Soup von scyphi

[phin] Beauty in simplicity and (the pursuit of) truth - a guide to basic critical t...

Sun, 20 May 2012 21:40:39 GMT

Beauty in simplicity and (the pursuit of) truth - a guide to basic critical thinking

[Reposted from mx77 via brightbyte]

[phin] (Video)

Fri, 18 May 2012 06:11:57 GMT

[Reposted from science via strohmi]

[phin] Protein Crystals - Backstage Science

Fri, 18 May 2012 05:47:06 GMT

Protein Crystals - Backstage Science

[Reposted from science via sofias]

[phin] Epic time-lapse map of Europe - YouTube

Tue, 15 May 2012 19:08:47 GMT

Epic time-lapse map of Europe - YouTube

[Reposted from waka via Freeminder23]

[phin] T. Boone Pickens: Let's transform energy -- with natural gas | Video on TED.com

Tue, 15 May 2012 18:24:10 GMT

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/t_boone_pickens_let_s_transform_energy_with_natural_gas.html

[phin] Dan Barber: How I fell in love with a fish | Video on TED.com

Tue, 15 May 2012 18:24:03 GMT

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_barber_how_i_fell_in_love_with_a_fish.html

[phin] Marcel Dicke: Why not eat insects? | Video on TED.com

Mon, 14 May 2012 19:20:37 GMT

Marcel Dicke: Why not eat insects? | Video on TED.com

[phin] Jonathan Foley: The other inconvenient truth | Video on TED.com

Mon, 14 May 2012 19:03:02 GMT

Jonathan Foley: The other inconvenient truth | Video on TED.com

[phin] Welcome to the Anthropocene

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 20:40:38 GMT

Welcome to the Anthropocene

How humans have transformed Earth: Incredible video illuminates every road, shipping route and flight path

[Reposted from science via Zaubertrank]

[phin] A quick look around the LHC

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:25:18 GMT

A quick look around the LHC

[Reposted from science]

[phin] Magnetic Salt - Dysprosium Nitrate

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 15:15:07 GMT

Magnetic Salt - Dysprosium Nitrate

[Reposted from science]

[phin] Glow in the Dark Soldiers and a Civil War MysteryAt the Battle of Shiloh, som...

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 12:18:41 GMT

Glow in the Dark Soldiers and a Civil War Mystery

At the Battle of Shiloh, some wounded soldiers waited days in the chilly rain for medical help. When soldiers usually waited that long, they were prone to deadly infections that doctors at the time couldn’t do anything about, much less understand the cause.

Some of them noticed that their wounds were glowing at night. Were they hallucinating?And those with glowing wounds had better survival rates. 140 years later someone figured out why.

Soil-dwelling worms like the one above are filled with bacteria that they use to eat and protect food they find in the soil. The luminescent bacteria inside the nematodes fight off other bacteria, and the worm and bacteria both get a tasty meal all to themselves.

The soil of the Shiloh battlefield was full of these worms and bacteria, and when they got into the soldier’s wounds they created a glowing, antiseptic worm bandage.

[Reposted from science]

[phin] Helicopters are Gyroscopes - Smarter Every Day 48

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 17:12:51 GMT

Helicopters are Gyroscopes - Smarter Every Day 48

[Reposted from science via mactux]

[phin] Static Flow of Water

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 17:08:14 GMT

Static Flow of Water

The camera is shooting at 25 frames per second, which is exactly the same rate that the tube carrying the water is being vibrated by the speaker. Furthermore, the stream of water exiting the tube not only breaks apart into individual droplets, it actually does so in a repeating pattern. As a result, the droplets that form assume a nearly identical shape (and occupy an almost identical point in space) every 1/25th of a second.

[Reposted from science via mactux]

[phin] The dark side of working nights

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 13:41:34 GMT

Working the graveyard shift can increase the risk of developing diabetes via two separate mechanisms, according to a Harvard Medical School study, The double whammy of sleep deprivation and a sleep/wake schedule that’s out of sync with the body’s internal biological clock reduces the amount of insulin secreted by the pancreas as well as the [...]

