Breaking news from the world of academia: Thomas the Train — the popular children's television show — is covertly delivering a conservative agenda. Political scientist Shauna Wilton of the University of Alberta analyzed 23 whole episodes of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends, that wonderful show about an adorable cartoon train and his zany adventures on a fantastical island, and presented her findings at a recent conference of the Canadian Political Science Association. Wilton found that the show, which is broadcast in 130 countries, carries subversive themes that pose a danger to ... Read More
Gas on Mars Silent But Not Deadly
March 10, 2010 • By • 1 Comment
Scientists have ruled out the possibility that the presence of methane gas on Mars is due to meteorites or volcanic activity. Recent research in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters highlights the hope that the consistent levels of methane on the Red Planet could be the result of microorganisms in the Martian soil that are producing the gas as a "by-product of their metabolic processes." "As Sherlock Holmes said, 'Eliminate all other factors and the one that remains must be the truth,'" said professor Mark Sephton of the department of earth science and engineering at Imperial ... Read More
Handwriting: The Controversy!
March 9, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
I read with great interest Anne Trubek's article titled "Handwriting Is History" (January-February 2010). In 2008, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, featured my work on holistic future's forecasting. I am old enough to recall the 1980s predictions of both the paperless society and of technology fostering so much leisure time that people's future lack of need to work would become a severe societal problem. "Machine replaces human" in a world as complex as this one has a poor track record. Moreover, slowness of thought (fostered by handwriting) has its irreplaceable ... Read More
Having a Nose for Degraded Documents
March 9, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Ever wondered why your grandfather's cherished, dog-eared copy of Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire smells like that? Or why the Declaration of Independence retains the unmistakable musk of 1776? At long last, scientists have developed a "sniff test" to measure the telltale aroma of old books and irreplaceable historical documents. You know the smell — that "combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness," as the authors put it. Inhale and smell the Industrial Revolution! In a recent edition of the American Chemical ... Read More
Oscar Winners Should Thank Their Economist
March 6, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
As anyone who has channel surfed past Entertainment Tonight is aware, movie studios put massive energy into their Oscar campaigns each year. But does this effort to sway the voting members of the Motion Picture Academy of America pay off in terms of increased revenues? A series of studies over the past decade have reached conflicting conclusions. In a 2001 analysis titled “What’s an Oscar Worth?” a team of economists led by Randy Nelson and Michael Donihue of Colby College compared the box-office take of 131 nominated films with that of 131 less-heralded movies released in the same ... Read More
Death and the Academy Award Winner
March 5, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Do Oscar winners live longer than their peers? The answer is as murky as bad cinematography. As Dr. Donald Redelmeier noted in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 2001, social status is a “consistent, powerful and widespread determinant of death rates.” So, at least in theory, the status conferred by the golden statuette could contribute to a recipient’s longevity. Redelmeier and Sheldon Singh compared the mortality rates of the 762 actors and actresses who had received nominations up to that point, and compared them with another cast member of the same gender who was in the same film ... Read More
Cash for Clunkers, Visualized
March 5, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Data from the U.S. Department of Transportation's Cash for Clunkers program is displayed below as a directed network that represents the flow of car ownership, from the trade-in of "gas guzzlers" toward the purchase of new, supposedly more efficient auto makes. Each node represents a make of car and is scaled in size according to the total number of units traded in and purchased new. Node color varies according to the number of units traded in versus purchased new: The brightest red nodes represent car makes that were more frequently purchased new; the bluest nodes indicate makes more often ... Read More
Predicting Oscars for Bigelow, Bridges, Bullock
March 4, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Among its many benefits, academic research can help you win the office Oscar pool. Just go to the Web site of Iain Pardoe, who holds the Hamletesque title of associate professor of Decision Sciences at the University of Oregon. In a 2008 edition of the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Pardoe explained how he and his collaborator, Dean Keith Simonton, came up with a prediction model based on “discrete choice models.” Utilizing statistics dating back to 1936, they have determined that certain factors make getting an Academy Award more likely (receiving a Golden Globe, or ... Read More
Does an Academy Award Really Denote Quality?
March 3, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
A continuing debate among cineasts is whether the Academy Awards truly reward the best films of the year, or whether they’re highly publicized popularity contests. While the gap between critics’ top 10 lists and Oscar nominees has narrowed significantly over the past decade, conventional wisdom holds that truly groundbreaking work is seldom appreciated by the aesthetically conservative Academy. The research points in different directions. In a 2004 edition of the Creativity Research Journal, University of California, Davis, psychologist Dean Keith Simonton looked at 1,132 films that had ... Read More
