Quote of the day -- William Shakespeare

Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt.

Measure for Measure
Act 1, Scene 5

Quote of the day -- Edgar Degas

. . . Degas was a realist who was also subtle -- guarded even -- about how reality should be rendered. He once said that, were he to start an art school, it would be in six floors of a single house. Beginners would start with the model on the top floor. As students developed, they would move down, floor by floor, until they reached street level; to consult the original model, they would have to climb the stairs each time. Art for him was not just about memory, it was a Platonic conception of different layers of being.

Alistair Macaulay
New York Times
9/4/2011
Arts and Leisure p. 12

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Totally worth reading. Super fun. 80's media trivia + Geek Boy Meets Geek Girl + D&D + Console Video Games = Single serving novel. Best beach read of the summer.

Enjoy the Salton Sea

http://bcove.me/h3e46jvy

Sugar: The Bitter Truth

Quote of the day -- William vanden Heuvel quoting F.D.R.

Speaking about F.D.R., he said:

"When will we again have a President who says, Don't judge me by what I do for those who have much but for what I can do for those who have little?"

New Yorker Magazine, August 15 & 22, 2011 p. 34

Stay south of the Haimish Line

Good NYTimes editorial today by David Brooks.

Quote of the day -- Sun Tzu

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before the defeat.

Grading Graders on a Curve

How do you correct for easy and hard graders? One suggestion is to normalize the grades of graders -- that way they can give whatever grades they want, then they get renormalized to reflect the fact that someone is an easy grader and someone else is harder. That way, an 87 in a tough teacher's class becomes a 92 before it goes on your transcript. Similarly, a 95 can become an 78 if it's the lowest grade that teacher has given in years.

Here's a link to the article describing this in more (i.e. eye-watering) detail.

Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

Signaling/Countersignaling

Good article about countersignaling, which my friend Charlie Griffith described as "being cool."

via LessWrong

The Overlearning the Game Problem

What happens when a process becomes game-ified to the point where it no longer serves it's original purpose?

From Andrew on Everything

Quote of the day -- Sue DeRoos CPO®

Everyone gets organized at some point, they just might not be around for it.

-- Susan DeRoos CPO®

Information consumes attention: focus in the age of abundant stimulus

In New York magazine, Sam Anderson ponders economist Herbert A. Simon's 1971 thoughts on the economics of attention: "What information consumes is rather obvious: It consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it."

via BoingBoing

Quote of the day -- Leo Tolstoy

"The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him."

John Naughton via Boing Boing

Street Fighting Mathematics

http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/full_pdfs/Street-Fighting_Mathematics.pdf

Where Children Sleep

From James Mollison

Westward Expansion visualized by Post Offices

Posted: Visualizing US expansion through post offices. from Derek Watkins on Vimeo.

I Heart Vi Hart

And you should, too. You can follow her:

on Facebook,

on Youtube, or

on RSS.

ROCK SCULPTURE ON THE BOULDER CREEK

Quote of the day -- Albert Einstein

In 1931, the pamphlet One Hundred Authors Against Einstein was published by Philipp Lenard (1862–1947) and 99 others. As Einstein remarked in 1933, "If I were wrong, one would have been enough."

from Raganwald's Posterous

Slow. Motion. Owl.

Metropolis II by Chris Burden (the movie)

The Perfect Beach Vacation - Beach Angel Commercial by Travelocity

Since we're going to Cape Cod soon.

Look at that

Presto by Pixar

Presto - Copyright 2008 Disney/Pixar from Robert Toth on Vimeo.

Everything that is great about Pixar (except Wall-E), in 5 min.

The Joy of Stats

Hans Rosling says there’s nothing boring about stats, and then goes on to prove it. A one-hour long documentary produced by Wingspan Productions and broadcast by BBC, 2010. A DVD is available to order from Wingspan Productions. Director & Producer; Dan Hillman, Executive Producer: Archie Baron. ©Wingspan Productions for BBC, 2010.

