Who knew that our national parks contained such great typography?
I love the cursive font here:
The trail signs also look great:
You can find that cursive font here.
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Author Archives: kevin
links for 2010-08-26
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goes through all the interview steps, too detailed to quote
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terrible. Given that factual backdrop, you'd think that people would say, "You're right, we made a terrible, terrible error, we investigated the case incorrectly, and it led to this tragic result." But no. Even with the DNA evidence, even though the serial murder-rapist gave a full, detailed confession and provided all kinds of details that no one knew, but the real perpetrator could know, this detective just last week said, "I'm sorry, that's ridiculous, Jeffrey Deskovic is guilty. The only false confession in this whole matter is the false confession given by the serial rape-murderer."
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To me, the meaning was clear: when people search, they aren't just looking for nouns or information; they are looking for action. They want to book a flight, reserve a table, buy a product, cure a hangover, take a class, fix a leak, resolve an argument, or occasionally find a person, for which Facebook is very handy. They mostly want to find something in order to do something.
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Social norms etc - if you expect that everyone else is cheating/stealing you do too
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The park officials in Massachusetts aren't really trying to minimise the risk that you might drown. They're trying to minimise the risk that you might sue. The problem here, as Mr Howard says, isn't simply over-regulation as such. It's a culture of litigiousness and a refusal to accept personal responsibility. When some of the public behave like children, we all get a nanny state.
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The implicit recommendation seems to be that when you’re choosing a tomato, you should care about all the energy costs. Well, yes. You should. You should care about all those costs. And here are some other things you should care about: How many grapes were sacrificed by growing that California tomato in a place where there might have been a vineyard? How many morning commutes are increased, and by how much, because that New York greenhouse displaces a conveniently located housing development? What useful tasks could those California workers perform if they weren’t busy growing tomatoes? What about the New York workers? What alternative uses were there for the fertilizers and the farming equipment — or better yet, the resources that went into producing those fertilizers and farming equipment — in each location?
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STUFF I DON’T WANT TO DO, AND WON’T: -ORGANIZE ALL MY DIGITAL PHOTOS -STAY ON TOP OF ALL MY EMAILS -DRINK 8 GLASSES OF WATER A DAY -DO IRON MAN OR CLIMB EVEREST STUFF I WILL NO LONGER TOLERATE: -ALLOW TOXIC PEOPLE IN MY AIR SPACE -NONSENSE STUFF WE HUMANS SHOULD NO LONGER ALLOW: -CNN BLARING IN AIRPORTS/PUBLIC SPACES (SO MANY BETTER OPTIONS!) -NON-STOP CONNECTIVITY– EATING INTO THE SACRED SPACE WHERE INVALUABLE REFLECTING AND THINKING OCCURS. -LETTING ANYONE UNDER AGE 18 DRIVE -RIDICULOUSLY COLD AIR CONDITIONING IN JUST ABOUT EVERY PUBLIC SPACE (MAJOR WASTE OF ENERGY, AS WELL AS UNCOMFORTABLY FREEZING) -5-YEAR PARTY SCHOOLS
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photos of social networking names, poverty, pretty
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One explanation is that nerds want to show off their non-social skills, and so require social games so that there are others who can observe their impressive performance. But nerds seem to prefer more social interaction in their games than having a mere audience requires. Another explanation is that while nerds like to socialize, they are terrified of making social mistakes. This explains why they tend to avoid eye-contact – it is too easy to make the wrong eye contacts. Games let nerds interact socially, yet avoid mistakes via well-defined rules, and a social norm that all legal moves are “fair game.” Role-playing has less well-defined rules, but the norm there is that social mistakes are to be blamed on characters, not players.
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anne holland posts results of A/B tests on this blog. interesting finding: "We think it’s interesting that Version A won even though its ‘Download Now’ button was way below the fold. Perhaps the authoritative quote made a big impact. Kudos to YNAB for testing their product tour page. This shows you really should be testing every page that can get you more conversions."
