Re: Philosophy
the power of forward movement in platforms |
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<rant>
The Apple iPhone dominates the smartphone market. It has the best features and the largest installed base, and most importantly the best application ecosystem, with thousands of third-party applications which enable the iPhone to do lots of additional things. Also rans include RIM’s Blackberry, and Palm’s Pre. There is an interesting challenger from Motorola called Droid, which runs Google’s Android system; it is getting high marks for an open application development environment. Still no significant challenge to Apple seems possible.
Google announces their Nexus One phone! It is the best implementation of Android yet, slick, capable, and pretty. Reviewers like Walt Mossberg in the WSJ like it. Momentum changes. The market story becomes Apple vs Google. There are comparisons made at the feature level, and at the application ecosystem level; most give an edge to Apple for their large base, but tip Google for a better development environment. The feel of the market has changed overnight, because of Google’s forward movement in their platform. Suddenly it appears to be a two horse race.
Palm announces the Pre Plus! It is newly available on Verizon, the largest cell network, in addition to Sprint, the smallest, and has spiffy feature improvements such as a “hotspot” feature which enables it to serve as a WiFi hub (!) Importantly Palm opens application development entirely, enabling Adobe to ship Flash for this platform; neither the iPhone nor Android support Flash. The story becomes Palm’s comeback. The feel of the market has changed overnight, because of Palm’s forward movement in their platform. Suddenly it appears to be a three horse race.
And so we see how quickly markets can change. A competitor does something, and the market dynamics shift. The change can be subtle, but once the playing field shifts everything repositions. Tomorrow RIM might announce changes to the Blackberry platform, and then it could be a four horse race. Or Apple could announce something new, tilting the market once again to reassert their dominance. This delightful dance shows how important it is to keep chugging, keep trying to understand what customers want, and what developers want, keep making improvements, keep iterating. The phone competition is especially interesting because the entrants are not just products, they are platforms; each phone OS not only provides a raft of features to consumers, it enables a much larger raft to be created by third-parties. The shifts in phone features don’t move the market as dramatically as the shifts in application ecosystems; that's the power of forward movement in platforms.
What will happen? Who will win? </rant> |
Holiday Inn |
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... So last night I fired up iTunes and poof there it was (yay), and a couple of clicks later we were watching Holiday Inn, starring Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. Once again it was amazing, and once again it showed how the convenience of the iTunes / AppleTV ecosystem isn't just in the ease of watching, it is in the power of *now*. the nexus of understanding |
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The other day in a burst of insight I noticed that Il Tridente, The New Yorker, Reason, and The Economist were in some sense mutually orthogonal, and defined the Axis of Understanding. This insight was so exciting that I had to share it with you. (Perhaps this was not such a brainwave, but two of you emailed to say you liked it.) So today I received a new issue of Wired, and I realized that it has aspects of each of the other four and is indeed a sort of weird combination. And so we must now modify our diagram to place Wired at the "nexus of understanding", midway between fantasy and reality, and clueless and clued in. And this insight was so exciting that I had to share it with you :) |
the Law of Significance |
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Chris Anderson is one of my favorite writers and bloggers, but he occasionally falls prey to The Law of Significance. (You can tell something is Really Important because people write about it with Capital Letters. Dum dum dum.) Chris has unearthed some amazing insights in his time; the Long Tail is one of the truly interesting new ideas in business spawned by the Internet era. But once you've found a few key insights like that you begin thinking of yourself as a Thinker (note capitals), and it inspires you to promote everyday observations to the status of Laws. You could imagine Chris might drop a piece of toast, find that it landed face down on the floor, and discover the Law of Toast. I call this phenomenon the Law of Significance (note capitals and boldface). |
the axis of understanding |
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If you're a regular to these parts, you know it is my habit to read magazines while shaving each morning. And so it was that on this particular morning, I found these particular magazines in my bathroom: the latest issues of Il Tridente (a puff piece from Maserati), The New Yorker, Reason, and The Economist. And as I was looking at them it occured to me that in some sense they were each opposites of each other, each endpoints of a two-dimensional "axis of understanding". And this insight was so exciting that I had to share it with you :) |
recrossing the chasm |
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You might remember Shirley gave me a Kindle as an early birthday present right before I left for Brazil… so I bought a number of books to take with me, and one was Geoffrey Moore’s classic Crossing the Chasm. I’ve been rereading it with delight. Despite being written in 1991, it still hits about ten nails on the head at once. I’ve always liked this book and talked about it, but I’d forgotten how cleanly Moore presents his thesis, and what a compelling case he makes. It is one of the best business books I’ve ever read because not only does it identify and explain a problem, it presents the solution... |
Five-O update: T minus 4 |
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So, four days until I turn 50... and I’m doing a bit better.
