NPR interview with David Remnick. Here’s a
NPR interview with David Remnick. Here’s a newly-released collection of his recent writing, which includes his interview with Al Gore.
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Entries for May 2006
Creating talent
The Stev(ph)ens Dubner and Levitt report on some recent research suggesting that people who are good at things got good at them primarily through practice and not because of innate talent.
Their work, compiled in the “Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance,” a 900-page academic book that will be published next month, makes a rather startling assertion: the trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated. Or, put another way, expert performers — whether in memory or surgery, ballet or computer programming — are nearly always made, not born. And yes, practice does make perfect. These may be the sort of cliches that parents are fond of whispering to their children. But these particular cliches just happen to be true.
The talent myth described here seems to be distinct from that which Malcolm Gladwell talks about in relation to talented people and companies, but I’m sure parallels could be drawn. But back to the original article…I was particularly taken with the concept of “deliberate practice”:
Deliberate practice entails more than simply repeating a task — playing a C-minor scale 100 times, for instance, or hitting tennis serves until your shoulder pops out of its socket. Rather, it involves setting specific goals, obtaining immediate feedback and concentrating as much on technique as on outcome.
“Deliberate practice” reminds me of a video game a bunch of my friends are currently hooked on called Brain Age. Available for the handheld Nintendo DS, Brain Age is based on a Japanese brain training “game” developed by Dr. Ryuta Kawashima. The game measures the “age” of your brain based on your performance of simple tasks like memorizing a list of words or addition of small numbers. As you practice (deliberately), you get faster and more skilled at solving these mini-games and your brain age approaches that of a smarty-pants, twitchy-fingered teenager.
Speaking of talented teenagers, this week’s New Yorker contains an article (not online) on Ivan Lendl’s golfing daughters. In it, Lendl agrees that talent is created, not born:
“Can you create athletes, or do they just happen?” [Lendl] asked me not long ago. “I think you can create them, and I think that Tiger Woods’s father proved that. People will sometimes ask me, ‘How much talent did you have in tennis?’ I say, ‘Well, how do you measure talent?’ Yeah, sure, McEnroe had more feel for the ball. But I knew how to work, and I worked harder than he did. Is that a talent in itself? I think it is.”
Translation: there’s more than one way to be good at something. There’s something very encouraging and American about it, this idea that through hard work, you can become proficient and talented at pretty much anything.
Steven Johnson responds to (blasts? slams?) the
Steven Johnson responds to (blasts? slams?) the endangered joy of serendipity piece I just linked to, arguing that the web is a much better serendipity engine than the library. (BTW, I think Steven is part machine himself…after posting that link, I took out the trash and ducked out to get something at the bodega around the corner and when I got back, there’s a message from him in my inbox with a link to his rant. Jesus.)
William McKeen on the “endangered joys of
William McKeen on the “endangered joys of serendipity”. “Do people browse anymore? We have become such a directed people. We can target what we want, thanks to the Internet. It’s efficient, but dull.”
What’s the fastest way to get to
What’s the fastest way to get to the JFK airport in NYC? Helicopter, bus, subway, car, or cab? (Didn’t the NY Times or the NYer do a piece like this several months ago?)
Update: New York magazine and the NY Times both did stories on getting to JFK. (thx, kyu)
What Is the best work of American
What Is the best work of American fiction of the last 25 years? Toni Morrison’s Beloved. In a companion piece, A.O. Scott writes: “I was surprised at how few of the highly praised, boldly ambitious books by younger writers - by which I mean writers under 50 - were mentioned. One vote each for ‘The Corrections’ and ‘The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,’ none for ‘Infinite Jest’ or ‘The Fortress of Solitude,’ a single vote for Richard Powers, none for William T. Vollmann, and so on.” (via, sps)
HOW DARE YOU INSTANT MESSAGE A SUPERMODEL shirts
Some dreams deserve to be immortalized on tshirts:
He can feel the anger in my voice, so he immediately tries to calm me down. “I’m trying to explain the differences between MySQL and Perl to my friend,” he answers as if that were the most logical thing to ever come out of his mouth.
