the power of the internet
So yeah, I discovered that reading other people's blogs and newsworthy event coverage (at least, of the sort I'm accustomed to, not the sort that passes for news for most people) is not nearly taking up enough time in the day. Taking a series of tests on various types of bodies of water on the globe, African cities and capitals, and baseball records managed to soak up plenty of time.
I determined that I absolutely crush almost all people on basic quizzes of the pointless factual data involving Africa (large cities, capitals, rivers, GDP). And baseball records of course.
Is academic writing getting harder to read?
6 hours ago
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Whenever I'm bored I usually just go to youtube. One good search item lately has been "bbc documentary". I watched a series on Alexander the Great last night, and they have a whole series on composers, a real good one of which is about Beethoven. Lots of cool shit out there. ted.com is good too, but it's very short and cursory, not very in depth. I don't know what your thoughts on music are, but for whichever instrument grabs your fancy there's a video of someone badass rippin' it up on one on youtube.
My writing's been getting slim, but then again, it seems only the people I force to read it read it; the pieces never prove to be nearly as provocative as I thought they would be. They tend to just produce the response, "That was weird".
I've seen weirder.
Did you see the marshmallow one about delayed gratification and success over on TED?
Probably not because it's not ringing any bells. Good?
I first saw it with an Atlantic article that I linked to. But basically they took kids at this preschool and told them they'd get another marshmallow if they could wait to eat the one on the table until an adult came back into the room (about 15 minutes). And then they studied how kids (and later adults in similar tests) came up with ways to delay gratification and the effects that has on later success rates on things like academic testing or career development.
Doesn't bode well for a culture of instant gratification.
I saw that kind of thing, but I think it was done with jellybeans. Really cute. Some kids wait as long as they possibly can stand it...some go for the candy right away. The implications aren't very funny, but I find it hilarious to watch.
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