Monday, December 20, 2010

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Creating a phony health scare with the power of statistical correlation

Posted: 19 Dec 2010 05:03 PM PST

cell tower.jpg

In the United Kingdom, the more mobile phone towers a county has, the more babies are born there every year. In fact, for every extra cell phone tower beyond the average number, a county will see 17.6 more babies. Is this evidence that cell phone signals have some nefarious baby-making effect on the human body?

Nope. Instead, it's a simple example of why correlation and causation should never be mistaken for the same thing. Writes Matt Parker in the Gaurdian:

This was discovered by taking the publicly available data on the number of mobile phone masts in each county across the United Kingdom and then matching it against the live birth data for the same counties. When a regression line is calculated it has a "correlation coefficient" (a measure of how good the match is) of 98.1 out of 100. To be "statistically significant" a pattern in a dataset needs to be less than 5% likely to be found in random data (known as a "p-value"), and the masts-births correlation only has a 0.00003% probability of occurring by chance.

The match between mobile phone towers and birth rates is an extremely strong correlation and it is highly statistically significant. ... Mobile phone masts, however, have absolutely no bearing on the number of births. There is no causal link between the masts and the births despite the strong correlation. Both the number of mobile phone transmitters and the number of live births are linked to a third, independent factor: the local population size. As the population of an area goes up, so do both the number of mobile phone users and the number people giving birth.

But wait, there's more! To test the media's science savvy, Parker sent out a press release detailing the correlation he found—but without any information on the real cause of both factors. Interesting object lesson or in-real-life trolling? Can't it be both? The press release went out late last week. If you've spotted any stories about the fertility powers of cell phone towers, leave a link in the comments.

(Via Steve Silberman)

Image: Some rights reserved by smith

Angry printer-cartridge description: the backstory

Posted: 20 Dec 2010 03:58 AM PST

A reader writes,
Hi there, I'm the guy who wrote the cartridge description that has received a lot of attention on the internet in the last week or so. I thought I could tell you how this all happened so you could do a update article or something if you wanted to.

But anyway, the whole description thing only started as a little joke. It was a Monday morning and I was tired and a little fed up (maybe a bit of a hangover as well), I was writing descriptions for our new site and was getting extremely bored and a bit frustrated. Now I've seen in a lot of the comments on your site, and a lot of others, complaining about the grammar and saying that I should not be a copywriter if I cannot write. I must stress here that I am not a copywriter, far from it. I do a lot of different types of work here ranging from replying to customer e-mails to writing the descriptions on the site, but as I said I am not a professional copywriter and honestly I never want to be.



I was angry and depressed so I began to type what I was thinking, that's
all. I was originally just going to delete what I had written and carry
on as usual, but instead I left it on over night and showed it to a
friend... and my friend unfortunately/fortunately decided to tweet it. And
thats when it started, I decided not to take it down and leave it there
for my friends friends to see, and I would take it down on the next Friday.


Then on Thursday my bosses noticed the site going slowly, and I sneakily
checked analytics to see if I could see why, and saw traffic coming in
from a lot of blogs. And then later that afternoon the 'giz-effect'
happened, something that I knew nothing of until that day. The site went
down, and my bosses were not sure whether to be happy or angry at me for
having accidentally brought too much traffic to the site. Either way they
put it on my shoulders to sort out so spent the whole weekend sourcing a
dedicated server.


I don't regret any of it though, it was a huge reaction to something
that was just me being grumpy so that's not a bad thing.

(minor textual corrections mine)

The Tree Nobody Wanted: perfect tree-side holiday reading

Posted: 20 Dec 2010 02:09 AM PST

Tom McCann's delightful, sweet little book The Tree Nobody Wanted is a remembrance of a working-class Brooklyn Christmas in 1946. It's a perfect holiday read -- something to curl up and read aloud in front of a fire or after a big dinner and reflect on the way that family, love and friendship can overcome so much.

Also highly recommended: the audio edition.

The year is 1946, a year after the end of World War II.

The place is Brooklyn -- the poor side, the tough side: Brownsville.

The time is Christmas Eve. The Christmas tree sellers have turned off their lights and gone home. The lots are empty, except for a few forlorn trees that nobody wanted.

