After writing my post about the perils of extremism a few weeks ago, I just have to link to John Perry Barlow’s thoughts on the subject. Despite being the author of the much ballyhooed Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Barlow only recently started a weblog of his own. After one of his posts evangelizing […]
Category: thoughts
Crossing the Chasm, by Geoffrey Moore
Amazon link This is one of those standard high-tech marketing books that everybody refers to in the technology business sector. I had never gotten around to reading it, but after our marketing folks started mentioning the chasm in every presentation recently, I figured it was time to skim through it, just to find out what […]
Dean Can’t Win
In light of my speculation as to Dean’s chances in the presidential election, I thought I should put up a link to the political cartoon, This Modern World, which published a cartoon this week, ridiculing the idea that Dean can’t win. I’m still torn on Dean. I like his position on several of the issues. […]
Height study redux
In the latest Science News, I read a blurb that partially supports the theory I posited in my rant about the height study a month ago. In particular, my assertion that “if one is undernourished as a kid, the body gets most of the nutritive value and the brain is starved.” The article, entitled “Ketones […]
Extremism
Last month, I was chatting with somebody who, upon finding out that I went to MIT, asked me if I had ever taken a class with Noam Chomsky. I said that I hadn’t, but I’d read a couple of his books, so he asked me what I thought of them. I said something like “I […]
Language in Thought and Action, by S.I. Hayakawa
Amazon link (originally posted on 8/17/03, link fixed on 11/17/03) I found this book in a roundabout way. In Conscientious Objections, Neal Postman reviewed the book Science and Sanity, by Alfred Korzybski, calling it one of the most important books of the last century. Korzybski developed the field of general semantics, a system of thinking […]
Playing with rules
I want to spend some time explaining nerds. In particular, nerds of the type that I get along with. I mentioned in my rant about questioning the assumptions that “The difficulty comes in dealing with people who believe that the rules are the rules full stop.” It’s interesting because after reading that in the context […]
Introversion
So, as I mentioned in an earlier post, “I’d love to become instantaneously more sociable and more comfortable around people.” It’s hard to explain to folks who aren’t introverts how difficult being sociable is. My friend pointed me to an article in the Atlantic Monthly on the subject which has a lot of good stuff […]
Question the assumptions
(written 11/14/03) A friend of mine offered up this piece of advice about how to deal with children, learned from experience with his own two-year-old: Offer them choices where you’re happy with both outcomes. That way, they get to make a choice and feel in charge of their life, and you’re happy regardless. Choices like […]
New vs. the Old Testament
(written 11/12/03) Whee. Short post. Too much going on in life (chorus rehearsal last night, salsa class tonight). Maybe another long post tomorrow. While I’m on the general anti-religion bashing theme, I was chatting with a friend about the people who think that the Bible is the literal word of God. The interesting bit to […]
