Feeling googley

Google: ‘I’m Feeling Sicky’:
[Via Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines]

While worries over Google’s “big brother” surveillance practices still worry many, a softer, more health-conscious side of the search giant is partnering with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The tool, “Google Flu Trends,” uses the aggregate regional data obtained from flu-related searches to predict epidemics weeks before they can be diagnosed by traditional measures.

The Guardian:

Google already has a window into our souls through our internet searches and it now has insight into our ailing bodies too.

The internet giant is using its vast database of individual search terms to predict the emergence of flu up to a two weeks before government epidemiologists.

Google Flu Trends uses the tendency of people to seek online help for their health problems.

By tracking searches for terms such as ‘cough’, ‘fever’ and ‘aches and pains’ it claims to be able to accurately estimate where flu is circulating.

This is a pretty interesting approach. Of course, it really co-mingles all respiratory illnesses that occur around this time, flu just being the most prevalent. It is nice to see it broken down into states.

But it seems to me that this really only works if people do not know about it. Otherwise, their search patterns might alter enough to change the curve.

Technorati Tags: Science, Web 2.0

More ways to read a map

Worldmapper: viewing the world in new ways:
[Via Discovering Biology in a Digital World]

Worldmapper is a web site with 366 maps of the world. These maps however, are not the kinds of maps you’ve seen in school, with every country shown by size. These maps are cartograms. It’s a bit like seeing a cartoon version of a Thomas Friedman book. These maps present a whole new way of visualizing information about the world.

Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

These are a lot of fun to examine and do a great job of providing visual cues to what normally would occur only in large tables.Total number of airplane flights is pretty awesome. As is this one about meat consumed.

Technorati Tags: Science

Science to scare

Salticid Spider Bollocks:
[Via Catalogue of Organisms]
I’ve had this turn up in my email recently also. I hate seeing our interest in the natural world around us being used to frighten.

The “information sheet” below was forwarded to my e-mail this afternoon. The person who forwarded it to me did so as a joke, but apparently it has taken some people in:

Really terrifying

Three women turned up at hospitals over a 5-day period, all with the same symptoms.
Fever, chills, and vomiting, followed by muscular collapse, paralysis and finally, death..

There were no outward signs of trauma.

Autopsy results showed toxicity in the blood. These women did not know each other and seemed to have nothing in common. It was discovered, however, that they had all visited the same Restaurant (Olive Garden , Western Cape ) within days of their deaths. The Health Department descended on the restaurant , shutting it down. The food, water, and air conditioning were all inspected and tested, to no avail.
The big break came when a waitress at the restaurant was rushed to the hospital with similar symptoms. She told doctors that she had been on vacation, and had only went to the restaurant to pick up her check.

She did not eat or drink while she was there, but had used the restroom
That is when one toxicologist, remembering an article he had read, drove out to the restaurant, went into the restroom and lifted the toilet seat

Under the seat, out of normal view, was a small spider. The spider was captured and brought back to the lab, where it was determined to be the Two-Striped Telamonia (Telamonia dimidiata), so named because of its reddened flesh color. This spider’s venom is extremely toxic, but can take several days to take effect. They live in cold, dark, damp climates, and toilet rims provide just the right atmosphere..

Several days later a lawyer from Jacksonville showed up at a hospital emergency room. Before his death, he told the doctor, that he had been away on business, had taken a flight from Indonesia , changing planes in Singapore , before returning home He did NOT visit (Olive Garden), while there. He did (as did all of the other victims) have what was determined to be a puncture wound, on his right buttock. Investigators discovered that the flight he was on had originated in India .
The Civilian Aeronautics Board (CAB) ordered an immediate inspection of the toilets of all flights from India and discovered the Two-Striped Telamonia (Telamonia dimidiata) spider’s nests on 4 different planes!
It is now believed that these spiders can be anywhere in the country.
So please, before you use a public toilet, lift the seat to check for spiders. It can save your life!

This is one of the better urban legend types, much like the poisonous snakes in the pocket of coats at Walmart/Target/K-mart. It would sure make me check the seats of any public toilet, if I did not take the time to inform myself.

These stories are supposed to serve as examples of how the other, the thing outside of our community, is really very dangerous. Using mainly ignorance of people about the specifics plus the nice fear most have of spiders creates a willy of a story.

Here is the rest of the story:

And please pass this on to everyone you care about.

Aww, look! It’s a salticid! Innit cute?