An eleven-year-old boy is sent out to pick through those trees and bring one back to the apartment where his Nanny raised him since infancy.

What follows is part fable, part remembrance, part miracle.

It's a story of family values -- even if "family" means a boy and his grandmother; a story of hope in hard times and great happiness growing from small things; a story of youth and age, rejuvenation and rebirth. It is a story of things that are not supposed to happen, but do. That's part of the miracle.

Above all, it's a love story -- of a special kind that is the other part of the miracle.

The Tree Nobody Wanted

Physical store for 3D printed objects

Posted: 20 Dec 2010 01:53 AM PST


Joris sez, ".MGX is Materialise's design label and it has just opened the world's first physical shop for 3D printed goods. The .MGX Flagship Store is in Brussels and showcases .MGX's 3D printed lighting and furniture designs. The store will exhibit works by Amanda Levete, Arik Levy, Xavier Lust, One & Co, WertelOberfell - Platform, Bathsheba Grossman and others."

.MGX opens world's first store for 3D printed goods (Thanks, Joris!)

With a Little Help paperbacks now at $14.50!

Posted: 20 Dec 2010 01:30 AM PST

When I created the Lulu.com store for the With a Little Help paperbacks, I discovered that adding an ISBN to the books automatically raised the minimum price on the book from $11 or so to more than $17 (that's because adding an ISBN makes the book available to retailers like Amazon, and Lulu wants to have some margin to use for a wholesale discount).

I wasn't happy about this, but I figured it'd be worth trying a launch-high/discount-later pricing strategy until I could figure out how to get the price down. Now, with help from Lulu, I've figured out how to get the paperback price down to a much more reasonable $14.50. The present book interior features some 75 typo-fixes, crowdsourced from early readers (each typo is commemorated with a footnote thanking the eagle-eyed reader).

With a Little Help paperback

Evening Standrd: anonymous satirical newspaper headline posters

Posted: 20 Dec 2010 04:36 AM PST


Some anonymous genius has been postering my neighborhood in east London with satirical posters featuring headlines from the "Evening Standrd" (sic) (the Evening Standard is a ubiquitous London tabloid freesheet). So far, I've spotted four of them (along with this possibly related Daily Mail parody). I don't know who's behind it, but they've got my vote for God-Emperor of British Media.

Evening Standrd

 


Lady Remington Christmas ad, 1969

Posted: 19 Dec 2010 10:08 PM PST


This 1969 Lady Remington ad ("Give your wife an extra head this Christmas") boggles my mind: "Hey honey, you know, ever since we got married, I've noticed, well, that you're a little, you know, hairy. Merry Christmas. Also, ha ha, it's got an extra head. Two heads are better than one ha ha. Ha? And you know, 'head'? It's an innuendo. Ar ar ar?"

Lady Remington, 1969

HOWTO tronify your outfit

Posted: 19 Dec 2010 10:04 PM PST

Limor "Lady Ada" Fried and Becky "Lady Becky" Stern show you how to solder and sew electroluminescent wire borders to your favorite fabric accouterments and create exciting, tronesque glows: "Tote your Thinkpad and port your Apple in style with our custom TRON-inspired laptop bag tutorial. With a little soldering and sewing skills you can have your own light up satchel, sure to impress geeky friends. So grab your sewing needle and soldering iron and follow along."

Make A TRON Bag - How to use EL (Electro Luminescent) Wire (via Neatorama)

 


Star Trek Christmas humor from Foxtrot

Posted: 19 Dec 2010 09:59 PM PST

Great robots of antiquity

Posted: 19 Dec 2010 09:55 PM PST


Dark Roasted Blend does a roundup of wonderful, ingenious automata of ages past -- the early clockwork robots that boggled crowds with their ticktock liveliness: "As watch making developed in the Age of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, so did the art of creating mechanical people and animals. Jacques Vaucason created numerous working figures, including a flute player, which actually played the instrument, in 1738, plus this duck from 1739. The gilded copper bird could sit, stand, splash around in water, quack and even give the impression of eating food and digesting it:"

Amazing Automatons: Ancient Robots & Victorian Androids (Thanks, Marilyn, via Submitterator)

 


Science and hope affirmation from XKCD

Posted: 19 Dec 2010 09:50 PM PST


Today's XKCD, "Sickness," treats with faith, hope, and frailty, and is a stirring affirmation for science as a source of comfort in times of trouble. Randall Munroe, the strip's creator, recently went on hiatus due to a family illness; this, presumably, was inspired by it. Thanks for such a great strip, Randall, and I hope things are looking up for your family.

