I skateboard or walk to work usually.

good points

it comes down to 'case study' data vs interval numberic data

sales is easy to quantify

quality of art however....also, there is a novelty aspect as well, music listeners seeking out novel and "unknown" artists because they like to find new things

"critics picks" can be all over the place

I like these kinds of questions, but one thing researchers have difficulty accounting for is the difference between the music people listen to and what the Billboard Top 100 chart says.

Defining "pop music" as whatever is on the Billboard Top 100, especially now, is reductive. I understand it's quantifiable and that's the best idea they had for a quantitative definition of pop. However, Billboard's charts are virtually irrelevant when trying to ascertain what people **actually listen to by choice**

Obviously, record companies try to game the system but in the last 30 years they using NASA level science (or attempting to) to control every aspect of the music in ways no one thought of before.

Also: digital music production and software has made "pop" music so mass produced and generic you get things like the Nickleback debacle

I'm not trying to be over-critical of the researcher's methods. I'm sure they did the best they could, but these points are important to understand when investigating this kind of thing.

agree

I'm 100% in favor of strict NSA accountability, but it's wrong to blame the NSA as if they aren't at least partially working for the right reasons.

Blame hackers, oligarchs, and wannabe international gangsters first and foremost. The NSA must be held accountable with hardcore oversight, but we need law enforcement and defense.

Also, the tone of this article is weird, it seems to put China as some kind of arbiter of global trade ethics:

China's government is a totalitarian, freedom depriving monolith. The people of China are victims.

I see the angle, when we put spyware in tech like this there are consequences and it's probably overreach by the NSA, but TFA is criticizing from the wrong angle.

China is not a threat to us. That's the core misunderstanding. How many books, blog posts, articles by Thomas Friedman have there been about the "China Rising" nonsense? We don't owe China like a bank...they ***invested in the US*** by buying our bonds...you don't invest in something you are trying to destroy.

China's financial sovlency depends on the US's ability to honor our bonds. They hitched their wagons to our economy.

Also, China is a pollution wasteland. Human and chemical. Their disasterous one child policy has ruined the population balance of a generation and they have to run their city marathons in smog so thick it's visible at ground level.

I want the US to be a good influence on China. I want our policies to promote them making the right decisions for their people.

I also did a research study on the effectiveness of a "Abstinence Only" sex-ed message in high schools in Indiana for the Indiana Department of Health.

I wrote the study and devised the research design.

Guess what the results were???

The info was presented to the IN Dept of Health who replicated the survey in schools all over the state. I used it as my Master's thesis. Published only in conference proceedings, but we presented it several times for rooms full of doctors and public health experts.

Not as good as Hawking, eh?

I think we should be able to criticize theories and that criticism can be based on logic more than courtroom-style evidence.

I reject the "Appeal to Authority" fallacy at the core of many criticisms, including yours.

my main contribution, in my wildest dreams, is to put out a new theory of Cybernetics which reconciles both 1st Order (Weiner) and 2nd Order Cybernetics

3rd order Cybernetics

Cybernetics is typically defined as 'the study of control in biological life and machines" and a new theory could revitalize Computer Science (which is bogged down by the Church-Turing model of computation) and also has applications in virtually all areas of design.

Cybernetics also involves Information Theory, especially Claude Shannon's contributions.

I'd really like to get a clear statement of Cybernetic theory that can apply consistently across all the disciplines that Cybernetics touches. From interaction design to information theory cosmology.

I think it would be a breath of fresh air and provide a point of departure to try many new theories.

i totally didn't mean it that way!

yeah i feel he was treated unfairly for his "I don't understand women" comment a few years back

i agree the media are idiots in general and especially when reporting about science

we can't all put our resumes atop every comment

you're using a double standard (i have to link to a peer reviewed research journal to support every sentence I type, where you give Hawking a pass completely) and also committing the 'appeal to authority' logical fallacy

my comment was about science and the misuse thereof...Hawking can be a 'genius' and still have incorrect notions of both computers and human behavior

Stephen Hawking needs to stick to cosmology...he doesn't know *shit* about computing and human behavior.

"aggression" is such a ridiculously ill-defined term, it means virtually nothing scientifically

just like all traits of human behavior, evolutionary biologists (esp. psych) drastically oversimplify the most complex behavior we observe in the known universe

the **real problem** is listening to people like Hawking....they pontificate to feel important and get all the research dollars chasing their tails

this is just like Hawking warning of 'ai'....neither 'ai' nor 'aggression' are a threat to humanity....people listening to Hawking on this is the only threat

i don't read much fiction anymore...last book i read was Signal and Noise by nate silver

last good fiction i recall right now was Mars Trilogy a few years ago

i thought about reading Gravity's Rainbow, but instead i just went to a nice bookstore and grabbed a copy off the shelf and read over it w/ a reader's guide open on my phone...it was nice actually

scifi needs to step up it's literary game imho...we're living the future now...we're practically in a Phillip K. Dick novel...got to be some good stories to tell

it would be cool to actually do this

imho, it wouldn't "never stretch or slacken"....

relatively speaking, yes

but if you actually did this, you'd need at least...idk...1000 km of slack...just a guess

the IAU should grant Pluto a once-in-the-universe exception to the definition of 'planet'

it's perfect for kids...

why?

because Pluto technically isn't a planet even though historically it is known as one of the planets

why isn't it a planet?

see...it's just a big excuse to talk about astronomy

put an asterisk by it in the textbooks

the IAU could bolster its reputation by doing this as well

After reading KS Robinson's Mars Trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars) I just don't know if anything except the real thing will be worth reading

The appendices of Mars Trilogy have actual fictional research papers...it's pretty detailed.

The science hasn't changed that much, and he explores all different kinds of colonization approaches and technical solutions.

From a practical standpoint, i guess a technical description of actual robots we could make and use with existing technology would be an interesting read, but it's still just science fiction unless...you know....you're actually going to do it