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July 16th, 2012Top StoryHow to Put a Movie Theater in Your Home on the CheapBy Adam Dachis
About six years ago I had a terrible day at work—on my birthday. When I finally left the office full of stress and frustration, I only had one purpose: I was going to make an irresponsible impulse purchase to try and make my day suck just a little less. I took the subway to Best Buy, found an inexpensive 720p DLP projector (~$1000), and put it on my credit card. While I can't recommend this method to anyone else, it was the start of a great new project: putting together a movie theater in my home. This was back in 2006 when prices on HD projectors were just starting to decline. Nowadays you can pick up one that's as good as mine for a lot less money. It's not the only thing you'll need—a good screen and sound system are important, too—but you can easily assemble a pretty killer home movie theater for as little as $1,000. In this post, we're going to take a look at how. Step One: Choose Your HardwareBuying a projector, a screen, and a good pair of speakers isn't cheap, but the total cost isn't much higher than a similar setup with a good flatscreen television. You can always spend more for better quality, but it's not necessary. We're only going to talk about awesome projectors (and other necessary components). Mine projector is six years old and is worth about $400-500 today, but it's been so good I've had no need to upgrade. If you've got some freedom to spend, we'll talk about options that are worth the extra cash. If not, don't worry—it'll be great nonetheless. The Projector
Again, any of these projectors will provide a great image. I still use a 1,000 lumen, 720p DLP projector and I'm very happy with it six years later. Whether you're aiming for cheap or have a little extra to spend, you'll be pleased with what you get. The Screen
One last thing to note is that some screens will claim to offer enhanced contrast. This is generally accurate, but the effectiveness of the claim varies. As with anything, be sure to read reviews and see how others have responded to the screen's quality before purchasing. The Speakers
Unlike a TV, the primary speakers aren't going to be next to the projector. Instead, they're going to be across the room. That means you're going to have to run a wire from the projector (or sound source) to the location of your speakers. If you don't have a good way of stealthily running an audio cable across the room, one surprisingly effective solution is the Audioengine W1 wireless audio transmitter. Using it means you're foregoing the option of surround sound, which may be important to you, but the W1 is exceptionally easy to set up and actually sounds really good. You just plug them both into power—and they're powered by USB—and connect the output to the transmitter and the input to the receiver. This is a very simple solution to an annoying cable problem and it only costs $100. Audioengine also offers a variety of great stereo speakers (like these), so if you're not looking for a surround sound system they're a good place to start. The other problem with sound is that you'll likely have multiple sources connected to the projector but the projector won't handle switching sound between them. That means you need to swap sound inputs separately. You can get an expensive system, or you can just pick up a simple AV input switcher like this one and call it a day. You could spend more money, but you don't have to. The Media Center
If you want to save some money, you can buy less RAM, swap in a slower (compatible) processor, purchase a smaller hard drive, and so on. If you're planning to make this build a hackintosh, be sure to check out the tonymacx86 forum post from which it originated. Mounting the Projector and Screen
What You'll NeedBefore we jump into the setup, let's talk about what you're going to need:
Make Your Calculations
Put it All Together
Now you're good to go! Sure, it isn't the easiest process, but once you get the hang of it you won't spend a bunch of time figuring out the perfect alignment—you'll just know. Also, expect to make mistakes. Having a little spackle around for a few holes you drilled in the wrong place can't hurt. Despite the frustrations and mistakes, the important thing to remember is that when you are finished, you will essentially have a movie theater in your house. It turned out to be one of the best accidental decisions I've made. Chances are you'll love it, too.  |
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July 16th, 2012Top StoryJust Because You Don't Like a Study Doesn't Mean It Is WrongBy Hamilton Nolan
The LAT's headline: "Wives watch sports for husband's sake, study reports." A representative sarcastic blog headline: "Fun Fact: Girls Only Like Sports to Impress Boys!" And therein lies the complete breakdown in the communication chain. Neither journalists nor bloggers are scientists (usually). Even many science beat writers at top-tier publications lack the scientific expertise to independently analyze and interpret the myriad academic studies that flow forth from the world of science. This is okay. Most people who went to school long enough to be scientists are scientists, not news writers. Someone who writes news stories or blog posts about scientific studies is not required to have a Ph.D. in every scientific field. They are only required to know how to find someone who does know the answers to relevant questions to speak to, or, even simpler, to be able to accurately translate the meaning of a study into language that everyone can understand. Nobody expects bloggers to be so scientifically savvy that they can independently spot scientific or mathematical errors. People do not turn to general-interest news writers and bloggers for savvy scientific analysis. This is not a job requirement for bloggers. You just have to be able to say what something says. You can joke about it. You can speculate on what it means. (Or, as I did, you can go steadfastly absurd in order to tacitly acknowledge that you are not a scientific authority.) But you can't make it say something that it doesn't. Perhaps it was the LAT's definitive and wildly oversimplified headline that started the downhill unscientific snowball. The Atlantic Wire weighed in with "Do Wives Really Only Watch Sports Because of Their Husbands?" questioning whether a study with only 19 participants could say something definitive. (Spoiler: no, although that did not stop the LAT's headline writer.) Woman-centric blogs like Jezebel and XO Jane went on to mock the study as "stupid" and "TOTAL BULLSHIT." Was it really possible that a 21-page double-blind, peer-reviewed academic study with 80 separate cited sources could be so TOTALLY