Welcome. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Jeff Hermes. I work over at the Berkman Center at the Digital Media Law Project. In addition to reminding you of a couple of things, first of all, this event is being webcast and recorded. And second of all, our friends from the Harvard Cooper at the back selling books, more on the books soon. It is my solemn duty today to introduce to you Mark Abrams. Mirror words tend to fail when applied to Mark. This is a person I first met 15 years ago as a first year attorney. If that's true, use some gestures. Mirror words tend to fail when applied to Mark. As I said, this is a person I first met way back. There we go. As a first year attorney out of Harvard Law School, when after being kidnapped by two senior partners at my firm, it was dragged to Sanders Theater where I was forced out in front of a standing room only crowd carrying a sign reading, if you have been injured by cosmic background radiation, you may have legal rights. It is my understanding that this is not an uncommon introduction to Mark and his world. The Washington Post has called Mark the nation's guru of academic grunge. The Journal of the American Medical Association has called him the puck of science. He has been called many other things as well. Mark is the editor and co-founder of the Science Humor Magazine. Analysts of improbable research-free copies of which are also on the back table. And it's associated website and internet TV series. He writes about research that makes people laugh and then makes them think. Many of us know Mark Best as the father and master of ceremonies at the annual Ig Nobel Prizes. At a gala ceremony held each autumn here on the Harvard campus at Harvard Sanders Theater, real Ig Nobel Prize winners hand out the Ig Nobel Prizes to, well, let's call them achievements in various fields of human endeavor that make people laugh and then make them think. Mark himself has written 16 librettos for many operas which have been performed during the Ig Nobel ceremonies. They are also broadcast on national public radio and the internet. However, if you are on the Harvard campus, there really is no excuse for not attending. Kidnapping is not required. Mark is also the author of the books The Man Who Cloned Himself, Why Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans and the Ig Nobel Prizes. Of Mark's latest book, This Is Improbable, Backtable. Terry Jones of Monty Python fame has said, after reading this hilarious book, you'll never look at scientists in the same way again. There is much more I could say. I urge you all to ask Mark about his secret life as a manga character. But for now, please welcome Mark Avers. It was a wonderfully long introduction. Thank you. You couldn't ask for anything lengthier. This is, I believe, an unusual event for everybody here. This is going to be looking at a bunch of published studies by scientists and other researchers about many different topics. These are things that I've written about. I write a column for the Guardian newspaper in England every week. These are things I wrote about there and also in the new book, which has just come out, the book called This Is Improbable. Most people in the world never get to see the actual studies that they might hear about or see mentioned in a sentence somewhere in a newspaper. These are the actual studies. People spend a lot of time on these. We're going to treat them as dramatic literature. We have, what, 10, 12, 15 different people here from different fields who have each been very generous and kind in allowing us to dragoon them here. Each of them arrived, and we showed them a stack of these studies and said, pick one, pick whichever one is most interesting to you, and then pick two minutes' worth of it. And they are going to read to you their selection of two minutes' worth of a study they have never seen before. I'm going to begin by just naming each of them so they know the order in which they'll be speaking. For the moment, could you just, when I read your name, stand up and just take a bow? So we know you're here for one thing. Gus Rancatori will be our first speaker. Then Richard Bagguley is sort of a stand. Then Naomi Stephen. Jeff Hermes. Mary Carmichael was going to be with us, but she has a newborn, as in about two weeks ago, who is having not the best day, so Mary couldn't make it today. Molly Saunter. Ryan Budisch. Judith Donath. Kendra Albert. Alicia Soloneederman. Matthew Battles. Adam Holland. Jonathan Zittrain. Is there any reader whose name I've left out? If anybody else wants to read, sorry, we're full up for the moment. The readers are going to come up. We're going to help them with the two minutes. We want things to move quickly. It's going to be two minutes and then questions for each. For the two-minute part, so they don't have to think about the time, we have two kind volunteers who will help with the timing. We have a timer and a keeper of the bell. The timer, in fact it will work better if you can switch seats here. It's two minutes for each reading. Each person is going to begin by telling you in a sentence who they are and then reading the title and then they begin. Once they begin, the timekeeper will begin paying attention to the time. After 30 seconds, timekeeper, please indicate by gesture to the keeper of the bell that the first period has passed. When you get that first indication, ring the bell once. After another 30 seconds, please indicate twice. Ring the bell twice. After a third 30 seconds, three times. And after two minutes have gone by, please indicate. And then just keep ringing the bell until the person stops talking. Thank you. Speakers, that's how the time will go. Again, we are going to have two minutes begin by introducing yourself in a sentence, read the title, and then do your dramatic reading. First, please welcome Gus Rancatori. Hello. My name is Gus Rancatori. I own Toscanini's Ice Cream in Central Square, Cambridge, closer to the other school. Did you bring it up for everyone? I would have. I got lucky, I got a piece that I actually think is interesting. May I remind the speakers, don't describe it, don't introduce it, introduce yourself, read the title, and then do the dramatic reading. It's important, Mark. Race differences in selection of cheese color. And it's by Beth Scanlon of Central Connecticut State University, and it appeared in Perceptual and Motor Skills. Preferences for specific foods and colors vary greatly in humans. There are many explanations to account for this variation, but no one facet has been pinpointed as major. It has been suggested that family experience, the color of an item, and aesthetics all play a part in accounting for the variation of food and color preference. This study investigated color preference in food as related to the race of individuals. White and yellow cheese was presented to 155 individuals from three ethnic groups. In group one were 30 black individuals. In group two, 197 white persons, and in group three, 28 people from various other ethnic backgrounds, including mostly Hispanics. The participants ranged in age from 11 to 72 years. A controlled group of 20 persons was also tested to ensure equivalence of the taste of the two colors of American cheese. In a supermarket, a display table was set with two plates of American cheese, one yellow, one white. As the individuals selected a piece of cheese, the grouping and the color of the cheese were recorded. The control subjects were blindfolded and asked to sample both types of American cheese. They were to identify which was yellow American cheese and which was white. Their responses were recorded. The frequencies for color preference were as follows. Nine black individuals chose white, and 21 chose yellow cheese. 105 white participants chose white cheese. And while 92 chose yellow, of the subjects from other ethnic groups, nine preferred white and 19 preferred yellow cheese. The association between types of individual and choice of cheese for these groups was statistically significant according to this piece of research. The data indicates that the preferences for one of the two colors of American cheese are dissimilar for different races of respondents. The data from the blindfolded control group established that the variation is not based on differences in flavor. Thank you. Now we're going to take two questions. Because we have so many speakers, we're going to limit it to a maximum of two questions. The rule on questions is ask anything you like. Be very aware. The person you are asking knows nothing more about this than you do. For the person answering the questions, answer however you like. The only rule is no bullshitting. If you don't know something, it's okay to say that. If you want to interpret it or speculate, that's fine. Just explain that's what you're doing. Now we'll take two questions. I'm going to start with the back of the room, which is where I always sat. Yes? Do you know what our little green man from Mars prefer moldy cheese? I don't know. Yes? Is there a similar differences in the color selection of ice cream? Not in color selection, but in many other issues. Gus Rancatori. Thank you. Our next speaker is Richard Bagguley. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Richard, and I write about technology for a living. This means that I look at some of the best ideas that human beings have. Write about technology means that you look at some of the best ideas that human beings have and some of the worst. This one I'm not quite sure where it fits on that scale. We're talking here about United States pattern 3,811,643. It's by a gentleman called Gustano A. Pizzo of New York, and the title is Anti-Hijacking System for Aircraft. This invention relates to an anti-crime devices, and in particular, to the construction of an aircraft, which is, as its purpose, to foil hijackers by safely removing them from the aircraft in flight. In general, the aircraft is constructed with a fore and aft partition, which can be raised in an area after the pilot's cabin, to isolate the hijacker in the area of the floor on which it is constructed a pair of pivotal sections, which are adapted to be dropped for lowering the hijacker into a releasable capsule, to which a parachute is attached. Bombay doors are provided in the belly of the plane for ejection of the capsule from the aircraft. Various modifications of the invention may be affected by a person's skill in the art without departing from the scope and principle. I think that basically means he hasn't quite figured it out, and you've got to try and do it yourself. In particular, the pilot being notified on the attempted hijacking by a stewardess raises the partition to isolate the perpetrator in one of the port or starboard zones. The stewardess, sorry, the separated person from the others on the airplane, including the stewardess, is then dropped into one of the openings of one of the capsules at which point the bombay doors are opened and the capsule, with its human cargo, is parachuted safely to Earth. I think that's about it. Questions? Did you notice, if you read further, why the writer is so concerned about the safety of ejecting the hijackers, why they can't just be ejected sans-parachute? I would suspect that possibly may be legal issues, but people in this room who are better qualified to answer that one than me. Liability. Do you think that this research perhaps informed the design of the anti-hulk and loki cell on the helicarrier in the Avengers? That's a good question. It's quite possible. Of course, one thing you do have to bear in mind is that with a patent, you don't actually have