Sickness)

 


Cablegate game gives points for summarizing, tagging Wikileaks cables

Posted: 19 Dec 2010 12:59 PM PST

"Cablegate: The Game" gameifies the job of sorting through the #cablegate leaks, awarding points for reading, tagging and summarizing the enormous heap of Wikileaks plunder. (via /.)

Yelping at Saints

Posted: 19 Dec 2010 11:28 AM PST

Screen-shot-2010-12-19-at-11.20.jpg
(Photograph of "Halo Moon" contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr Pool by BB reader Scott Wililams.)

If your December evening skies have been clear recently you probably can't help but have noticed the slow growing of the moon as it has risen from being for a twilight sliver almost two weeks ago, to a half-illuminated disk passing Jupiter to an almost-full orb rising only an hour or two before the sun sets. There's nothing new here. It does essentially the same thing every 28 days, but it is still a show worth watching.

On Tuesday, as the moon finally goes from just-barely-not-full to finally-completely-full, the moon will finally brighten its last incremental amount and it will be its brightest of the month, though only a little brighter than it was the night before.

This gentle brightening to a muted peak sounds prosaic and reasonable. But it is not true.

Synaxis_of_all_saints_(icon).jpg

I remember once being out on a backpacking trip in the wild mountains inward of the Pacific coast south of Monterey. Some friends and I had hiked all day to make it over a range and down to the bottom of a creek where a little stream of hot water poured out of the earth making a tiny pool in which to soak sore legs and shoulders. We camped a bit away from the hot pool, ate a warm dinner as the sun was going down, and finally began climbing our way to the top of the little ridge separating us from the hot spring. We didn't even bother with flashlights in the dark because the full moon had made the entire woods faintly glow -- plenty of light to get around at night even in the dark of the wilderness. As we had almost reached the top, though, somebody silently flipped a switch and a blinding spotlight was suddenly tracking us from the ridge.


This was miles away from any roads or machinery down a long windy trail, so perhaps I could have reasoned my way out of the situation given a little time for relaxation, but, in the instant, I did what I think most anyone would do when unexpectedly illuminated by a spotlight deep in the woods far from where anyone or anything should be: I yelped. Loudly.

My yelping didn't affect the spotlight, which refused to flinch. It refused to flinch, I realized an embarrassed moment later, because it was no spotlight, it was the moon. It had been hiding behind the ridge until we had gotten near the top, and as we rose over one bump it suddenly revealed itself like the flip of a switch. My credibility as a young astronomer (I had just started graduate school that year) was seriously diminished amongst the friends who had seen me frightened of the moon.


Which is to say that the full moon is really bright.


The fact that the full moon is bright is perhaps not a startling fact, but what is startling is that if I had been coming over the ridge on my way to the hot pool and I had seen the moon a day earlier or a day later, I would never have mistaken it for a spotlight.


You don't have to take my over-tired-from-hiking-all-day's impressions for it. If your skies are clear this week as the moon is finally puffing towards full, go outside and see for yourself. Go out on Sunday, two days before the full moon, and look around. Check out the barely visible shadows. See what fuzzy shapes you can make out in the distance.

Look up and notice that the moon is definitely not fully illuminated, but it is getting close.

Go out Monday. To really do the job right you should go out an hour later than you did the night before, since the moon will have risen an hour later. Look around. You probably won't be able to tell any difference at all from the night before. Same vague shadows, same fuzzy details. And then look at the moon. Definitely bigger, but one edge is still a little flattened. Tomorrow it will indeed be full.


Finally, go out on Tuesday, an hour later still if you can. Stare right at the moon, if your eyes can stand it. It does look like a spotlight up there in the sky. It is much brighter than it was just the day before. Look at the now-crisp shadows on the ground and the sharp details on the rocks and the plants that you can now pick out.

