Cooler Dirt

A new study gives all doubters hope.  Or less hope.  We’re not sure.

According to the report, about half of all peer reviewed, scientific research papers published around the world aren’t true. (No, we aren’t going to get into the self-referential questions of whether the paper itself is true, so shut up.)  A variety of problems contribute to the errors, mostly; poor study design, small sample sizes, selective reporting and others.

And while no one factor is causally identified, the combination of errors means that those studies which have found statistically significant results (results that can be shown to be large enough to not be the result of random factors) are, half of the time, not significant.

Studies in ‘hot’ fields–where multiple teams are competing against one another–tend to be even less reliable, and studies with small sample sizes are even worse.

We know what you’re thinking: you knew it all along.  Scientists don’t have any answers, they just pretend like they do. After all, how many times do you hear about a study that says one thing while another a few months later says the opposite?

But, we have to ask, isn’t that kind of the point?  Isn’t research a venture into the unknown? And aren’t wrong conclusions sort of expected?

Uncategorized news, science

According to a new study, happiness is more contagious than the ebola virus.

Well, not really.  But it is contagious, at least as far as social circles are concerned.

The study showed that people tend to be happier when they associate with people who are happy.  Essentially, if you have happy friends, you too will be happy.

And though the corollary didn’t show as strong a relationship (being around sad people doesn’t necessarily make you sad), there was a clear indication of an increase in happiness up to the third degree of separation.  How much? Look at these numbers:

• First degree of separation (Immediate contact): Increase your happiness chances by 15%.
• Second degree of separation (Friend of a friend): 10% increase.
• Third degree of separation:  (Friend of a friend of a friend): 6% increase.

And while having more friends also increased your chances, the deciding factor was whether or not you had happy friends.

Which brings us to our question:  Do you have a duty to be happy? If your happiness increases the happiness of others, and by inference, makes everyone’s life better, do you have an obligation to be happy?

If it isn’t a duty (ethical or moral), is it just a good idea to surround yourself with better (i.e. happier) friends? Quality over quantity seems to be the deciding factor in increasing your chances at happiness.   If you want to increase your chances at happiness, it seems like you’d be better off getting rid of the downers in your life.

And on that note, we’ll say:  Excelsior, True Believers!

(Photo courtesy Swami Stream’s Flickr page.  Thanks, Swami Stream!)

Uncategorized friends, happiness, study

We have a confession to make: We hate plays.

There, we said it.

Yes, yes, hold your rancor and chastisements.  We know we have now branded ourselves uncultured, illiterate, beer-swilling simpletons, but we don’t care.  No matter what you say to bring us out of our provincial shitkickerdom, plays suck.   Here’s why;

1.  The Medium: For most of human history there haven’t been a lot of options when it came to entertainment.  Medieval people would no doubt see the production of a play as an awe inspiring, life changing experience.  Compared to their daily drudgery, why wouldn’t they?

But times have changed.  We have mass produced books., films, television, sporting events, etc, etc.  The days when a group of people standing in front of you playing make believe was the supreme achievement in human entertainment are long gone.  Whenever we see a play nowadays, we can’t get past the idea that we are watching adults stand around for an hour and a half, pretending to not be on a stage, pretending to not be pretending, pretending to be someone they are not, pretending to…oh, you get the point.

2.  The Culture: What little exposure we’ve had to theater culture has left us scratching our head and wondering whether or not these people could be found anywhere else in life.  Even forgetting the dramatic persona that seems so common amongst these denizens of the stage, there is so much off kilter here, we have no idea where to even begin relating to them.

For instance, what is with the superstitions?  Why can’t you say Macbeth without a theater person going into convulsions and frothing at the mouth in terror?    Why say “break a leg” instead of “good luck”?  No, we don’t really understand any superstition.  They all seem to be so primitive and ego-centric, as if the universe is keeping watch and just waiting to cause you problems because you say one thing instead of another.

And in what kind of world is the excuse “Well, that’s show business,” acceptable when something goes wrong?  If a ship’s captain runs their vessel aground, you don’t hear them say “Well, that’s trans-oceanic shipping for ya!”

And getting back to the people.  We’ll merely summarize our conclusion by saying: only theater people could call someone who sings, dances and acts a “Triple Threat” without breaking into hysterics.  

There is nothing threatening about any of those actions.  Never has been, never will be.

3.  Musicals: No.  Seriously…just, no. We can listen to music and enjoy it’s performance, but when someone stops talking and starts singing, forget it. Whatever narrative thread we, the audience, have been following up to that point is summarily sliced away when the people who I am trying to take seriously start singing in an attempt to communicate.  No.

