Census Dotmap

http://bmander.com/dotmap/index.html

Why I Quit Being so Accommodating (1922)

http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2012/12/26/1922-why-i-quit-being-so-accommodating/

The Hundred Best Lists of All Time : The New Yorker

http://m.newyorker.com/online/blogs/shouts/2012/12/the-hundred-best-lists-of-all-time.html

Simple is not the same as easy, part 10

Article from Men's Journal about weightlifting as a way to get strong.

Johnny Depp to Star as a Supercomputer in Christopher Nolan Film About the Singularity

I'd buying my ticket now.

Running and Fundraising

http://pfa-blog.com/home/5-lessons-for-fundraisers-from-a-runner/?goback=%2Egde_1538517_member_192563463

Seth's Blog: Soft and hard

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/12/soft-and-hard.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Fsethsmainblog+%28Seth%27s+Blog%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

After One Year In New York – Kara « The Sartorialist

http://www.thesartorialist.com/photos/after-one-year-in-new-york-kara/

Clairification: THANKS(for)GIVING: 8 Mistakes Nonprofits Make When...

Clairification: THANKS(for)GIVING: 8 Mistakes Nonprofits Make When...: Are you focused on the gift or the giver? Thanking donors is the one thing most nonprofits do not spend enough time thinking abo...

Moon phases for 2013

Thanks, Ted.

Energy from a single orange…

Thanks to Caleb Charland.

Good Sugar Cookies

http://www.landolakes.com/recipe/2931/sugar-cookie-cut-outs

How to schedule meetings

What happens when not everyone is using outlook?

http://doodle.com/

Wind powered land mine removal

http://vimeo.com/51887079

The Stick Dance Math Cooperative

150 Years ago today

On Nov. 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address as he dedicated a national cemetery at the site of the Civil War battlefield in Pennsylvania.

• See This Front Page

• Buy This Front Page

Quote of the day - Aristotle

"The fool persuades me with his reasons; the wise man persuades me with my own."

Tablet for < $50 from India

http://qz.com/26244/how-a-20-tablet-from-india-could-finish-off-pc-makers-educate-billions-and-transform-computing-as-we-know-it/

Game on, Google.

Skittles Sorting Machine 2

PSY - Gangnam Style (Acoustic Cover by Ra-On) 강남스타일 어쿠스틱

Singularity Chess

http://abstractstrategygames.blogspot.com/2010/10/singularity-chess.html

To ask or not to ask

http://theplannedgivingblog.wordpress.com/2012/10/19/to-ask-or-not-that-is-the-million-dollar-planned-giving-question/?goback=%2Egde_1538517_member_176994637

N Is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdos

http://kottke.org/12/10/n-is-a-number-a-portrait-of-paul-erdos

The Elements of Computing Systems / Nisan & Schocken

http://www.nand2tetris.org/

The Maker

How to Pronounce Laphroaig

Generational Warfare: The Case Against Parasitic Baby Boomers - NationalJournal.com

Generational Warfare: The Case Against Parasitic Baby Boomers - NationalJournal.com

New comet might blaze brighter than the full Moon

New comet might blaze brighter than the full Moon

32 metronomes sync up

The Opening Statement - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/02/opinion/brooks-the-opening-statement.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212_20121002&_r=0

Once a Whiff, Always a Whiff

As We May Think

A wonderful essay by Vannevar Bush from the July 1945 Atlantic Magazine about how scientists should make the transition to peacetime research.

Conversation with Randall Munroe

As tempted as I am to just post every xkcd.com strip and his new "What If" column as well, I will just post the link to the Atlantic news article interviewing him.

Call Me Maybe (1000% slower)

This is much better.

The Popinator

Sit on it, Tufte

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/09/12/160996525/odd-things-happen-when-you-chop-up-cities-and-stack-them-sideways

WHERE GOOD IDEAS COME FROM by Steven Johnson

Education For Whom and For What?

Initial thoughts about educational disruption

There are three parts to it. The first has to do with the disintermediation of schools from the lecturing and teaching that goes into a lecture class, so that the best classes can be recorded and replayed around the world over and over. It means that we don't have to put up with mediocre lessons about any subject as soon as a good lesson on that subject has been given. And it means that there is going to be an inexorable move from live lectures to recorded ones, not only because the cost savings will make it compelling, but because the quality will actually go up.

