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7 guidelines for challenging projects

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 03:07:11 GMT

clipped by: willhelm

Start small. Projects can get depressing because we tend to only think about how big they are and how much time they’ll take. Break the problem into parts, instead of looking for a solution for the entire project. It’s much easier to find solutions for small problems than complicated problems.

Once you figure out little by little about what it’s going to take the finish the project, start mapping tiny dates that you think you can have X done. Just enough to keep you focused, but not enough to freak you out.

Starting with what you know about the problem is always the best way to find solutions. If the problem is complicated, make sure to constantly be looking over what you know. What you know clues you in on what you need to find out.

Worrying about details at the beginning is an easy way to lose focus.

Don’t limit yourself to what you know. If you can’t find a simple solution, start thinking big.

try looking for simple, obvious solutions first.

Ask advice.

Right before our eyes

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 20:26:17 GMT

clipped by: dakotayii
clipper's remarks: A study of change blindness - Even when people are on the lookout for changes—and insist that they will detect errors—they still fail to find them,Simons’s research suggests.

A very interesting site about Visual cognition.

Clip Source: nivea.psycho.univ-paris5.fr

ABSTRACT

Any theory of experience which postulates that brain mechanisms generate "raw feel" encounters the impassable "explanatory gap" separating physics from phenomenology.

If I show you a picture and make a change in it, like this, you immediately see the change. there's no problem, it pops out.

Change with no transient

But if I make the change at the same time as I put a slight flicker on the screen, like this, then in many cases you miss the change.

Flicker example: woman in kayak

It's quite interesting that sometimes you can be looking directly at the change and still not see it. So here if I tell you to look at the man's nose, you'll be within a few pixels of the change, and yet often you wont see it: it's the bar in the background going up and down.

Notre Dame

Some changes are easier to see than others. But even a change which occupies a very large portion of the visual field may not be noticed if it's not part of what the picture would be said to be about

canalbridge

Tags: science

The Universe - The Guardian Science Course Part 1

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 09:29:22 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

The Guardian: Science course

Part I: The universe

Creation in the blink of an eye

Cosmologists are agreed that the universe began with a big bang. Direct evidence comes from the fact that the universe is still expanding today

Timeline of the universe

Scientists can now tell us what happened in nearly every millisecond of the big bang. Robert Matthews takes us through the first crucial moments

Heavenly bodies

Do you know your red dwarf from your neutron star, your supernova from your solar wind? When does an asteroid earn the status of planet? Read on ...

We are not alone

How was our solar system created? And now that we have discovered planets orbiting other stars, will we find one that supports life?

A view from here to eternity

Light is only part of the story - there's a whole set of different ways we can study the stars, from radiation to x-rays. But your eyes are a good start, writes Duncan Graham-Rowe

The night sky

The power of the dark side

The end of time

The hunt for aliens

No Such Thing as Society

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 06:19:15 GMT

clipped by: abailart

Clip Source: www.huppi.com

There's no such thing as society," British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once declared. "There are individual men and women and there are families."

This remarkable statement serves as a useful litmus test for distinguishing the moderate right from the far right. If you are a conservative and agree with Ms. Thatcher, you most likely subscribe to the far right; if not, you are most likely a moderate. (The reaction of liberals to this audacious claim was predictable: many were left wondering how a great and sophisticated nation like Great Britain could elect anyone to high office without even a rudimentary understanding of sociology.) But as audacious as the claim may be, it is a common one among neo-conservatives. They believe that the concept of society is a myth, and in its place we actually have a collection of disparate individuals.

Tags: thatcher, neo-conservatism