What has really helped is the white swan |
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An outlier like this is sometimes referred to as a "black swan", a term popularized by Nassim Taleb, in a book of the same name. Sometimes such a rare event can be positive, maybe we could call that a white swan? |
When you're out in the ocean every once in a while you encounter a "rogue wave", a wave which is vastly larger than the average. Such waves are caused by a random confluence of a number of difference factors, each unpredictable, and each coming together to create a freakishly large wave. Nobody can predict such waves, they just happen, but if you're out at sea long enough, you'll encounter one.maresia |
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Each culture has unique words that describe concepts important in the culture, and so it is with Brazil; and upon what matters |
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What matters:
How did you do? Now try this:
Was this easier? I have a Google Alert for Westlake Village (where I live :), and it brings in all sorts of great and no-so-great stuff. This morning it brought in a post by Ramsey Omery... so I'm reading his blog, and I find this: The Charles Schultz Philosophy. "The people who make a difference in your life are not the ones with the most credentials..the most money...or the most awards. They simply are the ones who care the most." Whoa. Thanks, Ramsey, you just made my day.
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the big Five-O |
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moving backwards? |
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One of the joys of blogging - especially having done so for a while now - is re-reading old posts. I often get sucked into doing this by looking at referer logs (essentially, who out there is linking to my blog), and just yesterday I re-discovered a post called moving backwards from November 2005. It's great; please take a moment to read it. I'll wait. The question posed in this post is: am I still capable today of doing things I could do in the past. Essentially, am I moving backwards? I wonder about this a lot, with fifty approaching (yeah, I am 49 now, and will turn 50 in December). There are certainly some things I can't do as well as I could twenty-five years ago, but they are mostly physical. I don't have the intensity I had in my mid-twenties; I could work all night on a program without interruption, only to discover I'd gone twelve hours without eating, sleeping, or communicating with any other humans (perhaps this contributed to the downfall of my first marriage :). In the nearer term, my moving backwards post was pretty good; could I write it today? Or was I capable, at 46, of writing something I could no longer write today, at 49? In three more years I may read this post, and compare it to that one; which will seem "better"? Not clear. (I'll check back in three years and let you know :) Today I participated in a board meeting; with the current financial turmoil you can fill in the blanks, yeah, it was "interesting", and we have some cool new opportunities we reviewed as well, and the combination of messages was/is difficult to process (be financially conservative while aggressively pursuing new opportunities = huh?). I'm definitely better at that sort of discussion and analysis than I was twenty-five years ago, or even three years ago. So on balance I reiterate my conclusion from November 2005; there were things I've done that were good, and I wouldn't do them the same way today, but I don't think I'm moving backwards. Whew!
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workaholic in stealth mode |
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Many of you know me outside of my blog, some of you for a very long time (!), and others of you know me pretty well from reading my blog these past 5+ years, so you know: I am a workaholic. I basically work all the time, morning 'till evening, seven days a week, except when working is interrupted by something else like my family, cycling, sailing, etc. Leisure time means I work on stuff I want to work on, rather than on stuff I have to work on. (Blogging has alternated between one or the other category :) If I take a vacation, it is either to go riding or sailing or (gasp!) hang out with my family, but it is also a chance for some concentrated time working on stuff I want to work on; yes, it is a bit sad, but it is what it is. Shed no tears for me. Actually, I am a stealth workaholic... |
all truths are simple |
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All truths are simple. Seems simple, but seems true :) The corollary is that anything which is too complicated is not true, or perhaps is not fully true. {A classic example of this is particle physics. Whenever someone tries to explain the nuclear forces, electromagnetism, charged particles, quarks, etc. it is too complicated, so we don't yet know the real truth. Contrast with special relativity, E = mc2. That's simple enough to be true.} |
user experience |
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Hi all; here's some musings on user experience... |
one of their kind |
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Today I did another great ride from Amsterdam, this time West through the extended estuary to the coast at Sandvoort, then South a bit and back via Schiphol airport. At some point my philosopher iPod dialed up Santana's You Are My Kind, which was amazing because I was ruminating on the Dutch, on being Dutch, and on how, despite never having lived here, nor having any plans to live here in future, I feel more comfortable here than anywhere; truly I am one of their kind. If you are a regular reader you know I place significant stock in genetics; not that genes are destiny, but they are certainly part of it. In today's weird liberal ethos this point of view is considered "bad" - since all men are created equal, we must pretend that all men are created the same, which is foolishness - but I prefer honesty to political correctness. Whenever I am in Holland the culture embraces me with its familiarity. And that culture (like all cultures) is born of its people; the libertarian social approach (not to be confused with liberal), the steadfastness and self-reliance, the competitiveness, the entrepeneurialism combined with enlightened altruism, the easy acceptance of sex and sexuality, the embrace of family and quiet religion undertones. It all feels comfortable, there isn't the tension between the people and their way of life you feel in America.
