Animal Behaviour

There were a couple of reports on recent research into animal behaviour on the BBC News website today. One on chimpanzee behaviour, which is close to some of the material in the Quest 3 chapter on physical anthropology (ch.2), almost won, but then I saw " 'Robosparrow' created from dead bird".

In this article, Zoe Kleinman (2013) reports that a study using a mechanically driven, computer controlled dead swamp sparrow has confirmed scientists' belief that the males of the species flap their wings to show aggression. To get their sixty days of tests in the open, the researchers had to overcome technical difficulties to animate the dead body, which barely lasted so often was it attacked by living sparrow males.

What really interested me was the behaviour of the human animals. They went to a lot of trouble to devise and then perform an experiment that, whilst interesting, doesn't seem earth shattering. And their budget was tiny - only $1,500! They must have spent more than that over the course of the research. I can't even imagine that small amount paying for the machinery that fit into the dead bird's body to make the wings flap under computer control. This wonderful demonstration of the human desire to solve puzzles, to better understand things around us, again reminds me strongly of the article on chimpanzees that I'm not blogging this evening. I've emailed that one to myself, so maybe it will pop up here tomorrow.

The actual research results do not surprise me at all. I grew up on a farm, and the birds there all seemed pretty aggressive to me, and wing flapping or raising definitely seemed to play a role in that. Even the roosters that lorded over our free range hens (very tasty, super fresh eggs) engaged in the same kind of wing flapping displays. I guess such research might seem a bit pointless, but I don't think it is. Just because something seems obvious doesn't mean it's true. Lots of common beliefs that human beings, often whole societies, have had turned out to be completely wrong. And the best way to make progress is to constantly test everything. As you will probably quickly learn, one of my most frequent comments in class is "Check". In any academic field, academic are always checking whether some belief, some idea or opinion, is right or not. And often ideas are wrong.

Getting it wrong and then fixing the mistakes is how we make progress, which is why you should not worry about making a few, or a lot of, mistakes in class. My job is help you progress by learning from the mistakes.

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Reference

Kleinman, Z. (2013, February 26). 'Robosparrow' created from dead bird. BBC News Technology. Retrieved February 26, 2013 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21579211

A Hard Swallow

The European horse meat scandal has not excited me very much, but when the name Ikea appeared in the same title on the front page of the BBC News, I was a little interested. Horse meat balls in the world's best known furniture stores?

According to "Horsemeat found in Ikea meatballs in Czech Republic", finding effective solutions to the problems brought to public notice by the discoveries of horse in many European processed meat products over the past month is something that European Union agriculture ministers will be discussing in meetings now taking place in Brussels (2013). The article says that Ikea, the latest corporate victim of the growing scandal, acted to stop all sales throughout Europe of meatballs that might be tainted with horse meat, which was discovered by inspectors in the Czech Republic.

I inferred from the story that Ikea sells meatballs and other Swedish delights in its famous furniture stores. I've never been inside an Ikea store, so I wasn't sure, but my inference was confirmed by a quick skim of the Wikipedia entry for IKEA ("IKEA", 2013), which the company apparently prefers to write as IKEA, not Ikea as I've been writing it; I'll continue to copy the style of the BBC News and write Ikea. I also noticed that the "IKEA" entry on Wikipedia was updated today, although apparently before the horse meat story broke: there is no mention of horses in the article.

But as I've already said, the horse meat scandal seems to me a bit over-rated. Does it really matter that much if people eat a bit of horse mixed in with their beef or pork? What does seem to me to matter is the dishonesty of passing off horse meat as pig or cow, to which the obvious solution seems to me to start selling more horse meat - horse burgers, equine lasagna, and the like. But then I was surprised: in Australia, horses are generally much more valuable than cattle, and you couldn't really make much of a profit by selling a horse for hamburger mince. I suppose some profit is better than no profit, but I wonder if a meat processor for human food would pay much more than a pet food processor. So, who is dishonestly selling these horses dressed up as cattle or pigs, and why?

Reading the article, I realised that health is one concern, although there doesn't seem to be any evidence yet that any harm has actually been caused to any person as a result of ingesting a bit of horse. I suspect that what's really made it such a big story for the past few weeks is that a lot of people really don't like the idea of eating horses, although the French do it regularly. And of course, most of us don't like being lied to.

My blog post tomorrow will be about a different sort of dishonesty, one far more relevant to us. I thought about blogging that story, also from Europe, today, but it's a bit serious. Maybe I should written about the Razzie Awards, where Twilight was the all out winner.