The second has to do with the quantification of teaching into bite-sized, Khan-Academy formatted lessons. This will have the impact on classes that the palletization of goods, the shipping containerization of trade, and the digitizing and standard IP packetization of data had on the transfer of data. As soon as that standard sized lesson takes over, it will standardize (and erode) the variability of teaching styles. Maybe people will still hold on to longer form lessons, just as there is still music that is written that doesn't fall into the standard 3 minute pop song format. But what percentage of the songs and music are not that length? Not much. What percentage of phone calls are analog? Not many. And what percentage of goods are not shipped via pallets and shipping containers? Not much, particularly in comparison to what is sent that way. Other goods are sent via other means, but they are usually luxury goods or bulk raw materials. Fair enough -- there will always be a market for the bespoke suit, the hand-made car, the original painting, and the private school education, but that will become the purview of the 1%, and that's not really where I think we should all aspire to be.

The third part is the impact these two forces will have on education. These forces will result in an inexorable squeezing of the standard model of education into a new model. Much of the classroom time will be the result of "flipped" homework and class assignments. Students will watch videos and listen to lectures and see sample problems worked out at home. They might blog about their questions or other observations they gleaned from the lecture as a way to take notes and stay engaged with the matierial as it is being presented. Then, when it comes to actually following through on what they've learned -- that will happen in class where there can be interaction and feedback and getting questions answered (although the class could post questions and have them answered, as a way to earn karma points for extra credit). The focus will be better in class on the kinds of problems or writing that they need to master, partly because everyone will be working on the same kinds of tasks (peer pressure) and partially because there will be fewer distractions of the kinds that kids have at home or each other's houses.

From there it is only a small step to a virtual model of classes, which will allow students and teachers to find times to meet via videochat in order to find times that work for everyone. I don't know how to resolve the cheating issues, except to say that at some point the potential employees or students need to be held accountable, and while it will bear a passing resemblance to virtual study hall, it is clear to me that there is probably a way of doing this.


http://www.quickanded.com/2012/09/the-curious-birth-of-the-credit-hour.html

The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics

Thought experiment about disintermediating education

There will be a post here, probably tomorrow, about the process underway that is disintermediating education from schools back to people.  The combination of online courses offered from excellent schools:

http://chronicle.com/article/Teaching-to-the-World-From/134068/

along with the atomization of particular lessons via Khan Academy

http://www.khanacademy.org/

has the potential to disrupt the education marketplace, as foretold by Clayton Christensen in

Disrupting Class

More to follow tonight, and it may end up being in three parts over the next few nights.  I'm not sure.

Math Resources

http://www.mathigon.org/

Cory Doctorow: "The Coming Civil War over General-purpose Computing", Ta...

Ira Glass on Storytelling

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

Introducing the Leap

KATHARINE HEPBURN READS A LETTER SHE WROTE TO SPENCER TRACY

A good place to work

In good organizations, people can focus on their work and have confidence that if they get their work done, good things will happen for both the company and them personally. It is a true pleasure to work in an organization such as this. Every person can wake up knowing that the work they do will be efficient, effective and make a difference both for the organization and themselves. These things make their jobs both motivating and fulfilling.


http://bhorowitz.com/2012/08/18/a-good-place-to-work/

Doesn't seem like too much to ask . . .

Browse music

http://musopen.org/music/by/performer/Musopen-Symphony-Orchestra

Behold: A hole thru a hole in a hole « Boing Boing

Via BoingBoing

How to Tell Good People from Bad People « Budget Raygun - Be Ready

http://www.budgetraygun.com/featured/how-to-tell-good-people-from-bad/

Autonomous robotic plane flies indoors at MIT

A Guide for Parents

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marshall-p-duke/college-guide_b_1750951.html

Good News, Bad News on the Common Core

http://www.quickanded.com/2012/07/good-news-bad-news-on-the-common-core.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheQuickAndTheEd+%28The+Quick+and+the+Ed%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Gene Wilder Willy Wonka's famous rant - YOU LOSE! GOOD DAY, SIR!

Cloud Atlas Extended Trailer #1 (2012) - Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Wachows...

A Working Assault Rifle Made With a 3-D Printer

I have mixed feelings about this, too.  On the one hand, the Rep-Rap world is wonderful, but I wasn't expecting this to happen as quickly as it did, i.e. before we had any sort of systems in place to control it.  Moore's Law takes everyone by surprise sooner or later, I guess.

via Popsci.com

Sight

Sight from Sight Systems on Vimeo.


What a world will look like with Google Glass -- I have mixed feelings about this: it looks so cool that I almost can't resist, but it would make me less connected in the ways I know really matter.

