Big Pickles

You know, like nunchuku skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills...

Only, we're talking things like dialing a rotary phone, using a card catalog, adjusting your tv antenna, and cranking up and down a car window.

Labels: tech

The link that lead me to this picture was labeled "Good luck!"

So there is this professor who has come up with a technique to keep his students vigorously engaged in otherwise dry and tedious subject matter. Each lecture contains a lie, and the students are challenged to find it. It's more than just an attention-getting device, it also provides valuable practice in questioning and verifying everything you hear.

As one commenter is quick to point out, the professor would really have to know his stuff for this to work. Most of my teachers--especially in high school--made enough honest mistakes that their lectures would never stand up to this kind of scrutiny. So I guess the technique forced him to pay extra close attention as well.

What a neat idea.

Labels: education

I love behavioral economics. It's a beautiful amalgam of theory and counter-intuitive empirical observation. It's the opposite of ideology. It acknowledges that people don't always behave the way we expect them to, and tries to figure out why. And according to this article, Barack Obama's wonks are rooted in it. I guess it makes sense that it was Steven Leavitt, author of Freakonomics, that turned me on to Obama over a year ago.

From the article:

As Thaler puts it, "Physics with friction is not as beautiful. But you need it to get rockets off the ground." It might as well be the motto for Obama's entire policy shop.

I think that encapsulates the difference between Obama's crew and someone like Ron Paul, who I think also has a lot of good ideas. Everything coming from Lew Rockwell and the libertarian think tanks sounds good in theory, but it feels like working out those physics problems where vacuums and frictionless surfaces are assumed. Same goes for Bush's cadre of neoconservatives and Clinton's neoliberalism. Sure, universal health care/getting rid of the Fed/invading Iraq sounds good, but is there any real evidence that things will play out in reality as well as the theory suggests? It's all deductive, and assumes that if we fix policy around over-arching principles, the details will bear out those principles.

I have no way of knowing whether Obama would be a good president, but I like the idea that his people strive to form policy that accounts for and relies on hard data, rather than trying to implement a broad ideology that is assumed will bring about desired results. I'm willing to give the inductive approach a try. It seems more scientific, even humbler. It acknowledges that no one really knows what will happen until we try something out.

Labels: politics

Vanity Fair has reconstructed several iconic Hitchcock scenes with modern actors. It's interesting what choices they've made to reconstruct the scenes.

Most of them substitute today's glamorous stars for yesterday's--Charlize Theron, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Scarlett Johansson are all beautiful as Grace Kelly, and Naomi Watts and Jodi Foster work well as Tippi Hedren.

But you know someone's having some fun when Seth Rogen is cast in Cary Grant's role.

Labels: movies

Like Pacman, but you control the ghosts.

Labels: games

What do the 41-9 Boston Celtics and the 25-0 Memphis Tigers have in common?

The Dribble-Drive Motion offense.

Labels: sports

Once when I was a kid, I mentioned to my mom that I tend to associate numbers with certain colors. She responded that it sounded like I had a neat idea for a Swatch watch. This was the eighties, after all, when Swatches were all the rage.

I didn't think much of it, really. When you're a kid, it seems like colors are often used as a memory aid. In first grade, Mrs. Parker's class was green, Mrs. Tyler's class was blue, etc. So I always assumed that the letter P is green and the month of May is yellow because I had some memory of similar associations from childhood. Probably I'm just remembering some colored refrigerator magnets or something.

Today, my officemate Scott directed me to the wikipedia page on synesthesia. He was reading about a piano player that had it, and it reminded him of Ratatouille, where the rat sees colors and hears music when he tastes certain flavors. He thought it would be a cool condition to have.

I'm now convinced I have grapheme-color synesthesia. It's strongest for digits, but I also get colors for letters, days of the week, months of the year, etc. I don't know why it would be cool to have, though. I can't remember it ever coming in handy for anything. I just figured everyone did this.

The colors I see:

Labels: wikipedia

The trailer for the new movie is out. It's even in HD!

My premature verdict: better than Rocky Balboa and Rambo, in the 80s action hero reprise genre. Unlike those two, this movie isn't Ford's attempt to relive his glory days--in fact, it took some convincing by Spielberg before he would even agree to do it.

But there will still be some acknowledgment that the character is past his prime, as evidenced by this line from the trailer:

Indy friend: This ain't gonna be easy.
Indy: Not as easy as it used to be.

Labels: movies

There are a ton of websites I use regularly that I don't think I've ever mentioned here because they seem like common knowledge, but today I got to thinking that maybe they aren't. For example, no matter how many times I mention it, it seems like there is always someone in our office who has never heard of Snopes. (That probably says more about our turnover than anything else.) So here's a few:

IMDB: Just kidding, everyone already knows this one.

Google Maps: ...is the best! True dat! Double True!

Okay, seriously now...

