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But I agree with his logic:

(1) He is referring to autobiographies and not biographies. As he points out, plenty of biographies are critical and even extensively point out all the subject's flaws and failures.

(2) The value of reading biographies comes from aggregating them not extrapolating from one. If you read 10 biographies of entrepreneurs and you notice the same 3 recurring themes in all their stories, that's a good hit that those themes are not random.

(3) There is definitely a danger of survivor bias, but the best biographies do a good job of trying to figure how much luck played a role in an individual's success.

But the bottomline is that no matter what you read, you do have to take it with a grain of salt and consider that there are probably many other factors which were not included.

I have been a college professor for 7 years, here's what I have been able to PERSONALLY observe in that time:

(1) Frequent, regular feedback (quizzes, tests, homeworks, projects) helps a lot for most students. If you just have a final at the end the majority of students will finish the course having learned a lot less.

(2) Obviously students learn more when they're personally engaged and interested in a topic rather from just doing it to get a grade. But getting them excited is not obvious and engagement varies in predictable ways based on previous background knowledge and aptitude for the subject. A lot of the extra effort a teacher does is ultimately to try to get students more excited about a subject.

(3) One on one time with a teacher students can be very helpful. It will almost certainly produce a noticeable improvement in subject understanding, particularly for those students who are motivated but struggling a little bit. Unfortunately this requires a lot of time from the professor, so it's not really practical except with small classes and a small teaching load.

Wolfram and Minsky both have backgrounds in academia. In academia "self-promotion" is actually not generally frowned upon.

People really do expect you to bring up your own work whenever possible and connect it whatever issue is at hand. This is not considered rude or offensive or "bragging", anymore than if someone told you they're from New York City and you mentioned that you'd lived in Brooklyn for seven years.

It's a way for people to find common ground and show how much they share intellectually.

Thus, I'm pretty sure Minsky wouldn't be offended.

And yes, for the record I have found Wolfram to be somewhat self-aggrandizing in the past, but I just don't think this is an example of that, he's simply reminiscing over his history with Minsky and describing some connections between their work.

Yes, I do believe Wolfram went overboard with his claims for "A New Kind of Science", but I don't think this very sweet blog post was in any way inappropriate.

It's not rude to reference your own work when discussing someone else's, especially when you're showing how much they influenced you and were important to your growth.

- But should she be subjected to an investigation for writing a "naive" article? I think not, as surely the freedom of thought includes the freedom to have "wrong" opinions?

(2) "then took a very unwise turn with the recounting of the ongoing court cases."

-Disagree. These cases are in the public record. Why shouldn't she mention them? It's not as if she has sworn confidentiality or she had inside information.

(3) "What particularly struck me was the refusal to believe professors had any power over students"

- I don't think this is an accurate summary at all. You don't have to agree with her opinion, her point was that the new attitudes she's complaining about greatly exaggerate the power of professors over students. A professor has the power to give a student a bad grade or write them a bad recommendation. A student has the power to complain about the professor to the dean/chair and give him/her a bad evaluation. If a student alleges sexual harassment or assault the professor's career could be destroyed even if the charges are not proven. Basically a professor has some power, but not some kind of unlimited power over individual students, which seems to be what is being alleged.

(4) "if students aren't exposed to harassment at university then they won't be prepared for real life."

-Nope. I would phrase it as "If students are overly coddled and swaddled they will not develop psychological coping skills to deal with a real world which is not going to exquisitely cater to their sensitivities".

http://www.protein.bio.msu.ru/biokhimiya/contents/v69/pdf/bc...

Funny and inspirational, and shows how primitive a lot of biological research really is: Almost randomly try a bunch of things and take note of anything that has any effect. Lather, rinse, repeat.

“Increasing the supply is not going to increase the number of affordable units; that is a complete and utter fallacy,” said Jaimie Ross, the president of the Florida Housing Coalition.

As the article explains, the reason is that builders are going to prefer to build "luxury" units to "affordable" ones. So having a whole bunch of construction is not necessarily going to lead to anything affordable. A construction boom may bring the high end rents down a little bit, but they'll still be out of reach of most people.

