Month: May 2007

The Future of SLD

Seth Roberts8 Comments

In a Pottery Barn yesterday, I noticed some air “fresheners” with names like Tupelo Honey, Paper White, Pomegranate, and Mandarin. Like an incense stick or scent candle, they add a pleasant smell to the air. The display included testers, similar to perfume testers, that produce a fine spray. I tried a few. They were an easy way to alter the flavor of one’s food, I realized. I asked a clerk, “Can these be sprayed on food?” He tried to find the ingredients but couldn’t. “Is this the strangest question you’ve been asked today?” I asked. “No one has ever asked me this,” he said.

If you carried in your purse a few small sleek canisters of “food perfumes,” you could easily make any food at any meal less recognizable and thus less fattening. Randomly using two or three perfumes per meal might provide enough diversity to last a lifetime. The SLD forum term for this is crazy-spicing. At least one person has lost a great deal of weight (80 pounds?) doing nothing else. You can still eat all your favorite foods; depending on the dose of food perfume, they will still taste good (if not out-of-this-world delicious). In this post, Peter Merel describes his discovery that slightly-altered favorite foods no longer trigger binges.

a little slice of mud cake … I know if I start I’m going to be inhaling that stuff big time. No question. Serious ditto for me.

Do you think lemon juice can cut that?

Only one way to find out. Into the microwave and then a squeeze of lemon juice on top. I’ll admit the lemon juice didn’t help a chocolate cake. But it wasn’t bad either. I mean I’d have it again like that if this actually worked.

This Actually Worked!

I have also posted many times about the benefits of flaxseed oil, which I believe derives from its high omega-3 content. The benefits are so large, fast, and repeatable I suspect almost everyone is suffering from omega-3 deficiency. The Shangri-La Diet of the future, I believe, will have three main parts:

1. Some sort of oil for weight loss and other benefits, including better sleep, better skin, and omega-3s. If it has flavor, you close your nose while you ingest it.

2. Elegant little spray cannisters of food perfumes to vary the flavor of your food.

3. (For hot weather) Ice-cold fructose water. I think it’s a viable product, like ice tea.

Memorial University Continues to Destroy Its Reputation

Seth RobertsLeave a comment

A paper by Saul Sternberg and me questioned a 2001 Nutrition paper by Ranjit Chandra, a nutrition professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland. We were not the first to question Chandra’s published work. Many years earlier, a nurse named Marilyn Harvey, who worked for Chandra, complained to Memorial that Chandra could not have done the research he claimed to have done. It is now obvious that Harvey was right. A panel convened by Memorial, however, found that she was wrong — more precisely,

The university said it did conduct an investigation of Chandra’s research, but based on what it knew at the time, “properly determined there was insufficient evidence to sustain the complaint against Dr. Chandra.”

Harvey claimed that certain data didn’t exist. The Memorial panel was unable to figure out if this was right or wrong!

Harvey showed a lot of courage. She put herself at considerable risk by challenging Chandra, who was the best-known professor at Memorial. By doing a travesty of an investigation, Memorial University failed to protect her. And now Memorial University is defending what they did! Such a defense is a second travesty.

As the person responsible, the President of Memorial, Axel Meisen, continues to demonstrate his cluelessness. When the truth about Chandra became evident, he said, “I don’t think one can conclude that everything Dr. Chandra did is under suspicion.”

More about Chandra.

The New Yorker Crosses a Line

Seth Roberts2 Comments

This week’s New Yorker contains an article (humor by Larry Doyle) that can be fully appreciated only online — it is full of hyperlinks. A press release calls the online version “an interactive version” of the article. A better term would be “the real version.” It’s the difference between a sculpture (the online version) and a picture of a sculpture (the print version).

Before Spy ran into financial trouble, I had had approved an article about someone in the software industry. At the time, the Internet and web pages were just starting. I envisioned my article with lots of pseudo-hyperlinks (underlined bits of text in the main article connected to text boxes). Since there was no online Spy it would have just been a form of footnote or annotation. Alas, the article was canceled. My editor at Spy, Susan Morrison, now edits the section of The New Yorker in which this line-crossing Spy ish article has appeared. “We [the editors of Spy] try to find new ways to present information,” Susan once told me, as some staffers played a board game that appeared in the next issue. Larry Doyle used to write for Spy. Congrats to both of them.

