I had the TV on MSNBC this evening for about 2 minutes, during Tucker Carlson’s show. Here’s (a paraphrase of) what I heard Tucker say: Some deaf parents want to be able to test for deafness. They want to make sure that their children are deaf like them. [blah blah blah] Now, it’s one thing […]
Monthly Archives: September 2006
Knowledge work and the hacker mentality
Are you a hacker? I am. And I’d be willing to bet that quite a few of you reading this are, as well. In fact, I think being a hacker is one of the skills/mindsets that is essential for a competent and successful knowledge worker today.
Amazon aStore
A couple of weeks ago, I saw Matt Homann’s post about his new Amazon aStore. I’ve been an Amazon Associate for a year or so, but I don’t rely on it for anything so haven’t really been paying attention to what they’ve been doing. When I logged in to the affiliate site, there was a […]
Complete archives of Royal Society available free through December
Several years ago, after reading Neal Stephenson‘s incredible Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World), I developed an interest in the activities of Natural Philosophers in England in the late 17th Century. I picked up several biographies of the times including names like Sir Isaac Newton, Christopher Wren, Thomas Willis and […]
Bringing gaming back to the masses – Nintendo Wii
Nintendo announced today the ship date (19 November) for its new video game console, the Wii (pronounced ‘we’), as well as the line up of games available at shipping time. See Live at Nintendo’s NYC Wii press conference for minute by minute details. At a time when most new gaming systems, especially consoles like Microsoft‘s […]
The Quest for genius on CNN
Thanks to Hobie Swan over at the Mindjet blog for a heads up on the upcoming program The Quest for genius to be broadcast on CNN the weekend of 23-24 September. In addition to interviewing Tony Buzan and putting mind mapping to the test, host Richard Quest will interview chess legend Gary Kasparov, Dr. James […]
Mastery writ large – US Open Champions
This past weekend saw the crowning of new champions of tennis at the U.S. Open. Congratulations to all those who competed (that takes a whole lot of mastery itself), and especially to those who won. Of special note is Roger Federer, who showed decisively why he is considered the best in the world today. Consider […]
Diverging to nonsense? Thoughts on Wikipedia
Will Wikipedia converge into a useful encyclopedia, or will it diverge to nonsense? That is one of the central questions discussed in a story I heard yesterday morning on NPR‘s Morning Edition. An interesting story to listen to if you are interested in where Wikipedia is going, though for those who are already familiar there […]
Escher and Hilbert on passion
From my M. C. Escher calendar: Any schoolboy with a little aptitude can perhaps draw better than I; but what he lacks in most cases is that tenacious desire to make it reality, that obstinate gnashing of the teeth and saying, “Although I know it can’t be done, I want to do it anyway.” This […]