Inception Script Sketch

from an interview with Christopher Nolan by his brother

via In Contention

Galileo's Moon Drawings

Not clear whether he sketched them, or whether they were just illustrations he included in a folio of his other astronomical work.

"In either case, it is rather beautiful. But it didn’t seem that way to many people at the time. It was a shock and an affront to suggest that God’s heavenly objects were not perfect but pocked and roughened with craters and protuberances like some ordinary rock of the earthly realm. This would all come to a head when Galileo visited the pope in 1616 …"

via Tom Christensen

Winter Solstice Eclipse tonight

The full moon will pass through Earth's shadow, changing from gray to a rusty, red color.

Why red? NASA describes it this way:

A quick trip to the Moon provides the answer: Imagine yourself standing on a dusty lunar plain looking up at the sky. Overhead hangs Earth, nightside down, completely hiding the sun behind it. The eclipse is underway. You might expect Earth seen in this way to be utterly dark, but it's not. The rim of the planet is on fire! As you scan your eye around Earth's circumference, you're seeing every sunrise and every sunset in the world, all of them, all at once. This incredible light beams into the heart of Earth's shadow, filling it with a coppery glow and transforming the Moon into a great red orb.

If you're not much for staring at the sky, at least glance up once: early Tuesday morning at 12:17 a.m. That's when the eclipse will be most striking, according to astronomers.

Holiday Message from Ricky Gervais

Why I'm an athiest.

via WSJ

Space Program in One Tufte-Friendly Chart

Click on the image to see the whole thing.

via National Geographic

Facebook Connections

From the Facebook Blog

Prevention may not be a good way to reduce overall health care costs

Paper's conclusion: Although effective obesity prevention leads to a decrease in costs of obesity-related diseases, this decrease is offset by cost increases due to diseases unrelated to obesity in life-years gained. Obesity prevention may be an important and cost-effective way of improving public health, but it is not a cure for increasing health expenditures.

Machine with Roller Chain - Arthur Ganson

No comment necessary -- this is just great all by itself.

Machine with Concrete - Arthur Ganson

A machine waiting to be used as a metaphor for something.

15 year old Tells Establishment to Stick-it.

I like this because it reminds me how articulate young people can be, and resets the bar where it should be.

Quote of the day -- Anias Nin

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

via The Positivity Blog

How to give bad news after a job interview

Good advice on giving appropriate information in a kind way after an interview.

via Nathan Marz.

Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats - ...

Letter from Gandhi to Hitler

While the letter itself is very moving, I'm more interested in the comment that "this particular letter never reaches Hitler due to an intervention by the British government."

via Letters of Note

Paul Graham on Hackers

"Give hackers an inch and they'll take you a mile."

From Paul Graham's column on tablets.

Rewrite

Another thing we learned was that…
Another thing we learned was…
We also learned that…
We also learned…
We learned…

From 37Signals

Friedman Op-Ed

Interesting column from Thomas Friedman about the loss of American leverage due to our reliance on foreign oil and the ownership of our debt by China.

New York City

Remote control plane flies over Brooklyn and Statue of Liberty.

Contrail Shadow

At first I couldn't figure out how the sun was casting a shadow from the contrail up to the cirrus clouds above it. The angle just seemed wrong. Then I realized that the contrail was above the cirrus clouds, but the clouds were almost transparent so the contrail was clearly visible above it.

3D Video Capture with Kinect

It looks like the beginning of Minority Report where Tom Cruise is drugged up and looking at the 3D image of his son extrapolated from the home movie.

Great post by Seth Godin -- What's the Hard Part?

Don't tell me you have a good heart but don't want to raise money. That's the hard part.

From Seth Godin's blog.

Authors@Google: Garry Kasparov

Safari imitates Just So Stories

From National Geographic photo essay.



From Just So Stories "The Elephant's Child" by Rudyard Kipling.

Bauhaus Chess Set

Chess set made out of pure awesome.

George Michael - Freedom! '90

It's worth watching this video again to see how much of my aesthetic was shaped by the supermodels in ascendency in the 80's. According to Wikipedia, "[t]he song also alludes to the struggles of being a closeted homosexual man, and acted as a catalyst to his effort to end his publishing contract with Sony Music. As if to prove the song's sentiment, Michael refused to appear in the video, directed by David Fincher, and instead recruited supermodels Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Tatjana Patitz, and Cindy Crawford to Lip sync. "

Make Guitar Picks from Credit Cards

via Boing Boing.

Quotes of the day: Max Frisch and Niels Bohr via Neil Postman

Taken from The End of Education by Neil Postman:

Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we do not experience it. -- Max Frisch

The opposite of a correct statement is an incorrect statement, but the opposite of a profound truth is another profound truth. -- Niels Bohr

1 Up

No reason to repost this except that it makes me happy.

Feynman 'Fun to Imagine' 4: Magnets (and 'Why?' questions...)

