There’s a recurrent theme in my inbox as another semester is near the end. (And yes, I do use that wooden desk Gmail theme. Let a man keep his kitschy customizations.)
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I’ve been ‘attending’ Harvard University’s free online Computer Science class, and I wholeheartedly recommend it. I hope to plug some holes in my CS understanding, left from sometimes inadequate self-teaching and an academic background too focused on the end-user understanding of computers. Having had almost no direct contact with a foreign academic systems (except for a couple of University of Texas workshops and seminars held here in Porto), let alone Ivy League, here are some remarks after ‘attending’ the first couple of weeks (meaning watching four videotaped lectures and doing a couple of ‘problem sets’):
So yeah, I’m enjoying it.
James Gleick on what defines a meme. ···
Practical tips on writing a book. Which is something I permanently want to start doing, soon. ···
Werner Herzog explains ‘truth intensification’ to Steven Colbert. I quite enjoy Herzog’s candid approach to the subject; while his manipulative antics (mutant albino aligators!) might horrify some, the fact is manipulation is unavoidable. Like an audiovisual equivalent of the Uncertainty Principle, I believe subjectivity stars when the filmmaker choses a camera angle over another or a moment over another. In that sense, all documentary is fiction (or, a lot more like fiction that most people want to believe), and the debate about truthfulness should hinge on what the author is trying to say rather than what is being shown. ···
The Elements of Hapiness, a study capturing the entire lives of more than 800 individuals. It’s a shame you can’t download the PDF. ···
What is College good for? I’ve recently had a student ask a somewhat more brutal form of the question the author mulls about — “Why do we have to learn this?” (‘this’ being, by the way, a short tutorial on sound recording in the context of a Multimedia Lab course with a very high amount of audiovisuals in its syllabus) — and found myself unable to provide an answer. I always figured someone who goes to college has a interest in learning stuff, no questions asked (much less when the ‘stuff’ is a downright obvious part of what you commited yourself to study for three years). ···
In the United States, the advertising industry says the middle class is over. ···
Nobel laureate Paul Krugman on the ‘rule by rentiers’. No better example than the recent Portuguese election, in which the media (owned by people with a vested interest in the privatizations-to-come) conspired not only to utter demonize the outgoing PM — the only way to ensure a ‘stable’ government by the right, given the overall perceived mediocrity of the right-wing leader and new PM, Pedro Passos Coelho —, but also to present the IMF’s prescriptions as palatable and inevitable (and a good 80% voted pro-IMF, fucking A!). And of course, not content until the country descends (or, as the media would put it, ‘ascends’) into a kind of feudal post-democratic ‘Berlusconianism’, pundits now call for a new ‘modern’ Constitution, stripped of such ‘nagging aspects’ as electoral and labour regulations, then freely available to the MPs and the lobbies to change as they please. And it seems people will gladly take it, as envious dreams of bling are the true opium of the masses. (via Boing Boing) ···
On a lighter note, about one year ago two players fought a three-day, eleven-hour battle in the Wimbledon lawn. The fifth set of the match ended 70-68. ···
Love this xkcd. While teaching practical use (i.e. video editing) to kids who often reason and behave as if the computer is a black box with elves, fairies, unicorns and glitter inside, I’m always trying to offer a glimpse of the real beauty: Layer upon layer of progressive abstraction that allows for billions of very simple elements, such as what are basically on-off switches, to create something incredible complex, for instance a dramatic chipmunk.
