I was surprised to learn that in the United States the number of firearm deaths and the number of motor vehicle traffic deaths are nearly the same: about 10 deaths per 100,000 of population, or around 30 people a day.
My guess would have been that cars kill many more than guns.
Gun suicides are about half that, and are about half of all suicides, nationally. Car suicides exist, and unlike gun suicides the deceased's intent is much harder to determine.
Gun suicides cause death at about twice the rate of homicides of all kinds. Source: Suicidology.org
Here's some more data: Gun Rhetoric vs gun facts at FactCheck.org.
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
The First 20 Hours: how to learn anything
Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours has become a cultural meme (if you haven't heard it, then you've just not been infected yet.) Now here's Josh Kaufman telling us that we can learn anything in 20 hours.
The numbers are not contradictory: it takes 10,000 hours, or something like that, to reach expertise in a field; but in twenty hours you can learn a single skill, well enough to feel good about what you've done.
Kaufman has written a book, "The First 20 Hours" describing his method in detail, and giving examples from his own practice: yoga, programming, touch typing, go, ukulele and windsurfing.
His formula:
Interview:
The numbers are not contradictory: it takes 10,000 hours, or something like that, to reach expertise in a field; but in twenty hours you can learn a single skill, well enough to feel good about what you've done.
Kaufman has written a book, "The First 20 Hours" describing his method in detail, and giving examples from his own practice: yoga, programming, touch typing, go, ukulele and windsurfing.
His formula:
- Choose something you love
- Focus on one skill at a time
- Define your performance level
- Divide skills into sub-skills
- Get the critical tools
- Eliminate barriers to practice
- Make dedicated time for practice
- Create fast feedback loops
- Practice in short bursts timed by the clock
- Emphasize quantity and speed
He's got several talks on YouTube in which he explains his method; one thing that I thought was underscored in his talks is this: commit to practice 20 hours. That can help get you past the feeling of incompetence that is inevitable when start on a new skill.
RSA:
RSA:
Interview:
Robert Anton Wilson
've just discovered Robert Anton Wilson, who set my brain on fire. I thought i would share the find with you. Feel free to pass on to any you think might be interested.
Wilson writes fiction in a style that seems to combine Douglas Adams and Kurt Vonnegut with some Joseph Heller thrown in.
He's written a ton of stuff, none of which I have ever heard of before. He's had a career as a public speaker and has a lot of interesting things on YouTube. One of them is a video from the Libertarian Party's Presidential Nominating Convention in 1987. The talk is called "Politicians, Peptides, and Stupidity."
Wikipedia describes him (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Discordianism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Included are links to two of many books written by Wilson. One is "Prometheus Rising" an exposition of some of the philosophy embedded in his books.
The other actually three books: the Schrodinger's Cat trilogy, excerpted below to whet your appetite for his writing style and his weird way of looking at things:
BOOK ONE
The Universe Next Door
The majority of Terrans were six-legged. They had territorial squabbles and politics and wars and a caste system. They also had sufficient intelligence to survive on that barren boondocks planet for several billions of years.
We are not concerned here with the majority of Terrans. We are concerned with a tiny minority, the domesticated primates who built cities and wrote symphonies and invented things like tic-tac-toe and integral calculus. At the time of our story, these primates regarded themselves as the Terrans. The six-legged majority and other lifeforms on that planet hardly entered into their thinking at all, most of the time.The domesticated primates of Terra referred to the six-legged majority by an insulting name. They called them "bugs."
There was one species on Terra that lived in very close symbiosis with the domesticated primates. This was a variety of domesticated canines called dogs.
The dogs had learned to achieve a rough simulation of guilt and remorse and worry and other domesticated primate characteristics.
The domesticated primates had learned how to achieve simulations of loyalty and dignity and cheerfulness and other canine characteristics. The primates claimed that they loved the dogs as much as the dogs loved them. Still,
the primates kept the best food for themselves. The dogs noticed this, you can be sure, but they loved the primates so much that they forgave them.
One dog became famous. Actually he and she was a group of dogs, but they became renowned collectively as Pavlov's Dog.
.....
The use of atomic weapons was widely blamed on a primate named Albert Einstein. Even Einstein himself had agreed with this opinion. He was a pacifist and had suffered abominable pangs of conscience over what had been done with his scientific discoveries.
"I should have been a plumber," Einstein said just before he died.
Actually the discovery of atomic energy was the result of the work of every scientist, craftsman, engineer, technician, philosopher, and gadgeteer who had ever lived on Terra. The use of atomic energy as a weapon was the result of all the political decisions ever made, from the time the vertebrates first started competing for territory.
