I can't get to the actual study, but here is an article that discusses it in more depth:
In one experiment, the researchers tested 30 pairs of undergraduate students. Each participant received a list of 20 statements about topics like campus food or the weather.
One member of each pair read their statements into a tape recorder–taking either a sarcastic or serious tone–while the other member e-mailed the statements. The participants also noted whether they thought their partners would correctly interpret each statement's tone.
The participants then listened to or read their partners' statements, guessed the intended tone and indicated how confident they were in their answers.
Both the e-mailers and those who recorded their messages were highly confident that their partners would correctly detect their tone–both groups predicted about a 78 percent success rate. The speakers weren't too far off–their partners got the tone correct about 75 percent of the time. The partners who read the statements over e-mail, though, had only a 56 percent success rate–not much better than chance.
What I'm *really* curious about now is whether the participants were allowed to reword the statements when they sent them in email, and if so, how much. (I'd also be curious to know if any studies have been done on internet communications that take pre-existing relationships into account -- I tend to assume that my friends are going to be better at picking up on tone than people I don't know, and I phrase my emails/posts accordingly. A post here, where I assume most people are familiar with my verbal patterns, is going to be phrased differently than a post on an LJ community where I mostly lurk. And so on.)
[eta: Oh hey! The guy who did this study is the same guy who did the "Stupid People Don't Know They're Stupid" study way back when!]
Ms. Dinoire described how she awoke to discover her horrible disfigurement after her black Labrador chewed off the lower part of her face while she was unconscious from taking sleeping pills
Was the dog trying to wake her? Did he think she was meat?
Although, my cat does bite me while I sleep-- so reading that she had taken sleeping pills does help me be less scared that my cat will mutilate me while I am sleeping,
Strega, the tone reads to me like the what ifs are new what ifs, as opposed to common currency in a not-small genre.
And, okay, the opening sentence "What if ET isn't cute?" just made me sprain my eyes.
Also her "this is not science fiction" made me roll my eyes too. She's making stuff up. It is science fiction the minute an alien appears in her pictures, if not sooner. There can be science in science fiction, after all.
How freaking weird:
Hollywood star Minnie Driver and British comedian Eddie Izzard will play the husband and wife lead roles in a new US drama called Lowlife. The show - produced by the creators of surgical drama Nip/Tuck, sees Oscar-nominee Driver and Izzard as Dahlia and Wayne, a couple of traveling con-artists on a splurge through America. FX Networks president John Landgraf says, "It's a very complicated marriage, and both characters are really strong, so we needed two actors who are perfectly matched up and can hold their own." Production is due to start in early March.
Also, "Grandpa Munster" (Al Lewis) has died at age 95.
But the question is, do they share clothes???
There's a great blog entry about the Muslim cartoon controversy, and where it might stem from. To summarize, the Saudis were starting to get flack in the Muslim countries because their lack of planning caused yet another stampede at this year's hajj that killed 350 people. They needed to wag the dog, so they started complaining in the press over the cartoons that were originally published back in September with no controversy whatsoever. The situation was then inflamed when right-wing European papers republished the cartoons.
"Grandpa Munster" (Al Lewis) has died at age 95.
The weird thing is that his family claims he was born in 1923, which would make him 83. My favorite part of the obituary I read was this:
A year later, he was back offering his recollections of a seminal New York punk band, the Ramones, on the DVD "Ramones Raw."
FWIW, No Depictions of Muhammad was covered in the most intro of J-school classes. The flames may have been fanned, but it's hard to imagine that the editor/publisher didn't mean for them to be.
OMG, speaking of blashpemy, one of the guys at the party I was at last night was wearing this t-shit:
On the front it said "The Devil is as Ugly as Sin" with this big hideous charicature done like those spray-paint shirts you see at state fairs and stuff.
On the back: a big cross, and the words "'Cause Jesus Beats Him with a Stick."
