NOV 08
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“ If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it ? “
Albert Einstein
Albert instein
Amnesia & Academia : the upside
" There are a growing number of researchers and management practitioners who believe that conventional marketing theory is often ill-suited to the challenges of the modern business environment. "
Hence the need for an alternative viewpoint - to be found in the journal Marketing Theory.
The latest ( Dec 2008 ) issue is a special - tackling the theme of Amnesia , ( collective and otherwise ) and how it relates to marketing theory.
As an example, see ;
`Don't forget the fruit gums, chum': marketing under erasure and renewal.
The authors contend that, within the marketing academia sphere at least, amnesia should be encouraged, not cured -
" In marshalling the evidence in favour of forgetting, we pull apart the dialectic of remembering and forgetting, demonstrate how forgetting is integral to the academic sensibility, and question how much of the marketing literature is worth remembering in the first place. "
Further notes :
The original version of the ad. ran` Don't forget the fruit gums, mum' - making it a possible contender for the UK's first full-on ‘ pester-power ’ ad. The copy was changed ( under pressure ) to ' chum ' in the later versions.
Here's the original soundtrack (1956 )( .wav file courtesy of whirligig-tv.co.uk )
27 NOV 08
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Pausing for thought
Turn to the latest issue of the journal Communication Theory for an
article about ' Silence '
" Silence and speech are often defined in relation to each other. In much scholarship, the two are perceived as polar opposites; speech enjoys primacy in this dichotomy, with silence negatively perceived as a lack of speech. "
The author argues that that could be a mistake : for -
" When we deny the complexity of its nature, we sentence silence to a passive state of being that can only communicate through a marked absence occurring in place of an expected presence. "
And, to further counter the negative associations of silence, he notes -
" ... one of the beauties of silence – that, when multiple people perform it at once, their silent voices are raised in unison, creating not cacophony, but symphony "
• You can read the full article here :
Also see :
• Also see hear explore our .mp3 archive :
26 NOV 08 ( late edition )
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Minding the cognitive gap
The concept of ' Sensemaking ' has come into sharp(er) focus over recent years.
' Sensemaking is an active two-way process of fitting data into a frame ( mental model ) and fitting a frame around the data. Neither data nor frame comes first; data evoke frames and frames select and connect data. When there is no adequate fit, the data may be reconsidered or an existing frame may be revised. '
If that Wikipedia entry is hard to grasp at first glance, do not despair- for, as the University of Twente in the Netherlands explains :
" Since Sensemaking has been under development since 1972, it cannot be explained in a few sentences. "
Despite its inescapable fuzziness, the concept is finding more and more applications in complex commercial operations.
And it's particularly favoured in military circles - where ' stories ' are built to ( try to ) make sense of situations where the intelligence is very weak.
Earlier this year though, a new subsection of Sensemaking emerged ( via the University of California ) which might help to clarify the subject - by looking at it from the other direction. viz.
Organizational (Non)Sensemaking
The paper which was published in the journal Communication, concentrates on confusion, errors and ambiguities as a way to make sense of things.
Even going so far as to cite ' crazy ' and ' incompetent ' business decisions - and examining in the process the so called ' Kafka Circuits ' which often defeat even the most accomplished of sensemakers.
An extrapolation, in effect, of what Singer proposed back in 1980 [1]
" . . . organizations suffer from psychotic and pathological behaviors as much as do people but are rarely diagnosed, critiqued, or treated as such "
By applying such an approach we can now perhaps make sense of stories like this - from ABC News earlier this week.
[1] Singer, B. (1980). Crazy systems and Kafka circuits. Social Policy, 11(2), 46–54.
26 NOV 08
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And then the fire-man rushes in from the pouring rain, very strange
Turn to this month's edition of the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts for :
A linguistic analysis of the Beatles. [ lyrics ]
The researchers used ' a new generation of computer text analyses ' - based around :
Latent
Semantic Analysis (LSA) Coefficients to examine a swathe of Beatles song lyrics.