So let’s hear it.  Why do you hate us now?

Books, Movies, TV, Music and Art plays, theater

We had an interesting discussion the other day about horror movies.  More specifically, the Zombie Movie.  One of us recently read the Max Brooks book World War Z, about a future where zombies almost wipe out the human race and the leftover people have to fight back against them.   Though we all liked zombie movies to one extent or another, we did come up with an interesting observation about the zombie genre in particular.

1.  Zombie survivors make shelters: In pretty much every zombie movie we’ve seen, the non-zombie people wall themselves up, bar the doors, build barricades or otherwise create a fortress to keep the hordes of zombies from getting inside and eating their brains.  (Or something.)

2.  Zombie survivors have immediate needs: Apart from food, shelter, weapons and maybe a zombie-escape-mobile, zombie survivors don’t really have a lot to do.  They don’t have to pay bills, don’t have to study, don’t have to worry about getting the girl.  It’s pretty much basic survival needs with none of the complications of modern life and socialization.  Conversations revolve around how to get away, where the ammo is and what needs to be done to stay alive.

3.  Zombie survivors use violence: It goes without saying that if you are attacked by a zombie, you’re going to defend yourself using whatever you have available.   Chainsaws, swords, bats, and of course, as many guns as you can get your hands on.  If you are cast into a world of zombies, you gotta fight, and fight well.

As we see it,  zombie movie people use violence, build forts and think of nothing other than meeting their immediate survival needs.  Does this sound like anyone you might know?  Or, to be more specific, is there a certain group of people who’s desires closely match those of the people in zombie movies?

How about pre-teen boys?  How about teenage boys, or those on the verge of sexual maturity?  In other words, are zombie movies fantasies of the pre-teen boy inside of all the fanboys, film makers and otherwise adult men who flock to them?

Look at it this way:  If you survive a zombie attack, you have to build a fort to wall yourself off from the outside world. (Very boyish).  You have to find all the weapons you can.  (Ever seen boys play war?)  You have to get food and concentrate on staying alive.  You don’t have to deal with school, or parents, or complicated relationships,or, god forbid, sex! (Sure, there are sexy women in these movies, but aren’t they too just fantasies?)

The zombie fantasy offered by these films caters to the regressed or psychologically stunted impulse to wall yourself off from the world and not grow up.  You don’t have to worry about any big, emotional, complicated stuff that adults have to deal with.  All you have to do is play soldier and stay alive.

Of course, we haven’t found any direct evidence that the people making these films or books believes this, or is using the zombie setting as a metaphorical tool to explore these ideas.  We could be completely wrong about it.

But we don’t think we are.   After all, who are the biggest fans of zombie movies?  When the next zombie movie comes out  (the movie version of World War Z is set to be made soon), go see it in the theater.  Pay attention to the ratio of men to women.  We’re guessing it’s going to be fairly male heavy.  We’re also guessing those men are either adolescents or a little regressed.

(Photo courtest Ateo Fiel’s Flickr site through Creative Commons.  Thanks, Ateo Fiel.)

Books, Movies, TV, Music and Art book, books, brain, conversation, conversations, life

Robots

So we know it’s been a while.  But give us a break, we were…uh…reincarnated, taken by aliens, busy traveling back and forth from Colombia as drug mules, abducted by robots.   Yes.  Abducted.

By robots.

Yeah.  Really smart robots that can think for themselves.   In fact, they’re so smart that since releasing us from their evil island robot lair they’ve gone to work for several government agencies, TV shows and scientific research institutes as autonomous researchers capable of thinking for themselves.

Okay, we made some of that up.  In fact, we pretty much made all of it up.

Except for the part about the robots that think for themselves.

On Thursday, two separate research teams reported that they had created robots that could form their own hypothesis, test them, and then learn from what they observed.

Take a moment to let that sink in.

We aren’t exactly fear mongers around here.  Usually we try to remain level headed, easy going, quick with a joke type people.  And then we came across this section of the report:

“Just by crunching the numbers — and without any prior instruction in physics — the Cornell machine was able to decipher Isaac Newton’s laws of motion and other properties.”

That seems pretty impressive to us.  Even if you only count since humanity has been agrarian, it took us–people–about 10,000 years to come up with Newtonian physics.  These robots came up with it in what, a couple of days?  A week? A few hours?

We have no idea.  But by our calculations, the robots will be taking over next Thrusday, around tea time.

And we welcome our new robotic overlords. We remind them that as trusted blogers we can be used to spread their commandments and round up human slaves for work in their silicone and robot wig factories.

Hail Robots!

Uncategorized artificial intelligence, robots