Immoveable Feast

In Praise of Boredom →

bobulate:

On the exquisite nature of boredom:

It’s about a certain mindset. Perfect boredom is the enjoyment of the moment of stasis that comes between slowing down and speeding up — like sitting at a traffic light for a particularly long time. It’s at the cusp of action, because however enjoyable it may be, boredom is really not a long-term aspiration. It’s for an afternoon before a sociable evening. It marks that point in a holiday when you’ve shrugged off all the concerns of work and home, explored the hotel and got used to the swimming pool, and everything has become totally familiar. ‘I’m bored’ just pops into your mind one morning as you’re laying your towel over the sunlounger before breakfast, and then you think ‘How lovely.’ It’s about the stillness and familiarity of that precise moment before the inevitable anxiety about packing up and heading back to God-knows-what.

Equal parts irreverent, innocuous, and inspiring, boredom is at once impossible to intentionally be (one can’t plan to be bored) and impossible to be without.

Here’s another part that I really enjoyed:

Boredom in the workplace is something else, of course. Here every moment has hovering over it the question-mark of time passing.

Ignorance Frequently Begets Confidence →

This explains a lot.

The Dunning–Kruger effect:

A cognitive bias in which “people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it”. The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than in actuality; by contrast the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority.

[Researchers] hypothesized that with a typical skill which humans may possess in greater or lesser degree,

1. Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill.
2. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others.
3. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.
4. If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill.

(via bobulate, via Caterina.net)

Grumpy People May Be More Evolved →

If that’s the case, I’m highly evolved.

Phenotypic changes between species can occur when evolution shapes development. Here, we tested whether differences in the social behavior and cognition of bonobos and chimpanzees derive from shifts in their ontogeny, looking at behaviors pertaining to feeding competition in particular. We found that as chimpanzees (n = 30) reached adulthood, they became increasingly intolerant of sharing food, whereas adult bonobos (n = 24) maintained high, juvenile levels of food-related tolerance. We also investigated the ontogeny of inhibition during tasks that simulated feeding competition. In two different tests, we found that bonobos (n = 30) exhibited developmental delays relative to chimpanzees (n = 29) in the acquisition of social inhibition, with these differences resulting in less skill among adult bonobos. The results suggest that these social and cognitive differences between two closely related species result from evolutionary changes in brain development.

The Great Grocery Smackdown →

Will Walmart, not Whole Foods, save the small farm and make America healthy?

Is it just me, or is The Atlantic ruling more and more lately?

(via givemesomethingtoread—which also rules, thanks Nostrich and Marco)

Computer Science Students are Biggest Cheaters →

A recent study by the San Jose Mercury News shows that at Stanford, cheating in computer science classes account for 22% of the university’s total honor code violations, despite accounting for only 7% of student enrollment…

My wife and I were taking the PRAXIS test in Jersey a few weeks ago. The PRAXIS is a standardized test that you need to take to become a teacher. I showed up with a hangover and a bad attitude (It was Saturday morning, in my defense). The other budding test takers brought note cards and study guides. Mind you, this was the test in “Elementary Education: Content Knowledge.”

Then it happened. A girl spotted a chart in the corner with a list of former presidents on a timeline in the opposite corner of the room. She immediately got up and moved her seat to sit next to the poster. Others were busy scrawling notes on the Magna Carta in discrete places on their desks.

These people are either current or aspiring teachers. Cheating. On a test of their knowledge of the content taught between grades 1 and 5. Seriously?

Addendum: My wife and I got certificates in the mail saying that we scored in the top 15% of all test takers. They sent the certificates in big envelopes with the word “Excellence” written in big, gold-embossed print on them. Again: elementary content knowledge. Should we be proud?

I already ordered frames off of Amazon.

(via fuckyeahcomputerscience)

When I was in high school, there was a replica of the Mystery Machine in the neighborhood.

Custom Vans as Endangered Art Form (via laughingsquid)

When can I move in?

(via sweethomestyle)

Yes, Ms. Palin—you certainly are a rogue.

Get me a fire flower.

Comparing the Country’s Public Transportation Systems

Yeah I’m not very happy with this stuff getting sent to my inbox. There has to be a preferences pane to shut this shit off, I don’t need my iPhone beeping. That beeping sets off my social anxiety like a bat out of hell. The more I try to push people away the more ways I find to keep interacting with them

— Frank Diaz on Google Buzz

Will the iPad make the iPod touch a little more awesome?

Here’s my bullshit Apple prediction for the week. By prediction, I really mean something that I wish would happen but probably won’t—and I am totally cool with that.

What’s the difference between the iPad and the iPad with 3G? Well, 3G and about $130.

Now, what’s the difference between the iPhone and the iPod touch? A lot of things. No camera. No built-in mic. Okay—two things. But they’re big things.

I have an iPhone. But part of me realizes that I’d be just as happy with a prepaid cell phone and an iPod touch of I could capture and create media like I can on my iPhone. I have an iPhone for the mobile computer part, not because I make all that many calls. And as far as being able to get my email where ever I may be? Yea, I could use a little less of that.

Windows: Looking out for me.

iPad: The Forgotten Details →

Granted, Apple has put a lot of work into rebuilding some of their applications to work better on the iPad (not to mention, designing the hardware to go around it). But the home screen—something you see every time you need to switch applications—should not have been a mere afterthought. If the iPad was designed before the iPhone, would it really look like this?

I completely concur. The small icons and unlock slider feel out of place on the larger iPad. I would have liked to see more Mac-like icons, maybe 128 pixels or so. Granted, I realize that this is impossible given the fact that the iPhone apps in the store currently don’t have larger icons and consistency is probably better than having some icons small and some large.

In my opinion, Apple missed an opportunity to create a completely new and much more natural user experience. They did so with very good reasons, but the opportunity has still been missed. That doesn’t stop the iPad from being an amazing device.

Colonial Ebay

(via maneeshsethi)