Couple more quick links I found recently. Picasa is an image management software tool written by Google, of all people. I don’t remember where I saw a reference to it recently, but I just tried it out, and it’s absolutely wonderful. Instantaneous response to typical image manipulations, an “I’m feeling lucky!” button ala Google when […]
Cognitive effort
I bought a bed last weekend, and it was delivered two days ago. Yes, I finally decided that I should stop sleeping on the futon that I had bought used in grad school nine years ago. And two nights of sleeping on the nice new bed has made me go “Wow! Why did it take […]
Links
I’ve been using del.icio.us more, so you can always go there to check out what I’ve been finding interesting in my trawls through the web, but I wanted to call out a couple specifically. I thought Paul Graham’s latest essay was really interesting and either inspiring or depressing depending on my mood. Inspiring because he […]
Infinite games in childhood
A thought struck me this morning on my BART ride into work, in response to Carse’s talk. He describes infinite games as where the point of playing is to continue to play. Doesn’t this describe childhood? Over Christmas break, I was visiting some friends with kids, and I was playing Uno with their four year […]
Managers Not MBAs, by Henry Mintzberg
Amazon link I read about this book in the Economist, and the concept intrigued me. I’ve been in the business world long enough to develop the typical technologists’ disdain for MBAs and their lack of domain knowledge and emphasis on numbers that are probably meaningless. I was looking forward to reading this book to gain […]
Sources of Power, by Gary Klein
Amazon link Subtitled “How People Make Decisions”, this book attempts to explore the process of decision-making from a perspective far outside the normal business-world-oriented theories. In business school, people are taught that the right way to make a decision is to define the problem, generate a list of possible solutions, evaluate all of the possible […]
James Carse at the Long Now
I’ve been to a few of the Seminars about Long-term Thinking, sponsored by the Long Now Foundation. They’re hit and miss. Sometimes they’re really interesting, sometimes they’re kind of boring. This week’s speaker was James Carse, author of a book called Finite and Infinite Games. I’m not sure where I’d heard of Carse (although reviewing […]
More thoughts on gifted education
I’ve rambled about education before, particularly with regards to gifted education. But I’ve never been bashful about repeating myself. So here we go again. Here’s a thought experiment that a friend posited a couple weeks ago. From a purely academic point of view, how long would it take a smart kid, working at their own […]
Sync, by Steven Strogatz
Amazon link I’ve been wanting to read this since first hearing about it. I took a class from Strogatz when I was at MIT, and he was a great lecturer that was way too smart so I figured his book would be interesting and well written. I was reminded of Strogatz’s book recently when I […]
Performing Janacek’s Glagolitic Mass
Oh, I forgot to mention it, but the chorus performed Janacek’s Glagolitic Mass last week, and now I’ve updated my chorus page to reflect that.
