"For anyone to think that these differences are of no import is inane. "
Why?
What reason do *you* have to believe they are significant?
"You can't say 'blacks are the same as whites' and then support affirmative action."
The hell I can't! You think racism doesn't exist in this society? You think we're each born with the same oppurunities? Affirmative action has *nothing* to do with helping out people whose inborn talents are sub-par. It has everything to do with giving people who are vastly overrepresented in the poor sections of our population a chance out of their situation. I don't always agree with Affirmative action, I don't think it's a miracle tonic for society's ills, but you seem to have a terrible misunderstanding of its purpose.
I somewhat agree - I have personally come across one example where Gould wasn't exactly wrong, but he certainly neatened some actual untidiness for the sake of his essay. It was on the evolution of insect wings, and Gould wholeheartedly embraced the theory of thermoregulatory benefit as if it were established and respected fact. (It is *not*. It is simply one of a number of theories on the subject, at least it was a year or two ago...certainly it was when Gould wrote the essay.)
The other example came from another essay on the evolution of QWERTY, where Gould simply wrote up the popular myth (which has since been debunked by *gasp* real research, see a prev slashdot article on the subject).
Yet I did very much enjoy Mismeasure of Man and thought it made some excellent points about statistical bias and keeping a proper perspective on historical scientific findings. I wouldn't have said con-man, and I wouldn't go so far as to say that he is a complete fraud as a scientist. Grain of salt...
The point that several previous posts seemed to be angling towards, but not quite saying directly, is that crud like this is unscientific at best. The article claims that Einstein's brain was compared with that of 35 people of "average" intelligence. Putting aside the very basic idea that average is not definable here, this is still a pretty small case study. This just ain't front page news.
Someone earlier mentioned Mismearure of Man, where Gould has done a rather amusing overview of the cranial capacity of some of the world's great thinkers. Very wide spread. No clear definition one way or the other. In fact some of the greatest proponents of this type of phrenology were pretty distressed to find their own capacity hitting a little below the mark...
There were four books altogether: The Camera The Negative The Print (and believe it or not) The Polaroid I *think* that's right. The Polaroid is now long out of print, and probably rightly so since it dealt with specific materials (as is my understanding) and would at this point be pretty out of date. The first three are a wonderful and still timely reference (now 20 years after Adams' death!) although I don't think they make a great choice for the less-experienced crowd. The negative in particular will be of less use to 35mm photographers, as it deals with selective development that has little place in roll film applications. Anyhow. I always *did* think that Upton & London's Photography was overkill for beginners, it's good to see a quicker reference receiveing rave reviews.
Yeah proper Surround Sound is neat-o, but the complaint still stands that this would be aiming towards a *very* small portion of the market.
Even if you could sell four speakers to a respectable sector of the market, who is ever going to set them up properly? This just doesn't fit with consumer products...Surround without properly positioned speakers is quite worthless.
I just don't understand how Sony, et al expects to move many of these on those merits....although I suppose all they have to do is convince the public its superior....I dunno, the whole thing sounds like a waste of resources to me.
I'm amused that we're finally reaching storage capacities we have no use for....everyone is grasping at straws on how to soak up the extra GBs with data noone really wants...
Well, from what I've heard they are regrettably going the full higher-quality route, at least in terms of Audio-DVD. Frankly I don't believe the world needs 24-bit 96kHz sound in a general consumer format.
The average listener doesn't even pick up what CDs have to offer. 24-bits 96 thousand times a second still sounds awful if its going through a four-inch speaker in a boom-box. A-DVD will cater to a miniscule fraction of the market....I just don't think they can pull people away from their CD collections.
Slashdot Mirror
"For anyone to think that these differences are of no import is inane. "
Why?
What reason do *you* have to believe they are significant?
"You can't say 'blacks are the same as whites' and then support affirmative action."
The hell I can't! You think racism doesn't exist in this society? You think we're each born with the same oppurunities? Affirmative action has *nothing* to do with helping out people whose inborn talents are sub-par. It has everything to do with giving people who are vastly overrepresented in the poor sections of our population a chance out of their situation. I don't always agree with Affirmative action, I don't think it's a miracle tonic for society's ills, but you seem to have a terrible misunderstanding of its purpose.
"For anyone to think that these differences are of no import is inane. "
Why?
What reason do *you* have to believe they are significant?
I somewhat agree - I have personally come across one example where Gould wasn't exactly wrong, but he certainly neatened some actual untidiness for the sake of his essay. It was on the evolution of insect wings, and Gould wholeheartedly embraced the theory of thermoregulatory benefit as if it were established and respected fact. (It is *not*. It is simply one of a number of theories on the subject, at least it was a year or two ago...certainly it was when Gould wrote the essay.)
The other example came from another essay on the evolution of QWERTY, where Gould simply wrote up the popular myth (which has since been debunked by *gasp* real research, see a prev slashdot article on the subject).
Yet I did very much enjoy Mismeasure of Man and thought it made some excellent points about statistical bias and keeping a proper perspective on historical scientific findings. I wouldn't have said con-man, and I wouldn't go so far as to say that he is a complete fraud as a scientist. Grain of salt...
The point that several previous posts seemed to be angling towards, but not quite saying directly, is that crud like this is unscientific at best. The article claims that Einstein's brain was compared with that of 35 people of "average" intelligence. Putting aside the very basic idea that average is not definable here, this is still a pretty small case study. This just ain't front page news.
Someone earlier mentioned Mismearure of Man, where Gould has done a rather amusing overview of the cranial capacity of some of the world's great thinkers. Very wide spread. No clear definition one way or the other. In fact some of the greatest proponents of this type of phrenology were pretty distressed to find their own capacity hitting a little below the mark...
Silly stuff.
There were four books altogether:
The Camera
The Negative
The Print
(and believe it or not) The Polaroid
I *think* that's right. The Polaroid is now long out of print, and probably rightly so since it dealt with specific materials (as is my understanding) and would at this point be pretty out of date. The first three are a wonderful and still timely reference (now 20 years after Adams' death!) although I don't think they make a great choice for the less-experienced crowd. The negative in particular will be of less use to 35mm photographers, as it deals with selective development that has little place in roll film applications.
Anyhow. I always *did* think that Upton & London's Photography was overkill for beginners, it's good to see a quicker reference receiveing rave reviews.
Yeah proper Surround Sound is neat-o, but the complaint still stands that this would be aiming towards a *very* small portion of the market.
Even if you could sell four speakers to a respectable sector of the market, who is ever going to set them up properly? This just doesn't fit with consumer products...Surround without properly positioned speakers is quite worthless.
I just don't understand how Sony, et al expects to move many of these on those merits....although I suppose all they have to do is convince the public its superior....I dunno, the whole thing sounds like a waste of resources to me.
I'm amused that we're finally reaching storage capacities we have no use for....everyone is grasping at straws on how to soak up the extra GBs with data noone really wants...
Well, from what I've heard they are regrettably going the full higher-quality route, at least in terms of Audio-DVD. Frankly I don't believe the world needs 24-bit 96kHz sound in a general consumer format.
The average listener doesn't even pick up what CDs have to offer. 24-bits 96 thousand times a second still sounds awful if its going through a four-inch speaker in a boom-box. A-DVD will cater to a miniscule fraction of the market....I just don't think they can pull people away from their CD collections.