Most Terran primates did not understand the multiplex nature of causality. They tended to think everything had a single cause. This simple philosophic error was so widespread on that planet that the primates were all in the habit of giving themselves, and other primates, more credit than was deserved when things went well. This made them all inordinately conceited.
They also gave themselves, and one another, more blame than was deserved when things went badly. This gave them all jumbo-sized guilt complexes.
It is usually that way on primitive planets, before quantum causality is understood.
Quantum causality was not understood on Terra until physicists solved the
Schrödinger's Cat riddle.
Schrödinger's Cat never became as famous among the primate masses as Pavlov's Dog, but that was because the cat was harder to understand than the dog.
Pavlov's Dog could be understood in simple mechanical metaphors. To understand Schrödinger's Cat you needed to first understand the equations of quantum probability waves. Only a few primates were smart enough to read the equations, and even they couldn't understand them.
That was because the equations seemed to say that the cat was dead and alive at the same time.
Every character in this book looks like Pavlov's Dog from a certain angle. If you look at him or her a different way, however, you'll see Schrödinger's Cat
Friday, November 15, 2013
Fodder: using language
I attend a discussion group in our town, called `Beyond Labels.` Last week we decided to talk about the problems that the bankruptcy of Detroit representes. The post describing the topic was titled:
>“State and Local Entitlements”
The use of the term "entitlements" seemed to represent a particular point of view. So I noted that in my post to the group:
I’ve been reading some things that have made me sensitive to the way that language is used in discussion–including, but not limited, to the discussions that we have.
For example the topic of this post could be titled, as it is now:>“State and Local Entitlements”
The use of the term "entitlements" seemed to represent a particular point of view. So I noted that in my post to the group:
I’ve been reading some things that have made me sensitive to the way that language is used in discussion–including, but not limited, to the discussions that we have.
“State and Local Entitlements”
or using language elsewhere in the post:
“State and Local Employee Benefits”
or
“State and Local Obligations”
Does it make a difference? Maybe it’s just me, but I think it does. Enough that I went back to earlier posts to see if it was part of a pattern, or an exception. My judgement (and I am happy to say so) is that this is an exception. I think Scott has been diligent about using neutral language in the posts as he is diligent in our meetings to make sure that we hear all viewpoints–even ones not represented in our group.
Still it raises questions.
At one extreme: am I being oversensitive to the language? That’s the case if no one else sees this, and that would be interesting for me to know.
At another: Is Scott being undersensitive? That would be the case if he’s the only person in the group who did not see the term as significant. That would be interesting to me, and I expect to Scott as well because of the care he takes to keep things “beyond labels”.
In the middle there might be some people who come down firmly on either side (some see “entitlement” as labelling the issue, in some way, and some are absolutely sure it’s a neutral term) and some who say, “Well, I didn’t see that, but now that you mention it….yes.”
It raises the question: when are we labelling, and when not.
Might be a topic for another time.
How to learn anything, 20 hours at a time
I found this great TED talk by Josh Kaufman. Josh is a self-confessed geek who loves learning new things. He takes us from the frightening idea that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become expert to a more approachable one: we can become capable with just twenty hours invested.
Not just any 20 hours, of course. It's got to be twenty hours of deliberate practice, structured in an intelligent way.
1. Deconstrcut the skill
2. Learn enough to self-correct (just enough)
3. Remove practice barriers (distractions, set-up costs)
4a. Pre-commit to 20 hours of practice (is it important enough?)
4b. Practice for at least 20 hours
The first phase of learning anything is incompetence. Incompetence leads to upset and that leads to abandoning the practice before twenty hours. This structure helps you get past that. Until you've put in your 20 hours don't judge your performance. Once you have put in your 20 hours you'll be good enough to give yourself some credit.
My problems:
1. I tend to try to learn a lot more than I need. Kaufman points out that this is just a way to procrastinate.
2. I don't remove practice barriers.
3. I don't focus on the 20 hours.
Twenty hours is 40 minutes a day for 30 days.
So here's my metapractice:
1. This is a nice deconstruction of the steps in any practice
2. This is also enough for me to self-correct my own practice
3. When I practice, I need to anticipate distractions, and set up policies for dealing with them
4. I need to organize each thing I'm practicing into fixed periods (twenty, thirty or forty minutes each) and keep track of total hours and progress.
So what do I want to practice:
1. Blogging
2. Guitar
3. Keyboards
4. Spanish
We'll see what else as we go along.
