the Stanford Prison Experiment and Beyond) Charles Skoller: Twisted Confessions (Skoller was the NYC ADA who investigated the Kitty Genovese murder and prosecuted Winston Mosley who killed Kitty and other women; it's useful to compare Skoller's account with other accounts as Harold Takooshian did in his review of this book in PscyCritiques) Gerd Gigerenze: Gut Feelings (Gerd's attempt to cash in on the Blink popularity which relied in part on his research which he goes into more detail in this book) Gary Belsky Tom Gilovich: Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes and How To Correct Them (part behavioral economics, part decision-making and heuristics, part self-help) All of the above are available on Amazon. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu For reference, here is the list that I used last year: 1) Self insight (Dunning) 2) The mismeasure of women (Tavris) 3) The how of happiness (Lyubomirsky) 4) How we know what isn’t so (Gilovich) 5) Mindfulness (Langer) 6) Intuition (Myers) 7) Curse of the Self (Leary) 8) White bears (Wegner) 9) Strangers to ourselves (Wilson) 10) Making marriage work (Gottman) 11) The relationship cure (Gottman) 12) Opening up (Pennebaker) 13) Singled out (DePaulo) 14) Emotions revealed (Ekman) 15) Telling lies (Ekman) 16) Breaking Murphy’s Law (Segerstrom) 17) Survival of the prettiest (Etcoff) 18) Stumbling on Happiness (Gilbert) 19) American Paradox (Myers) 20) Meanings of Life (Baumeister) 21) The two sexes (Maccoby) 22) Why so slow? (Valian) 23) Everyday mind reading (Ickes) 24) Losing control (Baumeister) 25) Friendly letter to skeptics (Myers) 26) Mistakes were made (Tavris) 27) The cultural animal (Baumeister) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] State Dependent Wine Perception/Appreciation
Some folks around this time of year start to wonder about what brand of champagne they should get for New Year's Eve, whether they should get something cheap like American sparkling wine (e.g., Korbel, which technically is not a champagne), a French champagne that that is moderate in price (for example, see: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/dining/reviews/23wine.html?emc=eta1 ) or something really expensive under the assumption that there is a strong linear relationship between price and objective quality. But it is refreshing to note that some people don't rely upon price or the score that Wine Spectator assigns to a particular wine to judge whether a wine is good or not (snob appeal aside). To see this attitude in people who recommend wines for a living is even more surprising. Which is why I suggest looking the following column by Brecher Gaiter on the Delicious Wines of 2009, see: http://online.wsj.com/article/tastings.html As they point out, the perception and appreciation of wine, as with many things especially works of art, is not just a function of the objective properties of the wine but also our expectations, the reasons why we are drinking it, the situation/environment in which we drink it, and so on, representing a very high order of interaction. What may be great one time, may not be great or even bad another. There is the old saying of you can not step in the same river twice which can be altered to you can not drink the same wine twice. -Mike Palij New York Unviersity m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
re: [tips] Martin Bolt
On Sat, 26 Dec 2009 06:27:11 -0800, David Myers wrote: Dear teaching colleagues, I am so sad to report that my friend Martin Bolt, author of many instructional resources for the teaching of psychology over the last quarter century, died of cancer on Christmas morning, with his family gathered round. With gratitude for the generosity of his spirit and the excellence of his work, David Myers P.S. If perchance you have benefitted from his resources and might have a word of appreciation, I am collecting such to convey to his family . For those of you who, like me, were unfamiliar with Martin Bolt, here is a press release from Calvin College where Bolt taught: http://www.calvin.edu/news/2009-10/bolt/index-mbolt.html -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Next Time You Go Out To Dinner, Remember Menu Psychology
There is an interesting article in the NY Times about Menu Psychology, that is, the subtle (and not too subtle) ways in which a menu is designed to influence a person's perception and decision to select particular items for a meal. It even explains the rationale for why dollar signs ($) don't appear on certain menu. Some of the commonly known heuristics and priming effects are referred to but not by name (e.g., the anchoring and adjustment heuristic which would suggest putting the most expensive item on the menu at the top, thus making all other menu items appear to be more reasonably priced). To give a sense of the article, consider the following quote: |In the “Ten Commandments for Menu Success,” an article published |in Restaurant Hospitality magazine in 1994, Allen H. Kelson, a restaurant |consultant, wrote, “If admen had souls, many would probably trade them |for an opportunity every restaurateur already has: the ability to place an |advertisement in every customer’s hand before they part with their money.” | |And like advertisements, menus contain plenty of subliminal messages. | |Some restaurants use what researchers call decoys. For example, they |may place a really expensive item at the top of the menu, so that other |dishes look more reasonably priced; research shows that diners tend to order |neither the most nor least expensive items, drifting toward the middle. |Or restaurants might play up a profitable dish by using more appetizing |adjectives and placing it next to a less profitable dish with less description |so the contrast entices the diner to order the profitable dish. | |Research by Brian Wansink, director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell |University and the author of “Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We |Think,” suggests that the average person makes more than 200 decisions about |food every day, many of them unconsciously, including the choices made |from reading menus. | |Menu design draws some of its inspiration from newspaper layout, which |puts the most important articles at the top right of the front page, where the |eyes tend to be drawn. Some restaurants will place their most profitable items, |or their specials, in that spot. Or they place a dotted outline or a box around |the item, put more white space around it to make the dish stand out or, in |what menu researchers say is one of the most effective tools, add a photograph |of the item or an icon like a chili pepper. | |(Photos of foie gras on the menus of white-tablecloth restaurants would be |surprising, however. Menu consultants say those establishments should never |use pictures.) According to the article there are four types of diners; which are you? a) Entrees b) Recipes c) Barbecues d) Desserts Remember, if you put lipstick on a pig, you still have a pig but some people will like the pig with lipstick better than the pig without lipstick, if it is done right. And they'll pay more for the pig with lipstick. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] How Is A Church Like A Can Opener?
The NY Times has a review of Nicholas Wade's book The Faith Instinct which might be of interest to some. Wade tries to explain religion as an evolutionary device that applies to groups of people which may be why it is so prevalent and enduring; see: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/27/books/review/Shulevitz-t.html?em -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re:[tips] Three psychologists walk into a bar...
On Wed, 23 Dec 2009 21:35:43 -0600, Paul Brandon wrote: And if they've got some period music scheduled, so much the better. On Dec 23, 2009, at 8:38 PM, Jeffrey Nagelbush wrote: As far as I am concerned, at this time of year the best place to go in NYC is the Cloisters at Fr. Tryon park. The weather adds to the mood of the place. And those wonderful unicorn tapestries. For those that are not familiar with the Cloisters, it is a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and it contains a number of medieval works of art in a structure that is itself a work of art (Thank you Mr. Rockefeller). For more info about it, one can read the Wikipedia entry; see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cloisters Info about its address, hours of operation, and how to get there (the subway-bus combination is recommended; take the A train to 190th St but stay in the first car to shorten the distance to the elevator; Washington Heights is literally on top of one), see: http://www.ny.com/museums/cloisters.html For events at the Cloisters, see: http://www.metmuseum.org/cloisters/events Now, I did not push the Cloisters as a place to visit because it takes up a big chunk of one's time. Though the Met Museum is on 5th Ave 79-83th Streets, the Cloisters are on the uppermost west side of Manhattan. If one is in the western part of Midtown, say the 59th St/Columbus Circle subway station, it will take about a half hour to get to the 190th St subway station (though there is an interesting express ride from 59th St to 125th St). Then there is the bus ride to the museum which adds another 10-15 minutes (wait included). So, depending on whether one gets the A train at 59th St or elsewhere, traveling time one way can easily take an hour. Now the Cloisters are a really nice place but one really has to be into medieval art. After visiting the Cloisters, one can visit Fort Tryon park but in winter it is unlikely that one would want to stay out too long. Fort Tryon is north of Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center (the 168th St subway station stop) and the George Washington Bridge (the 175th St subway Station). Yeshiva University which has several campuses spread out around NYC, has a main campus on the east side at 185th St (accessible from the 181st St subway station). These points of interest might be interesting to some but I don't think that most would want to explore them. Meaning, after you do the Cloisters, you go back to areas where more interesting locations and activities are clustered. There are other NYC attractions that one could go to but they too require a significant traveling time and are somewhat out of the way. The Bronx Zoo, Coney Island (where the Cyclone roller coaster and the NY Aquarium are located), the Bronx Botanical Garden, the Brookly Botanical Graden, and other attractions are scattered around NYC. Typically, if one goes to these places, that's all one is going to do because of the amount of time getting to them. NOTE: one can drive in NYC but it take extensive knowledge and experience to do so efficiently. Taking mass transit (subways, buses, etc.) is usually more time efficient (but you'll hear New York complain). Even so, traveling away from Manhattan central can take a significant amount of time. One final suggestion is to take the tramway which is next to the 59th St bridge (eastside) and goes to Roosevelt Island. It's like taking the Staten Island Ferry: it's mass transit but the sights along the way are something to write home about. Info about the tram is provided here: http://www.ny.com/transportation/ri_tramway.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roosevelt_Island_Tramway For people who are train/subway fans this website provide a lot of info and photos about the subways, the different lines, and the stations: http://www.nycsubway.org/lines/index.html This site give one an idea of what to look for in different stations and their history. By the way, there is a transit museum located in Brooklyn but it may be somewhat difficult for out of towners to get to. The transit museum does have a shop in Grand Central Terminal (GCT). If one is around GCT, it is worthwhile to visit the grand train station (think about the dancing scene in it from the movie The Fisher King). GCT is on 42nd St and Park Avenue. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Must Be Santa!
http://www.noradsanta.org/en/index.html -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
RE: [tips] Must Be Santa!
On Thu, 24 Dec 2009 08:45:46 -0800, Rick Froman wrote: Here is the interesting story of how this tradition (of NORAD Santa-tracking) came about. http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/12/24/cnet.norad.santa.tracker Interesting story but I have to our Canadian friends: What the hell is Moose Milk? Happy Holidays! -Mike Palij P.S. Remember that tomorrow is Christmas for only some people, namely those that follow the Gregorian calendar. More Christmass to come in January. --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
re: [tips] URGENT! URGENT (TIPSTER OF THE WEEK)
On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 22:16:46 -0800, Michael Sylvester wrote: Please help me identify Tipster OF THE WEEK.He is a white dude and is endomorphically challenged.He has publications in many languages and is recognized throughout the universe.He is a mobile nomadic professor but his base is at a university somewhere in the North pole.He has a penchant for delivering publications exactly at 12 AM every Decenber 25th by Federal Chimney Expres.Canadian tipsters Black,McKelvie,Clark,Green have reported picking up his podcasts in English,French,and Scottish-ending then with Ho,Heaux,and Rhyming in the glomind.He travels with ruminants with horns. Canadian mounties and Imterpol are on his track and so is PETA.He is chosen as our Tipster of the week for exhibiting this rare quality among academics- jolliness. But I need to find his real identity and name. Hannibal Lechter? -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
re:[tips] Holiday stories
On Wed, 23 Dec 2009 00:47:23 +, John Kulig wrote: We've covered Tipster's favorite christmas songs, here is my recommendation for books: Barbara Robinson's The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (1972). It was recommended by a friend and I just finished reading it to my kids. It's a GREAT kid's book, about an obnoxious, unruly family of kids who manage to get parts in (what was supposed to be) a prim and proper christmas pageant Well, since the Subject line says Holiday Stories, let me suggest O. Henry's The Gift of the Magi, a story that psychologists can use when discussing interpersonal relationships. Copies of the story are available online and one website that has the story as well as an mp3 reading of the story is this: http://www.transpacificradio.com/2006/12/21/xmas3-deorio/ For background to the story, see its Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gift_of_the_Magi It should be noted that Wikipedia also has a listing of Christmas Fiction; see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Christmas_fiction And let's not forget the old Christmas favorites such as Clement Moore's The Night Before Christmas which helped to establish our current conception of Santa Claus (though the jolly old man in a red suit was made more popular through his portrayal in Coca-Cola ads in the 20th century;see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/6870862/The-saintly-spirit-of-Father-Christmas.html): For the text of the poem and some background; see: http://www.carols.org.uk/twas_the_night_before_christmas.htm Let us not forget Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, a free version of which is available on books.google.com; see: http://books.google.com/books?id=P9s0MAAJprintsec=frontcoverdq=%22a+christmas+carol%22cd=12#v=onepageq=f=false or http://tinyurl.com/y922vja Books.google.com has about 87 books with the title Christmas Stories some of which make the full contents available while other provide limited views or no preview; see: http://books.google.com/books?ei=uRgyS7jACozTlAfiqt2VBwct=resultq=%22christmas+stories%22btnG=Search+Books Perhaps I may be permitted to change the direction of this discussion by identifying what are my favorite Christmas movies or Christmas associated movies (i.e., because these movies though not explicitly about Christmas were presented around Christmas time). My top five favorite Christmas movies are, in reverse ranking, are: (5) March of the Wooden Soldier (Laurel Hardy) (4) The Wizard of Oz (if you have ask...) (3) It's A Wonderful Life (prototypical Frank Capra corn) (4) A Christmas Carol aka Scrooge (with Alistair Sim; for some reason that I could never understand in the past the NY Times in its TV listings would say that this film lays on the Freudian sauce heavily) And my favorite Christmas movie is: (Drum roll!) (Wait for it!) (1) Die Hard (with Bruce Willis; a wonderful film about loss and gain, redemption, hope, the human spirit overcoming overwhelming odds, and lots of guns and explosions! ;-) I find that most people look at me oddly when I say that Die Hard is my favorite Christmas movie. Perhaps they forget that it takes place on Christmas Eve and its underlying theme of miraculous occurrences. Plus the boyish fun of blowing stuff up! :-) Honorable mentions: A Christmas Story (1983; You'll shoot your eye out!) Three Godfathers (1948; John Ford directior; Starring John Wayne) Tokyo Godfathers (2003; see www.imdb.com for info) Since You Went Away (1944; starring Claudette Colbert) Meet John Doe (1941; more Capra corn) For a more comprehensive list of Christmas movies and Christmas related movies, see the list on Wikipedia: see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christmas_films And a Bah Humbug!, er, I mean Happy Holidays to all. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu P.S. I have to admit that I found the Saturday Night Live (SNL) Christmas special pretty funny, especially the sketchs with Alec Baldwin reprising his Glengarry Glen Ross speech to underperforming Santa's helpers and his Schweddy Balls bit; see: http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/clips/nprs-delicious-dish-schweddy-balls/2846/ --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
re: [tips] Three psychologists walk into a bar...
thinks he's a chicken). (h) NOTE: one can also go iceskating in Central Park and here is a link that provides info on other activities and sights: http://www.newyorkcitytravels.com/maps/central-park-attractions.html One can also iceskate for free at Bryant Park which is located behind the main building of the NY Public Library (the Library is on 5th Ave between 40th 42th streets while Bryant Park is located on 6th Ave between 40th 42th streets); see: http://www.bryantpark.org/ (2) Downtown at the former World Trade Center (WTC) or Ground Zero. The street map provided at Wikipedia provide a frame of reference; see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WTC_Building_Arrangement_and_Site_Plan.svg The map is oriented correctly, so going up is going north, going right is east, going left is west, and going down is south. I haven't been there in a while but I believe that a museum has opened there; see: http://www.groundzeromuseum.com/home.html (a) One notable place to visit is St. Paul's Chapel, located northeast across from WTC Building #5. The eastern border of WTC is along Church St and St. Paul's is between Church St and Broadway. The entrance is on Broadway and there is a cemetary behind it which goes to Church St. One can enter the cemetary from Church street and enter St. Paul's from the rear. St. Paul's served as a rest station for first responders on 9/11 and for workers at WTC afterwards. In front of St. Paul's one can see City Hall to the North east of Broadway. If one crossed Broadway to the street facing City Hall, one would be on Park Row. If one continued down Park Row, one would come across the campus of Pace University and the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge which allows pedestrian access. (b) If one is in front of St. Paul's and walk south on Broadway, one will eventually come to Trinity Church which fans of the movie National Treasure will recognize as being at the intersection of Broadway and Wall Stree. Walking east on Wall Street will bring one to Federal Hall where George Washington took the oath of office for President and the first home to the U.S. federal government; see: http://www.nps.gov/feha/index.htm The New York Stock Exchange is across the street and street security tends to be high (i.e., checkpoints to some areas exist). (c) If one continues to walk south on Broadway from Trinity Church, one will come across the big Bull in front of the old U.S. Custom House (which fans of Ghostbusters II will recognize); see: http://www.nysb.uscourts.gov/history/index.html Battery Park is just across the street to the southwest where one will find Castle Clinton and the ferry to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island and, further east, the Staten Island ferry which a free trip between Manhattan and Staten Island. For more info on Battery Park see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_Park and http://www.thebattery.org/ (d) At the WTC, the west side of the site is on West Street and across it is the World Financial Center (WFC) and Battery Park City which was built upon the excavuated earth from the WTC site. For info about the WFC, see: http://www.worldfinancialcenter.com/ For info on Battery Park City, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_Park_City The most interesting part of Battery Park City is the promenade along the Hudson River. If one walks south, it will eventually take one to Battery Park, passing the Museum of Jewish Heritage along the way; see: http://www.mjhnyc.org/museum_.htm There are are number of things that one can do in lower Manhattan. The WTC site is on the west side of lower Manhattan but on the east side of lower Manhattan is the South St Seaport; see: http://www.southstreetseaport.com/ Again, weather will affect what one can do or may want to do. Here is a link to some things/places to visit but this is better during warmer weather: http://blog.ratestogo.com/top-20-free-attractions-in-new-york-city/ In addition, there Washington Square Park (but it is undergoing renovation and half of it is fenced off), Greenwich Village, SoHo, Chinatown, the Cloisters, Yankee Stadium, etc.. There are many things to see and do but ultimately it is the interests of the person that will determine what to do. For information on using the subways and buses, see the MTA website: www.mta.info I hope that your son and his wife have a good time while in NYC. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
re: [tips] lazy American students.........maybe not quite that bad
On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:31:53 -0800, Edward Pollak wrote: I wish I could send TIPS some of the blog entries written by a young cousin of mine who was teaching English in China at some private schools for the children of fairly wealthy families. The poor work ethic, sense of entitlement, lack of respect for authority that she described (for the majority of her students) was appalling even by modern American standards. Of course she also describes some outstanding students but these were a decided minority. If you consider that only the cream of the Chinese crop get to come to the USA for study, the comparison made in the original article is not a fair one. I don't mean to defend the lack of work ethic in the bulk of our modern student body you can't compare what are likely elite Chinese students with run-of-the-mill American students. Another factor: the Chinese students are likely from the privileged classes and don't have to hold down part or full time jobs while studying here. Many of our students do. The issue of biased sampling in U.S. account of students should also be kept in mind. Consider the following article which talks about U.S. students who are likely to be elite as well though the point of the article is that trying to be elite may take a significant toll; see: http://ed.stanford.edu/suse/faculty/displayFacultyNews.php?tablename=notify1id=401 In NYC, the financial and social elite often reckon the trajectory of their children's educational and social life course at an early age. This is what make stories about not getting one's child into the right pre-school program so hilarious and so sad. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] The Happiest Place In the U.S....