Q: Why do magnets repel each other?
A: I can't tell you.

How Software Companies Die by Orson Scott Card

Running a good software company is like being a beekeeper.

Black Friday Coupon

via BoingBoing

Battle Hymn of the Republic

Essay via The Atlantic on the history of the hymn, including alternate lyrics from the labor movement entitled Solidarity Forever.

The Battle Hymn of the Republic
by Julia Ward Howe

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on."

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.


Lyrics to Solidarity Forever:

When the Union's inspiration
Through the worker's blood shall run,
There can be no power greater
Anywhere beneath the sun,
Yet what force on earth is weaker
Than the feeble strength of one?
But the Union makes us strong.
Chorus:
|: Solidarity forever! :|
Solidarity forever!
For the Union makes us strong.
2. Is there aught we hold in common
With the greedy parasite
Who would lash us into serfdom
And would crush us with his might?
Is there anything left for us
But to organize and fight?
For the Union makes us strong.
Chorus:

3. It is we who plowed the prairies;
Built the cities where they trade,
Dug the mines and built the workshops;
Endless miles of railroad laid.
Now we stand, outcast and starving,
'Mid the wonders we have made;
But the Union makes us strong.
Chorus:

4. All the world that's owned by idle drones,
Is ours and ours alone.
We have laid the wide foundations;
Built it skywards, stone by stone.
It is ours, and not to slave in,
But to master and to own,
While the Union makes us strong.
Chorus:
5. They have taken untold millions
That they never toiled to earn.
But without our brain and muscle
Not a single wheel can turn.
We can break their haughty power;
Gain our freedom, when we learn
That the Union makes us strong.
Chorus:

6. In our hands is placed a pot
Greater than their hoarded gold;
Greater than the might of armies,
Magnified a thousand fold.
We can bring to birth the new world
From the ashes of the old,
For the Union makes us strong.
Chorus:

Michael Sandel: The lost art of democratic debate | Video on TED.com

Michael Sandel: The lost art of democratic debate | Video on TED.com


"If we had thought that the rules of the sports we care about are merely arbitrary, rather than designed to call forth the virtues and the excellences that we think are worthy of admiring, we wouldn't care about the outcome of the game."

The McGurk Effect - Horizon Is Seeing Believing?

We are poor little lambs, who have lost our way . . . .

Garry Kasparov: The Last Revolutionary Technology Was The Apple II

Garry Kasparov talks about innovation and other topics. My favorite quote:

Advice to the Obama Administration

“You should stop printing money because that insults my intelligence. Using a lot of money to save something beyond rescue — the inefficient and corrupt banking and investment system — instead of investing in real stimulus was a bad decision, long term, mid term, and maybe even short term.”

Instead Kasparov says to “focus on the roots of the crisis — lack of technological innovation.” He said despite all the economic stimulus, unemployment in the U.S. still remains high, and that only restoring the technological lead of the country would help solve its woes.

via Forbes.

Anniversary of the Bomb

U.S. Navy Vice Admiral William H. P. Blandy, his wife, and Rear Admiral Frank J. Lowry cut a cake made in the shape of a mushroom cloud at a reception for Operation Crossroads, November 6, 1946.

via BoingBoing

Jon Stewart's speech at the Rally For Sanity.

"These cars — that’s a school teacher who thinks taxes are too high…there’s a mom with two kids who can’t think about anything else…another car, the lady’s in the NRA. She loves Oprah…An investment banker, gay, also likes Oprah…a Latino carpenter…a fundamentalist vacuum salesman…a Mormon Jay Z fan…But this is us. Everyone of the cars that you see is filled with individuals of strong belief and principles they hold dear — often principles and beliefs in direct opposition to their fellow travelers.

And yet these millions of cars must somehow find a way to squeeze one by one into a mile-long, 30-foot wide tunnel carved underneath a mighty river…And they do it. Concession by concession. You go. Then I’ll go. You go, then I’ll go. You go, then I’ll go — oh my god, is that an NRA sticker on your car, an Obama sticker on your car? Well, that’s OK. You go and then I’ll go…”Sure, at some point there will be a selfish jerk who zips up the shoulder and cuts in at the last minute. But that individual is rare and he is scorned, and he is not hired as an analyst.

Because we know instinctively as a people that if we are to get through the darkness and back into the light we have to work together and the truth is, there will always be darkness. And sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t the promised land. Sometimes it’s just New Jersey. But we do it anyway, together.

If you want to know why I’m here and what I want from you I can only assure you this: you have already given it to me. You’re presence was what I wanted. Sanity will always be and has always been in the eye of the beholder. To see you here today and the kind of people that you are has restored mine. Thank you.”

Quote about excellence

The lessons are straightforward: There is no path to excellence at anything except the deliberate, purposeful formation of daily habits that make the specific form of excellence possible. There are no shortcuts, and mere talent is not enough.