[Reposted from sigaloninspired]

[phin] Building a smarter forest using drones, robots, and algorithms

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 13:40:48 GMT

Cutting-edge tech — algorithms, robots, and drones — could save lives during natural disasters. That’s the argument made by computer scientists M.P.Sivaram Kumar and S. Rajasekaran in a recent article in the Journal of Computing entitled “Path Planning Algorithm for Extinguishing Forest Fires.” The vast majority of forests are destroyed by wild forest fires, and [...]

[Reposted from sigaloninspired]

[phin] (Image)

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 13:33:21 GMT

[Reposted from Johann via xann]

[phin] Shimmering waves of light, stalking their prey, ctenophores are on the move.

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 21:07:22 GMT

Shimmering waves of light, stalking their prey, ctenophores are on the move.

[Reposted from wonderfulnature]

[phin] The Mind Outside My Head

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 18:16:37 GMT

Tim Parks

Peter Marlow/Magnum Photos

Lighthouse at Dungeness, coast of Kent, Great Britain, 2006

“There are no images.” This was the first time I noticed Riccardo Manzotti. It was a conference on art and neuroscience. Someone had spoken about the images we keep in our minds. Manzotti seemed agitated. The girl sitting next to me explained that he built robots, was a genius. “There are no images and no representations in our minds,” he insisted. “Our visual experience of the world is a continuum between see-er and seen united in a shared process of seeing.”

I was curious, if only because, as a novelist I’d always supposed I was dealing in images, imagery. This stuff might have implications. So we had a beer together.

Manzotti has a degree in engineering and another in philosophy. He teaches in the psychology department at IULM University, Milan. The move from engineering to philosophy was prompted by conceptual problems he’d run into when first seeking to build robots. What does it mean that a subject sees an object? “People say the robot stores images of the world through its video camera. It doesn’t, it stores digital data. It has no images.”

Manzotti is what they call a radical externalist: for him consciousness is not safely confined within a brain whose neurons select and store information received from a separate world, appropriating, segmenting, and manipulating various forms of input. Instead, he offers a model he calls Spread Mind: consciousness is a process shared between various otherwise distinct processes which, for convenience’s sake we have separated out and stabilized in the words subject and object. Language, or at least our modern language, thus encourages a false account of experience.

His favorite example is the rainbow. For the rainbow experience to happen we need sunshine, raindrops, and a spectator. It is not that the sun and the raindrops cease to exist if there is no one there to see them. Manzotti is not a Bishop Berkeley. But unless someone is present at a particular point no colored arch can appear. The rainbow is hence a process requiring various elements, one of which happens to be an instrument of sense perception. It doesn’t exist whole and separate in the world nor does it exist as an acquired image in the head separated from what is perceived (the view held by the “internalists” who account for the majority of neuroscientists); rather, consciousness is spread between sunlight, raindrops, and visual cortex, creating a unique, transitory new whole, the rainbow experience. Or again: the viewer doesn’t see the world; he is part of a world process.

Everything we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell, Manzotti argues, involves the same creation of a physical unity—the moment of consciousness—sustained by processes within and without the head. The room, or part of a room, that you see now, including the screen on which you’re reading this blog, becomes, in combination with your faculties, a whole; this is consciousness. It happens in time, and it takes time (consciousness of visual phenomena seems to require at least 100 milliseconds to occur), and it changes constantly.

This minimal time lapse (some claim it is as much as 500 milliseconds) required for brain and world to generate consciousness allows Manzotti to deal with what would seem to be the obvious objection to the externalist theory. Do we not have consciousness when the eyes are shut and the mind lies in silence? And what about dreams? Isn’t the brain evidently sufficient to sustain consciousness without support from outside?

We do indeed have consciousness in these moments, Manzotti replies, but it is still spread out between mind and world. It may take only a fraction of a second for you to become conscious of the face appearing at your window, and then three more years before the same face surfaces in a dream, perhaps mingled with all kinds of other stimuli from elsewhere. But this doesn’t change the fact that consciousness is a coming together of brain and world: the physical process begun at the window is continuing in memory and dream. The congenitally blind, Manzotti points out, don’t dream colors because they have never encountered them. Consciousness is the mingling of mind process with the processes we call objects that are all in a state of flux, however fast or slow.