BULLSHIT that a typical non-Ph.D. non-scientist writing on a blog could dismiss it out of hand simply by considering what they believed its conclusions to be? I decided to ask Erin Whiteside, a Ph.D and assistant professor of Communications at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, one of the study's two authors (and a "regular Gawker and Jezebel reader," sadly). You may be surprised to learn that it appears that the media and meta-media, through a combination of laziness, sensationalism, and ignorance, may have misstated the results of a scientific study! "I would like to point out that nowhere in the paper do we assert that *All women watch sports to be with their husbands," Whiteside told me. "As you mention, feminist blogs have been critiquing the study, (and I would, too, based on what they think the findings say) but it is based in feminist theory and very much thinking about gender roles and the production of gendered subjectivities through everyday interactions (including watching sports) in the home. What we do say is that many of the women we talked to said they love watching sports because of the teams they favor, but *also like watching sports because it is a time to connect with their families. We expand on this point in the paper." In the paper! The paper itself, it turns out, is much more nuanced and reasonable than it summary in the newspaper. It notes that while female participation in sports is up, women's sports leagues still have trouble drawing spectators. Why? What a good question for an academic research project, right? The paper delves into patterns of media coverage, gender theory, and academic theories in search of answers. The study's authors conducted focus groups with women in order to get a sense of what they themselves had to say. It is, all in all, a better-researched, better-sourced, and far more labor-intensive piece of work than any blog post that has ever been written on any scientific topic. As to the much-criticized fact that the study used a relatively small number of women, Whiteside explained: "This is a qualitative project — hence group interviews with 19 women— as opposed to a wide-scale survey using a random sample. The strength of such an approach is it allows a researcher to go beyond describing a given social phenomena (e.g. women's sports lack a fan base) to explaining it. In fact, research that begins from the standpoint and everyday experiences of women is often considered a feminist approach to research (as opposed to male-centric modes 'discovery') because it privileges women's voices and experiences in the production of knowledge." Whiteside says that while standard numerical quantitative studies are based on set categories of identity (age, gender, etc.), "Our study thinks about how those identity categories are created... I would argue that identity categories are inherently restrictive and a product of power relations; once we assign an identity to a person, there is an expectation toward behavior. This is admittedly an abstract concept and difficult to report in a 300-word story, especially in a world in which measurable, objectively observed data is considered most worthy. This latter point reveals how epistemology (philosophy about what counts as knowledge) may figure into women's oppression. Although feminists hedge from assigning one method as THE feminist method, many would argue that qualitative research in the form of interviews, etc. can be feminist in that it situates the production of knowledge in women's everyday experiences and in their own voices." Cruel irony. Not only were the purposes and conclusions of this study mischaracterized, but that mischaracterization led to widespread derision from feminist blogs over methodologies that were explicitly feminist in nature. It is useful, when we decide to offhandedly offer our uninformed analysis about a study, to reflect upon the fact that the author of the study has probably already considered all of these objections—which are, after all, usually little more than the first knee-jerk reaction that pops into our heads. Whiteside, for example, is a Ph.D and an academic and is of course aware that it is impossible to generalize from 19 women to the entire world. "Applying any research 'finding' to a wider population is only* appropriate when the study draws from a random sample that is sufficiently representative of that wider population– which we did not do, nor try to do," she says. "But, again, our goal was not to describe a social trend at a meta-level but to interpret it, something for which qualitative research provides an especially useful toolkit." It is possible for scientific or academic research studies to be wrong. But they must be wrong for a reason. The fact that their conclusions just rub us the wrong way is not a reason. It is possible that our instincts have been proven wrong, by the science at hand. It is also possible, as we have seen, that we do not actually understand the science at hand—possibly because we're relying on a secondhand interpretation of it, which has been misstated or exaggerated or twisted in some way. Let's not kid ourselves into thinking that we have spotted what the professionals could not, due to our own incisive brilliance, as professional writers. Sometimes it's better to just stick to jokes. [Image by Jim Cooke]  |
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July 16th, 2012Top StoryThe Biggest Winners and Losers of Comic Con 2012!By Charlie Jane Anders
Here's our list of the biggest buzz winners and losers of Comic Con 2012. Top image: Getty Images. Obviously, there's nothing scientific about this list. This is based on our own subjective impressions, plus walking the floor and having hundreds of conversations with randomly selected fans and other journalist-types. We also trawled the internet for people's tweets and reactions to stuff. This is us sticking a finger in the wind. And it bears repeating: a movie can win at Comic Con and still lose at the box office. Comic Con buzz doesn't guarantee anything — just ask Scott Pilgrim. (Although, I think John Carter might have gotten a lot more early buzz going if it had had a Comic Con panel last year.) LosersAfter Earth
The Host
666 Park Avenue
Jackie Chan
Resident Evil: Retribution
Oz: The Great and Powerful
The Lone Ranger
The Vampire Diaries
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Mass Effect: Paragon Lost
WinnersJohn Scalzi
Dredd
Marvel Studios
Arrow
Looper
The Walking Dead
The Hobbit
Revolution
Pacific Rim
Godzilla
Legend of Korra
Elysium
Firefly
Neuro Kitty Ears
Image Comics
Thanks to Lauren, Meredith, Cyriaque, Keith, Evan, Owen, Michael, Annalee and everyone else who helped!  |
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