Aces Full of Links

Piña Colada Banana Smoothie

Ryan and I met at 5 Guys this week to discuss our collaboration on a new course we will be proposing at the university. Next door is a Tropical Smoothie Cafe’ which has gotten his attention lately with their peanut butter cup smoothie. I decided to indulge in their version of the Piña Colada - the Tropi-Colada Smoothie. It was pretty awesome. They have many different flavors to choose from; it’s a smoothie-lover’s paradise.

However, when I’m stuck hope on a rainy day, and I have lots of homework to do, I NEED MY SMOOTHIES. I have to make them myself. Making my own version of this smoothie was not all that difficult, so until Tripical Smoothie Cafe delivers, I’ll be making these for myself.

Piña Colada Banana Smoothie

• 2 oz coconut milk
• 6 ice cubes
• 1 frozen banana, chunked
• 6 oz of pineapple juice (a 6 oz can, for example)
• 10 chunks of frozen pineapple
• 2/3 cup of nonfat vanilla yogurt
• 2 Tbsp powdered sugar
• 1/2 tsp coconut extract (or imitation)
• 2 tsp dried egg whites (or approx 3 Tbsp pasteurized egg whites or egg substitute)
  

Place all the above ingredients in a good blender. Blend continuously on a medium speed for 10 seconds and then pulse 5 times for a half second each. Repeat 4 times. Or use whatever method your blender recommends for smoothies.

Makes enough for 2 smoothies.

The last 2 ingredients are optional. The egg whites fluff up the smoothie for a better texture. Egg substitute is egg whites, essentially.

If you buy a can of coconut milk, put the remaining liquid in an ice cube tray. Once frozen, transfer the cubes into a freezer bag and use them any time you want a smoothie. Ice cubes are usually around 1 ounce.

Make sure you peel your bananas before freezing them. Buy extra bananas and as they start to get too ripe, throw them in a freezer bag for your next smoothie.

Highlighter Raw Data

Have not done any analysis on that highlighter survey data, but here is the raw data from the survey, if you’re interested:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tytFhIuDnNbqQ5cAlYIffUA&output=html

Analysis to come at some point.

Please Take My Highlighter Survey

Won’t you please take my survey about highlighter colors?

No, I’m not doing formal research on highlighters. This is just for fun and because it’s easy to do in Google Forms. But I am also curious.

Facebook Group Hysteria

Facebook is a place where you can join groups to tell people about things you like and dislike, things that you want and want to avoid. But group-joining is sometimes more than that. Facebook groups sometimes seek to cause change, usually by promising some effect for some critical number of followers. Witness these real Facebook groups:

If this group Reaches 500,000 members I will name my son Batman

Think of the children!

For Every 1,000 that join this group I will donate $1 for Darfur.

It’s a worthy cause (er, what was the specific charity again) but I think my clicks are worth more than a tenth of a penny!

I love JESUS! If you love JESUS join this group.

Wait - you wouldn’t be exploiting people’s religious beliefs just to see how many people will join your group, would you? No.

If a billion people join this group Mark is allowed to get a Labrador

I dunno, Leah. If you don’t want Mark to get that Labrador, you might want to set the goal a little higher than a sixth of the world population.

Facebook: SWITCH BACK TO THE OLD NEWS FEED!!!

As far as Internet emphasis goes, three exclamation points is not all that many; however I’m pretty sure this cause doesn’t even warrant that many.

Here are some groups that have yet to be created, but they are clearly inevitable:

• If 5 people join this group, my wife will get off the couch and get me a beer
• For every pi people who join this group, I will donate the square root of negative one dollars to mathematics education
• If 666 people join this group, the Lord of Darkness will trade your souls for my 15 minutes of fame on a reality TV show
• If billions of people join this group, McDonald’s will bring back the McDLT!!!!!!!!!!!!
• JOIN THIS GROUP IF YOU DON’T WANT ME TO PUNCH YOU IN THE FACE
• If this group reaches 3,000,000 people, unicorns will be real

That Song Must Die 10

I have to knock the balloon boy story off the top of my blog. What better way to do this than with a new “That Song Must Die!”

But… oh no! One of these songs is growing on me!

1) “It’s Me, Bitches”

This might actually be a decent song if it weren’t for the singing/rapping. And the weird whooooooop! noise. Which means I guess I think the drums are OK. Not safe for work language in this one. Don’t people get bored with this stuff. “It’s me, bitches” is essentially a rap version of “Pop goes the weasel.” It even has a kid dancing. To profanity. Charming!

2) Take U to Da Movies

What the…? If you listen to just one Sudanese rapper today, listen to this one. BANGS is his name, though he inexplicably does not wear them in his hairstyle. There is something compelling about the innocent title and refrain, and the electronic tune played on a $20 Casio keyboard from 1983.