Gianni Ansaldi

Riccardo Manzotti

Let’s leave aside the gospel truth or otherwise of all this. I tend to be skeptical of people with big ideas and Manzotti, like Einstein I suppose, has the long unkempt hair and animated manner of the possibly crazy scientist or visionary. All the same, you can see at once that taking his externalist ideas on board would radically change our approach to the notion of what an individual or a self is. Which in turn, for a novelist—and that’s my job—means a different way of thinking about narrative, about description, about character. The fact is that I met Manzotti shortly after attending a ten-day retreat where, in strict silence, people were trying to develop a Buddhist meditation technique called Vipassana. I had gone originally for health reasons, assured that the technique was useful for chronic pain and with no intention at all (for heaven’s sake) of taking on board any ideas that might be in the air. But the experience was so fascinating it was impossible not to be curious.

“Are you aware,” I asked Manzotti, “of the Buddhist principle of ‘conditioned arising,’ which seems remarkably similar to your insistence that there are neither objects nor subjects nor images, but only processes in a state of flux?”

Manzotti is irritated by this digression. He isn’t aware of Buddhist ideas. Just as he worries that people will confuse his determinedly “physical” view of consciousness with Berkeley’s idealism, so he wants to avoid like the plague being mixed up with anything that smells New Age.

“The Buddha,” I rib him, “argued that the world was made up of infinitesimally small particles in a constant cause-and-effect flux, and in Vipassana the meditator is invited to contemplate that flux in his own mind and body and to accept his oneness with it. Do it for ten days in a row in complete silence and you begin to understand why Buddhists don’t accept the existence of the self as a separate entity, or, if you like, why Buddhist priests don’t write novels.”

Manzotti reflects. He is a man who publishes academic papers constructed, as is appropriate, with the most careful reasoning in the most respectable journals and, to boot, designs charming comic-strip essays that introduce non-professionals to his view of the world by analyzing such things as what it means when we see a face, or hear a tune, or call a thing an object.

Over a drink, however, he’ll go a little further:

If, as I believe, the orthodox, internalist vision of consciousness is false and even naive, then we have to ask why so many intelligent people hold it. It’s not hard to understand. By locating consciousness exclusively within the brain we can imagine that the subject, me, at some very deep level, is not subject to the same law of constant change that evidently governs the phenomena around me. The subject accrues and sheds attributes, but remains in essence him or herself. This allows for the notion of someone’s being responsible, even for actions carried out years ago, and hence gives rise to a particular moral universe; it also creates the comforting illusion that perhaps the self could survive separate from the world. Behind it all there is the desire to deny change in ourselves, perhaps to survive death. Anyway, to be an entity outside the world.

I laugh: “If we’re going to claim that society holds the vision it does because it’s comforting and convenient, then why do you hold a different one?”

Manzotti doesn’t answer the question directly. It’s time to order another beer. “Notions of convenience might not be the same for everyone,” he eventually ponders. “For example, a guy obsessed by building a robot that simulates human behavior would have special reasons for wanting to get the model of consciousness right.”

The Reasoner

A panel from A process oriented externalist solution to the hard problem by Riccardo Manzotti

For some time I walk the streets of Milan trying to accept that consciousness is not locked in my head but spread out across the revving traffic, the rustling leaves, the dog shit, the blue sky, the gritty cobbles, the solemn facades, the soft breeze, the unseasonal temperatures, the screaming children, the air, the women. After a while it begins to make sense. There are small shifts of mood passing from street to park, from outside to inside, from red to blue, male to female, night to day, tram to metro, center to suburb. There are varying tensions between focus of vision and field of vision, between conversation and background noise. In general there is more: the intrusion of smells, the slap of a passing truck, a persistent touching of heat and breeze. Oddly, the critical faculty is somewhat attenuated; one distinguishes a little less urgently between the beautiful and the ugly, the slow line and the fast in bank and supermarket. Sometimes it’s a tiny bit like reading a passage from Joyce, who was never a favorite author of mine.

Not of course that Manzotti would ever suggest that people should do this. He’s a scientist. Consciousness is consciousness whatever your ideas about it. You don’t decide whether the mind is spread, if spread it is. All the same, once you accept that this might be a more accurate model of how things are, then oddly enough things do begin to feel different. I guess we’re just that kind of creature: within or without, consciousness can be profoundly altered by a voice declaring, “There are no images.”

