New Pictures of the Sun

NASA's New Eye on the Sun Delivers Stunning First Images

Retweet from The Garden Variety Philosopher Weblog

"The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now."

~Japanese Proverb

From a very good blog.

Mirrormask

I wasn't sure what to expect from this movie. On the one hand, it hadn't received good reviews and wasn't around for long. On the other hand, I like Neil Gaiman. So I figured it would be a cool, quirky, low-budget looking movie with an interesting plot. I was totally wrong. The visual effects were really the star of the movie. They were so mesmerizing that I think I want to see it again just to watch it all unfold. The music was distractingly bad, the plot was totally forgettable, and there weren't really characters to speak of. But the images were so wonderful that it saved the whole thing. 3 out of 5 stars.

New David Foster Wallace book

There is a new biography about David Foster Wallace that just came out, which refers to a new novel Pale King, due to be published soon. It makes me want to re-read Infinite Jest.

The Dunning–Kruger effect

From Wikipedia:

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which "people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it". The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than in actuality; by contrast, the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to a perverse result where less competent people will rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. "Thus, the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others."


“In the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”

— Bertrand Russell

Update on the Metro-North Bar Cars Upgrade

A very helpful comment came in from Jim Cameron last night:

The NY Times story is WRONG. I was interviewed by the reporter and he conveniently ignored the facts I gave him.

The old bar cars will not be retired when the new M8's arrive.

I am confident there will be new M8 bar cars ordered, but not until our first priority is met: passenger cars.

JIM CAMERON / Chairman
CT Rail Commuter Council
www.trainweb.org/ct

Thank you, Mr. Cameron, for chiming in. Your clarification is very reasonable, and it is appropriate that the CT Rail Commuter Council put a higher priority on passenger cars.

Metro-North considering ending bar cars

This would make me very sad.

Merlin Mann Interview

I like Merlin Mann, in part because he reminds me of a lot of my clever friends. I don't get to talk to my clever friends as much as I'd like, so I settle for listening to and reading Merlin.

Thank You, Kurt Vonnegut

"Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies -- God damn it, you've got to be kind."

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

The Enemy of my Enemy

Nice New York Times column that starts with math and ends with politics.

Thinking about Grade Inflation

The website gradeinflation.com is trying to be a little more systematic in its approach than rants about Harvey "C-Minus" Mansfield.

Politics and the English Language by George Orwell

There is something fundamentally hopeful about this:

A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.

Tastes like chicken

A new brown thing I'll totally eat.

Movie update

Desk Set. 4/5 -- very good, but the pacing seemed so slow by 2010 standards, that I couldn't go all the way up to 5. Also, A fell asleep, which DQ's the highest rating.

Cube 2: Hypercube. 2/5 -- Hard to believe I was actually disappointed by this, given how low my expectations were, but I was. How much extra would a smart screenwriter have cost, given the budget that was bigger than the original (which was better).

Terminator: Salvation 3/5 -- nothing super-dope special-effects-wise, which is what the franchise usually offers. Good plot, but it felt more like a regular adventure movie. Too much emphasis on the -- "Oh, no! A paradox if someone from the future kills my teenaged dad before he can go back and meet my mom!" This was all picked through in the first movie. Don't tackle this unless you have something to offer.

Ninja Assassin 2/5 -- all the good scenes were in the preview. Very disappointing, given that the Wachowskis were involved.

I still like this picture

I don't care that it's in the dorm room of >10% of college frosh, or that it had to have been staged. It's still wonderful.

Westminster Hockey Alumni help BC

Two Westminster alumni helped the Boston Eagles' men's ice hockey team win the NCAA national championship at the 2010 Frozen Four.

One of the best magazine profiles out there

Frank Sinatra has a gold, from Esquire magazine by Gay Talese.

Elon Musk on Obama's Space Program Announcement

Elon Musk is also someone who, if he says, "Obama made a good decision," I tend to trust.

Increase your word power

These are the words David Foster Wallace circled in his dictionary.

Game Store Owns Your Soul

Better read that fine print from now on.

Wallace and Gromit

Why order each story individually from Amazon for $9.99 each, when you can get all three together for $11.99?

1. A Grand Day Out - 1989
2. The Wrong Trousers - 1993
3. A Close Shave - 1995

Streaming Netflix for the Wii

My productivity, such as it was, will now drop to near flat-line.

Project Euler

Anyone who says that they're bored should go here and do problems until they're not bored anymore.

No post yesterday

I ended up spending my posting time playing Civilization Wars (free as in beer Warcraft knockoff).

It probably all boils down to this

Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.
After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.

~Zen proverb

101 Zen Stories

Available here.

Even meaner version of Tetris?

This version was inspired by Wednesday's xkcd cartoon.

A very mean version of Tetris

Hatetris

Last Stanza of Philip Larkin's "Church going"

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

Beowulf

Felt more like a proof of concept than a movie, although Robert Zemeckis had already explored this technique in Polar Express. Angelina Jolie is much better in person than she is as a CGI artifact. The script by Neil Gaiman was better than I expected. 2.5 out of 5.

Oursourced Grading

Chronicle article about papers graded in Bangalore. Arguably, this is the continuation of a trend that started when professors had T.A.s and students do the grading. I graded the homework assignments for Peter Schultheiss' Linear Algebra course when I was a senior. However, this does erode the proposition that the university is providing some particularly important value-added with the professors when they're not even grading the papers at the school itself.

Leaves of Grass improves distribution

Tim Blake Nelson's movie Leaves of Grass gets a better distribution deal after excellent buzz at SXSW.

John Carmack Quote

"The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying." -- John Carmack

I believe this because a) I think it's entirely true, and b) because given the choice between agreeing John Carmack and not, the smarter play is to agree.

John Conway Interview

Most famous for inventing the Game of Life, John Conway is impressive for other reasons as well. He ended up getting some nice airtime on the Nova special about Andrew Wiles and his proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.

The videos are here and here, and the transcripts of the videos are here and here.

District 9

Very good.

Sometimes I doubt your commitment

Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparke Motion.

Texas School Textbook Opinions

Nice article about the Texas School Board and their influence on book publishers nationwide by Roger Ebert, and a thoughtful reply from a publisher which was very reasonable (I think).

Joke from StackOverflow

A woman asks her husband, a programmer, to go shopping:
- Dear, please, go to the nearby grocery store to buy some bread. Also, if
they have eggs, buy 6.
- O.K., hun. Twenty minutes later the husband comes back bringing 6 loaves
of bread. His wife is flabbergasted:
- Dear, why on earth did you buy 6 loaves of bread?
- They had eggs.

The first action figure I'd actually buy

Note the 1:4:9 ratio of side lengths. Quality.

Cory Doctorow on Why I Shouldn't Want an iPad

He's right, of course, but it's so pretty . . . .

How to unlock a chain lock on a hotel room door

Thanks, YouTube.

OKCupid Political Statistics

Very good article about how statistical information gathered on a dating site can give insight into political trends.

OkCupid is an internet dating site, but they run a blog where they use
their massive database of demographic information to draw interesting
conclusions. This post analyzes why democrats seem to have numerical
superiority but are often defeated by Republican organization and
cohesiveness by looking at statistics derived from OkCupid's dating
profiles.

---
Thank you to Brian Howard for the link.

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.