“You’re friends with Gisele Bundchen?” I ask.
“Well, yeah,” he says. “I met her on a WordPress message board a few months ago.”
My whole world does a sort of belly flop, and I start to get a little dizzy because what I used to think was right-side-up is now turned on its head. “That’s not okay,” I say to him.
“What do you mean it’s not okay?” he asks. “We’re talking about databases, for crying out loud.”
Apologies to Mike for beating him to the punch.
ps. Sorry, you can’t actually order the shirts. I’ve offered Heather the design if she wants to do so at some point.
Google Trend graph for “the” and “and”.
Google Trend graph for “the” and “and”. I would have expected them to be flatter.
Fun! See graphs for the popularity of
Fun! See graphs for the popularity of Google search results with Google Trends. Is the blog meme trend finally flattening out? And hey, I had a hand in shaping this one.
Get yer Richard Feynman on at Google
Get yer Richard Feynman on at Google Video, particularly this 50-minute video of The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. A bit more Feynman at YouTube.
Edward Tufte on the user interface of
Edward Tufte on the user interface of some Sun software: “Dr Spock’s Baby Care is a best-selling owner’s manual for the most complicated ‘product’ imaginable — and it only has two levels of headings. You people have 8 levels of hierarchy and I haven’t even stopped counting yet. No wonder you think it’s complicated.”
I could give two craps about Sphere,
I could give two craps about Sphere, but I loved these two lines: “it’s eyecandy for Web2.0 retards” and “Designing for the TechCrunch crowd is a mook’s game. Designing for users means making things straightforward, lightweight, and uncluttered.” (via bbj)
How John Worley got duped by Nigerian
How John Worley got duped by Nigerian spammers. Amazing manipulation and gullibility. Great issue of the New Yorker this week, BTW…worth seeking out at the newsstand.
List of 10 character actors that should be in every movie.
List of 10 character actors that should be in every movie.
The original 13-minute version of Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket
Before he started making the super stylized films for which he is now known, a 23-year-old Wes Anderson made a 13-minute short film called Bottle Rocket. The film was shot in 1992, found its way to Sundance, and gave Anderson the opportunity to make his first feature film of the same name. Here’s that original short, starring then-unknown actors Owen and Luke Wilson.
Video of a man performing the history of dance. Awesome.
Video of a man performing the history of dance. Awesome.
Fun video of FedEx planes getting into
Fun video of FedEx planes getting into the Memphis airport around a thunderstorm. They look like ants trying to avoid a puddle of water. (via rw)
If it’s the last thing I ever do
Paul notes that a lot of people and organizations are vowing to do things in the news these days. Here’s a current sampling from Google News:
Uganda: Museveni vows to fight corruption
Family vows to fight futile-care law
Blair vows smooth handover
Dumars vows to keep top defender Wallace in fold
Bush vows to boost efforts to end Darfur killings
Ontario vows full-time work for all nursing graduates
China Vows to Close Unsafe Coal Mines
Magician Vows to Complete Aquarium Stunt
Sutherland vows to keep making 24
Vodafone Vows to Slash Roaming Charges By 40%
China’s Pearl River Smells, but Mayor Vows to Swim
People are doing a lot of urging in the news too:
Prescott urges Labour to avoid “war”
China urges to repatriate “Eastern Turkistan” terrorist suspects
Brussels urges 2007 declaration to break EU constitution deadlock
Report urges support for parents with learning difficulties
Bush urges larger UN role in Darfur
Roche Urges Care Against Online Counterfeit Tamiflu
Day urges Canadians to stock up for crisis
Leave it to President Bush to both vow and urge in the same headline: “Bush urges UN role in peacekeeping and vows to expedite aid”.