Now go ahead, if you need to, and let out a little bit of a yelp. I'll understand..


What is going on with the moon? How can it get so much brighter in just a day? Who turned on the spotlight?


In medieval paintings, saints and anyone else holy are always depicted with a halo around their heads. Unlike modern halo depictions, which look like a gold ring hovering slightly above the hat line, these medieval halos appear more like a general glow coming from behind the entire head. Whenever I see one of these glowing medieval halos I think about how bright the full moon is.


I have a hypothesis -- totally without the benefit of supporting research, necessary expertise, or, likely, even minor merit -- that the medieval painters painted halos like this because they had seen such halos around their own heads. And I know what the painters saw, because I have a halo around my head, as well.


Here's another experiment to try. Go outside on a bright sunny day and start watching your shadow. Walk along until you find a place where the shadow of your head is falling on grass. Focus on your head shadow while you continue to walk, letting the background grass blur in your vision. You will gradually notice that there is a diffuse glow around the shadow of your head. It won't be around any other part of your body, and you won't see the slightest hint around anyone else's head. Point out your halo to any else and they will see precisely the same thing: a halo around their own heads and nothing around yours.

Everyone is holy to themselves.


In reality what you are seeing is not some sort of corporeal representation of your own ego or a mystical aura of self-realization, but simply a literal trick of lights and shadows. When you are looking at the shadow of your own head, you are looking, by necessity, directly in the opposite direction of the sun. Stop focusing on your glowing halo for a minute and now focus on the grass itself. You'll notice that in the region where your halo is you will not see a single dark spot due to a shadow of one blade of grass on another. There can't be any shadows; with the sun directly behind you, any piece of grass that you can see can see the sun, so it can't be in shadow. Start looking away from your head shadow and you notice that you are now starting to see collections of tiny shadows, so the overall scene gets darker and darker even though it, too, is fully illuminated by the sun. Your halo is simply the total lack of shadows that can only occur when you are looking almost exactly opposite the sun.

I've seen my halo from many places, on many surfaces: on grass or rough dirt or asphalt while walking, even on the tops of a forest full of trees while looking out of the window of an airplane flying low enough right before landing that I could pick out the shadow of the fuselage and see a beautiful glowing ring around. Anywhere you have sunlight and a surface rough enough to make millions of tiny shadows you get to glow the glow of the saints.


And so it is with the moon. When you look at the full moon you are almost looking at where the shadow of you head would be. The sun, though it has set over the horizon, is directly behind you as you face the full moon. If you could see down to the surface of the moon, you wouldn't see a shadow anywhere, not in the craters, not amongst the craggy mountains, but, more importantly not even at the finest scales of the rocky dust that covers most of the surface. The next day, when the moon is just past full, the shadows will begin to reappear and the spotlight will be extinguished.


It happens every month. It's just a trick of light and shadows. But, every now and then, I still look up at the full moon and think about saints and I feel a little bit of a yelp deep inside.


(Image: Synaxis of All Saints, via Wikipedia)

Papa Sangre: binaural video game with no video

Posted: 19 Dec 2010 06:57 AM PST


Paul Bennun from Somethin' Else sez, "We just released Papa Sangre, the video game with no video. Backed by Channel 4 in the UK, it's not the first audio game or first game with binaural audio in it, but it is the first game with an entire world generated on the fly using 3d, binaural sound. Amazing combo of tech and art. Yes, I am biased. But. We are incredibly proud.Response has been incredible, just amazing, especially from blind people (unsurprisingly)."

Entering the Palace of Bones from Papa Sangre on Vimeo.

You are lost, deep in the darkness of the land of the dead. Your eyes are useless to you here -- but your ears are filled with sound. And what is it you can hear ... ?

All you know is someone is in grave danger and desperately needs your help. Can you save them and make your escape or will you be trapped in the blackness forever?

You're in Papa Sangre's palace. His palace is in an afterlife that takes the form of a malevolent, unpredictable carnival: imagine a Mexican graveyard on the Day of the Dead -- with the lights off. You're the piñata for a host of partying monsters. They probably look a lot worse than they sound. You should count yourself lucky it's too dark to see them.

Get out. Save the one you love. Do the right thing.

Papa Sangre (Thanks, Paul!)

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