Manhattan is also the counter example that always comes to mind for me. If you have a lot of relatively well off people chasing the same thing the prices are going to be high no matter what.

Urban rents generally only come down if the economy crashes or an area becomes undesirable (i.e. a lack of people people willing to pay the prices).

I would love to see examples of an urban area (i.e. not a suburb) where rents went down MAINLY because of building new units, even while demand and the economy remained strong.

(2) These particular salaries (SF police department) are financed out of local revenues and have nothing to do with the state budget anyway.

(3) The cost of living in SF is sky high as we all know, good for them for paying appropriately if they want to get the best people.

In general the ACA won't have a huge immediate impact for those who already have health insurance.

(2) Try to get enough sleep

(3) Make a very conscious effort to get out of your comfort zone and try unfamiliar things, even if you only try them briefly.

(4) Understand and accept that sometimes it takes years before a project gives any substantial results, so don't get discouraged if a project seems impossibly hard and going nowhere at first.

This subterfuge only seems to make sense if what you are promoting fundamentally sucks or if you have a very limited budget.

Well I use both Google+ and Facebook every day and to me Google+ seems VERY active with a lot of high quality content as well.

I can't really say if it is more active than Twitter (which is also very active of course) but it certainly doesn't seem like "a ghost town" as some people try to claim.

Yes, there could be a concern over a spammer automating the process but that might be more hassle than it's worth just to spam an small chess forum.

I highly recommend David McCullough's biography "John Adams." Even if you're not really into history (I'm not) it's actually a pretty good read and entertainingly covers most of US History from 1750 to 1830.

It has now been edited to the less informative "Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup - Class 5 Notes Essay"

The original title pointed out a rather striking anecdote that could trigger discussions about culture and discrimination while the current title doesn't point out anything interesting in the link.

For the impatient : This anecdote appears in Max Levchin's first contribution about halfway through the article. Just search for "hoops"

It also seems relevant to the usual HN topics of how new products get adopted into the marketplace, effective marketing, technology changes etc.

What I found myself fascinated by was the first 50 names on the path who were all on the "philosophy tree", (presumably religious guys). Were those all real people and is there historical evidence for the implied mentor relationships? If so, it's great that have a genuine 2000 year old path, no matter how tenuous the connections :-)

Randi posted the picture as "friends only" but due to Facebook's policies it turns out that people other than those friends could see the picture.

First question: If a friend posts something as "friends only" are you ethically bound not to publicly share it? I think most people would answer YES, under the assumption that if they wanted to make it public they would have posted it publicly.

But there are a couple of interesting wrinkles here :

1. Facebook's interface did not make it clear to Callie that this was a "friends only" post. Because it showed up in her feed she assumed it was public and meant for public consumption.

2. The presence of Mark Zuckerberg in the picture. Zuckerberg is essentially a celebrity and it seems there is a widespread assumption that ANY picture with a celebrity in it (whether Justin Bieber or President Obama) is fair game for sharing in a way that does not apply to non celebrities. I think if the picture did not include Mark Zuckerberg it is far less likely Callie or anyone else would have thought it was appropriate to share it.

It is just a matter of personal preference, being very local might be the right thing for other people.

I have been using the Pimsleur Spanish CDs for almost 6 months. I have made a lot of progress (especially with vocabulary) but am still at a beginner level (high beginner though, almost low intermediate).

Also I must say that as a daily Facebook user I haven't noticed most of these "thousands" of features being launched. They must be exceedingly subtle features or else they bundle them up for an annual release (which is actually a good idea).

I can't back it up with facts but I do have the impression this sort of thing is significantly more common in the US than in any European, Asian, African or South American country.

I guess you would have to compile statistics for "Mass murderers with no clear motive per capita" and compile all the incidents going back at least 20 years and you might have evidence for or against.

For example, I can imagine this happening in any African countries I am familiar with, so to me it is clear that there is an element of culture involved.