According to the article, many new technologies are reliant upon rare earth elements, of which China controls 97% of the world's supply. I'm not sure what the implications are.
As Deng Xiao Ping presciently commented, at a time when electric cars and wind power seemed like ecotopian wet dreams: "Arabia has oil, China has rare earth".
-Max
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If you're so evil, eat this kitten!
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
Science is
Science, in its purest sense, is as much an individual activity as religion. Science means reasoning by means of repeatable, testable hypotheses: science is what you can put in a letter and mail to another scientist and have him verify. Asking a paleontologist if dinosaurs were warm-blooded is not science; studying the papers and the fossils and then forming (and checking) your own opinion is science.
-Max
--
If you're so evil, eat this kitten!
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
-Max
--
If you're so evil, eat this kitten!
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Thursday, December 10, 2009
WMDs
I'm not allowed to discuss politics until 2010, but you should read this:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/12/09/is_climategate_the_new_downing_street_memo_99468.html
I will note parenthetically that I was completedly fooled on Iraq, but had I listened to Greg Cochran's views here (http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail227.html) I would have been a lot closer to correct, which is a large part of the reason I'm skeptical of Iran as a threat and trying to be appropriately skeptical of Afghanistan.
The really great thing about Cochran is he's quantitative, cogent, and fact-based. You can disagree with his priorities but you should always hear out people like this.
-Max
P.S. I didn't see this article at the time, but even though the surge in Iraq worked, should we have done it? Cochran discussed an alternative at the time. http://amconmag.com/article/2007/sep/24/00006/
--
If you're so evil, eat this kitten!
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/12/09/is_climategate_the_new_downing_street_memo_99468.html
I will note parenthetically that I was completedly fooled on Iraq, but had I listened to Greg Cochran's views here (http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail227.html) I would have been a lot closer to correct, which is a large part of the reason I'm skeptical of Iran as a threat and trying to be appropriately skeptical of Afghanistan.
The really great thing about Cochran is he's quantitative, cogent, and fact-based. You can disagree with his priorities but you should always hear out people like this.
-Max
P.S. I didn't see this article at the time, but even though the surge in Iraq worked, should we have done it? Cochran discussed an alternative at the time. http://amconmag.com/article/2007/sep/24/00006/
--
If you're so evil, eat this kitten!
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Why Object Oriented Languages Need Tail Calls
According to this argument, object oriented languages that don't require tail call optimization from their compiler(s) don't preserve object-oriented abstractions. I'm not 100% sure I buy the argument, since even if you do tail-call optimizations there are ways to implement the example in such a way that it runs out of stack space anyway--but perhaps his argument is that there's no correct way to implement the example (in the OO paradigm) without tail call optimizations. If that's the argument then I need to think about it some more.
-Max
--
If you're so evil, eat this kitten!
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
-Max
--
If you're so evil, eat this kitten!
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Public speaking
Tips on public speaking from Scott Berkun, who presented at work here recently:
1. Don't be afraid of the crowd. If necessary, arrive early, acclimate to the room, exercise beforehand. Amygdala.
2. Don't make it look like it's your first time ("nervous surgeon syndrome"). Practice slides, pitches, video manipulation, etc., beforehand until it feels good.
3. Keep a rhythm. ("Turtle on crack") Let people know how long each segment is supposed to take, be consistent. Attention span: 5-10 minutes. "I've got six pieces, five minutes each." May also be useful to give people an outline to follow in case they drift off for a minute.
4. Keep an interesting angle on things. Make it interesting to yourself at minimum. Also study the audience, talk to the audience beforehand about past experiences.
5. Avoid obfuscation of rhetoric: watch your tendency to use big, obscure words to win arguments (because people won't ask what things mean in an argument). Be clear, bring people along. Don't use language to defend yourself from questions. Do not be afraid of questions! (Side note, trying to make arguments strong: there's a difference between the point you want to make, and the arguments you use to support the points. Points must be clear, arguments can be clarified reactively.)
6. Slides serve what you are saying. Huge bulleted lists are often an indication that you have not practiced this, and are planning to use slides as notes. (Back to the audience, feel obligated to cover every point on the slides, etc.) Makes too many demands on visual bandwidth (information density--speaker doesn't know what the point is). Goal of a slide should be to support your points. If you need density, write a report, make a web site, whatever--but don't do a presentation. The acceptable level of density depends upon the presentation goal and the audience--if you're presenting code programming tips it may be okay to have more density than if you're giving tips on dating. When in doubt, rip it out.
-Max
--
If you're so evil, eat this kitten!
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Metacognition
I had to dig this up recently:
Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Leads To Inflated Self-Assessments
It turns out that the very thing which prevents you from being good at certain intellectual or social tasks also prevents you from recognizing that you're not any good at it. Fairly poignant stuff if you look at it from a certain perspective, since there may be things you think you do well (sense of humor?) which you're worse at than almost anybody without even realizing it. On the other hand, it may also explain why we we're so hard on ourselves on at stuff we're good at.
-Max
--
If you're so evil, eat this kitten!
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Leads To Inflated Self-Assessments
It turns out that the very thing which prevents you from being good at certain intellectual or social tasks also prevents you from recognizing that you're not any good at it. Fairly poignant stuff if you look at it from a certain perspective, since there may be things you think you do well (sense of humor?) which you're worse at than almost anybody without even realizing it. On the other hand, it may also explain why we we're so hard on ourselves on at stuff we're good at.
-Max
--
If you're so evil, eat this kitten!
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
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