Archive: January, 2007

January 24, 2007

I have multiple intelligences, but not multiple personalities

categories It's all about me | comments 2 Comments

I’ve known about the idea of multiple intelligences for a while. The idea being that we all learn in different ways isn’t that new and you might be familiar with the learning by seeing, hearing or doing. Howard Gardner expanded on these three and over the course of years, delineated eight distinct intelligences. Here’s a quick explanation of the differences between the eight.

I took a quiz on-line (different than on-line quizzes) the results of which I’ve summarized below:

My multiple intelligences

I don’t find it surprising that my highest score was the Naturalistic intelligence given my personal and academic interest in the more-than-human world. What is interesting are the listed skills or traits of a naturalistic intelligence that are echoed in my own experience:

  • noticing patterns
  • noticing things in the environment that others miss
  • have collections

What intelligence (or combination) are you?

January 18, 2007

I’m in Ottawa

categories academia | comments 0 Comments

Well, not me, per se, but my SSHRC Doctoral Fellowships Program application.
This means that it got out of the Faculty and out of the University. That’s good. Now, I got this far last year and then had the application evaluated at a 14 / 30, so this little piece of news doesn’t mean anything other than I don’t know quite yet that I won’t be getting a SSHRC.

January 15, 2007

Troy Hurtubise is back at it

categories news? | comments 0 Comments

Troy, who is a personal hero (especially for his research committee meetings at a North Bay Country Style Donuts and stalking Black Bears in a garbage dump, as captured in Project Grizzly), is back at it again. He has built a suit of armour (tested against bullets and an elephant gun) for soldiers.

Best part? Troy, who still lives in North Bay (Lee and I made a special road trip to the Country Style Donuts), drove to Hamilton in his suit:

Hurtubise, 43, wore his suit — helmet and all — on the four-hour drive down south, partly as a way of making sure it would be comfortable enough in the field. Even sitting on his armoured butt cheeks, he said he was fine.

As he drove his black pickup in his black getup, other drivers gawked and honked. Just south of Huntsville, he was delighted to be pulled over and gave an apprehensive OPP officer a close-up look at the suit.

Awesome.

Link: From Bears to Bullets, YouTube Video Clip (with an added soundtrack that makes it more slapstick that tragic)

January 12, 2007

I’ve arrived: RateMyProfessors.com

categories academia, teaching | comments 0 Comments

Yeah, so I’ve been rated and here’s my scorecard:

Gavan Watson’s Scorecard
No. of Ratings: 1
Average Helpfulness: 5.0 Hotness Total: 0
Average Easiness: 2.0 Average Clarity: 5.0 Overall Quality: 5.0

How about that?

My feeling about ratemyprofessors.com is a bit mixed. While I think it’s great that students feel like they can evaluate those that evaluate them, it’s been my experience that only those at either ends of a normal curve (students that *really* like you or *really* hate you) bother posting a rating. Which means that you end up with personal attacks which may be cathartic for those posting but are pretty hurtful. I mean, just writing “elitist” doesn’t really help at all. It’s just poor feedback.

Gavan Watson – York University – RateMyProfessors.com

January 11, 2007

Surrogate Species: Beavers help Frogs and Toads survive

categories Environment, academia | comments 0 Comments

Researches at the U of Alberta have found that significantly more frogs & toads (5.7 more new wood frogs [Rana sylvatica], 29 times more western toads [Bufo boreas] and 24 times more boreal chorus frogs [Pseudacris maculata]) could be found in the ponds created behind beaver (Castor canadensis) dams when compared to nearby free-flowing bodies of water. Reasons for the amphibian’s success are suggested as the warmer, well-oxygenated water that is created in the new beaver pond habitat.

Dr. Cindy Paszkowski, one of the researchers suggests that:

“The concept of surrogate species in conservation planning offers simple, ecologically-based solutions to help conserve and manage ecosystems”

So, rather than seeing as being pests blocking culverts (the role that beavers are increasingly cast), these rodents can now be seen as important (integral?) to the success of amphibian populations.

Link: Beavers Helping Frogs And Toads Survive

More reading: Recent article from Biodiversity and Conservation on assessing the effectiveness of surrogate species approaches to biological conservation [PDF alert]

January 9, 2007

Coolest plant name on earth: Obe-Wan-Conobea (Leucospora multifida)

categories Humour, Plants | comments 0 Comments

And who says that Botanists don’t have a sense of humour?

Link: Obe-Wan-Conobea (Leucospora multifida)

January 9, 2007

That new iPod phone

categories Gadgeteria | comments 2 Comments

I’m writing this about twenty minutes after the Macworld keynote and I’m sure you’ve already heard of this little gadget: the iPhone. Sure looks cool: mobile phone+ iPod + web browser. WiFi. Bluetooth. 4 & 8 GB flash memory.

Seeing as we don’t live in the US, I wonder which Canadian carrier will eventually sell it. Since Apple seems to be exclusively locked with Cingular in the US, and Cingular runs on a GSM network, expect to see this from Rogers, IMHO. Because it is a GSM phone, there is always the possibility of getting an unlocked phone and popping in your Fido or Rogers SIM in. I’m not sure this is necessarily going to work for this little piece of technology, though. The keynote outlines the ability to get voicemail “a la carte”, sorta like opening an email message (so if you really want to listen to message #5, you don’t have to listen to the preceding 4 messages). I’m not sure how or what kind of changes that need to take place on the carrier side of things for this to happen. Most likely, if unlocked iPhones appear north of the border, this little piece of technology won’t work. I’ll be interested in hearing more about the changes on the carrier side of things in order to make this phone a reality.

I can’t help but wonder what this means for the iPod proper. Is this the new iPod (6th generation), or are we going to see widescreen iPods with HD and larger capacities? For my own sake, I hope the answer is yes. For one, I just bought an unlocked Treo 680 and don’t have the disposable income to buy another “mobile phone plus.” My iTunes library tops out at 19.83 GB and no longer fits on my 4th generation 20 GB iPod. I like having all my music on one device. I’ve had to jump through all sorts of hoops to get a reasonable selection of music on my iPod now that it all can’t fit. And, frankly, not thinking about how the music gets from my computer to the iPod is part of the appeal of the gadget. So, if we’re topping out at 8 GB, I can’t help but think that will force more people to worry about this and make a once seamless step, well, not so seamless. I’m sure the Apples have thought long and hard about the capacity and I’m some weird outlier who likes all their music on their device. Otherwise, it makes a compelling product less so in my eyes.

Update: So, after reading this Time article, seems as though the demands that I suggested Apple has put on the carrier side of things was right:

Jobs demanded special treatment from his phone service partner, Cingular, and he got it. He even forced Cingular to re-engineer its infrastructure to handle the iPhone’s unique voicemail scheme. “They broke all their typical process rules to make it happen,” says Tony Fadell, who heads Apple’s iPod division. “They were infected by this product, and they were like, we’ve gotta do this!”