Tuesday, April 27, 2004

Bringing Up Baby, but Not Giving Up Movies. Thousands of moms and dads across the country are taking advantage of new programs that enable them to see first-run films with their children. By Micheline Maynard. [New York Times: Business] 7:16:08 AM    comment []

Where Federal Judges Went to Law School. What follows is a list of the top 30 law schools with the most alumni on the federal bench (either... [The Leiter Reports: Editorials, News, Updates] 7:15:41 AM    comment []

Useit.Com: B2B: Help Your Fans Convince Their Bosses. Advocacy kits are rare on current B2B sites, but they're a great way to leverage the Internet's one-to-one ability to reach directly inside a customer company and connect with people who are eager to help you close the deal. [Tomalak's Realm] 7:15:28 AM    comment []

Thoughtful post over at TAR on the problem of Induction on a Single Case. One hears it said from time to time that it's irrational to perform inductive inferences based on a single data point. Now this is sometimes irrational. For example, from the fact that Al Gore got the most votes in the last Presidential Election it would be foolish to infer that he'll get the most votes in the next Presidential Election. But it isn't always irrational. And this matters to some philosophical debates, and perhaps to some practical debates too. Here's my proof that it isn't always irrational. Imagine on Thursday night I go and see a new movie that you're going to go see Friday night. Friday lunchtime I tell you how the movie ended. How should you react? Most people will complain that I've spoiled the movie because you now know how it will end. But if induction on a single case is always bad, this is impossible. All you have is testimonial evidence of how the movie ended on a single occasion, namely Thursday night. You need to make an inferential leap to make a conclusion about how it will end Friday night. (It certainly isn't a deductive inference because some movies have multiple endings.) That inferential leap will be induction on a single case, and will be perfectly reasonable. . . . [Thoughts Arguments and Rants] There's more discussion, too, which you should read if you're interested in this sort of thing. That's a really great example. I find myself inclined to offer (what I think is) a different account of why it's reasonable, though: it operates against the background of a reasonably well understood network of apparently deterministic causal processes. Hume's Problem aside, for the moment, with overwhelming frequency, future endings of particular works resemble past endings of them (so overwhelming that we're likely to hear about it for works that depart from the typical in that respect). We think we have a pretty good idea why that's so, having to do with our understanding of how movies, say, are made and exhibited. Our single-case induction is made against that background, and may really be at least as much a judgment about the credibility of our informant as about the world otherwise. Good problem to be taking up, though. I'll think on this some more. 7:13:03 AM    comment []

Committee Urges Harvard to Expand the Reach of Its Undergraduate Curriculum. For the first time in 30 years, the university has reviewed its undergraduate curriculum, concluding that students need more room for broad exploration. By Sara Rimer. [New York Times: Education] 7:04:55 AM    comment []

Hypertextual. In the wake of the still-blowing-my-mind Pepys' Blog (Comments for annotations! TrackBack for cross-referencing! Gaaaah!), I've come across another hypertext of a classic of the English language - the Waste Land. Mmm...... [Andrew Bayer is Dreaming of China] 7:04:20 AM    comment []

The science of the retail sale. Big-name retailers and new start-up companies are turning to a new type of software to manage markdowns and compete with discount giants such as Wal-Mart Stores. [CNET News.com] 6:59:20 AM    comment []

Decent piece in Buffalo Wings & Vodka: There's Nothing Funny About Law School, on being trained for working law review, but the best parts come in the comments, including: You just got your ass called on in Contracts, and you're not here. (No direct link appears to be available -- it's by yellowperil; you'll have to scroll down to get to the discussion.) 6:58:32 AM    comment []

Confessions of Saint Evangeline: Mr. Bradley pressured kids to run cyberbothels, scam houses, and racist welcome houses. In this remarkable interview, Evangeline announces his permanent departure from TSO and claims that he was not the driving force behind The Hotel Erotica and... [The Alphaville Herald] 6:53:09 AM    comment []

Habits: When a Team Tackles Smoking. When a whole doctor's office gets involved in helping smokers quit, the success rate more than doubles. By John O'neil. [New York Times: Science] 6:52:31 AM    comment []

CHI tutorial on sociology and cybercollective action. In Vienna, Marc Smith and Susan Herring are teaching a CHI 2004 tutorial on recent sociological work on computer-mediated collective action. This includes a session on Analyzing Social Interaction in CMC Systems. [Smart Mobs] 6:52:11 AM    comment []

More attack code surfaces for recent MS security holes. Just days after Microsoft Corp. warned its customers about the release of code that can exploit a hole in its Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) library, new code that claims to exploit another recently disclosed hole surfaced on a French language Web site. [InfoWorld: Top News] 6:51:52 AM    comment []