Lists of lists

I don't like list posts because they're lazy, but this is a nice summary of why smart people who are successful in school don't always end up doing very well outside the academic environment. It really systematizes my thinking on this issue.

Google on recursion

Recursion. It took me a while to get it.

Blogging

John Taylor Gatto - The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher

I feel sometimes like Gatto is like communism -- his critiques are helpful, but only as critiques. The substance doesn't stand on its own. He's a good writer, though, especially when he's edited hard.

Taken

Last night's movie was Taken. Formulaic thriller of a father (with mad spy skills) trying to rescue his daughter who was kidnapped in Paris, but the formula exists for a reason -- it works well when it works. Liam Neeson was good, as was his ex-wife, who I knew I recognized, but only discovered later (I heart IMDB) that she was Jane Grey in the X-Men movies.

The Hurt Locker

Watched The Hurt Locker on Sunday night. Very good move, but I'm not sure it's better than Avatar.

A brief, yet helpful, lesson on elementary resource-locking strategy

Funny story about shaky-cheese from a programmer.  Why can't a woman be more like a man?

This is definitely the clock I want

Unfortunately, it doesn't exist.  It was made up to earn an EnergyStar rating, in order to point out the very limited oversight of the program.

For example, not only does a gasoline-powered alarm clock sound ridiculous to begin with, but it even had the dimensions (again, on paper) of an electric generator.

Add to my list of clocks I want, but won't get

From the webite:

Here comes the revolutionary concept Aspiral Clocks designed by Will Aspinalland Neil Lambeth. How does it work? The clock face ever so slowly spirals over the course of twelve hours, moving a rolling ball precisely around, telling the time as it goes.

Second Prize - a set of steak knives

I wouldn't mind getting a set of knives from Bob Kramer.

Game on a single screen

Robot wants kitty.

Gladwell on the perniciousness of "prodigy"

Malcolm Gladwell is quoted in this article about why our definition of prodigy is problematic.  He gave a talk at the Association for Psychological Science.

Being Funny -- by Steve Martin

This article from the Smithsonian is not the first to get Steve Martin to talk about his theory of humor, but it actually by him, and he's such a good writer.

Ridley Scott discusses Deckard

Interview with Ridley Scott about Harrison Ford's Deckard from Blade Runner.

I'm Here

New movie by Spike Jonze (Adaptation, Where the Wild Things Are) premiering at SXSW, available online.

Nerds vs. Geeks vs. Dorks

For those of you not clear on the distinctions.

Netflix streaming to Wii

Netflix is streaming to the Wii.  Happy day.

Militant arm of the infoviz movement gets serious about PowerPoint

Initially from here.

Milgram redux

Milgram experiments recast as a reality tv show in France. 80% of "contestants" go up to maximum voltage.

George Bernard Shaw Quote

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

-- Man and Superman

Road Runner on Youtube

I couldn't be happier. Roadrunner is my perfect cartoon.

Topologists vs. Wizards

For the win.

Why there are cheerleaders

The presence of an attractive woman elevates testosterone levels and physical risk taking in young men, according to a recent study in the inaugural issue of Social Psychological and Personality Science. The article talks about skateboarders, but I'm guessing that it will have broader application.

Intel Science Talent Search Winner

Erika DiBenedictus describes simulating low energy orbits to move among planets with low fuel requirements.

Today's Indexed

All her stuff is good.

Marriage researcher can predict failures

Pretty serious focus on this one issue.

Balloon pop in super slo mo

2700 frames per second. Excellent.

Guilty

Stuff White People Like -- Picking Their Own Fruit.

Bread follow-up

Made the bread twice this weekend -- very good both times, and as easy as advertised.

One Minute Bread

Well, maybe more like 12 hours, but only one minute of prep time. Definitely something to try with T.

Umberto Eco on Mac v. PC

Not sure whether Eco was the first one to come up with the analogy that Mac:PC::Catholic:Protestant, but 1994 is still four years ahead of "In the Beginning was the command line" in 1998.

Palindrome video

Read each line top to bottom, then read each line bottom to top. Since it's a palindrome, the sentences work both ways, and the meaning is exactly the opposite. Clever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=42E2fAWM6rA

It doesn't matter what you say,

"It doesn't matter what you say, it matters what they hear." I've heard this in several places recently. One from a retired headmaster, who was talking about the importance of understanding your audience (compare with the following quote from TLE's classroom: "I taught the material but the students didn't learn it. Define 'Taught' as it is used in this sentence."). That seemed eminently reasonable at the time.

However, the more I think about it, the more it seems like this is actually a disguised version of utilitarianism, where the ends justify the means. Recast in this framework, "what you say" becomes the Kantian intention, while "what they hear" becomes the utilitarian consequential calculation. Say whatever you need to say to get your point across and achieve the goal you want to achieve.

No, they both matter. Just as no one is really a pure Kantian or a pure Utilitarian, no one really focuses either entirely on what they say or on what the other person hears.

Old Jews Telling Jokes

Charlotte Bornstein, “Food Issues”

Unusually thoughtful letter about pot smoking from a father to a daughter

Dan Shapiro from Salon.com. Something to email to myself in 4 years.

