What iPads Did To My Family - Chuck's Blog

What iPads Did To My Family - Chuck's Blog: "All the PCs and laptops are basically not being used.� All the Macs are not being used.� All have been powered off.

Everyone in the family is waiting for their turn at the iPad.

My wife asserted her rightful place in the hierarchy later that evening, and took it upstairs to the bedroom to relax while watching TV.� Tap, tap, tap.� Occasionally, she showed me something interesting she found online.� And smiling."

Most interesting.

Tom Asacker on unlocking hearts and minds: The three knobs

Tom Asacker on unlocking hearts and minds: The three knobs: "Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, “Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity.”"

The whole article is the most profound things I read all year.

Baby, It's cold outside.

It's only 12F and its going to snow for 3 days. Not fun.

1 shot of gene therapy and children with congenital blindness can now see | Science Codex

1 shot of gene therapy and children with congenital blindness can now see | Science Codex: "Born with a retinal disease that made him legally blind, and would eventually leave him totally sightless, the nine-year-old boy used to sit in the back of the classroom, relying on the large print on an electronic screen and assisted by teacher aides. Now, after a single injection of genes that produce light-sensitive pigments in the back of his eye, he sits in front with classmates and participates in class without extra help. In the playground, he joins his classmates in playing his first game of softball."

Wow, do we live in an age of miracles or what.

E. D. Hirsch’s Curriculum for Democracy by Sol Stern, City Journal Autumn 2009

E. D. Hirsch’s Curriculum for Democracy by Sol Stern, City Journal Autumn 2009: "At his Senate confirmation hearing in February, Arne Duncan succinctly summarized the Obama administration’s approach to education reform: “We must build upon what works. We must stop doing what doesn’t work.” Since becoming education secretary, Duncan has launched a $4.3 billion federal “Race to the Top” initiative that encourages states to experiment with various accountability reforms. Yet he has ignored one state reform that has proven to work, as well as the education thinker whose ideas inspired it. The state is Massachusetts, and the education thinker is E. D. Hirsch, Jr."

I love to see ideas in conflict and what each side brings to bare.

Rural towns need to reinvent themselves

Doughnut-Hole Country | Print Article | Newsweek.com: "But there are people maybe with young families or who tried urban living and wanted to opt out and try something else, who could be lured to the region—maybe not every 22-year-old, but maybe a 32-year-old who would think, 'This is great. I can raise my kids, I can buy a gigantic house. And as long as I have the digital infrastructure, I can telecommute. I can have a very good quality of life.' I think the lifestyle rural communities have to offer is really more compatible for young families."

I don't think much of cities, they were and still are a place to get people together so they are easier to control. Until very recently cities were the only way to get enough people together to divide up the labor so you could do something big. Like build millions of cars or manage billions of dollars. When our cities were build the only only way to talk to someone was to walk or hop on a horse and ride to meet them in person or send a letter that took the same methods.

How many different ways can we get in contact with someone now?

It is interesting to see how important diversions are in this conversation. That is a question up there with "What about their socialization?" it misses the point. Look at NetFlix or iTunes they don't care where you live, all you need is mail or broadband. How many of those users are in cities already not taking advantage of those oh, so important amenities they claim are so important because they aren't in the rural.

Going out to the movies is a lot of fun, but in a rural town it is hard to do if the only theater is playing the same movie for weeks. Okay, so this is an issue that Hollywood has to get over itself to solve, but a small rural theater wouldn't be bad at all if there was a way to dial up the movie you want instead of waiting until the reels you have have "paid" for themselves. The technology is out there but it is stuck in oldthink.

Admittedly, sometimes you want to actually be with other people of similar interests. How many forms of MeetUp.com do you need? Just one for the town, really. Then you just have to be open and honest enough about yourself to post what you really want to do, rather then what you want them to expect you to want to do.

Rural towns need to reinvent themselves, because it isn't about the land, and cities are constantly reinventing themselves, they have lots of money sloshing around, rural towns don't but they can have things money can't buy.

Nasty Weather

Got a lot of snow, it started last night just after dark and has been snowing all day. We have about a foot on the balcony and it is still coming down. Needed to take out the trash, forgot to do that before the snow started. It is really slippery out there and helped a lady get her car into a spot.
The weather service is saying it will snow tomorrow too.

Week in Apple: New... everything! - Ars Technica

Week in Apple: New... everything! - Ars Technica

A roundup of Apple news.

Something to shake up even the most blasé

Now this is seriously cool!

What Every Super Achiever Knows About Time Management – That You Don’t | Investing Notes from REAL Investors

What Every Super Achiever Knows About Time Management – That You Don’t | Investing Notes from REAL Investors: "Super achievers don’t manage their time, they create, manage and maximize their opportunities. At any given time they know the one critical, must complete, task and they work on that task. It is the most important and therefore deserves their full attention."

Don't lose sight of this.

WorldWatch - September 27, 2009 - Why Union Leaders Are Trying to Destroy Themselves - The Ornery American

WorldWatch - September 27, 2009 - Why Union Leaders Are Trying to Destroy Themselves - The Ornery American: "Nobody learns from history -- isn't that sad? Now it's the extreme Left (the only kind that seems to exist any more) that behaves exactly like the extreme right of the 1950s, and it will lead to the same result. They look at anti-Communism and instead of learning that extremism, pushed too far, destroys itself; instead they only learn 'anti-Communism was bad' -- which, of course, it wasn't, when it was actually needed."

