Incentivize Wellness

The news item this morning from Boston about the "near-universal" health care made me think about wellness. There is difficulty incentivizing behaviour.

As with other things in life, there are probably as many reasons for not taking care of yourself are multitude.

One thing that could contribute would be having your gym count days in attendance each month and granting credit for it in some way. The gym could use RFID on membership cards and you wouldn't get credit if your stay is under 45 min. In essence, you get paid for attending the gym.

Open Access and Self-Destructive Acts (edited rant repost)

Open access to research funded by the U. S. Government at any level is not really a matter of debate any longer. What we are witnessing with attempts to head off open access may be a DMCA-like act of desperation. In any case, the behaviour of citizens, whatever they do for a living, has changed as they interact with increasingly democratcized channels of information distribution over time. The trend is obvious and resistance is indeed futile. This much is plain and I believe we all agree on the ubiquity of the conversion of these cultural artifacts to digital form.

What we don't agree on is the right of last year's concessionaire to be this year's gatekeeper. Certainly a graceful segue into a different business model is the proper solution, but at whose expense?

As we see in the courts, it will be many years before we see a political body that is prepared and knowledgeable in issues of advancing science and technology. Perhaps it is naive of me to think people who are afraid of the future and unwilling to adapt should admit it. Delaying tactics appear to be the order of the day.

I don't want to draw inappropriate parallels, but look at the way Al Gore was treated publicly over his advocacy on global climate change. You have a situation where a long-term trend is recognized by people you pay to research stuff you don't have the inclination to learn, then ignore what they have to say - or - "Decide for Yourself" the immortal motto at Fox News. Obviously the journal publishing industry has a long way to go before they throw money to the think tank prostitution industry the way ExxonMobil does but it's worth considering. Are we indulging in self-destructive acts?

There is evidence that humans will need every single minute available to them in order to learn to deal with earth's changing systems. Delay in this case (global warming) may end up causing irreparable damage to civilization. Delay in the case of open access holds the potential of hindering the movement of information to places we never foresaw, preventing developments we never imagined.

Some of this perspective comes from attending the open access symposium at the 2005 AAAS meeting in Washington, some from watching what the Department of Energy and others such as Deep Web Technologies, think about the future of collaborative research over the last few years, and some from observing the evolution of knowledge systems online.

I'll admit to being unscientific and indulging in advocacy as well but I have students who need need new systems in place for learning and for advancing knowledge. Not tomorrow, but today.

Fox News Recipe for Graphics Excellence *wink*

Fox News appears to have obtained the last surviving copy of the "Glitz-o-Matic."
Awesome Fox News Graphics

That was an inside joke for SIGGRAPH attendees in the early 90s but I don't think it really needs elaboration. You can't teach concepts of scale with nothing to compare against.

Inflation, GDP, productivity measures and other countries - all of these things would be at least somewhat useful.

It's a strange Fox recipe:

1. Rip off somebody you don't like.
2. Criticize his presentation.
3. Do something far worse.

Education and Streaming Video

There are vendors who want schools to transport vast archives of video files over their networks for educational purposes. The idea is that a teacher can have her choice of appropriate material constantly available for curriculum needs. Some Districts have already spent money on it.

I believe that the majority of educational video content should continue to be provided by cable distribution.

Mark Cuban posted a thoughtful rant (possible oxymoron here)about getting video files (1)hosted and (2) transported across the limited bandwidth available to large numbers of folks.

The Broward District School Board in South Florida has about 250,000 students on any given day. There are 134 teachers at my modestly sized high school which gives you an idea of how many classrooms might be viewing something. It has *one* network with equivalent capacity of one or two T1 connections to each location where there may be from 400 elementary to 2000 high school students.

Granted, there are display devices that serve up to 25 students at once. But assuming modest use, this is going to strain the dickens out of the network of people actually use it.

Let's look at an alternative. Each school district has a broadcasting license for television which allows them to become a mini cable provider.