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References

Horsemeat found in Ikea meatballs in Czech Republic. (2013, February 25). BBC News Europe. Retrieved February 25, 2013 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21569645

IKEA. (2013, February 25). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 16:06, February 25, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=IKEA&oldid=540193751

The Dying Death Penalty

I saw the essay "An evolving debate: Democracy and the death penalty" in The Economist a few days ago (2013), and since you have already read Levitt's discussion of the death penalty  (Levitt & Dubner, 2006, pp. 124 - 125),  you might like to have a look at it.

The point I thought most interesting, though not directly related to Levitt's discussion, is that a majority of US citizens continue to favour the death penalty, even in states where their representatives in government have abolished it. I rather like this because it shows that in a healthy democracy the government does not and should not simply do what the majority, even a large majority, want. (I think the death penalty is just, but probably better not used.)

Apart from this main focus on the nature of democracy, however, paragraph 7 does discuss issues relevant to Levitt's discussion on pages 124 - 125.

You are, of course, welcome to respond to anything that attracts your interest.

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Reference

An evolving debate: Democracy and the death penalty. (2013, February 8). The Economist Lexington's Notebook. Retrieved February 13, 2013 from http://www.economist.com/blogs/lexington/2013/02/democracy-and-death-penalty 

Levitt, S. & Dubner, S. (2006). Where have all the criminals gone? In Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (p. 117 – 144). London: Penguin Books.

Economy, too broad factor

Regression model is one powerful tool of statistics, and is widely applied in many sciences and analyses. People applied it to solve relations between things in order to explain what factors drive an interested variable; for example, suppose that you are McDonalds fans, and you are interested in what factors are relevant to Mc’s burger sales. You can make hypotheses, collect data, and form regression models. Although this tool has some limitation such as if you are interested in some non-quantitative factors such as people taste, health concern, or a collection of Mc’s toys, you must convert them to quantitative scales, its concept is powerful and useful.

In Where have all the criminals gone? chapter, Levitt & Dubner say that a strong economy is definitely not related to crime rate reduction in U.S. in 1990s. (2006, pp. 121 – 122) They give three reasons in order to support their conclusion; that is, a strong economy is related to only non-violent crimes such as burglary and robbery, and not related to violent crimes; however, violent crimes were the major reduction in that period. In addition, they strengthen their conclusion by providing evidence that in spite of high growth economy in U.S. in 1960s, crimes increased significantly.

I like their analyses because they can convey a qualitative and controversial issue to quantitative analyses based on fact and data, and I am practicing the way as they did because this is a good and effective method to make low-error and low-bias results of group meetings. However, this analysis is seemed as it followed the concept of regression, and I only concern that they regress a specific issue on a broad factor; thus, its result generally returns a weak relation or no relation; moreover, I concern that we might ignore some missing links between a strong economy and crime rate. For example, you regress Mc’s burger sales on an economy. You will find that its relation is low or weak (or you fail to reject the claim that its beta value is zero). However, an economy relates some degree with Mc’s burger sales; that is, when Mc’s do its marketing campaign by launching toys’ collection, it will be succeeded if an economy is strong, and some people who are not usually eat Mc’s will spend their wealth consume Mc’s in order to take its toys. Otherwise, this campaign will be failed if an economy is slow down.

Their analyses are convinced me that a strong economy is not a factor that drove crime rate down in U.S. in 1990s, and my concern is a little point for their conclusion. However, I have to raise this concern in order to remind me that their analyses and explanations are the study of specific events, and I cannot throw any factors into a bin if I think they maybe relate with my study when I do my analyses for my tasks by referring their conclusion.

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Reference

Levitt, S. & Dubner, S. (2006). Where have all the criminals gone? In Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (p. 121 – 122). London: Penguin Books.

True or False: Legalizing drugs leads to an increase in drug use.

As Ariely points out in the conclusion to his essay, facts matter: they should guide policy decisions which can have a very substantial impact on the lives of citizens and of whole societies and their institutions (2008). Knowing relevant facts about how people make decisions about stealing can guide policy making, which is likely be a disaster if facts  are not taken into account or if people base decisions on false beliefs, however popular those false beliefs might be.

I think the decades long failure of currently popular drug policy is a good example. The facts are obvious: the policy of making some, but not all, recreational drugs illegal has done nothing to solve any country's drug problem. Many drugs have been illegal in Thailand for decades. Those same drugs are readily available and causing problems all over Thailand, as daily news reports show. If a policy is so clearly a total failure, we must ask why governments persist in it, and why the public continue to support an obvious failure. Why doesn't society demand a new solution, one that might actually help to solve the problems?