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Amazing, inspiring
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writer goes to amsterdam to see what retail pot looks like. When Jason asks me before my first shift, "So, you did your homework? You know your way around the menu?" I say, "Oh, sure." But what really happened during my tasting session was that I got very worried that someone in the coffee shop might try to talk to me, so I sprinted back to my hotel and stood in front of the elevator for thirty terrified seconds, praying that I wouldn't have to cope with the desk clerk bidding me good evening. At last I made it to the third floor and was so relieved to reach the sanctuary of my room that I spent twenty minutes moonwalking the carpet and singing Andy Gibb's "I Just Want to Be Your Everything" before collapsing on the bed, where I lay awake until dawn, quaking with the conviction that every decision I've made since birth has been corrupt, selfish, and wrong.
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large numbers of planes sitting empty in western deserts
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incapable of being imitated or copied; surpassing imitation; matchless. Like this word
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great introduction to a counterintuitive idea, that you should want to live as long as possible. I am appreciating this format more and more "All right," Harry said coldly. "I'll answer your original question, then. You asked why Dark Wizards are afraid of death. Pretend, Headmaster, that you really believed in souls. Pretend that anyone could verify the existence of souls at any time, pretend that nobody cried at funerals because they knew their loved ones were still alive. Now can you imagine destroying a soul? Ripping it to shreds so that nothing remains to go on its next great adventure? Can you imagine what a terrible thing that would be, the worst crime that had ever been committed in the history of the universe, which you would do anything to prevent from happening even once? Because that's what Death really is - the annihilation of a soul!"
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Wilderness first responder training
- CMC brought in a Wilderness First Response expert to teach us first aid so we could be prepared while leading freshmen on orientation trips in the backcountry. We had been partying every night and everyone was hung over for the talk, but even so, the nonchalance of some group members towards the emergency training put me off. The guy at the front of the room was treated as an outsider. He was dressed like an outdoors guy and wasn't shy about discussing violent injuries or putting his hands on someone to demonstrate the correct way to administer aid. We all laughed nervously when he did this. There was a low chance we would have to use any of the training, but the consequences of failure in a risky situation are huge. I sat through most of the meeting imagining having to face a room full of lawyers and angry, sad parents, and focused the whole way. I thought about saying something to the group but decided that I probably just wanted to show how much I cared about the training. On the whole the benefit from acting cool (acting tired, telling jokes, telling asides) probably outweighed the potential cost of not paying close enough attention to the training.
- The guy CMC brought in was clearly an expert who flew across the country helping educate people and advising other first responders on the best course of action. He must see people get maimed, mauled or killed every day in the backcountry. When he tries to educate people (us) on how to prevent deaths in the future, we respond by not taking him very seriously. That must have hurt, yet he seemed fairly resigned about the whole process.
- I was surprised that so much of the treatment focused on correct diagnosis and response and so little focused on overcoming the social pressure to take it seriously. Anyone who's read about Kitty Genovese, the smoke alarm room experiment, or Asch's studies on conformity can tell you that a large component of the response is recognizing the problem. Furthermore, the victim will be under social pressure as well and might insist that they're fine even though they're dizzy, or they're beginning to get hypothermia. Other times victims might try to hide the problem; the most common place to find choking victims is on the floor in the bathroom, unconscious. When I expressed my worries the other leaders said "I think in the real situation we would know how to handle it." I had some confidence they could diagnose problems in freshmen but what if a fellow leader, or a teacher tagging along on the trip, needed treatment? There would be significant chance of social pressure inhibiting response.
- I was also surprised that the Red Cross, the American Heart Association and our teacher's organization still disagree on the correct method of treatment in many cases. I asked the teacher why and he said that there are tradeoffs in liability, long-term patient safety and knowledge. Red Cross tends to go for "help the patient, deal with liability later" and teaches their courses in the simplest way they can imagine to maximize the chances you remember the training. This was more advanced and often corrected the training I'd gotten last summer for the Red Cross.
- The teacher often corrected people's misconceptions about symptoms and treatment. Many of these are staggering. Drowning victims, for example, do not flail their arms.
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links for 2010-08-25
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Funny song
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links for 2010-08-21
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"Libertarians are treated as if they have quirky beliefs precisely because they are consistent."
