April 2015 Media Thread

ArisKatsaris

This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.
If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.
Please post only under one of the already created subthreads, and never directly under the parent media thread.
Use the "Other Media" thread if you believe the piece of media you want to discuss doesn't fit under any of the established categories.
Use the "Meta" thread if you want to discuss about the monthly media thread itself (e.g. to propose adding/removing/splitting/merging subthreads, or to discuss the type of content properly belonging to each subthread) or for any other question or issue you may have about the thread or the rules.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.
If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.
Please post only under one of the already created subthreads, and never directly under the parent media thread.
Use the "Other Media" thread if you believe the piece of media you want to discuss doesn't fit under any of the established categories.
Use the "Meta" thread if you want to discuss about the monthly media thread itself (e.g. to propose adding/removing/splitting/merging subthreads, or to discuss the type of content properly belonging to each subthread) or for any other question or issue you may have about the thread or the rules.

Short Online Texts Thread

Ya‐Qin Hu , David Kay Ferguson , Subir Bera & Cheng‐Sen Li (2008): Seed hairs of poplar trees as natural airborne pollen trap for allergenic pollen grains, Grana, 47:3, 241-245. - They did it in a botany garden, which means that pollen diversity could have been higher than in an average street, but still... it's like, 'we serve any pollen in the city'.

Athanasios Damialis & Dimitrios Gioulekas (2006): Airborne allergenic fungal spores and meteorological factors in Greece: Forecasting possibilities, Grana, 45:2, 122-129. - the section 'statistical me... (read more)

3NancyLebovitz11y

http://chriskresser.com/a-beginners-guide-to-scientific-research A good overview-- probably not a lot new for most people here, but I liked the bit about hypotheses that simply don't get considered.

10gwern11y

Everything is heritable: * "Eight thousand years of [human] natural selection in Europe", Mathieson et al 2015 (Khan) * "The Fourth Law of Behavior Genetics" (GWAS hits replicate across populations; dominance genetic variation explains little of variation - most continues to be additive.) Politics/religion: * "Break-In at Y-12: How a handful of pacifists and nuns exposed the vulnerability of America's nuclear-weapons sites." * "The Irish Slave Trade - The Forgotten "White" Slaves; The Slaves That Time Forgot" * Breast attitudes in North & South Korea * "Longevity of popes and artists between the 13th and the 19th century", Carrieri & Serraino 2005 * The redemption movement * "The Lesson of Iraq" * "Different modes of discourse" * The iron law of oligarchy Statistics/AI/meta-science: * "Compliance with Results Reporting at ClinicalTrials.gov", Anderson et al 2015 (incentives matter) * "The Mystery Machine: End-to-end Performance Analysis of Large-scale Internet Services" (commentary) * "Many Labs 3: Evaluating participant pool quality across the academic semester via replication" (commentary) * "p Values are not Error Probabilities", Hubbard & Bayarri 2003 (excerpts) * "Most Published Research Findings Are False—But a Little Replication Goes a Long Way", Moonesinghe 2007 * "Understanding Bayes Theorem With Ratios" * "Mice Fall Short as Test Subjects for Some of Humans’ Deadly Ills" Psychology/biology: * "Coincidental killers: We assume that microbes evolved to attack humans when actually we are just civilian casualties in a much older war" * "The myopia boom: Short-sightedness is reaching epidemic proportions. Some scientists think they have found a reason why" * "New Improved Lottery": the Premium Bond * Nasal cycle (One thing I find interesting about the nasal cycle is that even though it's ultra-noticeable when you have a cold or stuffy nose, a lot of people seem to have either never realized that they have a cycle or assume it's a pers