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rePost::Believing You Can Get Smarter Makes You Smarter

Back in college they instituted a reform in the basic undergraduate curricula called RGEP. This allowed students to choose what general educations subjects to take with certain restrictions. This was met with celebration by a few friends from CAL(College of Arts and Letter), they were celebrating because for them this meant that they can fully skip taking even one math course, through my mildly probing questions (some would say interrogation) I was able to find out that they believed themselves NOT GOOD in math,  they seem to believe that they won’t get good in math. This saddened me.  (although one was dreaming of graduating with honors and didn’t want to risk a mediocre grade in math subjects). This afflicts most of us, we do a few things well and when faced with the initial problems when trying to get better at something we stop. I say push through, forge your skill from this frustration and anxiety.

Practical Application
Blackwell, Dweck, and Trzesniewski (2002) recently replicated and applied this research with seventh-grade students in New York City. During the first eight weeks of the spring term, these students learned about the malleability of intelligence by reading and discussing a science-based article that described how intelligence develops. A control group of seventh-grade students did not learn about intelligence’s changeability, and instead learned about memory and mnemonic strategies. As compared to the control group, students who learned about intelligence's malleability had higher academic motivation, better academic behavior, and better grades in mathematics. Indeed, students who were members of vulnerable groups (e.g., those who previously thought that intelligence cannot change, those who had low prior mathematics achievement, and female students) had higher mathematics grades following the intelligence-is-malleable intervention, while the grades of similar students in the control group declined. In fact, girls who received the intervention matched and even slightly exceeded the boys in math grades, whereas girls in the control group performed well below the boys.
These findings are especially important because the actual instruction time for the intervention totaled just three hours. Therefore, this is a very cost-effective method for improving students’ academic motivation and achievement.
via Believing You Can Get Smarter Makes You Smarter.

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rePost::Marc Webb To Direct New Spider-Man Trilogy!? | /Film

I loved watching 500 days of summer and really wanted film makers like Marc Webb who has a sense of ; style and vision, and the chops to execute. I feel that a lot of film makers are found in extremes, between trying to please only themselves and to please most people, or the other extremes trying to please movie studio execs.  I hope Marc Webb does the reboot well, is a christopher nolan too much to ask from this obviously talented director? I hope not. I came in with high expectations when I watched 500 days of summer, too high, yet I was not let down.

Last week it was reported that (500) Days of Summer helmer Marc Webb was at the top of the list of candidates to helm a Spider-Man reboot. Vulture now has breaking word that Webb is signed on to direct, not only the Spider-Man reboot, but a new Spider-Man trilogy. That’s right, three movies!
The reboot allows Sony to clean house of all the high price-tag cast and crew from the original trilogy. Webb will be paid roughly $10 million for the first film, with reported substantial bonuses built in “if the picture reaches certain box-office milestones.” Sam Raimi was paid $10 million for the original Spider-Man film, but that was nearly ten years ago. The Evil Dead director’s agreement included a percentage of the film’s grosses (nearly 25 percent when combined with star Tobey Maguire on the last sequel).
via Marc Webb To Direct New Spider-Man Trilogy!? | /Film.

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rePost:: Information wants to be free my ass

If we do not support finacially the artists that enriches our lives, we may one day have none of them any longer.

It’s a strange world we live in. We begrudge the folks who actually create the stuff we enjoy reading, listening to, and watching a few pennies for their labor, and yet at the very same time we casually throw hundreds of hard-earned bucks at the saps who run the stupid networks through which the stuff is delivered. We screw the struggling artist, and pay the suit.
Somebod’s got a good thing going.
via Rough Type: Nicholas Carr’s Blog: Information wants to be free my ass.

