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Friday, February 03, 2006 |
A cornucopia of misconceptions.
Instead of an update, I want to specifically point readers to Evolgen's extended post on the nearly neutral theory. He takes my 10 yard pass on genetic drift and jukes and jives all the way to the end zone (with a good block from John Hawks). The take home message is that science is about successively more accurate approximations of nature, with the caveat that in probabilistic field like much of genetics the "answer" is the most likely explanation (expectation), around which there will be exceptions to the rule galore (variance). Chad's initial post seems to have been a little epidemic in this corner of SB, let's see if it abates now.... [Gene Expression]
6:36:59 AM 
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Half of Korea’s Preschoolers Use Internet Daily.
Internet use among preschoolers between three and five is no longer limited to a handful of prodigies, an astounding government survey suggests, reports Digital Chosunilbo.
If the figures are to be believed, some 48 percent or 870,000 children in that age bracket used the Internet daily in the second half of last year.
... Young children on average started using the Internet at 3.2 years of age and spent on average 4.8 hours a week online.
[Smart Mobs]
6:27:08 AM
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Videos of guest-speakers at Google.
Cory Doctorow: Jed sez, "Google regularly brings in speakers to give 'tech talks' on all sorts of subjects. They've started to make some of these talks available for free (with the permission of the presenters) to the rest of the world via Google Video. You can find them by following the link, which does a search for [Google techtalks] at Google Video. For example, there's a talk by Peter Patel-Schneider of Bell Labs on 'Knowledge Representation and the Semantic Web,' and a talk by Lauren Weinstein on 'The War for Privacy Rights.'" Link (Thanks, Jed!)
[Boing Boing]
6:25:18 AM
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A "Guide" for Graduate Students about Publishing (Leiter).
There is some interesting and thoughtful advice here in this short essay by Thom Brooks, a political philosopher at the University of Newcastle. I'm not sure I agree with all of this (e.g., I don't think American grad students, at least, are well-advised to spend time writing book reviews--but the situation may be different in the UK), but it's worth a read. I invite comments from readers on the general topic of publishing as a graduate student. As usual, comments may take awhile to appear, so please only post once.
[Leiter Reports: A Group Blog (Jan. 23-May 31 2006)]
6:25:07 AM
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Eavesdropping 101: How NSA snoops.
The ACLU has provided a primer on how NSA probably eavesdrops on electronic communications:
The NSA is not only the world's largest spy agency (far larger than the CIA, for example), but it possesses the most advanced technology for intercepting communications. We know it has long had the ability to focus powerful surveillance capabilities on particular individuals or communications. But the current scandal has indicated two new and significant elements of the agency's eavesdropping:
1. The NSA has gained direct access to the telecommunications infrastructure through some of America's largest companies
2. The agency appears to be not only targeting individuals, but also using broad "data mining" systems that allow them to intercept and evaluate the communications of millions of people within the United States.
The ACLU has prepared a map illustrating how all this is believed to work. It shows how the military spying agency has extended its tentacles into much of the U.S. civilian communications infrastructure, including, it appears, the "switches" through which international and some domestic communications are routed, Internet exchange points, individual telephone company central facilities, and Internet Service Providers (ISPs). While we cannot be certain about these secretive links, this chart shows a representation of what is, according to recent reports, the most likely picture of what is going on.
[Smart Mobs]
6:24:44 AM
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