Monthly Archive for August, 2007

Larnin’

Published on August 30, 2007 in family, food, friends, life and teaching. 1 Comment

I learned from Gramma…

Reading the paper is wonderful. It’s a big world, and what is better than talking politics in the morning with people you love?

I learned from my Mom…

Veganism is not a magic bullet. There are hard tradeoffs between being a steward of the environment, of our bodies, of our society, and of our animal friends.

I learned from my Dad…

Flashing needs to go up and over the bottom plate, and should NOT extend out under outdoor decking.

I learned from Emily…

Eating raw isn’t just about not cooking things, it’s about appreciating raw ingredients. And your gut can tell you a lot about what you need to eat.

I learned from Patrick…

Doing projects is awesome, and all you have to do is keep doing stuff you love.

I learned from Wendy…

It’s ok for me to struggle and grapple and scramble. Not everyone is a cucumber.

The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men…

Published on August 24, 2007 in 2nd year project, cognitive science, embodiment, experiments, pi, research and school. 0 Comments

(title courtesy of Robert Burns, and thanks Niamh for setting me straight on the proper wording of the phrase way back when…)

Here’s a first crack at a new research plan for my 2nd year project proposal. It’s entirely unedited and needs work. But I think it’s a step in a better direction, more along the lines of what Ed is looking for.

I would like to conduct an experiment that tells us more about how people make the transition from doing a task with their flesh bodies to doing a task with an extended body. I think event description is a good task domain for studying this. When describing events, people often use their bodies [citation needed]. I would like to create a situation in which the affordances provided by body parts will be taxed to their limits, and participants will be likely to employ additional tools to help them enact events.

Procedure:

Participants are asked to recreate a structure out of blocks. The purpose of this exercise is to give participants “ownership” of the blocks, where they feel like they can use them freely. After the structure is built, they are asked to knock it down so it is not in the way. Participant A is then asked to watch a video of a complex event. Possible examples include multiple car traffic accidents, or football plays. Participant A would be able to watch the video twice, both times having access to the blocks. Participant A would then be asked to explain the event to Participant B. Participant B would then take a quiz about the event.

Analysis:

I expect that participants will use the blocks to help them enact the events. From video footage, I will look for examples of participants using their biological bodies to enact events, and I will attempt to discern the purpose of such enactments, and the affordances provided by their body parts. I will then observe the ways participants use the blocks and the table to enact events, and will similarly discern their purpose and the affordances they provide.

Hypothesis 1:

It is my hypothesis that there will be overlap. I expect that in some cases, if not most, the purpose of the block enactment will fall into a well established category of hand enactment. If this is true, it lends support to the idea that physical objects can play a role similar to biological body parts in cognitive activities, and that the same cognitive structures are likely to be used for physical objects as for body parts.

Hypothesis 2:

By varying the complexity of the events being enacted, I will be able to study the way in which the affordances of the blocks diverge from the affordances of participants’ hands. In particular, I will be able to observe when participants choose to use their hands to enact an event, and when they choose to use blocks. My hypothesis is that participants will opportunistically switch to using blocks instead of hands in cases where they need to represent more than two or three positions simultaneously.

Hypothesis 3:

By offering different shapes of blocks, I will be able to shed some light on the phenomenon of tool choice. When choosing blocks to use to enact an event, participants might choose based on similarity between the block and the entity being represented, they might choose based on ease of grasping, or they might choose based on similarity to other body parts simultaneously being used in the enactment. If participants are re-using cognitive structures meant for their biological parts, then we might expect some preference for blocks with similar structure.

Example stimulus videos:

Car accident: http://youtube.com/watch?v=-r5bClOqhjQ

Football play: http://youtube.com/watch?v=9oWtAsRxR34

Similar video stimuli could easily be created in a video game environment, with varying degrees of complexity. Both driving and football video games exist which could easily be used to create high quality videos of these phenomena.

Sixth figure

Published on August 24, 2007 in dance, fame, family, pi, videos and youtube. 0 Comments

Kate’s and my dance video we recorded over Christmas recently topped 100,000 views. 278 people say it’s one of the favorite videos. Go figure.

