Shiny Things

09:36 am - Derek Sivers: Smart people don't think others are stupid

I think this is a great attitude to try to hold onto. Too many times when we disagree with people, especially over emotionally-charged issues, it's too easy to assume it's because they're stupid. In my experience, it's more often because they have different priorities.

Smart people don't think others are stupid

08:34 am - David Whitcher's _Tahiti_

01:23 pm - Lone Gunman: The Wadsworth Constant: Ignore 30% of Everything

My application of this idea was this: when telling a story, start 30% of the way through its events. (This is a fairly common technique called in media res, but I hadn't seen a suggested proportion of story to pre-story before.)

The Wadsworth Constant: Ignore 30% of Everything

I think something like this is also what first hooked me on anime. Okay, so there are bright moving colors and stuff, but so many of the stories started without explaining anything about the current situation, and forced me to figure it out as I went along. And I _liked_ that. Because having stuff explained to you is boring: figuring it out is fun.

09:28 am - Time To Get Up

Brandon: Time to get up.
Morgan (reaching over from her loft and putting her hand on top of my 6'4" son's head): Snooooooze...

09:17 am - Bark Like A Fish, Damnit!: Annotated Fairy Tale: The Wonderful Birch

I love Ursula's annotated fairy tales.

Annotated Fairy Tale: The Wonderful Birch

08:48 pm - The Higgs Boson Explained

This video really does a pretty good job of explaining why we are trying to detect the Higgs Boson. I feel enlightened.



(The opening 30 seconds or so of video of a food tray is noisy and hard to understand, but once the animation starts it's much better.)

(Via Astronomy Picture of the Day, aka APOD: thanks, Karen!)

10:24 am - Google Augmented Reality Goggles

I want these.

12:39 pm - Tabletop

I just watched the first episode of Wil Wheaton's new YouTube show, Tabletop. I now have a ridiculously unrealistic goal of watching a half-hour video of Wil and other geek celebrities playing a game I designed. I think I just lost some sanity points.

08:32 am - Wired Science » Frontal Cortex: Thinking Smarter About People Who Think Differently

To my mind, this Jonah Lehrer article supports my thinking that less debilitating forms of autism are actually within what should be considered the normal range of human behavior: not better or worse than being neurotypical, just less common.

"The new CDC report saying that one in 88 children is autistic should be a wake-up call to the fact that we’re currently offering very few resources to these folks once they become adults. Instead of asking 'How can we cure autism?' we should be asking, 'How can we ensure that millions of autistic people lead happy and healthy lives?'"

Thinking Smarter About People Who Think Differently

10:02 am - Use This Information. Don't Utilize It.

Until I read this article, I would have insisted that "utilize" has the exact same meaning as "use" and people only use "utilize" to sound impressive. Now I know better.

"McGyver once utilized a shoelace, bubble gum, a house key and hair spray to create a bomb."

Use vs. Utilize - Writing for Business

(Thanks, Russ!)