One thing that keeps unsuccessful people that way is the belief that one has finally finished learning; that one can never grow any further – or even worse, that one has no desire to grow any further.
Successful people never stop growing.
Retailers everywhere are getting very desperate this year. And it’s all leading up to the mother of all Black Friday sales. If you’ve made smart investing decisions and avoided losses throughout this year, it would be a good time to buy things you’ve been waiting to buy.
So many prospective college students exaggerate things on their applications… I’m listening to it happening right now, amidst sounds of a football game, on the very deadline for applications. I can’t help but think that such a person is not a fit college student. I don’t see why colleges don’t select for honesty. Force the applicants to justify their claims. Watch them all fall apart.
There was some interesting news today about an HIV+ person who received a stem cell transplantation (for leukemia) from someone who was naturally immune to HIV. He was ultimately cured of the disease (although the jury is still up as to whether the virus still inhabits his cells).
Natural immunity to HIV was discovered not too long ago. In the interest of preventing a delay in treatment of other viruses, I thought I would state the logical extrapolation of this idea outright:
For each virus capable of infecting humans, there are likely individuals who are naturally immune to it due to functional mutations.
How much of Seasonal Affective Disorder is truly a physiological reaction to a shorter day? I just realized around the DST change that most people probably get almost no sunlight at all in the winter thanks to the way a typical workday is set up (once the sun sets before 5 PM, that’s it; game over!)
This would be yet another instance of the dehumanization of perfectly normal people by placing them in a completely unreasonable environment, then labeling them defective because they are unable to cope with that environment.
Solution: shorten the workday by an hour or two (taking away people’s morning sunlight in exchange for giving it to them in the afternoon is not a solution). Most people are at their creative and intellectual nadir around 4 PM anyway, so you may actually be doing the organization a favor by adopting a 6 hour workday. Not to mention that it would be a huge boost for morale.
Ok, but you’re the type that plays Oregon Trail on the “Grueling” speed setting. So what if John breaks his leg, Timothy gets cholera, or the oxen die? You want those extra 2 hours.
Fine. So either shift the workday later (you’ll still overlap with that 4 PM slump, it will still be dark and depressing when employees leave work, and now you’ll have to deal with the fact that you are coming between employees and their dinner, but they will have a chance to catch some morning sunlight), or schedule a time in the evening for employees to telecommute, if possible. Attention levels rise in the evening, before finally dipping about an hour before a person’s typical sleep time. It’s a circadian thing.
Assuming SAD is purely a physical problem that cannot be attenuated through social change is likely detrimental to the productivity of the workforce as a whole.
Remember σ(pn) = p * σ(n) + σ(n / pα)?
More generally, σ(pkn) = pk * σ(n) + (pk – 1) / (p – 1) * σ(n / pα).
Again, p is a prime and alpha is its multiplicity in n’s prime factorization. σ is the divisor function, of course.
All I need to do now is figure out how to extend it to a composite number and I’ll have a complete multiplicative recurrence on the divisor function, which I can use to obtain a closed-form rate of growth. I’ve empirically calculated it to grow at approximately 1.6449*n, but my goal is to obtain a tight worst-case bound. I could not find anything special about this number, except that is the 90% critical value of a normal distribution.
Here’s a messy Maple worksheet containing the derivation (among a whole bunch of stuff not related to the derivation that I was experimenting with today).
Do highly composite numbers of the form n^2-1 occur infinitely often? What about when n is prime? Most values of n for which this holds seem to be. (Which makes sense, because if n is highly composite, n+1 is going to be deficient (because n’s prime factors will all go away), and squares of primes certainly fit the bill).
(Actually, can we always say that a highly composite number + 1 is either prime or the square of a prime? All of the values I checked were.
Things start to change around 5040…)
When trying to present an idea or vision, one important aspect of the presentation is establishing a central idea that will stick in their minds long after the remainder of the prose has faded.
