Politics

Obama's approval / disapproval ratings are now in a dead heat. Will the trend reverse course? Prediction based upon a non-random sampling of Fox TV and lefty blogs: the trend will continue during 2010, with disapproval surpassing approval ratings.

Dogs

Bark!

To apply to college, I wrote about four or five bad essays. They were all bad. I got accepted to one school, despite the essays, because I met some cutoffs on grades and standardized test score. (That essay, which I sent to dear old state, was about chaos theory, and the admissions lady told my guidance counselor the essay was also chaos.)

One of the essays became common knowledge among the underclassmen at my high school. I guess one of the english teachers showed it to them as an example of what not to do. But I was proud of my essay about being a dog.

Why the topic? A friend's dog had just had surgery and was wearing one of those white cones. Curious, I had taken the cone when the dog wasn't using it, and tried it on for a bit. This fifteen-second experience became a college essay. That school politely declined me.

But apparently, now there is a whole book called "Inside of a Dog." It's getting good reviews. I knew it was an interesting topic. "[W]e reside within our own umwelt, our own self-world bubble, which clouds our vision." So walk a mile in someone else's paws sometimes...

Binary outcomes

We are not hardwired to judge outcomes using probabilities. We judge outcomes using success or failure.

For example, many of us have a gut feeling that Belichick made the wrong decision.

And when we pin our happiness on outcomes, it is prone to peaks and valleys.

I'm always reminding myself of this.

Options

Whenever I'm bummed about being the smallest fish in my new pond, I think:

just stay alive for another 30 years, and the singularity will be here.

Urban is green

"When a household moves from living 2 miles away from a city center to 10 miles away, gasoline consumption increases by more than 100 gallons annually."

Edward Glaeser on the carbon footprint of McMansions

"A 30-story farm that covered a city block could feed 50,000 people year-round."

Scientific American on urban farms

Friday evening

Friday evening. Eigenvalues, with Dogtoberfest.

Shallow wading

"One study says that email is more corrosive to your I.Q. than pot."

- New Yorker, Nov. 9 issue

The internet age has made the Inada condition applicable to the consumption of knowledge.

Why would I dig deep into a question when I can surf Wikipedia? It's much more enjoyable to read about something brand new for 15 minutes than to re-read Hegel for yet another 15 minutes. So we end up eating lots of candy-like trivial info bits and not so much of the meat and potatoes power ideas.