Everything changes,
Everything is connected,
Pay attention.
Math and WWI
The first five configurations were all unbalanced, in the sense that they each contained at least one unbalanced triangle. The resultant dissonance tended to push these nations to realign themselves, triggering reverberations elsewhere in the network. In the final stage, Europe had split into two implacably opposed blocs — technically “balanced” but on the brink of war.
The only way I like my Math - relatable.
This brilliant column by Steven Strogatz should be high on your list of weekly readables.
Going to School in China
Class is in session, its English class. Repeat after me.
I bet the girls picked this one!
Lets learn about this middle aged English couple.
Smartest kid in the class :)
Some Math, some English..
Some Art.
100 + 100 = 200. Not. 100 + 100 = 200. Not.
We visited a school in one of the shanty towns of China, on the outskirts of Beijing. It was close to zero degrees, and the school was unheated. No one seemed to complain except the peering foreign eyes. There were classes till the 6th standard, after which the children went to a nearby higher secondary school. This was a private school, which meant that the students paid a nominal fee, which helped to pay for the infrastructure and the teaching staff (though I suspect some of them were volunteers).
I put these up to serve as a visual context for my current reading - James Tooley’s, The Beautiful Tree - A Personal Journey Into How the World’s Poorest People Are Educating Themselves.
The schools’ physical structures were indeed mostly ramshackle, but they were assembled no worse (and often far better) than the homes of the neighborhood children who learned in them. The owners seemed responsible and often caring, the teachers engaged and capable. And the parents Tooley met were adamant that the tuition they paid—between $1 and $2 per child, per month—was money well spent. They would never send their kids to the local public schools, they said, where facilities were fancier but teachers were truant.
These organic educational institutions captivated Tooley. Over the last ten years, he has labored to learn more about them, to publicize their existence and their successes, and to battle against the idea that they are insignificant. He passionately recounts this decade-long study in The Beautiful Tree, a book that should shake up adherents of traditional wisdom on education.
This is good review.
HOMECOMING
Starting out with some thoughts. They’re in points because somehow that seems to make them look more important.
(a) Took a break from tumbling because I wasn’t sure of how many people were actually going to suffer from the incredible loss of a few links, and then when I counted up the numbers on the ridges of one finger, I realized, that taking a break would only mean just that - taking a break!
(b) 2009 was such a good year of stories and great bunches of research and progress and findings-out, I really haven’t done justice to it. I hang my head in shame and will try and do more of a service to my 2 and a half readers (thanks mom, dad..) by keeping up with whats interesting.
(c) Oh that’s it really. Happy ‘10. I hear it’s going to be brilliant! :)
Really fat guys are geeks?
Dear Reader.. the Dear Leader.
Kim Jong Il. The man behind the rubber stamp ‘democracy’ of North Korea. The man, who i recently learned (thanks Vic) was a patron of the arts and cinema and had a keen interest and many an opinion on how they should be crafted.
From his masterpiece of literature, On the Art of the Cinema (1973),
The task set before the cinema today is one of contributing to people’s development into true communists… This historic task requires, above all, a revolutionary transformation of the practice of directing.
Of course sir. That’s what it’s all about.
The North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il has a passion for cinema. But he could never find a director to realise his vision. So he kidnapped one from the South, jailed him and fed him grass, then forced him to shoot a socialist Godzilla. Now, for the first time, Shin Sang-ok tells the full story of his bizarre dealings with - and eventual flight from - the world’s most dangerous dictator.
[..]
In the 1960s, Kim Il-sung’s propaganda machine had created Sea of Blood and The Flower Girl, films that, while regarded as tedious and crude by South Koreans, were products the North was quite proud of, and were based on revolutionary operas.
Sea of Blood is a war hagiography that gives Kim Il-sung exaggerated credit for victories over Japan in the 1930s. Recently it was still being shown widely in North Korea. Like Titanic and its schmaltzy My Heart Will Go On, Sea of Blood produced a hit song: My Heart Will Remain Faithful.
“Films should contain musical masterpieces like these,” Kim Jong-il writes in his book, “the fusion of noble ideas and burning passion.”
Jet here to read this wonderful article by John Gorenfeld.
And while I’m on the subject of the Dear Leader, have you been keeping track of his photo forgeries? Let me enlighten you.
the prison experiments
Conducted in the 1960s, the Milgram experiments presented a deep challenge to American ideas about the power of individual character and free choice.
