November 2015 Media Thread

Everything is heritable:

• "Thinking positively: The genetics of high intelligence" (commentary)
• "Political Attitudes Develop Independently of Personality Traits", Hatemi & Verhulst 2015

Politics/religion:

• "'Ethics' is advertising", "The Strange Case of Anna Stubblefield" ("Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees...", "organisms are adaptation-executers, not fitness-maximizers")
• "The Cost of Crime to Society: New Crime-Specific Estimates for Policy and Program Evaluation"

Statistics/AI/meta-science:

• "A New, Life-or-Death Approach to Funding Heart Research"
• "Magnesium l-threonate/Magtein: publication bias in its human trials"
• "Auto-Generating Clickbait With Recurrent Neural Networks"
• "Page Weight Matters" (Simpson's paradox: when a better treatment - faster YouTube page loads - makes aggregate numbers worse - average latency goes up)

Psychology/biology:

• "Reconstruction and Simulation of Neocortical Microcircuitry", Markram et al 2015 (media)
• "Synchronizing education to adolescent biology: 'let teens sleep, start school later'", Kelley et al 2014:
• "Evolution of the human brain: when bigger is better", Hofman 2014
• "When Evolution Is Infectious"
• Charles Bonnet syndrome (10-40% of blind people can experience vivid complex visual hallucinations; they just don't ever talk about it.)
• "The Dubious Quick Kill, part 1: Sword wounds and the circulatory system"
• Dealing with a mercury spill

Technology:

• "Crush Point: When large crowds assemble, is there a way to keep them safe?"

Economics:

• "Ghost Babies"
• "Does Academic Research Destroy Stock Return Predictability?", McLean & Pontiff 2015

Philosophy:

• "The Reversal Test and Status Quo Bias"
• "Growing a Language", Steele 1998

Fiction:

• "It Was You Who Made My Eyes Blue"
• "Tryfon Tolides: an almost pure empty poetry"

Good article for a general audience on Nick Bostrom and Superintelligence in the latest New Yorker:

The Doomsday Invention

Statistics

• The relationship between sample size and power. Or if you're lazy...

• Should I assume log e or log 10?

• wash-out period between treatments in cross-over RCT's

• So you want to draw inferences about an individual from a group?

• Sampling from dynamic populations

• Relationship between number of participants and number of clusters

Refugee health

• An investigation of culturally competent terminology in healthcare policy finds ambiguity and lack of definition.

• Mental health literacy among refugee communities: differences between the Australian lay public and the Iraqi and Sudanese refugee communities.

• Refugee mental health bibliography

• Refugee research techniques bibliography

• Refugee work and occupation bibliography

• Twine - UNHR data on refugees

Psychiatry

• Rosenhan experiment

• Current decision tools to determine if non consensual mental health treatment is used

• Percieved coersion and psychiatry: A primer that frames the issues of patient rights (v.s. coersive psychiatry) as a question of impression management by clinicians (deceptive psychiatry) rather than as a framework of privellaged rights for psychiatric occupations and deprivation of rights from their subjects.

• Coercive psychiatry, human rights and public participation - an article identifying the factors underlying the persistance of human rights abuses in mental health care in Australia in spite of formal enquiries.

Evidence-based Health policy

http://policymakers.evidencemap.org/#/category/36

Psychotherapy

http://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/A-Systematic-Review-of-Potential-Mechanisms-of-Change-in-Psychotherapeutic-Interventions-for-Personality-Disorder-2161-0487.1000133.pdf http://www.cochrane.org/CD003388/DEPRESSN_psychological-therapies-chronic-post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd-adults

Psychometrics

Item design:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_analysis

Survey design:

• https://fluidsurveys.com/university/tips-for-avoiding-respondent-bias/
• http://fluidsurveys.com/university/survey-priming-question-order-giving-survey-bias/
• http://fluidsurveys.com/university/maximize-response-rates-minimize-bias-proper-survey-structure/
• http://www.psych-it.com.au/Psychlopedia/article.asp?id=98

Misc

• Ring signatures are the future of the anonymous cryptocurrencies? Zero knowledge proofs are probably impossible

• Caplan's the Danger of Economics - most of which I think he's wrong about, but I appreciate that he's discussing topics and subtopics that I'm interested in.

• Recent redditing about anxiety and toxaplasma here got my researching:Given that Amantadine actually kills the pathogen associated with depression, whereas causitive agents are not associated with most types of depression, could it be that Amantadine can cure and not merely treat depression and/or bipolar or other mood disorders (and speculatively due to research on associations with schiz.) and even psychotic disorders? Unfortunately the low sample size of the only available study, the unfashionability of bringing infectious disease and mental health silos together, and the lack of a follow up study for the longer term, or even cases studies contacting participants in the last study if they had remissed is going to hold back those answers. I wonder why the malaria drug makers don't enter this psych pahrma industry themsleves

• codified of the 'honour code' of two American gangs

• experiential avoidance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiential_avoidance), social role valorisation and learned optimism

• limits of computation. I wonder if this is telling about human cognition too?