NASA quantifies perfect timing

Excerpt from “How To Play In Traffic”, Penn Jillette and Teller, 1997 (out of print).

via symftr.tumblr.com/

Corporate Tax Holiday article by Matt Taibbi

As it is, leading members of the Senate are seriously considering giving the most profitable companies in the world a total tax holiday as a reward for their last seven years of systematic tax avoidance. Hundreds of billions of potential tax dollars would disappear from the Treasury. And there isn’t a peep from anyone, anywhere, on this issue.

via Rolling Stone

He's Got Radioactive Blood...

He's Got Radioactive Blood... - The Atlantic

I guess I don't care that it's not coming out for almost a year -- it looks great.

Alternative History Review of Hermione Granger Series

It’s the end of an era. The entertainment which has stretched across books, movies, and countless marketing tie-ins, which has captivated children and adults for well over a decade and which has, for better or worse, managed to become the defining myth for an entire generation, is winding to its close. I speak, of course, of the Hermione Granger series, by Joanne Rowling.

from In praise of Joanne Rowling’s Hermione Granger series

Earth seen from MESSENGER

Quote of the Day: Max Ehrman

“If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.”
Max Ehrman

Is there anything good about men?

The essence of how culture uses men depends on a basic social insecurity. This insecurity is in fact social, existential, and biological. Built into the male role is the danger of not being good enough to be accepted and respected and even the danger of not being able to do well enough to create offspring.

The basic social insecurity of manhood is stressful for the men, and it is hardly surprising that so many men crack up or do evil or heroic things or die younger than women. But that insecurity is useful and productive for the culture, the system.

Again, I’m not saying it’s right, or fair, or proper. But it has worked. The cultures that have succeeded have used this formula, and that is one reason that they have succeeded instead of their rivals.

American Psychological Association, Invited Address, 2007

Guitar Oscillations Captured with iPhone 4

How ships are launched - Very cool

Warren Buffet on the Federal Deficit

“I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP all sitting members of congress are ineligible for reelection.”

Video via CNBC

I Like Ike

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. […] Is there no other way the world may live?

–Dwight David Eisenhower, “The Chance for Peace,” speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Apr. 16, 1953.

via goodreads

Grim Chart about US Debt

From The Economist

More Women == Smarter Teams

An intriguing research project highlighted in the June 2011 issue of the Harvard Business Review by Anita Woolley of Carnegie Mellon and Thomas Malone of MIT suggests what makes teams smarter: having more women on them. The study also points out some things which you might intuitively think would help, but don’t.

via Trusted Advisor

Five to Fist -- Excellent Decision Making Tool for Small Meetings

One fascinating clue to women on teams and how they make decisions is provided by a look inside the Blogojevich jury, made up of eleven women and one man. Jezebel wrote that instead of taking an immediate up or down vote on various counts, the jury used a teacher’s device of “five to fist” – hold up five fingers if you completely agree, a fist if you completely disagree, and 2, 3 or 4 fingers to indicate that you’re somewhere in between.

In the Chicago Tribune Mary Schmich suggests that:

The jurors reached their decisions with no bullying, no shouting, no pouting. A colleague of mine who has covered a lot of trials said she’s never seen a jury build agreement through so many shades of gray.

My take-away? Make sure your teams have plenty of women, and oh, while you’re at it, try “five to fist” for coming to consensus.

This post was written by Sandy Styer

Sandy Styer is TAA's practice leader for the Trust Quotient, Trust Quotient 360 and Trust Temperament service offerings, and Trust Audit services. You can read more about her here. You can follow Sandy on Twitter @sandystyer

via Trusted Advisor

Euthanasia Coaster

The design starts with a steep-angled lift to the 510-metre (1,670 ft) top, that would take two minutes for the 24-passenger train to reach.[1] From there, a 500-metre (1,600 ft) drop would take the train to 360 kilometres per hour (220 mph), close to its terminal velocity, before flattening out and speeding into the first of its seven slightly clothoid inversions.[3] Each inversion would have a smaller diameter than the one before in order to inflict 10 g to passengers while the train loses speed.

via Wikipedia

Fire nears Los Alamos

6/28/2011 7:00PM - Los Alamos National Laboratory tonight announced it will remain closed through Thursday, June 30 because of risks presented by the Las Conchas Fire and the mandatory evacuation of Los Alamos town site. Laboratory facilities will be closed for all activities and nonessential employees are directed to remain off site. Personnel are considered nonessential unless they have received specific instructions from their supervisors to report to the Laboratory. Employees should check local news sources, Los Alamos County Emergency Radio on AM 1610, the LANL Update Hotline (505-667-6622) and the LANL web page (www.lanl.gov) for updates.

