I see brilliant people

Just catching up with old news. In this case, it's a TED presentation, Talks Pattie Maes demos the Sixth Sense, which was posted in March of this year. It's an absolutely brilliant synthesis of technologies: computer, telephone, user interface, etc.

In a nutshell, it's a demonstration of a device that lets individuals pull up and display data on just about anything, from just about anywhere.

Gay rights are apparently not for the faint

An interesting bit of research appeared in the June 3, 2009, ChronicleOnline from Cornell University. It says that there's a correlation between a person's susceptibility to being more easily disgusted and political conservatism.

Assistant professor of psychology at Cornell, David Pizarro, surveyed people with two indexes: the Disgust Sensitivity Scale, and a political ideology scale.

Here are a few cherry-picked highlights from the article:

• Participants who rated higher in disgust sensitivity were more likely to oppose gay marriage and abortion, issues that are related to notions of morality or purity. The researchers also found a weak correlation between disgust sensitivity and support for tax cuts, but no link between disgust sensitivity and the other issues...
• Conservatives have argued that there is inherent wisdom in repugnance; that feeling disgusted about something -- gay sex between consenting adults, for example -- is cause enough to judge it wrong or immoral, even lacking a concrete reason. Liberals tend to disagree, and are more likely to base judgments on whether an action or a thing causes actual harm....
• The research speaks to a need for caution when forming moral judgments, Pizarro added. "Disgust really is about protecting yourself from disease; it didn't really evolve for the purpose of human morality," he said. "It clearly has become central to morality, but because of its origins in contamination and avoidance, we should be wary about its influences."

I'm not sure how to draw my own conclusions. I'm not particularly disturbed by animal blood and guts (human is a very different story), but I am very wary of the gun control agenda. Certain scenes in Brokeback Mountain really give me the willies (no pun intended), but I strongly feel that homosexuals should have equal rights under the law.

Do these contradictions make me a conservative liberal or a liberal conservative?

Rx with Blemishes

After doing a bit of research, I thought I'd plop down $10 of my hard-earned money on what is the most expensive iPhone applet that I've so far purchased: MotionPHR for the iPhone. This applet is billed as providing "a secure record of you and your families (sic) health."

At this point, I'm not into using all of the program's existing bells & whistles. I was interested in two things: pharmaceutical and immunology records. In the day since I've begun to noodle with this program, I can only address my observations about the pharmaceutical side of things.

In an earlier post, I talked about how Google Health makes use of pull-downs and hyperlinks when you add medications to your profile. Perhaps that spoiled me, because I was really disappointed when I discovered that I had to manually type everything into the MotionPHR applet. Forget pull-downs and forget spell checking. To its credit, MotionPHR does let you record the Rx number of a prescription, which is something that Google Health didn't do. However, back to manual data entry: I had a bunch of prescriptions to key in, and I though that it was stupidly inefficient of the program to not make use of the first instance of the pharmacy name to allow for speedier entry on subsequent prescriptions. I mean, most people use a single pharmacy for their various prescriptions, so why should they have to type the same name and phone number each time?

And the phone number is dumb, too. One of my reasons for putting that prescription info in there in the first place was so that I could call my pharmacy's automated voice mail system for refills. MotionPHR does not link the phone number field to the iPhone!

Another feature in the medications portion of the applet lets you record and increment the number of refills. Missing, however, is a calendar entry for when the prescription expires.

If you have a Google account (and who doesn't?) MotionPHR uses 64-bit encryption to back your medical data into a Google Docs account. It's only for archival storage, but it is a handy feature. MotionPHR's Blogspot site mentions that a future incarnation of the applet will soon let users be able to "sync their Personal Health data with Google Health and their iPhone." This could be a good thing,^tm in that one might be able to use Google Health and a real keyboard for entering their prescription information. Or, as MountainLaurel commented on my earlier Google Health posting, it could also be a bad thing.

Google Health

Google has a new toy in their box: Google Health, which allows you to store and manage your health information in a central location. If you want to know more about it, read About Google Health.

