Monday, November 27, 2006
The Bungler Hypothesis
News reports now state that the British police have found traces on polonium 210 at six locations where Litvinenko had been in the hours or days before his death. Does this evidence suggest, not that L committed suicide, but that he himself was wittingly carrying polonium 210 for some reason and somehow mishandled this substance and thereby unwittingly killed himself? If traces of polonium 210 were left by L's movements over a period of days rather than hours, this may strengthen the hypothesis that L was a witting rather than an unwitting carrier of the substance.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
New York Times, most probably Wall Street Journal and other leading newspapers as well have been using quite sophisticated information graphics to present information to readers in investigation-related cases. These visual displays often are masterfully compiled and designed. Yet, it is an open question how much average reader's opinion is formed from these displays. I suspect that photos play bigger role than diagrams. Recently, in connection with the "Plame Affair", there were elaborate graphics in NYT. But there was also a very impressive James Bond style photo of Mrs and Mr Wilson (the original was in 'The Economist' magazine, I think)-she wearing dark glasses and J.Kennedy-style coat, he as a cabrio car driver.
The "Russian spy" recently arrested in Canada carried hand-written notes with facts of Canadian history with him. Russian news agency is making fun of it, reporting of "a spy with cheat sheets on Canadian history" -- pushing the case towards the image of absurdly incompetent spy-catchers.
When the Central Park "wilding" case came back into the news a year or two ago, the NYTimes used an interesting visual display of the movements of the alleged wilding rapist and of the various attacks that took place in NYCity's Central Park that night.
P.S. I am not as convinced as some other people are that the defendant who was ultimately exonerated was not guilty of any of the attacks that took place in the Park on the night in question. But that's another story, and my recollection of that case is now very fuzzy.
okay, I have just stumbled upon your blog. I am a published writer and instructor in writing - I am a little obsessed by form and am fascinated by the form you present - I am convinced that information graphics has a far wider cultural reach -
keep me in-formed.
There is quite a lot of interest in teaching "visual literacy" or "media literacy" recently, in different countries- motivated by the global rise of audio-visual information. This teaching is meant to complement the traditional writing instruction.
A number of open issues, though:
1) Are visuals really stronger than text? NYT has article on how visual imagery formed perceptions of the Vietnam War. But there were strong verbal imagery as well: "Westmoreland was standing in the ruins and saying everything was great." http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/28/opinion/28johnson.html
Look at modern art - title of the work often carries very important role--often defines the work.
What is the role of the verbal comment a lawyer supplies in trial to his/her visual displays?
2) Lawyers generally are very fluent writers. What if the mechanisms of visual information production are different from text composition? Would taking a visual literacy course damage your writing skills?
3) I hypothesize that for some people (like myself) study of visual composition skills may yield little immediate improvement in these skills yet-paradoxically-help open up person's writing skills.
"standing in the ruins and saying everything was great."
This seems to employ certain metric or other poetic structure--that is not easy to translate from language to language
There is ineffective visual design. There is effective visual design. I do not know how to create good visual design. But I am quite convined that visual displays, properly done, make it easier for people to remember (and then use, modify, etc.) complex argument from and about evidence. See, e.g., my paper "Picturing Inference" at http://tillers.net/pictures/picturing.html
Gerard,
Come to the conference. I'm not an expert in visual design. But some of the people who are coming to the conference are experts in visual design; and many of them use graphs of one kind or another and know a fair amount about logic. The conference is an attempt to marry logic (primarily logics of uncertainty) with persuasion, or rhetoric, and visualization. I don't know if the marriage will bear fruit. But it should be interesting to witness the affair.
Peter
Post a Comment