08.29.07
Words to use when reading to young children
The BPS Research Digest has an intriguing post on a study that found that a mother’s use of verbs like ‘think’, ‘know’ and ‘remember’ when reading picture books to their children predicted the child’s later ability to understand other people’s mental states.
The researchers recorded mothers reading to their 3-6 year-old children, and tested each child’s ‘theory of mind‘ – the ability to infer other people’s beliefs, intentions and mental states.
A year later, the same procedure was repeated with the same mothers and children.
The researchers discovered that the more mothers used cognitive terms when telling the story (e.g. Mother says: “…this boy sees so many people and thinks, ‘I’ll pretend I don’t know what’s going on and I’ll push to the front of the queue’”) the better the child’s later ‘theory of mind’ abilities.
There’s more on the study over at the BPSRD. Importantly, it raises some compelling questions about how early interaction could affect the development of a child’s mental abilities.
Good advice to me
I’m not a neatnik. In fact, I’m not really neat. Good handwriting does not a neat person make—not sure if that’s an old saying, but I suppose it could be. In time.
So I enjoy advice on how to get my neatness act together, and Zen Habits has some good ideas:
Who among us has the time or energy for housework?
Sure, we often make the time, if we don’t like living in a pig sty. But too often our homes fall into disorder, just because we are too tired or too busy to do a bunch of cleaning in our spare time.
Instead, make housework simple. Simplify your housework with two easy cleaning systems:
- Clean as you go. This is merely the habit of putting things where they belong, instead of leaving them somewhere to be cleaned later, as well as cleaning any little messes quickly, instead of letting the messes build up. More on this below.
- Burst cleaning. In my house, we call this a 30-minute cleanup, and it’s something we do on a Saturday when we don’t have much time for cleaning (which is almost every Saturday). The concept is to do a quick clean, in addition to the little cleaning you’ve done throughout the week, leaving your house (fairly) spic and span.
I’ve talked about the concept of clean-as-you-go before, but I thought I’d expand on it a bit after reader Jeff Lilly asked:
I have a question about your clean-as-you-go article. I sometimes have to let our bathrooms get pretty dirty for a while, because I simply don’t have the 30-40 minutes necessary to get in and clean them. If I could do a five-minute cleanup job every time I use them, it would be awesome. What exactly is your routine?
The toilet, for example: if I use the standard toilet cleaner and scrub brush, it takes at least 15 minutes because I have to let the toilet cleaner sit for 10 minutes in the bowl. Obviously, I can do something else during ten of those minutes, but it breaks up the flow of work, and no one can use the toilet during that time. Alternatively, I could simply clean the toilet bowl with a cloth and cleaning solution (which is actually my preferred method, since it gets it a lot cleaner), but if I use a new cloth two or three times a day, that adds up to a lot more laundry!
Also, the shower spray you use: usually these things are designed to be washed off during the next shower. Do you use it in the kids’ bathtub? Do you worry about the chemicals mixing in their bathwater?
Clean As You Go
Jeff’s excellent question allows me to use the cleaning of the bathroom as an example of clean as you go:
The Refill-Not-Landfill project: next step
It started simply enough: use a refillable bottle instead of buying water in disposable bottles. The next step was to find a “good” refillable bottle: one that allowed one-hand operation, was cute, and fit the cup holder.
Then I discover that The Wife finds that the taste of the water in disposable bottles is better than that of our (filtered) tap water. So I remember my experience of 45 years ago in brewing beer and the water treatment added to the tap water. I do a little searching and find MoreBeer.com, and from them order packets of instant Burton-on-Trent water and instant Dortmund water: a packet of powder to add to regular water to produce the famed water. Those, along with a little lactic acid and a measuring pipette.
So the packets are for 6 gallons (US and not Imperial gallons, I presume — where’s the metric system when you need it?): 768 fluid oz. Our water bottles are 25 oz., 3.3% of that. One packet weighs 1.3 oz, so I use .04 oz. Hmm. I judge that to be one pinch. Add to that .13 ml of the acid—say, a drop.
We’ll give it a go. Refill Not Landfill, here we come!
