Bijou Smith
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Can we all please get beyond the myth that "thinking is hard"! This guy from Veritasium means well, but regurgitates the myth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gstcvew6FVM&feature=em-subs_digest Thinking is not hard because of the brain energy it takes. That is utter crap. What is likely more realistic psychologically is that people do not take time and quiet space to reflect and meditate. Deep thinking is more like meditation, and it is energizing and relaxing. So this old myth needs replacing I think. Thinking deeply while distracting yourself with trivia is really hard, because of the cognitive load on working memory. But humans have invented ways to get around this. One is called WRITING. You sit down meditate, allow thoughts to flood your working memory, and when you get an insight or an overload you write them down then later organize and structure your thoughts. In this way deep thinking is easy and enjoyable. Making thinking hard so that it seems to hurt your brain is a choice. You have chosen to by into the myth when you try to concentrate on deep thinking while allowing yourself to be distracted by life's trivia and absurdities. Unfortunately, few schools teach the proper art of thinking.
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Sen Bernie Sanders says what progressives and democrats should have been saying all year during the Trump show... focus on the positive in what Trump promises! They should have ignored all the Trump crap because everyone sees Trumps lunacy for what it is, even the minority White who voted for it all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olILIkiIrM0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olILIkiIrM0
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Pet Peeve for the Week: research journal abstracts that say nothing about the results or conclusions. Some people in higher education clearly have not finished their high school education. In good ol' New Zealand we were taught as freshmen to basically summarise everything in your abstract. Take a look at this shocker here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233543880_Competencies_the_triumph_of_a_fuzzy_concept
Now I do not want this entire paper, but I do have time to browse a few abstracts, since I am trying to model some of the stupidity of performance appraisal systems (which I think are redundant wastes of time IF your people are mentored nicely and trained in how to work via quality process). During my literature search I have fond dozens of utterly useless abstracts like this. No way I am going to fork over the money to buy these articles. Makes one think journal editors cull abstracts deliberately to get naive readers to purchase their articles. It's not US journals either, here it is from The Netherlands. Bad Dutch, bad, bad Dutch. We know you can do better.
Now I do not want this entire paper, but I do have time to browse a few abstracts, since I am trying to model some of the stupidity of performance appraisal systems (which I think are redundant wastes of time IF your people are mentored nicely and trained in how to work via quality process). During my literature search I have fond dozens of utterly useless abstracts like this. No way I am going to fork over the money to buy these articles. Makes one think journal editors cull abstracts deliberately to get naive readers to purchase their articles. It's not US journals either, here it is from The Netherlands. Bad Dutch, bad, bad Dutch. We know you can do better.
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When I was a young immature sports & science geek I never thought I'd be interested in Typesetting, but then I learned LaTeX for my PhD these decades ago. So I now enjoy this stuff as a diversion: check out Computerphile's nice little video on the Bell Labs Linotron 202 summer vacation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVxeuwlvf8w). The reproduction of the original memo can be found here: http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~bwk/202/summer.reconstructed.pdf
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Goof off in style. Nice fun for lunch time VDO's: the awesome toy playing Professor Tadashi Tokieda: http://bit.ly/29WXrYC
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What's worse than Republican hypocrites supporting immoral behaviour in their leadership? It is liberals like Bill Maher recommending progressives and lefties get equally dirty and hypocritical. Please do not take Maher seriously, his remedy of fighting corruption with corruption is just wrong and stupid and self-defeating. Progressives instead need to be even better and always seek the moral high ground. By this I mean both conservative and liberal progressives. Politics needs to get look to principles and universally agreed truths, and when disagreement over principles occurs then empirical facts need to supply some sanity wherever possible. And whenever relative truth or facts are in dispute we all need to take a breathe and consult with each and reach palatable and ethical compromises, not rush to the parochial partisan extremes. https://www.amazon.com/New-Rules-Polite-Musings-Observer/dp/1594862958/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
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If you ever thought when times are good the poor amongst us still get kicked in the ass, and when times are bad they get kicked in the ass AND brutally throttled and kicked in their heads, then please listen to Sundhil Mullainathan: http://www.lse.ac.uk/publicEvents/events/2015/05/20150521t1830vOT.aspx
His book "Scarcity: The New Science of Having Less and How It Defines Our Lives" is a must read for governments and policy makers. It shows you why poor people often make dumb decisions, but why everyone does the same whenever they find themselves in scarce need of something (could be in need of more time, more freedom, more sleep, more food, whatever). When hunger for anything causes us myopia we lose the ability to make wise decisions about other aspects of life, and this is true no matter what one's level pf educaiton. Scarcity makes you focus on what is vital for your immediate survival or psychological needs, and you WILL then become dumb about most other things. Thanks Sundhil, you are a saint of academics.
His book "Scarcity: The New Science of Having Less and How It Defines Our Lives" is a must read for governments and policy makers. It shows you why poor people often make dumb decisions, but why everyone does the same whenever they find themselves in scarce need of something (could be in need of more time, more freedom, more sleep, more food, whatever). When hunger for anything causes us myopia we lose the ability to make wise decisions about other aspects of life, and this is true no matter what one's level pf educaiton. Scarcity makes you focus on what is vital for your immediate survival or psychological needs, and you WILL then become dumb about most other things. Thanks Sundhil, you are a saint of academics.
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Pet Peeve for the Week: research journal abstracts that say nothing about the results or conclusions. Some people in higher education clearly have not finished their high school education. In good ol' New Zealand we were taught as freshmen to basically summarise everything in your abstract. Take a look at this shocker here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233543880_Competencies_the_triumph_of_a_fuzzy_concept
Now I do not want this entire paper, but I do have time to browse a few abstracts, since I am trying to model some of the stupidity of performance appraisal systems (which I think are redundant wastes of time IF your people are mentored nicely and trained in how to work via quality process). During my literature search I have fond dozens of utterly useless abstracts like this. No way I am going to fork over the money to buy these articles. Makes one think journal editors cull abstracts deliberately to get naive readers to purchase their articles.
Now I do not want this entire paper, but I do have time to browse a few abstracts, since I am trying to model some of the stupidity of performance appraisal systems (which I think are redundant wastes of time IF your people are mentored nicely and trained in how to work via quality process). During my literature search I have fond dozens of utterly useless abstracts like this. No way I am going to fork over the money to buy these articles. Makes one think journal editors cull abstracts deliberately to get naive readers to purchase their articles.
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Found something beautiful. Have you ever seen a complete thorough exposition of the solutions to polynomial equations up to quartics in less than 5 pages of absolutely clear and simple writng? Well, thanks to the great V.I. Arnold's student, V.B. Alekseev, you can see just such writing in "Abel's Theorem in Problems and Solutions", which has a reduced format published by the Math.Found.Am. edited by Julian Guilby and available here: https://www.mathcamp.org/2015/abel/abel.pdf. You might also find the better Kluwer translation somewhere online (it has nice problem guides). In an alternate universe I could see myself wandering the world popularizing mathematics, and in particular championing clear mathematical exposition, this little book would be one to champion.
http://bit.ly/2aEtT54
http://bit.ly/2aEtT54
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Maybe the best talk on how to write efficient easy to maintain code that I've seen in a long while, from Fred George. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1Efy4RB_kw
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