is not New York State, in fact, NY appears to be the unhappiest place, ranking 51st among the 50 states and the District of Columbia. How do I know? Because research tells me so as well as the NY Times. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/nyregion/22nyc.html The NY Times article summarizes a research study by Oswald and Wu that appears in the journal Science. Not mentioned in the Times article is that the data was collected around 2002 if memory serves. Which kind of explains why Louisiana is ranked #1 in happiness. What was it that Milton said about ruling in hell versus serving in heaven? Unhappy Holidays Everyone! -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] lazy American students
I'm not sure but I think Chris fell out of the wrong side of the bed this morning. His comments below seem somewhat relevant to the content of the article that Beth provides a link to but without more information about the students the article writer is talking about, it is unclear whether Chris' criticism's apply to all American students of a certain race and class or to some fraction of them (the author of the article is unlikely to have such data as she self-identifies as a teacher of rhetoric and history and not a researcher). I think Chris' rant is somewhat misplaced. The general issue that he is referring to is that of American exceptionalism, a concept that is easy to recognize but difficult to pin down. For some background on this idea see the Wikipedia entry (standard disclaimers apply): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism The idea appears to be first developed by Alexis de Tocqueville in his Democracy in America and here's a website that provides a little more on how Tocqueville conceived it: http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/courses/ed253a/american-exceptionalism.htm American exceptionalism has been an idea that has been recently promoted by U.S. conservatives and downplayed by moderates and liberals. Consider the following comments by Dick Cheney about President Obama being weak on American exceptionalism: |I think most of us believe, and most presidents believe and talk |about, the truly exceptional nature of America--our history, |where we come from, our belief in our constitutional values |and principles, our advocacy for freedom and democracy, the |fact that we've provided it for millions of people all over the globe |and done so unselfishly. There's never been a nation like the |United States of America in world history. And yet, when you |have a president who goes around and bows to his host and |then proceeds to apologize profusely for the United States, |I find that deeply disturbing. That says to me this is a guy who |doesn't fully understand or share that view of American exceptionalism |that I think most of us believe in. http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/12/is_dick_cheney_living_in_a_pre-2008_world.php For other conservative viewpoints on American Exceptionalism, see: http://www.american.com/archive/2008/april-04-08/understanding-american-exceptionalism Now, whether or not U.S. citizens have a sense of American Exceptionalism and whether this is the basis for bad behavior among certain groups of students is an interesting empirical hypothesis. However, Kara Miller's article is an opinion piece and not an empirical study. How many problems could a student in research methods find in the assertions she makes about her American students? Perhaps she is a magnet for lazy American students or her courses or her school or...whatever. Miller is entitled to her opinions about her students as is Chris is entitled to his opinions about U.S. citizens. But opinions are still opinions. It is better to have opinions consistent with empirical facts but everyone is well aware that this not a requirement. Sometimes an opinion is just a rant. Happy Solstice, Y'all! -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu On Mon, 21 Dec 2009 09:14:21 -0800, Christopher D. Green wrote: Beth Benoit wrote: Wow. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/12/21/my_lazy_american_students/?p1=Well_MostPop_Emailed1 So, what does your wow mean, Beth? Does this strike you as surprising? Outrageous? Offensive? It seems pretty much common knowledge to me. (And despite what the article says, I wouldn't suggest that [white, anglo-scottish-irish, long-standing] Canadians are much better than American kids on this score.) And I think I know where it comes from too. US (North American?, Western?) culture is crammed full of the message that we are superior, we are special, and it is something that is essential to us, not the product of some particular effort that we have expended (though perhaps our ancestors did). One sees this message everywhere from politics, to religion, to entertainment, to educational practice (virtually no one fails, everyone must be retained and eventually graduated, the slightest quiver of anxiety is immediately declared a disability and accommodated). The message is: you are a success virtually in virtue of just being you (think the self-esteem movement). Little (but loyalty) is required of you. You were born into the greatest, richest, free-est, most Godly, and, when necessary, most powerful nation/culture/civilization that has ever graced the face of the earth. Anyone who says otherwise is just hateful, jealous, and anti-(insert your country's name here). Can you imagine any US politician getting much electoral traction by announcing We have become self-indulgent and have fallen behind many other countries in education and productivity. The only way to retrieve some portion of our former
re: [tips] Lazy American Students and Their Grades
Before we start engaging in Who's got the Biggest Grade Inflation Problem, perhaps it should be noted that grade inflation is a widespread phenomenon, why it even occurs in *GASP!* Canada! Certainly not definitive but one should take a look at the Wikipedia entry on grade inflation (standard disclaimers apply): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_inflation From the Wiki entry it seems that one solution to the problem is simply having the department/division/school/whoever has the authority to mandate that only a certain percentage of each grade can be given in a course. One can use a normal curve to justify such a scheme (but one will have problems with such a justification) or other criteria such as no more than 15% of a class can be 'A' . Ties on the borderline will simply have to cry about it. Some people will probably applaud this solution, some will say that it is worse than the problem it addresses. I guess it all has to do with how one thinks about the distribution of intelligence in our students, how many really deserve a certain grade, how many do workwe are satistfied with, etc. Personal Anecdote Department: back some time in 1990s I remember reading an article (popular magazine, not a journal) about grade inflation at, I believe, Stanford (though it may have been one of the Ivy League schools). Apparently students were receiving only As and Bs in courses. The reason for this appeared to be that student could drop a course without consequence up to the 12th or so week in the semester. So, students who saw that they were failing going in the final weeks could drop the course with their G.P.A. unaffected. I think that they changed the policy after it became public but my memory isn't so good on that point. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu On Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:18:13 -0800, Karl Wuensch wrote: At my university, the undergraduate catalog defines grades this way: A -- excellent B -- good C -- average D -- barely passed F -- failed I -- incomplete So, C is average, eh? To check this definition I downloaded all grades for undergraduate courses for the just completed semester. Here is the distribution of final grades: A -- 38% B -- 30% C -- 18% D -- 7% F -- 7% I-- 1% Mode = A, Mean = B, Median = B. I have proposed that the catalog be updated to read this way: A - Average B - Barely average C - Could have been average if the student had attended class, read the book, completed the assignments, etc. D - did worse than Dubya F - Failed, but if the student begs enough for post hoc extra credit, this can be changed. I - I am still trying to decide whether to give the student an A after e put so much effort into persuading me it is not e's that e did not get an A and that I would be responsible for ruining e's life if I gave any grade other than an A. From: Christopher D. Green [mailto:chri...@yorku.ca] Sent: Monday, December 21, 2009 12:16 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] lazy American students Nicely stated, Chris. --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
re: [tips] Lazy American Students and Their Grades
On Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:31:54 -0800, William Scott wrote: Make Palij wrote: The reason for this appeared to be that students could drop a course without consequence up to the 12th or so week in the semester. So, students who saw that they were failing going in the final weeks could drop the course with their G.P.A. unaffected. --- Please note that the above quote is from an ancedote that I was relaying and not a result from a research study. I even labelled this Personal Anecdote Department in order to make clear that one should be cautious about making the anecdote=data confusion. That being said, more comments below. If this were true, and was the reason for grade inflation at that institution, then we should have nothing to worry about. The students were still receiving accurate grades and credit for courses in which competent work had been completed. Or students could look for teachers that were easy graders or gave courses with lax standards. I'm sure that one can come up with all sorts of alternative reasons for why the grades of the students with the 12th week drop option would not be an accurate reflection of that student's performance unless: (1) there were uniform, valid, and reliable testing for the material in a course that provided scores that were comparable across instructors, departments, and time, and (2) one has a specific theory as to the type of knowledge that a person should have from a specific course and how the testing provides evidence of the existence of such knowledge and its extent. If the above conditions can be met, shouldn't we have national tests for each college course that would fairly evaluate all students taking a specific course (e.g., psychological statistics)? However, I doubt that the grade inflation disappeared after that loophole was closed. Because my imcomplete memory is irritating me, I've tried to find some corroboration for it. One source is a NY Times article from May 31, 1994 titled At Stanford, A Rebellion of Grades. If you have access to the Proquest newspaper database, you can find it there. Some points made by the article: (1) There is no grade of F at Stanford (2) A grade of C is fast becoming extinct (3) A student could drop a course on the day of the final exam with no consequences (4) The median grade for undergraduates in the previous year was A- Now I'm not sure but I do have a feeling the grade distribution might have changed after this point in time (the Wikipedia entry refers to Stanford but does not provide much information -- any Stanford grads out in Tipsland?). The point of the article was that the faculty was attempting to institute new grading policies. However, not all people were in support of such a move, as expressed in the following opinion by a former Stanford student: http://www.utwatch.org/archives/subtex/cleaver_issue4.html It sounds like a rationalization invented to explain the source of the inflation as something other than a reduction of standards. When I presented clear evidence of grade inflation to my institution, the response was students are better now than they were then, therefore deserving of higher grades. I had to point out that the SAT scores had declined somewhat over the time period involved. There is research on these points if one is interested, often by political conservatives as represented in an article by Thomas Reeves on the website of the National Association of Scholars; see: http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?Doc_Id=708 By the way, what was your suggested solution to grade inflation to your administration? Was it forcing grades to follow a particular distribution? What was the rationale for this? -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Don't Forget To Save That Date: Winter/Summer Solstice Time Is Here Again!
Actually, if you're using the Georgian calendar, the solstice falls on December 21 so you still have time to do any last minute solstice gift buying and supplies for your pagan feast. For the scientific bits, see: http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/december-solstice.html For some of the pagan bits, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_solstice Happy Inti Raymi, Y'all! Remember, party like it's 2011! ;-) -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
re: [tips] Another 150th.anniversary
On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:45:58 -0800, Michael Sylvester wrote: As the cross-cultural dude and British literature freak on Tips, I wish to note that it was 150 years ago that the classic A TALE OF TWO CITIES was published . *BZT* I'm so sorry but the answer to question of What book by Charles Dickens was published on December 19, 1843 is A Christmas Carol A Christmas Carol See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Christmas_Carol A Tale of Two Cities was published in 1859, first appearing in serialized form in Dicken's magazine All the Year Round starting April 30, 1859 and ending in November 25, 1859. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Tale_of_Two_Cities That's okay, to some people all of Dicken's works look alike. Thank you for playing. As a consolation prize departing contestants receive a copy of the home edition of the TiPS Game! I am a Dickens man. It seems that this work is beginning to represent sign of our times as our middle class struggles to stay afloat. Ever read Kruger Dunning (1999) in JPSP? -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Anybody See Any Snow?
On the east coast of the U.S. there is supposed to be this lollapalooza of a snow storm moving north which is supposed to hit NYC and leave 8+ inches of snow (*yawn*). So far, no flakes (outside of the usual ones that one encounters on the streets of NYC). But I hear that there is a little bit of snow now around Maryland, round a place called Frostburg. Is this true or another misrepresentation by the eastern liberal elite media establishment? By the way, anyone have a favorite Holidays song? I'm partial to Annie Lennox's version of Winter Wonderland. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
re: [tips] And it came to pass( HELP)
On Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:24:22 -0800, Michael Sylvester wrote: I am looking tor the link to a piece .I think it is titled I SHALL NOT PASS THIS WAY AGAIN and goes something like this: And it came to pass on the last dat of the semester,there came Do you this? See: http://faculty.randolphcollege.edu/fwebb/traditions/pass.html -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] more pseudoscience?
. They could probably save a lot of money by ending the attempt to make all of their employees happier and more effective. I hope to read this book during the Winter break. Maybe after all the other books and DVDs and CDs I plan to read/watch/listen to. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu Chris Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada Bourgeois, Dr. Martin wrote: Well, my administration is at it again. Just got this announcement, and on a quick search, I found no evidence that this therapy is empirically supported. Anyone know anything about reality therapy? Dr. Robert Wubbolding is well known in the mental health field and academic world as a Reality Therapy expert. If you are fond of another theory or technique this is still “a do not miss workshop.” Dr. Wubbolding presents a Reality Therapy Approach to helping clients and students get real. Dr. Wubbolding presents a lively, witty, fast moving practical interactive all–day workshop offering proven techniques and skills that will enhance professional practice. --- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] The Power of Prayer?
APS' This Week In Psychological Science provides a summary of recent online published articles (prior to paper publication) and though there are several interesting research studies, the one detailed below stood out for me. First, it appears to have as co-authors a couple of guys I knew back in grad school at Stony Brook (Oh! How they have wandered!). Second, it puts another spin on the role of prayer that doesn't required the operation of a supernatural agency (at least that's the way I read it). That is, engaging in one behavior may be related to other behaviors (e.g., engaging in prayer may be related to forgiveness and other behaviors). I haven't read the entire article so I don't really know what the explanation actually is. It also seems as though this is not an isolated article but part of a more or less systematic research program on religious behavior. Anyone familiar with it? -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu Motivating Change in Relationships Can Prayer Increase Forgiveness? Nathaniel M. Lambert1, Frank D. Fincham1, Tyler F. Stillman1, Steven M. Graham2 and Steven R.H. Beach3 Author Affiliations 1Florida State University 2New College of Florida 3University of Georgia Nathaniel M. Lambert, Family Institute, Sandels Building, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL Email: nlamb...@fsu.edu Abstract The objective of the current studies was to test whether praying for a relationship partner would increase willingness to forgive that partner. In Study 1 (N = 52), participants assigned to pray for their romantic partner reported greater willingness to forgive that partner than those who described their partner to an imagined parent. In Study 2 (N = 67), participants were assigned to pray for a friend, pray about any topic, or think positive thoughts about a friend every day for 4 weeks. Those who prayed for their friend reported greater forgiveness for their friend than did those in the other two conditions, even when we controlled for baseline forgiveness scores. Participants who prayed for their friend also increased in selfless concern during the 4 weeks, and this variable mediated the relationship between experimental condition and increased forgiveness. Together, these studies provide an enhanced understanding of the relationship benefits of praying for a partner and begin to identify potential mediators of the effect. --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Three Psychologists Walk Into A Bar or What To Do Instead of Academia
Tired of academia? Perhaps you can become a stand-up comic. Consider the following: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/science/15comic.html?_r=1hpw The Tipster of 2009 Award goes to the first person who can complete the joke Three Psychologists Walk Into a Bar.. Extra points for humor. You have heard of humor, right? ;-) -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Three Psychologists Walk Into A Bar or What To Do Instead of Academia
On Mon, 14 Dec 2009 17:42:12 -0800, michael sylvester wrote: Mike: Please note that the Tipster of the year award is copyrighted and is my domain.Any more onfringement could subject you to hard labor at the U,S-Canada-Russian front. I would never attempt to infringe upon your copyright for Tipster of the Year. That's why I said Tipster of 2009. Completely different thing. Getting back to the original topic of this post, consider the following starting lines: (1) Weber, Fechner, and Stevens walk into a bar (2) Noam Chomsky, B.F. Skinner, and George Miller walk into a bar... (3) Stanley Milgram, Phil Zimbardo, and Leo DiCara walk into a bar... (4) HM, KC, and Clive Waring walk into a bar and forget why they're there. (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_%28patient%29 ) (5) Raymond Cattell, Philippe Rushton, and Claude Steele walk into a bar The Tipser of 2009 award awaits! :-) -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Scientists At Work
The NY Times has an article on the work of conservationist in Nevada. It's amazing what things are being conserved. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/science/earth/15ranch.html?_r=1hpw Anyone for a TiPS get together at the new Conservation Center? ;-) -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Crazy Ambien Sex?
TiPS has been a Tiger Woods Free Zone (unless I've missed some posts) and I am loathe to infect with it with TW news but as I was going through the Sunday NY Daily News this morning a headline caught my eye: Ambien is aphrodisiac, swear randy bloggers NOTE: the online version of this story has a slightly different title: http://tinyurl.com/ydr95ed As an occasional user of Ambien I admit to having been surprised to read this (if the claim is true that one can engage in wild sex and not remember it then I may have even more things to be surprised about). A quick search of the web confirms that the claim was made on bloggers' websites relative to Woods; see: http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/12/skank_week_is_not_yet_over_the.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/xxfactor/archive/2009/12/07/tiger-woods-crazy-ambien-sex.aspx http://www.celebitchy.com/83467/tiger_woods_mistress_we_have_crazy_ambien_sex/ There are other bloggers who also report sexual side effects prior to the Woods disclosure; for example: http://ezinearticles.com/?Ambien-Side-Effects-May-Make-You-Think-Twice-Before-Using-Itid=430781 This article was submitted on January 25, 2007. Quoting it: |In the same vein as the above side effects of Ambien is that some |people become sexually uninhibited and display extreme sexual |behavior while on Ambien. Again, most do not remember acting |that way or that they engaged in sexual activity when they wake up |the next morning. While some may find this to be a side benefit |rather than a side effect it can be dangerous. Often the person |tends to not have inhibitions about WHO they have sex with. |One woman reported that several people who knew she was |taking Ambien used it as an opportunity to have sex with her when |she normally would not have done so with them. Now, a check of side effects shows that there are a variety of side effects including various activities where the person appears to be awake but has no memory for the activities; for example, see: http://www.webmd.com/drugs/drug-9690-Ambien+Oral.aspx?drugid=9690drugname=Ambien+Oral Although it seems possible to have sex while on Ambien it doesn't appear to function either as an aphrodisiac (that is, increase one's desire to have sex) or to engage in more extreme sex though these behaviors may not have been reported by the people who particiapted in the original studies validating Ambien as a sleep aid (perhaps they were embarassed to report such things or thought that they were unrelated to Ambien use). So, crazy Ambien sex: mass delusion/urban legend/self-fulfilling prophecy or unexpected side effect affecting a small proportion of people or whatever? -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
re: [tips] APA citation question
On Sun, 13 Dec 2009 15:05:14 -0800, Beth Benoit wrote: How does one cite an author in the reference section if he/she is royalty? I thought that some royal person might have written something for the American Psychologist but a search of PsycInfo turns up nothing. More below. I have a student who is writing a paper about Queen Noor, from a developmental standpoint. My student is using her autobiography (called *Leap of Faith)*, as a reference, and the author is listed in the book as Queen Noor. Her real name is Noor Al-Hussein (or, of course, Lisa Najeeb Halaby). I think you would get an argument about her real name being Lisa Najeeb Halaby. According to the Wikipedia entry on Queen Noor, when she converted to Islam she changed Lisa to Noor. I don't know about the Halaby part. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Noor (a reference for Leap of Faith is provided near the bottom of the webpage in what appears to be APA style, sort of). How to cite in the Reference section? Noor, Q. Noor, A. Al-Hussein, N. Halaby, L. N. (a.k.a. Noor, Q.) ??? None of these sounds correct, but Al-Hussein, N. seems the most valid. Yet she didn't cite herself that way in her book. Very strange... This is probably something that one of the copy editors at the www.apastyle.org site will have to answer but I can give you examples of what software that tries to apply APA style to references thinks it might be. At NYU the CSA Illumina (by Proquest) interface is used and though one can access PsycInfo directly, the interface allows searchs across different databases. Searching for Queen Noor anywhere in the text turns up a few hits and the QuickBib software will try to format reference according to APA 6th edition. One should be caution in accepting results from software but it produced the following references: Hussein, q. (1984). Peace efforts: Principles versus practices. (address of her majesty queen noor al hussein, the hashemite kingdom of jordan.) given at the conference on U.S.-arab relations: The current political and social dimensions ... chicago ... 1984 Retrieved from www.csa.com r, Q. o. J. (2004). Leap of faith: Memoirs of an unexpected life / queen noor. paperback ed. London: Phoenix. Retrieved from www.csa.com The r, Q. o. J. above probably refers to the Royal Queen, of Jordan. Noor, Q. o. J. (2000). Foreword: The face of daunting challenges. In J. W. Wright Jr, L. Drake eds (Eds.), Economic and political impediments to middle east peace: Critical questions and alternative scenarios (pp. xix-xxiii). Foreword by Queen Noor of Jordan. International Political Economy Series. New York: St. Martin's Press; London: Macmillan Press. Retrieved from www.csa.com Finally, an article in the Journal Violence Against Women cite a statement by Queen Noor on the website of one of the organizations she is involved in and used the following format: Queen Noor, H.M. (1999). Women press releases [Online}. Available: Http://www.accesme.com/QNoorjo/main/honorcrm.htm So, take your pick. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
re: [tips] TIPSTERS OF THE YEAR 2009
On Sat, 12 Dec 2009 10:22:36 -0800, Mysterious Michael wrote a second time: Chris: Those tipsters were selected because of their ability to manage sense as well as nonsense with academic grace. And because they don't repeat themselves. And because they don't repeat themselves. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Next Year's Textbook?
