In Germany

[dagibbs]

Flights were, relatively speaking, not too bad -- but they were hellish for any sort of sleep schedule. The trans-atlantic flight left Montreal at 8pm, for about a 6-hour flight, getting into Heathrow (London) for 7am. This meant that I finally was tired enough to try to sleep around midnight my time (as I'm often not in bed until 1am-2am), and they were waking us up for breakfast on the plane around 1am (my time), or 6am London time -- about an hour before arrival. And, once down, I had to be on "morning", since I had more travelling and stuff to do. So, last night I got, at best, 1 hour of sleep.

Then, I had the fun of navigating Hannover with driving directions in German (courtesy of Mapquest.de -- mapquest.com will allow you to select German maps, but their database doesn't seem to be able to find any addresses, and their maps are bad, but mapquest.de has far better maps, and you can find things, but it is all in German, so I had German driving instructions) but managed to find my hotel successfully, then drive over to the training site (QNX's office in Germany) finding that successfully, too, verify classroom setup, etc.

I'm now trying to stay awake late enough that I don't wake up part way through the night, in an attempt to establish something not entirely unlike a local sleep schedule.

Comments

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

I ended up on a couple A-series highways, both had what I thought were posted limits (about 110-120 IIRC) and the traffic seemed to be generally obeying them (well, as in generally doing around 10 over), so I assumed I had correctly understood the signage. (And, yes I knew "autobahn" meant highway -- or maybe "car-road", since I seem to remember "bahn" is used in the word for railway, too.)

I had a small stalling problem -- stalled a couple times, not due to unfamiliarity with a standard shift (my car is manual, my bike is too), but the engine response, and powerband, and the amount it needed to be revved for starting was completely different, as it was a diesel, rather than a gasoline engine.

As to the off-topic question, I was part of that conversation, and I did say some stuff about Psychology -- but your paraphrase doesn't really cover it.

I said that in many cases a pure or true "scientific method" (as I understand it, that is, observe, form a hypothesis, make a prediction based on that hypothesis, devise an experiment to verify or contradict that hypothesis, perform that experiment then either confirm hypothesis, or reject and try again) can not be applied to many things in Psychology and Sociology, but also to many things in Medecine and even Biology -- in many cases due to ethical issues. While, some like Anthropology is, almost purely, a "natural science", as it is observational and descriptive -- but not testable. Back in the day, I took 3 Psych courses at university, Intro to Psych (Psych 101), Cognitive Psychology, and the Psychology of Perceptual Processes. Of the two non-Intro, Perceptual had the feel of science -- reproducible experiments, tests, hard data, predictions made on this. Cognitive had the feel of philosophy -- lots of ideas, lots of hand waving, but very little testable predictions or testing of predictions. Now, there has been a lot of advance in this stuff with some of the modern neuro-psych stuff, especially with the very advanced brain-activity type scanning (hm... I think it's function MRI, and other stuff like that) that has given a boost to the "scienceness" of some of this stuff. But, it is still, in many ways, a natural science -- we're still very much in the poking at a black box for brain/body/emotional behaviour, rather than having a strong ability to predict -- especially on an individual, rather than statistical level.

I did, also, talk about bias and precept in the scientific method -- but I didn't primarily apply that to psychology. I applied that to all science, and gave an example from medecine. But, there very much is a way of looking at the world that biases what data is chosen as acceptable, or thrown out as "experimental error", about what hypothesis are examined, or even about what hypothesis the experiment/scientist will even come up with/be able to come up with to test. There is, also, a lot of politics -- if you're investigating, trying to test a radical theory or prediction, you need to get the funding... if it is too radical everyone will assume it's wrong, and you won't get funded, hypothesis won't get test -- with the decision too often made by bureaucrats advised by scientists with a vested interested in the status quo.

Another part of what makes Psychology difficult to do as a science is one of the standard things you do when conducting a scientific experiment -- you make sure you have only one variable. We'll keep all the mixtures constant, and just vary the amount of water. Next we'll keep the water constant, and vary the amount of heat applied, etc. This isolation of factors is nearly impossible to achieve in any sort of psychological experiment, if not impossible. Now, technically, it isn't perfectly achievable in other places either -- but it is a lot easier to get close, than it is with psychology.

Hm... probably more answer than you were looking for -- but it is a very complex topic.
I actually didn't have trouble

And this isn't email?

[leolac.livejournal.com]

LOL - anyway, an entry worth commenting on, and at the exact time I happen to be looking for another distraction.

...now guilt setting in...

sigh

I read this, enjoyed it, want to comment on it for awhile, but my thesis is taunting me.

hugs - talk with you soon

prost!

Re: And this isn't email?

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

Not email, true. :)

And, this will be here for later comment... and assuming you have your posts, and responses to them, emailed to you, then coming back to this thread is just a click away until you delete the email.

And, almost as good as email...since almost noone else will be wandering back into this history to read stuff.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

The last line "I actually didn't have trouble" was a left-over fragment and not intended to be there. Guess I shouldn't actually proof-read, hunh?