Project Management Template from the Military

Our tax dollars at work.  Very cool.

http://kkovacs.eu/free-project-management-template-mil-std-498

Shadows in the Woods

A beautiful board game from England

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B0006443P8?m=A6VLL9VL7SDVJ

Recent updates in the Prisoner's Dilemma

http://bosker.wordpress.com/2012/07/23/the-prisoners-dilemma/

John Branyan - The Three Little Pigs

Quote of the Day -- Old Proverb

It is very difficult to find a black cat in a dark room.  Especially when there is no cat.

quoted in Stuart Firestein's Ignorance

Epicyclic Gearing

http://bl.ocks.org/d/1353700/
I love the different frames of reference.

Sixty One Years of Tornadoes

via BoingBoing

kansas Point of know return

Quote of the Day -- John Maynard Keynes

"When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done."

 -- John Maynard Keynes in The General Theory  


via James Fallows at the Atlantic

Rethinking recycling

The dismal science of economics has a dim view of recycling as currently done in the US, according to the NYTimes.

The Line

From a photo taken at the high-tide line of an aluminum spill from a chemical factory.  It reminds me of the aftermath of the Mount St. Helens eruption in Washington.

via boingboing

From Bench to Bunker - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

In a small, anonymous office in the Trump Tower, 28 floors above Wall Street, a man sits in front of a computer screen sifting through satellite images of a foreign desert. The images depict a vast, sandy emptiness, marked every so often by dunes and hills. He is searching for man-made structures: houses, compounds, airfields, any sign of civilization that might be visible from the sky. The images flash at a rate of 20 per second, so fast that before he can truly perceive the details of each landscape, it is gone. He pushes no buttons, takes no notes. His performance is near perfect.


http://chronicle.com/article/From-Bench-to-Bunker-/132743/

Every Shuttle Launched at Once

The "Me" Half-Century op/ed from NYTimes

Going forward, the youthful masses of every age would be permitted as never before to indulge their self-expressive and hedonistic impulses. But capitalists in return would be unshackled as well, free to indulge their own animal spirits with fewer and fewer fetters in the forms of regulation, taxes or social opprobrium.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/04/opinion/the-downside-of-liberty.html?smid=pl-share

The problem with stack-ranking

Eichenwald’s conversations reveal that a management system known as “stack ranking”—a program that forces every unit to declare a certain percentage of employees as top performers, good performers, average, and poor—effectively crippled Microsoft’s ability to innovate. “Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees,” Eichenwald writes. “If you were on a team of 10 people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good everyone was, 2 people were going to get a great review, 7 were going to get mediocre reviews, and 1 was going to get a terrible review,” says a former software developer. “It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.”

From a Vanity Fair article about Microsoft's "lost decade."  I think Jack Welch was famous for doing the same thing at GE.  It also explains why grading on a curve in a school is not always a good idea, and reminds me of the old joke about the two campers and the bear.

Match Rockets

Programming Koans

http://thecodelesscode.com/contents

All of the Earthquakes

Roshambo (rock-paper-scissors, not the other one) Robot with 100% winning rate

Apparently Janken is another name for the Rock-Paper-Scissors version of Roshambo (not the other one).

Simple made easy

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy

It does reiterate the point that simple is not the same thing as easy -- simple can be hard.

Quote of the day -- George Bernard Shaw

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

George Bernard Shaw

Irish dramatist & socialist (1856 - 1950)

Shakespeare Hokey-Pokey

O proud left foot, that ventures quick within
Then soon upon a backward journey lithe.
Anon, once more the gesture, then begin:
Command sinistral pedestal to writhe.
Commence thou then the fervid Hokey-Poke,
A mad gyration, hips in wanton swirl.
To spin! A wilde release from Heavens yoke.
Blessed dervish! Surely canst go, girl.
The Hoke, the poke -- banish now thy doubt
Verily, I say, 'tis what it's all about.
        -- by "William Shakespeare"

Written by Jeff Brechlin, Potomac Falls, Maryland, and submitted by Katherine St. John.


The poem is from the Washington Post Style Invitational contest that asked readers to submit "instructions" for something (anything), but written in the style of a famous person. The winning entry was The Hokey Pokey (as written by William Shakespeare).

via http://www.phantomranch.net/folkdanc/articles/hokeypokey.htm

Awesome HD Slinky Slow-Mo

The explanation that "it takes time for the bottom of the slinky to feel the change" might work ok, but it isn't the best.

Then why doesn't the bottom of the slinky fall as the top is let go? I think the best thing is to think of the slinky as a system. When it is let get, the center of mass certainly accelerates downward (like any falling object). However, at the same time, the slinky (spring) is compressing to its relaxed length. This means that top and bottom are accelerating towards the center of mass of the slinky at the same time the center of mass is accelerating downward.