The NY Times has an article on new devices are coming on market next year which may have the capabilities necessary for traditional textbook (i.e., being able to show text and color figures/animation in seperate screens). See: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/business/06novel.html?_r=1themc=th One device is being tested by a professor in the law school of the Catholic University of America and replaces 13 textbooks. I wonder which psychology text will make the transition first. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] When Metaphors Fail
The NY Times has an opinion piece by a high school student who is doing the college tour thing and comments on the heavy handed usage of the colleges he has visited to compare themselves to things in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter's Hogwarts. Now, from an adult perspective, this may seem like a brilliant PR move since it can be assumed that a large number of potential students will be familiar with the world of Harry Potter and they would enjoy going to college that is in some way similar to Hogwarts. Of course, the adults have it wrong. Read Lauren Edelson's article to see why: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/opinion/06edelson.html -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
re: [tips] Psych Testing clips
On Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:46:37 -0800, Rick Froman wrote: What are your favorite psych testing-related movie clips? How about: (1) When Jack Nicholson/R.P. McMurphy is being evaluated by three psychiatrists at the beginning of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I believe that they use the Proverbs Test which McMurphy manages to finesse. (2) Bill Murray/Peter Venkman doing psychic testing at the beginning of Ghostbusters (3) It has been a while since I've seen Charly (based on the short story/novel Flowers for Algernon) but I think that they have some testing scenes in that film. see: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062794/ The imdb.com website has rumors that Will Smith may star in a re-make. (4) Malcom McDowell/Alex's testing at the end of Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (No thanks, ma'am, no time for the old in and out, I'm just here to read the meter!) (5) In Forrest Gump, Forrest's mother (Sally Field) is given Forrest's IQ testing results and she emphasizes that she is willing to do anything to get Forrest into a mainstream class. (6) My memory fails me but isn't there at least one testing scence in Christopher Nolan's Memento? Some additional resources to consider: (A) Danny Wedding has a couple of books on movies in psychology. A search with his name on either books.google.com and/or www.amazon.com which turn these up. (B) The Pennsylvania State University (PSU) originated something once called the Psychological Cinema Register which is now a part of a larger collection of films that it makes available. See: http://mediasales.psu.edu/about.html Searching for psychological testing turns up a couple of hits. Other movies and video might be of interest in other courses. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
re: [tips] Psych Testing clips
On Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:46:37 -0800, Rick Froman wrote: I was considering having a mini-film festival as the semester ends in my Psychological Testing class. I don't mean long films but short clips from films that could be entertaining but also allow for some re-capitulation of the principles discussed in the semester. Some of my favorites are the testing of Leon from Blade Runner (you want to talk about my mother?) and the psychiatrist from Miracle on 34th St. I also once saw a short on one of the movie channels (probably TCM) called something like Psychometrician. It was one of those one reel movies that described a particular occupation. This one was particularly intriguing because it showed the psychometrician at work giving some hapless examinee a stress test that seemed to involve, if my memory is correct, shooting off a starter pistol behind the man's head. I guess someone thought that would be an occupation someone might be interested in. I have searched IMDb and the web and have never been able to find it. That would be an interesting one to record if I ever see it again. I believe that you're referring to a short film made by the director George Sidney (Viva Las Vegas!). He is listed on www.imdb.com but there is nothing in his entry that is titled psychometrician; see: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0796645/ The closest candidate might be What's Your IQ? #2. Even so, a search of books.google.com provides a hit that is Sidney's biography by Eric Monder which has a snippet about a psychometrician firing a shotgun behind a person's head; see: http://books.google.com/books?lr=num=100id=1n5ZMAAJdq=mgm+short+psychometrician+moviesq=psychometrician+#search_anchor or http://tinyurl.com/y99jf49 The book is available at Amazon and Barnes Noble (BN have the cheaper price) but perhaps you can get it through interlibrary loan. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Doubt Is Their Product
Has anyone used David Michael's Doubt is Their Product in research methods or critical thinking courses? Portions of the book is available on books.google.com. It seems to provide a good overview of how the tobacco companies developed an effective strategy for dealing with scientific evidence (i.e., raising doubts about the validity of scientific results, etc.) and appears to be relevant to current problems, such as the climate change debate. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Too Fat To Graduate
Imagine having to have a BMI below the obese threshold in order to be able to graduate from college. Imagine no more; see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/04/lincoln-fat-graduate-obesity I wonder when this will be made a condition of granting tenure. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Too Fat To Graduate
On Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:12:06 -0800, William Scott wrote: Wouldn't there be some problems with the Americans with Disabilities Act? There is a possibility that the ADA might be relevant in cases of extreme/morbid obesity but not for other cases of being overweight. A couple of short articles on the www.findlaw.com website are relevant. First, the general issue of whether obesity is a disability: http://library.findlaw.com/2000/Feb/1/128328.html And a situation comparabile to that in Lincoln college but involving Ohio state employees: http://library.findlaw.com/1998/Feb/1/131833.html The issue may be moot, however, since the students entered the college's program with acceptance of the reduced weight requirement, one could argue that they are contractually obligated to fulfill this requirement and failure to do so is the basis for the college not to fulfill its part of the contract, that is, granting a degree. I believe a number of private colleges may require students to sign statements that they will not engage in certain behaviors (I believe Brighan Young University does this in order to make sure that students and faculty adhere to the general principles of the Mormon religion). In the obesity case, students may have signed a similar statement. If so, there is an explicit contract. However, I am not a lawyer and I am sure that someone is likely to contest this in court. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu Mike Palij m...@nyu.edu 12/04/09 4:55 PM Imagine having to have a BMI below the obese threshold in order to be able to graduate from college. Imagine no more; see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/04/lincoln-fat-graduate-obesity I wonder when this will be made a condition of granting tenure. --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] The Loneliness Virus
Is loneliness contagious like a virus based illness? Popular media accounts of a study by John Cacioppo et al to appear in the December issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (oddly, when I checked this morning, the issue was not up on the APA website) seem to suggest this might be so. Using social network analysis, it appears that a lonely person transmits loneliness to friends and friends of friends. For one account, here is the story by the Washingston Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/30/AR2009113003846_pf.html There are critics of the research, some of whom are cited in the Washington Post article, but we'll have to wait for the article to go into general release before reviewing it ourselves. It should be noted that ealier this year Cacioppo and William Patrick published a book Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Cognition. This book is briefly reviewed in the Psychology Today blog The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin (I assume those who are familiar with the PT blogs might be able to assess the general value of her insights and commentary); see: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-happiness-project/200911/lonely-and-not-happy Ms. Rubins one of happiness myths that Cacioppo and Patrick debunk is that Happy people are annoying and stupid. I really am eager to see the research in support of this. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
re: [tips] Peer review
On Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:02:16 -0800, Stephen Black wrote: Ever had this problem? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VRBWLpYCPYfeature=player_embedded or http://tinyurl.com/yl5omvk (flagged from _Chronicle of Higher Ed_) I once had a research boss like that but they wasn't as well-behaved as the guy in the video. Seriously. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] APA 6th Edition Pub Manual Corrections: Amazon Style
Okay, here's my story. When initially announced, I had requested a copy of the 6th edition publication manual from APA which I had anticipated making a required text for my experimental psych lab course. I also bought two copies from Amazon, one as a back-up copy and one to give to my teaching assistant (who does the first pass of grading on lab reports). Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway), I was feeling pretty burned when all of the errors in the first printing came out. But here's an interesting development. Although I have not heard anything from APA about replacing the copy they sent me, I got an email today from Amazon regarding the two copies I bought from them. I wish APA had taken a similar approach to all of the people who had gotten copies from them. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu Email from Amazon follows: Hello from Amazon.com. We're writing to let you know that the first printing of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Sixth Edition, which you purchased, contained a number of errors. Books containing the errors are labeled Sixth Edition, First Printing on the copyright page opposite the Table of Contents. The second printing of this book (you will see “Second Printing: August 2009” on the copyright page) has been corrected. You can find answers to frequently asked questions about the errors and the corrections on the American Psychological Association’s website (http://apastyle.apa.org/manual/corrections-faqs.aspx) The American Psychological Association is offering three options for customers who have purchased the first printing and has asked us to let you know about these options: Option 1: Download an indexed document listing the corrections. The American Psychological Association has compiled the corrections and posted them in a PDF format (http://supp.apa.org/style/pubman-reprint-corrections-for-2e.pdf). Option 2: Contact the American Psychological Association for a printed version of the documents cut to easily fit inside your copy. Please contact the APA Service Center via e-mail at or...@apa.org to request your printed insert or call them at 800-374-2721 between 9:00 am and 6:00 pm (EST) Monday-Friday to request your printed insert. Option 3: Utilize the return and exchange program established by the American Psychological Association to get a corrected copy at no cost to you. Please contact the APA Service Center at 800-374-2721 between 9:00 am and 6:00 pm (EST) Monday–Friday. In order to receive the corrected version directly from APA, you must return your copy to APA no later than December 22, 2009 (postmarked by December 22, 2009). We're sorry for the inconvenience. Thank you for shopping at Amazon.com. We look forward to seeing you again soon. --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Testing Mozart's Genius Among Other Things
Did you know that this year is the 350th anniversary of the British Royal Society? In celebration of the event the Society is opening a website that allows one to examine the documents, letters, and other displays/info of this scientific organization. See: http://trailblazing.royalsociety.org/ The mass media has provided several accounts of what the website includes, such as an account by the naturalist Daines Barrington who tested the assertion that Wolfgang Mozart at age 8 was a musical genius (apparently Mozart passed the test) and the sobering realization that Benjamin Franklin's kite-flying during an electrical storm provided a profound insight to science but also disproved the notion that lightning was supernatural in nature. For one account, see the UK Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/nov/30/royal-society-online-library-anniversary For another, see Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE5AT02420091130 -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
re: [tips] Psychotherapy Can Boost Happiness More Than Money: Study - Yahoo! News
On Sat, 28 Nov 2009 14:59:20 -0800, Christopher D. Green wrote: Class, please discuss the following findings (including possible conflicts of interest). :-) http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/psychotherapycanboosthappinessmorethanmoneystudy I think that it might be more worthwhile to read the original article than to rely upon the popular news story. The journal in which the research article appears is published by Cambridge University Press and the article's doi is: doi:10.1017/S1744133109990326 If your institution has a subscription to the journal, you should be able to use the doi to access the article directly. If there is no sub, one can go to the CUP website and purchase the article (US$30); see: http://cjo-live.cup.cam.ac.uk/action/displayIssue;jsessionid=2BF65E5FFD94714C8EAE83A72E22A910.tomcat1?jid=HEPvolumeId=-1issueId=-1 or http://tinyurl.com/yljyl7m As for the senior author of the article, Christopher Boyce, some info about his research is available on the following website: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/study/csde/gsp/eportfolio/directory/pg/live/psrfbb/ Note that he has an in press article on a similar artilce in Psychological Science. One wonders what he will do when he hits puberty! ;-) -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
re: [tips] gladwell.com: Pinker on What the Dog Saw.
On Fri, 27 Nov 2009 11:30:41 -0800, wrote: Gladwell's reply to Pinker's nasty review. Pinker's saying it isn't so, doesn't make it not so. I would not have characterized Pinker's review as nasty but that is neither here nor there: such a statement depends upon an interpretation consistent with certain values. If one thinks that Gladwell does do something that is valuable (or at the least enjoyable which is a state that one might consider to be valuable) then one might consider critical reviews of what that person does or say as unfair or nasty. However, my idea of nasty is more in line with, say, how Glenn Beck characterizes his opponents. When I was younger and saw Noam Chomsky and some of his colleagues responding to others in person in public forums, I would have considered what they did as nasty (e.g., one of Chomsky's colleague was a discussant at a psychology of language held at IBM's Yorktown campus and one of the presenters was Walter Kintsch who spoke in accented but understandable English; the discussant said I couldn't understand what Kintsch said because of his accent so I'm not going to discuss his presentation -- now that's nasty). Pointing out that Gladwell makes a number of errors as well as questionable interpretations is not nasty though a person might not like that to happen to them (I know how that makes one feel). In any event, one can reach their own conclusions about the matter by reading Pinker's review: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/books/review/Pinker-t.html?_r=1sq=steven%20pinkerst=csescp=3pagewanted=all or http://tinyurl.com/yflgd5l http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2009/11/pinker-on-what-the-dog-saw.html I would like to provide some additional weblinks: (1) It seems like Gladwell apparently knew that a person was referring to eignenvalues instead of Igon values but it is not clear when he knew it. See: http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2009/11/letting-igons-be-igons.html As one of the commenters point out, the published article has eigenvalue (did a fact checker catch it?) while the article on Gladwell's website and the chapter in his book What the Dog Saw had Igon value. So what did Gladwell know and when did he know it. By the way, I found the following comment hilarious: |No, it's pronounced Fronkensteen. (2) The link above that Chris provide to Gladwell's response is only part of the story. Gladwell response and Pinker response to it will be published in the November NY Times book review but it available online right now; see: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/books/review/Letters-t-LETSGOTOTHET_LETTERS.html (3) The editors at the NY Times have a few things to say about the Pinker and Gladwell situation as well as providing some additional comments; see: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/books/review/Upfront-t.html?scp=4sq=steven%20pinkerst=cse (4) I haven't checked his website to see if Gladwell had responded to Stephen Colbert's nasty treatment of him on his show. One can watch the segment of his show at the Huffington Post website; the comments below the video may also be of interest: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/18/stephen-colbert-questions_n_361798.html It is also of interest that Colbert busted Gladwell for being a brand, a charge that has been made of Pinker and others here on TiPS (I can't seem to remember who that was ;-). There's also a transcript of Colbert's show for that date but it's somewhat mangled and doesn't keep always identify who is speaking; see: http://www.livedash.com/transcript/the_colbert_report/4794/COMEDYP/Wednesday_November_18_2009/109113/ -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
re: [tips] The 51st Great Myth?
On Thu, 26 Nov 2009 18:02:22 -0800, Michael Britt wrote: Lately I've been reading Scott Lillienfeld's great book on myths and this has perhaps primed me into thinking a lot about myths. So as I lie on the couch after today's turkey dinner thinking that the L- tryptophan was making me sleepy, I had a faint memory of hearing that there was perhaps nothing to this belief? Does anyone know if that's so? A simple google search for typophan myth turns up thousands of hits. One source that one can rely upon is www.snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/turkey.asp other sources are: http://www.livescience.com/health/071120-bad-turkey-sleep.html http://www.openscience.org/blog/?p=124 and one can find site through the google search that satisfies one's own criteria for credible evidence. The key ideas are: (1) the amount of tryptophan ingested in the turkey meal is comparable to the amount of tryptophan ingested when eating other sources such as beef. The amount is not sufficient to induce sleepiness. When tryptophan was being marketed for inducing sleep, it was in a purified form and at a high doses. (2) the Thanksgiving meal often has other components, notably carbohydrates and alcohol which also induce sleepiness but people usually overlook these sources. Even if one doesn't drink alcohol with a meal, I think most people would be shocked by the amount of carbohydrates provided in the typical Thanksgiving meal. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Remember Those Free Copies of the On the Origin of the Species Being Given Out by Fundamentalists?
On Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:00:32 -0800, Stephen Black wrote: Ah, a chance to simultaneously tweak _both_ Mike Palij and Allen Esterson cannot be denied (even if I will soon be made to pay for it). YOU'RE GOING DOWN STEPHEN BLACK ;-) Their shocking illiteracy astounds me. Hey, I'm an American. My illiteracy should not be shocking. :-) First Mike: I have no familiarity with Kirk Cameron, an actor, who was on the show and who authored the introduction as well as handing out copies of the free Darwin on Perdue's campus. Perdue = Purdue I must have been thinking of tasty chicken products when I wrote that. :-) There is a Wikipedia entry on Kirk Cameron which provides information about Cameron's background and more detail on his on campus religious activities (however, the Wikipedia entry claims that only Ray Comfort wrote the intro while the original blog entry identifies Cameron as co-author). Quoting the relevant passage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirk_Cameron |In November 2009 Cameron and others distributed free copies |of an altered version of Darwin's On the Origin of Species on |college campus in the United States.[42][43] The book consisted |of Darwin's text with selected parts removed and with an added |introduction by Ray Comfort reiterating common creationist |assertions about Darwin and evolution. The book has been criticized |by scientists and Darwin biographers for containing misinformation |about Darwin and repeating long-discredited creationist arguments, |for employing logical fallacies, and for omitting key chapters of the |book.[44][45][46] Comfort later said that the four chapters were |chosen at random to be omitted in order to make the book small |enough to be affordable as a giveaway, with the absent chapters |available for download, but that the missing chapters were included |in the second edition, which had a smaller text size that made printing |the entire book as a giveaway affordable. The second edition still |lacks Darwin's preface and glossary of terms.[47] The National |Center for Science Education arranged a campaign at colleges |across the U.S. to distribute an analysis of the Comfort introduction |and a banana bookmark.[48] An aside to Scott Lilienfeld: another quote from the Wikipedia entry: |Cameron and Comfort participated in a televised debate with |atheists Brian Sapient and Kelly O'Conner of the Rational Response |Squad, at Calvary Baptist Church, in Manhattan, on May 5, 2007. |It was moderated by ABC's Martin Bashir and parts of it were aired |on Nightline. At issue was the existence of God, which Comfort |stated he could prove scientifically, without relying on faith or the |Bible.[40] The audience was composed of both theists and atheists. |Points of discussion included atheism and evolutionary theory.[41] Perhaps Scott could debate Comfort at Emory on the existence of God. Best two out of three falls. :-) See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBEP5c-SUEQ I'm sure it would attract a lot of old GCW fans. ;-) -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Where Were You On This Date 46 Years Ago?
the reactions were to the event. Matthew Weiner, the series creator, producer, and sometime writer/director, explains his thinking about the episode and why he decided to incorporate it into the storyline (by comparison, consider how fleeting the references were to 9/11 in many TV series that take place in NYC; I think that only Denis Leary's Rescue Me has made 9/11 a critical component of its storyline). See: http://www.tvguide.com/news/madmen-weiner-kennedy-1011734.aspx For those old enough to remember the Kennedy assasination, I recommend viewing the Mad Men episode (which may be available if your cable system has AMC on demand). One surprise that I had was the realization that several TV channels had covered the assasination but that I had only watched the CBS coverage which featured Walter Cronkite (indeed, many presentations of the Kennedy assasination provide Cronkite's reporting of Kennedy's death as the report of the event; for unknown reasons as a child we always watched the CBS news). As time goes on, I realize that there is less that I can remember about that event which is okay. I now appreciate its significance and know that my memory for it has been altered by watching subsequent programs and learning about the events of that day. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] From Academic to Billionaire: The Story of SAS
James H. Goodnight, co-founder of the company that produced the statistical software company Statistical Analysis System (SAS, though today SAS is just a brand name) and its current chief executive, started out at the argicultural statistics department at North Carolina State University, has gone from academic to one of the few Ph.D.s who are currently billionaires. The NY Times has an article that focuses on the business aspects of SAS, Mr. Goodnight, the company's development (though I think that the history is very sketchy), and its coming battle in the business intelligence market with IBM (which has acquired SPSS; IBM will continue to use the SPSS brand, not PASW) and other companies. It might be of some interest to folks, especially those that use SAS or SPSS in their teaching, because it provides some insight in where these companies are going and who they think will be their most important customers in the future (hint: it's not academia). See: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/business/22sas.html?_r=1th=emc=thpagewanted=all Looks like a lot of people will be developing skills in R programming. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Remember Those Free Copies of the On the Origin of the Species Being Given Out by Fundamentalists?
At least one source points out that some of these copies have a 50 page introduction which attacks the volume; see: http://www.dailytech.com/AntiEvolution+Actor+Modifies+Darwins+Work+With+Questionable+Intro/article16892.htm or http://tinyurl.com/ycfu3mp I admit that there are big holes in my pop culture knowledge and that I never watched the sitcom Growing Pains, thus, I have no familiarity with Kirk Cameron, an actor, who was on the show and who authored the introduction as well as handing out copies of the free Darwin on Perdue's campus. I assume this is just another child star whose life has gone seriously wrong. He also promotes the notion that Hitler's ideas were based on Darwin's theory, a position advocated by Ben Stein (political analyst/eye drop shill) and others. In other news, if you had a first edition of the Darwin's On the Origin of Species (published in 1859), where would you keep it? (a) in a glass case, opened to the title page (b) closed in an archival grade envelope to protect against light, humidity, and insects (c) on the book shelf with the rest of the Darwinia (d) in the toilet For the answer to where one person kept it, see: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h-AA11NDInkwPqU7N0Er8sKs0MHA or http://tinyurl.com/yff26en -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Scientists Behaving Badly?
A curious article in the NY Times concerning hacked email messages among climate scientists. The email server that was hacked is located at the University of East Anglia (a British university) and the emails apparently reveal discussion among a number of American and British climate researchers on what seems to be a closed mailing list (in contrast, TiPS is publicly available on the mail archive site). See: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/science/earth/21climate.html?_r=1themc=th The main point of the article can be summarized with the phrase scientists behaving badly as the climate researchers badmouth global warming deniers/skeptics and appear to engage in some potentially questionable activities. The hacker(s) apparently released the email to show the bad faith which proponents of global warming have and the rudeness/contempt they have for their opponents. What initially caught my attention to this article is a Quote of the Day in the NY Times news summary email: |- QUOTATION OF THE DAY - | |Science doesn't work because we're all nice. Newton may have |been an ass, but the theory of gravity still works. |- GAVIN A. SCHMIDT, a NASA climatologist whose e-mail |messages were hacked by global warming skeptics, contending the |stolen data proves little except that scientists are human. Another statement at the end of the article also was noteworthy: |Spencer R. Weart, a physicist and historian who is charting the |course of research on global warming, said the hacked material |would serve as “great material for historians.” This made me wonder about how discussions on other email lists, such as TiPS, might be reviewed by historians and sociologists of science and teaching. Does one ever think that their posts to TiPS or elsewhere might become someone else's data? -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
RE: [tips] Dropkicking Malcolm Gladwell: Steven Pinker Style
On Sun, 15 Nov 2009 15:52:13 -0800, Allen Esterson wrote: In relation to this article: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/12/gladwell-200912 Mike Palij wrote [snip] Perhaps what I like least about Gladwell's writing is when he comes off like a snarky intellectual version of Larry King, AS HE DOES IN THIS THROWAWAY ARTICLE. (emphasis added) And Christopher Green wrote: [snip] more to the point of THIS ADMITTEDLY TRITE GLADWELL PIECE… (emphasis added) And Mike again: It may come as a surprise to some, however, that GLADWELL IS DOING A SHTICK, but this is, of course, his most adorable/annoying characteristic. :-) (emphasis added) Hey, folks. The article was a parody of Gladwell *written by Craig Brown*. Really? The piece by Brown appears on page 206 of the December issue of Vanity Fair. At the end of the one page article it says: --As Told to Craig Brown The same statement is made under the headlines of the Paltrow article on the VF website (though not for Gladwell's piece, instead under the headline there is the statement Malcolm Gladwell explains Christmas to Craig Brown). Now, if Brown interviews Paltrow and Gladwell, I expect that Brown is the author of the printed interview. However, this is not the sense of written you imply, rather, you seem to be saying that he pretends to interview people and uses the made-up interview to parody/sartirize/mock the interviewee. Perhaps you reach this conclusion because you are familiar with Brown's other writing where he has used this gimmick (since he is a British writer and not that well known on this side of the pond). But I must ask the following question: Given what Vanity Fair has presented on Brown's Maccolm Gladwell article, what either in the magazine or the webpage on which it appears supports your contention that it is fiction? I concede that Brown may have written a parody of Gladwell but on the basis of what available evidence (that is the article in VF and on the website) would lead one to this conclusion? I recognize that writers may write about things in a satirical style but one often has to know both the writer and the person/thing being satirized to realize that it is satire. For example, being able to follow Michael Musto in the Village Voice often requires extra knowledge to distinguish the phoney statements he might make from the real statements. Does reading Craig Brown require such knowledge? Does one have to be in on the joke to know that it is a joke? Or is everything he writes a joke? Craig Brown would be amazed that it led to a serious exchange on the meaning of Christmas! http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/comedy/craigbrown.shtml I would say that if he was amazed, then he would be amazed at the statement among theater folks that Satire is what closes on Saturday night (attributed to George S. Kaufman who apparently was a runner-up in a Barton Fink look alike contest, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Kaufman ) -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
RE: [tips] Dropkicking Malcolm Gladwell: Steven Pinker Style
On Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:52:48 -0800, Allen Esterson wrote: Malcolm Gladwell discusses Christmas with Craig Brown. http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/12/gladwell-200912 Perhaps what I like least about Gladwell's writing is when he comes off like a snarky intellectual version of Larry King, as he does in this throwaway article. A greater investment of time but with a much greater payoff would be Stephen Nissenbaum's The Battle for Christmas which provides an interesting history of the holiday from the setting of the date of Christman in 400 AD, its manifestation as misrule and rejection by some Christian sects such as the Puritains (Christmas was briefly legally banned in Massachusetts), and its reinvention by a number of New Yorkers into a child centered holiday (with borrowing from other cultures, especially German) that we continue to celebrate today. Nissenbaum is a professor of history which might be interpreted as implying that perhaps he has some idea of what he is talking about though, clearly, simply being a professor (as in Pinker's case) might imply to some the opposite. Nissenbaum's book is available in snippet view on books.google.com, see: http://books.google.com/books?id=-q6BMAAJdq=christmas+history+nissenbaumq=contents#search_anchor It also available in book form on Amazon (sadly, there is no version for Kindle gnawers or Kindle nibblers): http://www.amazon.com/Battle-Christmas-Stephen-Nissenbaum/dp/0679740384/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8s=booksqid=1258290808sr=1-4 or http://tinyurl.com/yzsa2vz -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Dropkicking Malclom Gladwell: Steven Pinker Style
On Sat, 14 Nov 2009 11:48:34 -0800, Joan Warmbold wrote: I look forward to reviewing this article but if it is any thing like his preface to Harris's book, The Nurture Assumption, it will contain a significant number of disputable contentions. Until very recently, I knew little about Pinker except that he's a renown evolutionary psychologist. [snip] I must admit to being amused when people refer to Pinker as an evolutionary psychologist. My own familiarity with Pinker's research began in the early 1980s when he was doing research on visual cognition is Stephen Kosslyn (Pinker did his dissertation under Kosslyn). I didn't find his psycholignuistic work very interesting and have problems with his nativist position. For one overview of his career, here is a summary he apparently provided to the Linguist List:, see: http://linguistlist.org/studentportal/linguists/pinker.cfm He also has a entry on Wikipedia, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Pinker I haven't followed Pinker's writing in the past decade or so but I'll take it on faith when people say he has become an evolutionary psychologist. I also admit to some amusement about some Canadian psychologists' harsh treatment of Pinker and wonder if it's because he's a Quebecois. ;-) -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Dropkicking Malclom Gladwell: Steven Pinker Style
In this Sunday's NY Times Book Review, Steven Pinker reviews Malcolm Gladwell's new book What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures which is available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/books/review/Pinker-t.html?_r=1nl=booksemc=booksupdateema1pagewanted=all or http://tinyurl.com/ygpb9yd There is something of interest to both fans and player haters. Just be careful and don't step on the Igon values. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
re: [tips] developmental question on color perception
On Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:20:41 -0800, Riki Koenig wrote: Please excuse the cross-posting A question arose today about when babies can perceive color. Is it an innate ability? The opposing view is that they can only see black and white at birth and color requires neurological development and maturation. I'm not sure that the distinction is so black white (pardon the expression) but one reference relevant to this is the following: Experience in Early Infancy Is Indispensable for Color Perception Current Biology, 14(14), July 2004, 1267-1271. Yoichi Sugita, Neuroscience Research Institute, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology and Crest, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Teragu 1497-1, Tsukuba, 300-4201, Japan Received 2 March 2004; revised 1 June 2004; accepted 1 June 2004. Published: July 27, 2004. Available online 26 July 2004. Abstract Early visual experience is indispensable to shape the maturation of cortical circuits during development [1]. Monocular deprivation in infancy, for instance, leads to an irreversible reduction of visually driven activity in the visual cortex through the deprived eye and a loss of binocular depth perception [2], [3] and [4]. It was tested whether or not early experience is also necessary for color perception. Infant monkeys were reared for nearly a year in a separate room where the illumination came from only monochromatic lights. After extensive training, they were able to perform color matching. But, their judgment of color similarity was quite different from that of normal animals. Furthermore, they had severe deficits in color constancy; their color vision was very much wavelength dominated, so they could not compensate for the changes in wavelength composition. These results indicate that early visual experience is also indispensable for normal color perception. Copyright © 2004 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL_udi=B6VRT-4CY7JRM-W_user=10_rdoc=1_fmt=_orig=search_sort=d_docanchor=view=c_searchStrId=1087176576_rerunOrigin=scholar.google_acct=C50221_version=1_urlVersion=0_userid=10md5=f17062fd800a1bd5e4f6ae51ab2f677f -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
RE: [tips] Ghost in the brain
On Sun, 01 Nov 2009 09:07:44 -0800, Helweg-Larsen, Marie wrote: I see paraidolia (-: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia Actually, apophenia might be the more appropriate term, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia I believe this is the basis for data mining. ;-) -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu -Original Message- From: Michael Smith [mailto:tipsl...@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, November 01, 2009 10:04 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Ghost in the brain As this forms a makeshift projective test, your responses indicate that you are all deeply disturbed. lol --Mike On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 8:47 AM, tay...@sandiego.edu wrote: OMG I'm so glad someone else saw something else. I thought it was me. I looked at that and said to myself, Self, I don't see ghost there at all. In fact, I'm with Michael! I also *immediately* thought, Mary Poppins! And then I thought, Oh No! What does this say about me, if I see Mary Poppins instead of ghost. Whew. I am so relieved today. Annette Original message Date: Sun, 1 Nov 2009 06:53:24 -0500 From: Britt, Michael michael.br...@thepsychfiles.com Subject: Re: [tips] Ghost in the brain To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) tips@acsun.frostburg.edu Allan, I'm afraid you're way off there. That's not an arrow sticking out of the back of the image. It is obviously an umbrella and this is clearly not a ghost but rather it is Mary Poppins. Really! I don't see how anyone can see anything different! ;) On Nov 1, 2009, at 3:15 AM, Allen Esterson wrote: Neurologist Joshua Klein: To me it looked like a ghost. That's exactly what I thought it was. At first I was thinking, Is this the angel of death? http://tinyurl.com/yjcoxmm I can discern a shadow image of a crouching dog to the left of the ghost. There is an arrow apparently sticking out of the middle of its back, but no doubt that's an accidental artefact of the imaging process. Allen E. - From:sbl...@ubishops.ca Subject: Ghost in the brain Date:Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:43:28 -0400 Another illustration of our infinite capacity to find order in disorder: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2009/10/ghost_in_the_brain_an _appariti.html or http://tinyurl.com/yjcoxmm (about that for you alone. The (thwarted) intent was to not clutter up the list, so of course that's what I did. Fortunately, there was nothing juicy there, and I resolved not to send yet another e-mail explaining it, but it can piggy-back here. Reminds me to be more careful). --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
re: [tips] Seligman and attribution
On Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:28:11 -0700, Philippe Gervaix wrote: I was quite interested in the discussion about Seligman, as I am starting on the chapter on Motivation these days. I am teaching at a Lycée in Switzerland, (which would roughly be equivalent to last year high school and first year college). I introduce them to Seligman's experiments and it really speaks to them. But concerning expanatory style, I prefer to introduce the related concepts along with the cognitive dimensions of motivation. And I thought the concepts of internality, stability and globality were introduced by Wiener: I would suggest that you take a look at Kelley Michela's (1980) review of attribution theory and research (ref below) which more or less puts all of the relevant constructs and more into historical and theoretical framework at that point in time, starting with Heider, Kelley, Weiner, Abramson, etc. Kelley, H. H., Michela, J. L. (1980). Attribution theory and research. Annual Review of Psychology, 31, 457-501. doi:10.1146/annurev.ps.31.020180.002325 And to clarify a point or two: calling these attributional styles Seligman's explanatory style seems to me to be wrong and confuses the history of the development of these ideas. A number of people at the Univeristy of Pennsylvania influenced each other during the 1970-1980s, starting with Aaron Beck's work on cognitive factors in depression, Lyn Abramson cognitive re-formulation of the learned helplessness theory of depression which would go on to become the hoplessness theory of depression, and Seligman's taking the cognitive reformulation of depression in the direction of positive psychology. I believe it was Abramson who promoted the use of social cognitive constructs in theorizing about the nature of depression, as represented by her early work with Seligman and later work with her students and colleagues. I would recommend her edited volume on this, especially chapters 1 and 2 (chap 2 provides some additional history and well as the research basis for the reformulated theory): Abramson, L. Y. (1988). Social cognition and clinical psychology: A synthesis. New York: Guilford Press. Apparently it is out of print but one should be able to locate a copy through Worldcat, e.g., http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/14003274referer=brief_results (copies do not appear to be available in Switzerland but are available in Germany, the Netherlands, and other European countries; for libraries in any location, put a zip code, state, or country name in the Enter your location slot). A reivew of the text is provided in PsycCritiques, which available through the APA's electronic resources. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Aaron Beck in the American Scholar
Threre is an article by Daniel Smith in the autumn 2009 issue of the American Scholar that people may find of interest. It is about Aaron Beck and how he and his approach to psychotherapy can serve as a model to other psychiatrists and clinical psychologists. See: http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-doctor-is-in/ -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Dealing with the Problem of Childhood Witches
In a strange mixture of fringe religious beliefs, superstition, and competition among pastors/exorcists to maintain or expand market share of the larger faithful community, child witches appears to be a problem made to order. Once one accepts the concept of an evil witch typically possessed by a demon, then the solution is to remove the demon by any means necessary. See the following news story to see where and why this has become such a problem: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/17/world/main5392572.shtml I don't even know where to begin with this situation. Clearly, there are aspects of lack of critical thinking and noncritical acceptance of false authority combined with capitalism's opportunitic strategies to help one succeed in a desperate enviroment but the exploitation of children in this process is heart breaking. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] The British Continuing Obsession