to make it work to get the patent. So I suspect this person probably never actually tried this. He just kind of got the patent and then figured, we're done. Richard Bagguley. Our next speaker is Naomi Stephen. Hi, I'm Naomi Stephen. I've worked at Harvard as a teacher and administrator for many years, and the piece that I chose is entitled Hot Potato Voice in Peritonsolitis. Colin, a misnomer. It was published in the Journal of Voice in 2006. Voice changes are a well-recognized symptom in patients suffering from peritonsolitis, whether due to abscess, Quincy, or peritonsula cellulites. The voice is said to be thick and muffled and is described as Hot Potato Voice because it is believed to resemble the voice of someone with a hot potato in his or her mouth. There have been very few studies analyzing the profile and characteristics of the voice changes in tonsolitis or peritonsolitis and none that have compared these changes with those that occur with a hot potato in the oral cavity. Voice is modified from the vocal fold generator by the resonating characteristics of the vocal tract, comprising the pharynx, oral cavity, and nasal tract. The shape of the vocal tract is determined by movement of the articulators, especially the mandible, tongue, lips, and pharyngeal wall. The opening of the velo pharyngeal valve wall will include the nasal tract in the resonator system. Alteration in the shape of the vocal tract modifies its sound, transfer characteristics such that many frequencies will be attenuated and only a few are allowed to pass through relatively unhindered. Those frequencies that do pass through at a high amplitude are termed formant frequencies and characterize the sound that is produced. I'm skipping forward. We undertook to analyze the voice changes in peritonsolitis in terms of alteration in formant frequencies. We also wished to compare these changes with those of a true hot potato voice, where a hot potato is placed in the oral cavity. Based on previous work, the resonance of the vocal tract would be expected to alter in peritonsolitis due to a failure of the velo pharyngeal valve, but we surmised there would be a differing change in the resonance characteristics of the vocal tract with a true hot potato voice. Before we take the questions, I'd like to make a slight alteration. Many people are watching today on the webcast. Of course, there are people here. The people here are eating lunch. I don't know about any of you watching live. We should give some sense of this for people who are watching on the internet. I wonder if I could ask the two gentlemen in the back who are standing eating food. Would you mind coming up? Bring your food. And if you wouldn't mind standing right directly behind the speaker. At a safe distance, although close enough to be seen, right? That's fine. If you want to get more food, that's fine. If anyone would like to join them... Careful of the back, okay? If anyone would like to join them, please do. Now, questions, please. Raise your arm. And wait for the microphone to get there, so the people eating lunch at home can hear you. Will it matter if the hot potato is baked or fried? I really don't know. Having put both in my mouth when they were too hot to speak, I'm guessing no. I think it would be temperature rather than means of cooking, but I couldn't answer that definitively. Next question. I would also wonder if this is impacted by the type of potato based on its size or its composition. Again, I'm not... It's a potato, an entire potato. I imagine if the potato were of a type that's more floury, like a baking potato, that might affect vocal resonance, but again, I'm not entirely sure. Our next speaker is Jeff Herbie's. You've all heard from me before, so I'll skip the introduction. The effects of pre-existing inappropriate highlighting on reading comprehension. Text highlighting is a common study strategy among college students. Brennan Winograd Bridge and Hebert 1986 found that underlining or highlighting was used as the most common study strategy among college students. Students highlight by marking, usually in yellow, parts of the text they think are important. Although much research has been conducted on the benefits of highlighting, no formal research has been conducted on the effects of pre-existing inappropriate highlighting. The topic of textbook highlighting is important because of its popularity among students ranging from grade school to college. If students are going to use highlighting as a study technique, then it is imperative for both the student and the instructor to be aware of the positive and negative effects of using such a technique. The present research examines both pre-existing appropriate highlighting and pre-existing inappropriate highlighting. We predicted that pre-existing inappropriate highlighting would interfere with the encoding and retrieval of relevant material. This would be shown by lower scores on a comprehension test for those in an inappropriate highlighting condition compared to a no highlighting condition. The results suggest that inappropriate highlighting results in lower reading comprehension and that this effect is still found even with a prior warning about the negative effects of inappropriate highlighting. It does not appear that readers can simply choose to ignore poor highlighting. Although the results of the current study were significant, several limitations must be noted. First, the majority of the participants were given extra credit to participate in the experiment. So they may not have been a representative sample of college students. Secondly, the first experiment was conducted during a summer session. College summer classes may be attended by students who differ in motivation, experience, and grades from students in other sessions. The fact that the effect was found in both experiments suggests that it was not due to these individual differences. As a result of our research, we have several suggestions for college students, instructors, and bookstores. First, college students who... No. Questions? Do you think these results would hold up if you were looking at grad students or law students or groups other than college students? All I can say on that point, Ryan, is that when I was in law school, I did my best to supply heavily highlighted books for research material to other law students, and with any luck the future results in these experiments will improve as a result. How are you defining appropriate versus inappropriate highlighting? Well, my own take on this question. I prefer side to side rather than up and down. The people who block off the text and then just fill in, I think, really aren't trying. Thank you. Thank you. For those of you who are going to speak, let me say, if you would like to bring food up here and eat while you're speaking, that's fine. Our next speaker is Molly Saunter. Hi. My name is Molly Saunter. I'm a grad from another school up the road. And this is bees in court history of the celebrated case of peach udder versus beekeeper udder, and it appeared in the Rocky Mountain Bee Journal, February 15th, 1901. Another witness, Mrs. W. H. Utter, the wife of the plaintiff, testified that the bees would alight on the fruit and then with their horns make holes in the peaches. She stated that there were eight holes in one peach she examined, and that three bees were on it, and that after they left, there were three more holes, or 11 in all. Mr. Bacon, one of our attorneys in his cross-examination got at the facts and something of this way. You say, Mrs. Utter, that there were three holes after three bees had visited that peach. Yes. You say that the bees made these holes with their horns. Yes, sir. Two horns located on the top of their head. Two prongs like this, he said, putting his fingers on top of his head. Well, yes. And they took these two horns and dug them right down into the peach, did they? Yes. Well now, Mrs. Utter, will you tell the jury how three bees, each with two horns, could make only three holes? Shouldn't there have been six holes? Well, they took two horns and put them together and then poked them and said, Mr. Bacon, with a wise look. And at this, there was a brorious laughter. When the jury and the audience had subsided, Mr. Bacon continued, you are sure these bees made these holes with their horns? Yes. Well, don't you know that those are antennae or feelers? Several had talked about the so-called horns and how bees make holes with the horns. Some of the witnesses told how bees ran their bills down into the peach, meaning, of course, the tongue. But the bill theory was reasonable and the rest of the testimony was then continued to the jaws, which it was referred, were powerful enough to puncture the skin of peaches. It was also claimed that the juice run out of the punctured peaches down onto the limbs, causing the destruction of the trees. Peach Utter claimed these damages upon these grounds, but evidence was given in a rebuttal to say that the two witnesses showing that a previous depredation of the bees would not cause the damage to the trees. Do you have any food to fortify yourself before you take questions? No, I'm good. Questions? Anybody have questions about bees? There's an arm raised there. Jeff? Okay. So, we have bees with two horns making one hole. That's the claim. That's the claim here. Now, isn't it possible that a bee sufficiently motivated might lean to the side and make a hole using one horn? So, I think the argument in the article is that bees do not have horns. So, the bee would have to be further than motivated to acquire horns, come back, and then do the whole side horn peach dance thing. Next question, final question. Yeah, Kendra. Did the paper investigate the effect of the lack of bee horns on other fruit than peaches? It was like, it's a conflict between brothers. There's peach udder, the guy who has peaches, and then there's beekeeper udder, the guy who has bees, and so there's a familial conflict, and if peaches udder had had other fruits beyond peaches, I assume that this would also come to play in the court case. But, he just had peaches. So... Always on this. Our next speaker is Ryan Budisch. Excuse me, do you guys have enough to eat? My name is Ryan Budisch, and I'm a fellow at the Berkman Center, and I apologize in advance for picking this topic in a lunch setting. This is entitled Vomiting in Wild Bonnet McCocks. Researchers have given little consideration to vomiting in non-human primates. We have found only two studies that mention vomiting as a species typical behavior for non-human primates. Scientists generally consider vomiting to serve as a protective function by ejecting toxins from the body. However, in humans, a wide variety of stimuli can induce vomiting, including illness, movement, allergies, headaches, head injuries, surgery, pregnancy, radiation, heat exhaustion, altitude sickness, and space travel. Therefore, it is a theoretically complex behavior that to date lacks a comprehensive explanation. In Wild Bonnet McCocks, we observe the amount of vomit in the amount re-ingested, the color and consistency of the vomit when visible, and identities of any individuals that showed interest in the vomit, and whether the individual has seen the vomit or has seen the vomit or has seen the vomit or has seen the vomit or has seen the vomit or has seen the vomit and whether the individuals ate some of it. We recorded 163 acts of vomiting, 102 events in the temple group, 50 in the forest group, and 11 from individuals in neighboring forest groups. Of the 163 events, 12 occurred when the individual that vomited was the focal individual, two occurred during scan sampling, and the remaining events were ad libidum data collected while focaling other individuals or between scans. We easily recognize vomiting. The... Questions? Raise your arm, please. Oh, okay. So, I don't know if you have ever noticed as a scientist the tendency of dogs to eat their vomit after they actually vomit. So, this seems to contradict the hypothesis that actually vomiting is a device for self-protection of the body. And do you see that kind of tendency in humans, and how can you explain it? I don't know about humans, but this study actually goes on to address that question, and the conclusion that they reach is that vomiting may indeed be an initial response to try to read the body of toxins, but that it may be over-inclusive. And so, in the cases where it's sort of a hair trigger response, and so the monkeys would vomit, and then they'd realize, well, actually there were no toxins and that was okay, and then they would go back and reinjust it. So, yeah. So, I assume that it could be similar with humans. Was that a satisfactory answer to your question? No, it was okay. Final question? Yeah, right here. Is there any evidence that mates are selected on the basis of their ability or proficiency to vomit? So, for example, there's a principle survival of the best vomitor. Well, I'm not sure I totally got that question. It seems like we're coming up with explanations, maybe an evolutionary explanation for this capacity to vomit. Is there any evidence from your study that maybe mates are selected on the basis of their capacity to vomit? Or proficiency?  