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

Merry Christmas

A decade or so from now, when, say, we're waiting for the kids to come home from college for their winter breaks, and, when they do, they want to spend their time going out with their friends — how much will we be willing to pay then to be able to go back in time, for one day, to now, when they're ten and five years old, they want to go to movies and play games and build Lego kits with us, and they believe in magic?

How much then, for one day with what our family has right now?

How much?

Everything.

All I want for Christmas is what I have right here.


paraphrased from a Christmas post by John Gruber at Daring Fireball.

Quote of the Day - Donald Knuth

The purpose of a liberal education is to learn something about everything, and everything about something.

from a video about his advice to young people.

Study Hacks » Advice on Getting Better from an Accomplished Piano Player

http://calnewport.com/blog/2011/12/23/flow-is-the-opiate-of-the-medicore-advice-on-getting-better-from-an-accomplished-piano-player/

It looks like Middle Earth: Guy Laramee's Books

via Boing Boing.

Ансамбль "Берёзка - "Прялица"

I love the way they walk, and I really love the whole stage and backdrop at the end.

How Chicken Wire is Made

I'm not sure which is better -- this video about making chicken wire, or the fact that there is a website devoted to different kinds of fencing.  Both make me happy to be living in the year 2011.

I was always a little worried about Facebook

While this is something of an exaggeration, I do worry about this from time to time.  I don't know whether it actually showed up somewhere or whether it's a fabrication, but, as the old reporters used to say, it's "too good to check."

Happy Holidays

This came from my Uncle, but I don't know where he saw it first.

Bene Gesserit Litany

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bene_Gesserit

Scooby-Doo and Secular Humanism

An interesting post on the hidden subversiveness in Scooby-Doo.

Ketchupbot + 20th Century Fox Theme on a Flute

Quote of the day -- Tim Minchin

 “Do you know what they call alternative medicine that's been proved to work? Medicine.”


-- Tim Minchin (start at 2:50)

Follow-up: Jetman versus Jetteam

Now he's flying with real jets. Granted -- they have their flaps down. Still.

Article about Reading David Foster Wallace's Syllabus

The Extraordinary Syllabus of David Foster Wallace
What his lesson plans teach us about how to live
by
Katie Rophie

Here are two of his syllabi.

Two good quotes:

"Even in a seminar class it seems a little silly to require participation.  Some students who are cripplingly shy, or who can't always formulate their  best thoughts and questions in the rapid back-and-forth of a group discussion, are nevertheless good and serious students. On the other hand, as Prof --- points out supra, our class can't really function if there isn't student participation—it will become just me giving a half-assed ad-lib lecture for 90 minutes, which (trust me) will be horrible in all kinds of ways."

"If you are used to whipping off papers the night before they're due, running them quickly through the computer's Spellchecker, handing them in full of high-school errors and sentences that make no sense and having the professor accept them 'because the ideas are good' or something, please be informed that I draw no distinction between the quality of one's ideas and the quality of those ideas' verbal expression, and I will not accept sloppy, rough-draftish, or semiliterate college writing. Again, I am absolutely not kidding."

Doing A Job by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover

http://bebekim.wordpress.com/2010/08/27/doing-a-job-by-admiral-hyman-g-rickover-u-s-navy-retired/

Zapruder HD Stable Pan

The image stabilization highlights the violence of JFK's head jerking back, and to the left.

Quote of the day -- Andy Inhatko

You know how your barbershop has six cutters, and there’s one that always does a spectacularly good job, there are two who are just competent, and the others can only be properly addressed as “barbers” when they’re being named in some sort of civil lawsuit?

-- Andy Inhatko in his review of Apple's new voice interface named Siri.

August 23, 2011 Earthquake in Simsbury

From the Maryland Geological Survey

John Gruber Talk

John Gruber - Çingleton 2011 from Çingleton on Vimeo.

Quote of the day -- Derek Silvers

To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.

-- Derek Silvers

Jetman -- Yes, he is a human jet. That is all.

Quote of the Day -- Jane Austen

We all love to instruct, though we can teach only what is not worth knowing.

from Brian Ford

Feminist Perspective on Penn State Sex Scandal

The mistake Penn State made was, in many ways, a simple category error: they mistook these pubescent boys for women.

-- from The Tenured Radical

Brian Eno Interview on Colbert

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

The Social Graph is Neither

Social networks exist to sell you crap. The icky feeling you get when your friend starts to talk to you about Amway, or when you spot someone passing out business cards at a birthday party, is the entire driving force behind a site like Facebook.

-- From The Social Graph is Neither

Westminster Newspaper October 28, 1962

Open publication - Free publishing - More newspaper

Surfing in Bullet Time

World's first manned flight with an electric multicopter

Want.

Corollary to the previously posted Rules of Thumb

If you’re not paying for something, you have no reason to expect it to be there tomorrow. -- Steven Poole

Glory Road

Glory Road is an excellent movie to watch at the beginning of March Madness. However, it's not so good to watch on TNT starting at midnight, because the geometric increase in the number of commercials per hour catches up to me when I'm most tired. Josh Lucas looks like Kevin Costner, except I think he's a better actor.

Tic Tac Toe xkcd

They're all good, but this one has all the makings of a classic.

Randall Munroe is just so great.

Rule of Thumb for Many Situations

"If you have been in a poker game for a while, and you still don’t know who the patsy is, you’re the patsy."  -- Warren Buffett


"If you're not paying for the product, you are the product." -- Jeff Reifman

People who make me feel like I haven't really accomplished much

George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics.

