I find it extremely romantic and serene to swim under a thunderstorm.
So getting kicked out of the pool is like being interrupted while being in a zone.
Come on, I get wet one way or another, and I am much more likely to be killed by car commute than lightning.
I found Bobby Fischer against the World a fascinating documentary about a particular kind of talent (chess) of a unique individual (Bobby Fischer, widely considered as the greatest chess player of all time who later self-destructed into an outcast) at a particular era (cold war, with chess being one of the competitions to showcase US/Soviet supremacy).
One interesting point pursued in the movie is about the specific type of brain that enables superior chess play may also cause certain psychological issues.
One can make a more general point in that unusual brains, as double-edged swords, can produce special talents as well as abnormal behaviors, as have been seen in geniuses across different disciplines such as musicians, artists, scientists, and mathematicians.
This is likely a unique local phenomenon, but I often see these student representatives wearing suits and sitting in meetings for various organizations.
It is extremely difficult for me to understand why anyone wants to do this. Young people should dream of being different instead of rushing into conformity.
Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.
– Steve Jobs
One of my computers has been extremely slow. After some investigations I found the culprit lied on the security software.
It was so slow as though the security software is checking every program execution and every network connection. So I just disabled it and the machine ran like a breeze.
I know I am supposed to get my computer protected, but what is the point if the protection will significantly cripple performance?
This bears analogy to how some nations (including two of the biggest and most important ones) trade off their liberty and security.
“They who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Benjamin Franklin
PS
I installed another security software a while later. It seems to work fine so far, but I would not hesitate to uninstall if it cripples performance.
On one hand, like math, coding provides some fundamental training that should definitely be learned by everyone.
On the other hand, it is a design problem if everyone has to learn coding just to build or use software tools.
In the current state of computer science, it remains unclear (at least to me) which parts are fundamental materials and which parts are design artifacts. The former can be distilled into general teaching curriculum while the latter should be fixed.
Ideally, an entrepreneur with core knowledge in math and programming should be able to create his or her own applications without having to write a single line of code.
This is already happening in certain domains such as mobile app development.
Last night I saw this Facebook post from a friend who is a CS professor in a top university:
Gag ugh gun ml K LnmNqnN ‘m
I spent some time deciphering the profound meaning and encoding of that post, to no avail.
Later on, the friend commented that this is the first Facebook post of his 2 years old daughter.
🙂
Theme: Rubric. Get a free blog at WordPress.com