Brian Butish, our next speaker is Judith Donoth. His name, I think I just mangled. I'm sorry. Hello, I am Judith Donoth. I am a fellow here at the Harvard Berkman Center. This is all easier on the lunch. I'm going to read to you about scalp hair length, hair length in Florida theme parks and approximation of hair length in the United States of America. 10 hair length studies were conducted between January and May of 2001 at theme parks across Central Florida to obtain data on the percentage of persons in the United States with different lengths of scalp hair we went to four theme parks in Central Florida on different dates to Epcot three times on January 24th, March 14th, March 21st on February 6th and Magic Kingdom three times and MGM Studios on February 20th. Our objective was to observe and count persons with different lengths of hair. So moving on because there's actually quite a lot of data in here. Here we are for the very longest hair only four people all women were observed among the 24,300 persons with hair down to the bottom of the buttocks 0.0165% one woman who's observed at Epcot had here reaching several centimeters past her buttocks she was dressed in a skin tight costume as were two young men walking with her shortly after a Disney parade she had curly blonde hair and appeared to be in her mid to late 20s. This woman was most likely a Disney employee hired for her long hair because we observed her once before a Disney parade playing Rapunzel. We observed another woman on our second study at the Magic Kingdom on February 28th who also had hair down to the bottom of her buttocks we should probably get to the conclusion because you need to really get the summary of this. Variables affecting hair lengths are summarized along with the data on abnormally long hair from several sources by observing the hair of 24,300 adults in central Florida who have long hair length and have long hair length on specified dates from January through May of 2001 and estimating hair length relative to specific anatomical positions we conclude that about 13% of the US adult population currently has hair shoulder length or longer 2.4% of hair reaching to the bottom of their shoulder blades are longer about 0.3% of hair waist length are longer and only about 0.017 That's true. Do you think the researchers tried to pass off those trips on their expense reports? I think that they have actually made quite a career of that because they are a husband and wife who are comprised the Clarence Robbins technical consulting group so I believe they have probably they also returned later to estimate how much hoods and head coverings affected the quality of this research. So they are thorough. Is there any accounting for mullets in this study and does that affect moral decision making? For some reason they were particularly interested in here right around the buttocks which they repeat several times I think all those mullets just kind of passed them right by so but I believe they would probably be quite interested in returning to carry out that study especially if you were paying. Thank you. Our next speaker is Kendra Albert. I'm Kendra Albert I'm a fellow at the Berkman Center and I have been accused at times of being verbose. So I'm reading consequences of erudite, vernacular, utilized, irrespective of necessity problems with using long words needlessly by Daniel M. Oppenheimer. Most texts on writing style encourage authors to avoid overly complex words. However, most of us can likely recall having read papers either by colleagues or students in which the author appears to be deliberately using overly complex words. Experience suggests that the expert's advice contrasts with the prevailing wisdom on how to sound more intelligent as a writer. In fact, when 110 Stanford undergraduates were polled about their writing habits, most of them admitted that they had made their writing more complex in order to appear smarter. For example, when asked if you changed the words in an academic essay to make the essay sound more valid or intelligent by using complicated language, 86.4% of the sample admitted having done so. Nearly two-thirds answered yes to the question, when you write an essay, do you turn to the thesaurus to choose words that are more complex to give the impression that the content is more valid or intelligent? There are many plausible reasons that the use of million-dollar words would lead readers to believe the author is smart. Intelligence and large vocabularies are positively correlated, Spearman 1904. Therefore, by displaying a large vocabulary, one may be providing cues that he or she is intelligent as well. Secondly, writers are assumed to be conforming to the Greek in maximum manner, avoid obscurity of expression, Greece in 1975. If authors are believed to be writing simply as possible, but a text is nonetheless complex, a reader might believe that the ideas expressed in that text are also complex, defying all attempts to simplify the language. Further, individuals forced to struggle through a complex text might experience dissonance if they believe the ideas being conveyed are simple, Festinger 1957. Thus, individuals might be motivated to perceive a difficult text as being more worthwhile, thereby justifying the effect of processing. Questions? Of any length? Is there a correlation between being confused by the essay and the large number of big words being used at all? Did they talk about that? They... They did... Could you answer the phone and see if they have a question? They did attribute some of the the studies found that folks in fact thought the authors were less intelligent when they used bigger words. And they attributed some of this to the decrease in fluency. You don't understand what the author is saying, therefore you don't actually think that they're intelligent. I'm wondering if Mary Poppins was asked about her opinion in this article. I don't believe she was, but they used the thesaurus substitution as the primary means of increasing the complexity of the text, and I'm not sure supercalifragilist thexpialidocious appears in the thesaurus. Kendra Albert. Our next speaker is Alicia Soloneederman. So I'm Alicia Soloneederman. I'm a project coordinator here at Berkman Center. I may have chosen this because I may be wishing that I were more mobile at present, but my study is entitled Skipping and Hopping of Undergraduates Recollections of When and Why. Yeah. It is in the Perpetual and Motor Skills Journal of 1999. Walking is the default locomotor pattern for most humans in most situations, but the function of most other locomotor patterns is clear. A person runs if greater speed is required. A person jumps or leaps if going up. Down or across an obstacle or open space. But what is the function of skipping? A step up sequence performed on one leg, then the other in an alternating fashion. Cradies stated that usually by early and middle childhood, youngsters seek to learn and master various gate variations. Some are simply fun to do. Skipping is an example. At times, factors other than maturation and learning influence whether a child will exhibit galloping or skipping. I will fast forward ahead to the purpose of this study. I'll skip the literature review. But the purpose of this study was to compare the reasons why young adults skip and hop to identify its unique characteristics. Skipping was contrasted with hopping. Hopping was chosen as the other locomotor pattern because its relatively low frequency of use for adults was assumed to be about the same in skipping. And this low frequency was assumed to help the participants clearly identify the last time they used the pattern and to consider why they did. I will then fast forward to the conclusions. You can answer this very important question. An important assumption in this study was that skipping, the comparative locomotor skill, was used by young adults about as frequently as skipping. The data supported this assumption, showing no significant differences in the time frames of the participants last remembered about of skipping or hopping. However, significantly more participants did not remember the last time they hopped than the last time they skipped. The key question posed in this study was why do people skip? The top four categories of reasons for each skill and each sex are given. The first question was related to affect with the next most common response set of responses indicating the reason was unknown or they did not remember ever having skipped. The framing of this paper seems odd because the phrase is a hop, skip, and a jump. Why was there some anti-jumping bias in the research framework? You know, I can only speculate. The paper does say that a person jumps or leaps if going up, down or across an obstacle or open space. So perhaps the authors felt that it was sufficiently explained already why a person would jump. It's hopping and skipping that are more mysterious. Final question? You know if the Ministry of Silly Walks was satisfied with the results of this study? You know, I haven't heard any reports. I think it might have been a bit too academic I could say if I were to speculate. I'm not sure they were pleased. Alicia Solo-Niederman. And we have just three speakers left and some food in the back. So if you want some more food, grab it now John Lin, or anybody else. And that also again applies to any of the remaining three speakers. Our next speaker is Matthew Battles. Hot Potato. Anyone watching on the web if you're close enough to get over here before we finish, come on over. