When we talk about information categorization, we assume that our coarse categories have no impact on the people who deal with them. People need to adapt to the atrocious indexing that we do, right? If a category is wrong, it’ll be adapted, right?

But the thing is that if you believe Elliot Aronson’s arguments in “Social Animal,” you have to believe that our early categorizations play a significant role in how people relate to the material, as they are more likely to reinterpret current information to fit their early mental models than to adjust their early categories.

What does this mean for coarse categorization that is implied to evolve? How does Yahoo!s listing of categories shape the way we think about web information?

It’s graduation season. Every year i think all of these wonderful thoughts about graduations – fun robes, academia in the spring time, joy and glory and happiness. And then i remember that i *despise* graduations, because they also mean families running around stressed about participating in a massive activity that never lives up to anyone’s expectations. Magnify that by really horrid student speeches about embracing the future or dreadful politicians campaigning masked as commencement speaking and you have a recipe for my irritation. Needless to say, i was a cranky graduation attendee this evening and luckily my brother sympathized.

What made this graduation special was that RIT still doesn’t seem to understand that the majority figure in statistics is not always the most interesting. Three years ago, RIT proudly printed t-shirts which stated that 92% of RIT guys stop sexual advances when they’re asked. At graduation, the president proudly announced that 67% of RIT students believe that racial diversity is a good thing for RIT. Does the idea that 8% of the campus population are self-described rapists and 33% are racists not disturb the administration?

Of course, there were many other aggrevating parts of the graduation process, but this… this topped the cake.