Olive coleslaw
Olive coleslaw
Total time: 30 minutes plus one hour chilling
Servings: 6 to 81/2 medium head green cabbage
1/2 medium head red cabbage
2 medium carrots, peeled and grated
1 large red bell pepper, cored, seeded and cut into 1-inch-long julienne
2 green onions, trimmed and finely chopped
3/4 cup drained, sliced pimento-stuffed green olives
2 tablespoons minced pickled jalapenos
3 tablespoons mayonnaise
3 tablespoons olive brine
3 tablespoons brown or white rice wine vinegar
1/2 cup peanut or vegetable oil
Salt and pepper to taste1. Remove the tough cores of the cabbages and slice the leaves into thin strips about 1 inch long and one-fourth inch wide. Place the cabbage in a large bowl and add the carrots, pepper, green onions, olives and jalapenos. Toss until the ingredients are well dispersed.
2. Place the mayonnaise, brine, vinegar and oil in a small bowl and whisk to combine. Stir the dressing into the vegetables and toss until well mixed. Taste and add more mayonnaise or vinegar if desired. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Chill at least 1 hour before serving.
Each of 8 servings: 210 calories; 2 grams protein; 10 grams carbohydrates; 4 grams fiber; 19 grams fat; 3 grams saturated fat; 3 mg. cholesterol; 310 mg. sodium.
UPDATE: Extremely tasty. A little crushed red pepper would not be amiss.
Back-to-school special: how to study for a test
This is useful knowledge regarding knowledge:
When I was in school, teachers often implored us to not put off studying to the last minute. Sometimes they even suggested that we spread out our studying over a period of weeks. But who has time for that? Most of us just studied the night before the test — with varying results, of course.
But surely research has been done on the ideal way to study. Is it possible to over-study? How much studying is enough? Wray Herbert has uncovered some real data on the problem, from a study by Doug Rohrer and Harold Paschler:
They had two groups of students study new vocabulary in different ways. One group drilled themselves five times; these students got a perfect score no more than once. The others kept drilling, for a total of ten trials; with this extra effort, the students had at least three perfect run-throughs. Then the psychologists quizzed all the students, once one week later and again three weeks after that.
After a week, the students who had done the most studying scored higher, but the advantage disappeared after three weeks. So cramming a whole lot right before the exam might help, but not if you study too early. But what if you take a study break? Rohrer and Pashler repeated the study with breaks varying from 5 minutes to a month. Here’s what they found:
Those who had taken a one-day break performed best when they were tested ten days later. But if they were tested six months later (the laboratory equivalent of long-term learning), the optimal break time was a full month. In other words, as reported in the August issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, “massing” all the study on a single topic together diminishes learning. It’s better to leave it alone for a while and then return to it, and indeed the longer you want new learning to endure, the longer the optimal break between study sessions.
I wonder if this effect would be maintained over really long time periods: If I returned to studying Italian after 19 years since college, maybe I’d be a true master! Actually I tried that a couple years ago before I visited Italy. I’m pretty sure my mastery of the language didn’t equal the level I was at in college, but I was surprised at how much I did remember.
Wray says Rohrer and Pashler’s results even extend beyond memorization and into abstract learning like mathematics. Sounds like their advice isn’t much different from what my teachers told me all those years ago. Now if only a researcher could explain how to get kids to listen to their teachers’ advice!
Photosynth: amazing technology
From the Panopticist:
Check out this astonishing TED presentation by Blaise Aguera y Arcas, a Microsoft researcher who is leading the development of an amazing visual technology called Photosynth. As Arcas’s bio on the TED site explains:
Photosynth itself is a vastly powerful piece of software capable of taking a wide variety of images, analyzing them for similarities, and grafting them together into an interactive three-dimensional space. This seamless patchwork of images can be viewed via multiple angles and magnifications, allowing us to look around corners or “fly” in for a (much) closer look. Simply put, it could utterly transform the way we experience digital images.
This is a revolution.
Here’s the video of his (7-minute) talk.
How to leave Iraq
Good post in ThinkProgress:
Opponents of a sensible Iraq withdrawal strategy have tried to argue that a redeployment is unfeasible either because it will be occur too quickly or because it will take too long.