A lot of things are like that and he goes through a whole bunch of very useful examples. Right now the administrators in Washington are doing more of what's worked in the past but it is going to hurt everyone as they go a law too far.

The mis-measurement mismanagement continues

Even as layoffs persist, some good jobs go begging - Yahoo! Finance: "The jobs opened up after the lab received federal stimulus money to research energy-efficient buildings. Baker needs employees with backgrounds in city management and a grasp of the building codes needed to design energy-efficient buildings. Yet even a salary of $140,000 for senior researchers isn't drawing enough qualified applicants.

Baker said he's getting resumes from well-educated people, including some from information technology workers who want to enter the green-energy field. But he said it could take a year to get an unqualified employee up to speed on all the building codes they need to know."

It reminds me of a job posting I saw once, a C++ programing fluent in English, Braille and Swahili.

There are lots of smart people out there that can't get a good job since they are missing some requirement or other.

The real question is how long will they let the position stay open before the cost/benefit calculation blows up.

A lot of companies are getting what they pay for even it is not what they really want.

The Believer - Closing Time

The Believer - Closing Time

A fascination look into the history of cars and car salesmen.

THE LAST DAYS OF THE POLYMATH | More Intelligent Life

THE LAST DAYS OF THE POLYMATH | More Intelligent Life: "In an age of specialists, does it matter that generalists no longer thrive? The world is hardly short of knowledge. Countless books are written, canvases painted and songs recorded. A torrent of research is pouring out. A new orthodoxy, popularised by Malcolm Gladwell, sees obsessive focus as the key that unlocks genius."

I think someone hasn't left his ivory tower for much too long. There are more polymaths then ever. The average person goes thru 5-7 careers, not just jobs, these days.

The job market has been evolving so quickly the last 20 years that whole industries exist now and are major drivers of the economy that didn't exist even as scifi back then. Web designer, information marketer and hosts of others exist now that needed to be filled.

If you have been a monomath half a dozen times is that not the same as being a polymath just without the burnout, or at least the same kind of burnout.

You're looking in the wrong places. Polymaths are not valued by the big institutions, so obviously you won't find them there. They'll be in the small companies, they are the superstars that when they leave for whatever reason the company ends up hiring 3 or more people to replace them because they were so amazing in so many areas.

What a well-placed $20 gets you

What a well-placed $20 gets you: "Tom Chiarella took a stack of $20 bills with him to New York City just to see what he could get by offering them to the right people at the right time. Turns out, quite a bit."

Interesting. But are the things you are buying worth it?

BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: A day at the museum - how much do children actually remember?

BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: A day at the museum - how much do children actually remember?: "Gross's team said the results 'demonstrated that children learned and remembered an extraordinary amount of information about a school trip to a museum' even after a lengthy delay. The findings also showed that giving the children the opportunity to draw, significantly increased the amount of accurate information they recalled. This is consistent with previous, forensically motivated research showing that drawing facilitates children's verbal reports of their experiences."

Isn't it interesting, that we take away our children's crayons in schools about this time.

ht Marginal Revolution

What's up with Google

First they ignore 9/11 and now they have a crop circle doodle. What's up with that?

TigerHawk

TigerHawk: "As we have long predicted on this blog, the health care 'reformers' propose to finance at least part of the 'savings' or new benefits -- it is impossible to know which -- by decreasing the rate of return on medical technology. There are many ways in which this might be done, but the Senate Democrats are proposing to do so directly, by levying a 'value added tax' on medical device companies according to their proportion of U.S. sales."

It not that they won't treat you or your grandma, but the treatment won't be as good as it could be. It seems to them that it is more humane to let us suffer for longer, rather then let us be treated.

Cell Phone Radiation Levels

| Environmental Working Group

Even at the high level these are still pretty low. But it can be a useful tool if you care.
The biggest problem is that it is so hard to figure out how much a cell phone plan costs adding this into the mix won't help.

Out of Work, and Too Down to Search On - NYTimes.com

Out of Work, and Too Down to Search On - NYTimes.com: "In the most direct measure of job market hopelessness, the bureau has a narrow definition of a group it classifies as “discouraged workers.” These are people who have looked for work at some point in the past year but have not looked in the last four weeks because they believe that no jobs are available or that they would not qualify, among other reasons. In August, there were roughly 758,000 discouraged workers nationally, compared with 349,000 in November 2007, the month before the recession officially began.

The bureau also has a broader category of jobless it calls “marginally attached to the labor force,” which includes discouraged workers as well as those who have stopped looking because of other reasons, like school, family responsibilities or health issues. But economists agree that many of these workers probably would have found a way to work in a good economy.

There were roughly 2.3 million people in this group in August, up from 1.4 million in November 2007. If the unemployment rate were expanded to include all marginally attached workers, it would have been 11 percent in August."

Yeah, it's pretty bad out there. And no one knows for sure exactly how bad because you can't manage the numbers. No everything can be measured and measuring the wrong thing makes things worse. Imagine that.