Recent Links (page 4)
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Scott Adams on goals
26 January 2012 01:00pm UTC 0 comments
Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) doesn't set goals, he has systems. This is similar to what I am trying to do with my New Year's resolutions this year or what Erik was talking about in his comment on my post.
Here's how Scott starts out:
The other day I put on my workout clothes and drove to the gym. But when I arrived I didn't feel like working out. This was not a huge surprise, since I didn't feel peppy before I even laced up my running shoes. Perhaps I hadn't gotten enough sleep that week. I wasn't sure what the problem was. I ate lunch in the snack bar then drove home and took a nap.
Question: Did I fail at my exercise goal?
And to recap, here's what Erik said:
I don't do New Year's Resolutions. Maybe I'm just using a different operational definition of "resolution" than everyone else, but when I think of resolutions I think of things like lose weight, quit smoking, and get out of debt. In my opinion all of these "resolutions" lack any gravity because they are not measurable, have no time frame, and are generally vague. I see them as wishes waiting to be given up on, nothing more.
I am a goal setter. To me goals have more power than resolutions if they are set in ways that are specific, measurable, and that have a deadline.
I think that both Scott and Erik are against goals and resolutions (respectively) in an entirely semantic way. They both have goals or resolutions (or whatever you want to call them) in the way that most people intend them to mean. They have just figured out better ways of making sure those goals or resolutions come true and have decided to call those ways something else.
At the heart of the matter is the fact that it is easy to want to change but harder to actually do it.
And to me the advice is, A) don't be vague, B) choose things that are easy to do, and C) choose things that help develop good habits as opposed to grand changes or gestures.
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Rolling in the Deep covers
25 January 2012 01:00pm UTC 1 comment
Apparently Adele's Rolling in the Deep has been covered more than 350,000 times on YouTube! Holy cow that's a lot!
Here are 71 one of those mashed together:
All I can think when I watch this is how a lot of those people were probably hoping to be "discovered" and make it big. So, this video is sort of a depressing monument to hope.
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California High School student devises possible cancer cure
24 January 2012 01:00pm UTC 0 comments
She sounds like no ordinary high school student, but still, pretty inspiring!
Angela's idea was to mix cancer medicine in a polymer that would attach to nanoparticles -- nanoparticles that would then attach to cancer cells and show up on an MRI. so doctors could see exactly where the tumors are. Then she thought shat if you aimed an infrared light at the tumors to melt the polymer and release the medicine, thus killing the cancer cells while leaving healthy cells completely unharmed.
I hope this isn't like the Skin Gun and isn't actually as amazing as they make it sound.
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Internet Story
22 January 2012 01:00pm UTC 2 comments
This is a disturbing story about why the internet isn't all fun and games!
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30 giant hornets vs. a whole honey bee hive
21 January 2012 02:00pm UTC 3 comments
I literally had a nightmare this week about the hornets from this video. Look at how big they are!
I don't care if they have any redeeming quality whatsoever for the ecosystem of the earth, if I could get rid of all hornets (and wasps) with a wave of my hand, I'd do so in a second. They scare the crap out of me! Especially these ones!
Click through to read more about how some bees have learned to fight them...
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Tiny tips for everyday life
20 January 2012 01:00pm UTC 0 comments
This is a cute website! Sign up to get little clues for life every day in your email. Or just randomly click through the archives. For example, I never knew this:
usually, saran wrap and tinfoil containers have tabs in the side. push them in to get the roll to stay in the box.
And sure enough, I checked the boxes we have here in the kitchen and they had little tabs to press in. Wow!
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Great video about SOPA and PIPA
18 January 2012 01:00pm UTC 0 comments
This goes into a little more of the actual wording of the proposals and why they are bad for the world:
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LensRentals 2011: Our Best Blog Posts
6 January 2012 06:07pm UTC 0 comments
LensRentals, which does exactly what it sounds like, also blogs about the history of photography, cameras and lenses. I haven't read all of the posts mentioned here, but I've read a few of them and find them pretty interesting. The lens ones go into maybe a little too much detail but if you're interested in photography at all I recommend checking these out!
Here's an excerpt from The Chemists, the Potter, and the Aristocrat: Imaging Before the Photograph about the camera obscura:
Over time the camera obscura evolved into a dark box with a lens and mirror that could be considered fairly portable. It was used as a drawing aid by artists in Renaissance. When, and to what degree, remains controversial but by the late 1500s Giovanni Battista della Porta suggested in his book “Magiae Naturalis” that a camera obscura should be used to sketch all portraits and landscapes before painting.