It’s also nice to see that the video Camille and I made a couple weeks ago has been rated three times, and so far has a perfect 5-star rating. Surely the haters will be getting involved soon?

Making plans

Published on August 24, 2007 in 2nd year project, literature review, pi, research and school. 1 Comment

I sent my 2nd year project proposal off to my potential committee for review, and got some good feedback back from Ed. One of the things he asked is that I describe a better research plan, stating clear procedure, a set of possible outcomes from the procedure, and describing how the different outcomes “will provide evidence that bears on my hypothesis.”

I’ve been sitting down and trying to come up with such a plan, without much luck. The experiments I’m citing are mostly experiments with monkeys and deep brain recordings. There are some imaging studies, but those are more advanced than I want to get into right now.

The only experiment in my lit review that doesn’t require any fancy equipment or monkeys is Yamamoto and Kitazawa’s 2001 study. They were comparing performance with tools to performance without. What they have that I don’t is data about a quirky feature of embodiment–that we get screwed up when we cross our arms–which they can compare to tool use. Without doing more lit review, I don’t know enough about embodiment to create a new experiment with that paradigm.

Nathaniel, one of the older students in my program, did a really cool experiment where he had people do math problems without pencil and paper, and observed all the ways they used their bodies to solve them. That kind of thing really appeals to me because it’s open ended in some way. But he obviously had a clear hypothesis and an procedure that he felt would shed light on it. I’m not there yet.

Dogs surfing!

Published on August 23, 2007 in pets, surfing and videos. 2 Comments

Thanks Jane!

Vegan Test Kitchen: Pancakes

Published on August 21, 2007 in cooking, family, food, photos, pi, recipe, test kitchen, vegan and video. 8 Comments

I’m back home in Ithaca, NY spending some quality time with my family. First order of business: create the perfect vegan pancake!

We made 20 different recipes of pancake, varying basic proportions, auditioning potential “secret” ingredients, and having a gay old time. Here are our findings, with the final recipe at the bottom. And yes, there were spreadsheets involved.

Oil vs. Earth Balance

We tried both, multiple times, and the difference was one of the most striking of the afternoon. Canola oil pancakes taste like crap, and Earth Balance pancakes are delicious. Don’t use canola oil, period. Other oils, like coconut, might work, but we didn’t try them. Let us know if you try something else and it works out.

Cutting the fat

Melting down your earth balance and mixing it into the dry ingredients provides a good flavor, but if you want a really amazing texture, just spoon the cold earth balance right into the dry stuff, and then “cut” it in. Traditionally, cutting fat into a flour mix is done with two knives, but we found that just squishing the earth into the flour worked great. Squish until you get a relatively homogeneous crumbly mixture.

It should be noted that you can make a pretty good pancake with no fat besides what is naturally in the banana and what you use to fry it. Not quite decadent, but certainly delicious.

Rising action

Recipes on the web vary wildly in the amount of baking powder they recommend, from less than a teaspoon per cup to up to two tablespoons (6 teaspoons) per cup. We found that for white flour, about one tablespoon of baking powder per cup of flour works well, yielding an extremely fluffy pancake with only a slight baking powder taste, which can be masked by other flavors.

A good fluffy pancake will actually visibly puff up when you flip it over, yielding a lovely dome shape like the one you see in the photo. Going down to two teaspoons per cup of flour yielded a soggier, denser pancake.

For whole wheat flour, we upped it to 4 teaspoons of baking powder per cup of flour. Whole wheat flour is less fluffy to begin with, so you might want to compensate.

We also tried using half baking powder, half baking soda, since we’d seen that on a few recipes, but that only seemed to create a nasty pretzel pancake thing. It certainly didn’t improve the leavening action.

The glue

Traditional pancakes have eggs, which not only provide protein, flavor and leavening (rising), they act as the glue that binds everything together. We found that the best way to achieve a great fluffy pancake that isn’t too crumbly was to add two teaspoons of mushed banana for every cup of flour, and if you’re using whole wheat flour, to add in an additional 1/2 teaspoon of corn starch (or any other starch) to provide additional binding. The banana taste is noticeable, but it works well with syrups and other fruits, and the texture is just great.