Finding that :
" Paul McCartney's lyrical style proved to be more variable and broad ranging than either Lennon or Harrison. "
and :
" . . . Harrison's lyrics were more influenced by Lennon than by McCartney. "
as well as :
" . . . the lyrics jointly written by Lennon and McCartney were mathematically more similar to Lennon's linguistic styles than McCartney's. "
leading to the conclusion that :
" we are entering a new world of language analysis that promises to revolutionalize the ways we can use people’s words to understand their psychological and social states. "
read the full paper here :
• Incongruously perhaps, one of the few remaining Beatles has just today announced, with very refreshing honesty, that :
" The key is that I don't ever think what I'm doing is ever that important. "
• Also see a previous Really Magazine article for a semiotic
analysis of Yellow Submarine
[ errrr . . . wasn't that written by Ringo ? Ed. ]
25 NOV 08
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Your search ________ did not match any documents . . .
There are now more than 8 billion webpages indexed by the major search engines.
No matter how obscure, if you search for something and the engines find it ; it could well exist - or it might well have happened - or, at the very minimum, someone somewhere has thought about it and mentioned it on a website. [ example ]
So nowadays, with a database that big, if your search for a bunch of common-enough words returns absolutely no results whatsoever, what can we, or indeed should we, imply ?
Try our new ' Matchless ' page and you decide.
23 NOV 08
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( lack of ) wind instruments
Back in December 2005 we drew attention to the alleviative possibilities offered
to sufferers of Obstructive Sleep Apnoea ( OSA ) - by playing the
didgeridoo.
Now, the lead given original paper has been considerably extended by a new OSA study which has moved from a single instrument to encompass the entire wind sections of professional orchestras.
The study, just published in the latest issue of the journal ' Sleep Medicine ' found 1,111 musicians to take part in a survey by completing the Berlin Questionnaire - the results of which showed that nearly one third had a high risk of sleep apnoea. And of these, roughly one third were players of wind instruments.
The dataset was then analysed via multivariable logistic regression techniques.
Sadly though -
" Playing a wind instrument was not associated with a lower risk of OSA. "
In the light of the findings, it's clear that the Didgeridoo Effect remains a mystery - and playing one must have some hidden attribute(s) which playing Western wind instruments does not.
If any readers have any ideas for possible directions for future research please let us know.
Also see :
22 NOV 08
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The Compendium of Physical Activities -
is a comprehensive list of the energy expenditure associated with an activity.
It was developed by the University of South Carolina in 1993, and is constantly updated, with new activities being added regularly.
It uses its own unit of measurement - called the MET
One MET is defined as 1 cal/kg/hour - roughly equivalent to the energy cost of sitting quietly.
Thus, for example, the activity of 'unicycling' is quantified at 5.0 mets - the same as 'maple syruping'.
Higher on the table, at 6.0 is 'pushing a plane in and out of a hangar' , or playing water polo - at 10.
At the highest end of the scale we find chopping trees down with an axe - at 17 mets - or running at 10.9 m.p.h. using up a huge 18 mets.
If you want to cut right down on your mets though, the bedroom is a safe bet. Where even 'active vigorous efforts' only score 1.5, and sleeping - the lowest- scoring activity in the whole list - costs just 0.9
comment from reader Alex B
' I was under the impression that the Met, just like the Olf and the Clo had been defined by Ole Fanger as part of his system to quantify thermal comfort in buildings. At any rate, about ten years ago, this system was all the rage in research about comfort in buildings.'
21 NOV 08
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Crunching data
The Food Science dept. at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
" . . . cannot stand still because science and the world are constantly offering new opportunities which we want to be a part of. "
As a result of this restless drive they have just published the findings of an investigation into the Mechanical Characterization of Shredded Wheat.
Spoon-sized pieces of three commercial brands of dry shredded wheat were mechanically compressed along their three principal axes, individually, and grouped in the same orientation.
Not so remarkable perhaps that -
" The force-displacement curves in the three directions were all irregular and irreproducible but had discernible features characteristic of the specimen's orientation. "
But the experiments did reveal some intriguing results - for this may be the first time that the fractal nature of shredded wheat crunching has been quantified -
" The jaggedness of the normalized (dimensionless) force oscillations record was quantified in terms of an apparent Kolmogorov (fractal) dimension, determined with the box counting algorithm. " *
For readers who are wondering if there could be any practical applications of such a study, the research team believes the answer is yes.