- Edwin J. Delattre

Quote about preparation

The only adequate preparation for tomorrow is the right use of today.

Archbishop Josiah Fearon
Diocese of Kaduna Nigeria

Portrait of the Artist at a Prematurely Old Man

It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every
Bachelor of Arts
That all sin is divided into two parts.
One kind of sin is called a sin of commission, and that is very
important,
And it is what you are doing when you are doing something
you ortant,
And the other kind of sin is just the opposite and is called a sin
of omission and is equally bad in the eyes of all right-
thinking people, from Billy Sunday to Buddha,
And it consists of not having done something you shudda.
I might as well give you my opinion of these two kinds of sin
as long as, in a way, against each other we are pitting them,
And that is, don't bother your head about sins of commission
because however sinful, they must at least be fun or else you
wouldn't be committing them.
It is the sin of omission, the second kind of sin,
That lays eggs under your skin.
The way you get really painfully bitten
Is by the insurance you haven't taken out and the checks you
haven't added up the stubs of and the appointments you
haven't kept and the bills you haven't paid and the letters
you haven't written.
Also, about sins of omission there is one particularly painful
lack of beauty.
Namely, it isn't as though it had been a riotous red letter day
or night every time you neglected to do your duty;
You didnít get a wicked forbidden thrill
Every time you let a policy lapse or forgot to pay a bill;
You didn't slap the lads in the tavern on the back and loudly
cry Whee,
Let's all fail to write just one more letter before we go home,
and this round of unwritten letters is on me.
No, you never get any fun
Out of the things you haven't done,
But they are the things that I do not like to be amid,
Because the suitable things you didn't do give you a lot more
trouble than the unsuitable things you did.
The moral is that it is probably better not to sin at all, but if
some kind of sin you must be pursuing,
Well, remember to do it by doing rather than by not doing.

Ogden Nash

Quote of the Day

That's so wrong it's not even wrong.


-- Brian Dunning from an episode about "Boosting Your Immune System"

Holland Hall Chooses New Head of School

John D. Marshall

Willpower not necessarily a finite resource

Summary:

Pull your socks up.

Abstract:

Much recent research suggests that willpower—the capacity to exert
self-control—is a limited resource that is depleted after exertion. We
propose that whether depletion takes place or not depends on a person's
belief about whether willpower is a limited resource. Study 1 found that
individual differences in lay theories about willpower moderate
ego-depletion effects: People who viewed the capacity for self-control as
not limited did not show diminished self-control after a depleting
experience. Study 2 replicated the effect, manipulating lay theories about
willpower. Study 3 addressed questions about the mechanism underlying the
effect. Study 4, a longitudinal field study, found that theories about
willpower predict change in eating behavior, procrastination, and
self-regulated goal striving in depleting circumstances. Taken together,
the findings suggest that reduced self-control after a depleting task or
during demanding periods may reflect people's beliefs about the
availability of willpower rather than true resource depletion.

http://www.stanford.edu/~gwalton/home/Publications_files/Job,%20Dweck,%20%26%20Walton,%202010.pdf

Mission Accomplished

Amen. Normally I don't cross post xkcd.com cartoons, because everyone I like should read them, but this one was too good not to pass along.

Thanks, xkcd.

Low Cost Robot Gripper Replaces Human Hand and Fingers

Allows grasping and manipulating irregularly or unpredictably shaped objects using everyday ground coffee and a latex party balloon.

Brilliant hack.

via Kurtzweil Blog.

Nordstrom's Employee Handbook

Welcome to Nordstrom

We're glad to have you with our Company. Our number one goal is to provide outstanding customer service. Set both your personal and professional goals high. We have great confidence in your ability to achieve them.

Nordstrom Rules: Rule #1: Use best judgment in all situations. There will be no additional rules.

Please feel free to ask your department manager, store manager, or division general manager any question at any time.

75 words. Hard to beat that.

via Wikipedia.

I (Heart) Google

"NASA Ames Director Simon Worden revealed that NASA Ames has 'just started a project with DARPA called the Hundred Year Starship,' with $1 million funding from DARPA and $100K from NASA. Worden said 'Larry [Page] asked me a couple weeks ago how much it would cost to send people one way to Mars and I told him $10 billion, and his response was, "Can you get it down to 1 or 2 billion?"'"

Via slashdot.


I don't care what else Google does if they can jump start this.

Bees solve Traveling Salesman problem (en route!)

As bees visit flowers to collect nectar and pollen they discover other flowers en route in the wrong order. But they still manage to quickly learn and fly the optimally shortest path between flowers.

via Slashdot.

Quote from The New Republic

From Leon Wieseltier's column "Ghosts" in the 10/28/2010 issue of The New Republic.