Could this have been cleverly timed to coincide with publication of Doyle’s new book? Probably.

Addendum: Doyle himself comments:

I have a humor piece in the New Yorker today — and it’s interactive! The piece is a website devoted to wedding plans of one particularly ambitious bride, crammed with links both real and fabricated: to her blog; to a new movie starring Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Lopez; to a site on how to treat stab wounds. Once you’ve bought the magazine and read the story, go to gwynnanddavesharetheirjoy.com and poke around (You need to read the story first, or the website won’t make sense.) You can also read the story for free online, but where’s the fun in that?

Love that dare not speak its name. Use of the old-fashioned term interactive is a hint that something is amiss. It’s not interactive in the print version, Larry.

Underrated Tourist Activity

Seth Roberts1 Comment

Riding the bus. I dislike riding the bus where I live but in strange cities it turns out to be a great way to see the sights. Getting on a random bus has worked well for me in Shanghai and Seoul. I just ride until I see something interesting. Today I took a long bus ride in New Orleans to get to the local Whole Foods to buy flaxseed oil.

Life-Size Faces on YouTube

Seth Roberts3 Comments

My recent post about life-size faces; the comments are especially interesting. Here are some usable YouTube faces, thanks to MorningPerson:

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=Oneparkave

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=communitychannel

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=geriatric1927

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=LUCYinLA

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=IanCrossland

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=crossmack

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=faintstarlite

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=Paperlilies

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=xPLx

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=lonelygirl15 (the earlier entries are better)

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=GregSolomon

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=renetto

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=tokenblackchic

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=thehill88

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=littleloca

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=Emmalina

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=Emmalene

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=boh3m3

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=WilliamSledd

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=courtneyblaircameron

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=HappySlip

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=DIEBUNNYHATER

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=dabestdude

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=TipToeChick

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=bowiechick

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=losetogain

I also came across the following bloggers that looked promising but I did not get a chance to watch them before I stopped using YouTube for my morning sessions –

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=applemilk1988

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=corriev

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=cubefarm

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=davidnode

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=DMcLean1989

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=ExperimentsinHonesty

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=FantasticBabblings

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=jennfriedman

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=kazzart

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=kicesie

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=macgyvergg

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=omgheatherface

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=rebzugo

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=rosaku

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=SadieDammit

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=spricket24

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=sxephil

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=thaumata

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=thehurtone

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=thepoasm

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=tinydancer14

https://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=TJRScudieri

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=trixiepixiedixie

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=Tsuneni77

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=Urgelt

https://www.youtube.com/xgobobeanx

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=ysabellabravetalk

https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=ZenArcher

Where Did Blogs Come From?

Seth RobertsLeave a comment

The more I blog, the more I think about blogging. (And the more I enjoy blogs.) In an email to Tyler Cowen I wondered if blogs were a new art form. He replied:

I’ve long been interested in early literary models for bloggers, including Boswell, Pepys, Julio Cortazar, and John Cage (having a co blogger and comments introduces an aleatoric element)…I’m always looking for others…

I replied:

My literary model is Scheherazade. When I think of more standard precursors of blogs, I think of diaries and epistolary novels. Improvisational jazz, too, the way bloggers riff on something they’ve read. Also the Watts Towers — especially for MR.

I think the way bloggers inject emotion into non-fiction is something new in the world of expression. Robert Caro once said that he tried to inject desperation into every page of his bio of Lyndon Johnson. “Is there desperation on the page?” read a note to himself pinned near his typewriter.

Non-fiction with emotion isn’t easy, in other words. Caro’s books are fantastic achievements because he manages to convey emotion page after page for thousands of pages. Not just Johnson’s desperation — as a friend of mine said, Caro seems to “hate” Johnson. He certainly hated the later Robert Moses.

Blogging with emotion, however, is easy. Almost unavoidable. For post after post. Nobody blogs about stuff they don’t care about or feel strongly about. If you want to learn about something, find a blog about it.

Addendum: Speaking of blogs and art, this NY Times Mag article is excellent.