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5217.George_Bernard_Shaw

Quote of the day -- John Gruber

I like to think that in the run-up to his final keynote, Steve [Jobs] made time for a long, peaceful walk. Somewhere beautiful, where there are no footpaths and the grass grows thick. Hand-in-hand with his wife and family, the sun warm on their backs, smiles on their faces, love in their hearts, at peace with their fate.

--Daring Fireball

Cooking with Machiavelli

1. Arrange to have garlic and onions cast into hot oil.

2. The carrot and celery you must divide against themselves. Ground beef, too, shall turn upon the burner; crush any coherent resistance with a spoon of wood. Sautee until no hint of blood remains to stain your hands.

3. Perhaps, in a dark place without witnesses, the tomato shall meet with the knife.

from BoingBoing

Star Wars Script

Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.

Guide to top 100 SF-Fantasy books

NPR flowchart that helps you decide what to read next.

Quote of the day -- Joe Walsh

Don't need the ladies crying 'cause the story's sad.
The Rocky Mountain way-- better than the way we had.

Quote of the day -- Steve Jobs

Steve and I were talking about children one time, and he said the problem with children is that they carry your heart with them. The exact phrase was, “It’s your heart running around outside your body.”

-- Eric Schmidt on Steve Jobs from Business Week

Quote of the day -- John Kennedy

"For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."


1962 Yale Commencement Address

Excerpts from this speech on YouTube

They're like Ents

Once you get them going, look out.

Old School bedtime stories

"For Children Three Years Old,” from Lessons for Children by Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Philadelphia, 1818:

There was a naughty boy; I do not know what his name was, but it was not Charles, nor George, nor Arthur, for those are all very pretty names: but there was a robin came in at his window one very cold morning — shiver — shiver; and its poor little heart was almost frozen to death. And he would not give it the least crumb of bread in the world, but pulled it about by the tail and hurt it sadly, and it died. Now a little while after, the naughty boy’s papa and mamma went away and left him, and then he could get no victuals at all, for you know he could not take care of himself. So he went about to every body — Pray give me something to eat, I am very hungry. And every body said, No, we shall give you none, for we do not love cruel, naughty boys. So he went about from one place to another, till at last he got into a thick wood of trees; for he did not know how to find his way any where; and then it grew dark night. So he sat down and cried sadly; and he could not get out of the wood; and I believe the bears came and ate him up in the wood, for I never heard any thing about him afterwards.

Frazetta

From The Pictorial Arts Journal: Long Live Frazetta

Think Different

Steve Jobs 1955-2011.
Thanks for everything.

Not a very nice note in a coffee shop

From passiveaggressivenotes.com

Ode to a Bookstore Death: Things we never told you

(click on photo to zoom)

from Boing Boing

Richard Branson

Richard Branson on Time Management.

Quote of the day -- Peter McWilliams

If it'll be funny then, it's funny now.

R.E.M. breaks up

Thank you for everything.

The Carpetbaggers

It is unlikely that you will experience in your lifetime all that you will see in The Carpetbaggers.



It is unlikely that you will see in your lifetime all that you will experience in The Carpetbaggers.

Quote of the day -- Stewart Brand

“Rigorously collected old data keeps finding new uses.”

-- Stewart Brand, The Clock of the Long Now, p. 140

Robert Nozick: Individual Liberty Trumps All

Blatant name dropping -- Tamar and I were philosophy majors together in college. She's famous and I know her.

Won't You Be My Neighbor from 1967 to 2000- Mister Rogers Neighborhood

Panoramic View In Front of Andrews Memorial Chapel

Panorama of Outside Andrews Chapel on CleVR.com

And quickly, too.

1. Something must be done
2. This is something
3. Therefore, this must be done.

Fewer posts

I'm posting less often recently because I've been trying to write every day -- I signed up for 750Words.com, a great website that encourages me to write every day and gives out badges (!) if I hit certain milestones. Apparently, although I've intended to try writing every day as a form of mental discipline and emotional health, I can only do it if I get badges.

Hello, I'm Shelley Duvall

A Time Bank in New York City

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/15/where-all-work-is-created-equal/?hp&pagewanted=all

How to write good

http://homepage.mac.com/mseffie/handouts/writegood.html

Having said all that, I do believe you have to know the rules before you can break them effectively.

Quote of the day -- George Patton

A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.

George S. Patton
US general (1885 - 1945)

Do not go gentle into that good night

Do not go gentle into that good night
by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Jeb Corliss " Grinding The Crack"

A Human Version of Go, Dog! Go!

see more There I Fixed It

Anthony Lane is in the right place at the right time

A few quotes from the May 16th issue of The New Yorker that make me glad I live in a world where I can read his work and share his observations about the world:

From an article about Pixar:

To disentangle the dealings between Disney and Pixar is perfectly straightforward, so long as you have trained yourself by studying, say, the history of Anglo-Irish relations.

and from the closing paragraph of the same article --

But what do they know, these super-educated Peter Pans, up in the Bay Area, hammering out their perfectionist fables, high on Cocoa Puffs and single malt?

and from a review of Thor:

Some gods have all the luck. When the hero of "Thor" plummets to Earth, from a far corner of the cosmos, in a storming thunderbolt, the first thing he sees upon waking is the face of Natalie Portman. Not a sheep, or a branch of Subway, or a rainy day in Pittsburg but, I repeat, Natalie Portman.

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