Anyway it is really nice to be here, even if only temporarily. I can soak up the feeling and carry it around with me. You can take a Dutchman out of the Netherlands, but you can't take the Dutch out of him :) Ik ben echt wel Nederlands. |
confidence! |
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Today was an object lesson in confidence, one of my favorite subjects, which is closely related to value creation, another one. (See this post about my friend Paul, and this one about Arnold Schwarzenegger.) |
entertainment |
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... Posted after spending the entire day skiing at Loveland Pass, Colorado. A day well spent 8) ... |
universal healthcare |
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Here's a theory for you to disregard completely... Universal healthcare is bad. Please click to read more... |
political system: fail |
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Watching the primary results, I am struck once again by how screwed up our political process has become. Consider this; California is the most important state in the United States. We have the most people, some of the biggest cities, some of the most important and innovative industries. We are often the source of new trends in any field, from business to entertainment to education to politics. Yet, California is not involved in choosing our next President. Already we can see it will be Obama vs McCain, and California has had virtually no influence on this. In the fall, the election will be over before California's votes are counted. The candidates will ignore California all summer, knowing this. How screwed up is that?
What should be done? First, all the primaries should take place at the same time. Second, the electoral college is an anachronism that should be eliminated; the President should be chosen by direct voting. That would fix everything. Well, maybe not everything but it would help. Oh, and immigrants who have been U.S. citizens and residents for twenty years should be able to run for President. |
the metric magic |
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I've been spending a few days worrying about measuring stuff. Like productivity and predictabilty. Way back in late December, 2006, I worried about this, too, and wrote a long rambly email to my team about it. I just reread it, and thought it might be worth sharing. So here it is. |
an uncomfortable truth |
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On August 31, 2003, I posted IQ and Populations, which to this day remains my second most popular post. Unlike Tyranny of Email, my most popular article, the reaction is not generally positive. The post is popular in the sense of being widely linked, but unpopular in the sense of being widely disputed. While Tyranny asserts opinions that nearly everyone agrees with, IQ and Populations reviews facts with which nearly everyone disagrees. So, is this really true? Yes. Is this uncomfortable? Yes. Is this important? Yes. |
Installing Dimmers |
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A long time ago I was working on something - well actually I was supposed to be working on something, I wasn't really - and by way of procrastination, I decided it must be the moment to replace some of the light switches in my house with dimmers. I won't bore you with the details but you can imagine "merely" replacing light switches with dimmers was non-trivial. { To give you a flavor for the yak shaving involved, I So. In my team "installing dimmers" has become a neologism for doing something useful which is nevertheless procastination. You can rationalize doing useful work pretty easily, compared to say watching the Lakers lose, but there is still the guilt; you know you are not doing the highest priority thing. Still, an amazing amount of work can get done this way. I've done incredible amounts of useful work by way of procastination from things I didn't want to do (or more to the point, didn't know how to do). So. Here I am, it is Sunday afternoon, and I am [metaphorically] installing dimmers. In fact I have a whole nest of dimmers I'm installing; there is the task-I-should-do, the task-I-did-instead, and the task-I-did-instead-of-the-task-I-did-instead-when-I-got-stuck. And then there is the task-I-did-instead-of-all-of-them, blogging. So here we are. My last blog post was October 15, 2006 ("Ole Votes"), cleanly seven months ago. That is my biggest gap ever, and followed closely my second biggest gap ever - five months - so it would be defensible to say I really haven't blogged in over a year. Unbelievable. I like blogging, well I liked blogging, anyway, but somewhere along the line it became a task to perform instead of a fun thing to do instead of tasks to perform, and so I stopped. Whether I have started again remains to be seen. |
something to think about |
