In a massive and deeply thoughtful essay, Bosco Ho writes about how connecting deliberative practice, neural plasticity, individual strengths, and the “joyful connection of flow” into a loop can lead to achieving mastery over an activity. Highly recommended.
Isaac Asimov’s classic Foundation Trilogy (later expanded to included several more books—prequels and sequels—and joined to his robot series), has been a favorite of mine since I was a teenager.
Nicholas Whyte recently posted that an eight-hour version of the Foundation Trilogy, produced by the BBC in 1973, is available at the Internet Archive Community Audio website. I immediately downloaded the eight one-hour MP3 files and began listening to them. This BBC version is performed as a radio play with little or no connecting narration. If you are not completely familiar with the books, this version can be a little confusing. But since I have read this science fiction classic possibly thirty times, I’ve had no problem following the story.
I once owned a six-cassette set of abridged readings of the Foundation Trilogy; I probably listened to it more than twenty times, to the point that I can recite long stretches of the book from memory. This edition was distinctive because it was Isaac Asimov himself who read Foundation on the first two cassettes. Asimov wasn’t an especially good reader compared to David Dukes, who read the second and third novels in this edition. But it was from Asimov’s reading that I learned that Hari Seldon’s first name is pronounced Harry and Gaal Dornick’s first name is pronounced Gale.
I searched for information about the cassette edition and found it on Edward Seiler’s Isaac Asimov Home Page, a comprehensive listing of everything Asimov produced in his lifetime. Seiler’s Asimov on Other Media page lists audio recordings, by Asimov and others, of Asimov’s works, and it was there that I found the following information:
If you’re interested, you can find copies of these editions from used book sellers on the Internet.
audible.com has a very good set of unabridged readings of the Foundation Trilogy by Scott Brick: Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation, all three of which I have listened to twice.
This weekend the New England Bicycle Expo is taking place at the Arts at the Armory building in Somerville, Massachusetts.
I visited with the Zipcar people, who were kind enough to give me a Zipcar T-shirt when they learned that Johanna and I have been members for nearly ten years.
I visited at the MassBike table (I am a member), and I bought a new North Shore and Cape Cod map.
I looked carefully at the elegant and functional messenger bags created by Vaya Bags. (I’m not quite ready to decide if I want to switch from a knapsack to a messenger bag.)
And best of all, I talked to the people at the Roll It Forward table and learned that they are taking donations of used bicycles this weekend. I cleaned up my old Raleigh Marathon 12-speed, pumped up the tires, tested the brakes, and took it in. They were pleased to get it and said it looked like it was in great condition. And I was pleased to get rid of it (so I can think about buying another bicycle).
Unfortunately, attendance was low, but I hope word gets around and the New England Bicycle Expo attracts more attention next year.
YouTube video author T0R0YD (Roy Prol) envisions what the Earth would look like if it had rings like Saturn’s rings. This delightful video shows what the rings would look like from various cities at different latitudes.
There are questions that the video does not address, and these are explored by Grrlscientist in her recent post, “What Earth might look like with Saturn’s rings.” Much of Grrlscientist’s information comes from a November, 2009, Scientific American post by John Matson, “What would rings around Earth look like?”
First, how deep a shadow would the rings cast on the surface of our planet, and could the consequent dimming of sunlight affect the Earth’s climate? Second, would the brightness of the rings have hindered the development of astronomy by obscuring regions of the sky and washing out the dimmer stars and perhaps even the Milky Way? Third, is it possible that the Earth once had a ring system?
Jamie Beck is a New York City photographer whose blog on tumbler.com, From Me to You, features a series of stunning animated photos. Each photo is actually an animated GIF, but you have never seen an animated GIF like Beck’s. The effects are subtle, limited to a small portion of each photo—just enough to bring each photo to life.
Among my favorites are a man reading a newpaper in a Manhattan park and the reflection of a passing taxi in a bar window.
(Via Shawn Blanc.)
In a post on Daring Fireball titled “Wolf!” John Gruber has collected predictions dating back to October, 2004, that any day now the Macintosh will become as big a target for malware as Windows. We’re still waiting….
Yesterday on the Gene Expression blog, Razib Khan wrote an extensive summary of a paper by Molina et al., “Molecular evidence for a single evolutionary origin of domesticated rice.” Khan, an excellent science writer, provides useful background information into the debate whether domesticated rice had two (or multiple) origins (proposed to be in China and India) or whether rice was domesticated once, after which domesticated strains were spread around Asia.
The latest evidence produced by Molina et al. is that rice was domesticated once sometime between 8,200 and 13,500 years ago in the Yangtze Valley in China.
Reference: Molina et al. 2011. Molecular evidence for a single evolutionary origin of domesticated rice. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA:10.1073/pnas.1104686108.