• chambers of commerce and the wiki

• https://nz.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091115064617AAbKDuZ
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organisation_for_Economic_Co-operation_and_Development
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etiquette_in_Australia_and_New_Zealand
• learn to ask questions better

• look at predictive modelling, econometrics and math finance

• illocutionary acts

• Try asking what your potential partners like sexuall, clinically or casually. It can come out of nowhere, that's how you can escalate!
• how ea ventures evaluate projects
• Energy, momentum, focus

Robert Green's sick articles on getting jobs and not living in the present

• http://www.irobotsoft.com/
• http://her.oxfordjournals.org/content/16/6/671.full
• https://unlock.vodafone.com.au/voila/handsetunlock/self-service.html?method=selectService
• https://soundcloud.com/ania-julia/here-lucianremix-ac
• https://www.reddit.com/r/agoristliving
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agorism
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agora_(online_marketplace)
• https://www.reddit.com/r/AgMarketplace/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_analysis
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_feasibility_analysis
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_transplant

This guy is really passionate about what he's talking about. But in a RSD kinda way, rather than a HappierHuman kind of way. It's still awesome

• Long term desire
• Existential bummer
• The Urge To Merge: Why Do We Crave Intimacy?

This guy is also really passionate:...

• Excuses are for bitches

Seperate:

• impolite escalation - logistically, physically, emotionally or sexual conversation topic

• Bias in Mental Testing, Jensen 1980 (review)
• Drug Interdiction Partnerships, Legal Principles, and Investigative Methodologies for Law Enforcement (review)
• The Master Algorithm (review)

Until the Sea Shall Free Them. Inherently partisan, and I have no real measure of its accuracy, but a compelling narrative that goes some way in expanding to the systemic ways things go wrong, while still very firmly rooted in its single example.

Light, by M John Harrison (based on the first 22%). I'm finding it genuinely hard to read - a bit like The Quantum Thief or The January Dancer, but more so than either of them. I can't yet say it's good per se - in particular the three narrative strands show very little sign of converging at this stake - but it's a striking, provocative experience.

I just read The Flux by Ferrett Steinmetz, the sequel to his novel Flex. Short review: Like its predecessor, The Flux is the literary equivalent of a summer blockbuster film: it doesn't feel like High Art, but it's action-packed, suspenseful, and a heck of a lot of fun. Recommended for anyone looking for a good time; 4 out of 5 stars.

• The Wind-up Girl (review)
• The Great Gatsby (review)

• Monogatari Second Season: Nekomonogatari+Kabukimongatari+Otorimonogatari+Onimonogatari+Koimonogatari (the long-awaited real followup to Bakemonogatari; the original sequel anime, Nisemonogatari, was more than a little disappointing in focusing too much on fanservice, fanservice which aside from the famous toothbrush scene was mostly a waste of time. Second Season, on the other hand, begins with followups on each of the main characters whose problems were solved in Bakemonogatari, but it turns out their problems were really only postponed to a more final reckoning. Beginning with Hanekawa, each sub-arc follows a fresh character's crisis while slowly shedding light on the larger story they are part of, a lengthy war between a mysteriously destructive interloper and a clairvoyant self-proclaimed to know everything in which they successively manipulate the main characters to create and resolve crises, respectively, with each arc getting closer and closer to involving Kanbaru Suruga in some way. The return of Senjougahara & her dialogue in Nekomonogatari is most welcome to this long-time viewer, and the final Koimonogatari likewise returns the fan favorite con-man Kaiki Deshuu to not just appearances but as protagonist for several episodes, which I especially enjoyed as an antidote to Araragi. I wouldn't say that it's better than Bakemonogatari, if only because I don't think any episode in Second Season has the same impact as episode 12, the overall plot can't be fairly judged just on the basis of Second Season as it ends right before the Kanbaru arc which seems to be the final arc, and I find the character Nadeko Sengoku impossible to understand or sympathize with in the least so the Otorimonogatari arc was a pain to sit through.)
• A Letter To Momo (review)