Not just any 20 hours, of course. It's got to be twenty hours of deliberate practice, structured in an intelligent way.
1. Deconstrcut the skill
2. Learn enough to self-correct (just enough)
3. Remove practice barriers (distractions, set-up costs)
4a. Pre-commit to 20 hours of practice (is it important enough?)
4b. Practice for at least 20 hours
The first phase of learning anything is incompetence. Incompetence leads to upset and that leads to abandoning the practice before twenty hours. This structure helps you get past that. Until you've put in your 20 hours don't judge your performance. Once you have put in your 20 hours you'll be good enough to give yourself some credit.
My problems:
1. I tend to try to learn a lot more than I need. Kaufman points out that this is just a way to procrastinate.
2. I don't remove practice barriers.
3. I don't focus on the 20 hours.
Twenty hours is 40 minutes a day for 30 days.
So here's my metapractice:
1. This is a nice deconstruction of the steps in any practice
2. This is also enough for me to self-correct my own practice
3. When I practice, I need to anticipate distractions, and set up policies for dealing with them
4. I need to organize each thing I'm practicing into fixed periods (twenty, thirty or forty minutes each) and keep track of total hours and progress.
So what do I want to practice:
1. Blogging
2. Guitar
3. Keyboards
4. Spanish
We'll see what else as we go along.
Blogging the backlog I
I've got a few dozen tabs open in Chrome with things I found interesting enough to make the extra non-effort to not close the browser if that's not too many double negatives?
Here's the first one:
It's about the differences between English slang and British slang. This is Hugh Laurie and Ellen DeGeneris trading Britishisms and Americanisms. Do you know what a "chin wag" is? How about a Ba-donka-donk?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYmrg3owTRE
Here's the first one:
It's about the differences between English slang and British slang. This is Hugh Laurie and Ellen DeGeneris trading Britishisms and Americanisms. Do you know what a "chin wag" is? How about a Ba-donka-donk?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYmrg3owTRE
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Who owns TED.com and sponsors TED Talks
Answer: TED is owned by the Sapling Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit established by Chris Anderson.
Ref: http://www.ted.com/pages/42
Ref: http://www.ted.com/pages/42
The goal of the foundation is to foster the spread of great ideas. It aims to provide a platform for the world’s smartest thinkers, greatest visionaries and most inspiring teachers, so that millions of people can gain a better understanding of the biggest issues faced by the world, and a desire to help create a better future. Core to this goal is a belief that there is no greater force for changing the world than a powerful idea.
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Making Snow with the GIMP
There's two kinds of snow: snowflakes and snow drifts.
Snow flakes: create a black layer. Add noise. Blur to get noise with different levels. Use levels to filter the noise. Then blur again to make it flakier. Use motion blur if you want to have the snow driven by the wind.
Snow drifts: Get a brush texture from one of these collections. Open a jpeg, copy a brush shape, use the clipboard brush. Vary opacity, jitter, and so on. Use the air brush to put shadows in.
Snow flakes: create a black layer. Add noise. Blur to get noise with different levels. Use levels to filter the noise. Then blur again to make it flakier. Use motion blur if you want to have the snow driven by the wind.
Snow drifts: Get a brush texture from one of these collections. Open a jpeg, copy a brush shape, use the clipboard brush. Vary opacity, jitter, and so on. Use the air brush to put shadows in.
Bill Joy's Cautionary: "Why The Future Doesn't Need Us"
Notable technologist Bill Joy has written a cautionary essay in Wired that raises concerns about the dreams of a Utopian future that I share with Ray Kurzweil, among others. He starts his essay with a quote from Kurzweil's book, worth repeating and considering.
> THE NEW LUDDITE CHALLENGE
>First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than human beings can do them. In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained.
If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can't make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines' decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.
>On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite - just as it is today, but with two differences. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consists of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone's physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes "treatment" to cure his "problem." Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or make them "sublimate" their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they will most certainly not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.1
The author of this excerpt is neither Joy nor Kurzweil, but by Ted Kaczynski, known as the Unibomber.
> THE NEW LUDDITE CHALLENGE
>First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than human beings can do them. In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained.
If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can't make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines' decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.
>On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite - just as it is today, but with two differences. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consists of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone's physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes "treatment" to cure his "problem." Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or make them "sublimate" their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they will most certainly not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.1
The author of this excerpt is neither Joy nor Kurzweil, but by Ted Kaczynski, known as the Unibomber.