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links for 2010-08-20
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one-third of couples met in places where no other couples met. E.g., if you're an African explorer, you're more likely to meet your spouse while exploring Africa, and less likely to find your spouse in a Chicago singles bar. School and work are the next-most common meeting locations (15-20%). Parties and bars are good for short-term (less than one month) sexual relationships (17-25%) and not bad for marriages (8-10%). Churches are good for meeting marriage partners (11%), and poor for meeting short-term sex partners (1%). Personal ads and singles cruises are poor places to meet anyone. also liked this: If you want to meet "bad boys"/business men try going to strip clubs during the lunch hour. If you live in the Minneapolis area try Deja Vu for their $2 lunch buffet (tuesdays, Washington Avenue and 3rd).
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I STRONGLY suspect that there is a enormous gulf between finding out things on your own and being directed to them by a peer. When you find something on your own (existential risk, cryonics, whatever), you get to bask in your own fortuitousness, and congratulate yourself on being smart enough to understand it's value. You get a boost in (perceived) status, because not only do you know more than you did before, you know things other people don't know. But when someone else has to direct you to it, it's much less positive. When you tell someone about existential risk or cryonics or whatever, the subtext is "look, you're weren't able to figure this out by yourself, let me help you". No matter how nicely you phrase it, there's going to be resistance because it comes with a drop in status - which they can avoid by not accepting whatever you're selling. It actually might be WORSE with smart people who believe that they have most things "figured out".
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links for 2010-08-19
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A couple of interesting counterintuitive ideas: He mentioned that the more money people spend on videos, the worse those videos seem to get. Also, he thinks it makes more sense to have students watch lectures at home and do homework at school as opposed to vice versa.
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Of course, the reality is you’re doomed if you’re even asking yourself the question. You know what I think? I think people who tell themselves ‘if I make $X million, then I’ll stop working and do what I want’ never make that $X million. They just don’t possess the relentlessness that makes it possible. I haven’t known that many hyper-wealthy people in my life, but at Goldman I used to sit 12 hours a day next to people whose annual incomes were greater than the capitalizations of many startups, and they possessed a rapacious greed breathtaking in scale. If they got paid $2MM that year, they’d want $4MM. Pay them $10MM, and they’d hanker for $50MM. Half a billion? They’d want to catch up to the Bill Gates of the world, and make several billion. Successful startup founders I’ve met seem no less ferocious.
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links for 2010-08-17
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Compliment the author on an article, then limit your story pitch to one or two sentences. No press release
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A Chinese friend once told me: "There are a lot of us. If you tell a Chinese woman she's 'one in a million,' that means there are thirteen hundred people just like her in China."
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the complete set of bob ross painting dvd's is only $1378.50
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links for 2010-08-16
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12 words per line: "The ideal line length for text layout is based on the physiology of the human eye… At normal reading distance the arc of the visual field is only a few inches – about the width of a well-designed column of text, or about 12 words per line. Research shows that reading slows and retention rates fall as line length begins to exceed the ideal width, because the reader then needs to use the muscles of the eye and neck to track from the end of one line to the beginning of the next line. If the eye must traverse great distances on the page, the reader is easily lost and must hunt for the beginning of the next line. Quantitative studies show that moderate line lengths significantly increase the legibility of text."
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Depends on the government: "When we look at systematic historical evidence, instead of individual cases, we find that authoritarianism buys little in terms of economic growth. For every authoritarian country that has managed to grow rapidly, there are several that have floundered. For every Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, there are many like Mobutu Sese Seko of the Congo."
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the best answer to the question, "why shouldn't I want to work at google" I've seen so far
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"[Schmidt] predicts, apparently seriously, that every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends' social media sites."
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Recent changes
You may have noticed, but the blog's undergone a pretty heavy redesign/stripping of extraneous features lately. It's hard to go wrong with "remove everything peripheral to the content, and change the content to Helvetica," although I'm going to tweak the design more soon. Feel free to leave comments if you have any.
In the interest of sharing more of what I do and what I've been reading, I've started posting my delicious.com links in the RSS feed. I've also started a new domain called "Kevin Burke Recommends" to highlight cool products, hacks or articles I find on the Web.
I'll put together a combined RSS feed and a split apart RSS feed soon.
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