[..]
The Milgram study is one of the twin towers of experiments in the “situationist” tradition, studies that reveal the extent to which our circumstances and environment influence human behavior. The other is an equally controversial study known as the Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted by Philip Zimbardo in 1971. A former classmate of Stanley Milgram’s at James Monroe High School in the Bronx, Dr. Zimbardo wanted to study the effects of a prison environment on human behavior. He gathered a group of college students, randomly divided them into “prisoners” and “guards,” and placed them in a simulated prison at Stanford University.
Extracts from an interview with Dr.Zimbardo by Believer magazine, below. (I had a hard time selecting interesting bits from it, because the whole interview reads genius. So take the time to go here and read the whole thing.)
BLVR: Another really interesting part of your book is your fairly detailed description of the situation’s impact over you, Philip Zimbardo as the “prison superintendent.” My favorite example in the book is after one of the prisoners broke down and you had to release him, you thought he was going to lead a prison break-in. So you started to get obsessed with this prison break-in in your prison, and you’re trying to reach the chief of police. The officer thinks you’re a nutcase.
PZ: Right, “psycho psychologist”—and that was only the third day! Of course, it was all a rumor, there was no break-in. But see, I had been doing research on rumor transmission; I do a demonstration in my classes, so I’m interested in rumors. And now there was a rumor of a break-in. I was the psychologist! I should have said, “Great, we’re gonna study this.” And if there was a break-in, that would have been a very dramatic thing, what would happen, how would you deal with it? But at that point I had become the prison superintendent, and the only interest you have is your institution. The administrator cares about the institution, the integrity of the institution and its staff, and that’s where, you know, I really switched over to being focused more on the institution, the agenda, the itinerary, and the guards.
BLVR: So you brought the prisoners up to a classroom….
PZ: The fifth-floor storage room, actually; it was terrible. It was this dark room and there were bags over their heads for hours and hours. And I was sitting there too, so it’s wasting time, and nothing happened. We didn’t collect data on the rumor transmission, we just wasted all this time. But do we all realize how stupid we were? No, we blame it on the prisoners. We think that somebody must have spread that rumor to get us upset. So then the guards said, “OK, we’re going to step up, ratchet up the abuse of the prisoners. We’re going to keep them up longer, counts are going to be two hours at a time, push-ups will be doubled, and so forth. Put them in solitary confinement for longer periods for any infraction.” So that was transformative for me, but I still didn’t realize it. It’s not like I stepped back and said, “Oh my god, look at you.”
BLVR: At any point did you have a kind of awareness that “I’m getting sucked into it,” or did that only come afterward?
PZ: No, well—it came out partially when 819… he was beginning to have an emotional breakdown. When the chaplain was interviewing him among the others, he started crying, you know, hysterically, and at that point I thought the chaplain was going to say, “Blow the whistle, look, this is out of control.” In fact, he tells me later, he said, “Oh, that’s a first-offender reaction, that is, they’re all very emotional initially and they have to learn not to do that, because they’re going to look like sissies, they’re going to get abused.” But then 819 goes ballistic, he starts ripping up his pillow and mattress and shit, and they put him in solitary confinement. And his cellmates get punished for not limiting that. He’s now hysterical and one of the guards comes and says, “We think he’s breaking down.” So I bring him up to a recreation room for the cameramen and observers. When prisoners were going to be released we brought them there to settle down, cool down, before we took them to student health, whatever. So I bring this guy there, 819, and I’m saying, “OK, 819, look, time is up, we’re going pay you for the whole time,” and so forth, and just then the guards line up the prisoners and get them to chant: “[Number] 819 is a bad prisoner. Because of what 819 did my cell is a mess. I’m being punished for 819.”
Now this guy starts crying again and says, “I’ve got to go back!” “What do you mean?” He said, “I’ve got to go back and prove I’m not a bad prisoner.” And so that was a shock. And so I said, “Wait a minute, you’re not a prisoner, you’re not 819, this is an experiment, you’re a student, your name is Stewart.” And at that point I said, “And I’m Phil Zimbardo.” He said, “OK, OK.” And I escorted the student out. But saying: “I’m not the superintendent. I’m this other person…”
That interrupting Kanye
Everyone knows what Kanye did. (That thing where he interrupts Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the VMA’s and tells the audience that Beyonce has the best video?)
But this meme is hilarious. Looking for more. Because Imma a pop-meme lover.