Update: Nathaniel asks, where’s the slamming? Here it is:
Comptroller report slams health system, police and NII
Traffic chief slams taxi fare bungle
Bangla author slams Dhaka
Cardinal Slams ‘Da Vinci’ ‘Disrespect’
Navratilova slams Czech Pres. as anti-gay
UN slams attack on aid worker
Update: Matthew sends in word of “smacks” in the news:
Holliday smacks two homers to lead Rockies over St. Louis
SCOTUS smacks down anti-choicers
Warren Smacks Broadway
Venice smacks Seminole in region opener
Another Zero-Day Bug Smacks IE
Let’s be clear: Bypassing Bush smacks of stupidity
Cox’s recent Wal-Mart battle smacks of political posturing
Fish Jumps in Boat, Smacks Woman’s Face
And Chris offers “blasts” news:
Cameron blasts ‘sexy’ children’s clothes stores
Iran’s Leader Blasts US, Calls Democracy a Failure
Trade Group Blasts Massachusetts Call For Office Plug-In
McInally blasts new SFL play-offs
Dean McDermott’s Ex-Wife Blasts Him & Tori
Sheehan blasts war, Bush at Town Hall
Environmentalist blasts bug spray
Awaiting the invitable “vows urges blasts slams smacks” headline…
Riding a wave of publicity from his
Riding a wave of publicity from his movie, An Inconvenient Truth, might Al Gore run for President in 2008? (My answer: unlikely.)
Short interview with Chris Ware upon the
Short interview with Chris Ware upon the occasion of a show of his work at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art. “I’ve found that anything I do [to] carefully plan and pare down in advance feels utterly false and constructed once I actually do it, having nothing of the sort of accident and unevenness of real life that I hope to, at least, modestly edge towards.”
Attention all my friends with children! Tiny
Attention all my friends with children! Tiny Eyes simulates what your baby sees in the first few months of his/her life. (via wdik)
Quirky Manhattan eatery Shopsin’s not moving to
Quirky Manhattan eatery Shopsin’s not moving to Brooklyn as previously reported.
Cloud Cult
Cloud Cult has been Pitchforked, Clap Your Hands Say Yeahed by Gothamist, and is already the last next big thing, but that’s not going to stop me from recommending them to you. Here’s their latest album (which was instantly good and still so after a week), befriend them on MySpace, or download a few free mp3s. Minnesota represent!
Sam Anderson articulates his hatred for Kobe
Sam Anderson articulates his hatred for Kobe Bryant. “Since he’s a Jordan-like talent, Kobe clearly thinks that he’s entitled to the Jordan mythology, but he doesn’t have any of Jordan’s charisma or imagination.”
New York magazine does its version of
New York magazine does its version of the power issue for NYC: The Influentials, “the people whose ideas, power, and sheer will are changing New York”. No offense to anyone who made the list, but NYC is unsurprisingly light on technology.
Interactive map (powered by, what else, Google
Interactive map (powered by, what else, Google Maps) showing which area will be flooded when the sea level rises. Here’s what parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens will look like if the sea level rises 7 meters.
Discussion of various animals’ athletic abilities. Cheetahs
Discussion of various animals’ athletic abilities. Cheetahs can reach a speed of 45 mph in 2 seconds (3-4 strides)! Still no convincing answer for the man vs. horse question though.
Economist Thomas J. Holmes studies the diffusion
Economist Thomas J. Holmes studies the diffusion of Wal-Mart across the US (here’s a video showing the retailer’s spread). Here’s Holmes discussing how density considerations affect where Wal-Mart places their stores.
Stephen Baker lists some reasons why journalists
Stephen Baker lists some reasons why journalists should ask dumb questions, but it’s good advice for anyone really. My favorite professor in college, his mantra in classes was that there was no such thing as dumb questions.
Some podcasts are available from Core’s Design 2.0
Some podcasts are available from Core’s Design 2.0 conference held in NYC back in February. The next conference is in SF in June.
No Proof of Aliens
UK report concludes that there’s no proof of alien life forms. I’m sure this will change when the UNIT files are declassified.
Horse versus human, who would win?