On Sun, 18 Oct 2009 01:16:52 -0700, Allen Esterson wrote: On the subject of the forthcoming UK Channel 4 programme on IQ Mike Palij wrote: Of course, as unpleasant as all this is, one can say the Daily Mail's handling of the topic is quite moderate, whereas the Telegraph forthrightly pronounces: Scientists claim black people less intelligent than whites in Channel 4 show http://tinyurl.com/ygbdz67 And if scientists make that claim, it has to be true, eh? Who would guess from Mike's representation of the Telegraph piece that the very first sentence of the article reads: Anti-racist groups said the broadcaster was giving legitimacy to discredited 'pseudo science' which was 'irresponsible'. And that considerably more space is given to opponents of the thesis than proponents. Actually, the first sentence below the headline (or the lede) is: |Campaigners have criticised Channel 4 over plans to screen a |controversial documentary in which scientists claim ethnic minorities |are less intelligent than their white counterparts. But Allen is right, after one is past the headline and the lede, a serious reader will have gone through the news article, unbiased by the biasing emphasis provide in the headline and lede, and focus on the (few) reasonable points made in the article. By the way, headlines and ledes have become important entry points for readers of mass and social media, as pointed on in the following blog on writing ledes: http://thefuturebuzz.com/2009/01/22/the-art-of-the-lede/ Quoting the blog's quote of Peter Kim: |…people don’t read every word anymore. They skim – and |most people don’t even do that.” The same behavior applies to |social media, especially where Twitter has users trained on 140 |character sound bites. Which raises the question of when is the twitter version of Myers' texts coming out? Mike writes: guess who should be in power and controlling the other groups?. Taking Mike's presumption as given, it must be North-East Asians from parts of China, Japan and North and South Korea. That is, if one buys into the nonsense of Richard Lynn and others that IQ scores can be interpreted this way. But one is drawn to this conclusion if one follows Murray Herrnstein thesis that the IQ determines one's position in society, that IQ is related to merit and in a meritocracy, the brightest will lead the others in society because they are in the position to make the smartest deicisions for society. Of course, today we realize that this is a naive view and that it is the ability to acquire great power through wealth and/or popular influence will bring people into leadership positions in society, not their intelligence. For example, NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a very smart guy but I doubt that he is the smartest guy in NYC (or even in Manhattan) but he is the richest man living in NYC. From his position of power and wealth he has been able to overturn term limits for the mayor's position (limited to 2 consecutive terms) and is currently running for a third term. We are reminded of this in NYC because Bloomberg is spending millions of his own money to continually remind us through radio and TV commercials as well as increadible amounts of junk snail mail that (a) highlight what a great benovelent mayor he has been (though he has not been able to make the subways run on time) and presenting his opponent (the current NYC comptroller) as an incompetent boob who was responsible for the all of the failures of NYC school system when he was its president. It doesn't hurt that Bloomberg also has a great media empirse ranging from a cable TV channel to radio stations to websites. I believe that his company recently bought the magazine Business Week. I think he could buy the New York Times if he wanted to but he probably thinks its a money losing proposition. In related news, John Liu is running for the comptroller's job, the first Asian-American in NYC history running for city-wide governmental office and he is likely to win because he is on the Democratic ticket. Is this the thin edge of the Asian takeover of NYC and other major metropolitan areas as predicted by Richard Lynn and other IQ proponents? We'll see. :-) Mike heads the thread The British Continuing Obsession. So, Mike, please provide evidence that (a) this is an obsession in the Britain Let's see, let me provide some evidence for this assertion but I am sure those who have studied Brtiish eugenics more seriously than I will be able to provide more details (as well as correcting misstatements): (1) Sir Francis Galton was the first to employ the term eugenics in the service of explaining differences among groups of humans. Quoting the Eugenics entry on Wikipedia (standard disclaimeers apply): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics |Galton first used the word eugenic in his 1883 Inquiries into Human |Faculty and Its Development,[46] a book in which he meant to touch |on various topics more or less
Re: [tips] The British Continuing Obsession
On Sun, 18 Oct 2009 11:45:39 -0700, Allen Esterson wrote: Mike Palij raises a number of points, [snip] I had prepared a long version of a response and then decided against it. As for Allen's lack of understanding about the British Continuing Obsession, I will let Phillippe Rushton answer for me: See: http://www.charlesdarwinresearch.org/Psychology%20is%20about%20people%20special%20review%201998.pdf as well as http://www.charlesdarwinresearch.org/ From Galton to Spearman to Burt to Eysenck to Jensen to Lynn and Rushton; an eduring obsession. I hope the Channel 4 program is everything you hope it to be. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu P.S. For Arthur Jensen's view see: http://books.google.com/books?id=UWQswu_E1t4Cpg=PA89lpg=PA89dq=%22intelligence%22+eysenck+galtonsource=blots=GGeXNfKvOZsig=Dp5VzWaj0c8GZirX_bNz5YxBUYwhl=enei=YZzbSqTQDoib8AbdjIW3BQsa=Xoi=book_resultct=resultresnum=5ved=0CB0Q6AEwBA#v=onepageq=%22intelligence%22%20eysenck%20galtonf=false or http://tinyurl.com/yfhusq3 --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] The British Continuing Obsession
The obsession mentioned in the subject line is with the concern of distinguishing groups of people on the basis of their intelligence or IQ scores. This gets translated into assertions that certain ethnic/racial groups systematically differ and with certain groups naturally having higher IQ while other groups having naturally lower IQs (guess who should be in power and controlling the other groups?). I raise this point because such issues are serious and need critical, thoughtful analysis with some degree of intellectual humility. Of course, the best venue for doing this is on TV, as the Brits are about to do on their Channel 4; see: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1220343/Channel-4-controversy-documentary-claims-race-linked-intelligence.html or http://tinyurl.com/yju7ay4 Did you know the following facts: |It will include claims that the most intelligent people in the |world are North-East Asians from parts of China, Japan |and North and South Korea. and |The Australian Aborigines will be said to have the lowest average IQ. The sources for these facts? Not clear but the following provides a clue: |He interviews Richard Lynn, emeritus professor at the University |of Ulster, who has amassed data which he believes shows there |is a global league table of intelligence between the races. | |He is seen claiming that 'the top rate' are North-East Asians who |have an average IQ of 105, followed by North and Central |Europeans with a score of 100. | |He claims American Indians have an IQ of 87, and that sub-Saharan |Africans 'pretty well on either side of the equator' have IQs of |around 70. He says Aborigines have the lowest scores of around 65. | |He says: 'When sub-Saharan Africans come and live - and even |several generations of them come to live - in European or North A |merican countries, their IQs increase because of course their |environment is improved, their schooling is better and their nutrition |is better. | |'But their IQs don't rise up to the same level as Europeans.' Well, I guess that explains why some people don't want White and Black people to marry. World famous Canadian Psychologist J. Phillippe Rushton also is showcased though his comments about racial differences in penis size do not seem to raised (NOTE: is Rushton compensating for something with this concern? See his Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Philippe_Rushton Quoting: |Rolling Stone magazine (1994) quotes Rushton: It's a trade off, |more brains or more penis. You can't have everything.) Quoting the Daily Mail article: |British-born J Philippe Rushton, a psychology professor at the |University of Western Ontario in Canada, is also interviewed. | |Professor Rushton claims the differences between black and white |and East Asian brains is due to general intelligence. | |He says black people have smaller-sized brains than white people |and are not as intelligent as white people. James Watson does not put in an appearance but is present in spirit; quoting from the article: |The 79-year-old American geneticist - who does not appear in |the show - said he was 'inherently gloomy about the prospect of |Africa' because 'all our social policies are based on the fact that |their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says |not really'. | |He added that he hoped that everyone was equal, but then alleged |that 'people who have to deal with black employees find this not true'. Of course, as unpleasant as all this is, one can say the Daily Mail's handling of the topic is quite moderate, whereas the Telegraph forthrightly pronounces: |Scientists claim black people less intelligent than whites in Channel 4 show http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/6327171/Scientists-claim-black-people-less-intelligent-than-whites-in-Channel-4-show.html or http://tinyurl.com/ygbdz67 And if scientists make that claim, it has to be true, eh? -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu P.S. As a tonic for this I suggest a review of the Monty Python sketch Upper Class Twit of the Year; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Class_Twit_of_the_Year and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSqkdcT25ss --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] When Medicine and Faith Clash
Some of you may be aware that there is a major battle going on in the U.S. Congress over health insurance, who should it cover, what it should cover, and how to keep the insurance companies wealthy while bleeding the federal government dry (that last bit is just a joke). The process of making law has been likened to making suasage (i.e., the result might be tasty but you really don't want to know what they put in it), with amendments added to bills to either correct definiciencies or remove existing protections (or just to be a pain in the ass of someone). Consider the following blog entry in the Washington Post titled Health Funding for Science, Not Faith, see: http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/herb_silverman/2009/09/health_funding_for_evidence_not_faith.html?hpid=talkbox1 or http://tinyurl.com/y8d3y6w The article lists amendments proposed for the Baucus Health Care Bill (which recently passed in the finance committe with the support of one Republican Olympia Snow). Consider: |First is the bipartisan amendment sponsored by Senators |Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and John Kerry (D-Mass.). Under |current law, religious people who object to medical care |may have some spiritual care covered by Medicare and |Medicaid, including reimbursement for payments that Christian |Scientists make to members of the Church who pray for them |when they are ill. Numerous children have died while receiving |this spiritual care, when modern science could easily have |saved their lives. And |We also oppose an amendment by Senator Mike Enzi |(R-Wyoming), which would allow doctors to deny patients |any care or information that violates the doctor's religious |beliefs. This violation of medical ethics is labeled with the |Orwellian term Conscience Clause. This amendment |cruelly places the religious beliefs of practitioners such as |pharmacists above the medical needs of patients. And |Lastly, we object to an amendment by Senator Orrin |Hatch (R-Utah), requesting that funding for Title V |abstinence-only-until-marriage programs be restored. |Congress has already wasted $1.5 billion on such programs |since 1996, despite the fact that there is no evidence that |abstinence-only programs have been effective in stopping |or even delaying teen sex. Given these amendments to only one of the bills (I believe that there are two in the U.S. senate and four in the house of representatives) I suggest that it might be worthwhile for people, especially U.S. citizens, to be aware of what is in the ultimate health care bill. Unless, of course, you don't mind paying for someone else religious beliefs with your health plan. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
re: [tips] When Medicine and Faith Clash
On Sat, 17 Oct 2009 07:39:50 -0700, Gerald Peterson wrote: And this is relevant to my teaching of???Political Behavior Analysis maybe? If the relevance to your teaching of psychology is not immediately obvious, let me suggest these points that you might want to think about: (1) When teaching research methods we may distinguish among different types of explanations (I often use Bordens Abbott, currently in 7th edition, which make the distinctions I'm highlighting): (a) Scientific explanations, which a research methods course whould spend significant time explaining (see chapter 1 in BA). (b) Commonsense explanation, which are based on a common set of beliefs, knowledge, history, culture and societal practices which people rely upon in order to behave in predictable ways and maintain social cohesion (the problem is that commonsense explanations are not subject to the same evaluation as scientific explanations and false beliefs, false knowledge, etc., may be maintained though false, e.g., complex social behavior is instrintive). (c) Belief-based explanation, which are based on knowledge that is accessible only throught certain special means or special authority. Belief in an inerrant Bible and that it provides all one needs to know about how to live in the world is an example. Religious beliefs are rarely evalauted in the same way that scientific explanations are and, indeed, it is not at all clear one can apply the same criteria to both (e.g., scientific explanations and theories are tentative and subject to disproof by new observations; religious beliefs are not supposed to be tentative or disprovable by observation because they frequently require an act of faith that transcends mere rationality and empiricism). Decisions based on belief-based systems, whether on the Bible or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, might seem reasonable within the belief community but may seem to be absurd to people with different beliefs (e.g., abstinence only sex education program should be supported regardless of empirical evidence against their effectiveness -- it is an expression of deeply held beliefs that transcend mere empiricist concerns). (2) Some Tipsters have expressed being sick and tired of politics running our lives but seem to fail to understand that is not really politics but religious beliefs that fuel the drive to (a) reduce the influence of science in teaching and popular culture and (b) the promotion of a particular religious dogma as a substitute for science. There has been the lament of late on Tips on how clinical psychologists appear to be lacking in scientific orientation and questions of how to make clinical psychologists at least as scientific as medical doctors. However, why should we bother when medical science gets trumped by religious belief? Should a healthcare reform bill be concerned with the promotion of evidence-based procedures, with programs that have been empirically demonstrated to work? If so, why is an amendment being provided to support prayer and spiritual care? Why an amendment to re-fund abstinence only sex Ed when there is no support for the effectiveness of such a program? If you ask your students these questions, what is their answer? That religious beliefs take precedence over scientific beliefs and our laws should reflect this? If this is their answer, I put it to you that you and other teachers of psychology have not done their job in teaching critical thinking and an appreciation of the power of science. (3) If you gave the amendments listed below to your class and asked them to use Rory Coker's guidelines for distinguishing between science and psuedoscience, what would your students say was the basis for the amendments: science or pseudoscience? For Coker's guidelines see: https://webspace.utexas.edu/cokerwr/www/index.html/distinguish.htm On second thought, why don't you go over Coker's points and explain whether the amendments are based on science or pseudoscience? And after that, perhaps you can explain which is the better basis for public policy and law: scientific knowledge or psuedoscientific knowledge? -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu - Original Message - From: Mike Palij m...@nyu.edu To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) tips@acsun.frostburg.edu Cc: Mike Palij m...@nyu.edu Sent: Saturday, October 17, 2009 10:03:51 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: [tips] When Medicine and Faith Clash Some of you may be aware that there is a major battle going on in the U.S. Congress over health insurance, who should it cover, what it should cover, and how to keep the insurance companies wealthy while bleeding the federal government dry (that last bit is just a joke). The process of making law has been likened to making suasage (i.e., the result might be tasty but you really don't want to know what they put in it), with amendments added to bills to either correct definiciencies or remove existing protections
[tips] No Interracial Marriages Performed: Protect The Children
A curious (if not unbelievable) story was making the rounds today as a White female and a Black male were refused a marriage license by a local justice of the peace in Louisiana. One source is the AP story on news.yahoo.com, see: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091015/ap_on_re_us/us_interracial_rebuff Quoting from the article: |A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue |a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern |for any children the couple might have. Keith Bardwell, |justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his |experience that most interracial marriages do not last long. | |I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that |way, Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. |I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, |I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like |everyone else. | |Bardwell said he asks everyone who calls about marriage if |they are a mixed race couple. If they are, he does not marry |them, he said. And from the San Francisco Chronicle, quoting: |What was the reason Judge Bardwell gave for his mindless actions? |I do it to protect the children, he reportedly said. The kids are |innocent and I worry about their futures. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/abraham/detail??blogid=95entry_id=49771 Oddly enough, Bardwell's refusal to issue the license/perform the marriage ceremony appears to be legal in Louisiana even though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that interracial marriages are legal in its Loving v. Virgina decision; see: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=USvol=388invol=1 Is this a teachable moment? -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
RE:[tips] An outsider's view of authorship
the following: (A) Papers with up to 3-4 papers, assume that the authorship is based on the amount of contribution of authors (grant writing researchers will only write papers with such few authors usually as summary or review papers, or opinion/theoretical statements). (B) Papers with more than 4 authors, assume that the first author is the project director (if not known to be the PI) who was given the responsibility to write up the research, the PI is listed last, and the little people fall between these two. The PubMed heuristic breaksdown when the research reported is not big science, that is, big science assumes one has assembled a large team to handle all of the aspects of a complex research project and all of these people will be paid to make a contribution. If one doesn't have a grant to fund a large staff, then the additonal authors may be people that the author/researcher was able to manage to provide some free service in exchange for a co-authorship. The PsycInfo heuristic would be more appropriate here but within the psychiatric/medical research community, the PubMed heuristic may be inapprorpiately applied. In summary, yes, let's state the obvious: knowing more about the actual research situation will allow one to better understand why the author sequence is what it is. However, if you are looking at a reference in PsycInfo or PubMed, you are unlikely to have this knowledge unless you know the researcher involved. Tenure and promotions committee may also find themselves in such situations. I suspect that psychology departments will use the PsycInfo heuristic in evaluating a psychogist's publications even for team-based research. I suspect that academic psychiatry departments will use the PubMed heuristic (i.e., first author is junior to the last author who is senior and supervising; everyone else listed as co-author presumably did a competent if not better job). Last authorships are viewed with skepticism in many academic quarters because, as you note, they can mean a number of different things depending on the situation, tradition in the lab, etc. That is, if someone is a last author on a paper, it's often hard to decipher what it means unless one has a better handle on the lab tradition, implicit authorship model, and so on. BestScott I guess one could set up a research program to study the different ways that authorships are sequenced and what position in sequence means. Then again, maybe one would also want to do research on how and why such consideration are important to researchers and tenure and promotion committees as well as to others. Ultimately it comes down to assigning merit but, really, how hard do most people really want to work on figuring out what the appropriate level of merit to assign? Couldn't they just follow the heuristic First Authorship is Best? -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
RE: [tips] An outsider's view of authorship
in authorship is that it represents decreasing contribution to the manuscript/research. In a team approach, often with a large number of people making contributions, then one needs a more complex set of rules for interpreting what did the first author do, what did the last author do, and what does the sequence of intermediate co-authors tell us about their contributions. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
RE: [tips] Help! point biserial
On Mon, 12 Oct 2009 02:45:28 -0700, Martin Bourgeois wrote: Nothing hard to understand about it; you dummy code a dichotomous variable and correlate it with a continuous one. On test items, you can dummy code a question as right/wrong and correlate it with test scores to see if people who get it right tend to do better on the test. To add to what Martin has written: (1) The point-biserial coefficient is the Pearson r calculated on a truly dichotomous variable (e.g., an item is right or wrong, gender/sex coded 0=female, 1=male, illness status, 0=not ill, 1=ill, life status, 0=dead, 1=alive, etc.) and an interval or ratio scale continuous variable (e.g., total score on a test, height, weight, number of years of smoking, degree of depression, etc.) The specific equation for the point-biserial is simplify hand calculation, simplifications that arise from dealing with dichotomies in form of zero and one. The Wikipedia entry provides additional background as well as the point-biserial's relationship to tests which appear similar but are not based on the Pearson r (e.g., the biserial coefficient and the rank-biserial); see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point-biserial_correlation_coefficient (2) The point-biserial coefficient is now often covered in introductory statistics textbooks. For example, Gravetter Wallnau include it and present it as a way of obtaining an effect size measure from the two-sample t-test. One version of the formula is the following: point biserial r**2 = t**2/(t**2 + df-TOTAL) where **2 means raised to the power of 2. Taking square roots of both sides provides the point-biserial r. I like Glass Hopkins (3rd ed) coverage of correlations and suggest it for additional background: Gene V. Glass and Kenneth D. Hopkins (1995). Statistical Methods in Education and Psychology (3rd edition ed.). Allyn Bacon. ISBN 0205142125 This book is available on books.google.com but only in a snippet view (I believe that it continues to be a popular book that is used in a variety of undergraduate statistics courses); see: http://books.google.com/books?lr=num=100id=SFmdMAAJdq=%22Glass+%26+Hopkins%22q=point-biserial#search_anchor or http://tinyurl.com/yg2ftct -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu On Monday, October 12, 2009 4:45 AM, Michael S wrote: I never did understand the point-biserial statistic.I came across it at Mizzou when I was in charge of grading lots of scantrons. It had something to do with test items but I never figured out why. --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] I Don't Like Mondays: Introducing the Facebook Global Happiness Index
An article in the NY Times provides coverage of some research (apparently dissertation research at that) of theFacbebook Global Happiness Index (FGHI) which analyzes the content of Facebook entries to identify the degree of happiness/unhappiness on particular days. For example, did you know that people confess on their Facebook pages greater happiness on days like Thanksgiving (I assume the U.S. version) and Christmas (again, the U.S. version) while confessing greater unhappiness when a celebrity like Michael Jackson or Heath Ledger dies. Mondays aren't so hot either but the Boomtown Rats told us that years ago. The article is available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/technology/internet/12link.html?themc=th To quote the article: |Mr. Kramer hardly seemed giddy in a telephone interview on |Thursday — he seemed determined, precise, ambitious, even |harried, since he is working to finish his doctoral dissertation |in social psychology at the University of Oregon. | |But he did seem optimistic. The Facebook happiness index, he said, |could be the first step in reorienting the nation’s sense of self-worth. | |“We have tracked the economic health of the nation for a long time,” |he said. “The reason we track those things is that the government is |full of economists, not psychologists.” | |“If we know money doesn’t buy happiness,” he asked, “why are we |optimizing for money?” Concerning his last statement, Adam D.I. Kramer, A.B.D., makes the typical rookie mistake of thinking that people acquire great wealth in order to buy happiness. People acquire great wealth for a variety of reasons including to have great power over one's life, other people's lives, a community, a city, a state, a nation, and the world. Moreover, when viewed as a game, the processing of acquiring wealth, whether through building a business, trading stocks and other securities, dealing in real estate, or running a huge Ponzi/Maddoff schme, has its own pleasures in the very acts leading to winning huge amounts of money (the same pleasures that sports players have when they unambiguously spank their opponents especially in very public venues; see the third game of the American League Division Series between the Boston Red Sox and the Los Angeles Angels -- Angels fans were probably screaming suck it! at their TVs while Jonathan Papelbon was wondering whether he should commit seppuku in the dugout of Fenway park or in the clubhouse because of his shattering defeat). Perhaps it's time for people to re-watch the movie Wall Street to be reminded why people go after great wealth. I will be good background for when Wall Street 2 is released. The TV series Mad Men also provides useful material to meditate on with respect to the acquisition of wealth and power, especially in the current storyline involving Conrad Hilton of the hotel chain and infamous offspring. Connie just doesn't want to be the best hotelier in the world, he want to bring American optimism and vision to the rest of the world even if they don't like it because that is what people with great wealth and power can do. Especially if they think they are on a mission from God (please, no Blues Brothers references). Anyway, any guesses on how many more dissertations in psychology there will be based on Facebook or Twitter or whatever is the latest social networking technology? -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] The Effect of Different PsycInfo Interfaces Reference Construction
