Includes stuff about anything where feedback causes the system to adapt, including the systems of nature, those that are man-made or cultural, and those of the human mind.
The human mind is fascinating, for many reasons. Here’s just one example. Until a few weeks ago, I thought that my purpose in life was eliminating problems. It went hand-in-hand with the idea of kaizen (as mentioned earlier on this blog). It’s not something I consciously thought about; it simply developed over the years, because …
Whenever I see unproven fear-based reports like this one, I’m reminded of all the fear-inducing reports in my childhood. Comic books were warping our fragile little minds, so when I was six, my mother threw away a huge collection of Bugs Bunny comic books that I’d been given by our neighbors before I could read …
Have you ever heard about MessagEase, the extremely fast and efficient text-entry method for small devices? Probably not, even though it’s been around for a long time. And why not? I firmly believe that it’s because of the learning curve — it takes at least a few hours of practice to see any real speed …
Uh-oh, looks like french fries are about to become “freedom fries” again. 😉
I’m fascinated by this kind of stuff, and thought I’d share it. There’s also another article by the same people that’s just as interesting, on the interaction of genetic disposition and environment in producing behaviors.
Sometimes you’ve just got to ask yourself what some would-be criminal “mastermind” was thinking. This is one of them. Nine thousand?! I’m the first to agree with the phrase “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing,” but even I have limits. And the stupid-stick apparently whacked Apple here too — did no one there notice …
Continue reading ‘“Scammer shuffles Apple out of 9,000 iPods”’ »
For someone like me, who always tries to trace the reasons for human behaviors, there were a couple of very odd interviews on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report this week. These shows almost always interview recently-published authors on book-promotion tours. The interviews are set up by the authors’ publicists, to get the word …
Continue reading ‘“Twitter not yet in ‘late stage’ talks with Google”’ »
Just saw a wonderfully-quotable phrase in an old Paul Graham essay: Graffiti happens at the intersection of ambition and incompetence: people want to make their mark on the world, but have no other way to do it than literally making a mark on the world.
It’ll be interesting to see how Apple responds to this. My bet: they’ll come out with lawyers a-blazin’. 😉 Though whether they have a legal leg to stand on or not is another story.
I’ve always heard that crime causes run-down neighborhoods, but it appears that, at least in part, it works the other way too.