Our boy Giovanni, though, is part of the reason the camera obscura wasn’t discussed too much for the next few centuries. He made a salon in his house into a huge camera obscura by putting a small hole in the outside wall and darkening the windows. He then invited guests over, and arranged for a group of actors to perform outside. He thought his guests would be most entertained by seeing the upside down images of the actors projected on the Salon wall.
Giovanni was obviously a really bright guy but apparently forgot, in his enthusiasm, that he was living in Italy in the 1570s. His visitors, being people of that era, realized immediately the images of upside down humans moving on the wall could only be the work of the Devil, ran screaming from his house, and Giovanni spent the next year defending himself from charges of Sorcery brought by the Inquisition. While he was eventually found innocent of sorcery, I doubt he hosted any more obscura parties.
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Scooby-Doo and Secular Humanism
5 January 2012 06:02pm UTC 0 comments
This guy really likes Scooby-Doo and has some great reasons for why:
The very first rule of Scooby-Doo, the single premise that sits at the heart of their adventures, is that the world is full of grown-ups who lie to kids, and that it's up to those kids to figure out what those lies are and call them on it, even if there are other adults who believe those lies with every fiber of their being. And the way that you win isn't through supernatural powers, or even through fighting. The way that you win is by doing the most dangerous thing that any person being lied to by someone in power can do: You think.
[via LinkMachineGo]
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Team WONG Sierra High Route Trek
2 January 2012 10:16pm UTC 0 comments
Just in case you wanted to watch a video with some glimpses of The Sierra High Route, which is what Greg and I plan to hike later this year.
It has a lot of them goofing around, but some cool glimpses of the route:
A couple notes:
The guy in the video with the red beard is "Wise Owl" (that's his trail name not his real name), and is someone that Greg and I crisscrossed with quite a bit on the PCT in 2004.
They are kicking down cairns (the stone trail markers) because the philosophy of the Sierra High Route is that you get off trail and away from evidence of humans. So, while they seem pretty obnoxious, that should not be one of the reasons for thinking that about them.
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BEST FAILS OF 2011
25 December 2011 02:00pm UTC 0 comments
Merry Christmas everyone!
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YouTube Rewind 2011
22 December 2011 08:10am UTC 7 comments
The top ten most watched videos on YouTube this year. I've put them all together here for you:
9. The Force: Volkswagen Commercial:
8. Maria Aragon - Born This Way (Cover):
7. The Creep (feat. Nicki Minaj & John Waters)
(no embedding)
5. Nyan Cat
3. Jack Sparrow (feat. Michael Bolton):
1. Friday:
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23 And A Half Hours
13 December 2011 06:12am UTC 0 comments
Who know being active would help in so many areas?
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The 45 Most Powerful Images Of 2011
8 December 2011 01:43am UTC 0 comments
Not a lot of uplifting images chosen. Boy, it's a depressing world out there.
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Mind vs. Machine
6 December 2011 02:00pm UTC 3 comments
Every year there is a competition where a set of computer programs try and convince a set of judges that they are more human than a set of humans. This article is about a human participating in that competition and trying to figure out how to act so that he could convince the judges that he was indeed one of the humans.
It is incredibly interesting, looking at what sorts of behavior make us unique and what potential artificial intelligence has at being humanlike, and the techniques currently used.
While this is about computers it isn't a techy article.
Here's an excerpt:
Humphrys’s twist on the Eliza paradigm was to abandon the therapist persona for that of an abusive jerk; when it lacked any clear cue for what to say, MGonz fell back not on therapy clichés like “How does that make you feel?” but on things like “You are obviously an asshole,” or “Ah type something interesting or shut up.” It’s a stroke of genius because, as becomes painfully clear from reading the MGonz transcripts, argument is stateless—that is, unanchored from all context, a kind of Markov chain of riposte, meta-riposte, meta-meta-riposte. Each remark after the first is only about the previous remark. If a program can induce us to sink to this level, of course it can pass the Turing Test.
Once again, the question of what types of human behavior computers can imitate shines light on how we conduct our own, human lives. Verbal abuse is simply less complex than other forms of conversation. In fact, since reading the papers on MGonz, and transcripts of its conversations, I find myself much more able to constructively manage heated conversations. Aware of the stateless, knee-jerk character of the terse remark I want to blurt out, I recognize that that remark has far more to do with a reflex reaction to the very last sentence of the conversation than with either the issue at hand or the person I’m talking to. All of a sudden, the absurdity and ridiculousness of this kind of escalation become quantitatively clear, and, contemptuously unwilling to act like a bot, I steer myself toward a more “stateful” response: better living through science.
I love that the search for artificial intelligence in computers can shed light on how we as humans interact and show us a better way of "being human."
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