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Jeff. Gentlemen. My name is Matthew Battles. I'm with MetaLab at Harvard and I'm a fellow at the Berkman Center and I'm reading a paper on the psychological response to unknown proper names. The procedure was as follows. The observer sat with eyes closed and was given a warning signal before the name was presented. The stimuli were given auditorily. The observer was informed of the general nature of the experiment and was told not to construct a visual image, but if one came to describe it as fully as possible. It was soon discovered, however, that some observers had no habitual visual imagery and we therefore repeated the series with the instruction to report what the person name must look like. We hoped by the second instruction to stimulate visual imagery in those observers with whom it was not habitual. This attempt was on the whole a failure. If we take the 500 reports as a whole, the results are negative. There is no constant or uniform tendency among these observers either to imagine a similar type of individual for the same name or to furnish a similar type of name for the same picture. Individual differences among observers are great. In the nonsense series, one observer failed completely. He was able only to suggest a nationality to which the name might belong and he did not complete the series. Of those remaining, five depended mainly upon auditory association. Thus the name Dotho suggested Delfos, Dahl, Doddering and Daudi, a friend and the images were a Greek man, a Dahl like girl, an old woman and a memory image of a woman. The two remaining observers tended to furnish images corresponding with the sound although they were not consistent. One of them had as an image for Dotho, a heavily built strong Greek, very jolly and said in his introspective report, it seems as if the sounds all and oh being generous sounds should go with broad shoulders and perhaps good nature. In only five cases was there anything like agreement among all observers as to sex or other characteristics. Rup Zoyat was reported as a young man by all observers.  Five thought Zetha must be a girl, six reported Gribb is a small man, and five reported Kurt Faumich as a strong or big man. For the remainder, there was disagreement. It seems then that the physiognomy of a proper name is at best but one and that not an important factor out of many which determine what personality shall be attached to the name. We know that Dickens came to Chuzzlewit through Swizzle in, Swizzleback, Swizzlewag, Chuzzletoe, Chuzzleboy, Chubblewig and Chuzzlewig. Could you repeat the question so it gets on? Sure. The best name found in the study, well I would have to go with actually the name of the author of the study which was G. English. How did they determine that the names were unfamiliar to the people taking the study? Yeah, that's a good question. There was mention of a control group which consisted of the names of distinguished psychologists. So, I think there was probably confusion all around. Matthew Bathol is the speaker of the next to the last but today is Adam Holland. Hi, I'm Adam Holland. I'm a project coordinator at the Berkman Center. Today I'll be reading from on the comparative palatability of some dry season tadpoles from Costa Rica. It is suggested that palatability and tadpoles may correlate inversely with vulnerability. Tadpoles are poor swimmers in both speed and agility but some tadpoles however are remarkably conspicuous. Often conspicuous animals are noxious and it can be hypothesized that conspicuous tadpoles may be so. The mock predator in this experiment was a sample of 11 students and faculty. Each taster was tested separately and asked not to discuss the test until the experiment was over. The tasters were asked to rate the palatability of each tadpoles skin, tail and body on a one to five scale. The standardized testing procedure included several steps. Tadpole was to be rinsed in fresh water. Taster would place the tadpole into his or her mouth and hold it for 10 to 20 seconds without biting into it. Then the taster bit into the tail breaking the skin and chewed lightly for 10 to 20 seconds. For the last 10 to 20 seconds the taster bit firmly and fully into the body of the tadpole. The tasters were directed not to swallow the tadpoles but to spit them out and rinse their mouths at least twice with fresh water before proceeding to the next tadpole. The most distasteful tadpole was clearly Bufo Marinas. This tadpole had distasteful skin a condition that could not be demonstrated in any of the other tadpoles. The most palatable tadpole was Smeleska sordida. The other tadpoles of other four species rest between these extremes, ranging from tasteless on the skin but slightly disagreeable within the body. This distastefulness may result from food in the gut of the tadpole rather than some innate distasteful property. The body cavity of tadpoles is almost entirely occupied by gut in which tadpoles process large volumes of detritus. One taster specifically commented on the grittiness of the gut contents. Questions? Yes. So what's the answer? Are the faster tadpoles less taster? I will briefly quote from the study and assuage occurrence by saying that they did account for the fact that excuse me, the objection that man is not a natural predator. However, the conclusions were that yes, the data support the general rule that the most palatable organisms are those least vulnerable to predator attack. The most distasteful are the most susceptible to such an attack. Final question. I think we can reproduce these findings with other animals like cats. As a matter of fact, the researchers have anticipated your concern and caught, most notably 1951, 1952, 1953, and 1954 found broad agreement among the hedgehog, rat, ferret, cat, and man in terms of assessing relative palatability. We have a little more time than I expected. If anybody has one or two more questions on this important topic. Do you know what the death rate was among the participants? That's an excellent question. While the participants were still being observed by the experimenters, there were no deaths. However, in related research that was perhaps leading to this particular study hang on, a note's in there somewhere. Oh yes. Thysilix in 1922 demonstrated that bufo-bufo eggs were toxic when injected into the skin of a particular frog species. And Licht reported the deaths of two Peruvian natives after the accidental ingestion of bufo eggs. He then initiated two studies into the palatability of those eggs. Do you know if these tadpoles were procured in the wild as in a naturalized hunting situation or were they procured from a lab's supply magazine? I can definitely assure you that they were not procured from a lab's supply magazine. The researchers in abundance of caution have provided the collection sites for their various species which range from shallow standing pools, permanent turbid ponds under the rocks in a shallow but flowing area of a particular river collected in tire tracks and in dense aggregates in quiet open pools where they observed for several hours the predation of a kingfisher on the tadpole population. Did any of the students involved with this study and the five years of subsequent studies finish their PhDs? I have no information on that topic although I can't tell they had to throw out two of the tasters because they were heavy smokers. How were the remains of the tadpoles treated where they granted the proper respect? I don't know although I was impressed with the carefully timed chewing intervals I thought that was pretty respectful, they weren't allowed to just immediately spit it out upon finding its skin distasteful. For another question. Oh my goodness. The tadpoles are on everyone's mind. How were participants in the study recruited? Well, they were all members of they were all people observing the kingfisher. They were a sample of students and faculty in the 1970 dry season course Tropical Biology an ecological approach which was offered by the organization for tropical studies. It does seem to be a bias toward male participants there were two female and nine male. Any other aspects of this question? Adam Holland and please welcome our final speaker Jonathan Zittrain. Hi. It seems like Gaben Max behind me. So I'm Jonathan Zittrain. I'm not crazy. I'm just eccentric. And my study is color preference in the insane problem. The writer has endeavored to determine whether certain colors are generally pleasing to the insane. Whether noticeable similarities exist between color preference in the insane and in children. Review of previous work several years ago 1922 a study was made by the writer of the color preferences of children. He found that blue was the most frequently preferred color at every age and in all grades from kindergarten to college 47% of the pupils choosing this color. Green was a distant second. Red a close third. Violet and yellow followed with orange the least pleasing of the six. Red was more favored and green less favored in children of poor than in those of well-to-do neighborhoods in the earlier years but this difference tended to be overcome as the children advanced in grade and age. Who says there's no social mobility? Method. The colors were numbered haphazardly and the number of each color placed above it. The cardboard was presented to the patient. He was asked to place his finger on the number of the color he liked best. After he made the choice he was asked in a similar manner for the next best color and so on. Some cooperated well and made six choices. Others quickly lost interest and made only one two or three. As soon as there was the slightest indication that the patient was bored by the procedure the test was terminated. Color preferences according to length of residence in the hospital. The patients were divided into three groups. Those had been there less than one year. One to three years and the third those remaining after three years. This is of significance as individuals in the hospital after the third year are for the most part showing marked deterioration. Correlation, causation, I don't know. They would be expected to approximate in preference more nearly the younger children than the older. As psychoses are generally regarded as a regression to a more infantile level.  Orange and yellow best like by manic depressives. Green by dementia precox and violet by all the others. Great. We'll take your questions. I have a question. We are here today inside of room in the newest most carefully designed building at Harvard law school. What if anything does this study tell us about the colors of this room? Well, the study does say that knowledge of color preferences of the insane might be practically applied in vocational therapy and in the selection of colors for the furnishings of living quarters. So the colors here appear to be late American corporate. How that maps exactly we'd have to update the study to put in the kinds of topes that aren't exactly Crayola in this room. Questions. So what's your favorite color? I guess I'm not allowed to read the study to find out. It is in fact tadpole green. Did the study take into account color blindness and what, you know that's a great question. I don't know if color blindness was even anticipated in 1922 and having been in an era filmed entirely in black and white. But the charts are not in color either and they're kind of pre-powerpoint. You can see it's like now I know where XKCD comes from. It's very cool. The charts. Yes, you can fill in your own chart by numbers, but if there's any disinterest it is immediately terminated.  They are very poor children, at least according to the study. Now does that mean they go for green or red? The crazy kids? No, I actually sorry.  