Relatively true?

If truth is relative, then the relativity of truth must be relative, otherwise it wouldn't be true that truth is relative.

But if truth is relative, and the relativity of truth is relative, then the truth of the relativity of truth must be relative.

But if the truth is relative, and the relativity of the relativity of truth is relative, then the truth of the relativity of the relativity of truth must be relative...

True? Relatively?

The Obameter

Politifact.com has something they call an 'Obameter'. They've compiled of 500 of Obama's campaign promises and are keeping track of how many he has kept, compromised, broken, stalled, or hasn't got around to yet.

I'd love to see a Ruddmeter.

Misc Tennis Photos

You know it's sunny when there's no motion blur even with my shaky hands.

(click for enlargements)

The psychology of air conditioners

Certain people (you know who you are) have a weird approach to heating and cooling their homes.

On a cold day, they'll heat the room to, let's say, 21 degrees; then on a hot day, they'll cool the room to 16 degrees.

I don't get it.

Tennis in Slow-mo

Australian Open Tennis Slow-mo Montage from Mark Brown on Vimeo.


The 300fps mode on my camera is still a novelty.

Ducks

A duck and her ducklings that were loitering outside the house the other day.

High tech space nappy

via Universe Today

The International Space Station's toilet has had its troubles, and Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has decided they want to "eliminate" this problem for future astronauts and procure a new way to deal with human waste in space. They formed a space toilet research group and came up with an idea that is sure to revolutionize space travel. The wearable toilet. "Clean and easy to use, the envisioned space toilet is designed to be worn like a diaper around the astronaut’s waist at all times," says an article on Pink Tentacle. Engineers hope to have this next-generation space toilet available to use in space within the next five years.

How does it work?

"Sensors detect when the user relieves him or herself, automatically activating a rear-mounted suction unit that draws the waste away from the body through tubes into a separate container," the article says. It's also a full feature toilet/shower almost like a bidet, as well as eliminating potential embarrassing situations in space. "In addition to washing and drying the wearer after each use, the next-generation space toilet will incorporate features that eliminate unwanted sound and odor."

I bet there's a lot of terrestrial couch potatos hoping this will become commercially available.

When you read the words "card credit" and "you thank" in this sentence, you'll probably think you read "credit card" and "thank you", but you didn't.

Isn't that cool?

Star Wars Musical

From Yahoo news:

Los Angeles (E! Online) – A long time from now, in a galaxy far, far away...the Star Wars money machine will still be cranking.

Not content with seven feature films or myriad TV spinoffs ranging from the current Clone Wars cartoon series to the dreaded Star Wars Holiday Special, the Jedi masterminds are readying a stage show.

George Lucas has signed off on Star Wars: A Musical Journey, a two-hour live musical event featuring John Williams' Oscar-winning score.

I've long been calling for a Star Wars arena spectacular...on ice!

The cake is not a lie!

My attempt at the cake from Portal. It's a bit wonky and is hemorrhaging its internal frosting, but I'm pleased with it.

Haven't tried any yet. Here's hoping it is delicious and moist.

MPs on the meaning of Christmas

From the House of Reps Hansard for December 4, 2008:

Kevin Rudd (Prime Minister): As we approach the Christmas season, there are often debates about Christmas being a Christian festival or a non-Christian festival in various parts of the world. I think the truth is this: whether we are of faith or not of faith, this is an important season for us all. For those of us who are of faith, it celebrates the birth of the Christ child. For those beyond faith it is a celebration for all families, and all therefore enjoy this season which lies ahead.

Beyond faith? As in, grown out of it, or as in a lost cause?

Malcolm Turnbull (Leader of the Oposition): This is, of course, the season of Christmas and we are celebrating the birth of Jesus, the birth of the man—the son of God—who established a faith that is as inspiring as it is mysterious, a faith that is based on love. This is truly, then, the season of love, and that is why families come together. It is why we come together to eat, for Christmas feasts, for lunches and dinners. We remember, too, that there is nothing more human than families coming together to share a meal. Indeed, the Eucharist is at the centre of our own faith, of our own liturgy—that sacred meal.

We should also remember that not all of the members of this House are members of the Christian faith. Indeed, I think it is important today to remember that a number of our colleagues around this time of year--around the Christmas season, if you like—-will be celebrating the feast of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival. That is a festival of lights and it celebrates the indomitable nature of the Jewish people.

Christianity, Judaism...yep, I think that's all of 'em.

Warren Truss (Leader of the Nationals): Christmas is a special time of the year. It is a time when families can gather together and enjoy one another’s company. From a parliamentary perspective, it is a time when we are able to have a break and perhaps live slightly more normal lives. But Christmas is more than just decorations, gifts and parties—although a special part of my Christmas is always decorating the family home with Christmas lights so that I can demonstrate what a special time Christmas is for me in my neighbourhood. The celebrations and symbols of Christmas highlight the joyous reason for our festivities—namely, the birth of Jesus Christ, who brought salvation and the message of peace and goodwill to all. Those who seek to take Christmas out of the holidays or Christ out of the Christmas certainly lose the central reason for our celebrations and their meaning and purpose.

Mmmmmmmm.

Apple's 1987 'Knowledge Navigator' video depicts my dream nerd lifestyle

And we're nearly there...nearly...the iPhone just needs a bowtie.

Hillary as Secretary of State?

I didn't believe it at first, but it's seeming more and more likely that Hillary will be Secretary of State.

