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rePost:: Learn Chinese!::Information Processing

Like any good techie I’m holding out for the technological solution. I’m bettingan auto speech to text/ or translation tool is release and language is would no longer be an issue.

Rather than bumbling along, government and corporate leaders should advance coherent policies for bilingualism. Europe began this process about four centuries ago. Washington moves quickly when military interests dominate. My Arabic-speaking son, Dylan, was offered $20,000 up front to staff intelligence outposts in the Middle East. But Mandarin? What’s the rush? The count of American high school students enrolled in Chinese classes is less than those studying German.
If you think the Arab world today poses a civilizational threat to the West, you are sadly deluded. The US has had its attention focused on the wrong competitors since 9/11.
via Information Processing: Learn Chinese!.

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rePost:: Moore's Law is Crap::Stevey's Blog Rants

Great advice. Read the whole thing.

The Big Choice
We all have to choose how to spend the time we’re given.
If you don’t choose, it just slips right by you. I know. On a trip to Vegas not too long ago, I made a pit stop in a casino restroom, and as I was washing my hands, there was this older guy there, also washing his hands. On a whim, I asked, “Hey man, how old are you?”
His reply? “Seventy-two! I have a son: I remember the day he was born like it was yesterday! I was holding him just like so. Well, guess what, he turned 40 years old just last week! It goes by in a flash! Before long, you’ll be lookin’ at THIS!” He pointed at his wrinkled mug, and concluded his monologue with: “Haw, haw, haw! HAW HAW HAW *cough* *cough* HAW *cough* *hack* HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW!” and walked out. I think I made his day, although I can’t exactly say he made mine.
When you graduate from college (or high school, for that matter), you have a simple choice facing you. You can either keep learning, or you can stop.
There is an almost unbelievably easy heuristic for knowing whether you’re learning. It goes like this: no pain, no gain. Learning is hard. If it’s easy, then you’re coasting; you’re not making yourself better at something fundamentally new that you couldn’t do before.
via Stevey’s Blog Rants: Moore’s Law is Crap.

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rePost::The end of the office… and the future of work – The Boston Globe

I find that i keep meeting young professionals who fantasize about freelancing. When I hear their reasons I cringe.  In reality what most people want is to not work. Read the whole thing its an interesting look at what maybe the future of work.

The middle of the 20th century was the age of the great employer: Mainstream success was a stable job at a single company, steadily ascending from middle to upper management. That began to change in the 1970s and 1980s, for reasons that were social as well as economic: American conglomerates began to face stiff foreign competition, and the country accustomed itself to – and even began to celebrate – a more mercurial, less cosseted brand of capitalism. The Organization Man was replaced by the worker as free agent, one who might with little regret leave a job when a competitor gave a better offer, or who might be left jobless when his company merged with another. The arc of the average career trajectory grew more fractured.
What we’re seeing today, says Thomas Malone, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the author of the 2004 book “The Future of Work,” is a further shift. The growing freelance workforce, he argues, is made up of people who see themselves not as having a single job so much as having several at once. To describe the current change, Malone borrows an image that the sociologist Alvin Toffler used to describe the earlier one.
“One of the things [Toffler] said was that we should move from the idea of a career as a linear progression up the ranks in a single organization to that of a career as a portfolio of jobs that you hold over time in a series of different organizations,” says Malone. “What I’m just now realizing is that many people today see their career portfolio including a combination of jobs at the same time.”
via The end of the office… and the future of work – The Boston Globe.

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rePost:: Tips and Tricks for Answering Hard Questions::Less Wrong

Excellent set of advice on how to answer hard problems.

Tips and Tricks for Answering Hard Questions
I've collected some tips and tricks for answering hard questions, some of which may be original, and others I may have read somewhere and forgotten the source of. Please feel free to contribute more tips and tricks, or additional links to the sources or fuller explanations.

Liked the advice below, problem is that I can’t adhere to it. I just begin to obsess on the problem and can’t go to sleep.  I really need more discipline!

Sleep on it. I find that I tend to have a greater than average number of insights in the period of time just after I wake up and before I get out of bed. Our brains seem to continue to work while we’re asleep, and it may help to prime it by reviewing the problem before going to sleep.
via Less Wrong: Tips and Tricks for Answering Hard Questions.

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rePost:: On Great Teachers and the Remarkable Life: A Deliberate Practice Case Study »Study Hacks » Blog Archive »

What Makes Great Teachers Great?
“Strong teachers insist that effective teaching is neither mysterious nor magical,” says Ripley. “It is neither a function of dynamic personality nor dramatic performance.”
Instead, Teach for America has identified the following traits as the most important for high-performing teachers such as Taylor:
1. They set big goals for their students and are perpetually looking for ways to improve their effectiveness.
(In the Atlantic article, Teach for America’s in-house professor, Steve Farr, noted that when he sets up visits with superstar teachers they often say something like: “You’re welcome to come, but I have to warn you — I am in the middle of just blowing up my classroom structure…because I think it’s not working as well as it could.” )
2. They’re obsessed about focusing every minute of classroom time toward student learning.
3. They plan exhaustively and purposefully, “working backward from the desired outcome.”
4. They work “relentlessly”…”refusing to surrender.”
5. They keep students and their families involved in the process.
An expert quoted in the article summarized the findings: “At the end of the day…it’s the mind-set that teachers need — a kind of relentless approach to the problem.”
The first four traits above should sound familiar. Setting big goals, working backwards from results to process, perpetually trying to improve, relentless focus — these sound a lot like the traits of deliberate practice.
via Study Hacks » Blog Archive » On Great Teachers and the Remarkable Life: A Deliberate Practice Case Study.

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Learned Today::Apple are evil? — The Endeavour

Apple are evil?

by John on February 8, 2010
Mike Croucher wrote a post the other day explaining why he’s going to buy an iPad. He said that one of the objections to the iPad he’d heard was
Apple are evil because they take away control of how we use their devices.
I teased Mike that I would never say “Apple are evil.” On this side of the Atlantic we’d say “Apple is evil.” But in the UK it is accepted usage to say “Apple are evil.”
“Apple” is a collective noun when used to refer to Apple Inc. British English treats collective nouns as plural, but American English treats them as singular. Although the British usage sounds odd to my American ears, it makes sense just as much sense as the American convention. You could argue for plural verbs because corporations are made of individual people, or you could argue for singular verbs because the corporations act as a single entity. See Grammar Girl’s tip on collective nouns for more background.
via Apple are evil? — The Endeavour.

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rePost::Ohio strip club hosts 'Lap dances for Haiti' – Odds and Ends – GMANews.TV – Official Website of GMA News and Public Affairs – Latest Philippine News

I support this!!! hehe.

Ohio strip club hosts 'Lap dances for Haiti'
02/09/2010 | 09:52 AM
TOLEDO, Ohio – A strip club in Ohio has raised $1,000 for Haitian earthquake relief during what was billed as “Lap dances for Haiti.” Marilyn's on Monroe in Toledo donated the $10 cover charges collected Saturday to ISOH (I-S-O-H)/IMPACT, an organization based in suburban Perrysburg that provides food and clothing for Haiti.
via Ohio strip club hosts ‘Lap dances for Haiti’ – Odds and Ends – GMANews.TV – Official Website of GMA News and Public Affairs – Latest Philippine News.