Anathem

How can I not have mentioned this before. I'm rereading it and it's even better the second time.

buy at Amazon

Success in a single sketch

via Nuclear Success

Jim Webb on Libya

Was our country under attack, or under the threat of imminent attack? Was a clearly vital national interest at stake? Were we invoking the inherent right of self-defense as outlined in the United Nations charter? Were we called upon by treaty commitments to come to the aid of an ally? Were we responding in kind to an attack on our forces elsewhere, as we did in the 1986 raids in Libya after American soldiers had been killed in a disco in Berlin? Were we rescuing Americans in distress, as we did in Grenada in 1983?

No, we were not.



From the Richmond Times-Dispach

Happy Birthday, Alan Turing

Alan Turing

Magic Mouse

Marine Quote about Gays in the Military

[T]he WSJ recently covered remarks made by Sgt. Maj. Micheal Barrett, the top non-commissioned officer in the Marine Corps and general all-around hardass, about gays in the military:

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution is pretty simple, It says, 'Raise an army.' It says absolutely nothing about race, color, creed, sexual orientation. You all joined for a reason: to serve. To protect our nation, right? How dare we, then, exclude a group of people who want to do the same thing you do right now, something that is honorable and noble? ... Get over it. We're magnificent, we're going to continue to be. ... Let's just move on, treat everybody with firmness, fairness, dignity, compassion and respect. Let's be Marines.

From WSJ via kottke.org

David Foster Wallace on Life and Work

A wonderful commencement address.

Great poster about talk and work

A geometric interpretation of "All Hat and No Cattle."

from Joey Roth via BankSimple Blog

Happy Friday

Spongebob Squarepants mushroom named

"Sing it with us: What lives in the rainforest, under a tree? Spongiforma squarepantsii, a new species of mushroom almost as strange as its cartoon namesake. Scientists from the San Francisco State University have discovered a new species of mushroom in Borneo with sponge-like properties. Its strange behavior convinced them to name it after the famous Bob. There is no word on whether or not their chances of getting future grant money will be improved by this choice."

via Slashdot

Are you ready kids? I can't hear you . . . .

Artificial hippocampal system restores long-term memory, enhances cognition

Theodore Berger and his team at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s Department of Biomedical Engineering have developed a neural prosthesis for rats that is able to restore their ability to form long-term memories after they had been pharmacologically blocked.

via - kurzweilai.net

This feels relevant to anyone who has experienced alzheimer's or similar memory-loss in family or friends.

World Trade Center Name Adjacency Algorithm

WTC Names Arrangement Tool from blprnt on Vimeo.

Video from an article about the World Trade Center adjacency problem.

- via blprnt

Wintours 5-word acceptance speech

Quote of the day -- Marko Rakar

Quote of the day, from Marko Rakar, Croatian data activist: "May the bridges I burn light the way"

via Boing Boing

Hula Hoop View of the World

Word of the day: Ephebiphobia

The fear of youth is called ephebiphobia. First coined as the “fear and loathing of teenagers,” today the phenomenon is recognized as the “inaccurate, exaggerated and sensational characterization of young people” in a range of settings around the world. Studies of the fear of youth occur in sociology and youth studies.

from Wikipedia via bestofwikipedia

Authors@Google: Randall Munroe of xkcd

An oldie but a goodie, and an excellent cameo by Donald Knuth.

Watson, fresh from Jeopardy victory, brings Medical game

Apparently this is what Watson was designed to do all along.

via Singularity Hub

Wonder Woman

From Phil Noto.

Midnight Sun Partial Eclipse

from Wired

Cassini at Saturn

CASSINI MISSION from cabbas on Vimeo.

Betteridge's Law of Headlines

Betteridge's Law of Headlines states that "any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no' ".

from Wikipedia

RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms

A great talk (with cartoons!) about education.