The bandwidth of commercial cable providers is so immense that the content available is pitifully inadequate to fill it. Think of the 490 channels you don't actually watch. The average teenager regularly views from 7 to 12 networks at home. That's from my freshman class survey done annually in the Fall for the last seven years. Yes they're self-selected, but *for* geekiness, not against. The mode is around 9.

Video files can still be delivered on the Internet, but most of the time teachers and students should be able to tune into the content they need with a cable-like service.

Science Tatoos

There is no longer a question as to whether Scientists have them. The question is, who has better ones?

(a) Physicists
(b) Biologists
(c) Mathematicians
(d) Marine Biologists [cause they're not *just* biologists]
(e) Name your own fav

LINK

The Next Big Thing Might Not be What You Expected

The Edge Annual Question has stimulated Sam Harris to propose reliable lie detection as a something that would change society. He is entirely correct. But I would like to point out something that may adulterate the overwhelming joy, should it come to pass. I'm not taking issue with Harris. Far from it.

We all understand the concept of social compacts because we are the "law-abiding" and the "good" citizens. The last eight years of extreme conservative rule making should make it clear that there are things the American People hold dear. The "potential for human life" is one of them. Another is our duty to invade another country and change things if we suppose our friends are not being treated right. Harris couches it in terms of tension between absolute morality and moral dilemma.

Absolute standards may label a thief as a bad person. A burglar may not subscribe to the complete social compact as understood by your average minister, but he wouldn't necessarily hurt you on purpose. Likewise, I may not subscribe to the concept that human life begins at the time of fertilization.

Harris imagines it happening thus:

Well-intentioned people would happily pass between zones of obligatory candor, and these transitions will cease to be remarkable. Just as we’ve come to expect that many public spaces will be free of nudity, sex, loud swearing, and cigarette smoke—and now think nothing of the behavioral changes demanded of us whenever we leave the privacy of our homes—we may come to expect that certain places and occasions will require scrupulous truth-telling. Most of us will no more feel deprived of the freedom (to) lie during a press conference or a job interview than we currently feel deprived of the freedom to remove our pants in a restaurant.

What if there is a location-dependent social compact where it is acceptable to smoke or remove your pants? What happens when you leave the area? Do you magically change from being good to being bad?

Harris suggests in a presentation at the Salk Institute that objective measurement is a solution. I agree.

The future might be *squirmy*.

Google Reader

It's official - among my students at any rate - the new Reader design is not eyeball friendly.

Blogging in Class

If you had asked me a while back if blogging in class was going to be an issue, I would have said no.

Now, maybe.

If it's reflective in nature because of interest in class discussion, it's great. I guess it's a gauge of interest like twittering.

The I-4 Corridor

The map of Florida counties gives lie to the I-4 corridor fantasy.

Note that at one end lie Hillsboro and Pinellas and at the other Orange and Osceola, counties that voted Democrat for Obama.

In the middle, the vast Southern Baptist stretch of pasture voted Republican for McCain. Polk, Lake, Pasco, and Sumter counties lie to each side of I-4 between Tampa and Orlando.

If you want to see I-4 as a lever for change for the Republican party in the past, the current configuration is a better description.

It resembles a dumbbell.

The I-4 dumbbell... Yes, it has a ring of truth.

Douglas Adams' _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ can and should replace the Holy Bible

I cast about in vain last night for an appropriate metaphor for life. Or as my kids would say, "in vein." Which made me think about my relationship with them as a teacher.

It occurred to me (BIONG!) that my relationship with them is a defining thing but for that to work for me, the concept has to include the rest of you, Gentle Readers.

I have concluded that the only world-view I can embrace is that of Douglas Adams' _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ but not as a central character.

I am a porpoise.

I believe it was Wednesday after my first class of the day when I mentally addressed my departing students with, "Goodbye, and thanks for the fish."

Look into the story my friends, you will find your situation mirrored somewhere. I wonder if at some point in my life, I can suggest to every one that Douglas Adams' _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ can and should replace the Holy Bible.

Why, you ask?

Because it more closely resembles reality.

Plot synopsis here:
Wikipedia entry for Adams' wonderful book.

Thanks for listening. If I had arms, I would hug all of you. Now give me a fish!