• The Martian (a faithful but very Hollywood depiction of the novel; it is exactly what one would expect upon hearing that The Martian was being turned into a big-budget film starring Matt Damon & Sigourney Weaver, glossy special effects and overwrought soundtrack and all. What is cut from the novel was of no importance.)
• The Great Gatsby (another glossy big-budget Hollywood adaptation; marred by the, thankfully brief, frame story in which Tobey Maguire ascends to heretofore unseen levels of schmarm and schmaltz as the narrator. The novel is so short that it's almost a scene by scene adaptation, and the main directorial choice seems to be to put a heavy emphasis on it happening to be set during the 'Roaring Twenties', so every scene or party is punched up as much as feasible. The narrator doesn't encounter Gatsby when the two are calmly sitting down at a party, but encounters him in the crush of a giant uproariously drunk crowd backlit by fireworks; the narrator cannot lunch with Gatsby at a dusty obscure roadside cafe, but they must lunch in a giant speakeasy with strippers/chorus-line dancers; in spending an afternoon with Tom's mistress & friends, he does not get tipsy on whiskey but he gets falling-down drunk with the half-naked women & popping up champagne bottles to bath in; women are not properly 20's flat-chested but all bare cleavage with pushup bras; Gatsby is not shot offscreen, but rather onscreen shortly after parting from the narrator while rushing to a phonecall he thinks is from Daisy; and so on. This damages the original atmosphere of the book, which conveys the sense of dusty dog days on rural LI in a way the movie does not at all, but I don't think it's a loss; the book is still the book, and it's fine for a movie adaptation to make more of a spectacle of itself and revel in audiovisuals. The party scene makes full use of its latitude. What is more annoying, or perhaps amusing, is noting the hamfisted touches of modernity. For example, the movie chooses to keep the part of the dinner where Tom alludes to Lothrop Stoddard; Fitzgerald brings this up not for being racist, but as part of his character study showing Tom to be pitiable as his athletic career is over & he's starting to realize his lack of worth, and the movie omits any hint of this in order, obviously, to simplify things by casting Tom as The Bad Guy, since of course bad guys must be racist - an edit which reflects the crudity & narrowness of the writers and also really does do harm to the literary qualities of the movie. A less significant, but much more amusing, example would be the attempt to whitewash the Meyers Wolfsheim character; never mind that he is repeatedly identified as Jewish, and that Jews at the time were deeply involved in NY organized crime & the numbers racket and the Wolfsheim character pretty much has to be Jewish or Italian, no, the movie determinedly edits out all uses of the word 'Jewish' from dialogue and goes so far as to cast Wolfsheim using an Indian actor! Because apparently there are no Jewish actors in Hollywood they could use.)
• Back to the Future II

Touhou:

• "Fairy Dance" (Pine Tree feat. Mii; Shinsoku {C86}) [rock]
• "Shanghai Teahouse ~ Chinese Tea" (Ex-calibur; Knights of Round {C73}) [instrumental rock]

Kantai Collection:

• "昼戦・砲雷撃戦、初め! -ピアノ協奏曲-" (TAM; KanColle Piano Concerto {C88}) [orchestral]

Doujin:

• "homephone TE" (Asahi feat.emaru; homephone TE {2014}) [electronica]
• "yume" (Asahi feat.emaru; homephone TE {2014}) [electronica]
• "tsuiraku" (Asahi feat.emaru; homephone TE {2014}) [electronica]
• "sinwave" (Asahi feat.emaru; homephone TE {2014}) [electronica]
• "handmade" (宮沢もよよ; PLAY {C85}) [electronica]
• "IVY" (Fullkawa-P feat. Utau Kitchen; Girlfriend from Kyoto {2012}) [Jpop]
• "Purl" (ITM; Bayside Dreamer {C88}) [house]
• "Fresh Air" (Lumina; Bayside Dreamer {C88}) [house]

Vocaloid:

• "Crawlers" (Miku; Croissant Chicago, Morning Act {2015}) [Jpop]
• "Osmium" (Avanna; Omega+, Transgalactic Flight {2015}) [trance/electronic]
• "Parades (monaca:factory Hadal Zone Remix)" (Miku; whoo & monaca:factory, VRUSH UP! #05 -whoo Tribute- {2013}) [trance]
• "ice (Guitar/Michael Lueckner Fire+Ice Remix)" (Miku; whoo & Michael Lueckner, VRUSH UP! #05 -whoo Tribute- {2013}) [trance]

This month, Enya's back with Dark Sky Island. The title refers to the British island of Sark, the world's first whole island that freed itself of nighttime light pollution so that people can see the stars.

Escape from chaos - a light instrumental playlist that's good for concentrating and elevating my mood while reducing anxiety

The most awesome song. Awesome possum! It's awesome to win and awesome to lose!

Kiki's Delivery Service SVH ?????? (hope 'I wish') rap remix Dj Day&Go or this or this since it frequently gets removed wherever it's hosted, like the original youtube clip

One vision productions - amazing indigenous hip hop and my favourite song

Affirmation song 'I'm a man in control of my life'

Caught in a hustle - Immortal Technique

This song reminds me to be good. I use to listen to it as a socialist adolescent and teenager. Now I look past that and his leanings towards conspiracy theories and try identify the authenticity, anger, hatred, sadness, self awareness socially consciousness, compassion, passion and mercy in the lyrcist's minds and words as sharing a kind of EA sentiment. I was reminded of this randomly while having a really off day today, without a sense of direction. I haven't listen to it yet. I wanted to see what I remember about it before I do by sharing it here.

Avast fluttershy's ass