Wednesday, May 24, 2006

יום התלמיד

Starting this evening, we at Hebrew University of Jerusalem are celebrating יום הסטודנס. Celebrations involve typical student-like activities such as parties with loud rock-music and beer. Also school has been cancelled to celebrate this day.

In protest, I am celebrating יום התלמיד, a day in which I sit in the library and study all day. This is, I suppose, another way of being a student. The library has at least one thing those loud outdoor parties don't have - an air-conditioner.

Friday, May 19, 2006

Who do they think they are?!

How stupid can you be? It is as if they are sending a formal invitation (printed on card stock, matte paper) to the international community to compare this Iranian regime to 1936 Germany. Who does their PR?

I wonder if they will include a reply card.

Update: I had linked to a National Post article (Canadain national paper) that ran a story about a new law in Iran which would require all members of minority faiths to wear armbands with distinct colors; Yellow for Jews, Red for Christians and Blue for Zoroastians. This report appears to be false, but I would stay tuned as the Iranian gov't is known to have misrepresented themselves before (re: op-ed in the NYT "We do not have a nuclear weapons program" from about a month ago).

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Babblefish in the Afterlife (or the lack thereof)

I am in the middle of an article about Cavell, Emerson, Aristotle, et al and I had the most curious thought: What if, when you die, you go to an afterlife that is completely foreign to you. You stand before a daemon, venting power and wrath, except s/he does not speak your language. You are at a complete loss to understand His/Her moral charges, but during the hearing, through no fault of your won, you crack up numerous times when the prosecutor utters words such as "Fuptubarb" and "Rakakamakamon." You can throw gavitas right out of St. Pete's window.

What an absurd ending.

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Viva la Lobbists!

I have not learned very much in the past year. One thing I have learned is that democracy is all about making your voice heard...above everyone else's. While other people merely vote in the polls, we (those that bitch the night away) must do something more to insure that America does not make the wrong decision.

How can I make my voice heard over the mass of the loud hoi polloi, you ask? Easy, donate to a campaign. Yes, you, who live in Chicago, NY or New Haven can influence an election in a state that is not even contiguous to your own! God bless America and its nearly boundless freedom of expression, i.e. hard money contributions. So quit whining about interest group politics and become and interest group of your own!

I would have now plugged Casey against Santorum, but as Casey is pro-life, I can't, in good conscience, ask other people to do that.

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Of Interest

Like every Monday morning at work, I set about perusing the NYT Online to see what I have missed through my inattention during the weekend. Among other important articles about the resignation of Goss from the CIA, I stumbled across a piece by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt "A Star is Made." It is unimportant to present a careful dissection of the argument, but simply put, the authors posit that talent is near worthless to effort. Great musicians, athletes, writers, etc are not born with talent, but become good through repetition.

Slightly more subtly, the article moves from a paradigm of "practice" to one of "interest"--which was more intriguing to me.
Deliberate practice entails more than simply repeating a task; playing a C-minor scale 100 times, for instance, or hitting tennis serves until your shoulder pops out of its socket. Rather, it involves setting specific goals, obtaining immediate feedback and concentrating as much on technique as on outcome...Ericsson's research suggests a third cliche as well: when it comes to choosing a life path, you should do what you love; because if you don't love it, you are unlikely to work hard enough to get very good. Most people naturally don't like to do things they aren't "good" at. So they often give up, telling themselves they simply don't possess the talent for math or skiing or the violin. But what they really lack is the desire to be good and to undertake the deliberate practice that would make them better.
Like many Levittine arguments, I initially tossed it out; obviously there are people who are more talented than others. While Michael Jordan is a better basketball player than I (which is no surprise, as he has practiced a whole lot more than I have) he is also better than Toni Kukoc, who probably shot nearly as many layups in his life.

What Levitt Inc propose is much more significant however--Michael Jordan is more interested in basketball than Toni Kukoc. Not interested in the sport--I am sure they both love the game--but the article posits that MJ is interested in those facets, the "specific goals" as they are referred to, than TC. Basketball is not one whole unit, but it is made up of zillions of finer aspects: dribbling, layups, guarding, wrist motion, etc. Levitt proposes that MJ just likes the sum of all these parts more than most players of the modern era, and as such, practiced to "obtaining immediate feedback and concentrating as much on technique as on outcome."

The obvious question which this thesis admits is: Ok, you have replaced the word, "talent" with "interest." So what causes one to be interested?

I didn't find the answer to that question in the article, but the conjecture is not as flat as I suggested. It means that if you think you are interested in a vocation, ask yourself, "Do I like the individual aspects, that sum to the whole?" Some people love physics, but are just not interested in doing long intergals or in trig. identities. I got news for you, it means you are not really interested in physics. And if you stay up at night pondering what other groups of Hermitian operators will solve Schodinger's equation, what you are doing in not called curling, it is called physics--sometimes things just get mislabeled (no philosophy of language discussion now, please), and you just might need to relabel them for yourself.

Friday, May 05, 2006

Homer Omer

I realize that this is square in the middle of the counting, but better late than never...

should you be in despair during sefirah, let Homer help you out! Zev would tell me that I would have failed to live up tradition if I didn't spread the word.