6,286 karma · joined February 24, 2007
If I didn't know much about what I was looking for (per this example), I could see myself spending a good hour trying to find an answer, vs. the few minutes it took to get one here.
That's what colleagues are for!
Nearly everyone that I know who has read it puts it at the top of their list.
In short, a hip "seed" version of the company where Dilbert worked.
Could be there's a "more" button I'm not seeing, though.
In the same way, I don't regret reading Feynman's, Lewis Carroll's, or James Joyce's letters. Thoughtful people tend to write thoughtfully, whatever the context.
Incidentally, I probably would buy Knuth's keyboard.
It doesn't help that information is embedded structurally in a novel, which makes it harder to tease out. But good fiction (say, Ulysses or Crime and Punishment or Nine Stories) is as rich as any essay or monograph.
It's also not clear that density, in the strict sense, is what I'm after when I read. If so I'd be buried in technical papers, when what I really want is something to tickle my brain; to that end, I wouldn't want to lose any one of arXiv, the Engineering library, or the literature section at Borders.
Sure, until one bacterium in your neighborhood starts working out---then you better hit the gym, too. Onwards and upwards.
I had no idea imdb had so much genre data. E.g., a "keywords" page for every movie [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/keywords] and, for every keyword, maps of (a) related keywords and (b) movies that mention it [c.f., http://www.imdb.com/keyword/metaphysical/].
Very cool.
It's the difference between just learning cute terminology (bad professor) and initiating a real interest/solving hard problems in the subject (good professor).
You can't expect everyone to devote themselves to your idea of worthwhile work, and you shouldn't begrudge their momentary diversions.
I don't begrudge you for closely following an internet comment thread when there are people suffering.
Keep in mind also that a lot of what we regard as essential today, say, the foundations of computer science (bits, formal language theory, algorithms) were once the trivial ejaculations of bearded professors in some ivory tower.
We need people dicking around in masturbatory enclaves solving puzzles, just as we need agitators and activists. I think it's unfair to say one group works at the expense of the other.
> Venter proposed that our current energy and climate situation requires truly disruptive technology. One project he’s working on would use altered microbes to metabolize coal in the ground and generate methane, for a tenfold increase in carbon efficiency. Another project proposes a “4th generation biofuel,” where engineered algae directly convert CO2 into hydrogen in bioreactors.
In any case, contrarianism is rampant where I am (undergrad at umich), and it gets annoying when the default reaction---often without basis---is disagreement.
52% complete, Rank 369 out of 7362.
One of this guy's prized "deep insights" is that negative numbers refer to deficits of cows. Granted, that's a slick (if not wholly obvious) way to represent an intuitively awkward concept, but it engenders a false confidence. Negative numbers don't exist to represent bookkeeping deficits. They are there because some formal mathematical argument grounded in pure logic said they had to be there. The fact that we use negatives to refer to cows reveals more about primitive functions of the human brain (distinguishing among objects, counting) than it does the deep algebraic structure of the numbers themselves.
I admire attempts to ground difficult abstractions in physical reality as much as the next guy, but we shouldn't confuse these simplistic observations with mathematical insight.