Saturday was a sports viewing doubleheader in our household: the Kentucky Derby followed by a lackluster Lakers vs. Suns game 7. During the basketball game, the commentators referred to the speed of the Suns’ Leandro Barbosa and that plus the similarity of his name to Derby winner Barbaro’s led to a discussion about which of the two would win in a race the length of the basketball court. Three of us argued that the horse would win and one argued for the human winning.
So, how fast are horses and humans? In winning the Belmont Stakes in 1973, Secretariat averaged 37.5 miles/hr over a mile and a half. World record holder Asafa Powell averaged 22.9 miles/hr in the 100 meter dash. Jesse Owens raced horses over a 100 yard distance and beat them, but only because the horses reared at the sound of the starter’s pistol, giving him a sizable head-start. In 2004, in an annual race held in Wales, a chap named Huw Lobb beat a field of horses and other humans over a distance of 22-miles.
But that doesn’t do much in answering the question of which would win over the short distance of a basketball court (94 feet or 28.7 meters). I searched high and low online and found little about the acceleration of either horses or humans. No doubt horses are much faster than humans, but a man is probably quicker off the line. So I put the question to you in hopes that you can answer it:
In a 94-foot race between a human sprinter and a thoroughbred race horse, who would win? Assume a standing start for both, the horse races on dirt, the man runs on the court, and both horse and man are among the fastest at their respective distances.
This is the most wonderfully nerdy thing
This is the most wonderfully nerdy thing I’ve ever read about politics and blogging. “So in fact, Reynolds has managed to fit five units of wrongness into only four declarative statements! This is the hackular equivalent of crossing the Chandrasekhar Limit, at which point your blog cannot help but collapse in on itself.” (via cyn-c)
Friends and finances in 21st century America: “
Friends and finances in 21st century America: “More friends and acquaintances are now finding themselves at different points on the financial spectrum, scholars and sociologists say, thanks to broad social changes like meritocracy-based higher education, diversity in the workplace and a disparity of incomes among professions.”
The NY Times has a big summer
The NY Times has a big summer movie preview section, including a movie release schedule (May, June, July, August).
The Kentucky Derby is “the weirdest two
The Kentucky Derby is “the weirdest two minutes in sports”. “What we get, then, is a not-very-representative sample of thoroughbreds running a far-from-typical race under far-from-typical circumstances.”
Maybe the universe is a trillion years
Maybe the universe is a trillion years old and has experienced several big bangs and big collapses over the years. “People have inferred that time began then, but there really wasn’t any reason for that inference. What we are proposing is very radical. It’s saying there was time before the big bang.”
Stardust Holiday is a blog written by
Stardust Holiday is a blog written by a woman who’s spending three months in bed as part of a NASA study. (via cyn-c)
Mexican president Vicente Fox didn’t sign the
Mexican president Vicente Fox didn’t sign the bill legalizing small quantities of drugs for personal use because of US pressure due to drug tourism fears. What I don’t understand is…why not just make it legal for Mexican citizens to allay US fears? Besides, anyone who goes to Mexico for drugs can get them if they want anyway, law or no.
The Forecast Umbrella uses WiFi to check
The Forecast Umbrella uses WiFi to check the weather report and if it’s likely to rain, the handle glows. Kinda like Sting, Frodo’s sword that glows when there’s orcs around. (also via infosthetics)
ASCII Maps, a fully-functional version of Google
ASCII Maps, a fully-functional version of Google Maps represented in ASCII. Doesn’t work in Safari tho. (via infosthetics)
You can use iTunes and a little
You can use iTunes and a little AppleScript to make custom ringtones for Mail.app. I could have it play When Doves Cry everytime I get email from Anil.
IndieKarma. Micropayments that work?
I got an email weeks ago urging me to look at a new micropayment system called IndieKarma. Pretty much every other micropayment scheme I’ve seen is too clunky to actually be useful, but I was pleasantly surprised with IndieKarma when I got around to checking it out. Here’s how it works.