President Bush argued that “precipitous withdrawal from Iraq is not a plan to bring peace to the region or to make our people safer at home.” Defense Secretary Robert Gates argued that an Iraq withdrawal “will be a long process.”
A new report by the Center for American Progress, entitled “How To Redeploy,” states that “deciding between a swift or extended redeployment is a false dilemma.” An orderly and safe withdrawal is best achieved over a 10- to 12-month period:
A phased military redeployment from Iraq over the next 10 to 12 months would begin extracting U.S. troops from Iraq’s internal conflicts immediately and would be completed by the end of 2008. During this timeframe, the military will not replace outgoing troops as they rotate home at the end of their tours and will draw down force and equipment levels gradually, at a pace similar to previous rotations conducted by our military over the past four years.
Most analysts claim that a withdrawal will be a drawn-out procedure because they assume, that given the amount of military equipment in Iraq, the U.S. is capable of moving out only one brigade per month to Kuwait.
The CAP report accelerates the timetable by placing an emphasis on the troops over the equipment. “It matters more to get soldiers and Marines to safety in Kuwait than it does to ensure one unit’s equipment is shipped out before another’s is able to.” The report explains that, rather than risking the lives of troops or wasting financial resources to stay longer, certain “non-sensitive equipment — such as freezers, sinks, fuel, excess equipment, and x-ray machines” can be left behind.
The report, authored by analysts Lawrence Korb, Max Bergmann, Sean Duggan, and Peter Juul, offers a detailed tactical perspective on withdrawal. Among a host of strategic maneuvers, the plan involves “closing forward operating bases” in Iraq, not replacing units that are rotated out, and securing the routes out of Iraq to Kuwait.
When Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) recently asked the Pentagon about contingency plans for withdrawal from Iraq, Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman responded that she was reinforcing enemy propaganda. If the administration fails to take the initiative in planning for a drawdown, the report warns troops could end up “waiting for the helicopters on the embassy roof.”
Interesting juxtaposition
ThinkProgress has three brief notes in succession:
Two years after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, “none of the 115 ‘critical priority projects’ identified by city officials” for publicly funded rebuilding efforts “has been completed.” Of the $34 billion “earmarked for long-term rebuilding,” less than half “has made its way through federal checks and balances to reach municipal projects.”
45 percent: Number of Americans who believe “at least some progress has been made” in rebuilding the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. Just nine percent say there has been “a lot of progress.” Among blacks, just two percent believe there has been a lot of progress.
President Bush plans to ask Congress “for up to $50 billion in additional funding for the war in Iraq.” “The request is being prepared now in the belief that Congress will be unlikely to balk so soon after hearing” optimistic testimony from Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker.
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lobbyists”
I think that would be a good step. (Note to Department of Homeland Security: I am not seriously proposing this step. Rather, I would reassign them to municipal park maintenance duties or something equally useful.) Read this article, which begins:
Inside the Higher Ed Lobby
Welcome to One Dupont Circle, where good education-reform ideas go to die.
By Ben AdlerIn 2003, Ted Kennedy tried to nudge America’s colleges and universities toward changing two of the least defensible practices in the modern admissions process. The first is legacy preferences, in which schools heavily favor applications from the children of alumni, often ahead of students with stronger academic resumes but less-well-connected parents. The second practice, early decision, where schools make it easier for prospective students to get admitted if they’ll commit to attending at the time they apply, has a similar effect, since wealthier candidates don’t need to compare financial aid packages and can therefore more easily commit to a school early. Taken together, the two practices fly in the face of the ideal of American meritocracy, and reduce the opportunities for young people of more modest backgrounds to go to selective colleges.
Under Kennedy’s proposal, schools that used both tools and also graduated students of color at a disproportionately low rate—at the time, that meant eighty-seven schools, including five Ivies—would be required to try to boost that rate, and would receive federal money to do so. If they failed, the schools would be required to give up legacy preferences or early decision, or else forgo other forms of federal aid.
