Many define intelligence at least partly as the ability to learn from one’s experiences. If I make a mistake and I’m intelligent I should be able to see what I did wrong, adjust, and avoid the problem in the future. That’s fine, but I have a better definition. I think what’s even more important is the ability to…
Desire vs. Attainability
Unopened reddit stories are noticeably more interesting when viewed from a mobile device than from a system with a full display and adequate bandwidth. This is for the same reason that any movie in your DVD collection is less interesting than the same movie playing on TV. With the mobile reading scenario I know the story might take…
A Simple Realization
I figured something out just now. When I experience something that provokes my interest or pulls at my emotions, all I can think of is calling a friend to talk about it. I want to appreciate these things with someone. From that I realized that my overall goal was simple: All I want in life is to have…
Judging Risk Based On Genetic Testing
I was just taking a shower and had a frightening idea. With all this talk of the National ID program, and the inclusion of biometric identification into the system, I started thinking about other trends in technology that could impact it. So the main danger, critics argue, of the National ID system is that as it becomes prolific…
The Nice Guy Paradox [Solved]
Most guys know about the nice guy paradox. It’s where they’ve been told since they were young — both by women and by society in general — that women like “nice” guys. And because they’ve been told this over and over, most guys grow up trying this approach only to have reality kick them in the groin. This…
The Memetracker Project
If you’re not familiar with the concept of memes you should get that way. My favorite definition came from Susan Blackmore, a renowned memetics expert, who says that memes are essentially anything that are copied. Anyway, check out the concepts of memetics; it’s pretty cool stuff, although I’m not sure I agree with one of her key premises,…
The Resonance Of Understanding
Resonance has intruiged me since I learned about the concept in high school. For those unfamiliar, it’s “the tendency of a system to oscillate at maximum amplitude at a certain frequency.” Or, to put it another way, it’s the frequency at which something vibrates the most. I remember one day being at 7-11 getting a Super Big Gulp.…
I Live In Constant Fear Of Doing Things Inefficiently
I could shield my body from a medieval sword attack using nothing but my amassed collection of printed out vim tutorials. I thrive on them. They sustain me. I hate the idea that I could be using something like vim in a sub-optimal fashion. I want to do things the best way possible; it’s an obsession that extends…
Security Filters Are All The Same
Let me start by stating that much of what I’m about to cover was seeded by a wonderful talk I heard by Marcus Ranum back in 2003. Since then I’ve been sort of mulling everything over, and here are the basic ideas: From Marcus’s talk: Q: What does a packet filter do? A: Looks at a few parts…
Great vs. Better: The Eternal Quest For Enough
For most people of a materialistic nature, “better” is always superior to great. This is a problem because there’s always something better. If there isn’t now, it’ll be out in six months. So if you ever want to be happy, focus on what you have that’s “great”, and forget about what could be an improvement over it. Another…
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