Quotulatiousness

July 13, 2009

When the data doesn’t support your claims, obscure it!

Filed under: Food, Science — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:31

Ronald Bailey looks at the too-good-to-be-true claims made for caloric reduction as a life-extending tool:

Last week, two research teams reported to great fanfare that restricting the calories consumed by rhesus monkeys had extended their lifespans. Calorie restriction is thought to increase longevity by boosting DNA repair. The idea is that the mechanism evolved so that creatures on the verge of starvarion could live long enough to reproduce when food becomes plentiful again. But did the experiments really show the CR works?

In my earlier blogpost on the research results, I noted that some experts quoted in the New York Times were not convinced. Why? Because the difference in actual death rates between the dieting monkeys and the free feeding monkeys was not statistically significant.

This doesn’t necessarily derail the notion that calorie restriction may be associated with increased lifespan, but the way this study was performed does not appear to prove anything due to rigging of the data.

(Cross-posted to the old blog, http://bolditalic.com/quotulatiousness_archive/005577.html.)

Google or Bing? Try them side-by-side

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:23

Craig Zeni sent along this useful link, which allows you to check the results of a search sent to both Bing and Google (so far, in my tests, Google is the hands-down winner): http://www.bing-vs-google.com/.

(Cross-posted to the old blog, http://bolditalic.com/quotulatiousness_archive/005576.html.)

Games for girls, critiqued

Filed under: Gaming, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:01

With all the unending uproar about how Grand Gears of BioDoomShockWar encourages violence and anti-social behaviour among boys, games for girls have been travelling under the radar. No longer:

Ridiculous Life Lessons From New Girl Games
Some parents worry that videogames might cause their children to become violent and antisocial, but what if the opposite were true? What if games could make kids exceedingly likable and fashionable?

A wave of new games for tween girls seeks to do just that, serving up innocuous gameplay designed to let players become perfect little princesses. Aimed at that lucrative, Hannah Montana-fueled intersection of childhood and adolescence, these games might give 8- to 12-year-olds their first experiences with fashion, make-up, popularity . . . even boys.

The weird thing is that you can view these “wholesome” games as being just as bad for girls as Grand Theft Auto’s random bloodshed and rampant criminality is for young, impressionable boys. And while GTA‘s influence on boys has been dissected to death, what about the Nintendo DS’ upcoming avalanche of games for tween girls? What kinds of values do preteens learn from these titles? Valuable life lessons, or bad habits?

Just for the record, I think kids are far more resilient than either class of critic can imagine. Playing a violent video game does not, in my experience, turn youngsters into nihilistic killers, nor would I expect girls to turn into proto-Stepford Wives after playing one of these “girly” games. Kids who have pre-existing problems may find more than just entertainment value in games, but (as with so many other “problems”), depriving everyone of the opportunity just to keep some people away from it isn’t the answer . . . nor — if our collective long experiences with prohibiting drugs, sex, alcohol, and risky behaviour of all kinds — will it be any more successful.

(Cross-posted to the old blog, http://bolditalic.com/quotulatiousness_archive/005575.html.)

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