Keys Corner

This guy…

... just loves his peanuts…

The feeder is squirrel-destruction-proof, but it doesn’t stop him helping himself!

...(otherwise known as www.tashian.com/multibabel) is an interesting web site if you want to try repeatedly translating a phase or sentence back and forth between English and a series of other languages. The result is much like you got if you used to play Chinese Whispers when you were younger.

For example, after ten iterations:

It’s better to learn a language, than rely on translation tools on the web

becomes

It is a language, this impulse of conteggio learns better in the subsidies to the translation in the Web

Take this Implicit Association Test (being run by Harvard University, the University of Virginia, and University of Washington) and find out.

Some background information on Implicit Association Tests from the participating universities: Psychologists understand that people may not say what’s on their minds either because they are unwilling or because they are unable to do so. For example, if asked “How much do you smoke?” a smoker who smokes 4 packs a day may purposely report smoking only 2 packs a day because they are embarrassed to admit the correct number. Or, the smoker may simply not answer the question, regarding it as a private matter. (These are examples of being unwilling to report a known answer.) But it is also possible that a smoker who smokes 4 packs a day may report smoking only 2 packs because they honestly believe they only smoke about 2 packs a day. (Unknowingly giving an incorrect answer is sometimes called self-deception; this illustrates being unable to give the desired answer).

The unwilling-unable distinction is like the difference between purposely hiding something from others and unconsciously hiding something from yourself. The Implicit Association Test makes it possible to penetrate both of these types of hiding. The IAT measures implicit attitudes and beliefs that people are either unwilling or unable to report.

And a link to more demonstration tests.

How much information about someone can you find out, starting with a discarded boarding card stub and just surfing the internet for 15 minutes using only data available in publicly available databases?

• Address?
• Who you are living with?
• Passport number and expiry date?
• Where you studied?
• Date of birth?
• Nationality?

Well, all of those and while you’re about it, why not log into his frequent flyer account and change a few details and book a flight somewhere hot and sunny? Also no problem. In this particular case, you can thank British Airways and the American Government for their help, and the Guardian for highlighting the case.

So remember, think about what you throw away, and shred sensitive paperwork, such as bank statements, credit card slips etc. before you put them in the dustbin.

Ruth was just reading about someone’s house (on a quilting web site, where else?), which has acid-stained concrete floors throughout. Sounds a bit weird, but it looks great. We took a look at Faux Real Flooring’s web site to see some examples (Take a look at some of the photos in their gallery).

It looks like an interesting alternative to other surfaces, and given that it is often used in museums and schools, it should be very hard-wearing. We’ve added it to our “house-book”, which is our list of neat ideas to consider next time we move!

The above picture is of my blog admin interface some 12 hours after I last deleted the spam comments that had been entered, linking to dubious web sites selling all manner of things. One hundred spam comments in 12 hours, which have been blocked from ever being entered on the blog and which I can delete from the review/approval queue with one single click (and which are automatically deleted, if I’m on holiday, after 15 days). The spam management system, Akismet, is a free service for WordPress blogs and hasn’t let through a single spam message since I activated it 1800 spam messages (or about 2 months) ago.

The amount of spam which even this insignificant blog attracts has been increasing steadily over the last months, so I am glad to have a service like Akismet taking care of it for me.