Prof David A Patterson’s lecture on bad career moves. Sage contrarian advice from a legend in our field. In order to get on the fast track to bad career, you can …
- Invent a field and Stick to it
- Let Complexity be Your Guide (Confuse Thine Enemies)
- Never be Proven Wrong
- Use the Computer Scientific Method
- Avoid Feedback
- Publishing Journal Papers is Technology Transfer
- Write Many (Bad) Papers by following 5 writing commandments
- Give Bad Talks by following 7 talk commandments
I love that he follows the section on bad career advice with a section on “alternatives to a bad career.” That’s my mission, to find an alternative to a bad career. This is a (little) bit more optimistic than the Matt Foley advice.
Jeff Bezos told this story a few years at a commencement address. After telling his grandmother to quit smoking in the most calculating, callous way imaginable, his grandfather responded with this memorable chestnut.
“My grandfather looked at me, and after a bit of silence, he gently and calmly said, ‘Jeff, one day you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever.’”
– from HBR Blogs
When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.
—Robert Frost, “A Time to Talk”
It’s not quite a Christmas song, but it does get me in the Christmas mood to see such a creative take on an old standard.
Fantastic piece by Charles Kenny on Foreign Policy on the effect of television on modernization. TV has become such an integral part of our culture in the US, but as television penetrates globally, we are seeing dramatic social consequences. Many of them good consequences.
A couple of these changes that jumped out at me.
Exposing (or Complicating) Corruption
Consider the bribes that Peruvian secret-police chief Vladimiro Montesinos had to pay to subvert competitive newsmaking during the 1990s. It cost only $300,000 per month for Montesinos to bribe most of the congressmen in Peru’s government, and about $250,000 a month to bribe the judges — a real bargain. But Montesinos had to spend about $3 million a month to subvert six of the seven available television channels to ensure friendly coverage for the government. The good news here is that competition in the electronic Fourth Estate can apparently make it more expensive to run a country corruptly.
Women’s Equality and Education
The soaps in Brazil and India provided images of women who were empowered to make decisions affecting not only childbirth, but a range of household activities. The introduction of cable or satellite services in a village, Jensen and Oster found, goes along with higher girls’ school enrollment rates and increased female autonomy. Within two years of getting cable or satellite, between 45 and 70 percent of the difference between urban and rural areas on these measures disappears.
Youth Truancy
Kids who watch TV out of school, according to a World Bank survey of young people in the shantytowns of Fortaleza in Brazil, are considerably less likely to consume drugs (or, for that matter, get pregnant). TV’s power to reduce youth drug use was two times larger than having a comparatively well-educated mother.
Youth Education
Today, more than 700,000 secondary-school students in remote Mexican villages watch the Telesecundaria program of televised classes. Although students enter the program with below-average test scores in mathematics and language, by graduation they have caught up in math and halved the language-score deficit.
Intercultural Empathy
In the United States, an additional minute of nightly news coverage of the Asian tsunami increased online donation levels to charities involved in relief efforts by 13 percent, according to research from the William Davidson Institute. And analysis of U.S. public opinion indicates that more coverage of a country on evening news shows is related to increased sympathy and support for that country.
[Source: Revolution in a Box]
Interesting study in the Scientific American today on mind matters.
In a series of experiments, they showed that if students make an unsuccessful attempt to retrieve information before receiving an answer, they remember the information better than in a control condition in which they simply study the information.
The authors of the “Dummies Guide” and “For Dummies” books have had this going for years. They start every chapter with a series of questions. In essence forcing the reader to prime their minds and improve retention.
The author mentions that next time you want to search for an answer online, take a guess first and then compare it with your online result. You learn more, even if you get it wrong.
I’d never heard of Louis CK before I saw this clip. Apparently he used to write for Conan O’Brien back in the glory days. I’m not too crazy about a lot of his other humor, but this is funny.
Funny because it’s true.