Why we learn more from our successes than our failures

Why we learn more from our successes than our failures: "If you've ever felt doomed to repeat your mistakes, researchers at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory may have explained why: Brain cells may only learn from experience when we do something right and not when we fail.

In the July 30 issue of the journal Neuron, Earl K. Miller, the Picower Professor of Neuroscience, and MIT colleagues Mark Histed and Anitha Pasupathy have created for the first time a unique snapshot of the learning process that shows how single cells change their responses in real time as a result of information about what is the right action and what is the wrong one."

The 'Web Squared' Era - Forbes.com

The 'Web Squared' Era - Forbes.com: "O'Reilly Insights
The 'Web Squared' Era
Tim O'Reilly and Jennifer Pahlka, 09.24.09, 12:19 PM EDT
The Web is gaining ears, eyes and other senses through smart sensors. This will be big."

Scala:: IDEs, Java, Adoption

Programming and politics: A Tipping Point for Scala:

"This past week's BASE meeting was all about IDE support for Scala. You can read my notes, posted to the Scala tools mailing list. I was very surprised by this meeting. Not by the findings, if you will, as I have used all three IDEs at various times in the last few months. What I was surprised by was the feedback from the group, and the logical conclusion of this discussion: Scala is near a tipping point, but IDE support is holding it back."

A year ago I was struck by breath of interest in Scala, but the interest I saw was from people with 1) strong interest in functional languages or b) major need to scale.

Now I'm seeing something very different. Many people, including Gossling and leads on JRuby and Groovy, are talking about it as a long term replacement for Java -- they are talking about it as a 'better java'. As I remember it, this is exactly how c++ moved into the mainstream -- not as an OO language, but as a 'better C'.

Last week's BASE (Bay Area Scala Enthusiasts) meeting examined Scala IDEs. This surprised me. I'd assumed that IDEs would not interest Scala people anymore than they interest Ruby people. Not so.
I don't expect any of this to have broad impact soon, but I think that in 12-24 months, having 12 months of Scala background will be nice to have on a resume.

As a dynamic language guy, I have been disappointed that jRuby (with good IDE support) or Clojure has not gotten more attention. However, Scala's design pays so much attention to the need for smooth integration into the Java ecosystem, that I no longer care. In other words they have designed the implementation as well as the language. Scala is much more than just a language that runs on the JVM.

Plus, perhaps I'll be a real for sure functional programmer in a few years;-)

FT.com / Columnists / Lunch with the FT - Lunch with the FT: Jared Diamond

FT.com / Columnists / Lunch with the FT - Lunch with the FT: Jared Diamond: "Lunch with the FT: Jared Diamond

By David Pilling

Published: August 7 2009 15:22 | Last updated: August 7 2009 15:22

Jared DiamondJared Diamond is the guru of collapse. Collapse is the title of one of the books that have made him a world-famous academic. It is a theme that captures the Zeitgeist: markets have collapsed, banks have collapsed and confidence, even in the capitalist system itself, has collapsed."

AP Delivering Nonprofits Journiasm

Four nonprofit groups devoted to investigative journalism will have their work distributed by The Associated Press, The A.P. will announce on Saturday, greatly expanding their potential audience and helping newspapers fill the gap left by their own shrinking resources.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/13/business/media/13press.html?_r=2&ref=media

[Thanks to @timoreilly. Tim's twitter suggested that AP: [You should] still link to investigative reporting at its source to give it Googlejuice in the link econ. I'm not sure most professional journalists get 'Googlejuice'. Tim is trying to school them.]

Health Outcomes Driving New Hospital Design - NYTimes.com

Health Outcomes Driving New Hospital Design - NYTimes.com: "Health Outcomes Driving New Hospital Design


Article Tools Sponsored By
By CAROL ANN CAMPBELL
Published: May 18, 2009

The curtain between two hospital beds does not stop noise from the television set, offer privacy during sensitive conversations with"

How We Feel Linked To Both Our Culture And How We Behave

How We Feel Linked To Both Our Culture And How We Behave: "How We Feel Linked To Both Our Culture And How We Behave

ScienceDaily (Apr. 19, 2009) — Scientists have long been interested in the interplay of emotions and identity, and some have recently focused on cultural identity. One's heritage would seem to be especially stable and impervious to change, simply because it's been passed down generation after generation and is deeply ingrained in the collective psyche. But how deeply, exactly?"