[Reposted from sigaloninspired]

[phin] ‘Super-Turing’ machine learns and evolves | KurzweilAI

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 16:49:41 GMT

‘Super-Turing’ machine learns and evolves | KurzweilAI

Computer scientist Hava Siegelmann of the Biologically Inspired Neural & Dynamical Systems (BINDS) Laboratory at the University of Massachusetts...

See it on Scoop.it, via The virtual life

[Reposted from 02mysoup-aa]

[phin] Adam Savage dipping his fingers into a pot of molten lead. Immediately prior ...

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 20:10:44 GMT

Adam Savage dipping his fingers into a pot of molten lead. Immediately prior to submerging his fingers in the lead, he wet them with water, which will form a thin protective layer of water vapor on contact with the lead, which was heated to 850 degrees Fahrenheit. This is known as the Leidenfrost effect.

[Reposted from vermillionlove via ididntorderthat]

[phin] Coupled Oscillators, or pendulums, are demonstrated by Professor Roger Bowley...

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 23:46:21 GMT

Coupled Oscillators, or pendulums, are demonstrated by Professor Roger Bowley as part of little Easter series. He's using creme eggs, of course.

[Reposted from Species5618 via datenwolf]

[phin] (Image)

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 18:07:13 GMT

[Reposted from barteq via mactux]

[phin] 5 Things You Can Do in 5 Minutes to Boost Your Well-being

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 18:00:27 GMT

No matter how busy you are, you can find five minutes or fewer in your day to take better care of yourself. Here are five expert tips on relaxing your body, soothing anxiety and coping with stressful thoughts.

1. Practice 3-3-6 breathing. According to Darlene Mininni, Ph.D, author of The Emotional Toolkit, this type of breathing provides more oxygen to the brain and activates the parasympathetic nervous system. That slows down breathing and heart rate, relaxes the muscles and causes blood vessels to dilate, improving blood flow. It essentially sends a message to your brain that everything is OK, and there’s no reason to fight or flee, Mininni said.

You can practice this breathing technique any time, anywhere, whether you’re waiting in line, stuck in traffic or sitting at your desk.

All you do is breathe in through your nose for three seconds, hold for three seconds and exhale for six seconds. As Mininni said, there’s nothing magical about these numbers, so you can do 1-1-2 or 4-4-8. What’s important is that the exhalation is longer than the inhalation, she said.

2. Give yourself some “PEACE.” Deborah Serani, PsyD, psychologist and author of Living with Depression, referred to this activity as “creating a state of momentary grace.” Specifically, Serani said:

Pit Stop: Take five minutes for an emotional and physical pit stop.

Empty your mind from cluttering thoughts and pressing emotions by imagining a splendid, tranquil scene.

Accentuate breathing from your diaphragm and focus on relaxing your body.

Calm your senses by closing your eyes, silencing whatever noise you can around you and finding stillness.

Embrace the experience, linger in it and when you’re ready, merge back into the lane of life.

3. Use distraction. If you’re already having troublesome thoughts, trying to stop them is about as easy as not thinking of a pink elephant. (See!) In fact, studies show that stopping a thought is very stressful, Mininni said.

It’s much easier to divert our attention and put ourselves in another scenario, she said. For instance, you might distract yourself by watching TV, seeing a comedy or playing the piano.

Distraction works because it puts you in a different – and more pleasant — mindset, she said. Mininni compared this to when her daughter was two. Instead of telling her daughter “no” when she wanted to touch a certain object, Mininni distracted her with a toy.

4. Give your partner a long hug. “Studies show that 20-second hugs raise oxytocin levels, which release feel-good chemicals in your body,” according to Terri Orbuch, Ph.D, psychotherapist and author of the forthcoming book Finding Love Again: Six Simple Steps to a New and Happy Relationship.

5. Meditate. Meditating every day or most days not only calms you in the moment, but it also prevents stress from hitting you so hard, Mininni said. She likens meditating to lifting weights. Lifting weights regularly strengthens your body and makes picking up heavy things a lot easier. In other words, when stress strikes, thanks to meditating, it won’t bother you as much.

There’s even preliminary evidence that long-term meditation literally strengthens the brain.