Saturday, November 9, 2013
Modern Monetary Theory
Modern Monetary Theory turns conventional monetary theory on its head. Instead of apologizing for debasing currencies by issuing "fiat money" MMT claims that the currency is valuable because sovereigns can levy taxes and require that taxes be paid in their currency. This creates a demand for currency, which is then supplied by the sovereign.
Here's a tutorial on the subject.
Here's a tutorial on the subject.
Ingress Stuff
I finally got an invite to the Ingress Maine Resistance community. Here's how it came about: I was playing Ingress at the Maine Hacker's group at the Maine Discovery Museum and one of the other guys heard the characteristic sounds of the game, checked me out and invited me in.
So it goes, after a year of failure!
So it goes, after a year of failure!
Rock on, Ludwig
One of the first songs I learned to play on the piano was Beethoven's Fur Elise. Now here's a nice rock 'n Acoustic guitar cover, along with tabs.
The video, direct on YouTube is here:
Update when I can play it, myself.
The video, direct on YouTube is here:
Update when I can play it, myself.
Guitar tutorials from MLR-Guitar
Some really nice tutorials for fingerstyle guitar from MLR-Guitar, here. Malero has a YouTube channel here with a whole raft of really nice tutorials. His blog is here.
I really like the fact that he just shows you how to play the songs, showing a note at a time, then playing the phrase, then speeding it up. No blah, blah, blah stuff.
I really like the fact that he just shows you how to play the songs, showing a note at a time, then playing the phrase, then speeding it up. No blah, blah, blah stuff.
Every Breath You Take: MLR-Guitar Tutorial'
My last post was a really nice arrangement of "Every Breath You Take" Now here's a series of tutorials by MLR-Guitar for the song, along with a tab for the song.
gf
The tab is from "GuitarTabMaker", here.
Guitar Resources:Every Breath You Take
I want to play the guitar. (Or as Michael says: guitary). The me that wants to play the Guitar may be the same me that wants to write, or it may be a different one. Whatever or whoever it is, The Guitarist and The Writer get along. And The Other has problems with both of them.
I've tripped over a bunch of resources for teaching myself to play (better, differently) and from time to time I make use of them. But mostly I don't for the same reason that mostly I don't write. I don't know for sure what that reason is, but my current hypothesis is that it's connected to my struggles with The Other.
Here's one of the resources:
A guy named Hansel Pethig has a finger-style arrangement of Sting's "Every Breath You Take." It's on YouTube here:
Now this is cool. And some time today I hope to get my shit together and start using it.
There's a tab for this also, but I want to start by fucking posting this.
Update: Here's the tab
I've tripped over a bunch of resources for teaching myself to play (better, differently) and from time to time I make use of them. But mostly I don't for the same reason that mostly I don't write. I don't know for sure what that reason is, but my current hypothesis is that it's connected to my struggles with The Other.
Here's one of the resources:
A guy named Hansel Pethig has a finger-style arrangement of Sting's "Every Breath You Take." It's on YouTube here:
Now this is cool. And some time today I hope to get my shit together and start using it.
There's a tab for this also, but I want to start by fucking posting this.
Update: Here's the tab
The First Post
I don't know how long ago I started this blog, but I know it's been a long time, and for a long time I've written exactly nothing. Finally I've gotten around to writing something, and it's not easy. And I'm going to post it and I don't think that's going to be easy either.
Just for the record, today is November 9th. 11/9, the opposite of 9/11, to coin a meme.
I'm schizophrenic. Not in a literal, clinical sense, but in a metaphorical, personal sense. There are at least two “me's” maybe more. Here are the two I know about.
One of them, the me I call me, or The Writer, wants to write. That's the part of me that's pounding on the keyboard right now.
The other, the me I'll call me, or The Other, does not want me to write. That's the part of me that's crying right now.
It's a battle for control. The territory to be won is the body, and the will, I suppose. There seems to be no room for compromise, so someone has to win.
Writing puts The Writer in control, strengthens The Writer and makes it easier to remain in control.
Writing weakens The Other. With any luck it might kill it. The Writer doesn't necessarily want to kill The Other, but if that's the way it goes, then fine.
For survival, The Other has to find ways to keep The Writer from writing. So far it's been doing a pretty good job. But this might just be a turning point. At least The Writer hopes it will be.
Now that the battle is out in the open, let's make things clear. I'm either going to write or I am going to metawrite in the Metablog. In any case, I'm going to metawrite daily, just to keep my muscles in shape.
I've got a backlog of stuff I want to write about, and I'm going to write about it, in no special order, just item by item.
And I'm keeping the metablog going. At least one post a day, maybe several.
And now, I post it.
Take that!
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