AMG: All Music Guide, like IMDB but for music. In fact, I actually like its sister site, All Movie Guide, better than IMDB, though it's still in beta.

Metacritic: Collects reviews on all kinds of media from various sources and combines them into an aggregate "metascore."

Snopes: Urban legend and hoax debunker. Whenever you get an email warning you about the latest carjacking scheme or that Barack Obama is a terrorist, you can usually count on Snopes to make you feel stupid for having believed it for a second.

(This website has become so popular that email hoaxes now tend to include "I checked it on Snopes and it's TRUE!" Notwithstanding, check it on Snopes and you will probably find that it's not so much.)

The Drudge Report: Not always the most accurate, but almost always the first with breaking news. Mostly politics, some entertainment gossip.

ConsumerSearch: Sort of like Metacritic but for consumer goods, they gather multiple professional reviews from various sources and use them to determine a winner. Epinions is a good site for consumer reviews, but it's gotten cumbersome lately.

Weather Underground: My favorite weather site, it has very detailed information from neighborhood weather stations, if you need that data for a project or a log or something.

Dinkytown: I don't know what's up with the name, but this site has every kind of financial calculator you can imagine. Very useful for simple models and projections (How long will my money last, etc.) I use it at work all the time.

Zillow: Map of real estate values. Careful, if you haven't seen this one before, you may end up spending the rest of the day looking up the market value of all your friends' houses.

That's probably enough for now, but I'm sure there are tons I've forgotten.

Labels: internet

I'm loving this band. Their name is a little off-putting at first, but then again so is Barenaked Ladies. They are Canadian, too, so maybe that has something to do with it.



(via BoingBoing)

Labels: music, video

This American Life is a very compelling radio show that airs on NPR on the weekends. Each episode is composed of several "acts" that share a theme. This week's theme is "Tough Room," and I'm linking to it because three of the four acts deal with stuff I'm interested in.

Free download

Act 1 is about the Onion, Act 3 is about LDS Missionaries, and Act 4 is about Malcolm Gladwell. (I'm sure Act 2 is interesting, too.)

Labels: audio

You don't see too many websites like this anymore. It's too bad, really. Someday our kids won't believe us when we tell them how bad it used to be out there.

Note: Be sure to hit refresh several times. It gets better.

Labels: internet

From the New York Times, the first graph illustrates how Americans spend money, and the second show rates of adoption of different consumer technologies. I didn't realize that cellphones caught on quicker than the Internet.

Labels: money, tech

I'm always on the lookout for new desktop wallpaper images. I have a few favorite sites that I use, but this article in Smashing Magazine introduced me to several more. I'll probably spend a few days looking through all of them.

Wallpaper tip: For best results, you want a wallpaper image that already matches your screen resolution, so you don't have to mess with stretching or tiling or anything else that degrades the image quality. To determine your screen resolution in Windows, right-click your desktop, click Properties, click the Settings tab, and there should be a box labeled "Screen resolution" with a slider bar in it, telling you your current resolution (usually something like 1024x768 or 1280x1024 for standard monitors, or 1050x1680 or 1200x1600 for widescreen). When you go wallpaper hunting, you can usually narrow your search to images of that size.

Labels: pictures, tech

It's can't really be true that all the coolest stuff out there is really only useful for single people, right? It only seems that way because I'm married with kids. Right?

Labels: design, furniture

At the Four Seasons, when they make the beds, they make a three-inch "foot pocket" fold in the sheet at the foot of the bed to give your feet some extra room. That's good thinkin'.

Labels: household

Just like it sounds, RulesofThumb.org gathers every rule of thumb into one place. They range from seriously helpful guidelines to Murphy's Law-type observations.

Under Parenting:

CHILDREN AND FOOD
Young children's enjoyment of a home-cooked meal is in inverse proportion to the amount of time spent preparing it.

ON CHILDREN IN GROUPS
One boy has a brain. Two boys have half a brain. Three boys have no brain.

What did you call the "S" weapon in Contra? We always called it "Spread," but in this article, the author refers to it as "Spray," which I've also heard. I think it's officially called the shotgun, but I don't know anyone who ever called it that.

Other great games mentioned: Double Dribble, Tecmo Bowl, Pro Wrestling, and of course, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out. I still have every one of those games.

Labels: games, nostalgia

In Spin The Black Circle, you spin the puzzle around and try to get the black circle to fall into the right spot. Does that sound exciting? Because it is. It really is.

Labels: fun, games, puzzles

Your typical brain teaser adventure. There are lots of these around, this one didn't seem too difficult at first, but now I'm stuck on number 8.

ETA: Ok, once I figured out number 8, I sailed through the rest of them pretty easily. I think there's about 24 of them. And the English isn't too great, so watch for that.

Labels: puzzles

You've probably seen it, it's all over YouTube:



I'll just say that Scarlett Johansson has my vote.

Labels: politics

An epic battle.

Labels: animation