They did a study on kids. They did a study on the insane. Clearly there should be NSF funding for insane kids in a corporate environment. Based on your, I'll be at Swift reading of the paper, can you propose hypotheses for what we should name new Crayola colors? It's funny because the colors weren't labeled except by number. So maybe for experimental consistency the color should henceforth simply be numbered. And why not bridge it to HTML color codes? So then you can just have hashtags F or something. As people walk around then they're being trained for the jobs of the 21st century. This is a technique pioneered in a different industry by Chanel. Number five. I like that smell. Any further questions? Given that the subjects in this study clearly were seeing the world through a somewhat different perspective, do they take into account the possibility that they actually perceived colors differently? That sort of deep question of our inability to really know what's going on in other minds particularly as they become more other. And that they actually perhaps all like the same experience say of red but it just looked like purple to some and green to others and red to others but they actually like the same thing. SE Katz does not evince in this study any reading of Kant but I agree with you that it would be interesting if optimistic people tended to like pink and rose better given the tint of their glasses. Sorry. Had to link that up for you. Now this would be pure speculation but I'm wondering if the color of tadpoles increases their palatability in your mind that's possible. There does appear to be a nice link between this study and the other study and if you're crazy enough to eat a tadpole you may have just outfoxed the tadpole because it's trying not to be palatable to the non-crazy. So this will be our final question. So the my understanding was that as insane people and people who'd been at the hospital more liked blue less. Is that right? Blue was the first choice for 41% of male kids who stayed there longer less decided liking for blue than the total number of school children as well as less than the total number of patients. So you are correct. And what color could you state for the record the color of the garment you were wearing? I'm wearing blue. I'm wearing blue twice. What color was the hospital? That is not specified. It was gathered at the Hudson River State Hospital after C.O. Cheney's superintendent. It's purple there. And we're supposed to believe you? That's what you see, yes? Thank you. Does anyone have any questions for the two gentlemen who are up here eating? Did you get fed adequately? You break the food acceptable? Great. Are there any questions in general before we or as we finish up? Is there anything I'd like to say about my book? I would like to thank very much Jonathan Zittrain for coming up to me and telling me that he purchased a copy of my new book. I don't think he's read it, but he purchased it and I'm told that's what matters. So thank you very much. The book is called This Is Improbable. You've seen some of the kinds of things that I write about. Things that have this quality that I hope makes people laugh and then think. If you run across anything in any subject from any point in time it's a good Nixonian phrase I would love to hear about it. Just drop me a line. And I want to thank the Berkman Center and Jeff and Amar and Dan especially for organizing all this stuff. And there is a wonderful technician here I've forgotten who's back in one of these rooms and probably is watching on TV. So thank you very much for getting set up. Thank you to our time keepers. Thank you to our eaters. Let me finish by reading once again the names of everybody who spoke here today and asking each person just stand up. If you're already standing then just remain that way and take a bow. Gus Rancatori Richard Bagguli Naomi Steven Jeff Hermes Molly Saunter Ryan Beutich Judith Donath Kendra Albert Alicia Solo Niederman Matthew Battles Adam Holland and Jonathan Zittrain Thank you all very much.


Everybody for a seer ripping 21 22 flawless basketball hobby 1 box number 23 left side serial numbers We're gonna random right now to see who's got which number and then we're gonna rip the box all in the same recording here We go And five going nine times here Names first in the numbers one two three four five six seven eight and nine But Dean down a top and bottom there and the numbers nine times one two three four five six seven eight and nine It's nine down to 11. All right, but Dean nine Richard W1 but Dean 23 Chang s10 but Dean 15 Jason a 18 Mike s2 Mackenzie with 14 But Dean with 12 13 16 22 6 and 20 Zung Han 24 But Dean 21 Felix 25 but Dean 7 Peter m3 but Dean 5 Thomas C 19 Louise G 8 She way with 17 but Dean 4 and 11 These results are getting posted right now. I'm gonna call out who's got what as we go along here. Oh look Here, let me I'll get I'll get it. I'll drop it in chat in between breaks here, Jonathan. Maybe that logo man We were looking for earlier than here Buckets see There you go buckets The last one I did earlier. I have armor here. It's more like I Was like a quarterback getting his he threw that thing was a lame duck Do the legal wants me to give him my Venmo so that he can request refunds from breaks. So I gave him a yellow card That guys I Was excited for the trash list it's coming up It's coming up into probably like 15 minutes here Really nice patch to start off. It's gonna be two of ten Derek white Where's the names? Where's the names? So they are Mike s number two two spots? This is the black self-extrasies Dorchard chamber on the patch ought a one of five Richard W1 spot Beautiful that's probably that's a four-color patch right there One of five against Dorth on the patch auto. Oh, yeah, this is for sure. Yeah Yes, you call Vaughan. I even think about that on Nice ruby color match here on the BJ Armstrong auto 14 to 15 dude. His auto was crazy 14 spot Mackenzie W 14 out of 15 BJ Armstrong momentous auto gold eight of ten Jalen Brunson Eight spot Louise G excellence auto ruby is 7 to 15 Clyde Drexler 7 spot Bideen Mackenzie if you're a buyer, there's someone in Twitch chat or if you're a seller, there's someone in Twitch chat That might be about that might be buyer Next up rookie auto with the gold foil here six of ten is Cameron Thomas six spot Bideen Enshrine signatures one of 25 the big over the bucks Oscar Robertson Dude that is that is a beautiful card next the big oh Yeah, no, I don't I don't see anybody in chat name Mackenzie, so I'm not sure and then the YouTube chat anyway Oscar Robertson there What do they call that what was the number again? Richard W the one spot Star swatch signatures one spot again Anthony Davis partial Laker logo patch one of five Hey, that's pretty that's nice right there. That's too. Oh That's nice LeBron James and Kate Cunningham flawless picks dual diamonds three of five Peter M with a three spot. That's a nice gem card LeBron and Kate three of five Diamond Guarantee here, and this is just disgusting three spot again Star swatch signatures rookie Franz Wagner three of five Huge patch Huge patch Big time Franz big big big big big card Peter M three spot again God that is sick That's either the C or the the top of the G I would think on the patch there for magic I don't think it's any other part of the lettering there You know that's dirty. That's disgusting that'll do it one box number 24 coming up next


Hi, my name is Rich Horsley. I'm the department head of plant sciences and the barley breeder here at the university. I was asked today to talk about a couple things. I thought, you know, field day, let's do it a little different in this virtual field day. So our backdrop here today is the barley and malt lab of Dr. Paul Schwartz on the campus of NDSU, something that you wouldn't see on a field day. And I was asked to talk about craft beer and what we're doing for developing varieties for craft beer. So I thought this was really a good place to talk from. Well, Dr. Schwartz and I, we both started here around 1988. And our job when we were hired was to develop malt barley varieties for the large commercial brewers. Basically, we were developing barley for Ann Hauser-Busch, Miller Brewing, and Strow Brewing at the time. And when you think about barley, barley's market is quite different than any other crop out there in the state. When a farmer sells corn or soybeans or wheat, they take it to the elevator and they just put all the corn that just got delivered with all the other corn in the elevator. It all just gets commingled. Barley's quite differently. When a farmer takes malt barley to the elevator, the first question they're going to get is, what variety is that? Because each of the varieties is going to get segregated differently. And the reason that happens is that each barley variety has its own characteristics for malt quality and brewing quality. It might impact a little bit of the flavor.  And so since variety is so important, when we develop varieties for those large commercial brewers, they tell us exactly what that quality has to be. It has to be this protein level. It has to have this level of enzymes. And the enzymes, for example, alpha amylase and beta amylase. If you don't meet those exact specs, that variety will never get used by the industry. So when we were developing for the large malt companies and the large brewing companies, we had some really nice looking varieties that stood well, yielded well, had nice disease packages, but they just didn't quite have the quality specs that those large commercial brewers needed. Those enzymes I talked about, why are those enzymes so important? Well, those large commercial brewers have a little bit of corn or a little bit of rice in their beers. And so they need those enzymes from the malt to break down the corn or rice. So that's why enzyme quality is very important. About a dozen years ago, we started talking more with the craft brewers. And they were coming to us and telling us, you know, those varieties you are developing for the large commercial brewer, they don't work for us. They have all these high levels of enzyme. And the proteins are too high. It just doesn't work. Don't you have anything that'll work for us? And we talked and had conversations. And they said, basically, it came down to they wanted lower enzymes and lower protein. And I was telling, well, the stuff you want sounds like the stuff we used to throw out, because it just didn't meet the specs of those large brewers. And so that's become a lot of fun to work with these craft brewers and the craft molsters, because it really gives us an opportunity to develop some materials that they wouldn't have been available to the farmers otherwise if it wasn't for this craft sector. And this craft sector, if you think about it, is grown and grown and grown. And it's now about 13 and 1 half percent of the market share of beer. And so that effort that we're doing in craft beer has really grown and become quite important to us. So as we've been doing this on the craft side for beer, I had a thought for myself as, well, if we can do this in barley, can't you do this in wheat? Can't you do this in other crops? Is it true for other crops? And so we started talking with chefs and people that on the wheat side talked with Dan Barber. He was at the Carrington Field Day about three years ago, a chef out in New York, chef and owner of Blue Hill, New York, and Blue Hill at Stone Barn. And we started talking about the wheat we're developing here at NDSU, and we're very proud of our wheat because it's known as the Cadillac of Wheats, very high quality, high protein, very strong wheats when it comes to bread making ability. And so Dan was saying, well, send us some of the wheat and we'll test it in our kitchens at the restaurant. He has a bakery, he has his own mill, and we sent them Glen because Glen is what NDSU and wheat is really well known for. So we sent the variety Glen there. And they came back and said, oh, this