For instance, take this:
“Because curricula would be problem and goal-oriented, spanning diverse subjects, and chosen primarily by students in accordance with their own goals, and because performance would be measured by proficiency rather than completion of a set number of credits, graduates of such a university would emerge highly versatile, with the insight, confidence, and experience required to pursue not only the challenges that society will set before them, but their own private visions of how the world should be. In fact, because students tailor their own experiences and can easily change fields without losing time due to our proficiency-oriented measure of progress and our goal-directed curriculum, they will have already exercised a great deal of personal choice, ensuring that their values are fully developed and their ultimate visions are well-defined and inline with their training. In short, they would satisfy the criteria for personal advancement set forth in Maslow’s concept of self-actualization or Dabrowski’s positive disintegration. Polymath graduates would not only be well-versed, but further along in their human development and realization of their potential.”
Very few people will read through that whole paragraph, and very few of those who do will actually understand and remember it all. But the one message that the paragraph (and the text of the site as a whole) conveys is:
“We are going to train polymaths”.
That’s it. In an honest world, I could trim the text down to this sentence and be done with it.
Even though this is the primary thematic idea people take away from the text, it’s a very powerful and compelling one. It captures the very essence of the vision, and thus represents the project’s goals. Those who agree with it resonate with the goals of the project and very often become its most ardent supporters.
This is a natural consequence of idea-orientation as well – the prose grows around an idea because that is the way the writer is thinking. It’s a component of natural leadership.
I met with the provost of Temple University a few months ago, as part of an interview of Temple’s graduate students to assess their experience with the graduate school and its programs.
At the time, I was fairly convinced that nothing would come out of it. But whether influenced by the interviews or already planned, seeing this gave me a bit of hope. At the least, the interviews were an attempt to gather information before acting, which is generally a sign of competent decision making. Maybe the new graduate school will even start allowing some interdisciplinarity into the mix?
I was watching the premiere of a fantasy series based on one of my favorite books today. I’ll do my readers a favor and not bother naming it, because what I saw was a two hour train wreck. I honestly do not understand how the producers of this show managed to obtain the author’s approval of their screenplay.
The show took many liberties with the text. This is understandable to an extent, as the medium and audience are very different, but every deviation from the text was executed very poorly. Now that I think about it, what little TV fiction I’ve watched recently has also exhibited the same general characteristics as this show:
The world is portrayed in absolutes: there is Good and there is Evil. The job of Evil is to take over the world. No motive for this is given, and it’s never because the Evil person wants to make the world a better place. The job of Good is to stop Evil, and thus Save The World.
It’s always personal: This originally begins as a personal vendetta after Evil lashes out at the protagonist, but this is quickly subsumed into a sense of duty to Save The World by killing the minions of evil, usually in elaborate, drawn-out battle scenes. Nevertheless, as Good Triumphs Over Evil, a protagonist will invariably make some remark about having given meaning to those who have fallen or having achieved his revenge.
All motivations are exogenous, most caused by Evil: if someone on the side of Good is a traitor, it is because he was bribed or coerced by Evil. If a character is attacked by wild animals, it was somehow Evil’s fault. If it rains and a character gets wet, it must be the Wetness of An Evil Storm.
Morality Determines Causality: Just as most motivations are Evil, most of the plot consists of Evil’s machinations. Nothing can happen independently; it must all be the result of the actions of the protagonists or antagonists. There is literally no setting; it has become an extension of the characters.
No patience for unknowns: This is a bit more specific to the show I was watching. There was an aspect of the main character’s identity that the book kept the reader guessing at for at least 100 pages. I was shocked when the show merely blurted it out, as if it were known all along. And everyone picked it up and acted as if it were perfectly normal once it was revealed!
Violence solves everything: This book had several instances where the characters talked their way out of problems and used their wits. Part of the idea was to avoid unnecessary violence, which is always a smart thing to do. On TV, if one character so much as breathed too near another, out came the swords.
What Philosophy?: Finally, the motivation of Good is to Save the World simply because the Good Guys are Just Plain Nice. They don’t have those pesky attributes of real morality, like a set of personal values or decisions that require them to really think about these values. This makes the characters come off as completely inauthentic. It’s as if an average person were to suddenly become a hero, yet retained the morality of an average person rather than anything that could be construed as heroic. The deeds are heroic, but why are the characters performing them? Think Superman.
That’s my rant for today.