Monday Night Open Thread

I likes me some college football. But I don’t like the so-called College Football Playoffs. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a playoff, but I want it done right, not that half-assed thing they got going.

Over at my little blog, I wrote about it, if you care to take a look. I do this every year, so you probably know what I’m gonna say and what the field of 16 teams would be.

Briefly, it’s this:

  • All conference champions qualify for the tournament. Those are the top ten seeds.
  • The six best teams that didn’t win a conference title qualify. That rounds out the field of 16.
  • Higher seeds host the first-round games. Four bowls host the second-round games.
  • First round losers still qualify for bowls.

Anyway, that’s what’s been on my mind. But it’s not about me, it’s about you. What’s on your mind? Got something to share? It’s Monday night Open Thread.

Who wants to start?

IMAO Time Machine: No More Unfair Comparisons

Here’s another fine mess Harvey wrote about in 2009. — The Editors


Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island claimed (link NSFW) that in 8 years, he couldn’t remember George W. Bush ever being portrayed with a Hitler mustache.

His point being that it’s completely wrong for Tea Partiers to compare Obama to Hitler.

My point being that if you’re not smart enough to put the words “Bush” and “Hitler” into a Google Image search, you’re probably shouldn’t be considered qualified to vote on matters of national import.

Still, his criticism is noted, and from now on, I’ll show some restraint when comparing Obama to people with postage-stamp moustaches:

One’s a comedian whose bungling antics brought laughter to millions, the other got his start in Vaudeville.

Bias, Schmias. We Got The Result We Were Looking For.

Who’s That Girl?

Research Suggests a Country’s Degree of Gender Equality Can Affect Men’s Ability To Recognize Famous Female Faces

Harvard Medical School / Ekaterina Pesheva / Dec. 6, 2019

Our ability to recognize faces is a complex interplay of neurobiology, environment and contextual cues.

Now a study from Harvard Medical School suggests that country-to-country variations in sociocultural dynamics . . .

Check out the number of particpants at the bottom of the article . . .

— notably the degree of gender equality — can yield marked differences in men’s and women’s ability to recognize famous faces.

Show me the “famous faces.” Who determines that baseline for the study?

The findings, published Nov. 29 in Scientific Reports, reveal that men living in countries with high gender equality — Scandinavian and certain Northern European nations — perform nearly as well as women in accurately identifying the faces of female celebrities. Men living in countries with lower gender equality, such as India or Pakistan for example, fare worse than both their Scandinavian peers and women in their own country in recognizing female celebrities.

. . . assuming, of course, that men from India and Pakistan are equally as familiar with these female celebrities as their cohorts in Scandinavia and certain Northern European nations . . .

U.S. males, the study found, fall somewhere in between, a finding that aligns closely with United States’ mid-range score on international metrics of gender equality.

The U.S. takes a back seat to no one on metrics of gender equality.

The results are based on scores from web-based facial recognition tests of nearly 3,000 participants from the United States and eight other countries

3,000 participants? Are you pulling my leg?

and suggest that sociocultural factors can shape the ability to discern individual characteristics over broad categories. They suggest that men living in countries with low gender equality are prone to cognitive “lumping” that obscures individual differences when it comes to recognizing female faces.

Lumping?

“Our study suggests that whom we pay attention to appears to be, at least in part, fueled by our culture, and how and whom we choose to categorize varies by the sociocultural context we live in.” said study senior investigator Joseph DeGutis, Harvard Medical School assistant professor of psychiatry and a researcher at VA Boston Healthcare System.

But can he speak English?

“Our findings underscore how important social and cultural factors are in shaping our cognition

?

and in influencing whom we recognize and whom we do not,”

?

said study first author Maruti Mishra, Harvard Medical School research fellow in psychiatry in DeGutis’s lab. “Culture and society have the power to shape how we see the world.”

Breakthrough!

The team’s findings showed that men living in the United States — a country that ranks midrange on the United Nations’ Gender Inequality Index — performed better when asked to identify famous male politicians, actors or athletes than when they were asked to identify famous female politicians, actors or athletes. And they fared worse than women in identifying famous female celebrities. Men from Scandinavian countries, such as Norway, Denmark and Finland — all places with a high level of gender equality — performed equally well in recognizing famous male faces and famous female faces. On the other hand, men living in countries with low gender equality — India, Brazil and Pakistan, among others — performed worse than U.S. men and worse still than Scandinavian men in identifying famous women.

For the study, the researchers asked nearly 2,773 adults, ages 18 to 50, to look at a series of famous faces online and identify them. Participants included 2,295 U.S. men and women; 203 men and women from Denmark, the Netherlands, Finland and Norway; and 275 men and women from India, Egypt, Brazil, Pakistan and Indonesia. The celebrity faces were almost exclusively those of U.S. politicians, actors, athletes and performers. The researchers point out that the faces shown were exclusively those of U.S. celebrities. To ensure that U.S. participants didn’t have unfair advantage in facial familiarity over their foreign peers, the researchers only analyzed results from international participants who had indicated they were familiar with or had seen the celebrities’ faces before.