" The described method could help to quantify textural differences between these and other brittle food products, and probably identify the conditions under which crunchiness would be maintained or lost. "
The study is published in the latest issue of the Journal of Texture Studies
* Editor's note :
For clarity, we should emphasize that ' box counting ' should not be erroneously associated with the cardboard containers often used for packaging shredded wheat. It refers instead to the progressive sub-division of datasets to asses their fractal content - as developed by Prof. Michael Barnsley et al.
For a technical example of its application see this paper
also see :
A previous Really Magazine article on the fractal nature of banana spots.
20 NOV 08
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Anyone seen my stapler ?
Dr. Brown, at the Lee Kong Chian School of Business, Singapore
Management University, Singapore, will shortly be publishing his study into territoriality in the
workplace.
His paper :
' Claiming a corner at work: measuring employee territoriality in their workspaces '.
will appear in a future issue of the Journal of Environmental Psychology. It will explain that
" Territoriality is an emerging concept of importance in organizations. Unfortunately, there does not exist currently a valid measure of territoriality with which to conduct research on territoriality in organizations. "
Sadly, the research is only freely available for subscribers who have already paid - but readers can get a flavour of the doctor's work by reading a previous article on ( broadly ) very much the same subject.
Viz. his research paper ;
' Hey, that’s mine! The nature of territorial behavior in organizations ' [ link below ] which was published back in 2005.
The research project, which was one of the very first ( perhaps the first ) to examine workplace territoriality, found that it can apparently include such seemingly commonplace actions like ' a jacket placed on a chair. ' or ' a photo of a pet on a desk ' .
106 experimental subjects participated in the research, and an open-ended survey was consolidated using cluster analysis formed by hierarchical agglomeration using Ward’s method.
The results identified that there are no less than four types of previuously unidentified workplace territoriality -
• Control-oriented marking
• Identity-oriented marking
• Anticipatory defence , and
• Reactionary defence
Leading to the observation that
" . . . people can be territorial to a wide range of objects. "
Further :
" It is important to recognize that workspaces are only a subset of the possible territories to which people claim. Future studies will want to consider how people mark and defend other territories. "
( proceed with caution : 206 page .pdf, relevant paper on page 140 )
• Further reading :
A previous Really Magazine article on the territoriality of park benches.
19 NOV 08
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Attractiveness : realistically tested
Michael Lynn, Professor of Consumer Behavior and Marketing, at the School
of Hotel Administration, Cornell University, is shortly to publish the results
of his study into perceived ' female attractiveness ' .
He's taken an unusual approach, the central idea being that it might be possible to empirically test ' attractiveness ' by the size of waitresses' tips.
" Since evolutionary theory on mate attraction suggests that men use resource displays and gifts to woo women (Buss, 1988), tipping is both a theoretically and empirically relevant response to female physical attractiveness. "
To find out, a study was implemented by placing a note on the blog www.waiterrant.net ( that's ' waiter rant ' ) asking waitresses to respond to an online questionnaire.
[ for readers who might think that blog-respondents might not be the most scientifically reliable experimental subjects, you would be right - but as the professor explains :
" An examination of the data identified many responses that were not believable. For example, one person reported having a 12 inch waist and another reported having a 12 inch hip circumference. "
These ' imaginative ' commenters were excluded from the dataset ]
The questionnaires asked for information on a number of workplace details ( the restaurant prices, geographical location etc. )
But also on the waitresses' bodily attributes ( e.g. hair colour, bra size, hip-to-waist ratio etc. etc. )
The collected data were later correlated with the size of the tips which the waitresses said they were accustomed to receiving.
The results were quite varied ( read the full paper below ) but, for example, the biggest tips tended to be received by waitresses in their 30s, and who were blond.
The professor points out though that more research may still be required to finally quantify and explain female attractive features.