(via @stevenstrogatz)

Quote of the Day -- James Dyson

I've always thought that schoolchildren should be marked by the number of failures they've had. The child who tries strange things and experiences lots of failures to get there is probably more creative.

The interview is in two parts:

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/115/open_next-design.html

http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/2007/04/next-design-extra.html

CARGO CULT SCIENCE by Richard Feynman

http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm

John Carmack is making a Virtual Reality headset

I don't know whether it will work or not, but if anyone can do it, John Carmack can.

Quote of the Day -- T. H. White

The wizard Merlin finds the young King Arthur gazing mournfully into a fishpond, on the verge of succumbing to the temptation of self-pity.

"The best thing for being sad," Merlin says, "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting."

T. H. White, The Once and Future King

NASA SDO - The Venus Transit

Additional plug for Vi Hart

She's really great.  Go watch her videos.

Ray Bradbury 1920-2012

Dark They Were and Golden Eyed

Quote of the Day -- Isek Dinesen

"The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea." 

In U.S., 46% Hold Creationist View of Human Origins

From Gallup:

PRINCETON, NJ -- Forty-six percent of Americans believe in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years. The prevalence of this creationist view of the origin of humans is essentially unchanged from 30 years ago, when Gallup first asked the question. About a third of Americans believe that humans evolved, but with God's guidance; 15% say humans evolved, but that God had no part in the process.

Turn your driveway into a glowing wonderland

http://dvice.com/archives/2012/06/use-your-drivew.php

Yale Blue Book to be published for one more year at least

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/apr/26/blue-book-returns-for-now/

Marina Keegan: The Opposite of Loneliness

The piece was written by Marina Keegan '12 for a special edition of the Yale Daily News distributed at the class of 2012's commencement exercises last week. Keegan died in a car accident on Saturday. She was 22.

Self-Stirring Pan

Neil Gaiman Commencement Address

Man, stranded in the desert, makes a motorcycle out of his broken car

While traveling through the desert somewhere in north west Africa in his
Citroen 2CV , [Emile] is stopped, and told not to go any further due to
some military conflicts in the area. Not wanting to actually listen to
this advice, he decides to loop around, through the desert, to circumvent
this roadblock.

After a while of treading off the beaten path, [Emile] manages to snap a
swing arm on his vehicle, leaving him stranded. He decided that the best
course of action was to disassemble his vehicle and construct a motorcycle
from the parts. This feat would be impressive on its own, but remember,
he's still in the desert and un-prepared. If we're reading this
correctly, he managed to drill holes by bending metal and sawing at it,
then un-bending it to be flat again.

It takes him twelve days to construct this thing.

You got the translation right, but there's not just a swing arm that's
broken, there's a frame beam broken too (not sure about the exact term,
one of the 2 girder of the chassis).
He's not far away but he has a lot of tools and other hardware that
could be stolen if he leaves them unattended.


http://hackaday.com/2012/05/21/man-stranded-in-the-desert-makes-a-motorcycle-from-his-broken-car/

The Problem With Music :Negativworldwidewebland

http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17

Westminster School Memorial Day Service, May 18, 2012

Quote of the Day - Lyndon B. Johnson

Greater love hath no man than to attend the Episcopal Church with his wife.

from equotes

Letter from Abraham Lincoln to his brother asking for money

From Letters of Note

StayFocusd

Using a Chrome extension called StayFocusd that allows me to limit the time I spend on enumerated websites.  It's already made me more productive and it's only been four hours.  Two thumbs up.

We Choose to go to the Moon

Echo -- Westminster Faculty Singers at Winter Concert 2012

Outstanding Gaming metaphor to describe privilege

Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is

My friend Ted's website

Ted Schillinger

50 years of Government Spending in one chart

From Planet Money

Panopticon -- The newest in dormitory architecture

The trusses and the skylights look like something much more modern.

Quote of the day - Socrates

"Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for
authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place
of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they
contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and
tyrannize their teachers."�

Hulk reviews Ruffalo's Hulk

Very funny article from The New Yorker where Hulk is a movie critic.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/05/the-hulk-on-mark-ruffalos-hulk.html?currentPage=all

Harvard Baseball 2012 Call Me Maybe Cover

Maurice Sendak Story

Quote from "Where the Wild Things Are" --

"Oh, please don't go—we'll eat you up—we love you so!"�
―� [ http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4489.Maurice_Sendak ]Maurice
Sendak,� [ http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3020535 ]Where the Wild
Things Are


"Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it.
I loved it. I answer all my children's letters — sometimes very
hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a
picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, 'Dear Jim: I loved your card.'
Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, 'Jim loved your
card so much he ate it.' That to me was one of the highest compliments
I've ever received. He didn't care that it was an original Maurice
Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it."