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From my friend Diane Simons: A young woman was about to finish her first year of college. Like many others her age, she considered herself to be a liberal Democrat, and was in favor of the redistribution of wealth. She was deeply ashamed that her father was a staunch Republican, a feeling she openly expressed. Based on the lectures that she had participated in, and the occasional chat with a professor, she felt that her father had for years harbored an evil, selfish desire to keep what he thought should be his. One day she was challenging her father on his opposition to higher taxes on the rich and the addition of more government welfare programs. The self-professed objectivity proclaimed by her professors had to be the truth and she indicated so to her father. He responded by asking how she was doing in school. Taken aback, she answered rather haughtily that she had a 4.0 GPA, and let him know that it was tough to maintain, insisting that she was taking a difficult course load and was constantly studying, which left her no time to go out and party. She didn't have time for a boyfriend, and didn't really have many college friends because she spent all her time studying. Her father listened and then asked, "How is you friend Audrey doing?" She replied, "Audrey is barely getting by. All she takes are easy classes, she never studies, and she barely has a 2.0 GPA. She is so popular on campus, college for her is a blast. She's always invited to parties, and lots of times she doesn't even show up for classes because she's too hung over." Her father asked his daughter, "Why don't you go to the Dean's office and ask him to deduct a 1.0 off your GPA and give it to your friend who only has a 2.0. That way you will both have a 3.0 GPA and certainly that would be a fair and equal distribution of GPA." The daughter, visibly shocked by her father's suggestion, angrily fired back, "That wouldn't be fair! I have worked really hard for my grades! I've invested a lot of time, and a lot of hard work! Audrey has done next to nothing toward her degree. She played while I worked my tail off!" The father said, "Welcome to the Republican Party". Perfect. Of course, Audrey was a minority, it wasn’t her fault that she played all day and got poor grades, it was discrimination and cultural bias. So the GPA system was “rebalanced” such that Audrey got a 4.0. P.S. The average GPA at Harvard is now 3.5. No wonder Larry Summers quit. |
On the Persistence of Bad Design... |
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As a programmer you are constantly making design decisions. Some are small, some are big. Some have little effect, some have larger effect. And every once in a while you make some decisions which seem small, but have a huge effect. If these decisions are made badly, then it affects many other people for years to come. |
Web 2.0, "Live" and other meaningless jargon |
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Do you hate business jargon as much as I do? Blech. A classic example of meaningless jargon is "Web 2.0". Nobody knows what it means, it doesn't mean anything. And for an unbelievable example of jargon run amuck, consider Microsoft's recent "Live" announcement. Talk about meaningless blather. |
moving backwards? |
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So having once posted it, I reread Second Gear for the umpteenth time, and I wonder, could I write this today? (As noted below, I am absurdly proud of it :) Or is it really true that I was capable of things at 30 that I am no longer capable of today, at 46?
Clicking through my little One Year Ago link, I came across four posts from November 21, 2004. They're good. We had a pithy review of The Incredibles (it is incredible to think a year has passed since that movie came out), an excellent rant against plaintext email, the obligatory New Yorker cartoon, and a thoughtful analysis of a Paul Graham essay on computer languages and development culture. Not bad at all. Could I write these today? Or is it really true that I was capable of things at 45 that I am no longer capable of today, at 46?
In a year - hopefully not after a three-month absence from posting - I may consider today's posts. Will I think they're good? Will I think, "is it really true that I was capable of things at 46, that I am no longer capable of today, at 47?" Nah. It might be true, but I don't want to believe it, so I won't. And honestly I actually don't think so. Sure, there were things I did at 30 that were good, and sure, there were things I did at 45 that were good. And maybe I wouldn't do those things today, because I'm not in the same place I was then. But by the same token there are things I can do today that I couldn't do at any other time. I've learned more and I've evolved, and I'm in a different place. Because I keep moving. And...
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second gear |
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Back in the dawn of time, when I was 30, my life was somewhat in limbo. I was in between marriages, and decided to take a creative writing class at a local college. I wrote an essay called "Second Gear" in one go, and I am absurdly proud of it; the feelings ring as true for me today, fifteen years later, as they did then. Makes me want to go ride the ol' Santa Susana pass again (although now I'd have my 15lb Kestrel with 18 gears). Anyway here it is, for your reading amusement, Second Gear...