Egg replacers like Ener-G work too, but they are are basically just starch, baking powder, and flour. You’ve already got baking powder and flour in your pancake recipe, so all you’re really doing is adding some potato starch or something. We’re pretty sure in the case of pancakes, corn starch and Ener-G will be basically equivalent. That said, we didn’t spend the money on a huge box of the stuff just so we could try it out. Let us know if you do.

Wetness

The wetness of the batter makes a huge difference in the quality of the pancake. Too much liquid, and your pancake will be dense and thin. Too little liquid and the pancake will be thick and dry. You’ve got to be like Goldilocks and find the porridge that’s just right.

The correct amount of liquid seems to be about the same as the amount of flour. One cup flour, one cup water. However, you might need a little less if you are adding banana or applesauce. We recommend adding the liquid slowly, whilst stirring, and monitoring the consistency carefully. You want a batter that will spread out to a round puddle about 1/4″ thick. If you tip the bowl, such a batter will slide freely and quickly off the walls of the bowl, leaving a thin layer of batter behind, but there should be some batter that slides down the bottom of the wall more slowly.

Bananas and apple and yams, oh my!

As we mentioned above, we really like what bananas do for vegan pancakes, especially the whole wheat ones. But we also tried adding applesauce and mushed cooked yams (in both cases, 2 teaspoons per cup of flour). The applesauce pancakes were good, but you sort of lose that wheaty pancake taste. I’d rather have regular pancakes with a sweet, cinnamon apple topping.

The yam pancakes were very good. If you want a heartier, more filling pancake that’s still sweet and fluffy, this is the pancake for you. Just microwave, bake, or boil the yam until it is soft, and then mash it with a fork. After you’ve cut the earth balance into the dry ingredients, add the yam and knead it into a dry dough. Then add water slowly until you get the right batter consistency.

Got milk?

Many vegan pancake recipes suggest using soy milk or other alternative milks. We tried both soy and oat milk, and it didn’t seem to matter. Water was just as tasty. Unless you really want the 1/4 gram of protein, you might as well save your money and use water.

Salt ‘n Suga’

Added salt seems unnecessary. Baking powder is already a little salty. We did like the sweetness a little sugar imparts, especially in the whole wheat pancakes which are prone to blandness, but if you’re using a banana you can get away without using sugar.

The Recipe

Proto-Ultimate Vegan Pancakes

(Makes 12 eight-inch pancakes)

These are the result of strenuous testing, but we’re open to suggestions for improvement. Post a comment if you think you’ve got a variation that beats these.

3 cups flour (white works well, but half whole wheat, half barley is a delicious alternative)
1/4 cup sugar
4 Tbsp baking powder
2 Tbsp corn starch (if using whole wheat flour)
1/4 cup Earth Balance, plus 1/8 cup for frying
1 banana, mashed
3 cups or less water

Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add 1/4 cup cold Earth Balance, and cut it into the mixture using your fingers. When the mixture is uniformly crumbly, add the mashed banana and knead it in. Put a large, flat bottom skillet or griddle on medium-high heat. It’s hot enough when water dribbled on the pan sizzles. Add the water to the banana mix slowly, until the desired consistency is reached. (See “Wetness” above). For each pancake, put about 1/2 teaspoon of Earth Balance in the middle of the pan. When it has melted, pour 1/2 cup of batter slowly into the center of the Earth Balance puddle. When the bottom of the pancake is browned, but the top is still wet, flip it. When the other side is browned, which will take less time, remove it from the heat.

Serve immediately! Don’t stack pancakes in the oven, put them on a plate and tell someone to start eating. The crispy, fluffy texture is best fresh off the griddle.

Variations: Substitute cooked, mashed yam for the banana. Make sure you incorporate the yam with the flour well before adding liquid. Or, add applesauce, cinnamon, and nutmeg for an apple pie taste.