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Interesting Read::The Girl Who Conned The Ivy League : Rolling Stone

The Girl Who Conned The Ivy League
How a high school dropout created the ultimate fake ID, scammed her way into Harvard and Columbia, and became the target of a nationwide manhunt
SABRINA RUBIN ERDELY
Posted Jan 12, 2010 2:31 PM
Brooke Henson knew she was in trouble when she logged in to her e-mail account at Columbia University and found a message from the campus-security office. She stared at the computer screen, feeling that familiar anxiety rising. You'll be fine, she reassured herself. Think positive thoughts, just like her therapist had taught her. Surely she would get out of this scrape the same way she'd gotten out of all the other ones: with smooth talk and little lies. OK, big lies.
She dialed campus security. “Hi,” she said, her voice controlled. “This is Brooke Henson.”
The officer told her that he had gotten a curious call from police detectives in South Carolina who were trying to crack a missing-person case. “There's something I need to ask you,” the officer continued. “Are you Brooke Henson?” The young woman who had disappeared from the rural South Carolina town of Travelers Rest seven years earlier? The girl whose grieving family had been searching for her ever since? The Brooke Henson who was presumed murdered?
“Yes,” Brooke said into the phone. “That's me.”
Her mind raced through her options. On the one hand, she had a purse full of proof that she was Brooke: her student ID, a Vermont driver's license, a U.S. passport, an Ohio identification card, a South Carolina birth certificate. She had a part-time job, a rented apartment not far from campus on New York's Upper West Side and a full course load at Columbia, all registered under the name Brooke Henson.
On the other hand, she wasn't Brooke Henson.
via The Girl Who Conned The Ivy League : Rolling Stone.

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rePost::Why are we condemning Jeff Zucker & NBC over Leno ? « blog maverick

If the experiment had work we would be calling him a genius, but it failed and now the mob wants to crucify him. But I am actually confused ,  there are I believe three groups that are out for Jeff Zucker’s head. The Conan fans or people who did not like the way Conan has been treated, and the local affiliates whose bottom line was affected by this move, the third are the people who mcuban is talking about. It seems to me that this third group is in the minority.

What Zucker and NBC did was the EXACT RIGHT MOVE.
Business environments change. When they do, as broadcast network television has, and continues to, there are two basic choices. You can do it the way it’s always been done, or you can challenge yourself to change the game.
In the case of NBC, Jeff Zucker chose to take a risk and move Jay Leno from late night television to primetime. The upside was HUGE. Rather than risking tens of millions of dollars each season on pilots that never make it on air, and then watching those that do get aired fail far more often than they succeed, Leno in primetime could change the economics of primetime TV dramatically for the better.
Leno’s show would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per hour instead of 2mm, 3mm or more per hour. A game changer. It was equivalent to CBS putting a reality show in primetime. Survivor worked. It changed the economics and ratings landscape of TV forever. A successful Leno show would do the same thing,.
But what if Leno to primetime failed ? What was the downside ?
The downside was that NBC could go back to business as usual. They could cancel and move Leno, just as they have done. Then they could go back to the old school way of lots of pilots, build a primetime schedule, and then pray some of the shows work. Rinse and repeat.
Going forward they will program the 10pm slot. They will get some hits, some misses. It will be expensive, but in a few years they will find a hit and recapture the viewers they lost. Just as every network has done in response to a down period. In a few years the Leno experiment will be nothing more than a memory. A big so what.
Thats what happens when ideas fail. They fade into memory and hopefully something is learned.
But there is a bigger message in all of this.
What I have learned from watching all of this is that corporate America has been neutered. No one has any balls anymore.
I have a saying, “No Balls, No Babies”. It was told to me by a blackjack dealer when I asked if I should double down on an 11. The message was simple. If you dont take the risks, you dont get the rewards.
Well that used to be the case. Its not anymore.
via Why are we condemning Jeff Zucker & NBC over Leno ? « blog maverick.

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rePost::The Price of Impatience – Freakonomics Blog – NYTimes.com

Why a lot of people can’t be trusted with markets. This is a relatively easy calculation to make, but ordinary people make this mistake. Maybe there really is a need for some foundation of some kind to teach simple financial/life lessons to help people act more rationally.