Douglas Allen
Director of Planned Giving
Westminster School
phone: 860.408.3027
fax: 860.408.3044
http://www.westminster-school.org

Message to new Apple Employees

Quote of the day -- Nicholas Carr

To put it a different way, the sharecroppers operate happily in an attention economy while their overseers operate happily in a cash economy.

I Can Do Anything -- I believe in my smellf

Quote of the day -- Mark Twain

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
- Innocents Abroad

Q: How many designers does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Does it have to be a light bulb?

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K LeGuin

Pure utilitarianism.

Armless Man who Makes Stools

Finally, A Shark with a Laser Attached to its Head

From Slashdot

Batman

Success

From This is a Book by Demetri Martin

2012 JEFFERSON LECTURER Wendell E. Berry Lecture “It All Turns On Affection”

http://www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/wendell-e-berry-lecture

Efficiency vs. Resilience -- An analogy based on an essay by Chip Ward

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174826/chip_ward_how_efficiency_maximizes_catastrophe


A long academic essay by Chip Ward on the tradeoffs between efficiency and resilience within natural systems. The thesis is that decisions that maximize efficiency in the short term often create fragile systems that collapse catastrophically when the unexpected inevitably occurs in the long term.

To explicitly recast this thesis (which I agree with) into the world of organizations and management, an organization can decide to streamline procedures so that they involve fewer people and are more efficient.
However, that same decision can erode the organization's ability to respond creatively and organically when something unexpected happens that requires experienced and thoughtful decision-making at a lower administrative level.

In addition, and this was not a point made in the article, this same process dramatically reduces the number of people who are experienced and seasoned enough to step into the smaller number of decision-making roles.

Descriptive Camera

A camera that records descriptions rather than images.

Patrick Stewart on Extras

Books for kids

67 books to read to your kids before they're 10.

I have a long way to go, but I've read some of them.

Logical Fallacies Poster

A printable logical fallacy poster. (via @mrbadexample)

Part of me doesn't care whether this is true or not

Rockets.

Rockets!

ROCKETS!

http://www.spacex.com/usa.php

And, did I mention Rockets?

Let's build stuff and shoot it into space.

NYTimes: Argentina to Seize Control of Oil Company

"The expropriation would reassert state control over a pillar of Argentina's economy but also increase diplomatic tensions with Spain and the European Union."

I kept looking for the quote from Francisco d'Anconia.

Primer - Full Movie

NIce summary on the substance of usage arguments

Language usage is and should be a battleground.  Our task is to make the
conflict fruitful.  To do this, we need to understand what precisely is
at issue in any particular dispute.  Does a new locution advance or
retard our power to express our ideas effectively?  Is the issue
primarily one of different aesthetic sensibilities?  Or is our argument
over language rooted in deeper disagreements over who we are and how we
should live?  Once we understand what is really at stake, we may be able
to learn much through arguing about language.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/arguing-about-language/?pagewanted=all

Fwd: Will Lacrosse ever go mainstream? -- from this month's The Atlantic

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/print/2012/04/will-lacrosse-ever-go-mainstream/255690/

Atlantic Facebook Article

Is Facebook making us lonely? Probably.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/is-facebook-making-us-lonely/8930/

An Invocation for Beginnings

John Cleese on Creativity

   

http://vimeo.com/18913413

Writing advice from C.S. Lewis

From Letters of Note --

1. Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean
and make sure your sentence couldn't mean anything else.

2. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one.
Don't implement promises, but keep them.

3. Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean "More
people died" don't say "Mortality rose."

4. In writing. Don't use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us
to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling
us a thing was "terrible," describe it so that we'll be terrified. Don't
say it was "delightful"; make us say "delightful" when we've read the
description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous,
exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, "Please will you do my
job for me." [emphasis added -- DHA]

5. Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when
you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk
about something really infinite.

Wind Map

http://hint.fm/wind/

Quote of the day -- Sir Edmund Hillary

"For scientific discovery give me Scott; for speed and efficiency of travel give me Amundsen; but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton."

— Sir Edmund Hillary, quoted in Leading at the Edge by Dennis N. T. Perkins

Harvard Business Review -- lessons of Steve Jobs

From HBR:

1. Focus
2. Simplify
3. Take Responsibility End to End
4. When Behind, Leapfrog
5. Put Products Before Profits
6. Don’t Be a Slave To Focus Groups
7. Bend Reality
8. Impute
9. Push for Perfection
10. Tolerate Only “A” Players
11. Engage Face-to-Face
12. Know Both the Big Picture and the Details
13. Combine the Humanities with the Sciences
14. Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

Article written by Walter Isaacson, author of the recent autobiography.

