Information sharing interferes with 'wisdom of crowds': study

Information sharing interferes with 'wisdom of crowds': study

(PhysOrg.com) -- A statistical phenomenon, called the Wisdom of Crowds, happens when a group of individuals make guesses and the average of the guesses reveal accurate average answers. However, researchers have discovered that when the individuals are made aware of other participant’s guesses, there is a clear disruption to the accuracy of the guesses.

R.I.P. Captain Beefheart

Endlessly weird, provocative (enough to catch Frank Zappa's eye) but an original talent, Don Van Vliet, Captain Beefheart, extended the boundaries of music. May he rest in peace.

Autumnal joy at the Garlic Festival in Orange, MA

The North Quabbin Garlic Festival -- "the festival that stinks" -- takes place each year in Orange, MA. It's one of our favorite harvest-time events with enough to keep the kids busy for an entire afternoon.

The festival is also a great opportunity for artists from Central Massachusetts and beyond to plug their work. One of the most arresting sets of work belonged to sculptor James Kitchen, who works superbly with industrial junk.

When September arrives in East Boston

When a trip to the Produce Center in Chelsea for cases of tomatoes signals not only September but the time to make a year's supply of tomato sauce.

Since the arrival of Italian immigrants in East Boston, the canning (or bottling to be precise) of tomatoes for Sunday morning sauces commences with the harvest. Some tomatoes are grown in backyards along with basil; others are purchased in Chelsea. Either way they are enjoyed year round once the flavor has been sealed in air tight jars

For a few days in the crispy air of fall, a pleasant smell of basil and tomato wafts through cellars below the three-deckers on the island that is known as East Boston. Those jars make Sunday possible.

There will be fewer of these days as time, that eternal constraint, and a generation of Italian families passes. Precious they are indeed those cellars in the autumn.

The underside of the 1960s: Charles Manson

The ever-readable Dan Flynn sifts past the nostalgia of Woodstock in the air these days to shine light on Charlie Manson, murderous hippie thug.

Theories regarding The White Album, a race war, and the Book of Revelations often cloud other, more central, inspirations for Charles Manson's blood lust. These include political motivations, a desire to exonerate a friend on murder charges, and intimidating music industry figures who spurned Manson, including Doris Day's son, producer Terry Melcher, who had previously lived in the Tate-Polanski home. If we do not know exactly why the Manson Family murdered, it is in part because they probably don't exactly know why either. All we know is that they did it.

The 1960s were the age of The Beatles, civil rights advances, and the peace movement. They were also a time of rationalized violence, drug abuse, reckless sex, and societal upheaval. The Manson Family offers a glimpse at all of these ugly traits from the other side of the '60s.

Charles Manson will rot in jail and hell. But he really should have been hanged a long time ago.

Oh my! A food fight at Reason's Hit and Run

Duck (excuse the pun): theological argument organic farming vs. factory farming and everything in between.

One commenter: If you've never busted sod by hand or even with machine you are in for one steep, painful, and hungry learning curve. I don't need luck. I was killing and growing what I ate before I could drive. I have the know how, know how hard it is, and don't plan on doing it until I have the free time and desire. The romantic notion of living the simple life is a myth that couch dwelling urbanites romanticize about. You haven't lived until you spent a 12 hour day cutting heads off chickens, dipping them in boiling water, yanking off their feathers, gutting them, then searing off the little hairs over an open propane flame. All in 90+ degree weather. Just think, you will get to spread that out over an entire year unless you have refrigeration.

And your mom wears Army boots!

Meanwhile, here's some wisdom from a farmer:

"If you really want to hurt the economy, beat the heck out of agriculture," Goehring said. "It is a primary sector in our economy. It is generating new wealth. You can't just rely on services to drive your economy."

Vandals desecrate World War II Memorial in Wakefield

Is there no shame? Last week, vandals decided to deface a community memorial to World War II veterans in Wakefield with a pithy peace slogan. "War is not the answer." In a free society, there's a time and a place for every opinion. However, the little anarchists, apparently full of themselves, have very little taste or knowledge of history. Town officials soon tried to remove the paint-stained message but the vestige of this major misdemeanor remains.

(Photographs taken 6/27/09 with Blackberry camera).

More on the defacing of the memorial from Marc Sardella.

The absolutely sweet Stevie Nicks and FM

Steve Nicks is telling the techonologically-driven world to stop. Computers are taking over our kids. She has a point.

Meanwhile here's a clip from the age of cassettes and vinyl, a time devoid of IPod consumption!


Hat tip: Hit&Run

Why dead-end Communists suck

They never had a sense of humor, that's why Commies couldn't help themselves as they butchered millions in the name of the State.

The Communist Party of St. Petersberg has condemned actress Olga Kurylenko for her role in the new Bond flick they say aids, "the killer of hundreds of Soviet people and their allies." The group described 007 himself as, "a man who worked for decades under the orders of Thatcher and Reagan to destroy the USSR." Thatcher, sure. I don't think Yanks get to order around British secret agents.

I guess the Communist Party of St. Pete is offended because Bond has only killed hundreds of Russians, and they think this total is too meager? Or were they upset they didn't get to starve a few extra hundred?

The only good commie is ...which is the point of the Bond brand.

Hat tip to Distributed Republic.

1968: The year of the posturing rebel - Times Online

It's refreshing to hear a dissent in the cultural community deviate from the predicable politics of his guild.Tom Stoppard has the right stuff on and off stage.

The convert

It really shouldn't be so hard to disavow post-modern liberalism in favor of classical liberalism (or mild libertarianism).First Mamet, next Vermont!

I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism.

Good question: Where are all the anti-communist movies?

Could it be that the Hollywood left is more sympathetic to socialism and opts to ignore the bad characters in its "ideal" system?

Anti-Nazi movies keep coming out, from Confessions of a Nazi Spy and Hitler, Beast of Berlin in 1939 and on through The Great Dictator, The Mortal Storm, The Diary of Anne Frank, Sophie's Choice, Schindler's List, right up to the current Black Book. And many of these have included searing depictions of Nazi brutality, both physical and psychological.

But where are the anti-communist movies? Oh, sure, there have been some, from early Cold War propaganda films to such artistic achievements as The Red Danube, Ninotchka, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The Killing Fields, East-West, and Before Night Falls. But considering that National Socialism lasted only 12 years in one country (and those it occupied), and Communism spanned half the globe for 75 years, you'd think there'd be lots more stories to tell about Communist rule.

No atrocities, maybe? Nazis and Brits were vicious, but Communists were just intellectually misguided? Well, that seems implausible. They murdered several times as many people. If screenwriters don't know the stories, they could start with the Black Book of Communism. It could introduce them to such episodes as Stalin's terror-famine in Ukraine, the Gulag, the deportation of the Kulaks, the Katyn Forest massacre, Mao's Cultural Revolution, the Hungarian revolution, Che Guevara's executions in Havana, the flight of the boat people from Vietnam, Pol Pot's mass slaughter—material enough for dozens of movies.