Category: ideas

Researchers have found they can tell what someone is typing on a computer by the sound of the keystrokes. “Because the sound generated by each keystroke is slightly different, the researchers were able to generate a computer program to decode what was written. Using statistical learning theory, the computer can categorize the sound of each key as it’s struck and develop a good first guess with an accuracy of 60 percent for characters, and 20 percent for words. We then use spelling and grammar check to refine the result, which increased the accuracy to 70 percent and the word accuracy to 50 percent.”

“Today, terabytes of easily accessed data, always-on Internet connectivity, and lightning-fast search engines are profoundly changing the way people gather information. But the age-old question remains: Is technology making us smarter? Or are we lazily reliant on computers, and, well, dumber than we used to be?”

“Orchestras are starting to program benefit concerts. And at some point, it will seem appropriate for a composer to put perspective to Katrina with a piece that is to this horror in New Orleans what John Adams’ On the Transmigration of Souls was to 9/11. In the meantime, a Schubert Mass in G won’t save lives, a Brahms German Requiem won’t comfort the victim, and no artwork will assuage the guilt many may likely feel as the arts season gets under way and we find ourselves slipping into enjoyment mode, even as misery continues for hundreds of thousands of others. For those of us who chronicle culture, that wondrous residue of civilization that plucks immortality from life’s daily flotsam and jetsam, the last few years have shaken our idea of permanence.”

Why are Americans still debating evolution almost 150 years after Darwin posited it? “A scientific-religious issue is being argued in courts and school boards, as if they ever could settle one’s faith in God or what hominid line led to homo sapiens. Which is why Americans are still fighting about this while the rest of the scientific world has moved on. In this political struggle, Darwinians have relied on the courts to bar the unconstitutional use of tax money to teach religion. But in doing so, they have fueled widespread (and often Southern, regional) resentments against “elitist experts” and “activist judges.” Creationists, meanwhile, tend to appeal to school boards and the public, knowing they can sway a popular vote.

Okay, so you love the shuffle music feature on your MP3 player. But, like many people, you’ve grown to suspect that the shuffle isn’t very random at all. Turns out it’s difficult “for a PC, which is designed to do things in predictable ways, to generate a string of numbers that are statistically random. Try as they might to compile a list of numbers at random, computers frequently spit out digits that have discernible patterns to them.” The problem, it turns out, isn’t that the programs aren’t randomizing my playlists. They are. But our expectations of randomness are statistically inconsistent.

As a general rule, stand-up comics tend to be fairly liberal sorts. Maybe it’s something about the lifestyle – performing late at night in seedy bars with other comics who use the f-word as punctuation – but the right wing, which encompasses a large chunk the U.S. population, has never seen much representation at the local Laugh Factory. But just as the world of American religious conservatism has created and nurtured its own sources for music, news, and education, a new market is emerging for Christian comics, who hit all the usual stand-up targets while simultaneously taking digs at evolution, activist judges, and gays who want to get married.

Legal doctrines “being aggressively pushed by corporations and law enforcement officials” are attempting to lock up content and programs on the internet. “The better world is one in which we don’t need to seek permission or risk punishment to do cool stuff that makes the world a better place. In the early days of the internet, a lot of people felt that we’d found that better world. Thanks to the internet’s open protocols, many of the most useful innovations, from the web to instant messaging to internet telephony, emerged without developers needing anyone’s permission to run their cool new code.”

A new survey of American college professors reports that the profs are generally unhappy with the quality of students coming in to theikr classes. “Just under half of all instructors — 49.6 percent — said they were. In addition, only 35.5 percent of all professors said they believed that faculty members at their own institution felt that students were well-prepared academically, although that number has actually increased from 28 percent in 1998.”

“Why is science in the media so often pointless, simplistic, boring, or just plain wrong? Like a proper little Darwin, I’ve been collecting specimens, making careful observations, and now I’m ready to present my theory. It is my hypothesis that in their choice of stories, and the way they cover them, the media create a parody of science, for their own means. They then attack this parody as if they were critiquing science.”