Here is the transcript from last night’s WFTB (Watch From The Beginning) tweetup. Click more to see all the tweets. Enjoyed getting this final season underway. h/t to @batchout for collecting all the tweets.
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Lost – What does lie in the Shadow of the Statue?
Did a little past episode snooping last night, and lo and behold, Ilana’s henchman, Bram (thanks IMDB) tried to persuade Miles to switch sides after he was recruited by Naomi. Who are the SotS people? They’re not Widmore’s people, they’re not Ben’s people…
Ilana and Bram confront Frank Lapidus
Bram confronts Miles in the back of the van
New Tech == bad for you (or is it)
or contra, studies with bad methodologies will make headlines!
I know, I know what else is new.
As Stacy noticed yesterday, facebook addicts face a hard row in college, and can’t compete with the non-addicts academically. Seems she’s now found that workers with addictions end up being less productive than their peers. Truly this is cats and dogs living together time.
We can now rest assured that western civilization is on the highway to hell, thanks to this headline
Twitter can make you immoral, claim scientists
(its big cuz its a headline)
Here is the lede:
Social networks such as Twitter may blunt people’s sense of morality, claim brain scientists.
New evidence shows the digital torrent of information from networking sites could have long-term damaging effects on the emotional development of young people’s brains.
A study suggests rapid-fire news updates and instant social interaction are too fast for the ‘moral compass’ of the brain to process.
The danger is that heavy Twitters and Facebook users could become ‘indifferent to human suffering’ because they never get time to reflect and fully experience emotions about other people’s feelings.
US scientists from the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California (USC) say the brain can respond in fractions of seconds to signs of physical pain in others.
Yep, that’s what happened to Hitler, too much twittering. So now all you time-travelers, go back and steal Adolph’s iPhone.
Oh wait, here is the buried lede:
But a new study led by Antonio Damasio, director of the USC’s Brain and Creativity Institute, suggests that digital media may be better suited to some mental processes than others.
The study used compelling, real-life stories to induce admiration for virtue or skill, or compassion for physical or social pain, in 13 volunteers.
The emotions felt were verified by researchers in a series of interviews before and after, conducted using a careful protocol.
Brain imaging showed the volunteers needed six to eight seconds to fully respond to stories of virtue or social pain.
However, once awakened, the responses lasted far longer than the volunteers’ reactions to stories focused on physical pain.
Yep, statistics geek, that is an N of 13 that supports the headline. Now all this neat stuff about how long the brain takes to fully register an emotional story is neat, but hardly directly attributible to ‘Twitter’. What about MTV, CNN, Headline News, etc… Nah, the headline gets noticed because of TWITTER.
I WANT MY GRANT MONEY
tab, pad, and board
(alternate title: how Apple is borrowing from Xerox PARC again)
Back in the heady days before the first Macintosh, when PC was in infancy there were a group of Apple researchers that took a visit to Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and took a look at a Xerox research product called the Alto that had a graphical screen, and this weird thing called a mouse to collect user input. The Apple guys came back home and brought out the Lisa (not huge commercial success) and then a few years later the Macintosh was born. This is history.
When I was in grad school, we got to take a tour of Xerox’s PARC and had an hour long lecture by Mark Weiser about Ubiquitous Computing ( look here and here ) which was fascinating. The year was 1996/97ish, and you have to recall the technology of the time. Weiser was excited about a few things, some haven’t really fleshed out (really cheap computers ~$5 per device — but look at flash drive prices; and the influence of IrDa – infrared as a local networking stack) but I think the one thing he’s come close to identifying is the three form factors of a pad, a tab and a board.
This was at the very beginning of Palm’s device, and that was considered a ‘tab’ something extremely portable, personal and identifible. In Apple speak this has grown into the iPhone/iPod Touch size devices.
The next form factor was the ‘tab’, this is roughly paper sized and very portable, Weiser saw this as impersonal, like sheets of paper but that could compute, you could push your presence to the device through your pad. Apple currently doesn’t have a device that fits this description, the closest could be the iBook line, but Weiser identified this as NOT a notebook computer. Could the rumors flying around Cupertino about a new tablet big boy iPhone be this missing link.
The third form factor was the ‘board’, Weiser saw this as a large wall sized computer monitor where or a group white board type of device where again people could connect to a ‘presence’ via the internet or some other networked type infrastructure. Apple ‘kinna’ has this form factor in their iMac and/or AppleTV/MAc Mini displaying through a large HDTV. I say kinda, because again this doesn’t fit Weiser vision as a computing device.
Switch paradigms a bit. Apple is a first class hardware software company, but they’re making lots of money in a different market, media. Since the first iPod, Apple has increasingly become less a computer manufacturer (ala Dell) and more a media marketer. iTunes has become the center of their universe.
It seems to me, that Apple is hitting those form factors and tying them to iTunes for the distribution of content and ‘presence’ to your devices (iPhone, iTablet, AppleTV).
So while all the rumors fly of what the next announcement out of Cupertino will be this afternoon, my thoughts think history will repeat themselves a bit, and Apple will announce a tablet form factor (not a netbook, not a notebook, but something more ‘apple-ish’) as well as more changes to support an iTunes centric media-verse for their collection of devices.
Happy Birthday Elvis!
