Most Recent Comments
Third-World's Problem Is Political Corruption, Not Poverty
January 19, 2010 12:36 PM, 6Kings wrote:Spot on. Corruption is a problem everywhere in poorer nations and in many cases it has become part of the culture which is very difficult to stamp out. No easy solutions to that either as it will take some herculean efforts and long term strategies to move these countries in the right direction.
President Bush Is Vindicated
January 22, 2010 6:11 AM, mauyr.myopenid.com wrote:I thought obmama campaigned saying that iraq was a distraction from Afghanistan, which should be the real focus of the war. Is this really a reversal?
Himalayan Glaciers Not Melting
January 22, 2010 8:24 AM, mauyr.myopenid.com wrote:The headline here is not true: the 2035 forecast is not right but the glaciers are melting.
The Quest for Mastery
February 3, 2010 3:23 PM, Bernardo wrote:I once went to a seminar that, among other things, brought up this kind of research. The seminar was offered by "life coaches" for free as a really elaborate pitch for their services. (I didn't sign up in the end). They took what they learned from studies on people who are very successful in certain fields, and applied it to normal people who want to be more successful in life (in careers, relationships, finances, health, etc). I had been exposed to most of these ideas before but never saw them woven together so well. So now when I hear about one, I think about the others:
- this "10,000 hours of mastery" idea (and other similar ideas, like what you wrote in this post);
- Carol Dweck's research on how, when you see failures as learning opportunities and see challenges as informative tests (rather than as scary occasions when you look bad by not knowing what you're doing), you can learn almost anything, and improve almost any skill. I.e. people who are good at things are people who keep trying and aren't afraid of making mistakes (and NOT so much the people who have natural in-born talent).
- Ideas by Jonathan Haidt, and Chip and Dan Heath, about how to make changes that stick, be it in yourself as an individual or in a group you're trying to lead. Google "The Mahout The Elephant And The Path" for more details. The basic idea is that your rational self only goes so far when you try to motivate yourself; you also need to engage your irrational, animal, emotional side. And, ideally, you need to change things in the world around you to make it easier to do the right thing.
- Some research on virtuosos, and on camps that train Olympic athletes (and athletes-to-be, and young musicians, and other people who want to start early at becoming the best). Out of all the stuff mentioned in that seminar, this is the research I had NOT heard of, and I've been meaning to look it up. The key idea supposedly is that these people are motivated to put so much work at improving themselves because they can SEE themselves as being really good in the future. You might try playing the piano, and drop it after a while because it's hard and you're not having fun with it. But if you know a very good piano player, and if you're confident that you can get to that level by trying, and if that image is well-developed in your mind, then it will be motivating. I know that's true for me; Silly as it might sound, when I was a little kid I saw fictitious "inventors" like Doc Brown and Gyro Gearloose and thought "I really, really want to be like that when I grow up". When I was a little older, it was Kelly Johnson and Paul MacCready and Burt Rutan. And now I'm almost there. Anyways, I still want to read more about this idea of how people are motivated by an image of future mastery. The coaches giving the seminar made it sound like a very powerful idea.
And back to what you wrote about here... If you give me a complicated structure (like an airplane tail) and tell me how it's loaded, I can tell you (before I do any math) that "This part is going to bend this way, that part is going to twist that way. These are going to be the most highly loaded parts, and if anything breaks, it will be them, unless you make them thicker than the rest. But if you make them too thick they won't stretch, and you'll see failure where they meet the thinner parts. If this part breaks, then most of the load will be taken by that part", etc... or, at least, "I'm not sure whether the part in tension will tear before or after the part in compression buckles, but it will be pretty close". This intuition doesn't give me numbers, but it's still very valuable when I set up my structural simulations, since it tells me when the results are not right, and saves me the time of modeling the failure events that are least likely. My intuition has actually sometimes been better than those of my team's leads; when we disagree on how a simulation will turn out, I'm usually right. The reason I'm writing this here is that I'm fairly sure that this ability comes from having built things (such as elaborate LEGO structures, and large things out of foam) since I was a little kid. I really think that a childhood of building things (out of materials that were barely stiff enough to hold together) gave me a huge advantage in being a structures engineer.