Nevertheless :
" These findings, which are discussed from an evolutionary perspective, make several contributions to the literature on female physical attractiveness. "
The article will feature in a future issue of the journal Archives of Sexual
Behavior
you can read a first draft of :
Determinants and Consequences of Female Attractiveness and Sexiness: Realistic Tests with Restaurant Waitresses
Also see :
A previous Really Magazine article on the professor's guide to bigger tips.
18 NOV 08
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I felt like I
The March issue of the journal English Today has an interesting free-access
article which asks ( and goes some way towards answering ) the question :
Tiger Woods as a linguistic role model ?
The author, from the University of Singapore's Centre for English Language Communication has noticed that in media appearances Tiger tends to use what might be called -
" . . . a prefabricated phrase or sentence stem "
- perhaps even without realising it.
and, from an earlier issue of the same journal :
The mugs are a touch
an English Today article on :
Sadly the article is subscribers only - but Really Magazine's research dept. has unearthed this webpage by the paper's author, with a host of words and phrases which may feature heavily in the Australian circus world.
Topper.
17 NOV 08
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Wounded Furniture.
If you happen to be in, around, or near Guthlaxton College, Wigston, Leicestershire, UK on the 16th Nov, why not visit the Wounded Furniture event -
' An evening of non-music and curios '.
The curator, Dr. John Richards , Senior Lecturer in Music, Technology and Innovation at the School of Media and Cultural Production, De Montfort University, has made available a free download with construction instructions for his recently developed Sudophone - you'll need an old bean tin, some nuts, bolts, and grommets, various electronic components, and some soldering skills.
Download here ( saved, curiously, as a .zip file of .pdfs )
This is what it might sound like
More ( slightly confusing ) event details here
14 NOV 08
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Mint conditioning
Apologies to readers for the late coverage of the 15th International Symposium on Olfaction and Taste ( ISOT ) which was held in San Francisco, California last July.
The symposium presented a huge number of research papers on the subjects of smell and taste - more than 500 in fact.
Bearing in mind the extreme complexities of the subject, many of the research papers will perhaps not find immediate practical applications.
For example :
# 65 UNDERWATER SNIFFING IN SEMI-AQUATIC MAMMALS
or #77 THE IDENTIFICATION OF ATTRACTIVE VOLATILES IN AGED MALE MOUSE URINE
Others, however, have very obvious implications which might well find immediate, influential, and perhaps even controversial applications in the wider-world.
such as : # 167 EFFECTS OF PEPPERMINT SCENT ON ENHANCING WEIGHT LIFTING, STRENGTH, AND ENDURANCE
from Wheeling Jesuit University, USA.
Participants in the research experiment were tested on how much maximum weight they could lift on chest press, lateral pull down, leg extension, and leg curl machines.
But half were allowed to sniff peppermint essence every 15 minutes.
The results :
" Peppermint scent inhalation was associated with increased number of repetitions performed and increased muscle endurance. The direction of the perceived workload in the areas of mental, effort, and frustration were less and performance was greater in the peppermint condition."
Read all the research abstracts here
( extreme caution : 215 page .pdf )
Comment from reader Sarah K. :
' Are Wheeling Jesuits anything like Whirling Dervishes ? '
13 NOV 08
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Slightly loaded in Pennsylvania
" Surprisingly little is known about how people plan and control everyday physical actions, such as walking along and picking up objects. "
Fortunately though, the Laboratory For Cognition and Action at Penn
State University is investigating - and has recently published some results.
They wondered : would a right-handed person tend to use their right hand when picking up a bucket ( slightly loaded with sand ) which was placed near a table ?
The answer is only a partial yes : for the subjects sometimes varied from expected behaviour :
" . . . but only when the reaching distance across the table was uncomfortable or if the target [ bucket] was too far to the right. "
The authors caution against about drawing too simplistic a conclusion though :
" Presumably, the parameters of the model would change if the features of the setup were varied. Thus, if the weight of the bucket were altered, participants’ reluctance to lean over to pick up the bucket would probably change as well. "
More research may be required before the trade-offs between reaching and walking are fully explored.
