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From the staggering Eric Barker

Try, try again.

for posterity:

The Crash

Iceland

on the Movie The Invention of Lying

Appreciations of Robin here and here.

He’s one of the few people I’ve read that I genuinely think is a step or two ahead of everyone else. And not the kind of step that you can take by increasing the content of your mental knowledge bank. Remarkable stuff. But he’s a bit of an acquired taste.

Science here

The Awl wins the comment competition

“Scientists expect the planet’s chronological balance to be restored during this Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony, which, with ten best picture nominees, is gonna take forever.”

The Trenta!

Self Recommending

http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.overcomingbias.com%2F2010%2F02%2Flegalize-dud-drugs.html

So HGH doesn’t do anything?

Self described multitaskers are stupider.

There are a few things that are posited to be correlated, here:
1. Multitasking and poor cognitive performance
2. multitasking and poor memory
3. poor memory and poor cognitive performance (obviously).

Which way does causation run?

My guess is that it goes like this: Multitasking (optional) –> poor memory –> poor cognitive performance

being able to focus on a problem for long periods of time DEFINES intelligence. Controversial, non?

The thesis is that we don’t do any “work” at work

Getting a massive following on the net, now, but the implication is that we should be just left alone to “get on with it” and get “work” done.

In fact, monitoring and collaboration are incredibly important in the workplace and meetings, when done properly, are necessary to maximize productivity. I recommend this lecture by Ed Catmull, one of the co-founders of Pixar. The gist of the lecture is that you need to monitor works in progress, not finished “work” that our friends at the Big Think suggest we should all be left alone to do.

Most of what our grandparents might call “work” is now done by computers. If you want to get on with “work”, get a construction job and really learn how to bust your ass for a living.