To meditate, simply sit in a quiet and comfortable position, close your eyes and focus on your breath, Mininni said. Whenever your mind wanders, just come back to your breath without judgment.

[Reposted from psychole]

[phin] Want to Improve Your Attention? Wear a White Coat

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 19:11:21 GMT

The power of 'enclothed cognition': how what you wear affects how you think.

It's surprising how much simple movements of the body can affect the way we think. Using expansive gestures with open limbs makes us feel more powerful, crossing your arms makes you more persistent and lying down can bring more insights (read more here: 10 Simple Postures That Boost Performance).

So if moving the body can have these effects, what about the clothes we wear?

We're all well aware of how dressing up in different ways can make us feel more attractive, sporty or professional, depending on the outfit, but can the clothes you wear actually change cognitive performance or is it just a feeling?

Adam and Galinsky (2012) tested the effect of simply wearing a white lab coat on people's powers of attention. The idea is that white coats are associated with scientists, who are in turn thought to have close attention to detail.

What they found was that people wearing white coats outperformed those who weren't. Indeed they made only half as many errors as those wearing their own clothes on the Stroop Test (one way of measuring attention).

The authors dub the effect 'enclothed cognition', suggesting that all manner of different clothes probably affect our cognition in many different ways.

This opens the way for all sorts of clothes-based experiments. Is the writer who wears a fedora more creative? Is the psychologist wearing little round glasses and smoking a cigar more insightful. Does a chef's hat make the resultant food taste better?

From now on I will only be editing articles for PsyBlog while wearing a white coat to help keep the typo count low. Hopefully you will be doing your part by reading PsyBlog in a cap and gown.

Image credit: mars_discovery_district

PsyBlog's How to Be Creative

If we can all be creative, why is it so hard to come up with truly original ideas?

It's because creativity is mysterious. Just ask any scientist, artist, writer or other highly creative person to explain how they come up with brilliant ideas and, if they're honest, they don't really know.

But over the decades psychologists have given ordinary participants countless tests, forms and tasks and conducted hundreds of hours of interviews. From these emerge the psychological conditions of creativity.

Not what you should do, but how you should be...

Click here to find out more...

[Reposted from psychole]

[phin] eligoesrawr:

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 21:52:23 GMT

eligoesrawr:

No matter how long the slinky is, the bottom of the slinky will stay still (hover) until the top reaches it. Even if the slinky is over 1000 feet long.

[Reposted from cleek via diimem]

[phin] Perpetual Ocean

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 21:12:58 GMT

Perpetual Ocean

This visualization shows ocean surface currents around the world during the period from June 2005 through Decmeber 2007. The visualization does not include a narration or annotations; the goal was to use ocean flow data to create a simple, visceral experience.

[Reposted from science]

[phin] (Image)

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 20:07:43 GMT

[Reposted from batgirlinwonderland via Teerea]

[phin] "... Denn in der Medizin kann LSD durchaus Vorteile bieten, zumal es kaum abhä..."

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 20:05:29 GMT

... Denn in der Medizin kann LSD durchaus Vorteile bieten, zumal es kaum abhängig macht. Jetzt haben Forscher sechs Studien aus den späten sechziger und frühen siebziger Jahren ausgewertet, in denen insgesamt 536 Alkoholiker mit Hilfe von LSD behandelt wurden. Das Ergebnis: LSD habe einen "klaren und konsistent hilfreichen Effekt" in der Therapie der Trunksucht.

Verblüffender Langzeit-Effekt

Teri Krebs und Pål-Ørjan Johansen von der Technisch-Naturwissenschaftlichen Universität im norwegischen Trondheim haben sich auf kontrollierte klinische Studien konzentriert, an denen keine Patienten mit Schizophrenie oder anderen Psychosen teilgenommen hatten. Alle Teilnehmer seien per Zufall in Gruppen eingeteilt worden, die entweder LSD, andere Substanzen oder Placebos bekommen hätten.

Wie das Forscherduo im "Journal of Psychopharmacology" schreibt, hatte das Halluzinogen in jeder der untersuchten Studien eine heilsame Wirkung.

