Being Human

From the NYT:

Last month a Georgia woman named DeShan Fishel was driving near a school and saw a Jeep rush past a stop signal on a school bus, clipping a 5-year-old boy. The other driver sped away.

Ms. Fishel whipped a U-turn and gave chase. She stayed with the Jeep on surface streets and caught the driver on a highway in Dawson County, Ga., making him pull over. She watched the driver until police officers arrived.

"All I could think about was that little kid, getting hit, and this person getting away with it," Ms. Fishel said at a news conference. "It just really upset me."

The public urge for punishment that helped delay the passage of Washington's economic rescue plan is more than a simple case of Wall Street loathing, according to scientists who study the psychology of forgiveness and retaliation. The fury is based in instincts that have had a protective and often stabilizing effect on communities throughout human history. Small, integrated groups in particular often contain members who will stand up and — often at significant risk to themselves — punish cheaters, liars and freeloaders.

Just saying hello. Already posted on Rick's thread about the reading. I'm excited to hear what people have thought about the reading.

From The Observer

Can machines think? That was the question posed by the great mathematician Alan Turing. Half a century later six computers are about to converse with human interrogators in an experiment that will attempt to prove that the answer is yes.

In the 'Turing test' a machine seeks to fool judges into believing that it could be human. The test is performed by conducting a text-based conversation on any subject. If the computer's responses are indistinguishable from those of a human, it has passed the Turing test and can be said to be 'thinking'.

No machine has yet passed the test devised by Turing, who helped to crack German military codes during the Second World War. But at 9am next Sunday, six computer programs - 'artificial conversational entities' - will answer questions posed by human volunteers at the University of Reading in a bid to become the first recognised 'thinking' machine. If any program succeeds, it is likely to be hailed as the most significant breakthrough in artificial intelligence since the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. It could also raise profound questions about whether a computer has the potential to be 'conscious' - and if humans should have the 'right' to switch it off.

From Darwin @ Home:

Darwin at Home is an open source software project that aims to bring the process of evolution into your computer at home so that you can see it working. From the initial projects to evolve locomotion it is now moving towards a more generic framework for evolution in general.

Hello everyone!  Not sure if I'm doing this correctly, but I'll find out soon enough! 

Let's use this thread for talking about the "Standard Equipment" chapter. Any thoughts or flashes of insight occurring to anyone? Has anything resonated or repelled? Let's hear the details!

Just saying Hi!  See you all Tues!

I don't really know how to use this....new experience should be fun!! Any advice on how to best use this blog, let me know. : )

Hello everyone.

Hi all.

So the time has come for me to finally give in and do this blog thing.

I have been avoiding the whole blog thing because, honestly, I've made fun of it in the past.

But now I'm ready to use it to learn. I promise I won't make fun of anyone's ideas! I just always had a...misconception about blogging. 

Here it goes...

Well, I guess I'll tell you a little about myself.  I just transferred to Evergreen after receiving my AA.  I live in Seattle, WA (a few blocks from UW I might add) and work at the Woodland Park Zoo as the Membership and Annual Giving Coordinator full-time.  I'm not looking forward to the commute down to Olympia each week, but I think it will be worth it.  I live with my wonderful partner, Christopher, and 2 gorgeous cats, Flora and Isis.  The picture of myself is from my sister's wedding, so it's not exactly an accurate depiction of me, but it's all I could find that would work.

 I'm really looking forward to this class, which actually goes along nicely with my ILC in which I will study how memories are formed and in what ways they help (or hinder) individuals identify their sense of self, place and culture.  

See you all next week.

 Kristine

Looking forward to reading Pinker and exploring evolutionary psychology

j

Scott Taylor here.  Just logging on and sayin' hi!

Richard Dawkins describes why evolution has shaped our mind to perceive only objects and events that are in the range of our experience.

Link to mp3 audio.

I came back searching for a note from Delwin and to talk to Steven, and I was surprised to see people still blogging here.

Since it seems to be something that people liked, I wanted to share a few resources with you that you may enjoy:

Rick has a neat project called Olyblog that may be a great place for folks to migrate to, since it is set up similarly to this website and will feel very familiar. I wrote a couple of things over there today as "Pattytoo", which was my first step into that system.

There are also really great online communities like Livejournal, which are a bit different but super neat. I've had a journal over there under one name or another for quite a few years, and it really allows for some interesting community building. My latest one has been online for about a year, and I've met many real life friends and had great conversations with it. Some of those conversations have literally been going on for ten years now, and they have greatly enriched my life.

There are other tools too, like blogger or myspace as well. The coolest thing about myspace is that it allows you to check up on professors before you take them, sort of like ratemyprofessor.com.

I think Rick said that he'd be leaving this one alone for about a year, but I thought it might be good for folks to know about these other places too.

Patty 

New York Times

A surprisingly recent instance of human evolution has been detected among the peoples of East Africa. It is the ability to digest milk in adulthood, conferred by genetic changes that occurred as recently as 3,000 years ago, a team of geneticists has found.

The finding is a striking example of a cultural practice — the raising of dairy cattle — feeding back into the human genome. It also seems to be one of the first instances of convergent human evolution to be documented at the genetic level. Convergent evolution refers to two or more populations acquiring the same trait independently.

Here are some links that you may find useful in writing your evals.

• Evaluation Process at Evergreen
• Student Self-evaluation
• Student Evaluation of Faculty

Sign up for your very own eval conference with Rick!

In chapter 15 in The Nurture Assumption, Harris poses several questions she believes reasearchers should be asking such as "how can we keep a classroom of students from splitting into two dichotomous groups, pro-school and anti-school?"

i don't think it's realistic that all children be pro-school. I don't think it's that simple, anyway.  The U.S. school system is faulty- actually it's not; it's set up to fail students, at least a portion, and it works quite well. Consistently, schools in impoverished districts are lacking sufficient funding. As a result, some schools are without certain "necessities" such as books, extra-curricular opportunities, and enough good teachers. children are not given equal education but they are all compared by the same standardized tests (which, when consistently failed by any one school district, implies major "adjustments" to the district such as firing the experienced teachers and replacing them with new ones, and drastically cutting funding- putting students at an even larger disadvantage) That is no coincidence. The school systems are modeled from our economic system, which imposes a vast socio-economic gap. School systems reflect society and are tools to produce functional members of society. So, i think it would demand a restructuring on our economic system, built on even ground, to "keep a classroom of students from splitting into two dichotomous groups, pro-school and anti-school."