Maybe I’ve been working too hard, but now I feel like a trip to the movies. “YEEEAH.” Lord help me, but this song is starting to grow on me. But it is not for me to say which song must die — that’s your job. Tell me: WHICH SONG MUST DIE? And why?

Unrelated Bonus: While searching for “bangs” I found this picture, and I’m pretty sure this girl is made of a space age polymer.

Bad Headlines: People Don’t Even Need Help

My last post expressed my unhappiness with the idea of headlines being chosen by the number of people who click the headline. my opinion on that is that headlines become part of the story and so click-based headlines is not going to get you more accurate headlines, just more sensational headlines.

But bad headlines are not new, and you don’t need robots to create them. I thought I’d post this example from the recent “balloonboy” silliness.

Sheriff: No indication balloon ordeal was hoax

That’s the headline.

Here’s what it says in the story:

The sheriff’s office said it does not believe at this point that the balloon episode was a stunt, but investigators planned to question the family again Saturday.

“The sheriff’s office doesn’t believe” is different from “no evidence.” The sheriff has a responsibility to be very conservative in his accusations. He may find some scant evidence but find it is not enough to move forward with, in which case he would make a statement such as you see here. And perhaps follow up with some more questions. (The additional questions certainly indicate he still believes there is a possibility it was a hoax)

Heck — people have already seen plenty of evidence that satisfies a much lower criteria than law enforcement must meet. The father is an attention-seeking jerk. The parents are willing to put the whole family on TV hours after this ordeal, waking the kids up at some ungodly hour in the morning mountain time to get on a nationwide morning show. They let their kid vomit on national TV and don’t ask to stop the interview; the interviewer had to suggest it. The kid keeps referring to everything as being “for a show” — indicating that this instruction came from his parents. And then there’s the possibility that the family called the media as well at 911.

There is definitely some evidence that it was a hoax. Enough evidence to prosecute? I don’t think so. But indications? Certainly. The man has an absurd lack of judgment and is an attention-seeker. That’s not evidence, but it’s enough for people to judge him harshly. And I don’t think that judgment is unfair.

The headline is in conflict with the facts (and even the story itself). Considering the headline as part of the story, the story is self-contradictory. And the least accurate part is in giant, red type.

It may well be that “Sheriff doesn’t believe balloon ordeal was hoax” is less compelling than “Sheriff: No indication balloon ordeal was hoax.” But, so what? Well, it is a big deal if it means the difference between your story getting clicked and you getting paid.

Is this the tip of an iceberg? I’ve always taught the kids that commercials were essentially institutionalized (and adult-approved) lying for the sake of making money. But what happens as these principles are applied to our information sources? I guess we know what happens: trading accuracy for dollars becomes a science and sensationalism wins.

Accuracy and your brain lose.

Argue, if you like, that the truth can still be discerned from this story. Fine. Then we can talk about percentages of people who are able to come away with an accurate message, or about the the trade-off being increased cognitive load required to make the news useful vs. dollars. In the latter case, this would be the informational version of shrinking the contents of a box of cereal as a sneaky way to raise the price of the cereal.

I think it’s no good.

Robots Ate Your Brain: Marketing and Headlines

This Fast Company article proves that the humans have given up and are going to allow the robots programmed by marketing experts to eat our brains. It’s about The Huffngton Post using an algorithm to decide what headlines stories will run with.

The idea is simple; for the first five minutes that a story is posted, two separate headlines are randomly displayed to readers. the one that gets the most clickthroughs is considered the better headline, and so that one is shown to all the readers after that.

It’s true, a headline is important for bringing readers in. A headline is also important to framing an article and informing people who are just browsing the headlines.

Is optimizing clickthroughs the same as optimizing the value to the reader? Reader value is in how quickly and accurately the headline informs the reader. This algorithm only cares about clicks.

We can guess that what gets people to click: sensationalism. Subtly sacrificing value for attention is one of the ways your world becomes dumbed down, replacing expertise with algorithms. I am not opposed to algorithms that attempt to capture, recreate or enhance expertise, but this one cares nothing about value or meaning.

Apple Butter

My first attempt at canning happened yesterday. I cooked down about 20 apples into 3 pints of what approximates apple butter. It’s really a thick, spiced apple filling. I think it would be excellent spread on shortbread, or heated and placed on top of vanilla ice cream.

In any case, I went to the trouble of canning 6 half-pints of this stuff. Gave them the 10 minute boiling water bath and all. But Maggie is still afraid they would breed botulism, so they’re sitting in the fridge.

