Developing programming skills

For Bio-informatics, apparently. But should be good for anybody from the science and engineering background too — though, personally, I would have added C. Link via Eric Drexler.

Transcending the personal

In blogs:

To really work, Sierra observed, an entrepreneur’s blog has to be about something bigger than his or her company and his or her product. This sounds simple, but it isn’t. It takes real discipline to not talk about yourself and your company. Blogging as a medium seems so personal, and often it is. But when you’re using a blog to promote a business, that blog can’t be about you, Sierra said. It has to be about your readers, who will, it’s hoped, become your customers. It has to be about making them awesome.

So, for example, if you’re selling a clever attachment to a camera that diffuses harsh flash light, don’t talk about the technical features or about your holiday sale (10 percent off!). Make a list of 10 tips for being a better photographer.

If you’re opening a restaurant, don’t blog about your menu. Blog about great food. You’ll attract foodies who don’t care about your restaurant yet.

If you make superior, single-source chocolate, don’t write about that great trip you took to the Dominican Republic to source cocoa beans. That’s all about you. Instead, write the definitive article about making chocolate-covered strawberries. For the next 10 years, whenever a gourmand or a baker searches Google for a recipe on how to make chocolate-covered strawberries, he or she will find your post. Helping your users make awesome chocolate-based confections is likely to attract readers who might buy fancy chocolate, and that’s the point of a successful blog. Writing about trips to the Dominican Republic is going to attract only people who might want to travel to the Dominican Republic. Unless you’re selling that, you shouldn’t be blogging about it.

Beteille on Raj

Here is Beteille on the economist K N Raj:

I cannot assess Raj’s contribution to economic science, nor is this the place or the time to do so. But he certainly was an inspiration to many both within and outside his own discipline. P.N. Dhar, who was both his friend and his rival, was bemused by the admiration Raj was able to attract. Shortly after he joined Indira Gandhi’s office as her adviser, he prepared a note for her with great care and some satisfaction. When he went to see her about the note, the first question she asked him was, “What does Dr Raj think of this?” It mattered to many people what Raj thought of them and their work. It certainly mattered to me.

In 1968, I was awarded a Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship for two years. I chose as my subject the study of agrarian social structure, at that time a somewhat unusual choice for a sociologist. My choice was influenced to a large extent by my association with Raj. I was determined to show him that sociologists had something to say about class and not just about caste, but that they had their own approach to its study. My colleagues in the department of sociology were a little puzzled by my choice of subject, and some even thought that Raj was turning me into a Marxist.

Take a look!

Liquid droplet on liquid nitorgen

An interesting one from PNAS:

Vitrification and levitation of a liquid droplet on liquid nitrogen

Y S Song et al

The vitrification of a liquid occurs when ice crystal formation is prevented in the cryogenic environment through ultrarapid cooling. In general, vitrification entails a large temperature difference between the liquid and its surrounding medium. In our droplet vitrification experiments, we observed that such vitrification events are accompanied by a Leidenfrost phenomenon, which impedes the heat transfer to cool the liquid, when the liquid droplet comes into direct contact with liquid nitrogen. This is distinct from the more generally observed Leidenfrost phenomenon that occurs when a liquid droplet is self-vaporized on a hot plate. In the case of rapid cooling, the phase transition from liquid to vitrified solid (i.e., vitrification) and the levitation of droplets on liquid nitrogen (i.e., Leidenfrost phenomenon) take place simultaneously. Here, we investigate these two simultaneous physical events by using a theoretical model containing three dimensionless parameters (i.e., Stefan, Biot, and Fourier numbers). We explain theoretically and observe experimentally a threshold droplet radius during the vitrification of a cryoprotectant droplet in the presence of the Leidenfrost effect.

Take a look!

Readings: the private and the social

Libby Gruner at Inside Higher Ed:

It’s an odd thing, writing a blog. Folks I know — or colleagues I don’t know, for that matter — can stumble across it in ways they’re unlikely to come across my academic work, but they don’t often let me know they read it. That’s fine — one of the great pleasures of reading is how private it can be at times, how personal, how intimate. And if they don’t like it I certainly don’t need to hear it! But when I do hear about it, then writing a blog post becomes part of an ongoing conversation. I think we need both kinds of reading, the private and the social; the first allows us to drink deeply of new ideas and to reflect on them, while the second can allow us to put them into practice, to hone and refine them. (Or, one allows us to skim hastily while the other forces a certain accountability — that’s always another possibility.)

The rest of the piece is about a couple of articles on teaching that appeared recently (which Abi also referred to in his blog). Take a look!

Problems in our education

Are all due to “stultifying presentations of information” argues Bruce Eckel:

After an hour of listening to this intensity, you’re hungry for another one. It makes you realize that most of the problems in our education system come from taking information and presenting it in the most stultifying way possible. In contrast, you could listen to Radiolab-style lectures all the time. The big problem with this show, as Seth Godin points out, is that they don’t make them fast enough and that I’m going to run out of back episodes soon. But I don’t care, I can’t stop.

Radiolab gives you a steady stream of golf balls to the forehead. There’s a downside, as people who have come to open-spaces conferences can attest: it ruins you for the old, tedious way of doing things. I suspect you just become aware that you live bored, but this awareness is disruptive and you can’t un-open the can of worms. Go in with your eyes open.

I had a big golf ball to the forehead during the writing workshop. I will probably process this insight for years. It came during a rapid-writing exercise, where one of the things that appeared on my page was this:

We are irrational. Proof: We believe we are rational.

I’ve been unconsciously struggling with this issue for a long time. Why don’t we just behave sensibly? Every time I see people — including and especially myself — do dumb things, the same question comes up: we know the right answers, or at least how to find them, why do we adamantly continue down the path of stupid?

If you assume people are rational creatures, then our behavior is crazy and frustrating. But why did there need to be a “dawn of reason?” And just because we have discovered reason and the scientific method, does that mean that it permeates our brains?

It turns out that we are not really wired for reason per se. It’s not the way we absorb and internalize information, or make decisions.

Take a look!

Sriram on Sister Devamata

Days in an Indian Monastry is a book that I have wanted to read for quite some time now, though, I have not yet managed to find a copy. Here is Sriram on the sister and her book. While we are at it, A Yankee and the Swamis is a good read too.

The woman who dared twice

Sriram Venkatkrishnan tells the story!

… you should never completely trust a writer …

Especially if she is any good.

Says Michael Lewis in this piece; link via Abi.