The paper can be found in the latest issue of the Psychonomic
Bulletin and Review.
12 NOV 08
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Book of the month
Fail Better ! - by Stephen Brown, professor of Marketing Research at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland - a book that describes the marketing formula behind some of the most successful businesses ever – fail, fail and fail again !
The book - inspired by Samuel Beckett *, introduces six sure-fire ways of failing successfully.
" Although management gurus constantly chant the mantra of success – how to attain it, how to sustain it, how to unearth it, how to unleash it – the sad reality is that the vast majority of business ventures fail. Most companies collapse, most start-ups stop, most mergers misfire, most innovations implode, most CEOs crater, most R&D founders and most long-range forecasts flub. "
The companies who survive, despite all the foregoing, are the ones who have learned the techniques of failing better.
• Publisher's description here :
• The professor's website here :
* Notes :
• Samuel
Beckett 's quote :
" Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again.
Fail again. Fail better. "
' Fail Better ' (2006) from Herter Studio
or
' Fail Better ' (2009) by Zadie Smith
11 NOV 08
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Trying to hit 196 Hz
Several ( middle aged ) comedians have successfully constructed sketches around the unfortunate and inconvenient phenomenon of male voice-break.
Not quite so amusing though if you happen to be a serious choral musician, you are a male ' emerging adult ' , and want to accurately hit 196 Hz. ( a low-ish G )
For this has been confirmed as a crucially difficult frequency by a new research study published in the latest issue of The Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies. (JIMS)
The Australian Centre for Applied Research in Music Performance (ACARMP), Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney, Australia , noted that
" There has been little previous scientific research that has assessed acoustically the nature and extent of pitching inaccuracy in adolescent males undergoing voice change. "
There has been some though, notably by Cooksey et al. in the late 1970s. And the previous findings have been confirmed, refined and solidified by this new study, which analysed 79 recording of young male choral artist trying to sing ' Happy Birthday to you ' and ' Arthur the Rat '.
Specifically :
" a SFo of 196 Hz [g3] is an accurate indicator of imminent change, and that boys use their SFo pitch as a singing reference point. "
Leading to the observation :
" It is essential for the boys to develop new skills to overcome the temporary inefficiencies of their new vocal instrument, but these skills require practice and perseverance. "
See : Effect of voice change on singing pitch accuracy in young male singers
Notes :
• SFo is the ' speaking fundamental frequency
' - i.e. the most comfortable speaking pitch.
• The recordings were analysed on an IBM Thinkpad A30
• Ehtical approval was obtained from the Human Research Ethics Committee of the
University of Sydney.
10 NOV 08
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Product of the day :
The Puissance of the Proletaroid
A new study of urban culture in Berlin
" . . . highlights the temporal, social, spatial,
and semiotic distinctions of the city's current scene . . . "
by looking at a new(ish) cultural phenomenon which is completely unique to
the city.
The research paper, from the Department of Media Studies at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, is published in the latest edition of Space and Culture, and examines a highly unusual combination - some would say juxtaposition - of cultural activities : namely
Country Music and Ping-Pong.
A typical Ping Pong Country (PPC) event starts at 10pm and often goes on until 8am. The Ping Pong matches are accompanied by two DJs, playing a selection of pre-70's Country tracks.
The participants' rules are based on Gene Autry's Cowboy Code of Honor ( but with the word ' cowboy ' replaced by , ' player ' )
As the author points out :
" By considering in more detail what might otherwise be dismissed as an insignificant and frivolous social activity, ' just a game,' one can begin to see in Ping Pong Country a much more complex set of relationships which tells us a great deal about how young adults in Berlin construct individual, group and artistic identities in the context of a newly ' culturalized ' economy . . . "
• Read the full
paper here : ( caution : 4.3Mb .pdf )
• and for more details see the PPC official website : ( caution : features a combination of Flash™ with Country music )
07 NOV 08
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Armchairs and Avatars
Surfing the UK's National Health Service Institute for Innovation and Improvement website
:
Really Magazine converses with an imaginary cyber-agent :
[RM] Good morning, could you explain Deliberative Public Engagement for us ?