Why Aneesh Chopra is a Great Choice for Federal CTO - O'Reilly Radar

Why Aneesh Chopra is a Great Choice for Federal CTO - O'Reilly Radar: "Why Aneesh Chopra is a Great Choice for Federal CTO
by Tim O'Reilly | comments: 5

The news has now been leaked that President Obama intends to nominate Aneesh Chopra as the nation's first Chief Technology Officer. The Federal CTO will be an assistant to the President, as well as the Associate Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. He will work closely with Vivek Kundra, the recently-named Federal CIO, to develop and implement the President's ambitious technology agenda."

Michael Pollan on Food, Energy, Climate, and Health - O'Reilly Radar

Michael Pollan on Food, Energy, Climate, and Health - O'Reilly Radar: "Michael Pollan on Food, Energy, Climate, and Health
by Sara Winge | comments: 21

In his latest column, Nicholas Kristof encourages President-Elect Obama to heed Michael Pollan's call for a radically new food policy. Pollan makes a convincing case that our current food system is a 'shadow problem.' If we're serious about working on energy independence, climate change, and health care, we have to change how we're feeding ourselves."

How To Get Uncle Sam To Fund Your Start-Up - Forbes.com

How To Get Uncle Sam To Fund Your Start-Up - Forbes.com: "The two main grant categories are Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants and Small Business Technology Transfer (SBTT) grants. Total size of that considerable kitty: about $2.2 billion."
[Thanks to Tim's twitter.]

Health care, the quantified self, web 2.0

Health care, the quantified self, web 2.0

The Evidence Gap - Health Care That Puts a Computer on the Team - Series - NYTimes.com: "MARSHFIELD, Wis. — Joseph Calderaro, 67, is one of health care’s quiet success stories. Over the last four years, he has carefully managed his diabetes by lowering his blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol with diet, exercise and medication."

Quantified Self
Introspection 2.0

Web 2.0.
O'Reilly's notion of Web 2.0 is profoundly more powerful than the buzzword its become. The core difference is collection of relevance implicitly vs. explicitly. One feels alive; one dead.

When
--individuals collect and selectively 'publish' personal metrics
--when health care systems possibly Kaiser, Cleavland Clinic mine and selectively publish that data
--others use the result for new research on both a personal and institutional level
we will have an explosion of knowledge and practice

Heart rate monitors and GPS :: the landscape

Many players; many products.

These notes focus on products which can export their measurements in some machine readable format.
Some gadget oriented people have older models to loan. If you want to try one, ask your gadget oriented friends.

Garmin

Garmin makes a bewildering variety of GPS devices. A few are specialized for exercise and training. They are sold under the Garmin Forerunner brand.

Suunto

Suunto also has a wide variety of devices. In most of them don't support GPS. However, just as many photographers sync photos with GPS routes by getting the timestamps in sync, Suunto exercise logs can be synced with GPS routs.
Chris Carmichael, best known for being Lance Armstrong's coach, has a company which specializes in on line training advice and coaching. They are partnered with Suunto -- using the Suunto T6. However there are many similar coaching services. If one signs up with Carmichael, but one has been using Polar, the old Polar logs are curently useless.

Polar

I still have a Polar device I began using about 20 years ago. Now they also have a wide range of offerings and like Suunto, they usually don't include GPS, but many work with a special GPS pod sold by Polar.

Trainers and Training Software

Chris Carmichael, best known for being Lance Armstrong's coach, has a company which specializes in on line training advice and coaching. They are partnered with Suunto -- using the Suunto T6. However there are many similar coaching services. If one signs up with Carmichael, but one has been using Polar, the old Polar logs are currently useless.

Training Peaks evidently does offer some integration of data from multiple devices. It claims to support data from 70+ devices. A quick look indicates that the underlying model is primarly one of time and calories burned integrated with a record of calories consumed. I'm sure many people find that interesting, but not me. I wonder if it only uses a common subset of data? Could a better product be designed by examining its weaknesses? Their costs start at $20/month, a fraction of Carmichael's Train Right.
TrainingPeaks provides links to a variety of articles. Personally, I'd like to see a platform that would allow plug-ins to provide specific approaches to analysis and training program generation. Some may be a bit specific to the TrainingPeaks tools, but offer significant insight.

