dermot: February 2008 Archives

There was an interesting discussion on the radio the other day about the recent Public Library of Science article on Antidepressants PLoS Medicine - Initial Severity and Antidepressant Benefits: A Meta-Analysis of Data Submitted to the Food and Drug Administration

The discussion became a little strange at one point. The person speaking (a psychiatrist whose name escapes me) said that the study wasn't published in a high impact journal and that a lot of libraries (university and research libraries I presume) didn't carry it.  It was a strange statement as Public Library of Science is just that - a Public Library. Their first two principles are

1. Open access. All material published by the Public Library of Science, whether submitted to or created by PLoS, is published under an open access license that allows unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
2. Excellence. PLoS strives to set the highest standards for excellence in everything we do: in content, style, and aesthetics of presentation; in editorial performance at every level; in transparency and accessibility to the scientific community and public; and in educational value.

So all the psychiatrist needs is a machine with Internet connectivity (and seriously does any serious researcher look for articles in paper any more). As to the issue of impact. I think with studies like this one the PLoS Medicine will be failry high impact fairly quickly. 

Espen Andersen lists   the following as the core of the technology canon for people to have read.

My take on it

The first two are really interesting as they were recommended by our Introductory Programming Course in College. (Those and "How to Solve IT" by Polya). So its very interesting to see them turn up here

# Gödel, Escher, Bach: An eternal golden braid by Douglas Hofstadter
- Read It, Own it, Wonderful book. I should reread it as there is something to be learned in each reading

# Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
- Read It. Own more than one copy - particularly as the updates and later postscript are important. This book I've given to people. My mind melted a little when I first read it. I reread it regularly as there are some fundamentally important ideas in here, even the philosophical system is incomplete.

# How Buildings Learn by Stewart Brand
On the too read list. Don't own a copy.

# A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander
- Own and read. Great book. Trying to use elements of it in planning changes to our house.

# Turing's Man: Western Culture in the Computer Age by J. D. Bolter
- Never heard of it before today.

# The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder
- Have an unread copy.

# The Mythical Man-month by Frederic Brooks
- Owned and read. Again "No Silver Bullet" was give to us in College so there was a trend there.

# Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
- Owned and unread. Interesting to see fiction on the list

# The Control Revolution by James Beniger
- Never heard of before today. That two off this list. And I consider myself reasonably well read and if I haven't read it at least I know its something I should read. This I haven't even had the pleasure of residual guilt for not having read the damn thing.


# Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation by James Utterback
Unread

# The Innovator's Solution by Clayton M. Christensen
Unread. I've only read parts of the innovators dilemma as well.

# Consciousness Explained by Daniel C. Dennett
Read and owned. Not sure it fully explains consciousness but worth the read as is most stuff by Dennett.

# The Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler
Unread.

# The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World by Lawrence Lessig
Read. Good book.

Interestingly both "The Soul of the New Machine" and "Gödel, Escher, Bach" both won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction

Tomorrow to add my own books to the list. Starting with
"The Social Life of Information" by John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid

You'd be forgiven for thinking we'd just qualified for the world cup. Or even better won the damn thing. What we appear to have done is pay someone a large amount of money to come and manage the Irish team. I'm not sure how that qualifies as an achievement. Isn't that the point in paying large sums of money. Hope he does well. It'll be  an interesting contrast to Steve Staunton no doubt

Somehow this quote pops into my mind.

"Pity the land that has no heroes," says Andrea, a pupil of Galileo. "Pity the land that needs heroes,"

Galileo, by Bertold Brecht, translated by Charles Laughton

Still though maybe the moaning will stop for a few months.

Mmmmh. Rides to the rescue of the FAI. He does to a huge amount for charity. Still be interested in him staying in the country and paying his taxes like say Michael O'Leary.

Listening to George Hook tonight. The Movie segment. And somethings bothered me about it for a while. Its Philip Molloy. And the reviews are OK. He likes what he like and doesn't like what he doesn't like. We can agree to agree or agree not to agree but thats not really the point. The point is not having Google in the studio. Someone was ringing in to ask about a sequel to "Band of Brothers". I'd heard of something about Spielberg doing a treatment of the war in the Pacific along the same lines. Philip hadn't heard of anything. The listeners texted in with the details.

Somehow there seems no reason in this day and age not to be able to check this out on the fly in the studio. Why don't they have web access in the studio? Then you gotta ask the question about whoever texted in. Why didn't they Google the answer (not web literate, not aware?). So I guess the question is what is someone bringing to the show thats of value of an evening. The questions seem trite - is such and such available, when is such and such out, - go visit entertainment.ie or aint'itcoolnews or IMDB or Amazon.com.

There has to be something different offered by these programs or else there is no point if I can get it all from Google.

I counted including Ash Wendesday and Easter Saturday there are 46 days in Lent.

After a bit of Googling I find out that Lent is designed to exclude Sundays. What the hell. I had this argument with my parent when I was a bit smaller. I thought that skipping Sundays (and St. Patricks Day in Ireland) was cheating. Hell I still think it is.

It was a good practice at the time, still is I think. Haven't given up anything for lent in a long long time.

Worth reposting. Shows the scary power of ideas.

Seen 'Blasphemy' by Daniel Dennett, Secular Phillosophy - RichardDawkins.net
http://richarddawkins.net/article,2222,n,n

The West screwed up badly when the denunciation of the fatwa on Salman Rushdie was not closer to unanimous. (I will never forget or forgive the shameful silence of some writers who shunned the invitation to join in a firm but not hostile rebuke.) The West screwed up badly again when the Danish cartoons were not reprinted world-wide. What many didn't understand was that the staged riots were a political strike against moderate Muslims, not non-Muslims. The "tolerance" urged by many voices outside the Muslim world played into the hands of the radical Islamists. Now we get a third chance to come to the aide of moderate Muslims all over the world, but so far, I haven't heard much outcry. Several days ago I sent the following letter to the Boston Globe, which has not yet indicated that it will publish it: The conviction and pending execution of an Afghani student, Sayed Parwiz Kambakhsh, for blasphemy is an appalling circumstance, but it offers an opportunity that we should all seize. The time has come for Muslims to step up to the plate and demonstrate that Islam is a great faith that has no need for violence or intimidation to maintain the loyalty of its congregation. And we outside Islam must make it crystal clear that we cannot respect or honor a religion that would consider blasphemy a capital crime, no matter how ancient the tradition from which this decision flowed. Muslims who support–or refrain from condemning–the conviction and sentence of Kambakhsh must be made to realize that they share responsibility for bringing dishonor to their cherished heritage, and if we non-Muslims do not speak out, we too must share in the blame. Friends don't let friends commit, or condone, evil. The best way of showing our good will towards Islam is by helping it shed an indefensible aspect of its legacy. Every religion has much to atone for, but that is no reason to button our lips and tolerate fresh grounds for atonement. There is no need, yet, for anger. Let us all just remind Muslims everywhere of what they must surely know: blasphemy is not a capital crime in any society worthy of respect. It is now up to Muslims to prevent some of their number from defiling their own precious culture.

I got my renewal notice for the AA the other week. I checked online to confirm the price and then found something interesting. I could save get Rescue+ for €0 (value €65) if I was a new customer. So I called into the AA and said. Hey I'm an existing customer could I get the Rescue+ for free. No only for new customers I was told. So I said if my wife joined with me as an associate member (the opposite of the current arrangement) would I get the Rescue+ for free. Yes I was told.

So I did and I got the Rescue+ for free. For this year anyway. So why is it OK to treat new customers better than existing customers?