The price offered to coffee growers who turn in their “cherries” — ripe coffee beans — at Greenwell Farms in Kona, Hawaii, is $.90 per pound if they are paid weekly and $1.05 if paid monthly.
The weekly price is lower because it takes the company’s accountants more time to work out and record pay if they do it weekly rather than once a month. But what does this price differential imply about the grower’s discount rate? If he takes the weekly rate, on average he is getting $.90 one-half month earlier than he would get $1.05.
That implies an annual discount rate of nearly 4,000 percent — (1.05/.90)^24 – 1 –- a truly remarkable rate of impatience. Despite this, the tour guide tells me that a lot of growers do take the lower rate of pay.
via The Price of Impatience – Freakonomics Blog – NYTimes.com.

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rePost:Fine Set Of Principles:Declaration of principles « Paulo Coelho’s Blog

Declaration of principles
Published on January 16, 2010 in News. 66 Comments
Paulo Coelho
1] All men are different. And should do everything possible to continue to be so.
2] Each human being has been granted two courses of action: that of deed and that of contemplation. Both lead to the same place.
3] Each human being has been granted two qualities: power and gift. Power drives man to meet his destiny, his gift obliges him to share with others that which is good in him. A man must know when to use his power, and when to use his gift.
via Declaration of principles « Paulo Coelho’s Blog.

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rePost::ABC The Drum Unleashed – Prioritising life

When will we get our priorities right, and learn how useless the free market is in dealing with tsunamis, earthquakes, Aboriginal health, African AIDS, Middle Eastern pogroms, Chinese tyranny and the sort of shameful poverty that breeds terrorists everywhere and sends them walking in explosive underpants out of universities into airline waiting rooms? When will we understand that twenty dollars a week is better spent on tax-funded air ambulances and Elvises and hot rocks and wind power and stem cells and solar cars than on oil magnates who are killing the planet as we speak?
…..
Why don’t we get our priorities right? Why don’t we do our sums? We could spend five billion dollars on aid that civilises East Timor and ten billion dollars buying up Indonesia’s forests and a billion buying eighty Elvises over three years and the cost per week per taxpayer would be nine dollars fifty, the price of an hour’s parking or two Toblerones. Why don’t we do this?
via ABC The Drum Unleashed – Prioritising life.

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rePost::13*. Daybreakers: the Malthusiastic vampires | JessicarulestheUniverse

How do you know you and your friends are geeky? When after watching a movie you debate what happens in the world after the movie, specifically how the population would be affected sans in malthusian terms. I enjoyed this film because its a film that I believed started with a concept and not the stars. Although better acting and a more developed story (I don’t remember but I believe the film was little over 1hour 40 mins, they had more time if they really wanted to). It’s also commendable that they didn’t go the B-movie route of a little more nudity than was really warranted by the story (half-lie, the movie lover in me commends, the man does not, you had isabel lucas and you didn’t even try? come on…). Another weak point of the film is the relationship between sam oniel and her daughter. (spoiler alert)You’d save your daughter by turning her to a vamp, but you didn’t think about force feeding her he blood rations? All in all I went with little expectations and was thus delightfully surprised with what I saw.

What we have here is a high-concept film that brings up existential questions, Malthusian economics, and parasite biology (For a parasite to be successful, it must not only refrain from killing off its host but also ensure that the host thrives. See the toxo that lives in cats. Compared to toxo the vampire organism is greedy and stupid). However the filmmakers’ skills are strictly B-grade: cheap shock tactics from the Salem’s Lot school, blood and gore splattered across the screen, and ham acting from Neill and Willem Dafoe as the human rebel leader. Ethan at least takes the movie seriously (We still love him, even if one shot caused Noel and I to gasp, “Malaki na ang balakang ni Ethan!”)
So Daybreakers is an entertaining mix of the clever and the cheesy; we’ll call it Camembert. My rating: If you can spot existentialism, Malthusian economics, and parasite biology in a B-movie, String! (The best way to enjoy the movies is to entertain yourself.) If you like fangs, blood, gore, Kibble. If you expect a prestige project, Litterbox.
via 13*. Daybreakers: the Malthusiastic vampires | JessicarulestheUniverse.

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