For there is honor in partisanship, when the differences are philosophical; and for the purpose of social change, politics is all we have. Faction is not only a reality, it is also a calling. . . . The memory of courage and wisdom covers [the White House's] walls. Its past is its gift. Behind the Beltway, there is Washington. The Beltway is a venal place, but the streets of Washington are paved with the Constitution, the Constitution is the mortar between every brick of every building, it is in the air and in the light, you can find it even in a brandy glass, and it can get you through the day.

In honor of Wall Street, the movie

How to Tell You're Losing Your Integrity

Thank You, Benoît Mandelbrot

The length of a coastline depends on the length of the measuring stick.

Article on Procrastionation from New Yorker

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/10/11/101011crbo_books_surowiecki?currentPage=all

'Leaves of Grass': Edward Norton's Tribute to Pot and Walt Whitman - Benjamin Mercer - Culture - The Atlantic

Leaves of Grass Written by Tim Blake Nelson

Science proves that you can compare apples and oranges - Boing Boing

http://m.boingboing.net/2010/10/14/science-proves-that.html

Four Reasons to Tithe

1. It is a joy -- A celebration the bounty that we have received.

2. It is a privilege -- An opportunity to share what has been so generously given to us.

3. It is an act of trust -- An affirmation of the belief that the gift will be put to good use without knowing the details.

4. It is a blessing -- A confirmation that the true gift is often to the giver.

Fr. Tom Furrer Sunday, October 9, 2010

Old School Lunar Lander

Play here.

Water Droplet Bouncing on a Superhydrophobic Carbon Nanotube Array

Trust me on this one.

Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition

Don't talk to all your employees, all your users or all your prospects the same way, because they're not the same.

The Dreyfus model of skill acquisition posits that there are five stages people go through:

1. Novice
--wants to be given a manual, told what to do, with no decisions possible

2. Advanced beginner
--needs a bit of freedom, but is unable to quickly describe a hierarchy of which parts are more important than others

3. Competent
--wants the ability to make plans, create routines and choose among activities

4. Proficient
--the more freedom you offer, the more you expect, the more you'll get

5. Expert
--writes the manual, doesn't follow it.

If you treat an expert like a novice, you'll fail.

From Seth Godin

The Fundamentals of Game Design

Starting out creating an interactive experience, of any sort really, can be rather daunting. In this tutorial, we’ll run through the basic components of a game, so we can get a handle on what the next steps are when you make the jump from the training tutorials to your own projects.

Often people have trouble when conceptualizing a game. The idea, after all, is often the easy part. It’s actually making it, and figuring out where to start, that is the hard part.

A friendly warning, though! Just like writers have different ways of working, and some composers write music in their head and others at an instrument, different game designers are going to have different ways of working. Some work better “in the code” and others like doing everything on paper beforehand. Some think in terms of story and narrative, and others are systems designers first and foremost. So this tutorial may actually run a bit against the grain for you, depending on your natural temperament.

In what follows, I am going to use the language of games, but really, every piece of advice in this article applies equally if you are designing any sort of interactive project whatsoever. So just because I say “game” in what follows doesn’t mean this article won’t be useful to you when you start making a classroom experience or a chat room or some other application.

Pope Says Technology Causes Confusion Between Reality and Fiction

Pope Benedict XVI has warned that people are in danger of being unable to discern reality from fiction because of new technologies, and not old books. "New technologies and the progress they bring can make it impossible to distinguish truth from illusion and can lead to confusion between reality and virtual reality. The image can also become independent from reality, it can give birth to a virtual world, with various consequences -- above all the risk of indifference towards real life," he said.

From Slashdot

Epic Fail of the Bechdel Test

The test, named after 80s lesbian cartoonist Alison Bechdel, asks three questions:

1. Are there two or more women in it that have names?
2. Do they talk to each other?
3. Do they talk to each other about something other than a man?

Just about every movie I like fails this very reasonable test. I am clearly a sexist pig.

I Heart Carmex

There have been "improvements" to the packaging which allow less material to enclose more Carmex. Fair enough, but I do like the old glass containers better.

Ninth Circuit Approves Warrantless Searches?

If this is true, it's certainly disconcerting.

Seth's Blog: Beware the Nile perch

A blog post about how depending on a temporary fix can cause long-term problems.

It's going to get worse

Douglas Coupland's guide to the future. Spoiler -- it's not pretty.

RSA Animate - 21st century enlightenment

Clark's Law

Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. -- Clark's Law.

Adapted from Clarke's Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Ballmer does not get full bonus

Steve Ballmer reportedly didn't qualify for his full bonus this year, based on the failure of the Kin mobile phone and platform. I know someone who worked on this phone, so this feels very relevant to me somehow.

Body Part Size Proportional to Brain Volume For Control

This picture shows how the human body would look if the size of the body parts were proportional to the percent of the brain dedicated to their control. I realize I need a picture of a unicorn or a rainbow afterwards to clear your palate. Sorry about that.