I find it fitting that I am writing this post in Australia – which, as we all know, is the spiritual home of all toilet-seat lurking spiders. Not surprisingly, this particular story is total bollocks. And according to Snopes, it’s ancient bollocks – this story has been floating about the interweb since 1992, albeit with the occasional variation to where exactly it’s supposed to have taken place. Snopes also notes that the “Civil Aviation Board” referred to garbledly in the e-mail hasn’t been in existence since 1984. I noticed the problem with “They live in cold, dark, damp climates, and toilet rims provide just the right atmosphere..” Ummm, a toilet-seat isn’t a damp climate at all – quite the opposite – and any spider wanting to occupy the damp space under the rim is going to want to have invested in some scuba gear any time anyone flushes.

I’ll put this simply (’scuse caps) – THERE ARE VERY FEW SPIDERS THAT CAN HARM YOU. Of those spiders that can harm you (and Telamonia dimidiata – scroll down a bit if you click the link – ain’t one of them), even fewer of them are likely to come into contact with you. “Toxic” is not necessarily the same as “dangerous” – most toxic animals such as venomous snakes and spiders are far more likely to discretely get out of your way rather than attack. You probably won’t even know they were there.

This sort of thing was much tougher to debunk before the Internet. Now the truth can be discovered in seconds. Of course, some people are either too lazy to check or just too gullible.

A reply with the correct information, blasted to everyone else they included on the emails, usually does the trick. Don’t know if it stops them from being forwarded but I no longer am on their list to receive these missives.

Technorati Tags: Science

Transformative

by fdecomite

The World’s First 21st Century Leader:
[Via HarvardBusiness.org]

On Tuesday Barack Obama made history as the first black man to be appointed President-elect of the US. In the years and months ahead, he will make more history as he tackles unprecedented challenges: two bloody wars, a global financial crisis, the US’s tarnished reputation, domestic security and healthcare reform.

But as the euphoria of his victory gives way to the hard work of transitioning to the White House, we should perhaps pause for a moment to reflect on Obama’s other achievement: his emphatic arrival as the world’s first 21st Century leader.

I don’t think we can know this for quite some time but there are some good points about the type of leadership Obama brings.

While this article is a little effusive and may be somewhat premature, it does describe some of the work to identify traits of leadership during crisis, as opposed to stasis. It certainly looks like crisis leadership may be the norm for the next few years.

First, let’s examine what some of the most forward-thinking writers of the last century had to say on the subject of leadership. One of the central ideas of leadership in the last half of the 20th century was Max Weber’s concept of charismatic leadership. In 1968 the German sociologist wrote that social crisis was precondition for charismatic leadership, a combination of intelligence, purpose, grace under pressure and consideration for their followers.

US academic Noel Tichy built on his work in the eighties and nineties, identifying transformational leaders – courageous, value-driven, visionary people who were comfortable with uncertainty. Transformational leaders emerge in times of crisis or change, in contrast with transactional leaders who manage in steady times, preserving the status quo and strengthening existing structures, cultures and strategies.

Other researchers believed that the measure of a true leader was the ability to display both transformational and transactional styles as the circumstances demanded.

Transactional leadership uses the well recognized tools of reward and punishment to get their followers to comply with instructions. Fear is a major focus of command. Motivation comes from outside the employee/follower.

Transformational leadership evokes a feeling of higher purpose and is able to move their followers on a different level than simple positive/negative feedback. The leader makes their followers passionate. Motivation is driven by internal mechanisms, not external prods.

The idea that there are different types of leaders, each necessary for different times is well known when examining warfare. Leaders that are perfect for peacetime do not often fair well in wartime, and vice versa. It took Lincoln most of the early part of the Civil War to find a leader who was more transformative than transactional.

The difference between these two types of leadership is obvious here because wartime is principally a time of crisis. Yet, transformational leaders can also be found outside of the military, particularly in the innovative world of entrepreneurial endeavor.

Around the same time, Warren Bennis advanced the argument that in a complex and uncertain world, leadership can only be exercised by self-directed, strong, creative, purposeful and self-actualising leaders – those who have listened to their inner voice. Bennis later added that one of the most reliable indicators and predictors of leadership was the ability to learn from traumatic circumstances: emerging from these ‘crucibles’ of change, leaders were stronger and with a more defined purpose

In the 1990s, Peter Vaill of Antioch University added that values were the primary organising principle for action in a turbulent climate. When it is impossible to set goals, leaders need to rely on their inner resources, drawing on non-rational as well as rational abilities, in other words, their deepest convictions.

Of course, a lot of this just sounds like leadership of any kind. What is key here is that a transformational leader is very comfortable with shades of gray, is able to seek answers to complex problems without necessarily having every path delineated and recognizes that failure is often a necessary prelude to success.

And, finally, a transformational leader is able to gather their followers without the simple inducements of positive or negative reinforcements. Thus the followers are able to ‘lead’ themselves in the absence of the leader. Without the need for inducements, the organization can easily follow the 7 lessons I mentioned earlier. A transactional leader is simply unable to do this.

Technorati Tags: General, Politics, Web 2.0