Manhattanendge

yfrog Photo : http://yfrog.com/hsgthhpj Shared by neiltyson

May 30, 2011 -- one of the two days each year when the sun sets right at the end of the grid in Manhattan.

Machine for preserving the wind.

This feels like Ray Bradbury's “And the Sailor Home from the Sea.”

Cross Section Views of Leica Lenses

From PetaPixel

Books

Books -- That is exactly how they work

Anatomy of an A+: A Look Inside the Process of One of the World’s Most Efficient Studiers

Repost from Study Hacks.

However, the real reason I posted was for the beautiful visual for present value.

Where are they now: the cast of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory - Boing Boing

http://boingboing.net/2011/05/17/where-are-they-now-t.html?utm_source=feedburner

Update on Kahn Academy

Now with badges when I've learned something.

Out of Phase Pendulums

The best 1:45 you'll spend all day.

How do you quote a passage that has used '[sic]' mistakenly?

Excellent grammar meta-question:
How do you quote a passage that has used '[sic]' mistakenly?

I find your lack of faith disturbing

The Galactic Empire Times:

In a late-night appearance in the East Room of the Imperial Palace, Lord Vader declared that "justice has been done" as he disclosed that agents of the Imperial Army and stormtroopers of the 501st Legion had finally cornered Kenobi, one of the leaders of the Jedi rebellion, who had eluded the Empire for nearly two decades.

Robots learning to share

Enjoying the moment

So next time we’re washing the dishes, why not actually find enjoyment in washing the dishes? It can be a very relaxing activity. When we’re trying to reach inbox zero, why not enjoy the great conversations we are having and have some gratitude for the amazing people we are in touch with and the fact we can communicate so easily. When a customer gets in touch with a question about our product, instead of seeing it as a necessary but unenjoyable task, why not be thankful that they care enough to get in touch, and look for something we can learn from them?

from joel.is

To Amazon.com, It's Still Day #1

Amazon's 2010 and 1997 annual letters to shareholders.

More grim news about Ph.D.s -- Short version: oversupply

Education: The PhD factory

From nature.com

Women in Science

This article by Philip Greenspun is about anyone in science (not just women), and suggests that it is a tougher road than even those who champion it as a career would suspect.

Quote of the day -- Calvin Trillin

"When I'm trying to impress Alice, for instance, I remind her that I have resolutely ignored drinking fashions for twenty-five years, steadily knocking back Scotch whiskey the entire time. They turned to wine; I drank Scotch. They smoked pot; I drank Scotch. They ordered Perrier water; I drank Scotch. They snorted cocaine while naked in a hot tub discussing real estate; I drank Scotch. I like to think that late on some Saturday nights Alice can point to me - slumped in the corner, sodden with scotch - and say, 'There sits a man of principle. Inert.'" 

~ from Uncivil Liberties by Calvin Trillin

via The Atlantic

The Status Game

An interesting thought experiment, or possibly a provocative class exercise:

A stack of card was shuffled face down on a table, and each person was asked to choose a card without looking at it. Then the instructor asked us to get on stage, and raise our cards against our foreheads so that they are facing the rest of the group. Each person was automatically assigned a “status” corresponding to their card. Then the instructor suggested a business situation for us to enact in a way that helps each person guess the number on their forehead correctly. How would we do that? By changing our postures and tone of voice to match our estimated status and how it ranks against the status we see on other people’s forehead. For instance, if I am guessing the card on my head to be a 8, and I meet with a queen, I’d lower my voice and stand in a way that reflect the other person’s status dominance over mine. And if I meet a 5, I’d assume a higher posture and voice and may be give an order or two. If the person suddenly assumed a different posture and voice, it could mean that either she or I have the wrong guess. The goal wasn’t to challenge each other, but to help each other make the right guess.

from Hacking the Status Game

Snap Together Trebuchette

The projects supported by Kickstarter are getting better and better.

Another attempt to embed video + railguns

Experiment with embedding vimeo video

2011/03 Mike Monteiro | F*ck You. Pay Me. from SanFrancisco/CreativeMornings on Vimeo.

