Monthly Archive for April, 2009

TED Talks: Dan Barber

Published by Taylor on April 26, 2009 in Agriculture, Animals, Business, Food, Sustainability and TED Talks. View Comments

This is the first of an ongoing series in which we highlight particularly fascinating talks from some of the world’s most innovative thinkers.  These videos are featured courtesy of a Creative Commons license; for more on the TED conference (Technology, Entertainment, and Design), click here.

Dan Barber is a chef and restauranteur who visited a truly amazing farm in Spain that raises geese for fois gras in a shockingly humane and natural way.  The portrait Barber paints of the Spanish farmer is remarkable, and the amount of care that goes into raising these animals stands in astounding contrast to commercially-produced fois gras, beef, pork, poultry, corn, or soy.  It’s neat to watch a clear lover of food discuss a revelation about the production of ingredients and what it means to learn from nature.

You can also download this video to iTunes (MP4 file) by clicking here (“Save Link As” on Windows).

We’d love to hear your reactions in the comments.  In particular, I’m curious to know: is this destined to remain an inspirational micro-scale anecdote, or are there lessons in this story that could meaningfully impact our food systems at large?

The Science of Political Science

Published by Jarred on April 19, 2009 in Education, Politics and Science. View Comments

Back in January, I got into a debate with some work colleagues over the status of political science as a “true” scientific discipline.  Though I think one or two were playing devil’s advocate, the consensus seemed to be that political science was not worthy of the second half of its name.  I argued (and do believe), however, that it is indeed a valid science.

To be honest, I can’t remember my friends’ specific arguments (we may or may not have been sitting in a hot tub in the mountains and a few drinks in — thus making the debate fairly comical to begin with).  I’ll be sure to let them know I’ve blogged about it so they can correct, clarify, or elaborate on their arguments in the comments.  As I remember it, though, their main contention was that because political science is the study of human behavior, and because observations of human behavior cannot reliably be generalized and retested to form a consistent theory or law, the study of politics cannot be classified as a science in the same vein as physics, chemistry, or the other “natural” sciences.  It’s simply too flaky.

At Davidson (where Taylor and I went for undergrad and both majored in political science), there is a huge division among the department faculty on this point.  Currently, every political science major is required to take “Methods and Statistics in Political Science,” a course that is almost uniformly dreaded.  “I’m majoring in a social science precisely because I suck at math”, they complain.  “When will I ever use this again?”  The science and math wannabes that we are, Taylor and I loved it, and ended up working with our professor one summer on a quantitative study of how congressmen shape their political messaging.

The fear of the course stems mostly from a failure by the faculty to execute any kind of positive PR, because really, it’s not that bad and not that hard.  Anyone who is smart enough to get into Davidson can handle it.  The first half of the course doesn’t deal with a single number, formula, or regression model, but rather shows how to take a question of politics and attack it using the scientific method.  Delineate the specific question, form a hypothesis, decide what the variables are, and propose a way to run an experiment.  Not hard, right?  The second half is certainly more difficult because it delves into the quantitative realm using computer-aided regressions; but really, it’s nothing impossible and the professors are not only ready, but eager to help them understand and succeed.

Continue reading ‘The Science of Political Science’

Food for Thought (Sorry for the Silence)

Published by Taylor on April 9, 2009 in Culture, Energy, Environment, Lifestyle, Security, Twitter and Web 2.0. View Comments

Hey folks.  I’m back after a long day-job-driven haitus.  Things have been hectic, and the best way to jump back in seems to be some quick-blogging of items I’ve found intriguing over the past few weeks.

David Roberts at Grist offers a great primer on power grids, including the important distinction between a wide grid: “a new high-voltage backbone, with lines spanning the length and breadth of the country, able to carry electricity from anywhere it’s generated to anywhere it’s needed” and a smart grid: a transmission system that allows for distibuted production (think rooftop solar panels) and is capable of adjusting in real time to compensate for heavy usage, increased production, etc.  This is a recommended read to get a basic grasp of what David describes as two key power grid issues:

[O]ne grid issue is getting more power (transmission lines to new places) and one is using power more efficiently(smarter distributions systems). The politics around those two issues are quite different

Related, also courtesy of David: here’s a list of articles on my to-read list related to smart grids.

Jason Calacanis sent a long and thoughtful email about the ways in which anonymity online can be harmful to the extent that it erodes our empathy for other people. Jason goes so far as to call this trend a “disease”–”Internet Aspergers Syndrome”:

This disease affects people when their communication moves to digital, and the emotional cues of face-to-face interaction–including tone, facial expression and the so called “blush response”–are lost.

In this syndrome, the afflicted stops seeing the humanity in other people. They view individuals as objects, not individuals. The focus on repetitive behaviors–checking email, blogging, [and] twittering…–combines with an inability to feel empathy and connect with people.

This is a provocative thought, and it does seem to me that the next big trend online (web 3.0?) will be authenticated identities driving the social media we’ve taken for granted.  Calacanis mentions that social networks in South Korea require a social security number to sign up.  There will inevitably be a tension between the norms that have developed in the web’s infancy and the changes that will be necessary to combat what is moving from a medium where goodwill and trust could be taken for granted toward an anything-goes medium where accountability is virtually (pun intended) nonexistent.  How we choose to make that shift–requiring social security numbers, for instance, might be a bit invasive by American standards–is unclear, but I think many of us are starting to feel fatigue with unaccountable spammers and trolls ruining the web for everyone else.

I’ve come across a fair amount of criticism recently of URL-shortening services (like tinyURL, bit.ly, Digg, others).  As TechCrunch explains:

Nobody really likes [URL shorteners], but they are a necessary evil. How else are you going to share links on Twitter without having the URL take up half the message?

The criticisms focus on a number of issues:

  1. URL shorteners obscure links, which opens unsuspecting users to spam attacks;
  2. shorteners, to quote the founder of del.icio.us, “add another layer of indirection to an already creaky system” and slow the web;
  3. some shorteners, like Digg, deny direct traffic to sites by using a frame instead of directing clicks to the original material (Facebook users will find this familiar, since shared items are framed in a similar fashion);
  4. all shortened links are dependent on the continued existence of the proponderance of shortener start-ups AND the perpetuity of their terms of service (in other words, the guarantee that your tinyURL will not be reassigned or disappear)

I worry about the Digg/Facebook model gaining traction, since “link juice” for original material is what feeds the web’s content producers.  But I think in the future you’ll see more of this type of functionality: an interim landing page where visitors will see a full URL before continuing to the source material.  If content aggregators (I’m looking at you, Digg) can add value by previewing pages and layering social rankings or other features, this could be a win-win-win proposition: People clicking shortened links are protected from spam; the URL shortening service has an opportunity to advertise and lure visitors to other material; the content provider receives a direct traffic boost.

That’s all for now, though I should be blogging regularly again next week.