Laughable study.

Laughable.


It Could Have Been Invented Shortly After Alexander Graham Bell, But Whatever

… and kindly keep your Frenchmen jokes to yourself. . . .

Dial-A-Frog – Researchers Develop the ‘FrogPhone’ To Remotely Call Frogs in the Wild
British Ecological Society / 05 December 2019

And now, the award for the best use of “whilst” in a sentence:

Researchers have developed the ‘FrogPhone’, a novel device which allows scientists to call up a frog survey site and monitor them in the wild. The FrogPhone is the world’s first solar-powered remote survey device that relays environmental data to the observer via text messages, whilst conducting real-time remote acoustic surveys over the phone. These findings are presented in the British Ecological Society Journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution today.

{Sigh}:

The FrogPhone introduces a new concept that allows researchers to “call” a frog habitat, any time, from anywhere, once the device has been installed. The device has been developed at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Canberra and the University of Canberra in collaboration with the Australian Capital Territory and Region Frogwatch Program and the Australian National University. 

It took three organizations?

The FrogPhone utilises 3G/4G cellular mobile data coverage and capitalises on the characteristic wideband audio of mobile phones, which acts as a carrier for frog calls.

Sounds like an ad for a phone network.

Real time frog calls can be transmitted across the 3G/4G network infrastructure, directly to the user’s phone. This supports clear sound quality and minimal background noise, allowing users to identify the calls of different frog species. 

Still sounds like an ad for a phone network.

“We estimate that the device with its current microphone can detect calling frogs from a 100-150m radius” said lead author Dr. Adrian Garrido Sanchis, Associate Lecturer at UNSW Canberra.

“The device allows us to monitor the local frog population with more frequency and ease,

Might have been cheaper to dump a bunch of Alexas in the Outback.

which is significant as frog species are widely recognised as indicators of environmental health” said the ACT and Region Frogwatch coordinator and co-author, Anke Maria Hoefer. 

The FrogPhone unifies both passive acoustic and active monitoring methods, all in a waterproof casing.

Waterproof — Duh.

Wait: I get the “passive acoustic,” but what are the active monitoring methods?

The system has a large battery capacity coupled to a powerful solar panel.

Define “powerful.”

Acoustic monitoring of animals generally involves either site visits by a researcher or using battery-powered passive acoustic devices, which record calls and store them locally on the device for later analysis. These often require night-time observation, when frogs are most active. Now, when researchers dial a device remotely, the call to the FrogPhone can be recorded indirectly and analysed later

Thus negating the advantages of “real-time” monitoring.

Ms. Hoefer remarked that “The FrogPhone will help to drastically reduce the costs and risks involved in remote or high intensity surveys. Its use will also minimize potential negative impacts of human presence at survey sites. These benefits are magnified with increasing distance to and inaccessibility of a field site.” 

Fair dinkum.

The use of the current FrogPhone is limited to areas with adequate 3G/4G phone coverage.

Here we go with the ads again. Or is it a plea for more funding?

Secondly, to listen to frogs in a large area, several survey devices would be needed.

Yup. More funding.

In addition, it relies on exposure to sunlight. 

That’s the price you pay for being politically correct.

And another “More Funding” alert:

Future additions to the FrogPhone could include a satellite communications module for poor signal areas, or the use of multidirectional microphones for large areas. Lead author Garrido Sanchis emphasized that “In densely vegetated areas the waterproof case of the FrogPhone allows the device to be installed as a floating device in the middle of a pond, to maximise solar access to recharge the batteries”. 

Hope — like a FrogPhone — floats.

Straight Line of the Day: To Really Understand a Liberal…

Straight Line of the Day: To really understand a liberal…


Trying To Follow Joe Biden Makes My Head Hurt

From an NPR interview:

Q: But how do you get people excited to show up on Election Day —

A: Watch.

Q: For a return to the status quo before Donald Trump?

A: It’s not the status quo before Donald Trump. It’s a totally different world. Look, I promise you. Let’s put it this way. Take me out of the equation.

If, in fact, someone is able to get past, in the United States Congress, a, a, Obamacare with a public option that provides for a limitation of $1,000 deductible on on on any bills someone gets, makes everybody available to everybody who’s on Medicaid, to be able to get involved free, reduces drug prices significantly, turns around and provides for early education, which I’m the only one that’s laid it out clearly for everyone, 3, 4 and 5 year olds, which will fundamentally change their prospects of succeeding, gets climate change moving. What do you think they’ll be talked about in five years?


The Illustrated Walrus: Cartoon Villains

Submitted by Walruskkkch:

Beethoven’s 7th

This weekend, in 1813, Beethoven’s 7th Symphony was first performed. I’ve enjoyed it since I first heard it.

[The YouTube]

The composer conducted the premiere in Vienna, at a charity concert for soldiers.