January 2009
142 posts
One Big Crisis →
[T]here’s another political force growing fast, and that’s the politics of optimism. It’s a politics that says transformation is not just a duty, it’s an amazing opportunity. We might, instead of doing nothing and leaving our kids a ruined planet, decide to build them an awesome future and spend the rest of our lives enjoying it. That’s the choice we wake up to every day now: cynicism or change.
December 2008
149 posts
Utah Student Foils Land Auction →
Impressive.
Attention Control →
A person who works six hours a day but with total focus has an enormous advantage over a 12-hour-per-day workaholic who’s “multi-tasking” all day, answering every phone call, constantly checking Facebook and Twitter, and indulging every interruption.
It’s time we upgraded our work ethic for the age we’re living in, not our grandparents’ age. Hard work is...
The Invisible Economy →
What explains our schizophrenic attitude toward the invisible economy? We embrace the flow of bits and bytes in our daily lives, but we feel reluctant to give them as gifts.
Indeed, why does it feel so weird to give the electronic version of what we used to give (CDs, books, etc)? I’d say that the lack of something physical makes it difficult to feel like you’ve really given...
Moral Hypocrites →
A recent study showed that we’re more lenient towards ourselves than toward others when it comes to judging fairness, but that difference goes away when we’re distracted (in their case, by having to memorize long strings of numbers).
When asked if this meant ubiquitous Blackberries and iPods may make society more just, Valdesolo said, laughing, “our research suggests...
A Class Divided →
From Metafilter:
It depicts one third-grade teacher’s attempts to teach Midwestern children about the civil rights movement, many of whom had never met a black person before. As part of a daring experiment, she split the class between brown-eyed children and blue-eyed children, and gave the “browneyes” special privileges. The children were told, in no uncertain terms, that the...
The Art of Radical Exclusion →
I sometimes practice the fine art of radical exclusion. This is where I deliberately ignore or decline any number of inputs, messages, or requests for my attention in order to focus on what I decide is more important.
The theory of radical exclusion is that if I’m chasing down voicemail and hanging on every email, I’m probably not changing the world.
(via Lifehacker)
Cognitive Enhancement →
Normal life, unlike sports competitions, they argue, isn’t a zero-sum game, where one person’s doped advantage necessarily brings another’s disadvantage. A surgeon whose mind is extra-sharp, a pilot who’s extra alert, a medical researcher whose memory is fine-tuned to make extraordinary connections, is able to work not just to his or her own benefit, but for that of countless numbers of people....
Top 10 Web Games →
My personal favorite web games made it on this list, so I had to post it: Music Catch, Auditorium, and Hoshi Saga 3. I’m working my way through the rest now.
Why We're Still Happy →
Research in psychology and economics suggests that when only your salary is cut, or when only you make a foolish investment, or when only you lose your job, you become considerably less satisfied with your life. But when everyone from autoworkers to Wall Street financiers becomes worse off, your life satisfaction remains pretty much the same.
Zappos CEO →
“Everything I know about business I learned from poker”:
Just because you win a hand doesn’t mean you’re good and you don’t have more learning to do. You might have just gotten lucky.
What New Yorkers Should Dread In the New Year →
“Saturday Night Live” faces a “critical satire-deprivation environment” with the incoming Obama-Biden administration.
I’m okay with that. =)
The 24 Game →
Devised by Robert Sun, an inventor born in Shanghai, the 24 game requires players to combine four numbers, usually from 1 to 9, using basic mathematical operations to form the number 24.
I loved this game when I was little. You can play this with just a deck of cards, without buying a separate game for it, but I suppose it’s convenient to know that there is always a solution for the...
Watch
She talks about American-Chinese food and their origins: fortune cookies, General Tsao’s Chicken, chop suey, and beef and broccoli. (original)
(She also mentions “fried gelato” briefly. I need to find some!)
Pay It Backwards: An Act Of Coffee Kindness →
I love it. (via cakeface)
Murphy's Law of Packing
No matter how hard you try, you will always forget one item in the course of packing, only to remember it after you’ve left. The best you can hope for is that it’s a fairly insignificant item.
Diary of a Self-Help Dropout →
Ask yourself: “What is the next physical action required to move the project forward?” Repeat until everything in the world is finished.
A humorous look at three producitivity books, and his own efforts to apply their principles to real life, including an amusing 35-minute distraction after finding a dead squirrel. Haven’t we all fallen down the Wikipedia hole at one point or...
Meh →
That’s right, the word “meh” has made it into the dictionary… or at least, one dictionary. Win!
meh INTERJ 1 an expression of indifference, boredom: What do you think of their new album? Meh. ADJ 1 mediocre; boring: The Canadian election was meh. 2 apathetic, bored, or unimpressed: I feel a bit meh about the whole thing.
“My favorite combination is the quiet confidence of knowledge, combined with the...”
– Seth Godin
Adjustable Glasses →
Silver has devised a pair of glasses which rely on the principle that the fatter a lens the more powerful it becomes. Inside the device’s tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles.
The wearer adjusts a dial on the syringe to add or reduce amount of fluid in the membrane, thus...
Blindsight →
The man, a doctor left blind by two successive strokes, refused to take part in the experiment. He could not see anything, he said, and had no interest in navigating an obstacle course — a cluttered hallway — for the benefit of science. Why bother?
When he finally tried it, though, something remarkable happened. He zigzagged down the hall, sidestepping a garbage can, a tripod, a stack of paper...