How Popular are You?

Although it only has data since 1990, you might be interested to see how common certain names are for ">new babies in the US according to the Social Security Administration. Emily has been the most common name for girls for a number of years. I guess I haven't met a lot of very young girls since I was not aware of this trend.

If you have children in this age range you can see if you fit the trends. You may be surprised!

Calendar Reform Proposed

Richard Conn Henry, professor in the Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy at The Johns Hopkins University, is proposing a Better Calendar Proposedreformed calendar. His system would maintain 12 months a year and 7 days a week. The chance is that the dates will always fall on the same day of the year. So January 1st will always be a Sunday. To synch up with the seasons (instead of leap year) he proposes an additional week every five years.

Personally I think this is a great idea! No more wondering what day or date holidays would fall on. You birthday would always be on the same day of the week. Sure we give up some variety, but I don't think it would be that big of a loss.

I would suspect that a lot of people won't like the idea though. Especially those who make their money selling new calendars every year. If the dates were always the same, then we could keep reusing the same calendar. I don't know the actual number, but judging by the number of companies, stores, catalogs and website dedicated just to selling calendars, there must be a lot of money in it!

Last day of Child's Play 2005

Today is the last day to contribute to the Child's Play Charity for 2005. If you are not familiar with Child's Play, it is a charity started by computer gamers who were tired of the bad wrap they were getting. Last year they raised $250K in cash and gifts for the Seattle Children's Hospital. Most of the gifts were related to games - like game consoles. Most of the children at the hospital spend a lot of time waiting and gifts like these are a great way for them to pass the time.

Their goal for 2005 is $300K and it is going to five different hospitals. If you cannot donate today, then your contribution can be counted towards next year. Not only is this a great chance to contribute to a worthy cause in helping make sick kids more comfortable, but it is also a chance to improve the image of computer gamers.

Off-the-Record Messaging for GAIM

Off-the-Record (OTR) Messaging allows you to have private conversations over instant messaging by providing:

Encryption

No one else can read your instant messages.

Authentication

You are assured the correspondent is who you think it is.

Deniability

The messages you send do not have digital signatures that are checkable by a third party. Anyone can forge messages after a conversation to make them look like they came from you. However, during a conversation, your correspondent is assured the messages he sees are authentic and unmodified.

Perfect forward secrecy

If you lose control of your private keys, no previous conversation is compromised.

Science Honours

• Winner: Water on Mars. Nasa's Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity discovered compelling evidence for the prolonged existence of salty, acidic water on the surface of the Red Planet.
• Runner up: Indonesian "hobbit". A team of archaeologists made the mind-blowing discovery of a new species of human that stood only one metre tall and lived on the Indonesian island of Flores.
• Human cloning. South Korean researchers made headlines across the world after announcing they had cloned human embryos, the first published and "peer reviewed" evidence this technique could work with human cells.
• Understanding condensates. In 2004, scientists made giant leaps in understanding ultra-cold gases called condensates, shedding light on some key problems in physics.
• Hidden DNA treasures. Stretches of "junk DNA" proved to be far more important than previously thought. They turned out to be essential for helping genes turn on at the right time and in the right place.
• Pulsar pair. Astrophysicists discovered the first known pair of pulsars, spinning neutron stars that shoot out jets of radiation.
• Declining plant and animal diversity. There was disturbing news this year about the decline of species diversity from large studies that surveyed amphibians, butterflies, plants and birds.
• Water on tap. New results on the structure and chemical behaviour of water could reshape fields from chemistry to atmospheric science.
• Medicines for the World's Poor. "Public-private partnerships" emerged as a force in 2004, according to Science magazine, affecting the way medicines are developed and delivered to emerging nations.
• Genes in a Drop of Water. This year, researchers hit on a new way to identify lifeforms too small and too remote to see. They collected water from diverse environments and sequenced the genes floating in it.

Ballooning into the Sky

I always thought the idea of flying through the sky with balloons would be cool. Looks like I am not the only one. Check out Ballooning into the Sky. I am not sure if you have seen the movie "The Red Balloon", but both I, and the site author have. I always wanted to fly like that too.

Year in Ideas

The New York Times has published a great list they call the Year in Ideas: A to Z. While it is missing entries for a few letters (while others are duplicated), it has some great new inventions, discoveries and ideas from the last year.

And to think the US Patent director stepped down saying we have invented everything to be invented. And that was over one hundred years ago!

Sensationalism on Computers and Education

The Christian Science Monitor has an article titled Contrarian finding: Computers are a drag on learning, which is a great example of sensationalism both in reporting and studies.

Since there are plenty of reports saying computers help learning no one would read a report that repeated these findings, but if you say the opposite (or "Contrarian" as they put it) then you get attention. Reporting the opposite, exaggerating findings or otherwise presenting them in a more exciting manor is sensationalism. The information may be factual, but it is presented in a way to challenge or entice the reader and usually appears to contradict our presumed beliefs. Computers are a media delivery system. The same argument presented in this article and study could be made about books or any other media delivery system. Just the presence of the media delivery system does not facilitate or harm learning. That system, if used correctly for learning, will have a positive effect, or if used incorrectly it will have a detrimental effect. For example if your kids are reading pulp fiction novels, or romance novels, instead of giving attention to their studies. Does this mean books are bad? How about comic books? Not all cave paintings are of historical significance. Some is just graffiti!

The crux of this study is summed up in two paragraphs towards the bottom (of course) of the article:

"In fact, the study says, 'The mere availability of computers at home seems to distract students from learning.' Computers seem to serve mainly as devices for playing games. "Still, there were a few exceptions: Academic performance rose among those who routinely engaged in writing e-mail or running educational software."

So it would appear that if a computer is used for educational purposes then there is an advantage, but if it is just used for playing games then they are a disadvantage. Don't know why they needed a study for this! Bottom line, just like sending your kids to school does not guarantee them an education, giving them a computer can be expected to have the same results.