Too Many Voters
March 1, 2010 9:33 AM, Bernardo wrote:Y'know, I used to feel pretty strongly that "Voting is a right, everyone should have a say", etc, but you're starting to win me over.
A randomized system like this one, where anyone COULD be one of the few, gets around most (possibly all) of the injustice issues that arise when some people get to vote but not others. Hmmm.
And the broadcasts of the voters' week with the candidates would make for excellent reality TV! ;] Seriously, though, it would be much more interesting to see politicians try to persuade a small number of actual, knowable people, rather than the masses. It would make the politicians' speeches and positions much less... political, much more "real". Wow, just imagine, a politician who actually takes sides on issues, and who has conversations explaining why! That would be a sight to see. Wait, wasn't there a movie that went along these lines?...
You're Overusing Your Camera's Flash
March 1, 2010 9:49 AM, Bernardo wrote:Hmmm. I strongly agree that a good natural-light photo almost always looks better than a picture taken with a flash. But I disagree that digital cameras make that possible in general. In low light, you have to crank up the ISO and/or slow down the shutter speed (or let the camera do it for you) by a huge factor (e.g. typically ISO400 and shutter speeds around 1/10 of a second). Most non-SLR digital cameras become _very_ grainy when the ISO goes up above the minimum (even as low as 400), and most people's pictures look very blurry at slow shutter speeds because of how hands shake (and because the subjects move). A fast lens, some noise reduction, and good image stabilization only go so far. Realistically, if you don't have an SLR, the flash is often necessary, unless you don't mind a heck of a lot of motion blur and a heck of a lot of noisy grain. Only SLRs have large enough sensors (and thus, low noise at high ISOs) to overcome these problems.
Sure, people should learn how to hold their cameras steady, since in low light the flash won't help if your subject is more than 10 or 20 feet away. But even then, you often have to deal with subject motion and a lot of noisy grain.
There are two digital cameras out there with super-fast (f2.0 or so) lenses, and relatively large sensors with relatively few pixels, making for relatively little high-iso noise ("relatively" when compared with other non-SLR digicams), the Canon S90 and the Panasonic LX3. I own one of them and have had a chance to play with the other. Even though they have everything that would make a camera take decent natural-light pictures in low-light, their results are still closer to a regular compact digicam than to any SLR. In short, the noise is still very high. Sure, I still use the cameras in situations where some pictures are desirable and are better than no pictures at all (and when bringing the 5D isn't practical), but I don't expect that the pictures will look great.
You're Overusing Your Camera's Flash
March 1, 2010 9:53 AM, Bernardo wrote:Here are a couple of albums taken with a non-SLR digicam using only natural light in low-light. And this is a digicam with an f2.0 lens and a relatively large (low-noise) sensor. Even when shrunken to only 600 pixels across, the pictures look not-so-great. (And if I may be immodest for a second, my skills at holding a camera steady and at picking the right ISO are above average).
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What Is Health Care Rationing?
March 4, 2010 8:35 AM, mauyr.myopenid.com wrote:The president gets constant protection from the secret service too. It's not fair!
Too Many Voters
March 4, 2010 8:50 AM, mauyr.myopenid.com wrote:Unfortunately, to be workable the selected voters would have to remain anonymous, otherwise they would be targeted with threats/bribes. So you'd still get the politicos speaking out to the "masses".
Student Protests
March 7, 2010 5:59 AM, Francis W. Porretto wrote:The American university environment, as currently constituted, turns adolescents into whining, screaming toddlers, albeit with many times the destructive capacity.
The typical university student:
-- Doesn't pay his own tuition or any part thereof;
-- Relies on his parents or sweetheart loans to cover his living expenses;
-- Is housed among thousands of other students receiving the same benefits;
-- Inhabits an essentially unpoliced environment within which many offenses that would be criminal outside the university's walls are tolerated open-eyed;
-- Is told daily, by tenured lecturers, how special he is and how much his opinions matter.Given all that, the protests mentioned above are no surprise to a thinking person. Indeed, the surprise, if any, is why we haven't seen more of them. Then these selfsame "educated" young persons stream out of the ivory towers and wonder why no one will hire them. It is to laugh.
