Daily Archives: Sat, 2 June, 2007

How Not To Spot a Liar

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Again, more from the weird web department. This time, stumbling around the net brought me to a web page titled “How to spot a liar.” This is a page which explains how you can use eye movements, verbal constructions and blood flow to spot when people a lying. It is all packaged together well, and is generally an easy to read site.

The problem is, it is nonsense.

The bigger problem is that it is not pure, obvious nonsense, but the insidious nonsense which is latched on to some truth and then muddies the waters. Basically put the site discusses how eye movements can show which parts of the brain are being used, and how these parts of the brain have been (broadly) mapped onto construction or recall. That is about where it ends it’s relationship with reality.

For example, the site claims that when you ask some one a question, and they answer following a rapid eye movement up and to their right (your left), this means they are “constructing” the response and therefore lying. If they look up and left (your right) they are recalling the response and therefore telling the truth. As I said before, this is generally correct, but nearly half the population have this reversed. Makes using this a bit of a problem unless you know what you are looking for as you have an almost even chance of getting it wrong…

Add in to this the hazy use of recall and construct when it comes to answering a question and you can see that the most likely effect of taking this site seriously is to make you never know when some one is lying to you. Part of the art of getting a feel for deceit using clues like this, is learning how the question you ask influences the answer. Without that, even if you know which way the person looks, it wont help.

The examples given on the site are useful in this, and they highlight how the author of this post is turning slightly imperfect knowledge into a bad conclusion. This is the first example the author uses:
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Good but overly formulaic Dr Who

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Normally, I find myself agreeing with Heather’s comments on Dr Who, however having been able to watch tonight’s episode on time (not as easy as you would think), this time I don’t. Well, I don’t fully agree…

Basically, I thought both episodes of this two parter were quite good. Dr Who has had a tendency to find it has good plot lines but the squash to make everything fit 40 mins really effects it. The breathing room these two episodes had showed in the plot development and subsequent deliverance. If the BBC had any sense (which, sadly, it doesn’t) then it would give Dr Who a longer run each year and allow every story to have at least two episodes. The pinnacle of Dr Who (Tom Baker, obviously) normally had around four episodes in which to deliver a story line. The difference is startling.

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ID advocates never sleep

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According to Matthew Taylor in today’s Guardian:

State schools could teach the theory of intelligent design in science lessons, the Church of England’s new head of education has suggested.

Well, where do you start on this?

In my limited understanding of Intelligent Design, it is not “science”. It cannot be considered a science using any definition that I can recognise. “That’s really complex, so someone must have planned it” doesn’t seem wildly scientific to me.

There was brilliant post on Pharyngula that pointed out that astrology is much more scientific than ID. At least you can falsify astrological predictions. (It always gladdens my heart when “real” scientists show knowledge of epistemology.)

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Not a good Doctor Who

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The natural order of the universe has reasserted itself. There will be no uncharacteristicallly pro-Doctor Who enthusiasm today. This week’s Doctor Who is just poor. (And that’s despite having Jessica Stevenson, who I admire on principle.)

For a start, it was basically the sort of cut-rate episode that shows the BBC has already spent up its effects money.

When all else fails, an Edwardian-style episode of any scifi is cheap enough because all the costumes are already there. But Edwardian sets and costumes are generally completely uninteresting. Your eyes turn away from them. You know what to expect, Upstairs Downstairs, and so on. The yawning reflex kicks right in.

An unwillingness to watch the screen tends to make you lose interest in the plot, so I have only the vaguest idea about what it involved.

The lighting has ceased to be interesting, either. And has partly given up trying to follow the laws of nature. There was at least one scene – where the doctor is supposedly talking face-to-face with his assistant – which you know was filmed at different times.

Her face is lit with (a very high-contrast coloured shadow effect, so you can’t miss it) from the right. When the camera switches to his face, he is not lit from the left, In fact, it appears that his bit was recorded with a completely different set of lighting. So, as the camera switches from one to the other, she looks like she’s on set, doing her best to play the part, while he loooks as if he camera-phoned in some footage while he was on holiday somewhere.

Come on, if you must have totally dominating atmospheric coloured lighting, at least get the simple bits right. There are pedants out there…

Wonderful Web Weirdness

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The internet is the most fantastic source of weirdness the universe has ever seen. I am, generally, at a total loss as to what is spoof and what is real, which could explain some of the posts on this blog…

Picture of floating home - Copyright 2005, Underwater Vehicles Inc. All rights reserved. http://www.sub-find.com/trilobis65.htmToday, I was innocently surfing the net when I discovered a “Floating Home” (see pic or original site). This is brilliant and I really do hope it is real.

Basically for a mere US$4 – 5 million you can get one of these submersible houses. Words can not do justice for how cool something like this would be (strains of Homer Simpson singing “under the sea” are reverberating through my head now), especially given modern house prices.

Looking around the site (albeit briefly), it seems this was actually published in Popular Mechanics in 2002. This makes me wonder why there aren’t a good few of this wonders floating around. Even in the poor UK, there are a lot of people who can afford to spend GBP2.5 million on a house – especially a six bedroom one like this claims – and getting a house you can move, dont have to mow the lawn and get to see underwater from strikes me as a major selling point.

Add in the way this looks like an ideal means for an island with limited land and an increasing population and I think Gordon Brown should get involved as part of his major social housing scheme.

Obviously there are a few downsides, I suppose. The commute to would could be a pain in the ass (but we should all be telecommuting or working in VR anyway – even China has got in on the act here but more of that another time) and I can imagine docking fees every time you want to go to the shop could be tiresome. Would this be outweighed by the advantage of being able to move your house to a warmer clime whenever the mood hit you? Probably.

The only insurmountable hurdle I can see would be piracy. Can the Flying Spaghetti Monster help here? 🙂

Still, I am willing to take the risk. If people can help me raise enough funds, I will buy a floating semi-submersible house and report back what it is like. Currently the fund stands at US$0.00. All donations welcome…

[tags]Housing, Gordon Brown, Pirates, Flying Spaghetti Monster, Virtual Reality, Society, China, Scam, Spoof, Floating House, Technology, Adventure[/tags]