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losing something |
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I had a random thought last night which I thought I'd share. There is a visceral human reaction to losing something. People never ever want to give up something they feel they already have. This is not a cold logical calculation, even if you give people something which is way more valuable than the thing you're taking away, they hesitate. (This is why FREE is the most powerful word in marketing :) |
estimating in meatspace |
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I am really good at estimating. By which I mean, I can estimate anything, even if my estimates are not accurate. If you ask me for an estimate – on anything – I can give you one. I never let absence of facts stand in my way. However, many people are horrible at estimating. You ask them for an estimate – on anything – and they can’t do it. They don’t know where to start. Even if they should be able to estimate something, based on their experience and knowledge and the availability of facts, they just can’t do it. It isn’t that they don’t want to commit – they might say that’s why, though – it is because they honestly can’t make an estimate. Recently I’ve found a great trick. You can help people form estimates by using binary searching. People are much better at comparisons than they are at estimating. This is true even though all you need to do to form an estimate is iterative comparisons. |
how to fix the tort system |
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BusinessWeek had a great cover story: How to Fix the Tort System. If you're a regular reader you know this is a subject near and dear to my heart. BW offers a four-point plan:
These are good suggestions, but I think they missed one, too:
I sure hope something changes. This is the biggest problem we have in American business today. |
inclusive fitness |
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I found this cool presentation by Keith Goodnight: Kin Selection and Inclusive Fitness. It begins with the problem of altruism, examines group selection (and rejects it), makes the key distinction between genes and organisms (replicators and vehicles), examines the greenbeard effect, explains Hamilton's rule (conditions under which gene for altruism will be favored by selection), and finally ends up with inclusive fitness:
If you're at all interested in these things, check it out! |
the nuclear option |
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Relax, this is not a post about filibusters or approving Supreme Court justices. No, this is about nuclear energy. It seems that intelligent people of all stripes are converging on the nuclear option. Which is terrific, because the alternative - continuing to burn oil until it is gone - is no option at all. |
Tort reform now! |
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I just read something which boils my blood, and needed to share it. When private parties prevail upon the court system to settle a dispute, is called a “tort”. The U.S. tort system is badly in need of reform. Continue reading... |
non-realtime dreams |
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Last night I had an upset stomach. Really bad, like I ate something bad. I was barely asleep and barely awake all night. I usually don't dream - or I guess I should say I usually don't remember dreams - but I had quite a few last night. I was struck particularly that dreams don't take place in realtime. At one point I was awake at 4:00, then fell asleep and dreamed, and then awoke at 4:15. The dream was incredibly detailed and took place over the course of hours - even now I can remember many more details than could possibly have occurred in 15 minutes. (I broke my leg skiing and was roaming a hospital trying to find a doctor to set it, if you must know... I finally found one, and they finally had me about to have my leg operated on, and they began to give me anesthetic, and I woke up.) Anyway this is a weird capability of the human mind, that it can play through events in non-realtime. It just shows that "sensory time" differs from "CPU time" in organic brains, just as it does in computers. I've written device drivers and they are always waiting on the device, the world of atoms is much slower than the world of bits. Someday we'll have the ability to interface to human brains, both for input (adding information to brains from the external world), and for output (measuring what brains are doing, or even following along with what they're thinking). Weird to think that you could "learn" something via a dreamlike experience in much less time than it would take if it really happened. Shades of the Matrix! |
think green, think nuclear |
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If you're a regular reader you know that I'm a green in wolf's clothing. I think we must get better at preserving our environment and slowing our consumption of natural resources. And I also think - gasp! - that nuclear power is the key to this. Continue reading... |
alternative entropy |
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Ottmar Liebert noted Alternative Energy: "The world's biggest solar power plant went online in Mulhausen, Germany this month, putting out 6.3 megawatts of power." From my comments on his blog:
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unintelligent design |
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There are people who do not believe the theory of evolution is sufficient to explain the existence of the world as we know it. They prefer to believe in creationism, the idea that there is a deity who created the world. I have no problem with people who wish to believe this, it is their prerogative, of course, just as they may chose to believe the Sun orbits the Earth, or that the Earth is 6,000 years old. I only ask that they admit they are choosing to believe in “magic” instead of rational facts and logical reasoning. Please click for more... |
language talks |
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I just encountered Paul Graham's Great Hackers. Quite thought-provoking, including the notion that in choosing a platform, you are choosing a culture... |
no equals = wrong |
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"If it doesn't start with an equal sign, it's wrong." This is a first for me; spreadsheet nerdliness. But there's a larger point, too. Read on... |
In the Wet |
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One of my favorite books of all time is Nevil Shute's In the Wet. If you haven't read it, you should. It defies an easy synopsis but it is a wonderful engrossing read and is definitely thought provoking. It takes place in "the future", which given that the book was written in 1952 is now our recent past. |