They’re flavored with cinnamon, nutmeg, clove and a tiny bit of ginger. Sweetened with caramel squares and some brown sugar. It’s tart, strongly apple-flavored and good stuff.

Do Your Disney Research!

I couldn’t help but comment on this New York Times review (from Seth Schiesel) of Dead Space Extraction for the Wii:

You know the Disney theme park rides, like the Haunted Mansion, where you climb into one of those little clamshell contraptions, and it moves along a track while swiveling and tilting to show you different scenes? Well, what if you gave all the riders some sort of paintball-style infrared rifle and put targets to shoot at in each scene? Something along the lines of “Shoot the vampire with the silver bullet before he eats Sally Sue.” […]

I want full credit when such attractions start popping up at amusement parks around the country in the next few years.

Wait, you mean like this?

That would be Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin. It’s been around for over a decade.

So I don’t expect credit will be coming your way any time soon, Mr. Schiesel. It’s good for video game reviewers to leave the house once in a while, or even do their research.

You can even download an online game that says it allows you to collaborate with theme park visitors.

Best Spam I’ve Gotten This Year

I got some spam this morning that was non-offensive. It was such a refreshing change from usual spam that I thought I would share it.

From: Mr. Dany

Hi Sir,
How are you.
I make a new bollywood movie and I want a actor. If r u interested please reply me immediately.

Regards
Dany

I don’t want to encourage spammers, but I would love to write this back:

To: Mr. Dany

Hi Sir, right back at you!
I am fine. How are you?
I would love to be in a new Bollywood movie! However, I am a little busy at the moment with school and work. Also, I am nowhere near India, so commuting might be a problem. Other than that, I am pretty keen and so I would wonder if it’s OK if I get back to you on this after June of 2013?

Warmest regards,
James

Late Merge Studies Indicate It Is Faster and Safer

When you are driving on a highway and your lane is closing, do you merge as soon as you see the signs or do you wait until the last second to merge?

It turns out that this is a very contentious question with strong feelings attached. When I brought it up the last time on my blog over 2 years ago I found that while I believe that it is more efficient to merge at the last second (in a zipper fashion with each lane taking turns) close friends of mine had contempt for late merge behavior. Unfortunately for them, I did not find early-merge arguments convincing. While I completely understood that perception of late merge behavior was at the least, a black mark against it, I am one who has trouble letting go of a better solution just because other people are not convinced.

Yeah, these things stay on my mind for a long time.

The issue came up on Reddit today. it prompted me to read some responses and I was happy to see some of my same arguments used. But there were also references to scientific studies done, so I tried to look some of those up for you. Here’s some info I encountered, for you to read or ignore at your pleasure:

• Here is the Reddit thread where you can see people mentioning that late merging eases a backup by making more use of the roadway. It appears that in light traffic it doesn’t matter when people merge, but in heavy traffic, late merging is better.
• • The rules in Germany are cited: “Heavy traffic rules: Whenever traffic is heavily congested, normal right-of-way rules go out the window and the “zipper rule” (Reißverschluß) goes into effect. This means that cars feed one at a time alternating from each direction, regardless of who has the posted right-of-way. The “zipper rule” also applies when one lane ends and merges into another. Each vehicle in the through lane must allow one vehicle from the truncated lane to merge in.” (The zipper rule occurs at the point of forced merge.)
• Systems have been adopted in Minnesota and other states to referee the zipper system. [PDF] Based on what they refer to as traffic science, late merging is recognized as better, and so they are attempting to train people to expect late merge behavior and to make it even more efficient.
• • “When traffic is heavy and slow, it is actually much safer for motorists to remain in their current lane until the point where traffic can orderly take turns merging which is generally near the “MERGE” sign. Unfortunately, while the safer procedure is legal, it is not what has been taught.”
• This columnist at the Oregonian found people reacted quite violently to his suggestion that traffic science supported late merging. “I hope you die”
• If you’re so inclined, here is a research study on the development of a system to take advantage of the benefits of late merging. [.DOC format] It’s got references to support a number of claims about late merging (known as “static late merge”:
• • increases work zone throughput
  • decreases travel time
  • reduces road congestion
  • reduces queue length
  • decreases potential of rear-end collision
  • decreases lane-straddle conflicts

Perhaps this will convince nobody and states will have to continue to think up ways to force people to merge at the last second. In the meantime, at least I’ve got science on my side while the early merge folks are cursing at me. But instead of cursing, why not consider just staying in your lane and merging at the last moment, like a zipper? I promise to alternate and let you in if you’re next to me.

(I will be happy to browse any research that supports early merging. I would like to know the rationale behind any such research.)

