[clue-talk] Things are pretty OK

[Nate Duehr]

On Sep 19, 2008, at 7:32 PM, David L. Willson wrote:

> http://xkcd.com/470/
> http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html

I had seen the XKCD already and laughed out loud at it.  Sent it to a  
few friends while we were engaged in some non-public political debate,  
as a way to mellow the whole thing out a bit.  Very funny stuff, and  
very deeply true too... letting the political parties rile us all up,  
just means they're good at riling people up, not running a country.   
But I digress...

The Ted.com talk was great.

Those whining about the Flash stuff... bummer.  You need an OS that  
can view it, seriously.  The user interface created by Flash for the  
playback, really was quite nice.  Zoom it to "fullscreen" mode (which  
really isn't quite full screen, but scaled up nicely) to see all the  
nifty widgets that really seemed to work well, and made sense from a  
pure UI standpoint.  That's the type of UI that people like these  
days, and appeals to the masses.  (Desktop devs, take note.  GRIN.)

Pinker lets a bit of politics into his "science" a couple of times,  
comments like "Thank you President Clinton" weren't based in any of  
his research facts other than the dates lined, up -- but he didn't  
prove a President has any effect on violence rates overall anywhere in  
his study...

But in all it was less politics than it was solid information.  (His  
audience laughed nervously at that Clinton comment, showing that the  
recent studies on the "wisdom" of crowds, probably also holds some  
water.  It wasn't "laugh out loud" laughter.  It was "oops, you got  
your chocolate in my peanut butter" laughter, indicating that he  
overstepped the bounds of science, throwing that one out there.)

But in all, pretty good.  I wish they'd given him more time, and he  
was obviously (since he's a linguist by trade) using that background  
to find his research material.  Starting off with the opening with  
references to modern "language" in the news about violence, and  
throwing a smattering of Bible and other things in there just to show  
he's well-read.  I really enjoy the amateur study of language, so I  
could probably enjoy just about anything written or presented by a  
linguist.  YMMV.

Certainly entertaining enough for most average folks to watch, which  
is something academics have a tough time doing with their material.

--
Nate Duehr
nate at natetech.com