Global Economic Inequality |
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Sometimes a picture is worth much more than 1,000 words. The Economist ran a great story recently about global economic inequality: More or Less Equal? The graphs which accompany the story are terrific, and thought provoking... |
More Party Politics |
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The other day I lamented that the U.S. two-party system is suboptimal, and suggested that proportional voting might enable minority parties to have more influence, thereby enabling more innovation among candidates. Be careful what you wish for! I received an email from Ivan-Assen Ivanov, a Bulgarian, reporting that they have proportional representation, and it isn't working out. |
Two-Party Politics |
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Do you think the U.S. two-party system is optimal? I don't. It would be great if there were more points of view represented, more opportunity for candidates with a unique perspective which don't naturally fit into either mainstream party. |
Religion vs IQ |
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razib and godless are bored, so they plot and graph "religion important" vs. IQ for different countries. The bottom line: "religion and IQ are strongly negatively correlated (-.886)." |
The "under the skin" game |
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When I was a kid, I had a subscription to a magazine called Highlights. I remember one little article which stayed with me my whole life, called "the under the skin game"... |
The Joy of Craftsmanship |
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I just love real craftsmanship. It goes beyond mere doing things right, Confidence |
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So, Arnold Schwarzenegger is California's new governor. What is it about Arnold that caused so many people to vote against the incumbent, and for him? Confidence. |
Unless... |
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The Lorax has been each one of my kids' favorite story at a certain point. Meg is six, and it has been her favorite for about two years. This amazing story by Dr. Suess (Theodore Geisel) was published in 1971, but its message rings as loud and true 32 years later... |
Adding Value |
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I saw my good friend Paul last night, and he reinforced something I've been thinking recently. The most important thing you can do every day is add value. And inspiring others to create value is a really efficient way to add value yourself. Of course there is something even more efficient, which is inspiring others to inspire others. That's why I wrote this... :) |
Are You a Bright? |
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Are you bright? Do you know what the question is asking?
Yeah, I'm bright. I believe in a naturalistic world view. I believe everything can be explained rationally, logically, and scientifically, without resort to "magic". Continue reading... |
SES and IQ heritability |
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Back-to-school pop quiz: Why do poor children, and especially black poor children, score lower on average than their middle-class and white counterparts on IQ tests and other measures of cognitive performance? That's the lead question in a Washington Post article about a new study that appears to show that IQ heritability varies significantly with socioeconomic status. |
Blind Watchmakings |
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I recently discovered The Insect Company website, which has fascinating photo galleries of beautiful and interesting insects. I was awestruck by these wonderful examples of Darwinism in action; for me this was a religious experience. In paging through these photos, I was reminded of the amazing software Richard Dawkins wrote to accompany his 1986 classic, "The Blind Watchmaker"... |
IQ and Populations |
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Combining National IQ data from Richard Lynn's and Tatu Vanhanen's "Intelligence and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations" with world population data from the U.S. Census, we can quantify the decrease in world IQ over time. The consequences of this overall decrease in world IQ have yet to be quantified, but they are bound to be significant... |
Bloggers as Filters |
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Bloggers are interesting sources of information and analysis, and entertainment as well. But did you ever think of them as filters? |
Arnold and Proposition 13 |
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Earlier I reported that columnist Dan Gillmor wrote Why I Might Vote for Schwarzenegger. Apparently Warren Buffet, an advisor to Arnold in his gubernatorial campaign, mentioned that if elected Arnold might consider overturning Proposition 13. This has caused a stir, with many people feeling it would be political suicide to mention during the campaign. And maybe it is... but, Proposition 13 has been a horrible thing for the state of California, and overturning it would be a great good thing. |
Gravity Inversion |
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Today I was riding my bike, when suddenly I got this weird feeling. About gravity... |
People over 30 should be dead |
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What was M.E.? |
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My post about Mitochondrial Eve attracted a bunch of interest - thank you! - and several people asked a key question: what species was ME? |
Mitochondrial Eve |
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Of all the women who have ever lived, there was one woman who was special. She was the common maternal ancestor of all women currently alive. She was "Mitochondrial Eve". |
Human Pattern Recognition |
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Among all the remarkable things that we humans can do, effortlessly, that takes huge amounts of effort to do any other way; our image pattern recognition is perhaps the most awesome. |
Google and Escher |
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If you visited Google yesterday, you might have been intrigued by their logo; a grayscale drawing which showed a couple of hands drawing each other. This was their very cool way of celebrating M.C.Escher's birthday... |
Child Tax Credits and the Mutilated Beggar Effect |
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How the child tax credit which is part of the Bush administration's proposed tax cut is an example of the "mutilated beggar effect", as I argue against motherhood... |
Ceci n'est pas Mimi |
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Which brings us to Magritte's "The Human Condition"...