Problems to Solve

• Integration of GPS data with HR data -- probably through use of timestamps to integrate the two data streams
• Integration of exercise/GPS data from multiple devices/vendors.
• Common View/Controller for all data streams.
• Provide constant evaluation of risk :: too little exercise and stress vs danger of breakdown, illness and stale feeling
  

SapphireSteel :: How To Create a Ruby On Rails Blog - Part One

SapphireSteel :: How To Create a Ruby On Rails Blog - Part One: "How To Create a Ruby On Rails Blog - Part One
by Huw Collingbourne
Part One: Entering Posts

For many people, the one thing that really ‘turned them on’ to Ruby On Rails was the twenty minute demo given by Rails’ creator, David Heinemeier Hansson in which he showed how to create a weblog complete with user-submitted comments. You can watch his original demo online here: http://www.rubyonrails.com/screencasts."

Interesting combination :: using a .Net version of Ruby; generating a popular reference application.

Com-Pac Yachts: Trailerable Cat Boats, Trailerable Cruisers, and Cruising Sailboats

Com-Pac Yachts: Trailerable Cat Boats, Trailerable Cruisers, and Cruising Sailboats: "Welcome to the Com-Pac Idea

Com-Pac Yachts began business in 1974 with our first boat, the Com-Pac 16. The idea then was to build a seaworthy yacht with a strong commitment to value. (For the full story, see Hutchins Company Profile.) Since then we have expanded our line and today we have nine models, four cat-rigged and five sloop rigged. The Com-Pac line covers a wide range of sizes from a 14' day sailor to a 35' bluewater cruiser. Each model, regardless of size, is built with the same exacting attention to detail and that same commitment to value."

These trailerable boats, especially the cats that look like they have a lot of room for living and simple rigging seem very attractive. Can they sail? If so they might be perfect for the Delta and Baja.

FiveThirtyEight.com: Politics Done Right: For Obama, Will Familiarity Erode Contempt?

FiveThirtyEight.com: Politics Done Right: For Obama, Will Familiarity Erode Contempt?

This is, flat out, one of the most interesting comments on the election I've seen. A taste:

My focus is on the South in particular, because it's not clear if there are especially meaningful patterns in this data outside of that region; Obama had no trouble winning over white voters in relatively black non-southern states like Michigan, New York, or Maryland. There are fifteen states that I define as Southern. Obama drew a larger percentage of the white vote than John Kerry in five of them, a smaller share (sometimes substantially smaller) in four of them, and got exactly the same percentage in the other six.

The driving factor in determining how Obama performed vis-à-vis John Kerry, however, appears as though it might not be race, but rather how much Obama camaigned in a given state. According to the New York Times candidate tracker, Obama campaigned extensively -- by which I mean, he actually went out and spent a lot of time on the ground -- in 6 of the 15 Southern states. These include Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, and Missouri (where Obama campaigned extensively in the general election cycle), as well as South Carolina and Texas (where Obama campaigned extensively in the primaries). The other nine Southern states, Obama did not have more than a couple of apperances in, and several he did not visit at all.

I said 'interesting'. I'm not sure if I believe it. I'd like to.

Adobe Acrobat.com

The adobe tool suite enters a new phase with air-based tools like Buzzword (word processing) and AdobeConnect (desktop sharing & communication).
Buzzword is quite slick, but I'm not. My spelling is poor and I would not consider use of a word processor w/o a reasonable spell checker. Buzzword has spell check on a menu, but it is lame, lame, lame.

Adobe Acrobat.com

Gmail: Voice and video chat

Nice. Especially if it works.

Gmail: Voice and video chat

Live Election Coverage?

Little House on the Trailer

Modeled after an early 20th century house, but small enough to put on wheels and move around, this little house has everything.

Compact kitchen
Incinerating toilet
6,000 BTU propane space heater
Recycled fir featured throughout
Outdoor hot shower with on demand hot water

What a nice 'little' country retreat!
$60,000
Designed in Pt. Reyes Station

Fresh Air :: Michael Gazzaniga

The show talks with neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga, director of the University of California-Santa Barbara's SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind. One of the pioneers of split-brain research, he's been studying the way the left and right brain work individually for 45 years. Gazzaniga also serves on the President's Council on Bioethics. His new book is 'Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique.'"