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SubscriptionsSites I Read
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| Newscientist: Are humans cruel to be kind?
But it pays to examine your motives carefully. Woe betide a society in which altruistic punishment gives way to an envy-driven contest where everyone stands to lose. Hoff likes to illustrate the dangers with a Russian joke. A genie appears to a man and says: "You can have anything you want. The only catch is that I'll give your neighbour double." The man says: "Take out one of my eyes." --
Paul says: Instead, imitate Christ
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| MIT switches from Scheme to Python for freshmen core curriculum
Scheme is a major reason I decided I didn't want to do computer science at Cal. The fact we used such an esoteric and impractical language for teaching concepts really frustrated me. Scheme is a language for moldy old AI researchers, not students at the best school for CS in the world (Go Bears).
Note that this is MIT, but presumably Cal will be following suit soon enough, if it hasn't already.
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| To put a formal label on something I already knew about myself: I am a global learner. Previously, I had internally referenced this as being a "structural thinker". Thanks, little sister.
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Sequential learners tend to gain understanding in linear steps, with each step following logically from the previous one. Global learners tend to learn in large jumps, absorbing material almost randomly without seeing connections, and then suddenly "getting it."
Sequential learners tend to follow logical stepwise paths in finding solutions; global learners may be able to solve complex problems quickly or put things together in novel ways once they have grasped the big picture, but they may have difficulty explaining how they did it. Strongly global learners who lack good sequential thinking abilities, on the other hand, may have serious difficulties until they have the big picture. Even after they have it, they may be fuzzy about the details of the subject, while sequential learners may know a lot about specific aspects of a subject but may have trouble relating them to different aspects of the same subject or to different subjects. | | |
| I sometimes play this game where I center the steering wheel as precisely as possible, then let go of the wheel and see how far I can go before I begin to drift.
Today it occurred to me to combine that with cruise control. I adjusted the angle, pushed the button, and literally sat there as my car drove itself. There was this sensation of being in a robot-steered vehicle; it was such a weird feeling that it made me laugh out loud (might have been the fatigue speaking). Give it a try, it's fun. Clear, straight road only, of course.
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| My train was turned around just before my stop due to an on-track fire, so I'm going to be stuck in Lafayette with no definite timeline on a shuttle service. "Want to split a cab fare?" I ask a couple of my fellow passengers. By the time we flag down a taxi van, our little group has grown to 5.
Another lady asks to take the front seat, but the driver says, "My friend will be sitting there." Kind of weird, but all right. So we pull up, and another lady gets in the front seat. She turns out to be his wife. Weird. "Hi," we say, being friendly.
Then as we inch through the sea of cars on our way out, the driver offers, "So I'll charge you $5 each to get to Walnut Creek," pretending to be a huckster. I chuckle, but the enthusiastic young couple behind me pipes up, "Okay!" A beat, and when no confirmation of the joke seems forthcoming, I lean forward and ask, "Wait, you're kidding, right?"
By now our driver is on his cell phone, so when he finishes I say again, "Sir, you'd better turn on your meter", because he hasn't. "Five dollars each and I'll get you there," he says, irritated. "You can't do that," I say, and there are murmurs of agreement behind me. "This is a taxi cab, you have to run the meter".
"I'm taking my family home, I'm not running as a cab." Oh, so that's how it is.
"If you're going to charge us five, you can let us all off."
"Oh, not us, we're in a hurry," says the EYC. "Five is fine with us". Silence.
"Sir, you can let me off right here," I say. Clearly angry, he turns around and opens the door for me. I get out and flag down another cab.
By now there's no one else going to my stop, so the trip ends up being $15. I pay happily.
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I tell this story to my sister, and she laughs. "An idealistic young man". | | |
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