is way too strong. This isn't going to work for us. So I was thinking, well, maybe this is just like the craft beer industry is maybe the artisans need that, don't need all of that strength and stability and enzymes and so forth that we give to the large commercial brewers. So we sent them Faller and Prosper next and we kept hearing the same thing. No, it's still too strong. Do you have anything else? And so the answer was, can we identify wheats at NDSU that work in the artisan market? Just like we did with barley, and the answer was yes. And so it makes us a lot more exciting for us as breeders. We can not only develop for our large commercial brewers and we still do that. I mean, that's our main focus. But at the same time, we do have these other markets that are available on the craft side and artisan side. And we've expanded that work first from barley, then we're looking at wheat, and now we're expanding it to potato and dry bean. So it's been a lot of fun here to be a breeder at NDSU and to work with all of the sectors in the industry out there in the food industry. One question that comes up when you start working with the craft side and the local side is what about organic? And so on campus a few years ago, you go back six years ago, we had no organic land on campus. And so one of the things we've been doing is transitioning over some of our plot land. And we now have about 12 acres on campus that's certified organic. So that gives us the ability at NDSU to have organic research at three different sites across the state, here in Fargo, Dickinson, and at Carrington. And you really have to thank Steve's winger at Carrington for what he has done and really gonna bring an organic into the realm into a lot of people's attention here at NDSU. So everybody thinks that it's for organic only what we're doing, but really, I think of it more as local foods. That local food can be organic, but it doesn't necessarily have to be. The consumer just wants to know where's my food coming from? And the artisan wants to know can I make good products from these quality ingredients? So that's just a little update of what we're doing at NDSU and what we're doing on the breeding side. So one thing I wanted to finish up with you today and we'll go take another walk in a minute is a lot of people wonder, well, do you still have that old seed around? You said you were throwing outlines that didn't have the quite the right quality for that large brewer or for that large baker. So I wanna show you how we can archive seed. And when we get questions about, well, do you have this kind of trait and this kind of trait, a lot of times we do, we keep all that seed in our seed storage areas. So I'll show you that. Well, this is our second stop on the barley tours talking about cereals in general. And it's a room that you don't typically see here on the NDSU campus. This is one of our seed storage rooms. We won't spend too much time in here because it's cold. We keep these rooms, we try to keep them around 50 degrees and one to keep the germination of these seeds still viable for maybe up to 20 years sometimes. And also it helps keep the bugs down. A lot of times we get questions on, when I was working with Dan, he goes, are you working any culinary barleys, any hull-less barleys? And I said, well, we really haven't worked on any of that since 1999, I think was the last time we did any work with that hull-less barley. And he said, oh, that's too bad because you don't, you know, you may not have any left. I go, oh yeah, we archive everything. And if you look to this room, you'll see stuff from 2004, 1999, and earlier through the whole room. So we do archive a lot of material and it's really important to be able to come back in here as a breeder and find traits or characteristics that maybe you didn't think you needed 20 years ago, but now there's a purpose for them or demand for them. And one of those, a good example, would be the hull-less barley, that naked barley. Another example on the wheat side, you know, we've been working so hard to develop those strong wheats, like the Glen types, that we didn't necessarily bring forward some of those weaker ones that might work for the artisan market. So our wheat breeder, Andrew Green, was able to go back into his seed storage and pull out some of that material. So these seed archives are just, you can't tell the value of what these rooms really mean to us and our ability to come back. And you don't have to save a lot of seed. There's maybe 100 grams in these packets. But all you need is one seed and you can blow that up into 100 and then on and on. So it's an invaluable source. You don't see it, but we do have a lot of this on our NDSU campus.


Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today, we're going to do another round of updating our audience, our viewers, about the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly for India, because obviously, that's of greater interest to most of our viewers. If we look at the number of cases, total confirmed cases, it's about 82,000. And we have had about 4,000 in the last 24 hours as new cases. That's a worrying sign, because numbers had gone down per day. It's come up again a little. But we have to accept that these figures will wax and wane, because it is really not something which will be smooth and gradual that we seem to think in epidemics. Some cities suddenly go up, some clusters suddenly show a lot of new cases, and you are going to see this uneven rise and fall. Harshvardhan, our Minister for Health, has claimed that a doubly great has gone down. We'll see the charts to see whether that's really true, or is it probably an extrapolation made with just two few samples. Our testing rates are not bad, because if we look at our total number of tests, then we have done 2 million tests in this period last couple of months. And that's not a bad figure if we look at what different countries have done. But if we look at our population, which is 1.3 billion, that means our testing numbers compared to our population are still low. And though we have tested about 93,000 people in the last 24 hours, compared to the number of people we need to test, and compared to the number of people already infected, this is still low. We'll come back to this a little later. If we look at the total picture of India in terms of which are the states affected, they don't seem to show too much of a change. In the sense, we have Maharashtra, Gujarat, which are still showing a high rate of infection, also registering a fairly large number of deaths in terms of the total numbers. You also see Chennai has suddenly gone up. And that's affected, of course, the Tamil Nadu figures. We'll come back to this again. So yes, issues that we have been talking about in terms of both confirmed cases and deaths are there. And the numbers of people dead, it's about 2,700 or so, in 82,000 odd people who have been infected, this is a fairly high death rate figure. So we have to still keep watching how many deaths occur, where they occur, because sometimes a large number of deaths are an indication that maybe the infected people are not being tested and not being captured. And that's why they're showing up as COVID-19 deaths. Out of proportion to the number of people infected. When you look at the world, of course, we have a picture which is not pretty at all at the moment. We are not in control of the pandemic. And particularly, in countries like the United States, things are still rising. We have about four, approaching towards 4.5 million worldwide figures, and we have number of deaths which are, again, pretty large, more than 300,000 people have died. So if you take, for instance, what would be called the worst flu epidemics that have taken place, and that was really the swine flu epidemic, it's a combination of swine and bird flu epidemic that came out of North America, that had probably a death figure of something like 284,000. This is the CDC estimate. This is not the figures that were counted at that point of time. But CDC, the United States Agency, which looks at infectious diseases, had calculated that this is roughly 284,000 people and died worldwide. So compared to that, in the last two to three months, we have had more than 300,000 deaths. That's a big figure. And our new cases are still rising at a rate which makes us feel that at the moment, globally, we are still not in control of the pandemic. Of course, the figures are highest in the United States, which everybody knows, it's about 1.3 million, followed by the European Union. But what is, again, worrying is new countries are joining the number of cases. And in this, Brazil, with under Bolsonaro, who has refused to recognize that this is something which is to worry about and there should be lockdown, strong measures, he's been really doing what will be called pandemic denial. Brazil has taken over really the second spot and Russia has risen quite a bit. But if you look at these figures, what is worrying is the US figures are not dropping. They still continue to rise, though it's a slower rise, and we'll come back to that. Brazil is rising fast, but almost all other countries, the new infections are sort of holding steady. They're not continuing to rise as they are in Brazil, and as they're not in the United States. United States also, we see a leveling off the number of infections, but because they have such a high figure already, these figures are still adding up. We do not see a drop that we saw in Italy, in France, in Spain, and Germany, compared to what the US is showing, because the US started showing new infections almost at the same time as Italy did. So Italy figures have started to come down, but the US figures are still not coming down. Now, if we take the deaths, we have a very similar figure. Number of deaths are highest in the United States, followed by Brazil and Western European Union states. Here the death figures in UK are worrying because they seem to have the highest number of deaths in European Union. Of course, with Brexit, they're out of the European Union, but in Western Europe, the highest figures of death are from UK. Again, a higher number of deaths than what you would expect in the population of people infected. So these are causes of worry, why it is higher, and we'll have to look at those figures again. I'd like to take you to our, basically, our website, the Newsclick website, and if we go there, let's look at, for instance, the infected countries. Now, of course, these are no longer the highly infected countries. Brazil and Russia has taken over, and we will see in the later charts, which is not today, we'll see also how they shape up compared to others. But let's look at, for instance, what is happening to the United States? And if you see that, you will see the United States figures are continuing to rise, and they're not flattening. The way, for instance, Italy figures are flattening. You can see Italy, Iran, you can see France, you can see Spain. All of these are flattening in terms of the new infections that we see, that they are not that many. But the US, which is already around 1.3 million and 1.4 million at this point, we'll see every day still about 25,000, 30,000 cases. Now, that is something to worry about because flattening of the curve would mean that these numbers would slowly decline. They are still tending to hold steady. That means the US is still, I will say, teaching at the brink of either taking off again or going down. We have to say which way it goes, partly because there are a number of states, each state behaves differently. The lockdowns in each of the states are