Open Questions

Even after an afternoon of pancakery, there are still some things we didn’t get to test; some questions left unanswered. Like, since most baking powder is double-acting, would it make sense to let the batter sit and froth up, and then gently ladle it onto the pan for a second rise? If we did that, could we get away with less baking powder? And, my mom informed me last night that baking powder needs an acidic environment to react. Should we try adding some lemon juice or vinegar with the baking powder? And what about that no-fat-inside pancake? Was it really that good? What would vanilla add to the flavor, and exactly what happens when you cook a pancake on lower heat for longer? What about the liquid/flour proportions? Do you really need to eyeball it every time you make the batter, or can we construct a recipe that Just. Works. Every. Time? Katt says corn oil tastes great… what other oils work well, and how do they stand up to venerable Earth Balance?

Lots of questions. Perhaps a second edition of pancake VTK is needed.

Proposition

Published on August 19, 2007 in 2nd year project, embodiment, pi, research and school. 3 Comments

I just finished a very short, very drafty draft of my second year project proposal. I wanted to put it together before asking Rafael, Ed, and Jim to be my committee members. It’s rough, but I’m pretty excited about where it’s going. Here’s the introduction:

A small but convincing body of mounting evidence suggests that tool use is, in some cases at least, a misnomer. Tools are not merely “used” by a distinct and well-defined “user”, but instead are actually assimilated into the body schema, occupying the same role as a hand, finger, or eyeball. There is both imaging (Maravita and Iriki, 2004) and behavioral (Yamamoto and Kitazawa, 2001) evidence suggesting that the same cognitive machinery used for biological body parts is used for tools. These results point towards a new, radical theory of embodiment and tool use, where body parts and tools are not distinct categories, but a unified pool of physical structures which a “profoundly embodied” agent (in the sense of Clark, 2007) opportunistically engages and reconfigures in order to adapt to its environment. This view is just beginning to achieve mainstream attention in cognitive science, notably in the aforementioned paper by Andy Clark.

These new insights should be particularly exciting to researchers studying human-computer interaction. HCI has long suffered a lackluster theoretical foundation both in academia and in industry, instead relying mostly on moderately effective but poorly understood methodologies and heuristics for designing digital systems. Theories of Psychology, and more recently Cognitive Science, have had limited success in explaining the “H” in HCI, and theories of computation and of external cognition have provided insight into the “C”, but rich theories of the actually interaction between the human and the machine which are predictive, prescriptive and generative have not yet materialized. [cite Rogers?]

The theory of “profound” embodiment is exactly that. The idea that tool use and embodiment are one in the same, supported by our burgeoning understanding of embodied cognition and the way it develops in humans and primates throughout their lifetimes, provides a solid platform for explaining the actual interaction between human agents and computing machines.

The broad research question behind this project is: by what mechanism does the human body change to include non-biological structures, and how can we use our understanding of that mechanism to inform the design of human-computer systems?

Read the rest

Fake Superior

Published on August 16, 2007 in activism, feminism, gender, music and pi. 2 Comments

I remember being a boy and deciding that being a boy was just better than being a girl. The memory of my justification is pretty hazy, but I can guess what was going through my head. Boys can do anything, I probably thought. Or maybe I was thinking that we’re strong and everyone admires us. Or that we get to do science and figure stuff out. Or some such bullshit.

Over the last few years I’ve realized that if there’s any truth to these things, it’s because of some really ugly structure in the world. And it’s activism, not smugness, that should be welling up in little boys.

But along with that realization has come a problematic switch. The things I used to admire about men–the confidence, the wielding of dangerous and powerful tools, the independence–I find those things more and more repulsive. And I find myself jealous of this other kind of power… power that isn’t fed by entrenched cultural structures, but instead exists despite them.

After all, what’s more bad-ass? A boy wielding the confidence the patriarchy bestowed upon him, or a girl wielding confidence that couldn’t be wrested from her? It’s easier being a dude, but where’s the pride in having all of this stuff handed to you? And what right do I have to feel good about my value in a feminist space? Isn’t that just the patriarchy trying to assert its universal importance through me?

I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I have a few insights, but the questions keep coming up, and I’m never really prepared for them.

It’s sort of ridiculous, but in the end, the thing that gives me the most comfort is sitting down and putting on a Rufus Wainwright record. As ugly as I think the patriarchy can be. I listen to his voice and I think… that, at least, is beautiful.