08 AUG 2013 by ideonexus

 The Siren Server

A Siren Server, as I will refer to such a thing, is an elite computer, or coordinated collection of computers, on a network. It is characterized by narcissism, hyperamplified risk aversion, and extreme information asymmetry. It is the winner of an all-or-nothing contest, and it inflicts smaller all-or-nothing contests on those who interact with it. Siren Servers gather data from the network, often without having to pay for it. The data is analyzed using the most powerful available computers, ...
  1  notes

Web services that entice people to contribute to them, and whose contributions are then aggregated in various forms for the profit of the server owner.

11 JUN 2012 by ideonexus

 Science is Disconnected from the Needs of Man

A plain, reasonable working man supposes, in the old way which is also the common-sense way, that if there are people who spend their lives in study, whom he feeds and keeps while they think for him—then no doubt these men are engaged in studying things men need to know; and he expects of science that it will solve for him the questions on which his welfare, and that of all men, depends. He expects science to tell him how he ought to live: how to treat his family, his neighbours and the men o...
Folksonomies: science meaning
Folksonomies: science meaning
  1  notes

It gives useless facts, while the average man is seeking meaning.

30 MAY 2012 by ideonexus

 The Importance of Large Samples

Any experiment may be regarded as forming an individual of a 'population' of experiments which might be performed under the same conditions. A series of experiments is a sample drawn from this population. Now any series of experiments is only of value in so far as it enables us to form a judgment as to the statistical constants of the population to which the experiments belong. In a great number of cases the question finally turns on the value of a mean, either directly, or as the mean diffe...
Folksonomies: statistics sampling
Folksonomies: statistics sampling
  1  notes

Small samples introduce two potential errors.

04 JAN 2012 by ideonexus

 Online Shopping Replaces Sales People

During the Great Recession, nearly 1 in 12 people working in sales in America lost their job, accelerating a trend that had begun long before. In 1995, for example, 2.08 people were employed in “sales and related” occupations for every $1 million of real GDP generated that year. By 2002 (the last year for which consistent data are available), that number had fallen to 1.79, a decline of nearly 14 percent.
Folksonomies: employment automation
Folksonomies: employment automation
  1  notes

Everytime you purchase something online, that's something you didn't purchase from a retail clerk.

17 JAN 2011 by ideonexus

 Notes from the Science-Art Session

No direct quote for this meme.
  1  notes

Summaries of comments made during the science art session by artists and audience members:

  • Hawks – interested in reconstruction, detailed realism, Neanderthal terminator, there is a tradition in anthropology of illustrating, Neanderthal are reconstructed to look doomed and confused, like it when illustrators and artists bring humanity into them, humor, Kenise Brothers give smiles to them, pose them, which isn’t scientific because we don’t know these things, but also more scientific because it isn’t so clinical
  • Orr – orogenic.blogspot.com geometric, abstract illustrations of birds
  • Links ot other artists on the wiki page: Carl Buell, etc http://scio11.wikispaces.com/Science-Art
  • Radiohead/Nine Inch Nails Model: put a lot free stuff online in hopes of eventually being hired to do something custom, people expect images for free
  • Criticism of Mellow's Darwin painting: the steps were too linear, it should have been a bush growing out of his head
  • Svpow.wordpress.com – fantasy images of brachiosaurs, not scientifically accurate, but memorable. Brian Ang.
  • My Favorite Anthropology Sculpture of Homo Erectus at the Hall of Human Origins - post a link to this image in the wiki.
  • The monkey rising to become man iconic image is really wrong and hurts evolution’s image outside of the field. Mitochondria is another example, in cells they are not blobs, but are networked.