Thomas Malone on collective intelligence

Interesting idea: “that features of the group can be more important than features of the individuals that make up the group, for determining outcomes.” Not surprisingly, the collective intelligence of a group correlates with the number of women in the group.

How rich are you?

This site will tell you, based on your annual income, where you stand compared to everyone else.

Gödel, Escher, Bach - Lecture 1: Part 1 of 7

I've tried to read this book several times -- if I'd only known that I could just watch it on Youtube, it would have saved me plenty of angst. Maybe I'll try again after watching the video. Maybe.

New House for Steve Jobs

I wish I were confident that if I were a multi-billionaire, that I would have the restraint that Jobs has. I'm sure it will be absolutely beautiful. Say what you like about the guy, he has good taste.

Thanks, BoingBoing, for the link.

Building a Better America – One Wealth Quintile at a Time

Actual v. Estimated Wealth Distribution in America

Depressing footnote: Because of their small percentage share of total wealth, both the “4th 20%” value (0.2%) and the “Bottom 20%” value (0.1%) are not visible in the “Actual” distribution.

Also cited and discussed here in Slate.com.

Another great quote about patience from Leonardo Da Vinci

“Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will be powerless to vex your mind.”
Leonardo Da Vinci from the previously quoted blog post on patience.

Gwyneth Paltrow & Huey Lewis - Cruisin'

Once you get over the fact that they're supposed to be father and daughter, it's a great duet. She's got pipes, I'm just saying . . . .

How to Minimize Politics in Your Company

It can be counterintuitive.

A CEO creates politics by encouraging and sometimes incenting political behavior—often accidentally. For a very simple example, let’s consider executive compensation. As CEO, senior employees will come to you from time to time and ask for an increase in compensation. They may suggest that you are paying them far less than their current market value. They may even have a competitive offer in hand. Faced with this confrontation, if the request is reasonable, you might investigate the situation. You might even give the employee a raise. This may sound innocent, but you have just created a strong incentive for political behavior.

Specifically, you will be rewarding behavior that has nothing to do with advancing your business. The employee will earn a raise by asking for one rather than you automatically rewarding them for outstanding performance. Why is this bad? Let me count the ways:

1. The other ambitious members of your staff will immediately agitate for raises as well. Note that neither this campaign nor the prior one need be correlated with actual performance. You will now spend time dealing with the political issues rather than actual performance issues. Importantly, if you have a competent board, you will not be able to give them all out-of-cycle raises, so your company executive raises will occur on a first-come, first-serve basis.

2. The less aggressive (but perhaps more competent) members of your team will be denied off-cycle raises simply by being apolitical.

3. The object lesson for your staff and the company will be the squeaky wheel gets the grease and the political employee gets the raise. Get ready for a whole lot of squeaky wheels.

Aggressive Quadrotor Part II

Paging Skynet . . . .

Carrie Fisher

Thanks, Merlin Mann.

[1983] Gottlieb Mad Planets Arcade

I spent way too much time on this Senior Year.

Astronauts Fingernails Fall Off After EVA

Apparently on account of damage from the gloves they wear. I don't care -- I'd still totally do it.

Thought of the day from Ben Franklin

“He that can have patience, can have what he will.”
Benjamin Franklin
Other excellent quotes on patience.

Trolly Problem and Complications Thereon

The classic trolley problem, like most other problems, can be complicated by race and politics.

Abraham Lincoln's Letter to his Son's Teacher

He will have to learn, I know,
that all men are not just,
all men are not true.
But teach him also that
for every scoundrel there is a hero;
that for every selfish Politician,
there is a dedicated leader...
Teach him for every enemy there is a
friend,

Steer him away from envy,
if you can,
teach him the secret of
quiet laughter.

Let him learn early that
the bullies are the easiest to lick... Teach him, if you can,
the wonder of books...
But also give him quiet time
to ponder the eternal mystery of birds in the sky,
bees in the sun,
and the flowers on a green hillside.

In the school teach him
it is far honourable to fail
than to cheat...
Teach him to have faith
in his own ideas,
even if everyone tells him
they are wrong...
Teach him to be gentle
with gentle people,
and tough with the tough.

Try to give my son
the strength not to follow the crowd
when everyone is getting on the band wagon...
Teach him to listen to all men...
but teach him also to filter
all he hears on a screen of truth,
and take only the good
that comes through.

Teach him if you can,
how to laugh when he is sad...
Teach him there is no shame in tears,
Teach him to scoff at cynics
and to beware of too much sweetness...
Teach him to sell his brawn
and brain to the highest bidders
but never to put a price-tag
on his heart and soul.

Teach him to close his ears
to a howling mob
and to stand and fight
if he thinks he's right.
Treat him gently,
but do not cuddle him,
because only the test
of fire makes fine steel.

Let him have the courage
to be impatient...
let him have the patience to be brave.
Teach him always
to have sublime faith in himself,
because then he will have
sublime faith in mankind.