One common idea, I think, is that many people believe that legalising a drug increases the use of that drug; and conversely, that criminalising the drug reduces its use. If this is true, it makes sense to keep some drugs illegal. (But why not all? Why not alcohol, surely the most socially harmful of all drugs?)

This proposition about the relationship between the law and drug use certainly sounds reasonable. But, as Ariely has shown, and as Levitt's publishers advise:  we must "assume nothing, question everything" (Levitt & Dubner, 2005, cover).

And when we question the common assumption that making a drug illegal reduces use, what do we discover?

Let's follow Ariely and Levitt's lead and see where we're led.
Facts. We need some facts to test the common assumption. Can you help?

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Reference

Ariely, D. (2008). The context of our character, part I. In Predictably Irrational (pp. 195 – 216). London: Harper.

Levitt, S. D. & Dubner, S. J. (2005). Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. London: Penguin.

Is he a hero? For?

As I was first reviewing, and then proofreading, Mo's essay on Slim, I realised that Mo probably drew the most challenging topic to write about. My own essay on Carlson seems to me to have been much easier to write: it's pretty clear that although Carlson has some heroic characteristics, he is not and could never be a hero. (A t least, after having written the essay, it seems clear to me.)

But what about Slim?
As I read Mo's well argued position, I started thinking more about my own ideas, and why this character is so much more difficult to write about.

In the end, I decided that, like Law does for faith, we have to divide the possible question of Slim's status as a hero into three distinct questions that need to be kept separate:

1. Is Slim a hero for Campbell? Does he meet Campbell's criteria well enough either be, or to have the potential to be, a hero? 
2. Is he a hero for Steinbeck? That is, does Steinbeck present him as a hero in Of Mice and Men? 
3. Is he a hero for me? Do I think he qualifies as a hero? 

And also similarly to Law, I think that these questions are largely independent. Slim might, for example, be a hero for Campbell, but not for Steinbeck or me. Or he might be a hero for Steinbeck and Campbell, but not for me. Or he could be a hero for all three of us.

But there is at least one salient difference between the three questions, a point that comes out in several of your essays: two of the questions have answers that are right or wrong for everyone, whereas the answer to the other will vary from person to person.

I think I might actually need to write the essay to properly explore my own thoughts on whether Slim is a hero for Campbell or not. But not this evening.

Any thoughts?

More Cs:Campbell on Carlson on Candy's dog

One reason I set the exam question on Carlson's shooting of Candy's dog is the central role it plays in Steinbeck's carefully crafted story: it is in fact in the centre of the novel, over pages 50 to 56 out of 120 (2006); it moves the plot forward considerably; it tells us a lot more about the characters; it more firmly establishes themes that the story explores; and of course it powerfully foreshadows the awful climax that returns us to the beautiful and peaceful piece of nature whence we began, with even the heron (p. 2) and the little water snake (p. 8) reappearing to play a role. But are these characters' roles quite so benign when they reappear on page 112?

The reason for this short blog is that this central event in the novel also plays an important role in the support for some of your theses about an important human character in the story. And there seems to be considerable disagreement about how Campbell (as cited in Hartmann & Blass, 2007, pp. 202 - 204) would see the shooting of Candy's dog.

• Would Campbell see any heroism in Carlson's act? 
• Could Campbell see any heroism in the act itself or the wider series of events? 

Since taking account of opposing arguments is an important part of supporting our own ideas, you might find if instructive to discuss these specific questions more informally here before finalising your first draft of the essay this evening. What do you think? How well can you address the contrary opinion of others? 

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Reference

Hartmann, P. & Blass L. (2007). Quest 3 Reading and Writing (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Steinbeck, J., (2006). Of Mice and Men. London: Penguin Books.

C C C C C & C in OMM

I'd never thought of it until I was changing a file name from Carlson to Crooks an hour or so ago, when I remembered that Sup had commented on Curley's name in his review of his provisional thesis statement, but a lot of Steinbeck's characters in Of Mice and Men have names or are called by terms beginning with C: Candy, Candy's dog, Curley, Curley's wife, Crooks, and Carlson.

Do you think this means anything?

This is not the same question as the possibly more relevant one that asks whether Steinbeck gave his characters names that mean something, which is what Sup has been considering in the case of Curley.

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Reference

Steinbeck, J., (2006). Of Mice and Men. London: Penguin Books.