My Theory of Human Evolution (business book edition)

Seth Roberts2 Comments

My theory of human evolution says there are mechanisms that produce diversity of skills and knowledge. These mechanisms evolved because diversity of goods and services is crucial to a healthy economy. Human diversity generates economic diversity — the person who likes to paint becomes an artist, the person who likes to make things becomes an engineer. These differences are crucial because they allow trade. If everyone made the same things, there could be no trade and no gains from specialization. The more diversity, the better. This is the opposite of the way variation is viewed in statistics. A statistician thinks of variation in measurement as “error” — something to be reduced, perhaps by averaging. Variation is everywhere, of course; you can think of it as something to be encouraged or discouraged.

Human nature encourages diversity. You can build (a) institutions that encourage, benefit from, or at least accept human diversity or (b) institutions that discourage it. The former will work vastly better than the latter because the latter are always fighting human nature. It is the difference between swimming with the current and swimming against it. This is the heart of my criticism of higher education: It is anti-human-nature. It is anti-human-nature because every student in a class is treated the same. Every student is expected to learn the same things and is measured using the same yardstick. Such classes ignore diversity and try to reduce diversity (every student is supposed to learn the same stuff, thus making their brains more similar). They are ignoring and fighting human nature.

When I told Sarah Kapoor this critique, she recommended First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently (1999) by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. “You’ll like it,” she said. She was right. At the heart of what distinguishes better managers from worse managers, say the authors, is that the better managers have this “revolutionary insight”:

People don’t change that much. Don’t waste time trying to put in what was left out. [In other words, don’t try to make your employees identical.] Try to draw out what was left in.

In other words: 1. Start by accepting diversity. 2. Try to use it to advantage.

Better managers achieve better results, defined all sorts of ways, than worse managers. The author’s conclusions are based on a vast amount of research done by the Gallup Organization.

Christmas edition. American Idol edition.

Is the Goal of Education Obvious?

Seth RobertsLeave a comment

A Harvard task force has concluded that Harvard undergraduate education needs improvement. One task force member is Eric Mazur, a professor of physics. He has presumably given the matter a lot of thought. Here is what he does and says:

As a model for innovative teaching, Professor Skocpol [head of the task force] pointed to Professor Mazur, the physicist.

He threw out his lectures in his introductory physics class when he realized his students were not absorbing the underlying principles, relying instead on memory to solve problems. His classes now focus on students working in small groups.

“When I asked them to apply their knowledge in a situation they had not seen before, they failed,” Professor Mazur said. “You have to be able to tackle the new and unfamiliar, not just the familiar, in everything. We have to give the students the skills to solve such problems. That’s the goal of education.”

The other faculty in Professor Mazur’s department are surely terrific at tackling “new and unfamiliar” physics problems, which is the skill Professor Mazur wants to teach his students. Yet these other faculty are obviously not good teachers. (When he lectured, Mazur was simply imitating those around him.) I conclude that the skills needed to (a) do good physics research and (b) teach physics well are quite different. So why is Mazur emphasizing the skills needed to do the former (research) and not the latter (teaching)? And what about all the other jobs in the world — what do “you have to be able to” do in those jobs? The goal of education is not as obvious as Mazur claims.

The electrical charge of a single electron was first determined by Robert Millikan, who made a mistake in his calculations (wrong value for the viscosity of air). It was several years before this mistake was noticed. In the meantime, other physicists calculated the charge on a single electron. They did not make Millikan’s mistake — yet they got nearly the same (wrong) answer! Over time, the answers gradually drifted toward the correct answer.

That is essentially what is happening here. Mazur realizes something is wrong with the current system, but he has twisted his thinking — just as post-Millikan scientists determining the charge of an electron tweaked their equipment and data analyses — until the discrepancy is small enough to live with. The notion that “the goal of education” is being able to solve new and unfamiliar physics problems (or new and unfamiliar problems in general) doesn’t survive even a little scrutiny, but that’s what a Harvard professor who cares about education has come to believe.

The Man Who Walks Backwards

Seth RobertsLeave a comment

From the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine:

In his early 40s the torticollis began to worsen and was accompanied by increasing lumbar spine pain as he twisted his torso to compensate for a deviated field of vision. An occupational therapist suggested he try walking backwards, and this he did with some success. . . . Friends nicknamed him ‘The Sidewinder”. . . . He now never walks forwards unless asked.

Case report here.