different. So what it tends to do is therefore to give an overall picture in a graph which combines all the figures of the country is not a very, shall we say, a very good way of looking at the picture because each of the states could have different ways or that they are taking off or not taking off. And therefore an average figure for the country as a whole does not give us a true picture. Now, let's look at India again. And I would like to show you that for instance, what we have always compared India to is Malaysia. Why are we taking Malaysia? Because Malaysia seems to show good control. And though they started with a higher rate that India, in fact, initially Malaysia was showing rates which are almost twice that of India at this point of time. And you can see suddenly India takes off around this time after about 18 days of the zero date. We have taken the zero date as you know as 100 infected. The day each country hits 100 infected, that's where we bring every country to a common base so we can compare what they're doing. So this does not go according to the calendar but the hundred victim infected cases when we have, we put everybody at that point and we just show the days from that and each of the days obviously depend on the calendar is a different one from the one that we are showing. But this allows us to compare the responses of different countries at the same point of time in the infection, not in terms of the calendar. Now, we can see that India was lower than Malaysia for the first 18 days or so. It starts overtaking Malaysia after that point and you will see after that the distance between Malaysia and India, Malaysia at the moment is about 6,800 or so and India is at the moment 81,000, it's more than even 10 times the number, somewhere near 12 to 13 times the number. This shows that while they have flattened the curve, India has no and if you see the slope, you will see India curve is steadily rising and it is certainly rising beyond what countries like Iran, countries like Italy, countries like Spain have done. Of course, India started a little later than them, that means it hit the hundred number figure later than these countries did. We were sort of about roughly 18 days behind Italy. Yeah, let's look at it. You will see India is roughly about 18 days behind Italy. But if you see the figures that you will see that there is a steady rise for the last 10 to 12 days, the slope does not show any flattening as what the health minister talked about. And if you take our doubling rate, which should really be seen not in terms of something we compute today and based on last two days or three days, we should see the doubling rate of India when it was a half of the 82,000 figure that we could see. And we'll see that's roughly about 11 days, roughly 10 to 11 days back. So if it is 10 to 11 days back that we had half our current figures, our doubling rate is really at the moment 11 days and not based on the last three days figures. Why don't we take the last three days figures as Hanba Harshavan seems to have taken? Simply because we have to see a slightly longer time frame before we can make a judgment whether there is a really a long-term flattening of the curve or is it something that we are saying which is a temporary one and suddenly if it's a knife for instance takes off as it just did, then this whole curve would again start going up. So this is really the problem with using statistics that you can make it mean anything you want and that's why there is a famous statement which is what is it lies, damn lies and statistics. So I'm not going to say that the health minister is lying but certainly he's shading the statistics in his favor and at the moment we'll still keep our fingers crossed but that this really does behave the way he thinks it will. When you come to Indian states and this is the really the big issue that we should check out. If we come to Indian states, now in Indian states we seem to see a very similar phenomena. You have flattening of certain states that I will point out telling Manna and of course Kerala in that. Kerala has been by far the best performer in terms of meeting the COVID-19 challenge. It was the first to see the 100 cases. In fact, every state followed Kerala in that sense. Maharashtra and Kerala were the ones who show 100 cases virtually on the same day. Now we can see that Maharashtra has gone up continuously while Kerala has flattened the curve after the first 10 days you can see it slowly flattening and after the 35th day it reached 100 figure and you can see that Kerala's curve is almost parallel. Yes, there will be certain lips, small numbers which will go up and it goes up primarily because of migrants coming from outside and they will certainly carry infections into Kerala but looking at what Kerala has done and how the health system there has behaved it looks like Kerala is very much in control of the epidemic over there. If we come to Telangana which is another state which has done reasonably well it was flat for quite some time but it has started to show some rise. We'll have to see whether this rise which probably is more in Hyderabad than any other places and the urban centers tend to go up a little more than other centers and we'll come back to this later but this is probably also relatively under control. If we look at Maharashtra it's a very trend steady rise and the large part of this really comes from Bombay and it suburbs the Spune and this of course comes from the fact that Bombay is a very densely populated city. The huge number of clusters where the density of the population is one of the highest in the world therefore something is surprising. Control of the COVID-19 epidemic is going to be relatively more hard over there. If we come to Gujarat Gujarat there is a little bit of flattening of the curve and it seems that Anathabad which is the city which is really going up in large numbers that they have seen there is seems to be some control over it at the moment. Yes, from the way Gujarat was suddenly took off I think Gujarat at the moment seems a little better but we have suddenly a takeoff in Tamil Nadu and as I was talking about this seems to be largely Chennai related because Chennai suddenly has a market which has been infected, found to be infected and from that they have been able to trace something like two and a half thousand cases. So a huge number of the increase that we see in Chennai that is reflected in the uptick we see in Tamil Nadu's numbers otherwise it was also relatively holding better earlier. Delhi is still rising not as fast as for instance right now Chennai is or as fast as Maharashtra is but I will say that the rate of growth still is not very comfortable. Now when we talk about 11 days doubling rate or Harshabandhan's 40 to 14 days doubling rate these are a little misleading for a simple reason that we have to look at what each state is doing and even within that what each city is doing because the infection clusters are really in certain cities. Now there are probably about eight to 10 cities which show more than 60% of the infections in India right now. The cities that we are talking about is of course Mumbai and Delhi which are the two cities which show the largest number. They're also very big cities. So it is not surprising they have large numbers but they also have clusters very densely populated clusters where the disease seems to be relatively more difficult to control in spite of all the containment measures being taken and therefore we have large numbers taking off from in these places and that creates the big numbers that we see in Maharashtra. So lot of the Maharashtra's numbers come from Bombay and its suburbs more than 60% is really Bombay and its suburbs and then of course we have residual five to six percent from Pune. If we come to Madhya Pradesh there we see almost 50% in fact little more than 50% coming from Indore alone. But Indore is not really one of the largest towns in Madhya Pradesh that would really be Bhopal. So this figure would show there was an undetected cluster which it took off and it has taken some time before the Indore authorities have been able to control at least the numbers that we see and Ujjain which is nearby had also taken off. So these two put together probably around 60% of Madhya Pradesh total numbers. If we come to Delhi of course Delhi is a city so there is no question of differentiating between Delhi and others. But if we come to for instance Chennai again 60% of the Tamil Nadu figures or probably 55% of Tamil Nadu figures are from Chennai alone. Now if you put Chennai in its suburbs probably it will go over 60%. So you are really looking at about eight to 10 cities in which the COVID spread has been significant and these are the ones which need to be controlled and even within the cities you have what I call hotspots or clusters that have to be really controlled. So this is where the real issue lies. How do you control such clusters? Of course if you take the death rates they very much follow what we are seeing in the sense that the Delhi death rates have suddenly taken off but we suddenly have a spike over there. Otherwise it's more or less follows the number of deaths that we have seen in other places that roughly about two weeks after the infections have taken a certain shape, certain numbers you will see the death rate really tracks that. It means normally the deaths start showing up after two weeks of the infection start showing up. So if there is a spike of infections today you will see a spike of deaths after about two weeks. This is roughly what we seem to show. See and of course the states which have high death rates are the ones which have also shown high infections but the Pradesh is high in this. So is Gujarat, again Ahmedabad and so is Maharashtra. The three places which have taken off Delhi the death rates were lower earlier but now we can see there is a spike in Delhi death rates as well. So these are the things we'll have to study and of course you also have Rajasthan but the death rate is not looking very good. You have Uttar Pradesh, the death rates are not seem to be climbing. So we'll have to watch these places but it is also important for us to register one particular thing which is that we are seeing figures today both in terms of infections and death rates which are a consequence of the six weeks odd lockdown we have had and it is once the lockdown that is lifted then we are going to see are the infections spreading or spiking again? And that will be the big test because we are not in complete control of the infections in the reproductive rates that's been talked of in the region of 1.2 to 1.3 somewhere in between. If that is your reproductive rate that means one person still infects more than one person in terms of the multiplication of the numbers. So if I infect one plus another 30% that means three people are going to infect roughly four people. That means the infection still continue to grow but it is all smaller space. So the lockdown has slowed the infections but it has not put the infection rate below one which is what you need to control the pandemic. And if you don't do that on top of that we have to now lift partially lift the lockdown we cannot continue like this. Then if we do not take care of where the infection clusters are and how we handle it again the reproductive rate from the current 1.2 or 2.1.3 that we are seeing it can still jump to 1.5 or two which means we'll be back where we were before the lockdown. So that is the most important issue right now that instead of controlling the numbers if the numbers are already such that our numbers are