The Departed

Watched The Departed last night. Five stars, both for acting and for a plot I couldn't predict and which had some real integrity to it.

Creating a better teacher

From NYTimes Sunday magazine.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html?ref=magazine&pagewanted=all

Tron:Legacy

Trailer here.

Hurt Locker tech

How blast proof suits work.

The Genius in All of Us

There seems to be a growing consensus around this, which is a big improvement. Now we just need to get the colleges on board.

Wasps

John Cheever

How great that it is a negative definition: any insect of the order Hymenoptera and suborder Apocrita that is neither a bee nor ant.

Janet van Dyne

Henry Ford on Competition

The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.

—Henry Ford

I like this quote because it is a great response to all the "best practices" and "benchmarking the industry" talk. The ideas are not secret and they're not hard to find -- they're hard to implement, day after day, thoughtfully and scrupulously, for the long haul.

Oscar for Best Short Film

Logorama, which gave me vertigo as my brain tried to match all the logos with the products. Now if they could only figure out a way to make links to all these logos, we be in Minority Report.

Wisely, and slow.

Wisely, and slow. They stumble that run fast.
-- William Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet

Inspiration for an article about slowing down.

Good news -- Edward Tufte working for Obama

Tufte will be on the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel -- a panel charged with promoting accountability and transparency in the spending of federal money.

Very good wine from the other day

Ted says that he got the equivalent of four bottles for $20, and it's very good. Added benefit -- the box is very light.

David Gelertner on the Internet

David Gelertner is a Computer Science professor at Yale.

The Internet is no topic like cellphones or videogame platforms or
artificial intelligence; it's a topic like education. It's that big. Therefore beware: to become a teacher, master some topic you can teach . . . don't go to Education School and master nothing. To work on the Internet, master some part of the Internet: engineering, software, computer science, communication theory; economics or business; literature or design. Don't
go to Internet School and master nothing. There are brilliant, admirable people at Internet institutes. But if these institutes have the same effect on the Internet that education schools have had on education, they will be a disaster.

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/gelernter10/gelernter10_index.html

This suggests (to me at least) we should stick to writing about and publishing what we know, and to the extent we can generalize out from the specifics of our own experience, we may have the opportunity to touch on
something greater.

Additional writings by David Gelertner here:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/gelernter/gelernter_index.html

http://www.edge.org/documents/digerati/Gelernter.html

High IQ as a disadvantage

When does being smart become a disadvantage? When it becomes a crutch.

Strange -- I read this exchange between Eric Raymond and Linus Torvalds right after posting.

It makes me feel better about pushing effort even on smart kids (maybe especially on smart kids).

Ebert retweet on happiness

ebertchicago: "Being happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect.
It means that you've decided to look beyond the imperfections."
Original Tweet: http://twitter.com/ebertchicago/status/9903212029

Looping demo on iPhone

Wonderful tracks over tracks over tracks by French beatbox/rapper.

Rube Goldberg video from OK Go

I could watch this over and over. One. Single. Tracking. Shot.

Old Age

For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

-- from Morituri Salutamus: Poem for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Class of 1825 in Bowdoin College by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Multitasking myth

"There is no expedient to which man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking." -- Sir Joshua Reynolds

Quoted in the article "Divided Attention" in The Chronicle Review, in which Scholars "turn their attention to attention."

Nice Meta joke from Dilbert

A Muslim, a Christian, and a crazy guy walk into a room. The one thing you can know for sure is that at least two out of three of them organize their lives around things that aren't real. And that's the best case scenario. Atheists would say all three have some explaining to do. And atheists are the minority, which is the very definition of abnormal. -- Scott Adams

Why the moon seems bigger at the horizon

From wikipedia.

The Map is not the Territory

The stories we tell about our lives are like maps that allow us to hold longer narratives and sequences of events than we would be able to hold otherwise. However, the map is not the territory. What happens to me is not the story I tell someone when they ask how my day has been. This is why total non-sequiturs in a story can create authenticity, because "Why would someone make that up?"

Having said that,

a) Love is a story told to a friend/It's second hand. -- Joni Mitchell, "Conversation" and

b)This map is totally great.

Trying to link my Netflix queue to this blog

I'm pretty sure there is a way to link the two. We'll see.
-- OK, maybe not. I'll just post the movies after I watch them.

Last night -- Jackie Brown

It felt like old Tarantino, and not nearly as out there as Reservoir Dogs, Dusk til Dawn, or Kill Bill. Less stylized, but clearly he was getting into the swing of things. Didn't love it, but was glad to have seen it. 3 stars.

The Art of Learning

This is a wonderful book by the guy who was the subject of the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer. His name is Josh Waitzkin, and despite the over the top name of the book, it lives up to the hype. He really is the man, becoming a champion chess player and then a world champion martial artist.

The book is a nice balance of his pursuit of improvement in tournaments and the overlap between chess and martial arts. He then looks at the commonalities in the learning process for the two disciplines, and generalizes about the learning process. Lots to learn here, but I gave the book back to my dad, so I need to buy another copy soon.