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Job Seeking Advice |
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I have a friend who's seeking a job after having run his own business for many years. I'm not the greatest job seeker in the world nor the most experienced, so this could be quite wrong, but here's my advice to him... |
God and Beauty |
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Let's consider the nature of beauty. We'll explore atheism and the anthropic principle, the natural selection of beauty, selection of mates, and other stuff. It is not really about God, but it sort of is. You'll see... |
Emergent Properties |
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In which we discuss emergent properties vs. explicit properties, take Marvin Minsky to task about artificial intelligence, diss RDF and the semantic web, and relate image processing to water. Read more... |
A Perfect Day |
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I'm riding my bike: the sun on the lake, a light breeze, pretty girls, and my daughter's birthday party coming up... it all makes for A Perfect Day... |
Books and Wine |
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Two of my favorite things are books and wine. They even go together; what could be finer than curling up with a great book and a nice glass of wine. Amazingly, there are many similarities between these two apparently unrelated things... |
Try, or Try Not |
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Try, or Try Not... For everything there is to do, the easy way to fail is simply not to try. If you can feel good about yourself for your effort - regardless of the results - then you can always succeed. |
On Blame |
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Blame... What a strange concept, right? |
Lying |
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Lying is all about intent... When you say something you know isn't true in order to influence others, you're lying. |
"Tyranny" Revisited |
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A week ago I posted a little article called The Tyranny of Email, giving some tips for improving personal productivity. It generated a terrific response, and I herewith post the most interesting observations and comments... |
I am an Iterator |
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I am an iterator. When I make something, I don't just make it and go on. I make it, then I remake it, then I remake it again, and iteratively improve it until I'm happy. I annoy myself sometimes, I am so unwilling or unable to leave something as it is... |
The Tyranny of Email |
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If you're reading this, you're online, which means you may be a victim of the tyranny of email... |
This War |
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In case you'd like to know Saddam Hussein a little better, please read Tales of the Tyrant in The Atlantic. And related - a friend emailed a rant which I've posted anonymously: This War... |
Correlation vs. Causality |
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A quick rant on the difference between correlation and causality which is important in many things, including studies of people... |
The Role of Inspectors |
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The U.S. government is patiently explaining that inspectors are not spies... |
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All Articles
Re:Cycling
Re:The Book
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Re:Philosophy
About Me
W=UH
Email
Search
Greatest Hits
Correlation vs. Causality
The Tyranny of Email
Unnatural Selection
Lying
Aperio's Mission = Automating Pathology
On Blame
Try, or Try Not
Books and Wine
Google and Blogs
Emergent Properties
God and Beauty
Moving Mount Fuji
The Nest
Rock 'n Roll
IQ and Populations
Are You a Bright?
Adding Value
Confidence
The Joy of Craftsmanship
The Emperor's New Code
Toy Story
The Return of the King
Religion vs IQ
Most Spectacular Photos of 2003
In the Wet
the big day
solving bongard problems
visiting Titan
unintelligent design
Shorthorn
the nuclear option
second gear
On the Persistence of Bad Design...
Texas chili cookoff
the inflection point
almost famous design and stochastic debugging
may I take your order?
paper art
triple double
China's olympic gardens
New Yorker covers
Death Rider! (da da dum)
how did I get here (Mt.Whitney)?
the Law of Significance
Holiday Inn
Daniel Jacoby's photographs
room with a view
weird disaster update
in praise of paddle shifting
the first bird
Gödel Escher Bach: Birthday Cantatatata
shining a light
Father's Day (in pictures)
Tour de France 2009
Tour de France 2010
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