Folks may be aware that PsycInfo comes with different front ends which I assume differ in capabilities and costs. Two interfaces that I have access to are: (a) CSA Illumina and (b) Ebscohost. The look and feel of both interfaces are different and some of the functions that appear to be similar do not produce the same results. For example, because my last name has an unusual spelling, it should be a unique term to search for. If I search for articles where palij appears anywhere in the text, I should come up with the same number of hits regardless of the interface *IF* the functions are the same. In CSA, entering palij (no quotes) and choosing the search type Anywhere, there are 350 hits. In Ebscohost, entering palij (no quotes) and choosing search type TX All Text, there are only 39 hits (a side issue is that the two do not always agree on the number of citations of an article in the database which in turn are often systematically lower than the number of citations provided by ISI Web of Science). This raises some questions about why there are these differences when presumably the two interfaces should be accessing the same database (or do they?). Has anyone seen any research on this point? I just stumbled on the above while trying to answer a more important question: in APA 6th edition what is the format of a reference for an article without a DOI that was located online? On page 199 of the 6th ed APA manual, it says: |If there is no DOI assigned and the reference was retrieved online, |give the URL of the journal home page. My first question was, what does this mean and my second question was how do different interfaces deal with this problem? Both CSA and Ebscohost provide the capability of producing APA formatted references (CSA allows one to produce refs in either 5th edition or 6th edition while Ebscohost provides only one APA option which appears to be the 6th edition) but they will provide different looking references if there is no DOI provided (there are some other differences that one might notice). Consider: From CSA: Andía, J. F., Deren, S., Friedman, S. R., Winick, C., Kang, S., Palij, M., Robles, R. R., Colón, H. M., Oliver-Velez, D., Finlinson, A. (2003). Towards an HIV role theory: Drug-related peer beliefs and role strain indicators as predictors of injection risk behaviors among puerto rican injection drug users in new york and puerto rico. Journal of Drug Issues, 33(4), 963-982. Retrieved from www.csa.com From Ebscohost: Andía, J., Deren, S., Friedman, S., Winick, C., Kang, S., Palij, M., et al. (2003). Towards an HIV role theory: Drug-related peer beliefs and role strain indicators as predictors of injection risk behaviors among Puerto Rican injection drug users in New York and Puerto Rico. Journal of Drug Issues, 33(4), 963-982. http://search.ebscohost.com.proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu Focusing on the text provided at the end of the reference, it is clear that the particular interface is being referenced and not the URL of the journal homepage as specified in the APA 6th ed. manual. Perhaps the following notes need to be kept in mind: (1) Though the bibliographic formatting associated with the interface to PsycInfo are useful tools, one will still have to carefully examine the reference that is produced. Note that there are 10 authors on the article and CSA provides all 10 while Ebscohost provides the names for 6 (and eliminates some initials as well). The final responsibility for an accurate format of a reference is ultimately the author's, that is, if the author can figure out what it is currently. (2) I wonder about the requirement for providing the URL for a journal's webpage if no DOI is provided (as required in APA 6th ed). Clearly, the interfaces do not provide this info, instead they provide a URL to themselves. Since both interfaces appear to be following APA 6th ed, is this correct practice or does the actual URL of journal's webpage have to be provided? Why do I have the feeling that people may just delete the URL/retrieved from info altogether? I can see the value of providing a DOI but I don't see the value of providing an URL if it is absent, especially if one gets references from different college libraries. Besides, the two URLs provided at the end of the references above require one to have access to PsycInfo at those institutions, either as a student or faculty or some other affiliation. People unaffiliated with the institutions will not be able to access them, so what is the point? Again, I wonder if anyone has reviewed the different interfaces that are currently in use for accessing PsycInfo, how do they differ especially in providing info that is consistent with APA 6th ed. style. Any references on these points would be appreciated. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] On chick
On Sun, 11 Oct 2009 09:19:12 -0700, Robin Abrahams wrote: I have no objection to movies marketed to women being referred to as chick flicks, as long as movies marketed to men are similarly referred to as dick flicks. [snip] Careful what you wish for: From the Urban Dictionary: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=dick%20flick (1) dick flick June 2, 2007 Urban Word of the Day The testosterone-driven opposite of a chick flick. Generally contains lots of car chases, explosions, and boobs. (2) dick flick Function: noun Etymology: West Coast slang; opposite of chick flick; 1985 Dick-flick 1: A movie consisting of mostly ethno-male elements, action, saving a woman, revenge for a dead family, etc. The movie usually has back story in which the protagonist is told to be highly specialized, elite, commando, a seer with muscles, he-man, special forces, etc. 2: Any medium (literature, film, ) that is overtly masculine. A Charles Bukowski poem with drunks wooing hookers. 3.) Using the penis as a slingshot, post-ejaculation. 4.) A homosexual movie. There was no way that John’s date was going to watch a dick flick with him. (3) Dick Flick A movie such as 300 or Reservoir Dogs which is full of gratuitous violence, gore and nudity, mostly geared towards men. It's the opposite of a Chick Flick. Woman: Eww...this movie is such a Dick Flick! And because Judd Apatow has been so busy churning out guy oriented flicks (providing life to the term bromance), see the following titled Judd Apatow's Dick Flicks: http://thepassionatemoviegoer.blogspot.com/2008/04/judd-apatows-dick-flicks.html By the way, I am not taking any sides in argument, just providing some relevant information. I've got enough enemies. :-) -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] On chick
that this approach has worked out too well especially when Richard Pryor decided to cut down on the use of N-word in his performances. So, what was the intent of the speaker? In the case of chick on Tips, I do not know (then again, given who used it, I am often at a loss to understand what the point is). But one may also ask why does one take offense? If the offended person doesn't make clear why the offense has occurred, what can be learned to prevent offense in the future? Then again, given that this matter had passed, perhaps it would have been better to keep this old horse buried instead of digging it up and beating it again. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re:[tips] Comic Book, er, Graphic Novel for Math/Logic Nerds
- Original Message - On Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:15:39 -0400, Stephen Black wrote: I am glad that you were not impulsive and took your time in replying to my post. I am sure you took the time to work on addressing the points I made about 12 days ago. On 28 Sep 2009 at 9:20, Mike Palij wrote: There is an interesting book review in the NY Times which is titled Algorithm and Blues. The book it reviews is a comic book or, as the cool kids might call it, graphic novel snip Can psychologists expect similar treatment in the sequential art form? The answer is yes, but subject to the qualification that the individual so memorialized is actually a psychologist, which some would question. Inevitably, it's a comic book about Freud. The book is: Introducing Freud: A graphic guide to the father of psychoanalysis (2007) by Richard Appignanesi and Oscar Zarate You can check it out using Amazon.com's look inside feature. A few points: (1) It is a stretch to call Freud a psychologist, especially as we understand the term today. If one were to do so, one would probably have to include other psychoanalysts, such as Jung, in which case you forgot to suggest this book which is available on Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/yjkfsef (2) There is a big difference between a graphic guide which provides images as in a story book and a comic book/graphic novel. I don't know how familiar you are with the distinction but if you have not read many comic books/graphic novels and are not familiar with the concept of sequential art, I would suggest the folloing book by comic book great Will Eisner (most famous for the Spirit character and his role in the business of the comics from the 1940s onward): http://tinyurl.com/ylm8alt (There is page on Amazon devoted to books by Eisner, see: http://www.amazon.com/Will-Eisner/e/B000APEOIE/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1 and Eisner wrote a graphic novel explaining the plot to promote the fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion against the Jews: http://www.amazon.com/Plot-Secret-Story-Protocols-Elders/dp/0393328600/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_8 ) The crtieria you seem to be using to define a graphic novel would seem to include things like The Cartoon Guide to Statistics; see http://tinyurl.com/ygwx9yl or The Magna Guide to Statistics; see: http://www.amazon.com/Manga-Guide-Statistics-Shin-Takahashi/dp/1593271891/ref=pd_cp_b_3 Neither of which would really satisfy a fanboy's definition of graphic novel. To make the difference clearer, compare the book you suggested to a comic book version of Nicholas Meyer's The 7 Percent Solution which features both Freud and Sherlock Holmes (who has a huge cocaine jones); see http://tinyurl.com/ygwpbha Unfortunately, The 7 Percent Solution was never made into a comic book/graphic novel but it was made into a movie which may give you an idea of what a graphic novel might have looked like (well, maybe the magna version but I haven't examined its contents while I own a copy of Gopnik's cartoon guide to stats).. So, if you take a look at the books Watchmen, Sin City, V for Vendetta, The Dark Knight and others (last I checked, Barnes Noble had a section devoted to graphic novels; I assume other bookseller may have the same), you will get a better appreciation of the art form. I strongly recommend Watchmen but that's only because I'm a long time fan. (3) If we were to allow psychoanalysts/psychiatrists in comics books to represent psychology, then a better claim is made by EC comics. For background on EC comics, see the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entertaining_Comics EC comics was an innovative comic book company which produced a number of very interesting comics (both topically and visually; a number of Ray Bradbury stories were made into comics) and produced such comics as Tales from the Crypt, Mad, Weird Science and Weird Fantasy among others. However, Fredric Wertham's campaign against violence and horror in comics and the subsequent U.S. congressional hearings on juvenile delinquincy, forced many comic book publishers to police themselves with the creation of the Comics Code Authority which would limit what could be shown in comic books. For EC comics, this meant that they had to drop most of their existing titles and to produce new titles. Although innovative, these new titles did poorly in sales. Among these new comics was one with the curious title Psychoanalysis. A description of this limited run (only 4 issues) series plus the cover of the first issue is provided at: http://www.politedissent.com/archives/855 The artist Jack Kamen provided many covers to EC titles including Psychoanalysis and a sample of his work, including issue #3 of Psychoanalysis (with Comics Code Authority stamp!) is provided here: http://www.sci.fi/~karielk/kamehome.htm In an attempt to stay in business, EC started to publish magazines (even turning Mad from comic format to magazine format) with lurid titles. One
Re:[tips] Comic Book, er, Graphic Novel for Math/Logic Nerds
On Sat, 10 Oct 2009 08:37:06 -0700, William Scott wrote: Surely everyone remembers the educational comic books regarding applied behavior analysis in the early 1970's. see: http://www.fortunecity.com/tatooine/niven/142/profiles/pro34.html Holy Crap!!! I did not know that and now I feel bad about knowing about it. That's some pretty embarassing stuff. This stuff makes Wonder Warthog look like Shakespeare! See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonder_Wart-Hog and http://www.nmia.com/~vrbass/wart-hog/ And thanks to the University of Texas for supporting such fine literature. For the long-term influence of the Hog of Steel, see another page on the website William Scott links to above, namely: http://www.fortunecity.com/tatooine/niven/142/recycleb/rb18.html Shirley, everyone has heard of the Tick? -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
RE:[tips] Beyond analysis
On Thu, 8 Oct 2009 18:45:56 -0400, Scott Lilienfeld wrote: Hi Mike - Ekman has long been at UC San Francisco (Department of Psychiatry), and I believe is Professor Emeritus there. CheersScott Thanks for pointing this out. Ekman's affiliation turns out to be a curious false memory for me. A colleague did her Ph.D. in developmental at UC-Berkeley and had worked with Ekman and continues to do so (she even mentioned a get together for the Ekman gang a while back in San Francisco) which was the basis for my thinking that Ekman was at Berkeley. I double checked a short bio for her and while she did get her Ph.D. at Berkeley, she did a post-doc with Ekman at UCSF. The odd thing about this is that I read Ekman's Telling Lies about a decade or so and had to have known at that time that he was at UCSF but subsequently I have spent more time with my colleague and UCSF changed to UC-Berkeley over time in my head though I don't think she ever mentioned working with Ekman at Berkely (unless it was in one of things he's be doing recently at Berkely; quoting from the Wikipedia entry on Ekman: |He is currently on the Editorial Board of Greater Good magazine, |published by the Greater Good Science Center of the |University of California, Berkeley. I guess I should check my assumptions more often. :-) -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu -Original Message- From: Mike Palij [mailto:m...@nyu.edu] Sent: Thursday, October 08, 2009 5:07 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Cc: Mike Palij Subject: RE: [tips] Beyond analysis On Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:14:02 -0700, Scott O Lilienfeld wrote: Hi All - It's an intriguing collection indeed, but the description at the outset of the article isn't quite accurate. Psychologists were asked to say what they didn't understand about themselves, not what they view as the great answered questions in psychology as a whole. Still, quite entertaining nonetheless. ...Scott A point that may not be relevant but which I wonder about is the following. Presumably famous psychologists were selected either because (a) they somehow have a deeper insight into the problems that concern them (by the way, I wish Marty Seligman luck in walking and losing that weight) or (b) there is a gossipy interest in what famous psychologists are concerned about and whether such concern are profound or mundane (e.g., how to keep one's weight down). But if someone surveyed a representative sample of psychologists, would one find similar or different concerns? And which would be of greater interest: the concerns of the famous psychologists or the concerns of common psychologists? Anyone find it interesting that none of their concerns involved teaching? Or am I making too much of a little article in the Health Families section of a newspaper? By the way, when I tried to access the blog listed at the end of the story I got a You are not authorized to view page; see: Researchdigest.org.uk/blog Did it sense my less than appreciative attitude towards the piece? Also, wasn't Paul Ekman at UC-Berkeley? Has he gone into business for himself now? Incidentally, I agree with his positions and not the Dalai Lama's. And I never knew that Mike Posner was so mechanically challenged. I hope that light bulb changing behavior gets better. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu -Original Message- From: Allen Esterson [mailto:allenester...@compuserve.com] Sent: Thursday, October 08, 2009 4:03 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] Beyond analysis Beyond analysis: Inside the minds of the world's top psychologists From belief in God to the irresistible urge to flirt with the opposite sex, there are some human impulses that even the biggest brains in psychology are unable to explain. Here are their greatest unanswered questions http://tinyurl.com/ydcxrrx --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) This e-mail message (including any attachments) is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this message (including any attachments) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please contact the sender by reply e-mail message and destroy all copies of the original message (including attachments). -- Subject: Re: To curve or not to curve From: Don Allen dal...@langara.bc.ca Date: Thu, 08 Oct 2009 23:27:31 + (GMT) X-Message-Number: 22 Hi Jim- Thanks for the link to the SFU data. In trying to figure out why there would be such a discrepancy between grades at Langara and SFU I came up with two possibilities. One
re: [tips] Why Psychologists Reject Science: Begley | Newsweek Voices - Sharon Begley | Newsweek.com
On Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:22:05 -0700, Christopher D. Green wrote: This oughta generate a bit of heat. http://www.newsweek.com/id/216506 I don't know about heat but I do think it may generate a sense of deja vu given that Gerald Peterson started a thread with the title Clinical Workers and Evidence and referred to this article. See: http://www.mail-archive.com/tips@acsun.frostburg.edu/msg31491.html I admit to a bit of deja vu when I looked at the article (Wait, I've seen this before!). So, are youse guys running some kind of memory experiment on Tipsters? Ya gots IRB approval, eh? :-) -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] President Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize
Since no one else has posted this, I thought I'd be the first. See; http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/10/world/10nobel.html Let's see what heat *that* generates. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
re: [tips] Senator aims to de-fund Poli Sci
On Thu, 08 Oct 2009 05:45:26 -0700, Christopher D. Green wrote: From today's Inside Higher Ed: Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, is proposing that Congress bar the National Science Foundation from supporting research in political science. While the NSF is best known for its support for the physical sciences, computer science and engineering, it has a long history of also supporting work in the social sciences. A statement from the senator said: The purpose of this amendment is not to restrict science, but rather to better focus scarce basic research dollars on the important scientific endeavors that can expand our knowledge of true science and yield breakthroughs and discoveries that can improve the human condition. While such an amendment is unlikely to be enacted, the American Political Science Association is organizing letter-writing efforts against the measure. I wonder how long before they try to de-fund psychology. As Martin Bourgeois has pointed out, attempts to defund psychological projects have been going for a while. The APA has devoted a page to these attempts over the past decade; see: http://www.apa.org/ppo/ppan/peerreview1pg03.html Typically, these de-funding attempts have been framed as attacks on the peer review project. The Federation of Behavioral, Psychological, and Cognitive have also monitored these attempts and have sent out action alerts as well as noted them in their newsletter. See their website: http://www.fbpcs.org/ and http://www.fbpcs.org/docs/support_for_NIH_Peer_Review_System-092509.pdf Here is an excerpt from the Federation Newsletter from December 3, 2004: |PEER REVIEW ISSUE: THAT’S ONE FOR OUR SIDE… |Update on Congressional Threats to NIH Peer Review Process | |Last week, the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education and |Related Agencies conference committee submitted their report on 2005 |appropriations. A conference committee is a temporary, ad hoc panel |composed of House and Senate conferees that is formed for the purpose |of reconciling bicameral differences in legislation. Included among the |hundreds of items considered by the committee was the Neugebauer |amendment, reported in the Federation’s September 10th newsletter. | |In early September, the House passed, by voice vote, an amendment |proposed by Representative Robert Neugebauer (R-TX). The amendment |targeted two NIMH-funded studies: One examining the mental and physical |health benefits of focusing on positive life goals as compared to traumatic |events through journal writing, the other a study of the physical and virtual |environments that individuals choose for themselves and how these |environments may convey whether that individual is suffering from a |psychological disorders. Interestingly, each of these studies, although |targeted for de-funding, had already received all of the funds allocated to |them. |In other words, although the proposal to withdraw funding was |passed, there is no actual funding to withdraw from these two grants. |The Senate did not have a similar provision passed, and so the matter |was sent to the conference committee. The conference committee report |states, “The conferees reiterate their support of the two-tiered peer review |process used by NIH to judge research grant applications and continue |to expect NIH to ensure that its funds are allocated to research that is |both scientifically meritorious and has high potential public health impact.” | |Once again, the threat to NIH peer review has been averted. However, |we continue to expect similar amendments to be proposed in the upcoming |session and will take measures humanly possible to educate and persuade |legislators on this issue. We will keep you updated as things develop. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
RE: [tips] Beyond analysis
On Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:14:02 -0700, Scott O Lilienfeld wrote: Hi All - It's an intriguing collection indeed, but the description at the outset of the article isn't quite accurate. Psychologists were asked to say what they didn't understand about themselves, not what they view as the great answered questions in psychology as a whole. Still, quite entertaining nonetheless. ...Scott A point that may not be relevant but which I wonder about is the following. Presumably famous psychologists were selected either because (a) they somehow have a deeper insight into the problems that concern them (by the way, I wish Marty Seligman luck in walking and losing that weight) or (b) there is a gossipy interest in what famous psychologists are concerned about and whether such concern are profound or mundane (e.g., how to keep one's weight down). But if someone surveyed a representative sample of psychologists, would one find similar or different concerns? And which would be of greater interest: the concerns of the famous psychologists or the concerns of common psychologists? Anyone find it interesting that none of their concerns involved teaching? Or am I making too much of a little article in the Health Families section of a newspaper? By the way, when I tried to access the blog listed at the end of the story I got a You are not authorized to view page; see: Researchdigest.org.uk/blog Did it sense my less than appreciative attitude towards the piece? Also, wasn't Paul Ekman at UC-Berkeley? Has he gone into business for himself now? Incidentally, I agree with his positions and not the Dalai Lama's. And I never knew that Mike Posner was so mechanically challenged. I hope that light bulb changing behavior gets better. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu -Original Message- From: Allen Esterson [mailto:allenester...@compuserve.com] Sent: Thursday, October 08, 2009 4:03 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] Beyond analysis Beyond analysis: Inside the minds of the world's top psychologists From belief in God to the irresistible urge to flirt with the opposite sex, there are some human impulses that even the biggest brains in psychology are unable to explain. Here are their greatest unanswered questions http://tinyurl.com/ydcxrrx --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Terror Tales Fromt the 6th Edition: The Dreaded Running Head!