Fwd: Conversation with Peter Thiel/Planning for the future as a culture

The last comment is the kicker for me.

Some comments by entrepreneur Peter Thiel, interviewed by author� Francis
Fukuyama:

I think there's a close link between technological deceleration and
increasing cynicism and pessimism about politics and economics.

We should debate whether it should be decentralized or centralized, but
what the United States has today is an extremely big government, a
quasi-socialist government, but without a five-year plan, with no plan
whatsoever.

If there is going to be a government role in getting innovation started,
people have to believe philosophically that it's possible to plan.
That's not the world we're living in. A letter from Einstein to the
White House would get lost in the mail room today. Nobody would think that
any single person would have that kind of expertise.

It's much harder to get a new drug through the FDA process. It takes a
billion dollars. I don't even know if you could get the polio vaccine
approved today.

I'm deeply skeptical about any sort of rationalization of death.

When I taught at Stanford Law School last year, I asked students what they
planned to do with their lives. Most were headed to big law firms but
didn't expect to become partners and didn't know the next step after
that. They didn't have long-term plans about what they wanted to achieve
in their lives. I think the educational system has become a major factor
stopping people from thinking about the future.

http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=1187

It also reminds me of the insight* that the US is thinking about the next
quarter, Japan is thinking about the next 10 years, and China is thinking
about the next 100 years.

*I think it was James Clavell, or maybe Michael Crichton . . . .

Original summary came from Kurzweil's blog:

http://www.kurzweil

Le vent (ballet super slow motion)

Navy test-fires weaponized railgun with explosive results (video) -- Engadge

http://m.engadget.com/default/article.do?artUrl=http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/29/railgun-test-fire-video/&category=classic&postPage=1

Thanks, Charlie.

Letters of Note -- F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald's letter to his daughter at camp about "Things to Worry About" from the wonderful, wonderful website -- Letters of Note
Three things in this post are perfect: 1) his daughter's haircut, 2) his list of things to worry about, and 3) his list of things not to worry about.

Definitely go to their site to read the whole letter.  However, I had to copy out this part:

P.S. My come-back to your calling me Pappy is christening you by the word Egg, which implies that you belong to a very rudimentary state of life and that I could break you up and crack you open at my will and I think it would be a word that would hang on if I ever told it to your contemporaries. "Egg Fitzgerald." How would you like that to go through life with — "Eggie Fitzgerald" or "Bad Egg Fitzgerald" or any form that might occur to fertile minds? Try it once more and I swear to God I will hang it on you and it will be up to you to shake it off. Why borrow trouble?

Epic.

Two Step - Dave Matthews Band

A perfect Dave Matthews song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQVZR6UACT8&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Nine-year-old ski jumper screws up courage

Nine-year-old ski jumper screws up courage

This video shows a fourth grader trying a bigger ski jump for the first time.

#cryingatwork (via devour)

Tags: skiing   sports   video

Quote of the Day -- Confucius on the Rectification of Names

“A superior man, in regard to what he does not know, shows a cautious reserve. If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties and music do not flourish. When proprieties and music do not flourish, punishments will not be properly awarded. When punishments are not properly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or foot.

Therefore a superior man considers it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately, and also that what he speaks may be carried out appropriately. What the superior man requires is just that in his words there may be nothing incorrect.”  [Via Wikipedia]

          Confucius, Analects, Book XIII, Chapter 3, verses 4-7, translated by James Legge

Reproduction of Priviledge

Very disturbing article from NYTimes about college as a way to reinforce and perpetuate class distinctions.

Quote of the Day -- St. Augustine

“Let us, on both sides, lay aside all arrogance. Let us not, on either side, claim that we have already discovered the truth.” -- St. Augustine

What's Inside the Box

Excellent essay by Cory Doctorow

Give it Five Minutes

When someone says something with which I disagree -- I should give it five minutes:


He said “Man, give it five minutes.” I asked him what he meant by that? He said, it’s fine to disagree, it’s fine to push back, it’s great to have strong opinions and beliefs, but give my ideas some time to set in before you’re sure you want to argue against them. “Five minutes” represented “think”, not react. He was totally right. I came into the discussion looking to prove something, not learn something.  -- Jason Fried



"I have recently discovered the same thing about myself, so I've started forcing myself to ask the other person at least three questions about their opinion. Forming those questions helps me think. Often, my gut negative opinion changes. Sometimes, the questions change the other person's opinion. There is no downside." -- Dustin Curtis

Fatboy Slim - Weapon Of Choice

Another Park Another Sunday -- Doobie Brothers

Hope Springs Eternal

Know, then, thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reasoning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself abused, or disabused;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

– Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man

Powers of 10 remake

Web version of Powers of 10 (thanks, Stephanie!)

