Skinner as self-manager

I’m not sure how I came across it, but I saw a link to a paper on B.F. Skinner’s self-management skills. Skinner is well-known as the father of behaviorism and for developing operant conditioning, where people simply respond to the environment around them, thus leading his critics to accuse him of denying the existence of […]

Construction vs. design

I really liked Scott Berkun’s most recent essay, entitled “Why software sucks”. Berkun is a former Microsoft project manager, who’s now an independent author of project management books. I’m not sure where I ran across his web page, but his essays are often interesting and thought-provoking. I liked the distinction he makes between construction and […]

Cultural geography

My friend Jen pointed me at this column by David Brooks, describing the concept of cultural geography, a field he doesn’t really define, but comes across as the study of how and why different communities believe different things. Given my current belief in the idea that everybody has different realities, she thought I would find […]

My personal blogosphere

There’s been lots of talk echoing around my personal blogosphere recently about the aftermath of the BlogHer conference. In particular, the initial BlogHer session involved discussion over how men tend to network widely but shallowly and women tend to link narrowly but deeply. Given a link-based economy, the former strategy tends to be rewarded more […]

Google Maps Pedometer

I’m too cheap (and don’t do enough cool outdoorsy stuff) to buy a GPS unit to track how far I’ve gone when biking and running and stuff like that. So I was excited when Brad pointed to a tool called Gmap pedometer, which combines a nifty interface with the GPS information contained in Google Maps […]

Links of April 4th, 2005

Three links of interest that I came across today. Thomas Friedman wrote a long article about outsourcing for the New York Times magazine, making the point that with new technology, the world is flattening out such that anything can be done anywhere. While I believe outsourcing may be good, and while I am amazed, as […]

Look Up More

Damn. I just read about this awesome performance art piece called Look Up More, performed here in New York a week ago Saturday. And I missed it! Damn! I needed better contacts here, apparently. I was about five blocks away when it went off, watching a play. Ah well. They put volunteers in each of […]

Quick hits of February

A couple random observations, then more links. I was ego surfing today and decided to check on some of the neological phrases I’ve used in this blog. I’m now first on Google for “cognitive subroutines”, “information carnivore”, and “conservative postmodernism”. Of course, nobody but me has really referred to any of those phrases yet. But […]

Linkage

In his latest article, Christopher Allen takes on a question that I struggled with at one point: how do we handle our social networks when they grow too large? Too large, in this case, is defined with respect to Dunbar’s Number. Some interesting thoughts, especially on how we handled the problem in a pre-technology age. […]

The Principles Project

I’ve ranted before on the importance of a clear message in politics. And that the Democrats were lacking that in the last election. It seems that I am not the only one who made that observation. A group called 2020 Democrats has started a website called The Principles Project, which is “an effort to develop […]