Kennedy was touching the third and fourth rails of higher education, a particularly courageous move for a senator who represents the state with perhaps the most powerful colleges in the country. Yet as a longtime leader on education issues, who two years earlier had worked with President Bush to pass the No Child Left Behind Act, Kennedy had sufficient clout to get his measure considered, even in a GOP Congress. Indeed, the proposal held out some appeal to certain of the Senate’s Republican populists, who tend to be well disposed toward any effort to stick it to the East Coast elite.
But before Kennedy’s proposal could even be formally introduced, One Dupont Circle weighed in. That’s the address of the marble-and-glass office building that serves as the de facto headquarters for the array of groups representing the organized interests of America’s colleges and universities. Prominently located in a fashionable D.C. neighborhood that’s home to many of the better-funded nonprofits, One Dupont (or the “National Center for Higher Education,” as its awning appropriately proclaims) is owned by the largest and most powerful of the higher ed associations, the American Council on Education. In order to facilitate coordination of policy and strategy, ACE leases the rest of the space, at below-market rates, exclusively to other higher ed groups (from the National Association of College and University Attorneys to the American College Personnel Association). That sense of cohesion tends to come through in the lobby’s work: one higher ed expert I spoke to called One Dupont “a building that speaks, like the White House.”
Tomato bread soup
Tomato Bread Soup
Serves 3 to 43 pounds plum tomatoes
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 small onion, minced
3 cloves garlic
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 cups sourdough bread, without crusts, cut into small cubes
1/2 cup grated ricotta salata
1 tablespoon minced fresh basil leaves1. Core and quarter plum tomatoes. Place tomatoes in food processor and pulse to chop, but not too fine.
2. Heat oil in 4-quart saucepan. Add onion and garlic and saute until soft, but not browned. Add tomatoes and their juices. Season with salt and pepper, bring to a slow simmer and cook 45 minutes, covered, stirring from time to time.
3. When the soup has simmered for 45 minutes, stir the bread cubes into the soup and simmer for an additional 10 to 15 minutes. Check the seasoning.
4. Serve hot or a room temperature, with grated ricotta salata and minced basil strewn on each serving.
UPDATE: Made it using a half loaf of whole wheat kalamata olive bread I had. I like a little spiciness and thought of using some crushed red pepper, but instead chopped up a couple of jalapeños (with seeds) and sautéed them with the onion and garlic. Then, at the end, I added some ocean scallops, quartered, for more protein. It was excellent. No basil, no ricotta salata.
Mint-infused water
Slashfood has a tasty idea:
Several summers ago an older member of my church invited me over for dinner. She was turning the running of a committee over to me and wanted to discuss the details over a meal. She offered me a glass of mint-infused water with my plate of pasta salad, homemade bread and sliced tomato (dessert was a plate of cookies that she admitted to having purchased). The meal was generally memorable for it’s tasty simplicity, but the thing that stuck with me the most was that mint-infused water. I asked her how she made it and she said that simply kept a bunch of mint in a pitcher, continually refreshing the pitcher with water as the level decreased.
The last few months have been my summer of mint, as several of my friends have large patches of it in their yards and gardens and like to pass along large bunches of it to me. I have made mint-flecked salads, tossed it with melon and a sprinkling of sugar and have kept a pitcher of mint water in the fridge steeping in the fridge. I have found that on the days when I want a slightly stronger mint flavor you can increase the intensity by gently bruising the leaves. A single bunch of mint can flavor a water for up to a week (if it starts to look slimy, it is time to change it [no kidding! - LG]). It is refreshing, inexpensive and has helped me kick the juice/sparking water habit almost entirely.
Leathery morning
After the usual pre-shave beard wash with MR GLO, I used Cuisson’s Imperial Leather shaving cream—a gift from an Australian reader—with the Simpsons Emperor 3 Super brush. Very fine lather, which I whisked away with the Merkur Progress (set at 2.5) and a Tesco blade. Very smooth, no nicks or cuts, and the alum block felt good.
The Geo. F. Trumper Spanish Leather aftershave and—why not?—a spritz or two of Truefitt & Hill Spanish Leather cologne.
I’m also wearing leather shoes.