If you’re a blogger or web site owner, you sign up, put a bit of JavaScript code on your site, and whenever a reader who’s signed into IndieKarma visits your site, you get a penny. Seamless and easy.
If you’re a reader, you sign up, put some money into your IndiePass account (with PayPal), and then as long as you’re signed in, whenever you visit a site that’s using the IndieKarma JavaScript, a penny is deducted from your account and into the site owner’s account. Again, fairly seamless and easy.
What I love about this system is that it’s passive and based on actual usage. The reader doesn’t need to decide that they want to support a certain site, just that they want to support the IndieKarma-enabled sites they read often. For a reader who doesn’t necessarily want to support a certain site, if they happen to click through for a visit, it only costs them a penny and then they never come back.
Financially, if a reader visits a site 60 times a month (which is not that unusual for weblogs), that’s $0.60/mo. or $7.20/yr…the price of a couple lattes at Starbucks. If you’ve got 1000 people who read your site that are signed up through IndieKarma, that’s $7200 per year, a sizable chunk of change.
So that’s the good part. Here are some problems with IndieKarma and some suggested features:
- The “dock” that’s placed on the site is way too intrusive and inflexible. Ad banners and boxes are well-established as a way of delivering this type of information…why not use that format? When a reader isn’t logged in to IndieKarma, the ad banner/box prompts them to do so and if they’re logged in, they get a “receipt” message for their micropayment (e.g. “thanks for supporting the site). Optionally, as a site owner, I should be able to not have the banner show at all for a truly seamless experience for the reader. The easier you make it to pop into a sidebar for bloggers and site owners, the better.
- Lack of variable pricing. As a reader, I might want to give more or less money per visit to certain sites. I may decide to spend ~$20/yr on my Waxy.org habit and so opt to give three cents per visit instead of one. As a site owner, I should be able to set a suggested and/or minimum cost/visit for my site. If I’ve got 1000 people giving 3 cents/visit, they each visit 60 times per month for a whole year, that’s $21,600, a living wage (depending on where you’re living).
- Alternate payment methods. Readers could buy “subscriptions” to sites for a “buy now” price determined by the site’s owner. Or an option for “gosh, that post/video/comic was really good today so here’s an extra $5” payments.
- You could even incorporate advertising into the mix. An advertiser could come along and say, “I’m going pay for unlimited free visits to this site for IndieKarma members for 60 days” and in exchange, the IndieKarma banner is replaced with an ad for that advertiser.
But the big problem with IndieKarma (which I hope they can overcome somehow) is that it’s one of those things that’s only useful when there’s a lot of people using it. As a reader, if only 1 or 2 sites I read are using IndieKarma to generate revenue, I don’t have much incentive to go through the sign-up process, but if there are 30 or 40 sites I read that are using it, I’d be much more likely to sign up. Same goes for site owners…if 10 of my readers are using IndieKarma, that’s not good, but if 1000 of them are using it, that’s something.
It’s a chicken and egg problem…you need users to get sites to sign up and you need sites to get users to sign up. This would work much better for someone who already has tons of signed-in users and payment systems (Amazon, PayPal, Google, etc.), established networks of sites that have lots of potential users across many similar sites (Gawker, BlogAds, 9Rules, The Deck, etc.), or really big sites that could sign users up in 4+ digit quantities (Slashdot, MySpace, LiveJournal, Drudge, HuffPo, etc.). Like I said, I hope IndieKarma can overcome this problem because I think the basic idea has a lot of promise to provide an alternative to advertising-supported media, both from the standpoint of readers and web site owners.
pb fills us in on how he
pb fills us in on how he finds lost URLs. In addition to the techniques he lists, I use the search function on my newsreader, which content also gets indexed with Spotlight so that works as well.
John Gruber has more information on what’s
John Gruber has more information on what’s going on with Aperture at Apple. Bottom line: by throwing too many engineers at the problem, they made a late project later (see The Mythical Man Month, one of my favorite business books), and after it shipped, all those extra engineers were redispersed within the company and the managers responsible for the debacle got the boot. Good stuff.
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