continuing to grow then how do you have an intelligent lockdown? This is the key question. Unfortunately, we have no indication what the government is thinking. We have only fiat which are coming from the home ministry which says lockdown the following area lockdown this district's lockdown that town. So these kinds of messages that are coming do not tell us what the government's real plans or real mandobas is what are their arrangements they're going to do? Looking at it from our point of view and we have been discussing this issue with other experts or modeling experts it's very clear that lockdowns are never going to solve the problem of bringing the disease within control. China has shown in Wuhan it was very clear they had with lockdown a relatively very stringent lockdown even then they had a reproductive rate of 1.27 and they could bring it down below one only because they also took up a whole set of measures which is thorough testing continuous testing of the people contact tracing which we are also doing and then isolating those who are infected and of course taking care of them in the hospitals properly and lastly also seeing that the hospital staff are fully equipped with protective equipment so they did not become the vectors of disease themselves which is what we seem to see in India we saw that in Italy we're seeing that in the United States that the frontline workers whether it's the people who run the hospitals clean the hospitals, look after the patients the nurses and the doctors other health professionals they are the ones who get infected and of course infect other patients and also the people they come in contact with which could be people at home and so on so this is the last part point that we'd like to stress that unless we protect our health workers not only is it bad for them that we lose the people who are fighting the disease they're in the front lines but we also make them carriers of further infections which is certainly not the way to control the epidemic I will end with this what I started with we need much more testing yes we are testing about 100,000 per day but if we want to control the lifting of the long-term or even a partial lifting of the long-term focusing on the clusters where we still see hot spots we really have to extend our testing much more and that is a message we leave you with that yes we have slowed down the pandemic it's not that lockdown has not been effective it has been it slowed down the epidemic otherwise we would have had seen much larger figures I'm not going to speculate what those figures are I don't think it's even possible to speculate on these figures but it certainly would have been much larger after two weeks we'll see the effect of the lockdown because the disease takes about two weeks to show up really in the new clusters so we'll have to keep our fingers crossed how we handle the lockdown the post lockdown period lifting of the lockdown period is going to be fought with a lot of danger and what we do in this period all of us not just the government that will determine the trajectory of the pandemic my only submission and this is something that we have all been saying for a long time that the government needs to take the state governments and the people into confidence how it is fighting the epidemic have much more transparency than it is showing and if that does not happen we will not be able to control the pandemic through just central government feats alone which is the way the government seems to be traveling thank you very much for being with us watching news click do keep to come to our website and do see our shows


Hey guys, welcome back to my channel. This video is going to be all about the TARDIS contour palette volume 3 by Tarte I'm going to review this product as well as demo the product So if you are interested in seeing what this palette is all about then please stay tuned Okay, so I first want to come on here to show that I just put on my foundation and did my brows real quick and Now I'm going to highlight first because I can't contour without highlighting so I'll highlight first then I'll come back to show you The greatness that lies within this palette Alright, so now that I have finished highlighting my face. We will go ahead and move on to contouring And I will be using the TARDIS TARDIS, it's TARDIS, okay? The TARDIS contour palette by Tarte, of course The packaging is beautiful, but I will get into all the specs and everything After this demo, so I'll just get right into the demo I will go ahead and use this darkest shade for the contour and it's just a matte contour shade You know go ahead and use my Morphe Y9 brush from the gilded Gilded gold collection. I can't remember if that's the name of it. I'm not sure if it's still available because it was Limited edition so I'm not too sure if it's still there But you can check it out and see if it's still there. These brushes are so cute And I'll go on my jawline as well and then my temples Ever so gently I'm just going to blend out this contour a little bit I always do one side stronger than the other by accident.  I'm going to use the second darkest shade and this is the Bronzer shade. This is not a matte shade by the way But I will go over the top of my contour with that bronzer shade and I always I always forget to contour my nose, so I'm going to do that now. I Don't know why it's just a habit like I'll do my whole face and then I'll go back to the nose because I always forget Had a little bit too much of the brush there And I'll just go over that no contour With the same bronzer again So it's not too harsh All right, I'm just going to clean up the contour a little bit With some powder All right, and the cool thing about this palette is that it also includes a blush Like you really don't need anything else. I swear So I'm going to use this Blush that we have at the top here. It's just a nice natural color. Nothing too crazy but it can be Quite pigmented as you can tell I'm just gonna blend it out last but not least of course you have to highlight and I am going to use this highlight way at the top here and Not getting a great Well, it's showing up a little bit on camera, but it's like a rose gold highlight And I'm using my morphe M5 a one brush Love this brush for highlighting Can't you tell that? This is a great quality highlighter. I'm like barely dusting it on And it's showing up so well a little bit too much on my forehead. Oh my gosh Looking like a freaking disco ball That highlight is crazy, but I love it All right, so I'm just gonna you know finish the rest of my face come back and Give you guys a full review on how I feel about the TARDIS Contour palette volume 3. All right, so I'm all done with my face I just did a little bit of eye shadow and nothing too major and Added some lashes and these are actually the Misha lashes by Coco lashes. I just bought Three pairs of Coco lashes and I'm trying them out for the first time But anyway moving on to the TARDIS contour palettes by Tart This is the volume 3 version. Their first version was a general contour palette Had the same sort of layout except I think There was only one matte bronzer. I mean one matte contour One bronzer shade and then I forget what the rest is. I think there's like a highlighter shade like for like under the eye and then there is an actual like highlighter for the High points of the shade bones and Then there's a second version by makeup Shaila Which I was thinking about getting but I wasn't too sure because I wasn't sure if the Contour shade in that palette would be dark enough for me But when I saw this come out and it came out not too long ago Maybe a few weeks ago around Christmas time. I was like, all right that contour shade is Definitely dark enough for me like I have to get it and I just love Tart cosmetics. I love Like a whole bunch of their products So I figured this could not you know really fail me especially when I saw in the store And I was actually able to swatch the shades from the palette in the store. I was like, all right Like I'm done. That's like I'm definitely buying it when you open up the palettes. They have a blush You have a highlight They call this the glow, which it's the same thing as a highlight whatever and then you have your Matte contour shade and then you have your two bronzer shades and you can go either or However, you're feeling that day. This is their darkest contour palette So I was very intrigued It actually smells like chocolate not sure why but it does and The packaging is beautiful. I would say the formulas for these shades are They're tart like all tart formulas are pretty much that creamy rich Even with the powders that like it kind of just feels like butter when you put it on and it Just has that great formula that Tart usually has in all of its products This palette is very purposeful. I feel like I can if I'm traveling I can just Bring this for my whole face Besides my foundation and I am all set. You have your blush. You have your contour Except your highlight. I highlight with Concealer so besides that You know, um, you have your contour. You have your bronzer. You have your highlight To to choose from by the way, so I mean you're pretty much all set So I don't need to bring a whole bunch of separate Individual products because I have it all in one right here in this one palette It's obviously sturdy. I mean I'll see drop it hard I don't think anything's really gonna happen with this The only thing is that the powders here do kind of kick up a little bit.  So I don't know how long they're actually going to keep this palette, which The only one that's not limited edition is the first one the makeup Shayla palette is limit limited edition which I understand because it's a I don't understand why this one is limited edition when this one is so brown girl friendly So I hope they actually end up keeping this because I could see my myself buying this again once of this kind of Runs low. So I really hope that they actually keep this and Yeah, I just have another little palette added to my collection. It's so Aesthetically pleasing. I love the the pink metallic cover and it's sort of like a leathery feel and then of course the gold backing and It also shows you Exactly what everything is I can't even see because of the reflection, but it shows you what each Powder is on the back. So if you and it shows you on the palette itself, too So it's very user-friendly too. If you're just starting to get into makeup This is a good palette to practice with as well this palette retails for I Think it retails for forty five dollars It's in the forty dollar range. So it is a little pricey, but you get a lot of Product in here and a lot of use out of it. I believe like I think so so Yeah, I think I I definitely recommend this palette if you're in the market for a contour palette and You actually want a contour palette that has a little bit more to it than just contour shades and highlight shades So Yeah, I would definitely buy this product I think you guys so much for watching this demo slash review If you have any questions, don't forget to comment down below and definitely thumbs up this video if you liked it Of course, don't forget to subscribe because I am busting out these videos for you guys and I hope that you guys are enjoying them but yeah, if you don't want to miss a video you have to subscribe and You have to click that little bell reminder so that you don't miss the video You get a little reminder when I upload so make sure you click that too and I will see you guys in the next video Thanks for watching Bye And I will see you guys in the next video. Thanks for watching you