This is the type of thing that I imagine the "data suckers" (Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon) are able to do regularly with the complex data that they have and the advanced tools that they have at their disposal.
I can't see yet to what end that ability would be trained, but I consider that ability to be akin to the state's ability to see into my backyard from space: I know they can do it and it doesn't harm me immediately that they can, but there's something net negative about the power/ability imbalance that makes me feel uncomfortable. Of course nobody is going to use that awesome power on someone as inconsequential as me, but...
I wonder if the "data suckers" have any intention of creating a history of the world, in which no author imposes an interpretation of events. Besides remembering all the data, these companies have tools to parse the data and render it understandable, without imposing a meaning. Call it objective history. That would be valuable.
Team sports. I grew up playing competitive hockey. I learned from a very young age that I am not special, that the team is stronger than an individual, and magic happens when everyone commits to their role.
I am grateful for this gift, and attribute to it much of my present success.
Same for me. I’m nit sure if it requires playing at a competitive level or not, but playing on a team trying to accomplish a goal, battling adversity, sacraficing for each other, etc are really impactful experiences that I attribute most of my personal success to.
Team sports has too much 'coach as dictator' for non-competitive kids to develop. They are left to pasture, literally. Only the star athletes receive attention, then they bully the rest.
This definitely happens, but that’s also a bad coach.
Good coaches will develop kids across the entire range of skill levels, and will consistently give them tasks that they can succeed in (at least in practice). In the US, most little league teams have “must-play” requirements, so both coaches have to play their weakest players optimally.
I think both are true. The must-play requirements are present, but they don't stop certain things from happening -- things like the coach's kid from getting the most playtime, attention and opportunities in game. I saw this happen firsthand.
For anyone out there looking to give back to their community, learning how to be a good youth sports coach is probably high on the list of value add. It’s not easy, but you can have a positive impact on people that will last a lifetime.
Sure. There are kids who work in charities, political campaigns, family businesses, get involved in local civic or religious organizations, do creative performance like music/acting/dance, prepare for/compete in sports at a professional level, start doing serious academic work (attending conferences, writing peer-reviewed papers, working in academic science labs), invent stuff, publish fiction, compose new music, contribute to open source programming projects, do serious local journalism, .....
Any significant time commitment would be easier for a kid who didn’t spend all their time in school and had decent financial support.
I left the church just as every other thoughtful kid was supposed to but I miss it and worry frequently that American culture is slowly losing something which was foundational to its wellbeing.
By the time I was 12, church was something I was forced to do. I already doubted the whole premise, but couldn't actually say anything about it. And to top it all off, the churches my parents chose didn't really have kids my age. In sunday school, they usually had to decide which "special" class I was going to be in: THe one with older kids or the one with younger ones. It isn't like American children get any sort of voice in whether or not they go to church or which church/religion they adhere to.
I didn't have access to the other things, or at least I didn't know of these places in the small town I lived in.
Martial Arts. Any decent school you go to will probably have men and women of all ages, sizes, races and social backgrounds. Many schools will also do "community events" which provide opportunities for families to get involved more.
True, historically taught Martial Arts are fantastic for a well rounded development, whereas the toxic male fantasy taught at many schools is the opposite. It pays in spades to investigate a martial arts school's instructor personalities, as many are male failures attempting some type of redemption through domineering others' children.
I'm still taken aback by how quickly government (federal, state) allowed testing of driverless cars on public roads. Feels like a cold calculation made on behalf of citizens to say "some people probably need to die in order to bring this to market quickly, and that's ok with us in these areas."
The existence of cars and airplanes (even horses) is a similar trade-off. Some people have to die for us to even have them.
Ultimately the faster we bring driverless cars to fruition, the fewer people will die, simply because it's inevitable that they will quickly exceed the safety of humans.
Then we will have turned automobile safety into an engineering problem. It was partially that before, we could package the victim better to improve their survivability, but now we can modify the driver ... every driver.
Yes. My other half hasn’t got over the 30 minute rant and regular random explosions about it to this day when we hired a plumber and his van had comic sans and clipart from Microsoft office on the side. This was 15 years ago.
Can someone help me understand how to read/interpret this graph? I tried to make sense of it, but I think I was only fooling myself. I need to get planed.
Brings back many memories. Back in around 2000/01, the website had complete contact information for Gene Ray including phone number. So I called him up and he rambled at me for about 20 minutes before he had to go because his grandkids were coming over.
I'm happy to have had the chance to read these books twice (first in my early 20s, again in my late 30s), but I only wish I could compare my experiences with a first reading during my early teens or pre-teen years.