Long David Foster Wallace Interview

http://www.openculture.com/2012/02/david_foster_wallace_the_big_uncut_interview_2003.html

How the NFL might end

Not with a bang but a whimper.

Writing for Grantland, economists Tyler Cowen and Kevin Grier imagine how the NFL might end due to the increasing visibility of head injuries.

This slow death march could easily take 10 to 15 years. Imagine the timeline. A couple more college players -- or worse, high schoolers -- commit suicide with autopsies showing CTE. A jury makes a huge award of $20 million to a family. A class-action suit shapes up with real legs, the NFL keeps changing its rules, but it turns out that less than concussion levels of constant head contact still produce CTE. Technological solutions (new helmets, pads) are tried and they fail to solve the problem. Soon high schools decide it isn't worth it. The Ivy League quits football, then California shuts down its participation, busting up the Pac-12. Then the Big Ten calls it quits, followed by the East Coast schools. Now it's mainly a regional sport in the southeast and Texas/Oklahoma. The socioeconomic picture of a football player becomes more homogeneous: poor, weak home life, poorly educated. Ford and Chevy pull their advertising, as does IBM and eventually the beer companies.

Whitney Houston’s isolated vocal track

Whitney Houston’s isolated vocal track on "How Will I Know?"

from Jake Fogelnest

My favorite, however, will always be "Greatest Love of All."

Wired Response to Star Wars, Episode 1 in 3-D

Rerelease of SW1 - 3D merits a rerelease of the SW1 review in 3D from Wired Magazine.

Words With Friends dictionary issues continue

Excellent article on disciplined and thoughtful disagreement

"The paradox of reform movements is that, if you want to defy authority,
you probably shouldn't think entirely for yourself. You should attach
yourself to a counter-tradition and school of thought that has been
developed over the centuries and that seems true."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/opinion/brooks-how-to-fight-the-man.html

Ironhorse

A Swarm of Nano Quadrotors

Scary (if you've watched any of the Terminator movies), but wonderful also.

Henry Miller Work Schedule

Totally great list.  From Kung Fu Grippe

Quote of the day -- Larry Lessig

“When you feel the impossibility of really thinking about the ten thousand year horizon, you’ve got to access that part in each of us which knows that the rational calculation is not the only reason we do things.  We celebrate doing things that are plainly irrational—loving our children, loving our country, loving our planet—even though we’ll never see any of those things come to the perfection we imagine.”


Larry Lessig, at the end of a talk called “How Money Corrupts Congress and a Plan to Stop It”

DLD 2012 - University 2.0

I need to watch this tonight -- something really important is happening here, but I need to spend some time sorting it out in my own mind. More tomorrow.

Quote of the day -- James Fallows

In a nutshell, that theme—the intended message of the speech—is: I am a reasonable guy, still hoping to be a uniter rather than a divider, and I have a plan to deal with the trends that make us all worry about our economy and society. Also, I'm very patriotic—and if you think I'm weak or pussy-footing, go ask Osama bin Laden about that.

James Fallows, Annotated SOTU

Republican Candidates as Heinlein Novels

Newt Gingrich - Stranger in a Strange Land

Mitt Romney - Job: A Comedy of Justice

Rick Santorum - Methuselah's Children

Ron Paul - Have Spacesuit, Will Travel

Rick Perry - Starship Troopers

Michele Bachmann - Friday

Quote of the day -- Tim Bray

Remember, “data” is not the plural of “anecdote”.


-- Tim Bray

Music Roller Coaster

ZKO Rollercoaster // GREAT EMOTIONS from virtual republic on Vimeo.

10,000 Year Clock Update

We just completed the 12½ foot diameter, 500 foot deep vertical shaft for the 10,000 Year Clock. We used a mining technique called raise boring. Take a look at the video – it's an interesting operation. Instead of drilling down from the top, you pull a large diameter reamer up to the surface from the bottom using a smaller diameter pilot hole – more efficient than a top-down drill because the rubble isn't fighting gravity. It rains down beneath the advancing bore and gets hauled out a horizontal shaft at the bottom. Our next major step will be cutting the spiral stairway using a robotic stone cutting saw. In parallel, we're also manufacturing and testing the Clock components.


