Implicit Bias

Brian Nosek, Professor of Psychology from University of Virginia was one among the many distinguished and prominent speakers who walked the ramp of 543 Howard Street as an invited guest from our sister organization, LPFI. He gave us a scintillating presentation on unconscious bias - thoughts and feelings that exist outside of conscious awareness or conscious control that to a large extent shapes how we think and do things.
Recent results from his lab compared implicit - and explicit -
bias between self-identified conservatives/liberals, with these results,
as reported in the Washington Post:

"Another study presented at the conference, which was in Palm Springs, Calif., explored relationships between racial bias and political affiliation by analyzing self-reported beliefs, voting patterns and the results of psychological tests that measure implicit attitudes -- subtle stereotypes people hold about various groups.

That study found that supporters of President Bush and other conservatives had stronger self-admitted and implicit biases against blacks than liberals did."

Here's the complete article from Washington Post.

But better commentary yet was from Stephen Colbert on Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show".

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"Small" is BIG

I have been a proud owner of an Apple PowerBook for the last 3 years. While I possessed and used only Windows based machine for about a decade before that, I have to admit my loyalties switched as soon as I got used to a Mac. The resolution of the graphics, the slick user-interface and virus-free system that never crashed on me - all had me going for it. The package was all the more attractive since mine was a really slick 12-inch Powerbook that was handy to carry along and fast enough for running all my cpu and memory intensive applications (earlier version of Chandler included). Recently I was told by my IT guy that it's time to switch to a newer machine and I had to pick one out soon. Well, given practically everyone around me now owns the new Intel-based MacBook Pro and they rave about how swift it is, I couldn't wait to get mine soon. So I was checking out the Apple Store in San Francisco, I have to say I was thoroughly disappointed to learn that they have stopped carrying the 12-inch laptops anymore. All the MacBook Pros now come only in 15 and 17 inches. While I am looking forward to my new MacBook Pro I have to say I am going to miss my "small" book that had become the central domain of my work life the last 3 years. Who ever said, "small" is big has my +1 on that.