This is a big order,
but see what you can do...
He is such a fine fellow,
my son!

Abraham Lincoln

Thought about marketing

When you buy something cheap and bad, the best you’re going to feel about it is when you buy it. When you buy something expensive and good, the worst you’re going to feel about it is when you buy it.

From an article about Greplin.

Quote of the day

Bigotry and prejudice are not sources of power, they are displays of power.

Doctor Jay via TA-NEHISI COATES

Luck : A Compilation of Close Calls

How to Climb to the top of a radio Transmission Tower

This made my palms sweat when I watched it.

Quote of the day

If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold.

From Metafilter.

Thank You, C.S. Lewis

From The Screwtape Letters via Freakonomics blog.

We teach them not to notice the different senses of the possessive pronoun—the finely graded differences that run from “my boots” through “my dog”, “my servant”, “my wife”, “my father”, “my master” and “my country”, to “my God”. They can be taught to reduce all these senses to that of “my boots,” the “my” of ownership.

Even in the nursery a child can be taught to mean by “my Teddy-bear” not the old imagined recipient of affection to whom it stands in a special relation (for that is what the Enemy will teach them to mean if we are not careful) but “the bear I can pull to pieces if I like.” And at the other end of the scale, we have taught men to say “My God” in a sense not really very different from “My boots”, meaning “The God on whom I have a claim for my distinguished services and whom I exploit from the pulpit—the God I have done a corner in.” And all the time the joke is that the word “Mine” in its fully possessive sense cannot be uttered by a human being about anything. In the long run either Our Father or the Enemy will say “Mine” of each thing that exists, and especially of each man. They will find out in the end, never fear, to whom their time, their souls, and their bodies really belong—certainly not to them, whatever happens.

Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

Why I like Merlin Mann

He's smart as hell and goes right at it, whatever it happens to be (in this case the above photo). I'll recommend his book wholeheartedly even though it's not even available for pre-order. Also, watch this video if you haven't yet.

The Great Lie - Culture - The Atlantic

The Great Lie - Culture - The Atlantic

A powerful poem about slavery and its living legacy.

With a capital T and that rhymes with P . . . .

Scott Adams (Dilbert) suggests (for a good reason) that pool should be taught in school.

Zagats awards Five Guys best burger award

Excellent fries, also. Thanks, Zagats.

Hardest Hangman Word

Jazz.

Useful if you ever need to take down an elementary school kid who's getting too big for his britches.

Thank you, Mark Twain

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

Why Does Time Seem to Slow Down in Crisis?

NPR says that it's because you actually remember all the details.

Population by Longitude and Latitude

I wish I'd thought of this.

Virtual Keyboard

I try to stay away from ThinkGeek for exactly this reason.

More on the dangers of success

Further to the Fred Brooks quote from a few weeks ago, this one from Pixar's Ed Catmull: "Success hides problems."

When I was growing up, my mom would say to me that I should go over the problems I got *right* as well as the ones I got wrong, because if it's wrong, I'll try to fix it, but if it's right, I might have problems I didn't see at first.

Husky Short Field Landing and Take-off

I didn't want to get my pilot's license until now.

This answers the question once and for all

Horseracing to hot dog-eating, every single sport on earth shares three fundamental characteristics: people compete at it, computers can't do it, and aesthetics don't count. Absent any one of these criteria, and it is no sport—no matter what the NCAA and IOC try to sell you.

From The Atlantic "Why Cheerleading Isn't a Sport, but Croquet is."

Learn Python the Hard Way

Why not? If I get tired of doing Project Euler problems in Java, I could switch over to Python.

Great Idea or Great Execution? Which is the key to success?

Top rated answers:
1. Both
2. Yes
3. Two sides of the same coin.

Keep those telomeres long

Dr. Bill Andrews is hoping to extend the human lifespan by lengthening telomeres, a marker for aging.

Roches - Losing True - McCarter Theatre, Princeton 4-14-90

I love The Roches. Always will. Full stop.

Lyrics from metrolyrics.com

I'm losin' you
fading from view

aging and aching and raging and faking I'm

losin' you
losin' true

last time I saw you I wanted to paw you
not to destroy you now I just annoy you I'm

losin' to
accusin' you

when I first met you I failed to get you
now that I let you come through I forget who I'm

losin' out
cruisin' about

the night of shining armor doesn't do her any favors

make no mistake when mystiquing a make I'm

losin' you
choosin' to

Peter Norvig on Being Wrong

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/thewrongstuff/archive/2010/08/03/error-message-google-research-director-peter-norvig-on-being-wrong.aspx

Brilliant Phtotoshopped Historical/Modern photographs

From a lovely Russian blog by Sergey Larenkov.

Quote from Fred Brooks

Fred Brooks wrote The Mythical Man-Month, and was recently interviewed by Wired.