From Stewart Brand

Fair ownership allocation in a new startup

The founders should end up with about 50% of the company, total. Each of the next five layers should end up with about 10% of the company, split equally among everyone in the layer.


from Joel Spolsky

Management Debt

Like technical debt, management debt is incurred when you make an expedient, short-term management decision with an expensive, long-term consequence. Also like technical debt, the trade-off sometimes makes sense, but often does not. More importantly, if you incur the management debt without accounting for it, then you will eventually go management bankrupt.

from Ben's Blog

Bill Clinton interviewed

One of the real dilemmas we have in our country and around the world is that what works in politics is organization and conflict. That is, drawing the sharp distinctions. But in real life, what works is networks and cooperation. And we need victories in real life, so we've got to get back to networks and cooperation, not just conflict. But politics has always been about conflict, and in the coverage of politics, information dissemination tends to be organized around conflict as well. It is extremely personal now, and you see in these primaries that the more people agree with each other on the issues, the more desperate they are to make the clear distinctions necessary to win, so the deeper the knife goes in.


from kottke

Quote of the day -- Freakonomics

A counterintuitive argument against financial literacy, from Freakonomics.com

We then turn to the topic of financial literacy, which we’ve written about before. You’ll hear from Alan Krueger, chairman of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers; and from Krueger’s predecessor, Austan Goolsbee, who talks about the role that Americans’ financial illiteracy played in the Great Recession.

You’ll then hear from two guests who offer up radically different solutions to our financial illiteracy. One is Annamaria Lusardi, an economist at George Washington University, who has spent the past 10 years studying the topic, and believes that education is the way out:

 LUSARDI: In the same way we start people, you know, in school just reading and writing, you know, from the very beginning. We don’t teach literature so that people go on and write “War and Peace,” but we teach it so that people can appreciate a good book.

Next is Lauren Willis, a legal scholar who previously worked at the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission. She has argued against widespread financial education, recommending instead a new cadre of financial advisers and greater transparency and regulation in the financial industry:

WILLIS: It’s sort of like saying, well we should start teaching everybody to be their own doctor, teaching everyone to be their own mechanic, you know, something like that, terribly inefficient to do that. Not only is it inefficient, but it has this sort of culture of blaming the consumer. You know, you’re the one who didn’t figure this all out.

Word of the day -- psephology

psephology -- the statistical study of elections and trends in voting.

ORIGIN 1950s: from Greek psēphos ‘pebble, vote’ + -logy .

A good word to know for the next few months.

From the dictionary built into my MacBook (version 2.0.3 (51.5) © Copyright 2005-2007 Apple Inc., All rights reserved.)

Sometimes a Tablet is just a Tablet

SpuriousLogic writes in with a link to a story about some Canadian consumers who thought they were getting an iPad 2 but instead got the makings of the world's oldest tablets."As many as 10 fake iPad 2s, all made of slabs of modeling clay, were recently sold at electronic stores in Vancouver, British Columbia. Best Buy and Future Shop have launched investigations into how the scam was pulled off. The tablet computers, like most Apple products, are known for their sleek and simple designs. But there's no mistaking the iPad for one of the world's oldest 'tablet devices.' Still, most electronic products cannot be returned to stores. For the the stores and customers to be fooled by the clay replacements, the thieves must have successfully weighed out the clay portions and resealed the original Apple packaging. Future Shop spokesman Elliott Chun told CTV that individuals bought the iPads with cash, replaced them with the model clay, then returned the packages to the stores. The returned fakes were restocked on the shelve and sold to new, unwitting customers."
From slashdot

Grand Central Terminal

The first things visitors to New York's iconic Grand Central need to know is that it's not a train station. Because the massive train yard is the end of every line that arrives, it's more appropriately -- and accurately -- called Grand Central Terminal.


From The Huffington Post

Quote of the day -- G.B. Shaw

Isadora Duncan, dancer: You are the greatest brain in the world and I have the most beautiful body, so we ought to produce the most perfect child.

George Bernard Shaw: What if the child inherits my beauty and yourbrains?

— George Bernard Shaw

Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics

Associated images recursively searched

Search by Image, Recursively, Transparent PNG, #1 from kingcosmonaut3000 on Vimeo.

Very Cool Camp Stove from BioLite

Very cool camp stove that runs on wood and charges via a USB port.

Quote of the Day -- Merlin Mann

There are going to be people around you who have demands on your time and attention, and you've got to deal with that.  But keep in mind (in the context of scarcity), that no one's ever going to be satisfied with how quickly you're becoming the person they expect you to become.

From Back to Work #38:  Sorry.  You can't have a candle.

Real Success

Real success comes not from being invited onto the yacht, but from being able to paddle one's own canoe.

Kudos to Hugh McLeod

Happy 2012