Thursday, 28 July 2011

Health Supplement Efficacy Visualised

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/snake-oil-supplements/

Strong evidence includes:
  • folic acid for certain birth defects
  • green tea for cholestrol
  • probiotics for digestive health
  • vitamin D for general health
  • fish oil for blood pressure and secondary heart disease
  • st john's wort for depression
Slight or none:
  • dandeline
  • flaxseed oil
  • ginkgo bilboa
  • vitamin A
  • etc, etc, etc

Wednesday, 6 July 2011

Dutton's cross-cultural cluster criteria for art


  1. Direct pleasure - valued as a source of immediate experience
  2. Skill and Virtuosity - demonstrates specialized skills
  3. Style - made according to rules of form, composition and expression (while usually allowing or  celebrating departures)
  4. Novelty or Creativity - Valued and praised for originality.  Kitsch and craft use the style in an uncreative way.
  5. Criticism - artistic forms exist with parallel discourses of appreciation and judgement.
  6. Representation - In wildly varying degrees of naturalism, art objects represent real or imaginary experiences of the world.
  7. Special focus - art is bracketed off from ordinary life, "made special" by location, time,appurtenance, rituals, e.g. art gallery, opening, picture frame.
  8. Expressive individuality - potential to express individual personality through the work.
  9. Emotional saturation - not only the emotion of the content but the emotional tone of the work or performance.
  10. Intellectual challenge - utilize the combined variety of perceptual and intellectual capacities at a high level.
  11. Art traditions and institutions - works of art gain value from positions in the history of their traditions.
  12. Imaginative experience - (most importantly) artworks provide an imaginative experience for their makers and their audience.
Not all artwork will have all characteristics but they will generally show most.

    from Denis Dutton's The Art Instinct

    Tuesday, 5 July 2011

    Precision Planning

    Leap seconds: By international convention, UTC (which is an arbitrary human invention) is kept within 0.9 seconds of physical reality (UT1, which is a measure of solar time) by introducing a "leap second" in the last minute of the UTC year, or in the last minute of June.  [The deviation from UT1 varies "erratically" with changes in things like positions of planets, tides, weather, and ocean currents, which cause slight in the mass/angular momentum distribution of the earth.]

    Leap seconds don't have to be announced much more than six months before they happen. This is a problem if you need second-accurate planning beyond six months.
     I can cope.

    (from http://unix4lyfe.org/time)

    Monday, 4 July 2011

    Don't answer that phone!

    http://ashartus.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/cell-phones-and-cancer-revisited/

    "Ashartus" reviews two recent meta-analyses of mobile phone cancer risk.  One study found increased risk in the highest dosage group - extreme phoners - but lowered risk elsewhere.  This lowered risk is likely an artifact (we would think.)  The second study found no increased risk.  The data sets had various problems like self selection, self estimation and classification problems.  Some of the best data showed no risk and the epidemiology of the increased risk isn't quite as expected.

    Overall, I stand by my original conclusion that there is no reason to panic unless brain cancer incidence rates start to increase, but at the same time if you’re an extremely heavy user of cell phones it probably wouldn’t hurt to take at least minimal precautions. Also of note, the IARC evaluation mentions that the electromagnetic field exposure from newer 3G phones (or from Bluetooth headsets) is about 100 times lower than for traditional cell phones, which means that even if the amount of cell phone usage continues to increase, exposure will likely decrease.