Review of German Expressionist Art Exhibit

Walking through the German Expressionism exhibit really messed me up. All of them either killed themselves or fell down the stairs drunk to their deaths, and it was only, like, 1926, and you’re all ‘God, you have no fucking idea how much worse things are about to get, you poor people.’ The glorious shitshow of the 20th century has barely started, and you’re already painting elongated haunted torsos with exposed viscera.

Rambling bits that start out as book reviews and then turn into more general ruminations. Good stuff

-- Lazy Self-Indulgent Book Reviews

Understanding Congress’s solution to the federal deficit problem

We have a family that is spending $38,200 per year. The family’s income is $21,700 per year. The family adds $16,500 in credit card debt every year in order to pay its bills. After a long and difficult debate among family members, keeping in mind that it was not going to be possible to borrow $16,500 every year forever, the parents and children agreed that a $380/year premium cable subscription could be terminated. So now the family will have to borrow only $16,120 per year.

From Philip Greenspun's Weblog

The 'B' Students work for the 'C' students . . . .

America has made the mistake of letting the A student run things. It was A students who briefly took over the business world during the period of derivatives, credit swaps, and collateralized debt obligations. We’re still reeling from the effects. This is why good businessmen have always adhered to the maxim: “A students work for B students.” Or, as a businessman friend of mine put it, “B students work for C students—A students teach.”

-- P.J. O'Rourke

Quote of the day on the budget negotiations

Joel Housman: "Remember when Planned Parenthood & NPR crashed the market, wiped out half our 401Ks and took TARP money? Me neither."

Scientists answer Molyneux's question

It seems important any time scientists solve a question posed by philosophers hundreds of years ago.

Imagine, William Molyneux wrote to the great British thinker, that a man blind from birth who has learned to identify objects -- a sphere and a cube, for example -- only through his sense of touch is suddenly able to see.
The puzzle, he continued, is "Whether he Could, by his Sight, and before he touch them, know which is the Globe and which the Cube?"

For philosophers of the time, answering "Molyneux's question," as it was known ever after, would resolve a fundamental uncertainty about the human mind.

Empiricists believed that we are born blank slates, and become the sum total of our accumulated experience. So-called "nativists" countered that our minds are, from the outset, pre-stocked with ideas waiting to be activated by sight, sound and touch.

Find out the answer here.

via www.physorg.com

Star Trek is coming to Netflix

"Starting in July, every episode from every Star Trek series will be available for Instant Watch over Netflix, Ds9 in October."

from tekgoblin.com

I'm never leaving the sofa again.

Dilbert Test for Gender Fairness

So I propose a simple test to determine if you, individually, are a victim of gender unfairness. If a genie gave you the chance to magically switch your gender, and become a member of the other sex, would you do it? And let's say the new you would be about the same as now on the scale of attractiveness, intelligence, ethnicity, circumstance, and health. The only real change would be gender. Do you take the offer?

from Dilbert Blog

The Möbius Gear

"After some time staring at and puzzling over this image, I convinced myself that this mechanism is indeed possible and that with right tools, a functional prototype could be built."

There's hope for us as a species yet . . .

via Boing Boing

Makers vs. Managers Schedules from Paul Graham

For someone on the maker's schedule, having a meeting is like throwing an exception. It doesn't merely cause you to switch from one task to another; it changes the mode in which you work.

Paul Graham

I used to be more of a maker, but now I'm mostly a manager. A balance would be better -- maybe manager during the school year and Maker during the summer someday.

Quote of the day -- Lenin

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen”. – Lenin

From the Long Now Foundation

Ben Smith First Career NHL Goal/Point! (4/8/11) [HD]

I'd be happy even if he weren't such a good guy, which he is.

A Perfect Storm in Undergraduate Education

A whiny but fairly comprehensive set of observations about pressures that have contributed to a decline in the standards to which most students are held. From the Chronicle of Higher Education

Part 1
Part 2

Japanese Tsunami Stone Markers

“High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants,” the stone slab reads. “Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build any homes below this point.”

From The Long Now Foundation

All Points are Starting Points

Words to live by from Hugh McLeod