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