–Halluzinogen: LSD hilft gegen Alkoholsucht - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Nachrichten - Wissenschaft

[Reposted from e-gruppe via sofias]

[phin] Nancy Duarte: The secret structure of great talks | Video on TED.com

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 10:54:10 GMT

Nancy Duarte: The secret structure of great talks | Video on TED.com

[phin] Jennifer Pahlka: Coding a better government | Video on TED.com

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 22:59:24 GMT

Jennifer Pahlka: Coding a better government | Video on TED.com

[phin] Niall Ferguson: The 6 killer apps of prosperity | Video on TED.com

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 22:31:13 GMT

Niall Ferguson: The 6 killer apps of prosperity | Video on TED.com

[phin] The Coastline Paradox & The Koch SnowflakeHow long is the coastline of Austra...

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 19:54:12 GMT

The Coastline Paradox & The Koch Snowflake

How long is the coastline of Australia? One estimate is that it's about 12,500 km long. However the CIA world factbook puts the figure at more than double this, at over 25,700 km. How can there exist such different estimates for the same length of coastline? Well this is called the coastline paradox. Your estimate of how long the coastline is depends on the length of your measuring stick - the shorter the measuring stick the more detail you can capture and therefore the longer the coastline will be.

[Reposted from science]

[phin] Nanoscale 3D printing

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 23:08:49 GMT

This 3D-printed model of the Tower Bridge is only 200 micrometers long. To put that into perspective, the distance between the towers is the width of a human hair. This model is the product of research at the additive manufacturing department of the Vienna University of Technology

The models were fabricated much like normal stereolithography – a laser shines onto a vat of light-sensitive resin. The resin hardens when exposed to light, and the model is built up layer by layer. These nanoscale models were made using a process called “two-photon lithography,” something we’re not going to pretend we understand completely but here’s a nice paper that provides a good overview. Needless to say, the precision these prints exhibit are nearly ludicrous. The researchers claim a precision of ±1µm, a respectable amount of precision for very high-tech machining applications.

The researches posted a video of the fabrication of a nanoscale F1 race car filmed in real-time. Check that out after the break.

Filed under: cnc hacks

[Reposted from hackaday via RK]

[phin] Steel under electron microscope

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 23:00:31 GMT

Steel under electron microscope

[Reposted from science via brightbyte]

[phin] Public Key Cryptography: Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 21:13:27 GMT

Public Key Cryptography: Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange

Diffie-Hellman key exchange was one of the earliest practical implementations of key exchange within the field of cryptography. It relies on the discrete logarithm problem. This test clip will be part of the final chapter of Gambling with Secrets!

[Reposted from science via datenwolf]

[phin] Thin Film Physics

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 20:56:29 GMT

Thin Film Physics

[Reposted from antifuchs via brightbyte]

[phin] Apollo 17: VIP Site Anaglyph

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 20:44:32 GMT

Apollo 17: VIP Site Anaglyph
(Gene Cernan, Apollo 17, NASA / Anaglyph by Erik van Meijgaarden)

[Reposted from sawb via science]

[phin] Smart, Self-Healing Hydrogel Developed by UC San Diego Bioengineers

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 18:40:22 GMT

Smart, Self-Healing Hydrogel Developed by UC San Diego Bioengineers

[Reposted from science]

[phin] Profile of the Data Journalist: The Human Algorithm

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 22:50:16 GMT

Around the globe, the bond between data and journalism is growing stronger. In an age of big data, the growing importance of data journalism lies in the ability of its practitioners to provide context, clarity and, perhaps most important, find truth in the expanding amount of digital content in the world. In that context, data journalism has profound importance for society.

To learn more about the people who are doing this work and, in some cases, building the newsroom stack for the 21st century, I conducted a series of email interviews during the 2012 NICAR Conference.

Ben Welsh (@palewire) is an Web developer and journalist based in Los Angeles. Our interview follows.

Where do you work now? What is a day in your life like?

I work for the Los Angeles Times, a daily newspaper and 24-hour Web site based in Southern California. I'm a member of the Data Desk, a team of reporters and Web developers that specializes in maps, databases, analysis and visualization. We both build Web applications and conduct analysis for reporting projects.

I like to compare The Times to a factory, a factory that makes information. Metaphorically speaking, it has all sorts of different assembly lines. Just to list a few, one makes beautifully rendered narratives, another makes battleship-like investigative projects.