Brooks: You can learn more from failure than success. In failure you’re forced to find out what part did not work. But in success you can believe everything you did was great, when in fact some parts may not have worked at all. Failure forces you to face reality.

Article on Divorce

This is a link to an article by David Code, with some thoughtful insights on why destructive dynamics can develop in relationships.

A tragedy in four panels

If Calvin took Ritalin.

Utensil Bic pen caps

Just look at them.

How to earn the right to be heard

[H]ere's a quick list of a few ways to earn that right:

Be informed
Be rational
Pay your dues
Have a platform where a lot of people can hear you
Be an impacted constituent, not a gadfly
Represent a tribe of people with similar concerns
You've been right before
You're not anonymous
You have a previous relationship and permission to interrupt
Listening to you earns something of value

From Seth Godin

Envy

“Envy is the art of counting the other fellow’s blessings instead of your own.”
Harold Coffin

Microsoft Street Slide View

Tamar Gendler discusses her work

Yale Class of 1987: Tamar Gendler discusses her work on bloggingheads....: "      Tamar Gendler was recently on a blog/tv broadcast discussing some of her work.

Interesting Labor Statistic from Robert Reich

52,000 GM hourly workers remain in the United States – down from 468,000 in 1970.

From Robert Reich's blog article, The Great Decoupling of corporate profits from jobs.

Marathon Week 2

Week 2: so far, so good, althought I've already rearranged a few days. I try not to get all rigid about the workouts midweek because they seem fairly interchangable. M -- 3 mile run instead of resting, T -- 2.5 mile walk. W- off. If I do 3 mi runs on Th & Fri, I'll be back on schedule.

I was worried about the six-miler last Saturday, but it ended up being less of a problem than I had feared, esp. sore ankles.

Interval Arithmetic

According to one of its proponents, it's a big improvement.

Rules for Conversations -- active listening

From Scott Adams, author of the Dilbert comic strip.

1. The more dangerous or inappropriate the conversation, the more interesting it is.

2. Conversations about how people have or will interact are interesting, and conversations about objects are dull.

Annie Hall Marshall McLuhan Scene (short edit) Woody Allen

Happy Birthday, Marshall McLuhan.

Battle of intra-office notes

I care about fonts, but not as much as some people.

The problem with A/B Testing

Blog post from Jeff Atwood about how marketing studies don't create campaigns, they can only fine tune them. Excellent use of a movie reference to "Groundhog Day," as a way to make this point. Sample quote:

That's the problem with A/B testing. It's empty. It has no feeling, no empathy, and at worst, it's dishonest. As my friend Nathan Bowers said:

A/B testing is like sandpaper. You can use it to smooth out details, but you can't actually create anything with it.

Great thought experiment from For the Win

Cory Doctorow's latest work, For the Win, is not just for teenagers. Here's an example of the kind of thought experiment he presents:

You're in a strange town, or a strange part of town. A little disoriented already, that's key. Maybe it's just a strange time to be out, first thing in the morning in the business district, or very late at night in clubland, or the middle of the day in the suburbs, and no one else is around.

A stranger approaches you. He's well-dressed, smiling. His body-language says, *I am a friend, and I'm slightly out of place, too.* He's holding something. It's a pane of glass, large, fragile, the size of a road atlas or a Monopoly board. He's struggling with it. It's heavy? Slippery? As he gets closer, he says, with a note of self-awareness at the absurdity of this all, "Can you please hold this for a second?" He sounds a little desperate too, like he's about to drop it.

You take hold of it. Fragile. Large. Heavy. Very awkward.

And, still smiling, the stranger methodically and quickly plunges his hands into your pockets and begins to transfer your keys, wallet and cash into his own pockets. He never breaks eye-contact in the ten or 15 seconds it takes him to accomplish the task, and then he turns on his heel and walks away (he doesn't run, that's important) very quickly, for a dozen steps, and *then* he breaks into a wind-sprint of a run, powering up like Daffy Duck splitting on Elmer Fudd.

You're still holding onto the pane of glass.

Why are you holding onto that pane of glass?

What else are you going to do with it? Drop it and let it break on the strange pavement? Set it down carefully?

Tell you one thing you're not going to do. You're not going to run with it. Running with a ten kilo slab of sharp-edged glass in your hands is even dumber than taking hold of it in the first place.

Hal Higdon Marathon Training Week 1

We'll see if I can stick with it without getting injured. Based on a better-then-expected (sub 8 min) time in the Petit Road Race, I decided to take a stab at a marathon. Don't know which one I'll do yet, because there are so many weeks and chances to get injured between now and the end of the 18 week program, but it does lead right up to high season for marathons in the late fall. Expect weekly updates from the Hal Higdon program.

Ironic blog post

I suppose that a post about not spending so much time on the internet or connected to mobile devices is a little odd for a blog post, but it is such a good article from the New York Times I couldn't not link to it. Thanks to Lawrence Page for the reference.