On that other mailing list for teachers of psychology, a person posted a list of reponses from APA personnel on problems of APA style, one of which is Do you need to have the words 'Running Head' in the headers. The answer appears to be no but I'm sure the response below might be interpreted in other ways (e.g., does this apply to the first page as well?). -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu - Forwarded Message - From: Stefanie Lazer sla...@apa.org Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 2009 8:20:12 AM GMT Subject: RE: Running head in the Running head? Thank you for your questions. The running head should not include the words RUNNING HEAD, as were included in the sixth edition sample paper. Given that the maximum number of characters and spaces for running heads is 50 characters, such verbiage would be an unfortunate waste of space. As for alphabetizing last names with prefixes, APA's policy has not changed: The language of origin determines whether prefixes appear before or after the surname (as noted on p. 219 of the fifth edition; this explanation was left out of the sixth edition because APA follows standard alphabetizing rules that can be found in other guides). The difference in alphabetizing in the samples on page 219 of the fifth edition (Helmholtz, H. L. F. = von) and page 181 of the sixth edition (ben Yaakov, D.) is a result of the different name traditions in different languages rather than capitalization. The Chicago Manual of Style (in the fifteenth edition, see p. 778, section 18.69) is a helpful resource on this issue. In text, cite by the last name as it appears in the reference list (e.g., ben Yaacov, 2009; Helmholtz, 2000). Best, Stefanie Lazer Manuscript Editor, Journals --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] From the If You're So Smart How Come You Ain't Rich? Department
The Motley Fool website (a website that provides stock and investing advice) has a little article titled Are You Too Smart to Be Rich? in which the author goes over the reasons for why smart people (aka Big Brain/High IQ types -- I think that's a Jungian category :-) do badly at getting wealthy. Although skimpy on details (e.g., Michael Lewis wrote about the collapse of Long-Term Captial Management, an investment house with a couple of Nobel prize winning economists and heavy duty quantitative modelers and the collapse was not as simple as presented here; Lewis' article appeared in the NY Times and I provided a link to in a previous post to TiPS, so one should be able to search the archives for it). For more, see: http://www.fool.com/investing/value/2009/09/28/are-you-too-smart-to-be-rich.aspx To provide a sense of the presentation consider the following quote: |Economist Jay Zagorsky ran a study to determine whether |brains translate into riches. His conclusion? Intelligence is not |a factor for explaining wealth. Those with low intelligence should |not believe they are handicapped, and those with high intelligence |should not believe they have an advantage. | |In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell explored example |after example of how the successful became so. He concluded |that once someone has reached an IQ of somewhere around 120, |having additional IQ points doesn't seem to translate into any |measurable real-world advantage. I'm not a fan of Gladwell so I haven't read Outliers but I presume some Tipsters are fans and wonder if they can confirm that Gladwell actually says that one doesn't get a benefit for having an IQ over 120. Some people seem to believe in this as shown in the following quote: |Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A) (NYSE: BRK-B) billionaire |Warren Buffett seems to agree: If you are in the investment business |and have an IQ of 150, sell 30 points to someone else. Anybody know where one can sell some excess IQ points? ;-) -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Darwin Movie Creation Finds a U.S. Distributor
I'm not a Darwin scholar and looking at the materials that Allen has linked to, it seems to me that there will be no definitive answer to why Darwin waited so long to publish On the Origin of the Species unless some new material comes to light. I assume that there were multiple factors in causing the delay, some of which are publicly available and some that may have been known only to Darwin himself (I am reminded of the situation with Ph.D. candidates who take a LNG time to write their dissertation; when asked, they'll say they're working on, they're overloaded with other work [i.e., their day job], they're thinking through what they want to say, etc., but in some cases there may be the fear that either they can't actually finish writing it or that what they write will not be satisfactory, mostly to themselves regardless of what members of the dissertation committee say [e.g., We know what you did and how it turned out, just write the damned thing and get the degree already!]. One question I didn't see addressed (perhaps I missed it) is what effect would having published the book 20 years earlier would have had? Would its reception had been different from when it actually came out? Worse, the same, better? Did the passage of 20 years make Darwin's theory more palatable because of other changes in culture, beliefs, and society? Or would evolutionary theory be more advanced than it is today if it had been presented 20 years earlier (it still would have to wait for Sir Ronald Fisher to make the connection between evolutionary theory and genetics in the early 20th century)? -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu On Tue, 06 Oct 2009 06:12:42 -0700, Christopher D. Green wrote: Allen Esterson wrote: Mind the gap: Did Darwin avoid publishing his theory for many years? http://tinyurl.com/cobvtn It is by John van Whye, historian of science at Cambridge University, and Director of The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online. http://darwin-online.org.uk/people/van_wyhe.html A brief (though inadequate) summary of Whye's views is given here: Contrary to the beliefs of many Darwin scholars, the great evolutionist did not delay publishing his theory for fear of professional ridicule or social shame. According to a new analysis of Charles Darwin's correspondence, the real reason was much more prosaic - he was snowed under with work. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/mar/28/uk.books Allen, I've read van Wyhe's article. Although it cleared out a lot of underbrush (like the Bowlby stuff), I must say that I didn't find his too many other important things to do account to Darwin's delay wholly convincing. The urgency of the barnacle book can't really be made to bear quite so much weight, IMHO. The issue, it seems to me, was not so much whether he was afraid of religious authorities but, rather, that he knew the theory would be extremely controversial, and he wanted to collect in advance as many lines of evidence as possible in order to be able to most effectively defend his position (having seen all too well what happened in the /Vestiges/ controversy of the late 1840s). The issue of his wife's conventional Christianity seems to have been played up a lot recently in order to personalize the matter (making for better drama, but perhaps not for better history). That said, I, too, was a little underwhelmed by the trailer for the PBS show: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/darwin/program-q-300.html --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re:[tips] How Do You Explain A 4.4 Million Skeleton in a 6,000 Year Old Universe?
On Sun, 4 Oct 2009 19:52:11 -0600, Michael Smith wrote: Mike Palij wrote: It is unfortunate how Prof. Smith edits posts because he edited out the questions I asked which I reproduce here: ...Why he focuses on the summary answer I provide to the question in the Subject line is beyond me. Well, Mike, it may be beyond you, but if you look at your own post, the only question you actually asked was in the subject line. Given that you wanted me to answer something I took issue with your wrong answers to that question. I'm sorry Prof. Smith, you must be confused because in the post you are responding to I made clear which questions I was referring to: |How Taylor college's statement [of faith] translates into what |can be taught in the classroom, whether creationism/ID is taught in |biology courses or whether the Bible informs psychology classes, |I cannot say... If you find yourself unable to answer these questions, that's okay, and no one will think the worst of you for it.. As for why I asked about Statements of Faith, let me explain: places that require one to sign a statement of faith then requires one to teach and behave in accordance the beliefs in that statement. The clear example I provided is that of Patrick Henry College which had the practice of teaching creation along with evolution which was the reason why it was denied accreditation in the first place. I asked if your college's Statement of Faith, with its claim of an inerrant Bible also required such a practice. I also asked if you had signed such a statement and whether it affected how you present evolution in your courses. You have not directly answered these questions AND THAT'S OKAY TOO. I understand if you don't want to answer them because you simply don't want to or because this is a public record and your response might pose problems down the line. I find it curious though that the majority of your lengthy prose was to a peculiar end. That is, I have gone through this review in order to reach a particular point, namely, the Statement of Faith for Taylor College: Why would that be Mike? See Patrick Henry College, teaching creation and evolution and Biblical inerrancy. Their Statement of Faith clearly had an effect on their teaching. You teach at a College that appears to be similar to Patrick Henry College, a point you could clarified by saying yes we are or no we're not and this is how we differ. It is still unclear what your situation is. Now, in your last post in this thread (Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 1:32 PM) you did pose a number of questions which I suppose in your mind you believed that you asked in the post of Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 8:31 AM, but actually did not. These questions included creationism/Intelligent Design/homosexuality/etc. Yes, because if you are required to believe that the Bible in inerrant, then there is a support for some of these things (creationism/ID) and not for others (homosexuality, a womon's right to choose, etc.). Let come right out with another question: Do you believe in the inerrancy of the Bible. If you do not, how does that square with the Taylor's Statement of Belief? This may come as a surprise to some, but, as in the general population, Christians have varying opinions about these issues and varying levels of commitment to their opinions (at least in Canada). Non sequiteur. The purposes of Statements of Faith is to establish a core set of belief and if a college requires you to abide by them then failure to endorse them, especially if this was a condition of employment, then you can be fired. I know that there are a variety of positions in religion, I made this point clearly in another post involving the interview with the President of Notre Dame. Variety is not news, a college limiting academic freedom to the acceptance of a particular secterian viewpoint in its teaching and norms for behavior is. Although brief, there is a Wikipedia entry on Statement of Faith and perhaps other Tipsters can explain what a Statement of faith is to you; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statement_of_faith Another surprise perhaps: Being that I work in a Christian institution, I am not required to present ANY particular view. Note that this is NOT the case at a secular university where professors are required to teach a particular view, for example, that homosexuality is not pathological, and that abortion is a woman's right. A couple of points: (1) If you work at an institution like Patrick Henry College and you believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, you therefore will believe that homosexuality is a sin and that it's promotion is the work of Satan. I assume that this is the position of PHC as well as many other sectarian institutions (a number of Notre Dame alumni thought it should have been their college's position after hearing that the college allowed a Queer/Gay film festical on campus). (2) With respect to secular universities, I can teach
re: [tips] Anxiety article in NYTimes Magazine
On Mon, 05 Oct 2009 14:06:39 -0700, Beth Benoit wrote: Sunday's NYTimes did a nice job explaining Jerome Kagan's research on temperament. Most of the research articles we read don't give little tidbits of interesting information, and I find these are helpful to spiff up my lectures in class. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/magazine/04anxiety-t.html I admit that it is a good read but one has to be cautious about drawing easy conclusions from the decades of research Kagan and colleagues have performed. The most obvious problem is that of sampling bias. As the article mentions, most if not all of the subjects were white, middle-class, and born healthy. Not mentioned is what kind of parent allows their 4 month old participate in a research study? Surely such parents would be different from parents who would refuse to have their children participate (much like volunteer subjects differ from non-volunteers). Self-selection for follow-up participation further biases the sample. In the end, to whom do these results generalize to? Do they tell us anything about the temperament of non-white, non-middle-class, and infants born with health difficulties? Perhaps Kagan's research has far less generalizability then he and his colleagues are will to admit, far less than that implied in the article. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Darwin Movie Creation Finds a U.S. Distributor
Previously some Tipsters have pointed out that the Darwin biopic Creation had not gotten a distributor to release the film in the U.S. I may have missed updates on this in the recent excitement on TiPS, but, just to make sure, have no fears: Creation will be distributed in the U.S. One source of info on this is provided by an article on the website of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE): http://ncseweb.org/news/2009/09/creation-finds-distributor-005069 By the way, the NCSE is a nice source for variety of teaching topics: see: http://ncseweb.org/ And in case you haven't heard, the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) will start broadcasting Darwin's Darkest Hour on October 6; see http://ncseweb.org/news/2009/09/darwins-darkest-hour-005067 and http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/darwin/index.html Returning to Creation, another article in the U.K.'s Guardian also reports the U.S. distributor story: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/sep/25/darwin-biopic-creation-us-distributor However, just to show that God/Flying Spaghetti Monster/whatever has a sense of humor and irony, consider the following quote: |Remarkably, the feature will now be handled by the same firm |which helped make Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ such |a huge box-office hit in 2004. Newmarket is reportedly aiming |for a December release for the biopic. I assume that there will much less blood in Creation though it might have benefited from some. The Guardian quotes a Variety review of Creation which may explain why there were some problems in securing a distributor: |Bettany is appealing but this Charles is at times nearly |a sickly bore, while Connelly, not an actor with much lightness, |is OK but emphasises Emma's grave concern and disapproval |to the exclusion of nearly every other quality, wrote |Variety's Dennis Harvey. In the weird tradition of so many |real-life acting couples, onscreen these two stars don't have |much chemistry. Peter Bradshaw of this parish, however, |described it as a gentle, heartfelt and well-acted film. So, those who want to view Creation in theaters in the U.S., they will be able to do so, probably in December. The rest of us might wait for the DVD. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re:[tips] How Do You Explain A 4.4 Million Skeleton in a 6,000 Year Old Universe?
On Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 10:11:01 -0600, Michael Smith wrote: Feeling a bit verbose, a few notes about what Mike P wrote. [To which Mike Palij wrote:] This was posted after I hit my 3 post limit yesterday, so I had to wait until today to provide a response. I was curious about what kind of responses Prof. Smith's comments would elicit and I remain curious. I had planned on making one of my verbose responses to Prof. Smith's points but I now think that there would be little point in doing so. Via con Dios folks. [To which On Sat, 03 Oct 2009 10:04:30 -0700, Jim Clark wrote: JC: Like Mike P. I'm skeptical of the consequences of responding, but here's a few thoughts. [snip] After reading Prof. Smith's comments I got to thinking about the types of restrictions that faculty might find themselves under and how this might affect what and how they teach. In the U.S. we can make the following distinctions among academic institutions: (1) Public colleges and universities: on the basis of the establishment clause of the constitution (i.e., seperation of church and state) these have to be non-sectarian and should not promote a particular religious viewpoint. Teaching evolution as biology would be the norm as would most traditional mainstream academic topics. On hiring, a faculty member is probably asked to swear an oath to support the U.S. constitution and (probably) the state constitution (I'm not sure about what in addition to the U.S. constitution is sworn to in the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and U.S. territories). (2) Private Colleges that are Non-sectarian: these are private colleges that (a) not directly supported by the government (though they may receive financial and other aid in many forms) and (b) do not promote a particular sectarian/religious viewpoint. Private colleges may have been non-sectarian from their very beginning or may have started out as sectarian and converted into independent and non-sectarian status (Harvard and Yale are examples). Because they are non-sectarian, these colleges are eligible for federal and state funds and programs which may be an important incentive to becoming non-sectarian. NOTE: a college/university may be non-sectarian but still have significant religious/theological units (e.g., Yeshiva University). Being non-sectarian, in one interpretation, is that a religious viewpoint and teaching are restricted to traditional courses relevant to religion and theology and not presented in other courses, such as biology. (3) Private Colleges that are Sectarian-Catholic: Catholic colleges often will be sectarian but this does not mean that (a) all of the faculty at such institutions are Catholic nor (b) all students at such institutions are Catholic. The Catholic colleges and universities will have departments of religion and theology though it is my understanding that not all students are required to take courses in them (NOTE: a colleague at a major Catholic university expressed surpise when he learned that incoming students were directed into different curricula depending upon whether they identified themselves as Catholic or not; I assume that Catholic students may have been required to take a certain number of credits in religion/theology while non-Catholics would not or only be required to take an intro to religion course). Catholic institutions do put certain demands on their faculty. Faculty in departments of religion and theology are bound by the Pope's Mandatum that their teaching is consistent with with Catholic dogma and re-affirms Catholic values and beliefs (perhaps this is to keep the faculty going Hans Kung route). Faculty in non-religion/theology departments are advised to generally teach their courses consistent with Catholic values and beliefs but I am unsure whether these faculty are also held to the Mandatum or have sign a statement of faith affirming Catholicism. In order to receive federal and state funding, the religious programs are kept seperate from the non-religious. The Pope has affirmed that faith and reason can and should co-exist and science can provide useful knowledge and understanding of the physical world beyond what the Bible can provide. Thus, evolution is accepted and creationism/ID is seen as peculiar system associated with certain Protestant groups. Nonetheless, the current Pope has been outspoken on trying to reign in the U.S. colleges and universities as shown in the following article: http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0408/512391.html (4) Private Colleges that are Sectarian-Non-Catholic: A variety of religions have affiliated colleges and universities (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Universities_and_colleges_by_religious_affiliation ) but the majority of these will be some flavor of non-Catholic Christian faith. These schools can range from liberal in matters theological and political to ultraconservative. An extreme example of a conservative Christian
Re: [tips] How Do You Explain A 4.4 Million Skeleton in a 6,000 Year Old Universe?
are not monolistic entities, even if there is one person in charge who makes sure that it doesn't go off the rails. Catholicism can range from Liberation Theology with Marxist overtones to strict constuctionists who are both religiously and politically conservative (I believe this in the direction of Opus Dei; NOTE: Please don't confuse Opus Dei with what was presented in the movie/book The Da Vince Code, I believe it is a conservative Catholic organization but I do not believe that it routinely murders people or have albino monks causing general chaos). I recommend reading the entire article and the comments to it. Some Catholics might think that Notre Dame is being progressive with activities that are gay-friendly and allows on-campus productions of such plays as the Vagina Monologues. Those same activities are viewed by some Catholics as blasphemous and even anti-Catholic. You know, the range of opinions that one would find in any other religion. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu Original Message From: Mike Palij m...@nyu.edu Reply-To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) tips@acsun.frostburg.edu Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2009 10:31:43 -0400 To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) tips@acsun.frostburg.edu Conversation: Re:[tips] How Do You Explain A 4.4 Million Skeleton in a 6,000 Year Old Universe? Subject: Re:[tips] How Do You Explain A 4.4 Million Skeleton in a 6,000 Year Old Universe? Catholic institutions do put certain demands on their faculty. Faculty in departments of religion and theology are bound by the Pope's Mandatum that their teaching is consistent with with Catholic dogma and re-affirms Catholic values and beliefs (perhaps this is to keep the faculty going Hans Kung route). Faculty in non-religion/theology departments are advised to generally teach their courses consistent with Catholic values and beliefs but I am unsure whether these faculty are also held to the Mandatum or have sign a statement of faith affirming Catholicism. --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] How Do You Explain A 4.4 Million Skeleton in a 6,000 Year Old Universe?
On Sun, 04 Oct 2009 11:35:22 -0700, Professor Michael Smith wrote: Mike Palij wrote: If he pleases, Prof. Smith might answer these questions. It is unfortunate how Prof. Smith edits posts because he edited out the questions I asked which I reproduce here: |How Taylor college's statement [of faith] translates into what |can be taught in the classroom, whether creationism/ID is taught in |biology courses or whether the Bible informs psychology classes, |I cannot say... These are the questions I was referring to. Why he focuses on the summary answer I provide to the question in the Subject line is beyond me. In summary, it appears that there are two answers to the question I posed in the Subject line: (1) Not at all. (2) Very, very carefully if one doesn't want to lose their job. Hmmm. Let me see. I would say neither. Conservative institutions would respond I imagine probably in similar ways to how they handle the fossil record now. I don't know if they would, but that would make sense to me. Why do I get the impression that you didn't read the rest of my post? Do you think that Patrick Henry College's mixture of evolution and creationism was valid? How would a creationist account explain a 4.4 million year old hominid skeleton? Would a biologist teaching that creationism was nonsense at PHC not be fired for taking such a position? I have to ask, when you explain evolution and evolutionary psychology, do you incorporate creationism/ID? Do you really just say that Ardi is 4.4 million years old or do you say carbon dating isn't that accurate (if you do say this, what are ther references you use to support it?). For Taylor (and I imagine many many other christian institutions), I taught the scientific theory of evolution as a theory, a fact, and a logical necessity. Of course students are free to reject that as they are free to reject it at any educational institution. That's very good but it leaves unaswered the question of whether creationism/ID had to be presented as well. I assume that you had to affirm Taylor's Statement of Faith, presumably by signing a contract that you would? Correct me if I am wrong on this account. I do not completely understand all of the components of the Statement of Faith but it seems to me that it states that the Bible is an inerrant source of knowledge which would seem to mean that the genesis account of creation has to be accepted as fact. Is this your interpretation as well? Is it your institution, Taylor College's interpretation as well? Neither was my job at Taylor in any way under threat from anything I taught with regard to psychology--I was totally free to teach whatever areas I thought important to an understanding of modern psychology. And we, as a college encouraged looking at controversial issues or ones that were important from a christian perspective (evolution wasn't one of them). So, when you cover homosexuality, do your present it as an acceptable way of being or as a pathology? As well, all our psychology courses (and most, if not all, courses from the other departments as well) were transferable to the University of Alberta (the secular provincial university). Of course, none of this contradicts their statement of faith. I'm sorry, do you mean Taylor's statement of faith or the U of Alberta? I was unaware that they had one. Also, just to be clear, the courses taught at Taylor would be just like the courses taught at a secular public university, including human sexuality courses that affirms homosexulity as a nonpathological condition, a woman's right to control her own body and to exercise choice over pregnancy, and so on, you know, the topics that most conservatives just love to condemn. If true, that would be truly amazing. Hope that answers the two questions :) It answer two or more questions but not the ones I asked. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re:[tips] How Do You Explain A 4.4 Million Skeleton in a 6,000 Year Old Universe?
On Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 10:11:01 -0600, Michael Smith wrote: Feeling a bit verbose, a few notes about what Mike P wrote. This was posted after I hit my 3 post limit yesterday, so I had to wait until today to provide a response. I was curious about what kind of responses Prof. Smith's comments would elicit and I remain curious. I had planned on making one of my verbose responses to Prof. Smith's points but I now think that there would be little point is doing so. Via con Dios folks. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu [Mike P. had written} In the U.S. it is possible to run a college along religious line (i.e., secterian) and there can be an uneasy tension between the religious orientation maintained by the administration and the individuals working there, especially the secular faculty and faculty with different beliefs. I think if a person works in a Christian college then the person has to agree with the faith precepts of the institution. So I doubt there would be any secular faculty at such institutions, and if there are, they are clearly being unethical under such circumstances. I'm not sure what you mean by secular beliefs. If it is true that Ari is 1.2 million years older than Lucy (and I would imagine that this is the case given the amount of remains which were found and the diversity of scholars who worked on it) then it is not a secular or a religious belief, it would simply be a fairly well established fact for those that work in Christian colleges and those that do not. The tone of your post suggested, at least to me, that from the reference you provided I expected to see a problem where a secular minded or secular faculty member in a Christian institutions may have problems which conflict with that institutions administration (which should not occurr on any serious level since to work there, the person should be in principled agreement with the institutions world-view requirements). An example of the type of problem one encounters is provided in the following article which appeared in the AAUP publication Academe: http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/2006/JF/Feat/hill.htm; However, the author of the article is actually bemoaning the discrimination by a secular organization against a religious one solely because the institution is a religious one (something one is not supposed to do to individuals). But many times these facts conflict with religious beliefs and dogma and creation stories (I believe that the terms creation myths is now politically incorrect because various groups object to having their stories about their origins treated as myths -- why should science have the final say on how the world was created, eh?). This aspect of your post and the other about colleges with a literal interpretation of the bible and a 6,000 year old universe. Are these colleges not in the minority (compared with Christian institutions who hold a more complex view of life, the Bible, God, and the Universe)?[If not, then perhaps you should move to Canada, eh!] why should science have the final say on how the world was created, eh?). I doubt science will ever have the final say on that. God can never be ruled out of the picture. Science may be able to elucidate the various mechanisms of how this planet came to be, but such explanations still woulndn't address how the world came to be in the more fundamental sense that God nevertheless still created it, and so religion will always have the final say. Do we have any obligation in evaluating the evidence for Ardi and Lucy and, if we find it to have sufficient validity, work to counter those that might claim that it is a fraud, especially if the claim is made on religious rather than scientific grounds? I doubt whether any psychologist could assess the validity of the evidence for Ardi, we would simply be trusting the authority of the people working on it. I doubt the 6000 year old universe people would claim it's a fraud. Probably, that the dating etc., is mistaken. Shouldn't scientists work to counter claims of fraud from any group? (And I would say just by doing good scientific work.) Why focus on religious grounds for claims of fraudulance? --Mike --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] When Students Blog
There is an interesting article in the NY Times about M.I.T.'s decision to have students blog on the college website. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/education/02blogs.html?_r=1themc=th A number of schools have started doing this but a lot of schools have not because the admins of these schools cannot controls what is written in the blogs. Places like M.I.T. might be special in terms of the type and seriousness of the students that go there and the use of student blogs may be a marketing tool to attract like-minded/attituded students. I wonder how widespread this practice will become and whether some schools will continue to give students complete freedom in writing their blogs while some schools will edit and censor blogs if not having proffesional writers write the blogs (afterall, this *is* a marketing took, why not use professionals?). I wonder what might happen if some of the students blogs start to focus on particular professors in either a positive or negative way (as they do on ratemyprofessor.com). Would restrictions be put in place (e.g., preventing blogs from saying this guy may be the smartest guy on the planet in this field but he couldn't teach to save his own life or it is generally recognized that this professor has the best sexual techniques outside of class)? -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] How Do You Explain A 4.4 Million Skeleton in a 6,000 Year Old Universe?
In the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, and other media outlets, there is a story about Ardi. No, Ardi is not some ethnic guy from Brooklyn, NY who will be starring in the next Spike Lee movie, rather she is the oldest hominid skeleton that has been put together, pre-dating Lucy by about 1.2 million years. For the NY Times treatment, see: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/science/02fossil.html?em=pagewanted=all I assume that other sources will provide more detail about the research that went into putting Ardi together. This raises a number of interesting questions, one of which is posed in the subject line of this post. In the U.S. it is possible to run a college along religious line (i.e., secterian) and there can be an uneasy tension between the religious orientation maintained by the administration and the individuals working there, especially the secular faculty and faculty with different beliefs. An example of the type of problem one encounters is provided in the following article which appeared in the AAUP publication Academe: http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/2006/JF/Feat/hill.htm In the sciences, the problem is more acute because science claims to deal with facts and truth (note lower case t), such as the estimated age of fossils and out potential ancestors, such as Lucy and Ardi. But many times these facts conflict with religious beliefs and dogma and creation stories (I believe that the terms creation myths is now politically incorrect because various groups object to having their stories about their origins treated as myths -- why should science have the final say on how the world was created, eh?). So, what does one do in a college or a university which has a strict literal interpretation of the Bible and claims that according to it, the universe can only be about 6,000 years old? Will such colleges claim that stories about Ardi and Lucy are frauds promoted by a vast left-wing conspiracy of dishonest intellectuals who are using secularism and humanism to try to destroy the religious beliefs of the majority of the people who have the simple commonsense to believe that a God exists and that He can do anything he wants? Or will they simply ignore Ardi, Lucy, and their promoters? And what does this say about science education at the university level of the U.S. and elsewhere? Are there any anthropologists or sociologists of science studying this situation presently? Sort of like the research done by Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schacter had done for their book When Prophecy Fails? See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails and http://tinyurl.com/yb3qffp Do we have any obligation in evaluating the evidence for Ardi and Lucy and, if we find it to have sufficient validity, work to counter those that might claim that it is a fraud, especially if the claim is made on religious rather than scientific grounds? -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
re: [tips] Improbable Research
On Fri, 02 Oct 2009 05:22:17 -0700, Christopher D. Green wrote: The IgNobels for 2009 are out! http://improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2009 The most psychological (though it is formally for veterinary medicine) went to Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK, for showing that cows who have names give more milk than cows that are nameless. BRO! You've gots to be kidding me! Just ask any random male undergraduate psych major: THE FOLLOWING IS THE MOST PSYCHOLOGICAL!!?!: |PEACE PRIZE: Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, |Michael Thali and Beat Kneubuehl of the University of Bern, Switzerland, |for determining — by experiment — whether it is better to be smashed |over the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle. Dude! Are these guys going to get their own reality show on MTV or just make a guest appearance on Jackass? |REFERENCE: Are Full or Empty Beer Bottles Sturdier and Does |Their Fracture-Threshold Suffice to Break the Human Skull? |Stephan A. Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael J. Thali |and Beat P. Kneubuehl, Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, |vol. 16, no. 3, April 2009, pp. 138-42. |DOI:10.1016/j.jflm.2008.07.013. |WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Stephan Bolliger Warning: Do refer to this research the closer we get to Spring Break! ;-) -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Gad-Vooks!
The NY Times reports on a new hybrid media platform that replaces traditional books with the capabilities to provide electronic text, pictures, videos, and sound/music: the Vook. For more, see: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/books/01book.html?_r=1themc=th Quoting from the article: |Some publishers say this kind of multimedia hybrid is necessary |to lure modern readers who crave something different. But reading |experts question whether fiddling with the parameters of books |ultimately degrades the act of reading. | |“There is no question that these new media are going to be superb |at engaging and interesting the reader,” said Maryanne Wolf, a |professor of child development at Tufts University and author of |“Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.” |But, she added, “Can you any longer read Henry James or George Eliot? |Do you have the patience?” I wonder. How long before we have the first David Myers' Vookie textbook? -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Are Panties Optional On Reality Dance Shows?
I don't watch reality TV shows and only pay attention to news reports about them when something really unusual happens like, say, former U.S. congressman Tom Delay decides to participate in one of these farces. However, today my attention was drawn to a news item that suggests that a dance show on the Fox network had a Sharon Stone moment: see the Daily News story which is handled in impeccable tabloid style: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/2009/09/30/2009-09-30_so_you_think_you_can_dance_contestant_flashes_national_tv_audience.html or http://tinyurl.com/yer5e7s For you pervs, er, professors who would like to see the original video and determine whether it is the real McCoy or just a panties crease, our friends at the Huffington Post have thoughtfully provided the video snippet to us (they even have a poll: is it the real McCoy or a panties crease -- though they don't use the term real McCoy): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/30/vagina-exposed-on-so-you_n_304592.html Teachable moments for psychology classes: (1) When the liberal CBS network had Janet Jackson'd infamous wardrobe malfunction during the half-time show of the SuperBowl footbal game, CBS was fined for partial exposure of a female breast. What will the conservative Fox network pay in terms of money or other form of punishment for this display of female flesh? Will it be: a) More than CBS, given the body part exposed b) Same as CBS c) Less than CBS, because the conservatives at Fox obviously had made a mistake while the liberals at CBS obviously planned the wardrobe malfunction d) No fine because the prudes who fined CBS will be good submissive authoritarians and not fine their media overlords at FOX. (2) As noted in the one of the replies on the Huffington Post website, if actual flesh was shown, was a vagina really shown? a) Yes b) No As a commenter makes clear, the vagina in an internal orgram and the outer visual portion could be the labia and clitoris (or as another commenter points out, perhaps a thigh fat row). If people answer Yes to question (2), does this point out the need for more Human Sexuality courses? Finally, if panties/underwear are really optional, does that mean that Tom Delay is dancing around without . -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Kitty Genovese/The Windy City
On Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:36:43 -0700, Michael Sylvester wrote: Ken,Jim: Are you trying to say that there were no bystanders' apathy because two black gangs were involved? According to Jim's statements, no. As Jim says: |They continued to swing their bats to chase others away. If there was bystander apathy, there would be little need to chase people away with bats. Your posts are ridiculous. Please, Michael, you are in NO position to make such a statement. Also, learn how to spell DOG. Are bystanders' apathy only reserved for white people? Now you're just putting words into other people's posts. No one has ever claimed that it was only reserved for white people, only whether bystander apathy is an appropriate characterization of the situation being discussed. Since you are not an expert on the bystander research literature nor a researcher in this area, it seems much more plausible that you have inappropriately applied this concept to this situation. Harold Takooshian of Fordham University has recently written reviews of books the Genovese incident, explaining what had happend, as well as analyses that attack the concept of bystand apathy in general. One place to start on this is the PsycCritiques Blog which has a link to this book review: http://psyccritiquesblog.apa.org/2009/04/what-is-the-value-of-the-genovese-parable.html If you are really serious about this issue, you might want to contact Harold and discuss it with him. Contact info is provided on the website below and don't use my name: http://takooshian.socialpsychology.org/ I saw the video too but the video did not capture folks who were 100 or 200 yards away. How do you know who was 100 or 200 yards away? There were ordinary people around and this fact has been a matter of discussion on the major news network. Do not use news program chatter as the basis for understanding what happened at an event -- I thought we had pretty well establish that sources like this are often inaccurate, misleading, and reflect a variety of biases, both cognitive and political. If you're really serious about the event, get the police report for the event. Interview the people who were there. Learn about the historical and cultural context in which this attack took place. This is hard work but as scientists we should come to expect that obtaining valid knowledge about a phenomenon involves hard work, dedication, and careful, critical analysis. That is, of course, if one isn't just make snap judgments about a event from an armchair far from where the event took place and is really more interested in BSing about the event than trying to understand it. Obviously you all know nothing about a black community.Gimme a break. Keep your eurocentric cognitive imperialistic analysis in the classrom.dude. If I thought you were being serious, I would say you're being extremely harsh here because (a) you really know the facts about the situation you're referring to, (b) you are a priori assuming that your non-Eurocentric perspective is the correct one to use in analyzing this situation (a position you assert by fiat and not by research or reasoned argument -- I await your manifesto supporting your perspective to appear in Psychological Review where one and all will be able to figure out what they hell you've been talking about all these years). If you are being serious, please realize that statements like the ones you've made here have no more validity than the ones made by current protesters against U.S. health reform, such as, death panels are gonna get your gramma, government health care is socialism, and President Obama is somehow Hitler. Or, in another context, the U.S. Census will be conducted only to identify those people (i.e., political and religious conservatives, libertarians, etc.) who will ultimately rounded up and put into concentration camps and ultimately to their deaths. If you are just kidding, please put an appropriate emoticon (e.g., :-) ) so that we know we shouldn't take what you say seriously. So much of your writing leave people wondering whether or not you are being serious. Especially about training doors. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
