George and I talked about this some last night. Nature vs Nurture… I tend to think of both as bottlenecks for human development. The debate about which does more to me makes as much sense as debating which is better for a web application: Apache or MySQL? Both are involved and affect the end results.… Continue reading Smart Boys
Tag: brain
Losing My Mind
CPR/AED training requires time on the floor rescuing dummies. Objects in pockets, like my Digital Elph, interfere with rescuing dummies. Digital cameras on desks without supervision have a tendency to disappear. (Not so much from coworkers kleptomania but from my distractions.) So I put it in my work backpack. Today is the First Day of… Continue reading Losing My Mind
Brainwashed
People do weird things. Often these are due to the operant conditioning or classical conditioning inflicted on them. Its funny I’ve been seeing references lately to these to describe…. Email – Like Skinner’s pigeons, we hit the button to check for new messages hoping to get something. The intermittent reinforcement of not getting a new… Continue reading Brainwashed
What Makes You Happy?
Apparently singing to females makes male birds happy by triggering certain parts of their brains. Video games, chocolate, and some drugs like cocaine are associated with similarly creating happiness. How are you stimulating your VTA?
Propaganda
Wow… I have been ignoring a lot of propaganda lately. Work will often send email to all the employees. A filter sends those to my propaganda folder. I only have 5 for the first three days of September and 11 for the first three days of October. Not a promising start. Of course, it is… Continue reading Propaganda
Boredom Correlates to Mistakes
We never get to stay bored at work for very long. Every day has an emergency from something caused by a user of the institutions we host, the admins at the institution, or even people who work for our project. Wait…. Maybe it is the boredom which is the cause of the mistakes which keeps… Continue reading Boredom Correlates to Mistakes
Dance Lessons, Anyone?
The modest proposal of having students help teachers learn to dance makes an interesting point. Suggesting the learners do not want to learn is an easy way to avoid the real problem. I hear from higher education faculty, students are unmotivated and fail to see the importance of learning. I hear from academic technical support… Continue reading Dance Lessons, Anyone?
Why the Opposition to Year-Month-Day
When naming files, I would make a file with today’s time stamp 20080304. My brain was confused for a second when it saw 13012008. There are not thirteen months! Oh…. I have to use ls -latr to get the list in chronological order instead of just ls. Month-day-year I can understand (old habits die hard).… Continue reading Why the Opposition to Year-Month-Day
Are Books the Only Way to Learn?
Is the Internet really a bad invention? According to Doris Lessing, yes. We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women, who have had years of education, to know nothing of the world, to have read nothing,… Continue reading Are Books the Only Way to Learn?
Apolitical
So, I’ve banned the first person because of talking politics. He was pimpin’ Ron Paul. I guess I wasn’t aggressive enough at getting across that I really did not want to have the conversation because he started going to town writing IMs at me. I wrote back, “Yeah, I’m not the right person to have… Continue reading Apolitical