The Beauty of Sorting

Quote of the Day

Isaac Asimov:

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'

10cc - I'm Not In Love - making of documentary

Mark Twain Essay

Concerning the Interview:

No one likes to be interviewed, and yet no one likes to say no; for interviewers are courteous and gentle-mannered, even when they come to destroy.

Starlings Swarm

We will pay you $4.00 for One Hour of Your Time

The Classified ad that changed the world.
PTSD Therapy bills not included. Thanks, Stanley Milgram.

Commandments of Management

Excerpted from the NCO Creed.


1. The two basic responsibilities are "accomplish the mission" and "look after my people"
2. I will strive to remain technically and tactically proficient
3. All employees are entitled to outstanding leadership; I will provide that leadership
4. I will be fair and impartial when recommending both rewards and punishment
5. Superiors will have maximum time to accomplish their duties; they will not have to accomplish mine
6. I will exercise initiative by taking appropriate action in the absence of orders
7. I will not compromise my integrity, nor my moral courage

Nice Watches

A little over the top, and I'm scared to look at the prices.

Maybe I don't need to take Chinese After All . . . .

From Stratfor Editor interviewed in Yale's SOM bulletin.

Q: China is described in the book as a paper tiger. Why do you come to this conclusion?

China is 1.3 billion people. According to Chinese government statistics, 600 million of those people have a total household income of $3 a day or less. Another 440 million earn between $3 and $6 a day. What we would call middle class, people with a household income of $20,000 and above, account for only 60 million people in China. That's still comparable to a large country, like France, but it represents less than 5% of the Chinese population. China is an extraordinarily poor country. Most business people travel to that small part of China that contains the tiny middle class. And they extrapolate from that.

You always have to remember that China can't sell electronics or toys to people earning $2 or $3 a day. They have to sell those goods to the advanced industrial world. And if the advanced industrial world isn't buying, China is in tremendous trouble. When the United States or Europe stops consuming as much as they did before, you’re dealing with unemployment in a country where unemployment can yield malnutrition. What we're seeing right now is China introducing a massive security crackdown to try to control a situation of enormous unhappiness in China.

China is also holding extremely large dollar reserves. Japan in 1990 and the United States in 1929 held massive foreign currency reserves, which was a precursor to serious economic dysfunction, because when you are unable to metabolize that much money, there is something wrong in the virtuous cycle of exports, investments, and so on.

I'll leave you with one final figure. If the United States grows at 2.5% a year, China will have to grow at 8.25% a year simply not to fall behind the United States in absolute numbers. The idea that China will catch up to the United States within 10 years is just an arithmetic impossibility. And so China is a case where businessmen have bought into several propositions that were true 10 or 15 years ago, but are not true now. That shows the constant need to reexamine the premises on which you're building your investments.

Heuristics when arguing --

Adam Serwer, writing in the American Prospect -- "It's a good rule of thumb that anyone responding to a criticism by accusing someone else of enforcing 'political correctness' is factually incorrect. That's because if the actual facts of the criticism were in dispute, they'd dispute them."

from Scripting News.

There's an old saying among trial lawyers: When the facts are against you, argue the law. When the law is against you, argue the facts. When both the facts and law are against you, argue louder.

Chance favors the well-prepared

Plant nurseries in clover after finding four-leaf gene

Solitude and Leadership

Lecture delivered to the plebe class at the United States Military Academy at West Point in October of last year by William Deresiewicz.

Worry

A newly qualified chartered accountant applies for a job advertised in the Times. He is interviewed by the owner of a small business who has built it up from scratch. "I need a qualified accountant," says the man, "but mainly I’m looking for someone to do my worrying for me." "How do you mean?" says the accountant. "I have lots of things to worry about, but I want someone else to worry about money matters." "OK," says the accountant. "How much are you offering?" "You can start on fifty thousand," says the owner. "Fifty thousand pounds?" exclaims the accountant, "How can a business like this afford to pay so much?" "That," says the man, "is your first worry."

Right.

Probability Problem from Gathering 4 Gardner

Someone you do not know tells you "I have two children, one of whom is a son born on a Tuesday." What is the probability that this person has two boys?

a) 1/2
b) 1/3
c) 13/27
d) Cannot tell from given information.

Answer.

Cause and Effect in a Single Frame

It never occurred to me that this broke any rules until this post pointed it out. Interesting how we can telescope it all into a single event.

All Streets

Ben Fry made a wonderful map of the United States by combining all the road maps for every county. Geographic features -- cities, rivers, mountains, shorelines -- emerge from the shapes of the roads.

Airless Tires

Want.

Tiny Art Director

Great blog about an artist and the comments his daughter makes about his art.

Photographing a analemma

Great picture with a multiple exposure that took over a year.

Keytar-Playing Platypus explained

Get it?

Vintage National Park Posters

Buy here.