The Perfect Enemy

It is said that the perfect is the enemy of the good. That’s a lesson that many perfectionists have a problem internalizing.

One of the hallmarks of perfectionism is low productivity; a perfectionist is often someone who has trouble starting projects, works hard and then doesn’t get much done in the end. How can someone work so hard and have low productivity? Because they’re not happy with the work that they’re producing.

I don’t think I’m a perfectionist, but this brief blog post on the Harvard Business Publishing website offered some solutions for perfectionists. these points made me realize that I fall into some of the same traps. And since some people I know have complained about perfectionist tendencies, I thought I’d bring this to their attention.

Some important points from that post:

• Folks who undervalue their expertise have trouble starting projects.
• The same folks have trouble finishing projects when they transfer the feelings of inferiority to their product.
• Just get started (it’s better to produce something and overcome inertia)
• Do what feels right to you (help yourself avoid being sabotaged by the real or imagined criticism of others)
• Choose your colleagues wisely (you want encouraging and honest feedback, even when it is critical. Jealousy, insecurity and arrogance from your trusted colleagues, or your boss, are dangerous to your success)

Two big ideas that resonated with me:

The world doesn’t reward perfection; it rewards productivity.

This is a huge idea. The perfectionist will respond: “yeah, but who wants to produce a whole bunch of crap?” or “Who will want the whole bunch of crap I produce if I lower my standards?” This is where you have to rely on others to support you and trust them to tell you when your stuff is crap. If you write 4 novels and one of them is crap, then you have 3 good novels.

This idea is built into Agile programming methods which strive to get programmers producing solutions to problems and avoid them getting mired in perfectionist traps, or adopting super-rigorous approaches that set the bar far too high for anyone to get anything done.

Catch someone doing seven things right before you point out one thing they’re doing wrong.

This advice is for managers. I’ve seen it happen before: managers can sap the life and confidence right out of a worker. There is nothing more sad than someone who is working hard and producing to get the wrong kind of feedback and have the rug pulled out from under them. Yes, workers need to be managed and corrected, but worker enthusiasm is like the goose that laid the golden egg. Kill that goose and suddenly you’re out of a renewable resource that is vital to the productive workplace.

Unfortunately, not everyone can choose his boss, so workers whose managers have not learned this lesson are the ones who really need some good advice. The only thing I can tell you, from previous experience, is that if you’re not getting support from your manager, build your own resolve and confidence by banning closer together with friends and coworkers. Don’t avoid criticism, but seek out the most constructive criticism.

Smile!

A coworker was telling me that it creeps her out when some random stranger tells her to smile. I’ve never had this happen to me, but I have had other women tell me that it happens to them, and that they don’t really enjoy being told that. I don’t blame them. It’s somewhat intrusive. Telling someone to smile is not the same as trying to do something for someone to make them smile. There are often legitimate reasons for not smiling, and I think people should be allowed to express whatever emotion they’re feeling, not what emotion those around them would rather see.

This may not be the most civil suggestion, but I offer the following:

The next time some random stranger tells you to smile, you could punch him in the nose and then say:

“The next time you see me, you’re not going to say ‘smile,’ you’re going to say ‘don’t punch me in the nose.’ And then I might smile.”

As always, let your own conscience guide you.

Zotero Tips

I found this post on Zotero tips on another blog and thought it might be of interest to my researching colleagues:

12 must know Zotero tips and techniques

Some of the tips are probably already familiar to you, but one in particular was completely new to me: Zotero can index your PDFs and make your whole library searchable. (Tip #4)

Have Zotero index your PDFs
Zotero can index your PDF attachments and make them fully searchable, turning your library from a mere linked catalogue into a Google Books of sorts. The option is turned off by default because it relies on an external open source program (pdf2txt) which is not distributed with Zotero. However, Zotero can automatically install it and enable fulltext indexing: simply go to Preferences > Search and click on the ‘Check for installer’ button. For more info see pdf fulltext indexing in the Zotero documentation.

Thank you, Mark at The Ideophone, for that tip.

He also suggests a saved search to keep track of recent additions. I just sort the references by Date Added. But having a “new” group folder for papers that need to be read or have their metadata cleaned up (“ingested”, in his parlance) is a great idea. It’s like a reference to-do list.

Check it out.

(Zotero is a tool for keeping track of research papers.)

(Crossposted toIndentured Academitude)

When Children Ask the Hard Questions

Kids come up with questions you can’t answer as a parent. You can try to be prepared, but you’re going to get those tough questions, and often there really isn’t an easy answer. Or the real answer is too complex for them.

For example, my daughter just asked us:

“Why did they cancel Arrested Development when the third season won an Emmy?”

Sometimes it’s tough being a parent.