[RM] Right, and what do you mean by Armchair Involvement ?
[RM] You're thinking of using Avatars - what exactly is an avatar ?
[RM] Are there any risks with this type of approach ?
[RM] Really ? So is it a good idea to use them ?
[RM] Errr . . . so, you don't quite know why you're doing it then ?
[RM] Oh, right, it's all cleared up now, thanks, bye.
[ note: all the text is quoted verbatim from the relevant NHS websites :
reference links here :
Deliberative Public Engagement
06 NOV 08
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P L A N G . . . ( deconstructed )
Really Magazine is not quite sure why it has surfaced now* - because the original research ( from Prof. Jason Brown, Department of Mathematics and Statistics and Faculty of Computer Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia ) appeared way back in 2004 . . .
And anyway, try as we might, we just can't find the lost chord . . .
More from the same author :
His song " Why can't you love me ( for More than just my Mind )" (.mp3)
and his forthcoming book [ * ahhhh, yes, I see. . . Ed. ]
05 NOV 08
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Eating : the complex ethics of.
The International Journal of Analytic Philosophy - Ratio
' publishes work of a high quality on a wide variety of topics. It encourages articles which meet the highest standards of philosophical expertise . . .'
As an example, turn to the latest issue for an article entitled :
' THE VAGARIES OF VEGETARIANISM '
where professor Jonathan Harrison ( ex-Chair of Philosophy at the University of Nottingham ) examines the ethical pros and cons surrounding vegetarianism.
For example, many vegetarians cite the land-wastage associated with meat-farming. But, as the professor points out :
" Concert halls, which I am in favour of on aesthetic grounds, could be objected to for the same reason. "
And perhaps :
" Those who think we ought to act as nature's policeman, and eliminate animals like snakes who cause pain to other animals, ought to contemplate the practicability of killing off seagulls, on the grounds that they swallow alive vast quantities of fish. "
It's not all criticism though, for the professor offers some practical solutions :
" . . . imagine that the genes of an Aberdeen Angus could be blended with those of a lobster, so that when pieces of prime beef were cut off (naturally under an anaesthetic) the missing parts of the former exalted species were rapidly replaced, much as a lobster grows a new claw."
The tour de force continues with references to flying ants, hedgehogs, Martians, and whether Venus Fly-Traps might feel pangs of hunger.
And concludes :
" [animals] should always be treated with the greatest kindness and consideration. This kindness, however, does not extend to not eating them, provided it can be done without undue pain to the animals eaten. "
Read the first portion of his paper here :
second helping here :
؟ ؟ ؟
For an even more radical standpoint, don't miss another of his essays :
04 NOV 08
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' Is ' re-renewed
It was Bill Clinton who brought the subject up for a wider public attention
- with his famous observation :
" It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is'
is. " (
video here )
But the question as to whether the word ' is ' can be ambiguous had already been examined in some detail by philosopher David Wiggins in his book ' Sameness and Substance ' ( 1980 ) and in the sequel ' Sameness and Substance Renewed ' (2001 ).
To
paraphrase Wiggins, we could ask whether a statue might not be identical
to the clay that composes it, but rather could be ' constituted by ' that
clay.
And what would be the consequences if it was broken into pieces and then re-moulded as, say, a teapot ?
' Is ' the pot in some sense still a statue ?
or does ' is ' mean :
' constitutes ' , or
' is constituted by ' ?
The debate has been brought right up to date with an essay in the latest edition of Philosophical Studies, and Wiggins-esque ambiguities regarding ' is ' have perhaps, at last, been exploded.
Read :
' There is no ‘ Is ’ of constitution '
Editor's note :
Readers will appreciate that, unlike some ' Is ' scholars, we have taken some care not to haphazardly use the word ' is ' in our article. To do so could create a worryingly circular arguement - surely one can't liberally use a word during the process of trying to define it ?
Comment from David W
' Set to music (sort of) by Chris Standring on track 5 of HIPSWAY (Instinct Records).' [ link ]
03 NOV 08
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