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Tuesday, May 23 2000

40th Anniversary of "The Pill"

At about.com's pro-choice subsite, Margaret Sykes says The Pill set sexual practice and morality back to the way they were before the introduction of agriculture and herding, and that that's a good thing. Aside from quick mention of modern-day hunting tribes, she doesn't provide any evidence.

The Family Browser

From a Wired article:

Likewise, a novel retort to the current community-building craze was Suzanne Hin's "Scope Browser," which randomly groups users into "families." There's no logic to the selection process, and you're stuck with your family for life, so you better make the best of it. Family members can contact each other for advice or chat...

Wednesday, May 17 2000

High-Cholesterol Gene Pinpointed in Study on Black Men

Wired article says "African-American black men" with a particular form of the MTP gene have higher cholesterol than black men with different forms of that gene. The study was done on black men because "they tend to have higher rates of heart disease than people of European descent and because they often have higher cholesterol levels."

Tuesday, May 16 2000

Hindsight Bias, medical errors

It's not publicly available, but my old employer The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article by Hal R. Arkes detailing a study he (and others) performed in 1988 which, he says, shows the effects of hindsight bias, or Monday morning quarterbacking for us laymen. Essentially, he showed 1 group of doctors a set of symptoms for a patient and asked them for a diagnosis. Then he showed a second group the same set of symptoms, plus an autopsy report which made it clear what the patient was suffering from, but told them to ignore the autopsy report, and base a decision just on the initial symptoms. The second group, though told to ignore the end report, were more likely to choose the accurate diagnosis.

The lesson: knowing the proper decision to make after the fact taints the ability to judge already-made decisions.

Monday, May 15 2000

Ford Motor Company admits SUVs are dangerous for the environment and other cars

Salon's article consists of reaction paragraphs from environmentalists and auto-industry-boosters to the announcement from Ford Chairman Ford that SUVs contribute more to global warming than smaller cars, and generally cause more damage than other cars in collisions. They seem puzzled and dismissive of the admission, but Ford's message seems on-target to me. Message part one: SUVs are generally bad for the rest of the world, but if you're going to buy them, you might as well buy them from us. Message part 2: we build these damaging vehicles because you people buy them; if you care about the environment, buy our more-expensive, but smaller-impact, SUVs. Message part 3: we don't feel like lying about this.

Friday, May 12 2000

Masturbate-a-thon

Damn - I missed the 2nd annual Masturbate-A-Thon. Maybe next year.

Thursday, May 11 2000

Why We Shop

Nice article at Salon in favor of shopping, pointing out that materialism ain't all bad.

Monday, May 8 2000

Everything

Popped over to Everything, the Blockstackers' lesser-known project. It purports to (try to) be a compendium of all knowledge - of everything. The entries on girlfriend are of the "they don't exist" and "not really worth it" (tongue-in-cheekly) variety. In this way, Everything succeeds in demonstrating the truth of Larry Wall's attitude that successful (open-source) software projects are social projects as much as they are technological projects. (Subtext: Everything is failing because its contributors tend to think and submit in the same general way. (Which is not meant as an insult to the contributors, but an observation on what the project lacks.))

Me Human, You Alien

Jonathan Vos Post offers advice on how to communicate with aliens, in case you ever meet one walking down the street. Best piece of advice: carry $3.27 in specific coins, so you can build a model of the Solar System and demonstrate your knowledge of local geography.

About this site

This is the personal web site for Edward (Ed) Piou. Consisting mainly of a blog (operational since 1999) and various photos.

Some online projects I'm working on

Politics

Charity, Non-profits...

A while ago, I decided to put my money where my mind is on a (roughly) monthly basis and give to:

Photos

Public events documented through pictures...