A typical day involves juggling work on difference projects, mentally moving from one assembly line to the other. Today I patched an embryonic open-source release, discussed our next move on a pending public records request, guided the real-time publication of results from the GOP primaries in Michigan and Arizona, and did some preparation for how we'll present a larger dump of results on Super Tuesday.

How did you get started in data journalism? Did you get any special degrees or certificates?

I'm thrilled to see new-found interest in "data journalism" online. It's drawing young, bright people into the field and involving people from different domains. But it should be said that the idea isn't new.

I was initiated into the field as a graduate student at the Missouri School of Journalism. There I worked at the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting , also known as NICAR. Decades before anyone called it "data journalism," a disparate group of misfit reporters discovered that the data analysis made possible by computers enabled them to do more powerful investigative reporting. In 1989, they founded NICAR, which has, for decades, been training data skills to journalists and nurtured a tribe of journalism geeks. In the time since, computerized data analysis has become a dominant force in investigative reporting, responsible for a large share of the field's best work.

To underscore my point, here's a 1986 Time magazine article about how "newsmen are enlisting the machine."

Did you have any mentors? Who? What were the most important resources they shared with you?

My first journalism job was in Chicago. I got a gig working for two great people there, Carol Marin and Don Moseley, who have spent most of their careers as television journalists. I worked as their assistant. Carol and Don are warm people who are good teachers, but they are also excellent at what they do. There was a moment when I realized, "Hey, I can do this!" It wasn't just something I heard about in class, but I could actually see myself doing.

At Missouri, I had a great classmate named Brian Hamman, who is now at the New York Times. I remember seeing how invested Brian was in the Web, totally committed to Web development as a career path. When an opportunity opened up to be a graduate assistant at NICAR, Brian encouraged me to pursue it. I learned enough SQL to help do farmed-out investigative work for TV stations. And, more importantly, I learned that if you had technical skills you could get the job to work on a cool story.

After that I got a job doing data analysis at the Center for Public Integrity in Washington DC. I had the opportunity to work on investigative projects, but also the chance to learn a lot of computer programming along the way. I had the guidance of my talented coworkers, Daniel Lathrop, Agustin Armendariz, John Perry, Richard Mullins and Helena Bengtsson. I learned that computer programming wasn't impossible. They taught me that if you have a manageable task, a few friends to help you out and a door you can close, you can figure out a lot.

What does your personal data journalism "stack" look like? What tools could you not live without?

I do my daily development in gedit text editor, Byobu's slick implementation of the screen terminal and the Chromium browser. And, this part may be hard to believe, but I love Ubuntu Unity. I don't understand what everybody is complaining about.

I do almost all of my data management in the Python Web development framework Django and PostgreSQL's database, even if the work is an exploratory reporting project that will never be published. I find that the structure of the framework can be useful for organizing just about any data-driven project.

I use GitHub for both version-control and project management. Without it, I'd be lost.

What data journalism project are you the most proud of working on or creating?

As we all know, there's a lot of data out there. And, as anyone who works with it knows, most of it is crap. The projects I'm most proud of have taken large, ugly data sets and refined them into something worth knowing: a nut graf in an investigative story, or a data-driven app that gives the reader some new insight into the world around them. It's impossible to pick one. I like to think the best is still, as they say in the newspaper business, TK.

Where do you turn to keep your skills updated or learn new things?

Twitter is a great way to keep up with what is getting other programmers excited. I know a lot of people find social media overwhelming or distracting, but I feel plugged in and inspired by what I find there. I wouldn't want to live without it.

GitHub is another great source. I've learned so much just exploring other people's code. It's invaluable.

Why are data journalism and "news apps" important, in the context of the contemporary digital environment for information?

Computers offer us an opportunity to better master information, better understand each other and better watchdog those who would govern us. I tried to talk about some of the ways simply thinking about the process of journalism as an algorithm can point the way at last week's NICAR conference in a talk called "Human-Assisted Reporting." In my opinion, we should aspire to write code that embodies the idealistic principles and investigative methods of the previous generation. There's all this data out there now, and journalistic algorithms, "robot reporters," can help us ask it tougher questions.

[Reposted from 02mydafsoup-01]