Here's my little theory. On the night that Obama and her met after he'd won the primaries they did a clever little deal. He knew that she wouldn't want a crap job like Vice President, one because it's a crap job, two because if he lost the election she'd be untainted and the presumptive nominee for 2012. So he promised to offer her Secretary of State if she played nice during the presidential campaign. If he won, which he did, she gets the option of a great job. If he loses, she's a shoe-in for 2012.

We all assumed he didn't want her as VP because then he'd have Bill hanging around all the time. But it's probably that SHE didn't want to be VP! She wanted a real job! NoDramaObama probably feels like he can handle Bill now that the election is over.

No one as irish as Barack O'Bama

It's fascinating how affectionate the satire surrounding Obama is. And yes, I admit it, I too have turned into an irrational Obama fanboy.

The Death Penalty

I'm not a blood thirsty person. But if someone I knew and loved was murdered in a terrorist attack, there's a very good chance I'd want my revenge. I'd probably want them killed. I might even want to do it myself.

My hope is that my family, friends, and government would always prevent me from doing so. I certainly hope they would never enact revenge on my behalf.

Congratulations Mr President Elect

Congratulations Barack.

Where in Chadstone Shopping Center is Carmen Sandiego?

I sometimes have ideas that I wish I could send back in time to the days when I was a media major.

There's an iPhone game coming out in a week called Parallel Kingdom. It's an 'agumented reality' game. It shows you a map of wherever you are and overlays various monsters and treasures and other RPG type things for you to interact with. To navigate this world you have to walk (or drive, swim, fly) to the corresponding real world location. It uses the iphones GPS to discern your location. It's also multiplayer. Think World of Warcraft meets The Amazing Race.

I wish this kind of technology had been around back in my days of making bad student films. How cool would it be to do an interactive iPhone film where you have to walk to different locations to unlock scenes filmed at that location. You could have a murder mystery filmed at various locations around Melbourne; in each scene there'd be some clue as to where you need to go to unlock more of the story. Or maybe you could choose different paths (literally) to determine the outcome of the story -- a choose your own adventure format.

Or what about an iPhone version of Where In The World is Carmen Sandiago!? Ay!? Ay!?

If only I had the time, motivation, and talent.

Sarah Palin, Parah Salin

I'm not sure why this is amusing. But it is.

Sarah Palin can't say 'nuclear' either

The Psychology of Music Preferences

Apple has just released a version of iTunes with a new feature called Genius. Genius makes custom playlists (of either music you own or music you might want to by) based on a secret algorithm. If you opt-in, iTunes sends all of your listening history data (e.g., track names, artist names, playcounts, skipcounts) to a central server. The algorithm then looks for patterns in worldwide listening trends. To use Genius you right-click a particular song, choose 'start Genius', and BANG you've got a list of 'similar' songs. I'm loving it. It's helped me rediscover some music that Dan had given me but that I hadn't listened to much.

This got me thinking about how one might statistically look for trends in music preferences. I wondered if there'd ever been a factor analysis of music preferences. A factor analysis is a statical technique for finding trends amongst different variables. It's often used in personality research. You ask a large sample of volunteers a whole stack of questions (e.g., "On a scale of 1 to 10 how much do you like parties?", "How much do you like being the center of attention?" etc.) and look for shared variance in the responses. I've written about factor analyses of personality related data before here.

Anyway, a quick literature search turned up this article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology:

Rentfrow, P.J., Gosling, S.D. (2003). The Do Re Mi’s of Everyday Life: The Structure and Personality Correlates of Music Preferences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(6), 136-1256.

Among the studies reported is a factor analytic study of music preferences. 1,704 students from the University of Texas were asked to rate each of 14 music genres on a scale from 1 ('I don't like it at all') to 7 ('I like it a great deal'). The genres were: alternative, blues, classical, country, electronica/dance, folk, heavy metal, rap/hip-hop, jazz, pop, religious, rock, soul/funk, and sound tracks.

The analysis revealed 4 main dimensions (factors) that captured 59% of the total variance. The names given to these factors and the genres associated with them are as follows:

- Reflective and complex (blues, jazz, classical, and folk)
- Intense and rebellious (rock, alternative, heavy metal)
- Upbeat and Conventional (country, sound track, religious, and pop)
- Energetic and Rhytmic (rap/hip-hop, soul/funk, and electronica/dance)

These dimensions are reasonably independent of each other (1). People who like reflective and complex music are just as likely to enjoy intense and rebellious music as they are to not. What these factors mean is that if someone likes a genre related to a particular dimension (e.g., blues) then they'll probably also like the other genres on that dimension (e.g., jazz). The same goes for disliking a genre.

One limitation of this study is that peoples' understanding of genre terms may vary. I might think that I don't like folk music and yet like many songs that others would categorise as folk. It would be great to see an analysis done on song by song ratings, rather than just genres.

Another analysis, which was really interesting, involved looking for relationships between e musical preferences and differences in personality and cognitive ability. They found all sorts of relationships, although most of them were quite small (.2ish). The largest one (.4ish) was between a preference for Reflective and Complex music and the personality characteristic Openness to Experience. Interestingly, there was a small (.2ish) relationship between verbal IQ and liking of Reflective and Complex, Intense and Rebellious, or Upbeat and Conventional music (2).

Very interesting stuff.

I'd love to see these researchers team up with Apple and analyse the iTunes Genius data.

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(1) Upbeat and Conventional and Energetic and Rythmic correlate .5 if allowed to covary.

(2) And no, I don't think this is evidence that music makes you smarter (can you guess why?).