One of the impressive looking features lets you import medical records. There's a page of links to providers of internet-based health records. If you know who has your records, you can set up an account with them and ask them to transfer your records to Google. They're supposed to be your records, after all. The problem for me is that I haven't a clue as to which provider may have my records. I guess my doctor might know.

Another potentially neat feature lets you add your medications to your profile. There are easy-to-use pull-downs for generic and brand name drugs, as well as appropriate selectors for dosage and frequency. All of this is conveniently hyperlinked to drug information sites. While it looks like an encouraging start, however, I'm already disappointed in what it doesn't do. There's a Prescription column that I cannot enter data into or edit. This is where I would hope to be able to put in my pharmacy's prescription number, expiration dates and related information.

Google Health is like a boat-load of lawyers sinking into the ocean: a good start. It's still flawed in the type of information that I would like to be able to put into it, but I'm willing to give it a tentative one thumb up.

Why I Have the Blues

After three years of research, an Austrian chemist has announced that it's a type of body hair that is responsible for trapping lint and drawing it into a navel.

A March 1 article in Telegraph.co.uk, Revealed: The secrets of belly button fluff, reports that "the scaly structure of the hair enhances the 'abrasion of minuscule fibres from the shirt' and directs the lint towards the belly button."

Doctor Georg Steinhauser goes on to say that hair scales "act like a kind of barbed hooks" (Velcro?)

Shaving one's belly hair will result in a fluff-free navel, and a belly button ring seems to also be effective at sweeping away fibers before they have a chance to lodge.

An earlier Australian study determined that the "typical" carrier of navel fluff is "a slightly overweight middle-aged male with a hairy abdomen."

I'm going to see if I can have my belly button declared as a national breeding ground and sanctuary.

Collective Cluelessness

This information comes from a research study, so it must be true.

Brenda M. Trofanenko, a professor of curriculum and instruction in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says that teaching history by rote is a pedagogical method guaranteed to get students to tune out and adds to our collective civic and historical cluelessness.

“We need to start thinking differently about our students’ abilities,” she said. “They can think critically and engage in historical inquiry if they’re actually given the opportunity. Instead, we make them learn facts and test them on their ability to regurgitate them at the end of the week. I think that’s really insulting to them.”

It's interesting that the hypothesis blames accountability measures of the No Child Left Behind law. If it can't be quantified, it can't be measured. So the easy way to quantify knowledge of history is to rely upon memorization of dates. It's so much harder to grade an essay.

She's Gonna Blow!

According the the Associated Press, Alaska's Mount Redoubt is about to blow its top.

On Nov. 5, geologists noted changed emissions and minor melting near the Redoubt summit and raised the threat level from green to yellow. It jumped to orange — the stage just before eruption — on Sunday in response to a sharp increase in earthquake activity below the volcano.

Interestingly, Alaska's Volcano Observatory website is so swamped right now that it's posting this message:

Due to very high load on our web server, we can only support a very limited website. We are working to remedy the situation as quickly as possible. Thanks!

If you're as curious about the scheme behind the treat levels, there is a nice explanation on Wikipedia. Realizing that information on Wikipedia can be somewhat fleeting, let me provide the warning scheme here:

Code	Description
GREEN	Volcano is in its normal "dormant" state or, after a change from a higher level: Volcanic activity considered to have ceased, and volcano reverted to its normal, non-eruptive state.
YELLOW	Volcano is exhibiting signs of elevated unrest above known background levels. or, after a change from a higher level: Volcanic activity has decreased significantly but continues to be closely monitored for possible renewed increase.
ORANGE	Volcano is exhibiting heightened unrest with increased likelihood of eruption, or, Volcanic eruption underway with no or minor ash emission (specify ash-plume height if possible).
RED	Eruption is forecast to be imminent with significant emission of ash into the atmosphere likely. or, Eruption is underway with significant emission of ash into the atmosphere (specify ash-plume height if possible).
BROWN	Cataclysmic eruption is in progress. or, OMG!