Happy Birthday to the King of Rock and Roll
so… we went dancing the other night…
Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!
Beavers SNATCH victory from the hated Trojans!!!!
someone had to write that headline. ESPN missed the opportunity with:
It was a good game, and the Beavs had the mo the whole way, constant running game, stiff defense, and then resolve in the final minutes.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
Oregon State Fight Fight Fight.
I shoulda joined the WWF
Daily Walk 365 – Day 3
Are ya bored yet? 😉
Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives to all generously and without criticizing, and it will be given to him. — James 1:5 (HCSB)
How many times have I tried to find wisdom without asking God. This self-help book, this seminar, this special on TV, this episode of Oprah (well not many times that last one) Truth be told on the wisdom front, I too often trust my intuition rather than specifically asking God — to my shame.
Last night SS commentary talked about discipline (Hebrews 13ish IIRC) and how God disciplines those he loves. The commentary compared how we discipline (often poorly, selfishly, and pridefully) to God’s discipline (which is awesome, unselfish and beneficial to us). Our reaction to discipline is much like our kids, we don’t like it, but when we’ve learned our lesson we’re cherish their loving correction.
I think its like that with asking for wisdom (and this verse isn’t asking for wealth, prosperity, good feelings, which given the ongoing trials, discipline growth put to rest any ‘name it — claim it’ notions). In being a good disciplinarian, God wants us to ask Him for wisdom. But he won’t nag us, complain or belittle us if we act like a teenager and seek that elsewhere. He’ll wait for us to fall, fail and flounder then graciously help us up, dust us off, and remind us that He’s always here to help.
Do we disappoint him when we fail?
Seeking wisdom elsewhere is a childish thing (also called teenage rebellion), as we mature we should put away childish things, and seek the source of wisdom, and heed it.
Peace.
Funny thing happened on the way to the theater
So we got Danny and Brenna off to their 4 day camp, then back home with Lauren and MJ. Lauren went over to a friend’s house and so MJ, Angie and I were playing on our computers. Angie decided we’d sneak out to see Kung Fu Panda with MJ. But we got a late start and couldn’t make the movie show time.
The next show would start after we’d have to pick up Lauren, so we worked out some logistics, then decided to go to Cosco to fill our larder. After grabbing some frozen stuff to put in our freezer in the garage, we figured had a bit of time to do some window shopping.
Wait, need to esplain, no it is too much, will summ up: Our current HDTV has lost one of the color channels. Unless we like watching smurfs or leprhchans (blue of green) watching our TV had become a little frustrating. Especially, if like Angie loves to do, you’re watching a home design show and they decribe a vibrant yellow that looks like a muddy green. So yesterday it was sorta like the TV commercial where the wife says, yeah, we need a new TV, and the guy grabs his keys.
We went to Conn’s, mostly because we have good credit history with them (about to pay off three kitchen appliances we bought in ’05) and started looking. Our current TV is a 28″ HDTV CRT, and so we started out at around 30″ and just kept going up. We liked a 46″ LCD, and so asked the salesman to run a credit check. While he was doing that we wandered to the rear of the store and found some absolutely lovely DLPs. The price for DLPs is much less than an LCD, the cost is a bit more space (can’t wall mount) and a DLP does have a bulb that will wear out. So while we were watching the pretty pictures, and wondering around the small furniture section, the sales guy comes back and says, you can pretty much get what you want (he ran the high end of the LCDs we were looking at). I respond with, “That’s a bit scary.” We talked with him a bit about the DLPs, then it was time to get Lauren, and try to make the show.
Only we waited to long, by the time we got Lauren and headed back to the freeway, the clock had again ticked past and we’d get to the theater too late. So back home to do research and discuss some options. We use our living room to host a weekly American Idol party when that’s in season, and so that was part of the discussion. We talked viewing angles, and flexibility of rearranging, and sizes, and by the end of the time, we’d pretty much agreed on a moderate sized LCD in the middle of our price range.
We set off to Pei Wei to eat, then back to Conn’s to make the buying decision. We got back to the store, and start to look and narrow down. The one I liked from my research was a bit about our agreed upon price point, and so we hemmed and hawed, and wound up back in the back with the DLPs, and a nice console that met Angie’s standards. The console ended up being out of stock, and then looked at the DLPs a bit more closer, the one we liked was a 60″, but next to it, the same model and features was a 65” a hundred less. We bit, then added an upscaling DVD player (not ready for Blu-Ray yet) and some cables, and we’re out the door.
We had to drive to almost Irving to pick up the behemoth after dropping off the kids, to clear out the van. The box filled up the back of the van (with the seats folded), and setup was a breeze. We obviously need to do some rearranging, and maybe buy different furniture for it.
Once we placed it in the room, we realized how absolutely ginormous this thing is… Turning it on, was surreal, crisp vibrant colors, deep fine features in 1080i from the Verizon FiOS tuner. MJ, just wanted to play a game, so he hooked up his SpongeBob game contoller and got lovely 16bit quality pixelated video that he played avidly. Still have to test the Wii and hookup the upconverting DVD.
As you can see from the picture, about 4 of our old screens would fit in the screen size of the new one. We’re a bit overwhelmed, but I think we can adapt. :) (link to the TV at amazon)