Feedback

Slate.com (one of my favorite online news sites) has this interesting article on having a monitoring device to give you feedback on driving habits. It's been pretty well known that giving people feedback on their performance can really change their behavior. If you've ever driven a hybrid you know that the "mpg game" can be a hugely amusing distraction. It's interesting to think about how we can use feedback in daily life to improve all manner of things... Speaking of improvements, this also really reminds me of Atul Gawande's book "Better", about improvements in health practices and surgery. It really highlights the effect of quantitative feedback on performance. Lots of food for thought.

Camel Case

The New York Times Magazine's "On Language" column is one of my favorites. This week's article is a fascinating exploration of written language disguised as a polemic against camelCase. Now, I happen to love camelCase (running words together and capitalizing the middle words), but the article is still a great read.

And for those who are curious about how it works in other languages than English, in Chinese and Japanese (and I imagine most other Asian languages?) there is no "word" spacing. You figure out what characters belong together by recognizing words that are formed. I wonder if word spacing would have any effect on the way we read those languages...?

Car of the year

Top Gear did a hilarious build of an electric car, and you can see the Autocar Magazine video review here. The full review can be found here [warning: PDF link!]. It is, in a word, Hi-Larious.

World Toilet Day

Yup. You heard me. World Toilet Day. I don't think I need to say any more.

Also, those of you who have heard me talking about wushu (Chinese martial arts), this video will help explain what it is. And by explain I mean blow your mind.

First Post! (ironicly not)

Today's link come courtesy of The Atlantic Online, the undead electronic lich that has risen from the grave of the Atlantic Monthly.
a fascinating article about the genetic benefits of traits like depression. Group discussion topic: if you could find out your genetic predisposition to depression, would you?

Also,a bit of art to lighten the day.

Finally, if you can fight through the choppy prose and slightly painful self-analysis this article by Sandra Tsing-Loh (my commencement speaker!) actually puts up some thought-provoking points. That is all!

Welcome!

A surprising number of people have come to me and told me that I've brought joy to their internet time wasting with my gchat profile links, and I realized that I also like those articles. Therefore I've decided to start a blog, primarily to have a way of easily archiving the links and also to feed my growing narcissism. Plus this way I get to throw in some half-digested thoughts with each piece. So enjoy!